#1081: Tucker, The Man And His Empiricist

Summary

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Knowledge Fight Episode #1081: Tucker, The Man And His Empiricist

October 3, 2025

Hosts: Dan & Jordan
Main Topic: Analyzing Tucker Carlson’s interview with Christian apologist Lee Strobel about supernatural experiences (angels, demons, miracles).

Episode Overview

Dan and Jordan delve into a recent episode of The Alex Jones Show by way of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Lee Strobel, a former journalist turned Christian apologist. Strobel has released a new book claiming to "investigate" supernatural phenomena—angels, demons, miracles, near-death experiences—through an allegedly empirical, journalistic lens. Dan and Jordan scrutinize both the interview and Strobel’s arguments, exposing the weak evidence, logical fallacies, and not-so-subtle culture war messaging embedded throughout.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Tucker’s Framing: “Scientism” vs. The Supernatural

• Tucker’s Thesis [11:25]: Claims Western society has replaced religion with “scientism” — a fanatical worship of science that denies anything unmeasurable.

  • Quote [11:52, Tucker Carlson]: “There is a religion. It’s scientism... If it can’t be measured, it’s not real... The problem is our life contradicts it. Our daily experience is full of things that can't be measured.”

• Hosts’ Rebuttal [13:24]: Dan debunks the caricature, clarifying that science is iterative and never claims omniscience. Rather, it’s a system for testing ideas, subject to change if new evidence arises.

  “Science isn't a religion. This formulation is actually Tucker hiding the ball about what his actual argument is, which we'll get to as we go along.” — Dan [12:55]

• Subjective Experience ≠ Supernatural [15:10]: Jordan and Dan mock Tucker's claim that subjective sensory experiences are proof the "supernatural" exists.

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2. Lee Strobel’s Empiricism—Or Lack Thereof

• Tucker’s Introduction of Strobel [17:51]: Presents Strobel as a former Chicago Tribune journalist “grounded in empiricism.”

• The Reality [19:09]: Dan points out Strobel hasn’t worked in journalism since 1987 and is mainly an apologist (i.e., an advocate, not an investigator).

  “He’s a charlatan parading around in an empiricist costume, feeding into a religious hysteria that’s going to be used to persecute a ton of people for no reason.” — Dan [19:05]

• Argument Style: Strobel’s “evidence” is almost always anecdotal, third- or even fourth-hand, often derived from other apologists (e.g., Billy Graham). No actual empirical standards are applied.

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3. Anecdotes as "Proof"

Angels

• Classic Missionary Story [33:47]: Strobel recounts the tale of a missionary saved by a ring of angelic figures, sourced from Billy Graham, who in turn was retelling a late-1800s adventure story with no original mention of angels.

  • Hosts’ Dissection [36:19]: Dan traces the anecdote to its historical source and shows how it was embellished into the supernatural.

• Personal "Angel" Encounter [41:59]: Strobel describes a childhood dream about an angel questioning his worthiness to go to heaven.

  • Jordan’s Take [44:22]: “Dream-based evidence is not evidence. So no matter how convincing this story is or isn’t, it means nothing in our search for angels.”

• Modern Miracle Story [57:42]: Pastor rescued from an electrical accident by a mysterious man—presumably an angel. All “evidence” comes from the survivor’s account, who was likely dazed/in shock.

Miracles

• Blindness Healed [87:42]: Case study of a blind woman who regained sight after her husband’s prayer, published in a pseudo-scientific journal funded by faith-healing advocates.

  “If you go to the funding section, you’ll see that it was paid for by the very suspiciously named Global Medical Research Institute.” — Dan [91:22]

• Heidi Baker’s Mozambique Healings [95:59]: Described as a scientific experiment, but in reality is just lay “testing” at a faith healing service without any actual scientific rigor.

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4. Supernatural Claims as Culture War Ammunition

Demonology and Satanic Panic

• Tucker and Strobel on Demons [62:54]: Demons are “fallen angels” led by Lucifer, running around the earth (except with finite numbers and vague powers).

  • Dan’s Satire [73:31]: “This sucks — I hate this kind of shit where the devil is CEO of Evil, Inc., and you’ve just dealt with middle managers all your life.”

• Friends is Satanic [108:17]: Strobel claims Satan strategically uses media like the sitcom Friends to normalize “immoral” (i.e., non-monogamous) relationships.

  • Jordan’s Response [109:20]: Points out how ridiculous it is to fixate on sitcoms, especially ones as tame as Friends.

Moral Panic/Reactionary Politics

• Teachers and Drag Performers [114:16, 117:33]: Strobel and Tucker frame teachers and drag queens as corrupted or tools for demonic influence over children.

  • Tucker’s “Healthy Society” Quote [117:55]: “A healthy society would not put up with it for five minutes... They’d drive them out of the temple immediately with a whip.”

• Mental Illness as Demonic [121:05]:

  • Quote [122:01, Lee Strobel]: “I think it can very well be [spiritual].”
  • Hosts’ Analysis [122:24]: Dan warns that equating mental illness with possession is not just unscientific—it's dangerous.

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5. “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence” (But Not Really)

• Flipping the Burden of Proof [51:41]: Strobel claims belief in demons is the universal default, so atheists must produce “extraordinary evidence” that demons don’t exist.

  • Dan’s Rebuttal [52:11]: Explains why this is a logical fallacy (“You can't prove a negative”).
  • Jordan’s Quip [53:39]: “I will prove it by living my entire life never having an encounter, and then dying, and then neither of us will care. Proof.”

• Miracles via Public Opinion Poll [102:13]: Strobel tries to leverage survey data (“Have you ever experienced a miracle?”) as proof that miracles occur.

  • Dan’s Debunk [103:25]: “If we’re going to assume 99% of these folks are wrong... why can’t we assume it’s possible that 100% are wrong?”

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6. Other Supernatural Claims

• Speaking in Tongues [124:25]: Presented as spiritual languages interpreted only by the “gifted.” Jordan and Dan note it’s essentially an improv game.
• Near-Death Experiences [127:07]: Conflates “clinical death” with “brain-dead,” then uses anecdotal reports as evidence of an afterlife.
• Death Visions vs. Morphine [138:30]: Tucker claims modern medicine is cruelly depriving dying people of their “godly” visions by giving them morphine for pain.
• Ghosts and Psychics [144:25–147:08]: Strobel dismisses ghosts as demon apparitions and says consulting psychics should be a capital crime.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• "If demons do exist, we ought to be heads up about it."
  — Lee Strobel (clip) [07:08]

• "This is a dumb leap he’s making now."
  — Dan, after another angel anecdote [58:47]

• "I hate this kind of shit where the devil is CEO of Evil, Incorporated, and you’ve just dealt with middle managers all your life."
  — Dan [73:31]

• "If you are deceiving people to your God, your God is a deceiver."
  — Jordan [154:53]

• "Why would you come up with that [belief in the supernatural]?"
  — Lee Strobel, then echoes it as a point of universality [49:55]

• "If they answered in the affirmative, informal tests were conducted..."
  — Dan reading from the Mozambique study, mocking the “science” of faith healing [98:38]

• "How do you know that angels don’t get married?"
  — Dan, calling out “empiricism” being replaced by Bible fanfiction [31:02]

• "Are you bitching about Friends in 2025?"
  — Jordan [109:26]

• "Why are you doing something other than what the book says?"
  — Dan, as Tucker pushes for a single literalist, supernatural Christianity [159:57]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [11:25] – Tucker’s “scientism” as a modern religion
• [17:51] – Introducing Lee Strobel, the “empiricist”
• [33:47] – Missionary angel story (debunked by Dan)
• [41:59] – Strobel’s childhood dream evidence
• [57:42] – Modern angel rescue story
• [62:54] – Demons are fallen angels / Lucifer’s job description
• [73:31] – Dan on Demonic “middle management”
• [87:42] – “Blind” woman healed by prayer: case study scrutinized
• [95:59] – Mozambique miracle “study”
• [108:17] – Satan uses Friends to corrupt American values
• [117:33] – Drag queen story hour and the decline of society
• [121:05] – Mental illness recast as demonic possession
• [127:07] – Near-death experiences: science vs. supernatural
• [144:25] – Ghosts are really demons
• [147:08] – Psychics should be killed (according to Bible/Tucker)
• [159:01] – Christian “normalcy” vs. supernatural literalism

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Critical Takeaways

• “Empiricism” is costume jewelry: Despite marketing, Strobel offers no rigor or skepticism, just recycled church stories and bestselling “case for” book templates.
• Culture war framing: Despite surface-level detours into the supernatural, the real point is always a reactionary, exclusionary politics: demonizing (“literally”) alternative sexualities, non-religious teachers, drag story hours, etc.
• Weaponizing victimhood: Tucker positions Christians as victims in a secular world—any pushback on their beliefs (or efforts to limit proselytization) is painted as persecution.
• Dangerous consequences: The line between “demon” and “person with mental illness,” “gay person,” or “out-group” is deliberately eroded, justifying marginalization or abuse.
• Mocking but not totally dismissing faith: Dan and Jordan continually differentiate between personal religious belief (fine, harmless) and aggressive apologetics designed to justify control, discrimination, and bad policy.

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Final Thoughts

Dan and Jordan find Strobel and Tucker’s discussion equal parts laughable and alarming. While the supernatural content is silly (dreams, “healing” miracles, sitcoms as devilry), it’s all in service of real-world political exclusion. At its core, this “empirical supernaturalism” is used to demand theocratic politics, shame marginalized groups, and pathologize dissent. The best defense, according to the hosts? Keep your MacGyver handy, call out the nonsense, and don’t let Evangelical demagogues define Christianity or public life.

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Summary by PodcastSummarizerGPT
“The struggle for me here is that, sincerely, I don't hate Christians and I don't hate religious people, but this shit makes the position hard to defend.” — Dan [150:39]

Transcript

[Jordan]

Red alert. Red alert. Red alert. Red alert. Red alert. Red alert. Red alert. Red alert. Red alert. Knowledge Fight.

[Dan]

Dan and Jordan.

[Jordan]

I am sweating. Knowledgebody.com. it's time to pray. I have great respect for Knowledge Fight.

[Dan]

Knowledge Fight.

[Jordan]

I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys saying we are the bad guys.

[Dan]

Knowledge Fight.

[Jordan]

Dan and Jordan. Knowledge Fight. Need. Need money. Andy in Kansas. Andy. Andy, stop it. Andy and Kansas.

[Dan]

Andy in Kansas. It's time to pray.

[Jordan]

Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. Thanks for holding.

[Dan]

Hello, Alex.

[Jordan]

I'm a first time caller.

[Dan]

I'm a huge fan.

[Jordan]

I love your word. Knowledge Fight. Knowledge fight dot com.

[Dan]

I love you. Hey, everybody, welcome back to Knowledge Fight. I'm Dan.

[Jordan]

I'm Jordan.

[Dan]

Where a couple dudes like to sit worship at the altar of Selene. Talk a little bit about Alex Jones.

[Jordan]

Oh, indeed we are.

[Dan]

Dan Jordan. Dan, Jordan.

[Jordan]

Quick question for you.

[Dan]

What's up?

[Jordan]

What's your bright spot today, buddy?

[Dan]

My bright spot is I'm fucking around and thinking about bringing back a matter of time because I accidentally discovered that MacGyver is on streaming. Classic MacGyver.

[Jordan]

All right.

[Dan]

And I said, why not? I'll watch the pilot of MacGyver.

[Jordan]

Cause why not?

[Dan]

I haven't seen MacGyver in a long time. Yeah, I watched it when I was a kid a bit, and I think there were more jokes about MacGyver than I usually watched.

[Jordan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

I've seen definitely a few. I also think a fair amount of them blur together with Walker, Texas Ranger. And so, like, I'm not sure exactly what's Norris. What's Richard Dean Anderson?

[Jordan]

Meh.

[Dan]

And so I turned it on and I have to tell you, I was overwhelmed by the opening credits. It is so much boy stuff from my childhood. Like, it's just him doing a bunch of stuff that like rambunctious boys might do in the opening.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Dan]

It's just great. It tickled something in my brain.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And I. I love it. I can't. Well, I can't wait to watch however many seasons there are.

[Jordan]

I don't. I don't believe I've ever seen a full episode of MacGyver, but I've seen the last 8 minutes of 15 episodes of MacGyver and they are very similar.

[Dan]

Yeah. I know that. I've watched plenty.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Enough to answer this question. Yeah. That I don't really know. And that is, what does he do? Watch the pilot? I don't know.

[Jordan]

I was. Is he. I feel like he's an independent contractor. In some way, he's not wholly working for the like force or. You know what I mean.

[Dan]

Well, the government definitely tells him, we need you to do something.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

And then he. But he is also told, you can turn down this job.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

You don't have to do this.

[Jordan]

It's a very crazy. It's a very strange relationship he has with the government. Almost like altruistic in a sense. Like, he's like, oh, the government needs me again. I'll just help him out.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So in this one, there is a explosion in a negative third floor chemical plant.

[Jordan]

Oh, no.

[Dan]

And it turns out that it was sabotage by the head scientist. Scientist. Because he had created a way to get rid of the ozone layer accidentally, and he didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Dan]

So he lured the only other scientist in the world who understood what he was working on right to the. To his lab.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

They played a chess game with him and then blew it up.

[Jordan]

Okay, so they both died.

[Dan]

No, they both survived.

[Jordan]

They both survived. Oh, no.

[Dan]

A lot of other people died, but they survived. So MacGyver's got to go down and get him.

[Jordan]

Roll by.

[Dan]

And there's a chemical leak.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And so the military is going to shoot a missile at them.

[Jordan]

Of course, he doesn't get their own. This is a hell of a pilot.

[Dan]

Yes. And while he's down there, he meets the assistant to one of these scientists.

[Jordan]

Of course.

[Dan]

This lady.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

And she is like the gal from Indiana Jones. Like, she's an adventurer type. All right, she's ready to go.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Dan]

They kiss, like three times. I'm sorry, I Googled it.

[Jordan]

Do they know each other?

[Dan]

No.

[Jordan]

Wow, that's quick.

[Dan]

They thought they were going to die. And she's like, I just want to thank you.

[Jordan]

Oh, that's fair.

[Dan]

And then he kissed two more times.

[Jordan]

Wow.

[Dan]

And I Googled it. And she's not in another episode.

[Jordan]

I mean, scandalized. I hate to say this about MacGyver, but perhaps his one character flaws. He likes to hit it and quit it.

[Dan]

I. Yeah, he was loose with the lips. Also, he's a big brother, and that's cool. And he seems to live in a planetarium. I don't know. I.

[Jordan]

He's like a superhero, but a kid. But a kid. Yeah. He's like a little boy's imaginary superhero best friend who doesn't have superpowers, but is a good dad. But a dad who's your older brother.

[Dan]

Yeah. I worry about how much I'm going to uncover about like things from my cantankerous young boy phases.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Eras of life that I'm like, oh, wait, that was all just MacGyver.

[Jordan]

All of a sudden you realize that most of your memories are actually MacGyver episodes. Interesting.

[Dan]

I didn't blow up that lab.

[Jordan]

You were secretly experimented on by the government to teach you about MacGyver, like in the Matrix. But instead of, like, learning kung fu, you just. No MacGyver storylines.

[Dan]

Yeah. There's also four points where I audibly said, nope, but I love it still.

[Jordan]

It's all right. All right.

[Dan]

So it's your bright spot.

[Jordan]

My bright spot, Dan, is that for the first time in a good long while, my beloved Cubs have won a postseason game. Go Cubs. They will play today, this afternoon at 4:00 for the chance to make it to the National League Division series.

[Dan]

Nice.

[Jordan]

But for the time being, it's them versus the Padres, one to one, game each.

[Dan]

The dads.

[Jordan]

This is the third. This is the rubber match, and I'm excited to watch it tonight.

[Dan]

I hope we'll be wrapped up in time for you to take that in.

[Jordan]

Oh, yeah. I will have a cold beer in my hand and chips like an old fashioned man from the 1940s.

[Dan]

Nice.

[Jordan]

I will connect with my ancestors.

[Dan]

We went to go see a movie earlier in the week.

[Jordan]

Yes, we did.

[Dan]

So we were down near Wrigley, and it was during one of the games and there was counterterrorism on the L. Yep. And it was very. It was overwhelming.

[Jordan]

Yeah. There's gonna be a lot of people around.

[Dan]

Yeah. Our city has been invaded.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

So, Jordan, today we have an episode to go over.

[Jordan]

All right.

[Dan]

And without telling you too much about what we're gonna be talking about, I wanted to give you a little out of context drop to whet your appetite.

[Lee Strobel]

If demons do exist, we ought to be heads up about it.

[Dan]

Gotta be Heads up. Heads up. Demons. Is he wrong?

[Jordan]

I mean. No. You know, I was just thinking. You can't plan for every disaster, but you can plan for some disasters. And if there are demons, I think we should plan for them.

[Dan]

Right. We have. If we assume demons are real.

[Jordan]

Right. Big assumption. But we gotta assume it. Yep.

[Dan]

Heads up.

[Jordan]

The risk is too great.

[Dan]

Mm.

[Jordan]

I mean, if they are real and we're not prepared for them, we're fucked.

[Dan]

Yeah. Because they're tricky.

[Jordan]

They're unstoppable. Yeah.

[Dan]

So we will get into something about demons. But first, before we do that, let's take a little moment to say hello to some new wonks.

[Jordan]

Ooh. It's a demon feast.

[Dan]

So first, thank you very much for feeding my bespoke woke mind virus. Thank you so much. You are now a policy wonk.

[Jordan]

I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much.

[Dan]

Beswoke.

[Jordan]

Beswoke.

[Dan]

Beswoke. Next. From the Church of Dick Flachiel and the Latter Day Erections. Thank you so much. You're now policy wonk.

[Jordan]

I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much.

[Dan]

Big flaccid. Sorry.

[Jordan]

Gotcha.

[Dan]

Next. Dan, this is Jordan from the future. You're a great friend and I love you. Ooh, thank you so much. You're now a policy wonk.

[Jordan]

I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much.

[Dan]

Thank you.

[Jordan]

Yeah, well, I mean, it's good to know that in the future we're still friends. Or I'm a weirdo.

[Dan]

Or it could be like in the very near future or.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Or like, maybe it's. Maybe it's deeper into the future after all of this stuff has broken us up and torn us apart. And I was just like, I have one message on my deathbed to get back to Dan. Well, here we are.

[Dan]

I'm glad you took the time. And it means a lot, of course. So we also got a technocrat in the mix, Jordan. So thank you so much, too. I've got a small coffee company, outdoor coffee cult in Oregon called Hush hush Coffee. And I wanted to send you guys some coffee and officially offer you a sponsorship for your roast segment in honor of Owen Leaving hand biter. Thank you so much. You're an Iowa technocrat.

[Jordan]

I'm a policy wonk. Four star. Go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant.

[Dan]

Someone, someone Sodomite sent me a bucket of poop.

[Jordan]

Daddy shark. Bom bom bom, bom bom.

[Dan]

Jar Jar Binks has a Caribbean black accent.

[Jordan]

He's a loser. Little, little kitty baby.

[Dan]

I don't want to hate black people.

[Jordan]

I renounce Jesus Christ.

[Dan]

Thank you so much.

[Jordan]

Thank you very much. It occurs to me that I may have forgotten to reply to that email because I would like some of that coffee.

[Dan]

I don't need a sponsorship. If you want to send Jordan coffee, he drinks a lot of it.

[Jordan]

Absolutely. I drink so much.

[Dan]

I will say that on our last Owen episode, I did intend to write a roast.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

I did intend to, but I sat down, I started thinking of roast jokes.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I realized I hate roast comedy.

[Jordan]

It's the worst form comedy, I think, possible. Yeah.

[Dan]

Clever ways of saying, this guy sucks.

[Jordan]

You suck. Okay. The end.

[Dan]

So Jordan Yeah. There's no denying it. This show has been light on wackiness recently, and I think we've all felt the weight of its absence, especially as the world descends into, like, a real bad, bad time. We need that. We need something.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So laying in bed for a few days, I had the. I had the thought, you know, I was sick enough. Let's get wacky. So as soon as I got to feeling better, I got straight to this task, and I wasn't going to accept anything short of succeeding. And it didn't take me long to strike gold. On September 1st, Tucker Carlson released an interview with a former journalist named Lee Strobel entitled, quote, possessions, miracles, visions, and encounters with angels and demons. And I said, say less.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Now I'm in.

[Jordan]

I. You stop drilling. You have hit oil, my friend.

[Dan]

Yep. We all know Tucker was recently attacked by a.

[Jordan]

Recently attacked by a demon. This is finally him learning more about how to fight back.

[Dan]

Right.

[Jordan]

This is great.

[Dan]

And an opportunity for him to open up.

[Jordan]

Of course this is going to be more. Yeah.

[Dan]

So what do you think about demons?

[Jordan]

Yeah. Or, you know, traditionally against them. But maybe they're misunderstood. You know, I feel like perhaps we've gotten trapped in a dogmatic idea of good versus evil, and maybe that is. Kept us from evolving as a species. And demons are a fundamental asset aspect of something that we need to address is something part of our insights.

[Dan]

I'll spoil this for you. Lee. Is opposed.

[Jordan]

Opposed. Okay, well, then I'll go with that.

[Dan]

Yeah. So we start off here with Tucker giving a little bit of. A little bit of an intro. Son's guest.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay, so we're told there's no state religion in the west, certainly not in the United States, but in fact, there is. It's scientism. It's the worship of science. It's the belief, and all of us learn this at a young age, that everything around us, everything we experience can be measured by people in white coats. That's science. If it can't be measured, it's not real. The problem with this religion is that our life, our daily experience, contradicts it.

[Dan]

So a belief in science does not require a person to think that our current understanding of science is capable of explaining everything in the world. This is a semantic game that Tucker is playing where he's imposing on his opponents a position that they don't hold. Science can explain a lot, and it can explain a shitload more than it could a hundred years ago. So anyone who's not a dipshit would understand that in A hundred years, we'll be able to explain a lot more than we can now. Science doesn't purport to be able to explain everything, although most people who are into reality probably would concede that almost everything could be explained if we understood how everything worked, probably. Science is about repeatability for the most part. It's a process that takes ideas and tests them to see if they reach valid conclusions. What I mean is that science doesn't just say that antibiotics kill infections, and therefore this must be so rigorous trials and repeated studies that tested antibiotics against infections arrived at that conclusion that they were effective in fighting them. So that's become science's position. If new, repeatable, credible information were to come to light that indicated that they didn't work that way, science would change with that new information. Science isn't a religion. This formulation is actually Tucker hiding the ball about what his actual argument is, which we'll get to as we go along. Long as for the unexplained things that we experience in our day to day life, some of that can probably be explained by science. You just don't understand. Other parts of it might be stuff that can't be explained by our current body of scientific knowledge, but will be explained by a new discovery that's just waiting to happen.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

Or it could be magic.

[Jordan]

It's possible. Yes, it is possible that we could all be in some sense particles given mass by Higgs field, and that in a certain sense we are just moving through jello up and down like a wave. Or of course could be God, could.

[Dan]

Be magic, could be any of these things are possible. And scientism is a cult.

[Jordan]

That does make sense.

[Dan]

And, and all you need to know is that we're all having supernatural experiences all the fucking time.

[Jordan]

That sounds true.

[Tucker Carlson]

Constantly. All of us are seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling. Things that can't be measured by science, but it doesn't make them any less real. These are by definition supernatural. Supernatural experiences are a feature of everyone's life. And if we're honest, we'll admit that.

[Dan]

Tucker is saying that we're seeing, hearing, tasting and feeling things that cannot be measured by science. Which is strange because that's all of our senses except smell. Why aren't people smelling supernatural stuff?

[Jordan]

Okay, all right, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna follow this train of thought, please. If everyone experiences the supernatural, does it not then no longer deserve the term super?

[Dan]

Yeah, it's just natural. It's just regular way that we don't understand.

[Jordan]

Yeah, it's just natural or like, not even that. If you're tasting something, then we can measure, like, how spicy it is. Right.

[Dan]

We have saison levels and Scoville units.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Many of the things that you are seeing, tasting, feeling, are in fact, very measurable by your own senses.

[Dan]

Right.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Yeah. Tucker isn't talking about tasting a ghost or something here. This is actually just a reference to an idea in Lee Strobel's book where someone he's interviewing blows his mind by telling him that science can't describe the smell of coffee. Sensory experiences are tough to capture in words, largely because there's a disconnect between an experience and the awareness of the experience. Every person's reaction to a description of coffee relies on their subjective take on it. So putting that subjective description into more objective terms is difficult. But that doesn't mean that science can't explain why something smell the way they do. This is fairly basic stuff. It's something that we use so effectively that most people probably don't even realize it.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

For instance, natural gas is odorless, but it's also super dangerous.

[Jordan]

Can we measure it with science?

[Dan]

Well, when companies produce it, they add an odorizer to the gas so people can detect a leak more easily. Sure, they can do that because the scientific method has uncovered various compounds that have certain smells. Your experience of smelling one of these odorizers may be different from mine, but the arrangement of atoms that create the stimulus that we describe differently is science. Anyway, the point is that we aren't constantly running around having supernatural experiences. If you want to add some importance to the unique experience of tasting a peach, and that importance improves your life, then I wish you the best with it. But that does not invalidate science, and you sound like an idiot.

[Jordan]

I appreciate anybody who could write an entire book that I think his thesis boils down to explain example with your science.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes.

[Dan]

It does, except it's a little dumber.

[Jordan]

Yeah. I mean, ultimately, it bounds it down. It comes down to, like, well, I don't understand this. Prove that. Like, man, what are we doing here?

[Dan]

And I think that we're gonna have a tough time because I'm gonna be real mean to Lee Strobel. Not for you. But he seems like a pleasant man.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

I don't know anything about him except this interview and, you know, what I've read and his book and stuff. But, like, he seems like a happy person.

[Jordan]

He's all right.

[Dan]

He also seems probably worse than Tucker in some ways, but politer.

[Jordan]

I mean, I. I suppose. I suppose you don't, you know, if you. If you write a book about how angels and demons are better than science, I don't think I can let you off the hook. Even if you're a polite guy, wait.

[Dan]

To hear some of the shit he says.

[Jordan]

I believe that. I believe that hard.

[Dan]

So here's the thing you need to know about Lee, okay. Before Tucker brings him in. That is the. You know, the most important thing is he likes to prove shit.

[Jordan]

Right?

[Dan]

Because he's from journalism.

[Jordan]

Oh, my God.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, Lee Strobel was a reporter. He worked for the Chicago Tribune and left and became a pastor. So he has religious faith, but also a grounding in empiricism, the desire to prove things. He is the perfect person to write the book that he did about the supernatural. That would be dreams, mystical dreams, near death experiences, miracles, ghosts. We sat down with him to hear just how common these experiences are and what they mean.

[Dan]

I hate to say it, but the theme's grown on me.

[Jordan]

Really?

[Dan]

Tucker's theme song has grown on me?

[Jordan]

Twang. Yeah, well, it's fair.

[Dan]

So this is already what he's. What Tucker is saying is already a huge problem for him because he's trying to prove that Lee Strobel likes to live in the world of proven facts by saying that he worked for a major newspaper.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

The mainstream media is supposed to be all spin and lies. So the fact that he worked for the Chicago Tribune should probably be a mark against him in Tucker's world. Yeah, I guess the media is only the enemy of the people when you need it to be. So Lee did work in journalism, but he hasn't since 1987. At that point, he became involved with mega churches and writing Christian apologetics texts designed to argue why it's not irrational to believe in various tenets of the religion.

[Jordan]

There you go.

[Dan]

And I'm sure that most people know, but, like, apology in this case is not like. It's not like. I'm sorry.

[Jordan]

No, no, no, no.

[Dan]

Argumentative. It's a defense of physiognomy.

[Jordan]

Makes sense.

[Dan]

Yeah. I have no problem with him writing these kinds of texts, but it's deeply disingenuous to call him someone who's interested in empiricism in a religious sense. Lee is an evangelist, and when religion and politics intersect as they do with Tucker, he's acting as a propagandist. I don't care about a person working at a newspaper almost 40 years ago. So the presentation of Lee as a rational actor based on that piece of his resume, it's not going to sway me we'll see how he makes his arguments and presents his information. And from there, we can see if this is an honest empiricist who just has to admit that magic is real, or if he's a charlatan parading around in an empiricist costume, feeding into a religious hysteria that's going to be used to persecute a ton of people for no reason. Sure, we'll find out.

[Jordan]

You know what I was just thinking?

[Dan]

I was just thinking the second one.

[Jordan]

Here's what I'm doing, all right? I'm creating a farm system for these guys. This is my new plan. I hire a bunch, or I, like, raise a bunch of youth group kids to think, you know, go become a journalist. And then in eight years, you'll be the person. I'm like, oh, come to the other side. And you'll be like, I worked in journalism for 8 years and now I believe in the Lord, but actually you did it the whole time. It was all a fucking ruse. And now you're brought up to the big game. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't think this is a bad idea.

[Dan]

Well, I think that there is some kind of, like. What would Alex call that? Like, sheep dipping?

[Jordan]

Sure, yeah.

[Dan]

Dipping someone in credibility.

[Jordan]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

That's the way to do it.

[Dan]

So Lee comes into the. Into the interview, and Lee Strobel.

[Tucker Carlson]

So you've written a book. I don't do a lot of book interviews, but couldn't resist this one. Seeing the Supernatural, Investigating angels, demons, Mystical dreams, near death encounters, and other mysteries of the unseen world.

[Lee Strobel]

Right.

[Tucker Carlson]

I think a lot of us sense or know on some level. In fact, I think everybody knows on some level that there is a world that science can't measure or quantify.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

That there is, you know, that there's. There's stuff that we can't explain.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

But that it's. It's no less real for our inability to explain it. So let's. Let's go through the list.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So the elephant in the room here is that Tucker has recently revealed that he was attacked by a demon in his sleep. He did an interview with an orthodox documentarian about it. So it's not just a poorly kept secret or something that Alex has gossiped about without permission. Tucker's trying to insinuate that we all know that there are unseen things in the world that science can't explain, but doesn't seem to want to tell Lee about his own very real and very serious experience. Lee has written a Book about encounters with angels and demons. So Tucker could. He could be a very useful resource when he was writing this book or now he's promoting it.

[Jordan]

Should have been. Should have been consulted. Right.

[Dan]

Tucker has so much evidence. Like, I'm sure he took pictures of the claw marks, and his wife can verify aspects of the story. So this seems like a perfect situation for him and Lee. Lee's the person most motivated to believe Tucker's story, and Tucker is the person who seems like he could provide Lee with solid evidence of a demon attack.

[Jordan]

Chocolate and peanut butter, baby.

[Dan]

I'm sure that we're going to spend a lot of time nailing down the specifics. And, you know, Tucker's testimony feels very real. It's not going to come up at all.

[Jordan]

You don't think so it doesn't come up. It would be interesting to see them disagree, though. That would be the. That would be. The joy is like, I don't think.

[Dan]

Lee would disagree with him.

[Jordan]

As a professional former journalist who studies demons now, I can tell you that demon you are talking about was not real.

[Dan]

That claw is a dog size.

[Jordan]

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

[Dan]

You say your dog sleeps in the bed with you. Demons have much bigger claws.

[Jordan]

It's like. It's like the guy in the. In the. Who the Pope hires to be like, no demons are real until. But then he finds one.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah, we're gonna talk about a guy like that later.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So Lee, he used to be an atheist.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

And he was trained in law.

[Lee Strobel]

You know, by the way, I. I was an atheist. I'm trained in journalism and law. And so I'm always looking for corroboration. Yes. I'm looking for evidence. I'm looking for facts. And so you're right. I think there's an intuitive sense that most people have that there's something beyond what we can see. Touch and put. Eight out of ten Americans believe that.

[Dan]

So law is not a science. Law is another. It's a system of rules, which we like to imagine is based on empiricism, but it's actually more influenced by rhetoric. Lawyers make arguments and courts decide cases, which isn't the same as consistently reproducible reactions caused by introducing two chemicals into the same space. Journalism is also not a science. All of these things, law, journalism, and science deal with the concept of truth differently. So Lee boosting his credentials in law and journalism doesn't mean he has any connection to the scientific method at all. But Lee does have a master's in law from Yale, which makes sense because his Career is about arguing. It's not about proving, but instead about pretending that arguing is the same as proving. And that's why he was. He had a role in God's Not Dead Too.

[Jordan]

See, here's what's important. I was trained in law and journalism. Two things that everybody knows, like angels and demons are the single most objective things that have been. Nobody's ever seen a subjective court or a subjective piece of journalism. That would be absurd. Right? Right. So because of this expertise, I can now tell you that angels and demons are real. And I went to Yale. So you know, the things I believe are good for you.

[Dan]

I hold you in contempt. Couldn't think of another court term.

[Jordan]

Judgment.

[Dan]

So look, how do we know? How do we know things? How do we know anything?

[Jordan]

How do we know things?

[Dan]

Right. And when you think about how do we know things, how do we know things, you start to realize that atheists are the fucking stupid ones.

[Lee Strobel]

How do we know what is the evidence? And that's what I try to get into in the book. How can we be sure through corroborated evidence that indeed there are such things as miracles, as near death experiences as deathbed encounters and mystical dreams and things like that?

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah, atheism is the leap of imagination.

[Jordan]

It is.

[Lee Strobel]

That's true.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's hard to be an atheist.

[Lee Strobel]

It's very true.

[Tucker Carlson]

Admire them in a way though, feel sorry for them. But anyway, okay, angels.

[Dan]

Yeah, angels.

[Jordan]

Angels.

[Dan]

I think that in life it's important to respect what is knowable and what is not and to respect people's right to experience the stuff that's not. However, works best for, for them. As it stands now, there's not a reliable, reproducible, meaningful way to prove the existence of a personified God. So I think it's fair to count that as part of life that's unknowable for now. Maybe one day we'll create some kind of Geiger counter that can sense angel particles and then we can talk a bit more about the empirical case for religion. But for now that's dumb. That said, it's not necessarily dumb in my opinion, to have faith and choose to believe what you want about unknowable things. In the absence of demonstrable proof that God exists, it makes total sense to choose to believe in an all loving figure who created us for a reason.

[Jordan]

Why not? Exactly. Are you busy?

[Dan]

If it helps someone get through the day and find meaning, then it's probably a good thing. Generally, the only way that we can live in a balanced society is if we Accept what is knowable, what is currently unknowable, and treat those things differently. And I think we've lost track of that a little bit.

[Jordan]

Are you trying to say that there's something subjective about the Bible? I think you've missed the point.

[Dan]

Well, I think that there's a subjective and objective mix and enjoy. Tucker feels the need to deride atheists because he needs to obscure from the fact that he and hardcore atheists suffer from the same fallacy, which is pretending that they can prove something that's impossible to prove. One side says they can prove God does exist, the other side says they can prove God doesn't. And neither can really accept that they're fundamentally operating from an arbitrary answer that they've come up to for an unanswerable question. Sure. And their answer is acceptable. It's just imposing it on everybody else is dumb.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Yep. So that is kind of the problem. Yeah, it was. It. It's a little bit like, you know, if you think about what Jesus was saying about the hot or cold concept, if you're all the way in, right, you're going to treat people nice because you got to get into heaven. That's the most important thing that you could possibly do. Right. But if you're all the way out, you got to treat people nice. This is all you've got. This is all you've got left. You're going to die. You're gonna fucking die, and then there'll be nothing. So you got to treat people nice.

[Dan]

So that's what you thought the hot and cold was about.

[Jordan]

It's all the stuff in the middle that's dumb. Mmm.

[Dan]

But also when something's in the middle, it doesn't burn your mouth or chip your tooth because it's frozen.

[Jordan]

That's fine for all this stuff around here, but not for that guy upstairs.

[Dan]

That's fair enough.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

So I wanted to. I wanted to stress that and kind of like touch on this a little bit, because I don't want to be like, ah, fuck you, religion. Like, I don't want to come off like that. And I don't want to be like, haha, look at these stupid Christians that believe this dumb shit.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

These are specific people who believe some dumb shit. And it's possible to maintain religion and faith in a way that isn't this.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I just want to differentiate between that.

[Jordan]

One of the most universal things that is true is that everybody believes in dumb shit. Somewhere, somewhere or another, you'll find some dumb shit you believe in.

[Dan]

Right. And That's. That's essentially the only way to deal with unanswerable questions other than just being like, ow.

[Jordan]

Yeah, there's our believing some dumb shit. And they're both basically the same.

[Dan]

Yeah, well, one gives you things to do, the other doesn't.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dan]

So anyway, angels.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

What do you know about angels?

[Jordan]

Good ones or bad ones?

[Dan]

They play in Los Angeles because we.

[Jordan]

Got the good ones with the wings upstairs, but then we got the bad ones with the wings downstairs because they were upstairs. But then they got into a big fight and then they went downstairs, my man.

[Dan]

They become. Became demons. And we'll get to them later.

[Jordan]

All right, Fair enough.

[Dan]

Angels for now or just the good guys?

[Jordan]

Just the good side.

[Dan]

Okay, so Lee explains what they're up to.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Tucker Carlson]

Angels?

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

What's an angel?

[Lee Strobel]

Fascinating. You know, angels are created by God before humankind was created. They are spirit beings. So they have. They're not omniscient like God is. They're not omnipresent like God is. They are. They don't age because there's no physical body. They don't marry because there's no physical body.

[Dan]

Must be nice.

[Lee Strobel]

They very intelligent, very smart.

[Jordan]

With what?

[Lee Strobel]

There's no physical body to serve not only God, but also his people. And what's your.

[Jordan]

The.

[Tucker Carlson]

The Christian Bible with the Hebrew Old Testament?

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, Makes reference.

[Tucker Carlson]

Is there any culture in the world that doesn't believe in some form of angel?

[Lee Strobel]

It's pretty universal.

[Dan]

Pretty universal, sure. So now we're supposed to believe that Lee is coming from a position of a guy who is Christian faith, but is also a man of empiricism. So the things that he's saying aren't just wacky ramblings, they're based in fact.

[Jordan]

Absolutely.

[Dan]

If you want to say that you believe that angels exist because of some incident where someone is saved by an angel and there's no explanation that you can come up with for it, then I can accept that you're applying a critical mind to the situation.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

You're going off the rails and applying critical thinking poorly, but you're seeking an explanation for something that you feel cannot be explained any other way. So you're left to assume, well, maybe it was an angel. Sure. Conversely, if you're telling me that angels were created before humans and you want to tell me about their biology and dating habits, then I'm no longer convinced that what you're saying is the product of critical thinking as we go along. This is one of the crucial things to keep in mind, because it reveals the lie that all of this is based on. Lee is pretending that he's a good faith researcher who has seen stuff that just can't be explained by natural means. So he's left with no choice but to consider the possibilities that maybe the supernatural stuff is going on.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

But where in his exploration of trying to explain natural phenomena did he learn that angels don't get married?

[Jordan]

Oh, well. Well, because they can't fuck. Right. There's his argument is they don't marry because there's no physical body.

[Dan]

Right, Right. They don't age.

[Jordan]

That's the concept is that. Or they can't reproduce or whatever it is you'd like to say.

[Dan]

They never have to buy new clothes.

[Jordan]

Right, Right. Now, if I understand this correctly, though, where. Where do. Where do they smart? Do you know what I mean? If there's no physical body, what is it that they keep their smarts in? You know, like, we have a brain. We're not just, like, thinky.

[Dan]

I think there's spatial intelligence, people.

[Jordan]

Is that how it works? They just have existing space, you know?

[Dan]

You know how, like, Turbo on the challenge is really good at, like, color puzzles?

[Jordan]

That's true.

[Dan]

Like, he's just a machine at those things.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Angels are like that.

[Jordan]

Okay, that makes enough sense for me. I'm in.

[Dan]

Oh, boy. So this guy. I mean, like, we're already, like, only a couple minutes into the interview, and, like, you have abandoned the pretense of empiricism.

[Jordan]

Tell me more about the marriage. Tell me more about why they don't marry. Tell me if God was like, we should get ones that marry and ones that don't marry. What are we talking about here?

[Dan]

Well, they don't marry because they don't have hate hands and therefore no fingers. So they can't have rings.

[Jordan]

They can't put the rings on the fingers.

[Dan]

The ring is an essential part of the union.

[Jordan]

That makes sense. You're not wrong. And. And then how would they kiss the bride?

[Dan]

Right.

[Jordan]

They don't have a body.

[Dan]

No lips.

[Jordan]

No lips.

[Dan]

Yep. So you know who has lips? MacGyver?

[Jordan]

A Kardashian?

[Dan]

No. So let's hear some more about some angels.

[Jordan]

All right.

[Dan]

Like maybe how they save missionaries.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Lee Strobel]

What's interesting about the Christian interpretation of angels is it's real on the other side, in the book of Hebrews, in the Bible, that we should anticipate the possibility that we would encounter an angel. In other words, it says sometimes when you're providing hospitality to someone unbeknownst to you, it's an angel. And so there's an anticipation that perhaps there could be angelic encounters. And so what I try to look at in the book are cases in which we have angelic encounters. People actually encounter an angel. I'll give you an example. There was a missionary named John G. Paton, P A T O N from Scotland, and he went to an island in the South Pacific to be a Christian missionary. And he and his wife were living in a cottage there. And he's talking about Jesus. Well, the local tribes people didn't quite like that. And so one day, a mob of them came to burn down their house and kill him.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Lee Strobel]

So they see this mob forming, and he and his wife are in their house, and what can they do? They start to pray, say, God protect us, help us. They're going to kill us. They're going to burn our house down. What do we do? And they prayed all night long. And by dawn, the mob began to dissipate. A year later, he led the head of that mob to faith in Jesus Christ.

[Jordan]

Oh, my God.

[Lee Strobel]

And they're having a conversation, and John said, oh, by the way, do you remember that day when you all came to burn down our house and kill us? Why didn't you do it? And the man said, well, who are all those men you had there? He said, no, no, man. It was just my wife and I. Your house was surrounded by these muscular men and white gods with drawn swords.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Lee Strobel]

There's no way we could have hurt you that night.

[Jordan]

Injected in my veins.

[Lee Strobel]

Well, what's the explanation for that? I think it could very well have been an angelic encounter, that God had sent angels to protect him.

[Dan]

It only makes sense.

[Jordan]

That's the only thing I can think of. That's the only explanation I can think of.

[Dan]

I think you and I are both having, like, flashbacks to bullshit stories people.

[Jordan]

Told us when we were in youth group. So many of these. And it's always. It's always the. And then they prayed all night and all night. It's never they prayed for a couple hours. It's never they prayed for two nights. It's always the whole night. God needs the full eight hours, man.

[Dan]

Yeah. And if you clock out early, the mom's coming in.

[Jordan]

Absolutely. You're done.

[Dan]

Yeah. When Lee asks what's the explanation here, it's key to remember that he's not really asking a question.

[Jordan]

No.

[Dan]

He's arguing that angels were protecting this guy's house. And there's no other possible explanation that we can come up with. This is a cute Anecdote. And I remember hearing shit like this all the time in youth group because these are stories meant to appease the audience of the faithful. This is the type of content you throw out to literally preach to the choir because no one else is gonna be persuaded by this at all. For one thing, this is a third hand story at best. The mob leader is telling the missionary about something he allegedly saw. Then the missionary is retelling the story and Lee is retelling hearing about the missionary's story.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

This game of telephone doesn't inspire confidence. Further, you notice that Lee knows the missionary's name but not the guy who saw the angels.

[Jordan]

Yep, that's suspicious.

[Dan]

So Lee uses this anecdote in his book to argue for the existence of angels. But he doesn't use the testimony of the guy who saw the angels or even the missionary, John Gilbert Patrick. He cites Billy Graham discussing Patton's story, which is another layer of interpretation which is being added to this whole thing.

[Jordan]

Including Billy Graham, which increases the likelihood of truth.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah. Billy Graham used this story in his 1975 book, Angels, God's Secret Agents. Lee is just taking Graham's version of the whole thing, which isn't very inquisitive of him and makes me think that he doesn't care for empiricism. This is because John Gilbert Patton wrote an autobiography that was published in 1889 and this story is in there.

[Jordan]

Uh huh.

[Dan]

You are going to get the account of the random mob leader who supposedly saw angels. But Patton's story is closer to the event than Graham's retelling of it. So Lee should have consulted that for his book as opposed to Billy Graham's Wow. Version of the story. You'd think because if he'd done that, he would find that Graham is mistelling the story and there's no angels in it.

[Jordan]

Oh. What?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

What?

[Dan]

So to set the scene, okay. Patton and his associates were setting up a mission in the New Hebrides. There's some islands in the vicinity of Australia.

[Lee Strobel]

All right.

[Dan]

For the most part, the native population accepted merchants and missionaries. But there had been a flare up recently due to a quarrel between sandalwood merchants and some locals.

[Jordan]

That'll happen.

[Dan]

This led to some murders.

[Jordan]

Hey, what you gonna do?

[Dan]

In the aftermath of that, it looked like a full on war was gonna break out, but tensions lowered all the same. Patton's mission wasn't viewed the same after that. And a lot of people on the island viewed him as the enemy. Sure. A while after that, a chief from another island came to visit and died shortly after returning home.

[Jordan]

Eee. That's no good.

[Dan]

Some people qu, hearing of his death, ascribed it to me and the worship and resolved to burn our house and property and either murder the whole mission party or compel us to leave the island.

[Jordan]

I mean, it does make sense.

[Dan]

There's at least like a little bit more of an A to B.

[Jordan]

Exactly. You know, it's like, I. Sure you could believe in angels. I believe that this happened. We just move on. That's how it works.

[Dan]

So at this point, Patton had some allies among the native population, like a chief named Nawat, who spoke in Patton's defense and tried to get them. Hey, don't burn down his.

[Jordan]

Hey, come on. This guy's just one of. He's just a guy.

[Dan]

Yeah. But it wasn't enough. The inhabitants from miles around united in seeking our destruction, but God put to it even savage hearts to save us. A meeting of all our enemies on the island was summoned, and it was publicly resolved that a band of men be selected and enjoined to kill the whole of those friendly to the mission. Frenzy and excitement prevailed, and the blood fiend seemed to override the whole assembly. When under the impulse that surely came from the Lord of pity, one great warrior chief who had hitherto kept silent rose, swung aloft a mighty club and smashed it earthwards. Cried aloud, the man who kills me, see, must kill me first. The man that killed the mission teachers must kill me first. And my people, for we shall stand by them and defend them till death.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

So the guy who stands up for them ends up getting, like, a slow clap of the chiefs.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

Who are all like, we got his back.

[Jordan]

Right?

[Dan]

Right. You got the missionaries back, and then the mission saved.

[Jordan]

Right. And I. So let me follow this evolution if. If you will. So in this real story. Well, as real as we're gonna get out of this.

[Dan]

I mean, It's a late 1800s autobiography by a missionary who seems to think that he's part adventurer, which is kind of a fun tone.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

He also doesn't seem to hate native populations, but also kind of hates.

[Jordan]

I mean, you know, what are you gonna do? Yeah, but the point being, the native population is all doing what they do, and the hero of the story is one of those people.

[Dan]

Right. It's. And obviously you're going to say he's moved by the Lord of pity. You know, God moved his heart to protect them, but it is out of the goodness of these chiefs.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

Standing up for them and protecting them that they didn't have their mission burned.

[Jordan]

So then notoriously white supremacist Christian Billy Graham gets a hold of this story, and those men are no longer native, but in fact, white robed white people holding swords, muscular. That's crazy. That is just crazy.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So in his story, Patton says, quote, clearly, did our Lord Jesus Christ interpose directly on our behalf that day? I and my defenseless company had spent it in anxious prayers and tears, and our hearts overflowed with gratitude to the Savior who rescued us from the lion's jaws. So when Lee tells the story and asks, what's the explanation? I find his disposition to be dishonest. The explanation is obvious. A missionary who died in 1907 wrote an autobiography that at times reads like Tintin.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And then a craven evangelist came along and embellished the story for his own book about angels being secret agents for God.

[Jordan]

Explain that with your science.

[Dan]

Lee isn't interested in digging down to uncover truth. He's just financially invested in perpetuating the same shit Billy Graham was pursuing.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

And, man, I might read the rest of that guy's autobiography.

[Jordan]

I mean, that sounds fun.

[Dan]

Yeah, those.

[Jordan]

Those old timey adventure stories are truly great. And a lot of them have some truth to them.

[Dan]

Yeah. And he seemed like an unreliable narrator, but, like, in a fun way.

[Jordan]

Yeah, they're all really unreliable narrators because they're just white people having a grand time in the late 19th century.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

What are you going to do?

[Dan]

It's long enough ago that I think I can chuckle.

[Jordan]

Yeah. But also, it's hard to do anything about it now.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Let's just face it. There's no going back now.

[Dan]

So I think that this story sucks. And Lee's argument for angels still at zero.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

But Tucker is like, fuck, yeah, give me another one.

[Jordan]

All right.

[Lee Strobel]

And there's multiple numbers of cases like that.

[Jordan]

Give me another.

[Lee Strobel]

Well, I had an encounter myself when I was 12 years old. I was. It was the only dream I remember as a child. It was more of a vision than a dream. An angel appeared to me and started extolling heaven, how beautiful and wonderful heaven is. And I looked at him kind of offhandedly and said, well, you know, I'm going to go there someday. And he looked at me and said, how do you know?

[Jordan]

Huh?

[Lee Strobel]

And I was shocked by that. How do I know? And I started to kind of stumble around to justify my goodness. I said, well, I obey my parents pretty much, and I get good grades in school and my friends like me, and I'm trying to justify why I would get into heaven. And he looked at me and he said, that doesn't matter. And this chill went through my spine. How can this not matter? And he said, someday you'll understand. And then disappeared. Well, I kind of wrote it off as being a bad pizza and ultimately became an atheist. But 16 years later, as an atheist, my wife brought me to a church and I heard the gospel for the first time. That salvation, that the doors of heaven are not flung open based on how nice you are to your parents or how good grades you get in school. It's based on the grace of God. It's not something we earn. It's a free gift of God's grace. And I heard that message for the first time and my mind flashed back to that dream and I thought, wait a minute. That's what he was trying to tell me back then.

[Tucker Carlson]

Had you thought a lot about that dream in the subsequent?

[Lee Strobel]

It would come to me. Every once in a while I think about it. I just suppress it. That was a bad pizza, know. But then I thought there's two forms of corroboration there. Number one, that angel told me something when I was 12 years old that I did not already know.

[Jordan]

Fair.

[Lee Strobel]

That salvation is by grace.

[Jordan]

I'll count that one.

[Lee Strobel]

Secondly, he made a prophecy, a prediction that someday I would understand. That came true. Sixteen years later, boom. I think that may have been an angelic encounter that I had. I can't prove it, but that corroboration tells me maybe it really was.

[Dan]

I'm sorry, but I don't care about this dream at all. And I have to insist that it doesn't prove anything. If Lee wants to take some personal meaning from it, and if that's important to him, then I don't want to insult that or take that away from him. But pretending it's anything more than that is idiotic. The fact that this is the second example he has when trying to argue for the existence of angels is a bad sign.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And should be a strong indication that his argument is some weak shit.

[Jordan]

You know, here's what I'm thinking where I'm coming from right here.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Is if you do the. If you do the heart hard. Hard numbers, the hard economics. Right. I think in October there's well over 100 new sci fi fantasy books coming out. And of Those, less than 100 are going to make. Are going to sell more than like 2,000 copies. That's just the truth of the market. That's just how it works. But boy, buddy, Christian bookstores, especially Christian.

[Dan]

Apologetics, texts from big name people who are like, like established in the field lie off the shelves and probably subsidized by bulk purchases from churches.

[Jordan]

You better believe it.

[Dan]

There's all kinds of. It's definitely a cooler business to be in than sci fi.

[Jordan]

Yeah, that's the way. That's the way to go. Because it's very similar, but one is more lucrative.

[Dan]

I also have a working theory that Lee wrote this almost the same book about five years ago.

[Jordan]

And just doing it again, that probably sounds right. Right.

[Dan]

Anyway, we'll get to that later. But I could nitpick around and say that he could have been more aware of Christianity as a child than he's letting on, or that he probably rewrote this memory of the dream in his head a thousand times. But I don't want to do that because I don't care. I will not argue against the meaning that Lee personally has for this dream because that's for him to decide. I will just flatly say that dream based evidence is not evidence. So no matter how convincing this story is or isn't, it means nothing in our search for angels. If you're accepting angels visiting you in a dream and telling you riddles as a form of evidence, you're not interested in evidence. This is bad.

[Jordan]

You know, I always. I love these stories because of the way they. They're told in different places. This story told in the church group is very God heavy. This story told in like a dinner party, far less God heavy, more of just like. You know what? Here's an interesting thing that might have happened to me.

[Dan]

Tucker right in the middle.

[Jordan]

Exactly.

[Dan]

I think.

[Jordan]

Yep. Yep.

[Dan]

Probably a little closer to church than dinner.

[Jordan]

I would say we're probably more in a we can speak freely zone than elsewhere, if that's where we're. I mean, Tucker's been bit by a demon.

[Dan]

Yeah, but he. But weirdly, Tucker can't speak freely because he's not bringing up the fact that he got attacked by a demon.

[Jordan]

It is really weird that you've got a demon guy and you're not talking about being attacked by.

[Dan]

It's literally all I was thinking about while I was watching the whole time. Yeah.

[Jordan]

Crazy.

[Dan]

So look, angels exist.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

We've established this.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Dan]

Should you pray to angels?

[Jordan]

No.

[Dan]

You and Lee are in agreement about this, but there's nuance.

[Lee Strobel]

No, but the other thing I learned in my investigation of angels, I thought.

[Jordan]

You know what?

[Lee Strobel]

I don't think it's appropriate to pray to angels. I don't believe we're taught to do that. I think there's a slippery slope if you pray to angels, that it might slip into worship of angels, which would be blasphemous. But there's nothing wrong with praying to God about angels. Martin Luther in the small catechism has a prayer, an evening prayer that says, lord, send your holy angels to protect me from the evil one. And so I never used to do this, but I now make part of my prayer that God would send angels to protect me and my family, my ministry, my grandchildren. And so I think that's totally appropriate to do.

[Tucker Carlson]

Hate to brag, but we're pretty confident this show is the most vehemently pro dog podcast you're ever gonna see.

[Dan]

Okay. Jarring. Talking about whether you can pray about angels. And Tucker comes in with his love of dog. You know what that ad is for? What dog Telemedicine.

[Jordan]

That's not good.

[Dan]

Do you want to have a webcam then?

[Jordan]

I really don't. I really don't. You know, I was just thinking that Jesus was just so mean to those money lenders. Mmm. You know, like that's a real dick move. They didn't deserve that kind of treatment. They need to be more accepting of pro dog podcasts. That's what's important here.

[Dan]

So you're talking about, you know, Jesus and the money changers and things like, who do you think that Tucker will later compare to the modern day people that Jesus would throw out with whips?

[Jordan]

You know, I bet it's not money lenders.

[Dan]

It's not.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Probably antifa LGBTQ fans. There we go, baby. Hit it.

[Dan]

So when I think about why I believe in something, generally I'm like people did in the past. So I should too.

[Jordan]

Is that how that works for Tucker? It is interesting.

[Tucker Carlson]

Has there. Are you aware of any society in the known history of the human race that didn't believe that there was a supernatural realm with good and evil?

[Lee Strobel]

Yes. Virtually universal. Universal.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

I've never heard of any culture that didn't believe that. Post war West.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

Drop the atom bomb. Get rid of the supernatural.

[Dan]

Right.

[Tucker Carlson]

Because we're God now.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, that's right.

[Tucker Carlson]

But before then, I mean, I. I just think this was taken as a matter of course.

[Lee Strobel]

Right, of course. Yeah, naturally.

[Tucker Carlson]

So if every society in known history reaches the same a version of the same conclusion.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

It suggests maybe there's something there.

[Lee Strobel]

It sure does. It sure does.

[Jordan]

You know, why would you come up with that?

[Lee Strobel]

Exactly. You know, it's funny.

[Dan]

So Tucker's not This stupid. And him making an argument like, this is a weaponized attack directed at the audience.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

The argument is supposed to be that in the past everyone believed in a demonic and angelic supernatural realm, so we should too.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

It was pretty universally believed that the sun was God and the earth was flat. So why should we reject those widely held beliefs just because we're so cool and modern now?

[Jordan]

Yeah. Like, this is dumb Fucking kids with their TikTok. Explain that with your science.

[Dan]

When Tucker's laughing, making that argument, I think he's laughing at the people who believe that he's making a real point. Like, there's a part of me that feels like there's a disdain for. Like, this is so easy.

[Jordan]

That is. That is a ridiculous thing to say. Especially because we all know that there is a society that lives beneath the ground that worships an unexploded nuclear bomb. And that movie was in the past, so it was in the past. Past. Right. Now I know it was set in the future, but it was in the past.

[Dan]

It's also part of Lost.

[Jordan]

Sure, there's definitely that. Absolutely.

[Dan]

And there's also past and future and Lost.

[Jordan]

What do we do?

[Dan]

I don't know.

[Jordan]

Every society's always believed in that. Dumb, dumb. What are we doing? What are we talking about?

[Dan]

I think that you and I are both kind of a little bit short circuit because it's almost a non sequitur. It doesn't mean anything.

[Jordan]

It's crazy to use that as a thing to say.

[Dan]

Yeah. I think that what. What Lee is coming in with is a bit of a swing.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And you know, they say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. He says, nah, Interesting.

[Lee Strobel]

People will say, well, you need extraordinary evidence to prove an extraordinary claim, which I don't think is legitimate. I don't think that stands up to scrutiny. But let's take it for a moment on face value and say you need extraordinary evidence to prove an extraordinary claim.

[Jordan]

Claim?

[Lee Strobel]

Well, the claim that there are demons is not an extraordinary claim because 95% of humanity through history has believed in it. So if you're an atheist, the onus is on you. You must present the extraordinary evidence that the demonic does not exist.

[Dan]

No, I don't. When people say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, they just mean that if you're making a claim that flies in the face of existing evidence, your evidence needs to be more compelling than the existing evidence that says you're right. Wrong. The burden of proof falls upon a person who makes an affirmative claim because trying to do things the other way is impossible. For example, in this case, I can't satisfactorily prove to you that demons don't exist in the same way that I can't prove that any fake thing doesn't exist. You can't prove a negative, which is why you can't put the burden of proof onto a position that requires you to do that in order to establish them. When people argue against vaccines, it's not fair to demand that they prove that vaccines don't work because that would be impossible for them to do. What's expected of them is to critically attack the existing evidence that argues that vaccines do work. Vaccines do work as an affirmative position that people can prove by providing survi supporting evidence. And then people who want to be contrarian try to poke holes in that evidence. This is how this works. The game Lee is telling me that demons exist, so he's on the fucking clock. I'm not interested in disproving the existence of demons. So the only thing that's going to happen here is he can present information that I'll respond to or we can go home. He can just pretend that his belief in demons is the default position and I'm somehow out of step with history because I don't share it. But my little secret is that I don't give a fuck. I don't care about how he feels about this.

[Jordan]

Yeah, I will prove it by living my entire life never having an encounter to demon and then dying, and then neither of us will care. Proof.

[Dan]

Ta da.

[Jordan]

Done.

[Dan]

So this next clip, I think, is revealing about Tucker's psychology, and I think this scared me a little.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, there are also moments in the life of every person who's awake and not on fentanyl. Maybe even people who are on fentanyl, I hope, where you know that you are being acted on by an outside force of some kind. You have no idea what it is. But there are moments when you are much better than yourself, much more empathetic. And there are other moments where you're seized by the desire to destroy for the sake of destruction, which also doesn't make any sense. There's no kind of evolutionary, biological accounting for that. Why would you want to destroy for no reason another person, an object, but the impulse to destroy? Clearly the hallmark of evil, right?

[Lee Strobel]

It is. And it's consistent with the Christian teaching that the demonic realm exists, that it is intent on luring us away from him.

[Dan]

I don't know if the desire to destroy for the sake of destruction is like a universal thing or If Tucker just thinks it is. Because I think it's probably more a piece of his out of control anger that he feels all the time.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

Instead of dealing with the causes of that anger and letting go of his bullshit, I guess he's just decided to pretend that he's plagued by demons who control his impulses and behavior. Because I don't relate to that. I don't relate to the desire to destroy just for the sake of destruction.

[Jordan]

I would say that in general, this type of thinking comes from people who are terrified of taking responsibility for their own behavior, generally because their fathers, period.

[Dan]

Were in the CIA, something along those lines. I just find it unrelatable. And it feels more like a glimpse into Tucker's mind than anything else. Else? Yeah, I think it's more. It's almost. It feels.

[Jordan]

Excuse, you know, when I, what I. What I've experienced with that specific. That kind of like destruction for destruction sake is. That is somebody who thinks it is better morally or philosophically to destroy something for destruction sake than for the reason that they are actually doing it. That is usually like, oh, it's just destruction for destruction sake. As opposed to I want to obtain something and I am going to destroy this to get it.

[Dan]

Yeah, I can see that. And I think that that falls under the headline or the heading that I had of excusing. Yeah, it's rationalizing. What is a different impulse.

[Jordan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

So we've already heard a couple of dumb stories about people being saved by angels that don't seem convincing.

[Jordan]

Not very convincing.

[Dan]

How about another one though?

[Jordan]

Is it white people?

[Dan]

No, and it's a guy in a car.

[Jordan]

Excellent.

[Tucker Carlson]

So you said that angels in the New Testament and perhaps also in the Old. But angels are described as present in our world.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes.

[Tucker Carlson]

We will mistake angels for people very well.

[Lee Strobel]

That's right. That's predicted.

[Tucker Carlson]

So do you think that happens?

[Lee Strobel]

Yes.

[Tucker Carlson]

And if so, can you give us an example? And what would be the purpose of that?

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. In the book of Hebrews it says that we will do it unbeknownst to ourselves. So in other words, the implication is that we will have angelic encounters, but we won't realize they're angels. And I think that does happen. Now I have a couple of cases in my book. One is a pastor who is driving his car in Ohio. He loses control of the car. He hits a telephone or an electric transformer, kind of a pole type of thing. The wires fall down on his car. The doors are jammed shut, the electricity is coursing through the car, so much so that the windshield starts to melt. And he's trapped in this car. He doesn't know what to do. And he begins to pray. God, I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. And a man, scruffy kind of guy, comes walking up to the car and he opens the car whose doors were jammed. He opens the door, he reaches in, he lifts out this pastor and takes him about 50 yards away from the car, which then explodes. And he says to the pastor, he says, you're going to be okay. You're okay now. But the police are on their way and I can't be here when they get here, so just know that you're okay. And he walked away and disappeared. Now, the people, the medics who came, the emergency technicians and so forth, that came as a result of the accident, and they look at the car, they can't explain how this is possible, that somebody could have opened that car door and not been electrocuted and rescued this pastor. And yet it happened. And the pastor says, I believe it was an angel. Well, maybe could have been. How do you prove something like that? But I mean, how do you explain it away naturally?

[Dan]

Just because you don't have a ready, natural explanation for how something happened, that doesn't mean that you have to give credibility to a supernatural explanation. This is a dumb leap that he's making now. So go ahead.

[Jordan]

Oh, no, I just. I just finished. I just read this book, Ghosts of Hiroshima, which is a. Another. It's. I think it's pretty new, but it tells a bunch of these stories of the. The survivors of people who were in, In Hiroshima when the nuclear bomb landed and exploded. And there's just these blast zones, and it's a reproducible phenomena in all of these types of things. They're just these random spots where this person will be telling you a story about how they were having a day and then the entire universe around them was gone and they were fine. Right. Now, if that person genuinely wanted to be like, there's an angel, I'd be like, man, if anybody was ever getting an angel and I was going to take it, that'd be fine. And they were like, isn't that crazy, this coincidence that happened?

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah. And I think that this might fall under some of that headline.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Or some of that heading. Lee is supposed to be a guy who likes empirical evidence and he proves things. He worked at a paper. But in this story, there's no evidence of anything. There's a story that a Pastor told after he was in a car accident. Outside of this one person who was probably in shock after the crash, no one saw this other character in the story, this scruffy stranger may not exist.

[Jordan]

It was Bagger Vance, actually.

[Dan]

It could have been.

[Jordan]

It could have been.

[Dan]

While it is true and confirmed by emergency responders that an electric transformer did fall on this guy John Boston's car and that electricity was surging through the car when they arrived on the scene, we don't know if the door was actually jammed. It might have seemed like the door was jammed initially after the crash, but then he was able to get it open on a second or third try. Who knows? There's a lot of possibilities that aren't even involving malice or lying. No, There could just be the way your brain incorporates information.

[Jordan]

Absolutely.

[Dan]

So Boston claims that his seatbelt was stuck and that this scruffy guy named Johnny cut him, got him out of the car, but he doesn't know if he cut the seatbelt belt. The car ended up pretty badly burned, so I'm not sure there's any way anyone would be able to tell that one way or the other. So Boston's family was doing a vlog on YouTube around the time of this accident, so they ended up recording a fair amount of him in the hospital right afterwards. It's notable that in that video, he doesn't seem to know what year it is. He thinks that it's July, when it's actually April, and he appears to be on some painkillers. At one point later in the vlog, his wife says, quote, okay, he's coming to. He knows I'm recording now. Basically, everything about this story that makes it seem like maybe an angel was involved comes from one single person. So it's pretty easy for me to reject this as a solid piece of evidence of angelic intervention. Looking at the verifiable information about this incident, you can definitely say that this dude is lucky. But jumping to it was an angel is something you would only do if you were desperate to back up your belief in angels.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Because otherwise, it's just this guy told story.

[Jordan]

There's. I get. I guess I get it. I kind of don't. I really don't get angels. I. Of all the ones that there are, I just don't get angels. I don't get that concept. I don't get the idea of, like, oh, somebody's always watching over you. I don't. Get away from me, man. Get away from me. Don't you have somewhere to be?

[Dan]

I think as you get older, you might. Might warm up to angels.

[Jordan]

You think so?

[Dan]

Yeah. I think demons are young for the young, angels for the old.

[Jordan]

Right. Demons are cool. Hanging out, doing the sexes, running away from them.

[Dan]

Absolutely. You want to fight? Maybe.

[Jordan]

Totally.

[Dan]

Maybe you're scared.

[Jordan]

Right. Then angels. You're. You're really hoping somebody will give you a ride. Yeah.

[Dan]

Company.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

You're sitting around the house. Use an angel. So we, we now have to. To get off the subject of angels.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

Because it's time for the dark.

[Jordan]

It's demon time.

[Dan]

It's time for a demon feast.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Tucker Carlson]

What are demons?

[Lee Strobel]

Demons are fallen angels. The Bible is a little bit vague on this, but apparently what happened there was a.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's kind of funny. If I could just pause. This is my totally ignorant read of it.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

But when the supernatural host. You know, all these supernatural beings are referred to in the Bible, there's almost a sense in which the writer is assuming the reader already knows all this.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes, that's right. It doesn't have a passage that says by the way.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Tucker Carlson]

These things are real.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Lee Strobel]

Let me explain all this to you. It doesn't do that. Which is interesting because.

[Tucker Carlson]

The culture at the time was familiar with this and there was kind of no debate that there was a supernatural.

[Lee Strobel]

It's sort of like the soul. I have a chapter in the book on the existence of the soul. And because a lot of scientists today will deny that the soul exists. The Bible doesn't say, by the way, you have a soul. And here's. Let me define it for you. It presumes that we have a soul.

[Tucker Carlson]

Scientists will deny the soul exists. So most of what the big health companies sell is loaded with sugar and fillers and synthetic junk. It's probably not too good for you. And that's why we're interested in a company called Peak. It's a modern wellness brand that is. Is actually healthy.

[Dan]

It's good for your soul, which does exist. And scientists will tell you it doesn't.

[Jordan]

Scientists will tell you the soul doesn't exist. Prove that with your science and my.

[Dan]

Science will tell you that this supplement that I'm selling.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

Be good for your demons. It'll keep demons at bay.

[Jordan]

Science backed science.

[Dan]

Old literature often is reflective of the cultural milieu in which it was written. And it doesn't take the time to explain why certain things are the way they are. Are. A lot of early American literature takes it as understood that slavery is a natural thing and that there's a racial hierarchy that doesn't mean that those things are correct. It just means at the time, a writer didn't feel the need to justify everything that they knew that their readers would understand.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

This doesn't prove that demons or souls are real. It just means that it was a part of the culture at the time.

[Jordan]

It proves that it was a thing then.

[Dan]

Yep, great. We already knew that because there.

[Jordan]

I love. Whatever. It's just something like, isn't this really interesting? It sounds like it was almost written by some asshole. Just some regular asshole guy who was like, hey, how about, I had this. Not some sort of guided immortal force, just some asshole.

[Dan]

Yeah, it sounds human and of the time.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Weird.

[Dan]

Yeah. So do you believe in a soul?

[Jordan]

I mean, where.

[Lee Strobel]

Where do.

[Jordan]

Where am I keeping it?

[Dan]

What?

[Jordan]

Where am I keeping the soul?

[Dan]

Somewhere in.

[Jordan]

Okay, well then right here. All right. I mean, sure.

[Dan]

I can't imagine it's lower than the chest, right?

[Jordan]

That feel right?

[Dan]

Well, the gut, maybe, you know, people. Some people.

[Jordan]

People do say.

[Lee Strobel]

I mean, where.

[Jordan]

Where would it. Is it. Is it like. That's what the spleen is for. The solene.

[Dan]

I think we can definitely agree it's not in the legs.

[Jordan]

Yeah, definitely not in the leg. Left leg. Especially that fe. Not holding the soul.

[Dan]

Sinister left. That's what we're talking about.

[Jordan]

Good point.

[Dan]

Anyway, if you don't believe you have a soul, you're probably going to genocide people.

[Jordan]

But that sounds true.

[Tucker Carlson]

Life.com. tucker highly recommend it, by the way. Anyone who denies the soul exists, probably getting ready to genocide you.

[Lee Strobel]

It's like kind of a soulless experience.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, if there's no human soul, then how is murder wrong?

[Lee Strobel]

Well, exactly. And they'll say free will is impossible. So there is no free will.

[Jordan]

Will.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. But demons. It started out with Lucifer.

[Dan]

Yeah, that's a good place to start. You're going to talk demons and start with Lucifer.

[Lee Strobel]

Sounds right.

[Dan]

So I think a lot of the people who have committed genocides historically have been people who have religious convictions and probably affirm the existence of a soul. What kind of a problem for Tucker's argument? I'll be straight up. I don't think I believe in souls, but that ambivalence doesn't affect my belief that murder is wrong. You can justify that position a lot of ways that don't involve souls like that. It's just wrong to take away another person's subjective experience of life or that taking life as a transgression against the community, that can't be tolerated.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

There's a bunch of paths, whatever you like. If you incorporate an idea of a soul into your morality, that's great. It can add color and texture to your beliefs and make living a little bit more fun.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

I have no problem with that. On the flip side, if you need the idea of a soul to create a functioning morality, you're a baby, and you should not be taken seriously in. In public discourse.

[Jordan]

Yeah, it's not gonna go well.

[Dan]

Oh, you need a soul.

[Jordan]

It's such a. It's such a strange argument to make. Like, if there's no soul, then why is murder wrong when it's. It feels like it's the opposite? Like, murder. If you have a soul, it's gonna keep going. Murder's not even really a thing. It is only the cessation of your physical body. If you don't have a soul, you're actually murdering somebody. You're killing them.

[Dan]

That's an interesting point.

[Jordan]

I doubt he's thought about it. No.

[Dan]

And Lee certainly doesn't bring it up.

[Jordan]

No, I would. I would strongly doubt that.

[Dan]

In fairness to Lee. Yeah, it's because there's more important shit going on.

[Jordan]

That's probably true.

[Dan]

Like Lucifer.

[Jordan]

That is definitely true.

[Dan]

We got to talk about the big guy.

[Jordan]

How's he doing?

[Dan]

He's. Man, he's bad.

[Jordan]

Bummer.

[Lee Strobel]

It started out with Lucifer, whose name means morning star, and he was kind of first among angels.

[Tucker Carlson]

Name means morning star.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Lucifer.

[Jordan]

What are we doing? What is this?

[Lee Strobel]

Satan. And the name Satan literally means adversary. And so the implication of scripture is that this very prominent angel named Lucifer wanted to be worshiped. He's the one who wanted the worship. And so his pride is what resulted in him falling from the angelic realm, becoming Satan, becoming someone. I mean, think about this. When Jesus encounters Satan, what is it Satan wanted from him? Worship. Satan wanted Jesus to worship him. And that's what Lucifer wanted. It was pride that got in the way. He becomes Satan. And a certain percentage of the angels accompanied him in this fall. This happened before the fall of humankind in the Garden of Eden.

[Jordan]

So what, like, 8%?

[Lee Strobel]

I don't know how many angels accompany him, but there are a lot of angels.

[Jordan]

Seems important.

[Lee Strobel]

In Revelation, chapter five, there's a scene of Jesus on the throne being worshiped. And if you do the math, because it talks about it a little cryptically, it was a hundred million angels worshiping him at that time. So there's a lot of angels.

[Jordan]

That's a lot of angels at that time, though. We don't know we don't know what the reproduction rates are.

[Dan]

Married bodies.

[Jordan]

Right? So. So how many are there now?

[Dan]

I guess God could make more. But they don't reproduce because they have no bodies and don't marry.

[Jordan]

What are you doing with those hundred million? What are you doing with all those angels? Where are they going? What do they do? What do they have to do?

[Dan]

Wreck sports?

[Jordan]

That does make sense. That does make sense.

[Dan]

Yeah. Start a little soccer league.

[Jordan]

All of these outfields need an angel. God damn it.

[Dan]

Right? Inspiring children to do their best.

[Jordan]

That's fair. That actually would be a pretty solid use of angels.

[Dan]

So I gotta say, this is grounded and verifiable stuff, and I'm glad that Lee is staying in this empiricism pocket.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

This guy loves to prove things, and I tip my cap.

[Jordan]

His history as a journalist and his study of law has really informed this knowledge that there are 100 million angels. A rough percentage of them did fall to where? Don't know. Again, they don't have bodies.

[Dan]

Well, the hundred million is cryptic, too.

[Jordan]

That is cryptic.

[Dan]

In the Bible, in Revelation 5, it says, quote, then I looked and heard the voice of many angels numbering thousands upon thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand.

[Jordan]

All right.

[Dan]

Is that cryptic?

[Jordan]

Thousands upon thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand is not a number.

[Dan]

Ten thousand times ten thousand is one hundred million.

[Jordan]

That is. That is a number.

[Dan]

So is that cryptic? I don't know.

[Jordan]

Is that exact. Who's keeping. Who's counting? Is there a guy at the door with a clicker?

[Dan]

One in, one out.

[Jordan]

Absolutely. It has to be one in, one out, otherwise you can't keep track. All right.

[Dan]

I do like the round number, too.

[Jordan]

It is nice of God to be nice.

[Dan]

Yeah. Also, I love Tucker's fucking specialty. The hot pitch that, like, you responded to that. That, like, what? The face that he does and the fake sort of like, oh, my God, that's so interesting when he says that. Satan, Lucifer's name means morning star.

[Jordan]

Fuck you. Fuck you.

[Dan]

You got attacked by a demon.

[Jordan]

You in the whole world. Is this news to you, you dumb fuck? Fuck you.

[Dan]

But that's what he does. Like nobody else. Yeah, that. That what?

[Jordan]

And he's just got that sense of believability for a guy like this who's like, see, he's getting it.

[Dan]

He's got such a punchably stupid face. And, like, he commits.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

He doesn't care that it's very transparent and, you know, that's kind of fun.

[Jordan]

He's got. He's got a power to him.

[Dan]

So you scared? You scared of Lucifer?

[Jordan]

Not particularly. I feel like he's probably bored by now.

[Dan]

No, really, he's fucking busy.

[Jordan]

Okay. All right.

[Dan]

He's so busy.

[Jordan]

I mean, we got. You got to stay busy in retirement. I mean, it makes sense.

[Dan]

I don't know if he's retired. It seems to me from listening to this that, like, he's got to be, like, running all over the place.

[Lee Strobel]

He's not omniscient like God is. He's not omnipresent like God is. In other words, the guy was telling me, said there's probably never a time when you and Satan have both been in the same zip code because he's only in one place at a time. And so he's got things he's doing.

[Jordan]

He's probably never been the same zip code you had thought.

[Lee Strobel]

His demons probably have been. And they carry out his will, which is to pull people away from God, to discourage people in finding God, and to drag as many people to hell with him as they can. Now, his existence, he's sort of on a leash by God at this point. His ultimate destination in the Lake of Fire is already predicted. So he has no future, really. But he has influence and he has certain powers. And he. And the demon is very intuitive. You'll think they know more than they know. And they go after people.

[Dan]

This sucks. I hate this kind of shit. Where the devil is the CEO of Evil, Incorporated and you've just dealt with middle managers all your life.

[Jordan]

Jesus Christ.

[Dan]

Like, Satan is so busy, and he can only be in one place at one time. So, like, where is he?

[Jordan]

Why? What are the powers. I want an exact accounting for his powers.

[Dan]

How does he travel?

[Jordan]

Right? What are we talking about?

[Dan]

What is he busy with?

[Jordan]

What is he doing? What zip code is he in? Why is he in any zip codes? In what possible facet could he need to exist within a place?

[Dan]

Let me ask you another question.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Dan]

Because he would be in a zip code, right? That implies there's a physical form.

[Jordan]

Physical form.

[Dan]

How, basically, is he exactly?

[Jordan]

Can he be all encompassing?

[Dan]

Is he Godzilla size?

[Jordan]

Okay, now imagine this. Sure, he's not omnipresent, but is he. Can he be any size? Can he be the size of a planet?

[Dan]

Ant man style, Right?

[Jordan]

Exactly. Are we varying in size? What is our power set? I want to know whether or not he could defeat Batman.

[Dan]

Well, so far, I. He's.

[Jordan]

He's.

[Dan]

He pretends to know more than he does.

[Jordan]

I love. I love the way I'm supposed to be afraid of Satan and his Demons. And yet everything that he says makes him sound stupid.

[Dan]

I'm just picturing like a John Edward psychic type who's like. Like, I see somebody with the letter M in the audience. Interesting. Somebody who's pretending to know more than they actually do, but who's also late and needs to get somewhere. That's not a devil I'm super freaked out about.

[Jordan]

And just that lovely part of like, like, well, and God's got him on a leash for right now, which is like, really? So then everything is his fault again. Everything that you're ascribing to Satan. If there's. If somebody's got a dog on a leash, that person is responsible for what the dog does.

[Dan]

No, no, no, because the dog has demons. That's fair. The dog's demons aren't on a leash. They can be anywhere.

[Jordan]

You can't leash something and also not be responsible for what that thing on your leash does. Does.

[Dan]

Also, I would suggest that we have a finite number of demons because.

[Jordan]

Interesting.

[Dan]

I mean, he said a percentage of the angels left and became demons. That can only be 100 million possible demons, theoretically, based upon percent.

[Jordan]

10,000 by 10,000.

[Dan]

Yeah, that's cryptic. Yeah, but like, there's a finite number, so humanity should get it together and start fucking hunting these demons.

[Jordan]

Yeah, I think we could take them out. Yes, we could. But there's 8 billion of us. But what would we do? What would we hit them with there. There's no physical. Or do they get physical bodies?

[Dan]

You just have to yell Jesus at them.

[Jordan]

Oh, that sucks. Right? I mean, this is. Okay, this is a bad war.

[Dan]

Exorcists are effective.

[Jordan]

Yeah, that's true.

[Dan]

They have to be in their world. So, like, I think we could. We could take care of this demon thing.

[Jordan]

I. You know what? This is how I feel about vaccines. You know what I'm saying? Like, once we found out we could get rid of a disease, we should have had a task force that's like, now we're hunting every one of these fuckers down.

[Dan]

You know, to the extent that we can do that without creating more really dangerous things, there needs to be smart.

[Jordan]

People in charge of it. But you know the concept, you know, like, we're going after you, we're gonna win this one.

[Dan]

Yeah. There's no reason that polio should exist.

[Jordan]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Dan]

So, yeah, demons could. It's a solvable problem.

[Jordan]

We could handle this. Right?

[Dan]

And then that raises the question, if Satan can create more demons or does.

[Jordan]

He have to try and convince them or.

[Dan]

Oh, yeah, like Try and recruit some angels.

[Jordan]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Dan]

Of the pool that are still left.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

Or can he promote. Can he turn you into a.

[Jordan]

Okay, okay, so he's grabbing us. Blood in, blood out. A demon gets their ass kicked by a guy, but then, boom, we show up. Now you're demon number 45,940.

[Dan]

And maybe you're not great.

[Jordan]

I mean, you've never practiced being a demon before.

[Dan]

It's mostly just pretending you know more than you do.

[Jordan]

And I guess giving people what they want.

[Dan]

Yeah. All right, so we got to get a. We get to get into a little exorcism talk.

[Jordan]

Of course.

[Dan]

Now that's good talk. We. We find out about a guy, a psychiatrist named Richard Gallagher.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Lee Strobel]

I tell the story in my. In my book about a very prominent psychiatrist named Richard Gallagher. Educated Ivy League university. I have a quote from the former president of the American Psychiatric association calling him highest integrity, totally trained, and. And prominent in his field of psychiatry. Of course, he's a medical doctor because he's a psychiatrist. Just extolling him as an individual and as a scientist. As a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist. And about 25 years ago, he had two cats. And they got along great. They slept together, they played together. Everything was fine. Until one night, the cats started to attack each other viciously. I mean, they're trying to kill each other. They're clawing each other, they're snarling each other, they're biting each other. It was unbelievable. And they pulled them apart and put them into separate rooms and thought, what in the world was that all about? At 9am the next day, the doorbell ring, and it was a preset appointment. A Catholic priest was bringing by a woman to be examined by Dr. Gallagher. She claimed that she was a high priestess of a satanic cult and he wanted her to be examined. Was she demonically possessed? Was she crazy or.

[Jordan]

You don't have to finish the story.

[Lee Strobel]

So at 9am the doorbell rings for his appointment. And Dr. Gallagher opens the door, and here's this woman who claims to be a high priestess of a satanic cult, who kind of looks up at him and sneers at him and says, so, how'd you like those cats last night? There's something going on.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Got you with the cats, noob.

[Dan]

Good stuff. It's good stuff.

[Jordan]

No notes.

[Dan]

Nope. What a story.

[Jordan]

Good work, demons.

[Dan]

Convincing story. Well told. So Richard Gallagher is a disaster. According to his story, he was a doctor minding his own business when he got called on to consult about a woman who he refers to as Julia, who Claims that she was the queen of a satanic culture. She'd reported herself to a priest who wanted to talk to Gallagher about whether she was mentally ill or maybe this was a real possession situation.

[Jordan]

Interesting priest.

[Dan]

Hence the consult. Naturally, in the context of their sessions, Gallagher claims that he witnessed magical things that Julia did, like levitating for half an hour and seeming to do telekinesis.

[Jordan]

Amazing.

[Dan]

He's seen all sorts of stuff like. Like all this kind of crazy shit.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

But unfortunately, just to take his word for it, there's no proof of anything. He just gotta kind of take. Gallagher's seen so much magic, but nobody can prove any of it, which is part of the devil's plan.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

He was interviewed in Esquire in 2020, and he had the best explanation for why there's no proof of anything. He claims, quote, you're dealing with creatures who know you're studying them, observing them and trying to tape them. A lot of people think they're going to capture evidence on camera and prove the existence of demons to the world. But these creatures know when they're being filmed. They're not about to cooperate when a large part of their efforts have been to hide themselves. They're not about to make their existence obvious to people.

[Jordan]

That is fair.

[Dan]

It makes total sense.

[Jordan]

I mean, they are. They're. First off, they're canonically older than us. Right. So they've had more practice being. Existing. They never. They never die.

[Dan]

They have exactly the same amount of experience with cameras.

[Jordan]

That is a good point. That is a good point. There's no way they could possibly have had more experience than us. Right. Kind of. We invented them. Unless they invented them somehow.

[Dan]

I guess that's possible.

[Jordan]

I suppose so. I like a demon that operates on the same rules as fairy for Charles Dixon Dickens. So. That's nice. I appreciate that. I don't.

[Dan]

With your cats.

[Jordan]

I don't. Man. If that's what you got. If that's what you got. How you like them cats last night, you're done. No demon. I'm not afraid of demons. Right. Zero for zero fear.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

I have had a number of nights where Celine has acted out of character.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Out of sorts. Where she'll be, like, running around the house all crazy.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

The next day, witches have not shown up at my house and taunted me about her running around. Oh. I also need to make a correction. Gallagher didn't actually see Julia levitate. He just heard from some other people that she did.

[Jordan]

Oh, my God.

[Dan]

So I'm convinced, you know, this is.

[Jordan]

Why you got to give a little bit of respect to L. Ron Hubbard. At least whenever he tried to prove it, he got a crowd out there. He had the woman trained to do the thing, and then obviously she failed and going. Clear as bullshit. Right. But at least he gave it a shot.

[Dan]

He's a gambler.

[Jordan]

Yeah, right. What if it worked this one time? Yeah, it'd be crazy.

[Dan]

So there's no information in this story that doesn't come from Gallagher himself. So a naturalistic explanation for this is that Gallagher is not trustworthy. He believes other people telling him that someone levitated. So I wouldn't be too surprised if this woman showed up at his house and said, like, nice cats, and that turned into proof that she'd possessed the cats the night before or some dumb shit.

[Jordan]

Anyway, how you like those cats? I. Is that a genuine question? Yes, it is. I'm. I'm genuinely interested as a high priestess of a Satan cult. We're pretty into cats, buddy. It's kind of our thing.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah. So possession happens.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

Possession's nine tenths of the law.

[Jordan]

Nice.

[Dan]

But this is a different God's law.

[Jordan]

No, no.

[Dan]

And there's no nine tenths with possession demon wise. Because a true Christian can't be possessed.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Dan]

Because God's in there.

[Lee Strobel]

A true Christian cannot be demonically possessed. And the reason is a true Christian is indwelled by the Holy Spirit. You can't be indwelled by evil and good like that in the same way at the same time. So Christians, they're a rule. Possessed, physical rule, oppressed. They can be hectored. They can be bothered. They can be attacked. Attacked by demons. And there are some amazing examples of that, and I just mentioned a couple.

[Dan]

So how does he know that? Like, has he done studies on Christians and found that it's impossible to possess them?

[Jordan]

Yeah, I'm. I'm interested in this. I'm interested in some corroboration. On quote, unquote, a true Christian.

[Dan]

There's nothing. It sounds like a perfect time, though, for Tucker to chime in and say, I was hackered by a demon.

[Jordan]

Exactly.

[Dan]

Strangely, it doesn't come up.

[Jordan]

But he wasn't possessed, so he should bring up that he is a true Christian, otherwise he would have been possessed. Possessed.

[Dan]

But he was true. So he was Hector.

[Jordan]

So he was just hectored.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Let me ask you this question, please. Is the ratio of Christian proportional to the ratio of possession? Right. So If I'm like 40% Christian, do I get a 60% demon possession?

[Dan]

No, I don't think so. I think it's all or nothing.

[Jordan]

It's all or nothing. All right. So you're either a true Christian or you're demon possessible.

[Dan]

I think that. Yeah. With the Holy Spirit, when comes in you.

[Jordan]

True.

[Dan]

It's not there. It's just a yes or no proposition. It's not. It's not. There's no half Holy Spirit.

[Jordan]

All right, all right.

[Dan]

And hey, I. That's the closest thing to believing. His points I'll. I'll have is like, yeah, it's all or nothing. Good. Okay.

[Jordan]

Okay. So I'm the demon.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Right. I don't have a physical form.

[Dan]

No, because you're an angel originally.

[Jordan]

Exactly.

[Dan]

You don't marry.

[Jordan]

Right. Right. And I'm definitely not married married. And so I'm like, oh, I'm gonna possess this person you dated. Do I know in advance? Can I see, like, oh, no, there's the Holy Spirit. So I'm not even gonna bother this person. Or is it while I'm trying to possess you that I get hit by the Holy Spirit and I'm like. And then I start, like, poking you.

[Dan]

It's like an airplane bathroom.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Okay. All right. That's what I needed to know. That's what I needed to know.

[Dan]

I think that's how I imagine. All right, so look, there's miracles all around us.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

And Lee talks about his standard for figuring out. Out whether something is a miracle.

[Jordan]

That's a good question.

[Dan]

Or someone just saying some stuff.

[Jordan]

That's a good question.

[Lee Strobel]

For me as I investigate, another area I investigate in the book are miracles. And for me, if you have solid documentation, medical documentation, if you have multiple eyewitnesses with no motive to deceive, if you have no natural explanation that seems logical, that can account for the phenomenon, and if it takes place in the context of prayer, then I think it's logical to conclude that a miracle has taken place.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Lee Strobel]

And there have been miracles published in peer reviewed medical journals.

[Dan]

So Lee's standard for justifying belief in a miracle is faulty. And I don't believe for a second he isn't fully aware of it.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

He says that he'll believe something is a miracle if people involved don't have a motive to lie about it. Does he think that Billy Graham has a huge motive to lie about that story about the missionary or not? Like, what is he. What's his take on that? That I don't think I trust Lee's ability or willingness to judge whether someone has a motive to lie about something. And even in a perfect world, people often have hidden motives. Lee is selectively gullible, which is on purpose.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And it's a business strategy and a survival mechanism for this bullshit.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Yep. It is interesting to have so much burden of proof for a miracle and no burden of proof for. Or a demon can't get inside you if you're a true Christian.

[Dan]

Right?

[Jordan]

Obviously. Yeah. Duh. There's too much of the Holy Spirit in you. The guy can't fit because it's got a physical.

[Dan]

Well, no, he doesn't.

[Jordan]

No, he doesn't. No.

[Dan]

No. So. But, you know, you want that burden of proof and you want to hear what the information is.

[Jordan]

Absolutely.

[Dan]

How about something that's published in a fucking journal?

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Dan]

Okay, I gotcha.

[Jordan]

Nice.

[Lee Strobel]

And there have been miracles published in. In peer reviewed medical journals. I talk about one in my book. Here's a woman who was blind for 12 years with incurable condition. She went to a school for the blind. She learned to read braille. She walked with a white cane. And she married a Baptist pastor. And one night, they're getting ready to go to bed, she's already in bed. He comes over to her and he puts his hand on her shoulder. And he begins to cry. And he begins to pray. And he says, lord, I know you can heal my wife. I know you can heal her right now. And I pray that you do it tonight.

[Jordan]

Night.

[Lee Strobel]

And with that, she opened her eyes. Eyes to perfect vision. She said, I was blind when my husband prayed for me. I open. She prayed, I opened my eyes. I can see. It's a miracle. That was researched by multiple medical researchers and published in a medical journal as a case study. What do you do with that? What do you do with that?

[Tucker Carlson]

What did they do with it?

[Jordan]

What did they.

[Lee Strobel]

It kind of leaves it up to the. To the reader to say, what's your conclusion?

[Tucker Carlson]

Because they were upset by it.

[Lee Strobel]

Well, yeah, but certainly does point toward a supernatural event.

[Dan]

Who is upset about what?

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

I don't know.

[Jordan]

Are you saying that the hospital people are like, oh, miracles. I hate it when God heals people.

[Dan]

Tucker has such a knee jerk, instinctual need to, like, make himself and Christians the victim and everything.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

It's very sad.

[Jordan]

Everybody would be like, hooray. Everybody was like, hooray. This is fine. This is great. Great.

[Dan]

So this is from a 2021 article published in the journal Explore. To put it as politely as possible, Explorer is a bullshit journal that publishes a ton of pseudo scientific stuff and it is not taken seriously in an academic setting. But just saying that would be shooting the messenger. So I decided to give this article a little.

[Jordan]

Once you decided to explore it. Yeah.

[Dan]

As the name would suggest or demand, learn for yourself. So the woman in this case study was born in 1940 and went blind for unknown reasons in 1958 when she was 18. This timing is a small issue because, as the paper points out, quote, this case predates the availability of much of the ophthalmologic testing now used for diagnoses. That means that the information about her condition that led to the experience of sudden blindness is murky and we don't really know all that much. She was married to a pastor, and then in 1972, he prayed for her to regain her sight, and she did that night. Apparently, this was not something he had prayed about prior in their years of marriage, which I find to be an incredibly dubious claim.

[Jordan]

Also, if Tripp. He's kind of a dick, right? Yeah.

[Dan]

So this also stuck out to me from the case study. Quote, their only prior experience with prayer for healing seems to be when the patient and her husband had briefly visited the meeting of a well known healing evangelist, but they left before the time in the meeting when the healing practices began. That gives me the same kind of energy as Bill Clinton saying, he didn't inhale. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, I don't believe you. Wow, you went to this faith healer? Come on.

[Jordan]

Of course.

[Dan]

Calm down.

[Jordan]

Get the hell out of here.

[Dan]

So he says that she had instantly perfect vision, but in fact, the next documentation of her vision is from 1974, two years after she regained her sight and she was 20 over 100. I don't know if science has a specific explanation for why this woman regained her sight, but I also don't think that the details of this case are that compelling. For one, I don't believe that they never prayed for her to be healed before. But even leaving that stuff aside, this case is is being published in a shady journal. And if you go to the funding section, you'll see that it was paid for by the very suspiciously named Global Medical Research Institute. Lot of words that sound good.

[Jordan]

Man, those are the scariest names in the history of the world. Americans are great foundation. Can't trust you.

[Dan]

The GMRI is an outlet that funds papers and promotes the medical benefits. Benefits of proximal intercessory prayer or laying on hands like, as opposed to prayer over distance.

[Jordan]

Right, right, right. Yeah.

[Dan]

This is a critically biased source, as evidenced by a blog post on their website titled, quote, should I support GMRI quote. The answer is that you can't afford not to support GMRI without strong scientific evidence that in person prayer has positive effects on health. Authorities have prevented Christians from offering prayer and claiming that they even believe God can heal.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

This is a faith healing advocacy group, so it's hard to imagine that they would publish a study of someone miraculously getting their vision back and then work all that hard to poke holes in the idea that faith healing did it.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Treating this case critically is literally the opposite of their mission statement. And it shows. These are all, like, very serious credibility issues that Lee would care about if he was actually the person he's pretending to be.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

If he were actually interested in sorting out the truth from bullshit in the area of the supernatural, then he wouldn't be so excited to embellish and misrepresent information like this that comes from obviously biased sources.

[Jordan]

You know, it's interesting to think of my origin story in the context of God being real. Right. So my origin story begins with faith healing gone wrong, where they tried to do the faith healing and then they killed the kid. Right. So if they still want to do the. The faith healing is real thing, then they have to say that God chose specifically to kill this kid. Right.

[Dan]

So maybe the leader of your group wasn't on the up and up. Whatever you like, God disfavored him.

[Jordan]

Sure. Exactly. But again, God chose to kill this kid as opposed to healing these other kids.

[Dan]

Well, it's the same with literally every, like, miracle healing, except exactly. You have to be like, well, okay, well, then I guess he chose all of these other people are dying.

[Jordan]

Right, Right. But in this specific context, it also is a organization that broke up because of it. So God also included breaking up this Christian organization. So does that mean they were all evil or that, you know, any number of possible.

[Dan]

The face went wrong in order to knock over all the dominoes that it would take for you to be here.

[Jordan]

Exactly, yeah. Any number of those things.

[Dan]

But the point being, that's a miracle.

[Jordan]

If you're going to do the anecdote story, you have to do both of them. They're both. They both exist within the same context.

[Dan]

Or I think I feel like. Just stop it with the anecdote. Like, the way that he's trying to convey this information is, like, really dumb.

[Jordan]

And the rhythm is. So, like, these stories all have the same spoken word.

[Dan]

Rhythm. Rhythm, yeah. But doesn't he like what I said at the beginning? Doesn't he kind of sound more pleasant than a lot of the people that we end up.

[Jordan]

He's got. I mean. Yeah.

[Dan]

Smile in his voice. He has a little laugh to him that. I think he enjoys life more than a lot of these other assholes.

[Jordan]

These are more fun stories to tell than the like. Like, if you're choosing this side of things, you've got the we're all gonna die, everything's gonna explode by gold. Or you've got. Do you know what. What they prayed all night and what happened the next morning. Miracles.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Like, that's pretty fun.

[Dan]

Yeah. It's probably a better headspace.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So there's some more miracles if you. If you're down.

[Jordan]

Sure. Let's see what we know.

[Dan]

I don't know if you wanted to hear about some more healing.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Lee Strobel]

But here's what's interesting. There's a woman with a PhD from Harvard who's a professor at Indiana University, Major secular university. And she said, I'd like to test whether miracles are possible. How can we scientifically test that? So here's what she did. Miracles tend to cluster in places where the gospel is just breaking in. And so we see them in China, in Mozambique, in Brazil, places where the gospel is taking root. We see miracles taking place in a disproportionate number. So she says, I'm going to put it to the test. So she sends a team of scientists to Mozambique and researchers to Mozambique, and they go into the bush and they say, bring us all your deaf and blind. So they bring all the people deaf, blind, or with severe hearing or vision problems. They bring them and they test them scientifically. Right there. What is your level of vision? What is your level of hearing? They get that scientifically established, then immediately they are prayed for in the name of Jesus by people who tend to have a track record of God using them that way.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Lee Strobel]

And then immediately after that, they're tested again. Guess what? They found improvement in virtually every case. In fact, get this. The average improvement in visual acuity was tenfold.

[Dan]

Wow.

[Jordan]

No, that's unacceptable.

[Dan]

No. What?

[Jordan]

No, you can't. You can't do, like, pretty good. That's not how your God works. You can't do, like. Oh, man.

[Lee Strobel]

Man.

[Jordan]

They went from 20 over 100 to 2040. Can you believe that?

[Dan]

Right. And if you look at the actual study, there's a bunch of people who have, like, false positives who claimed that they were better, but the numbers didn't show that.

[Jordan]

All right.

[Dan]

I don't know about this. So this story that Lee is telling goes back to a paper published in the Southern Medical Association's journal in 2010. This isn't a shady outlet like Explore, but you'll see that there are some very serious problems with this study. Lee's version of the story is that a researcher at Indiana University wanted to test miracles. So she went to Mozambique, and what do you know? She found that prayer fixes everything. Small, all bullshit.

[Jordan]

Amazing.

[Dan]

The author of this paper went to Mozambique because there was already a woman there claiming that she was healing everyone with prayer. This was Heidi Baker, one of the founders of Iris Ministries, who, in collaboration with another missionary outlet called Global Awakening, was running charismatic Protestant services in rural Mozambique. The researchers were at church services between June 4th and 12th, 2009, where people in attendance were told, hey, if you're deaf or blind, you should come up to this designated area where people will pray for you to be healed. This is already shit. Based on the design of how they're carrying this out. But it gets worse.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Here's a description from the published paper about how they did their healing.

[Jordan]

Published paper?

[Dan]

Yeah, gotcha. Quote. Western and Mozambican, Irish and Global Awakening leaders and affiliates who administered prayer all used similar protocol. They typically spent one to 15 minutes, sometimes an hour or more, circumstances permitting, administering prayer. They placed their hands on the recipient's head and sometimes embrace the person in a hug, keeping their eyes open to observe results. In soft tones, they petitioned God to heal, invited the Holy Spirit's anointing, and commanded healing and the departure of any evil spirits in Jesus's hand. Name those who prayed, then asked recipients whether they were healed. If the recipient responded negatively or stated that the healing was partial, prayer was continued. If they answered in the affirmative. Yeah.

[Jordan]

If they answered making a murderer.

[Dan]

In Mozambique. If they. Making a miracle.

[Jordan]

Oh, boom, there we go.

[Dan]

If they answered in the affirmative, informal tests were conducted, such as taking recipients to repeat words or sounds like hand claps intoned from behind or to count fingers from roughly 30cm away if the recipients were unable or partially able to perform tasks.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

Prayer was continued for as long as permitted.

[Jordan]

Jesus Christ.

[Dan]

You basically have someone touching you and emotionally begging you to say that you have been healed. And if you say no, they keep begging you. It's a fundamentally flawed design for research. And I would say that it's not even really all that established how severe or real the people's hearing and vision problems were.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

The study makes it clear that they had a limited amount of time and a limited access to any kind of facilities or technology.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So, like, you could, in theory, be at a charismatic Christian revival.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Kind of thing.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And they're like, hey, I want to heal the blind. And you could go up and pretend your vision was worse than it was, and there's no way they would know.

[Jordan]

No.

[Dan]

So, like, all of this is shit.

[Jordan]

It's not a good experiment. Yeah. It's not a controlled environment. No. It's not probably going to get you the results that you're looking for.

[Dan]

Also, like this dude, Lee is saying, like, oh, these miracles seem to pop up in places like Mozambique and Brazil. And coincidentally, Heidi Baker works in Mozambique and Brazil. You see more miracles there because she's there.

[Jordan]

So crazy. It's almost like she makes it up, up and follows it. Yeah, well, could be.

[Dan]

So all this is nonsense. And none of this should be surprising because the funding for this study came from the John Templeton foundation, an outlet run by a weirdo Christian billionaire who believes in faith healing. He's also dead now, but his family.

[Jordan]

That sounds right.

[Dan]

The researcher who wrote the paper is named Candy Gunther Brown, who, strangely, was a member of the board of directors of the Global Medical Research Institute, the faith healing promotional outlet that paid for the blindness case study.

[Jordan]

We're getting a lot of strange strikes. Yeah.

[Dan]

The GMRI itself began as a part of Global Awakenings, which is the charismatic Christian group that put on the tent revival meetings in Mozambique.

[Jordan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

These would all be very suspicious details to Lee if you were interested in assessing the veracity of the claims that these people are making. But instead, you can see how uncurious he is, which is suspicious.

[Jordan]

No, no, no.

[Dan]

Strategic.

[Jordan]

Look at that. There's so much corroboration. They're all corroborating itself. It's each other. Each other. Not. It's not corroborating itself.

[Dan]

Right.

[Jordan]

That would be ridiculous.

[Dan]

So hold on now. You mean to tell me that this super independent and bold researcher at secular Indiana University is a board member of a faith healing promotional outlet?

[Jordan]

Okay, that's my favorite. That's my favorite evangelical speak that I just love so much. They can't help themselves, but from reinforcing, like, that secular universe. Like, what are we doing?

[Dan]

Well, it's like Alex saying, things are in the mainstream news, right? It's like, even the secular people believe.

[Jordan]

Yeah, exactly. Like, what are you doing? What is happening now?

[Dan]

So a lot of these studies are bad?

[Jordan]

No. Yeah, but they seem so scientific, which also is empiricism. But also we require faith.

[Dan]

It's also not scientific, and I have no faith in it.

[Jordan]

That fair.

[Dan]

But thankfully, Lee, he is A go getter. He decided, I'm gonna go ahead and do a study myself.

[Jordan]

Hell yes.

[Dan]

Yes. So here we get to learn about that.

[Jordan]

Let's hear it.

[Lee Strobel]

I did a study. I hired a public opinion firm to do a scientifically accurate study of American adults. And I asked the question, have you ever had one experience, at least in your life, that you can only explain away as being a miracle of God? 38% of American adults said yes.

[Jordan]

Wow.

[Lee Strobel]

And by the way, way. Let's say 90, 99% of them are wrong. Let's say they think it was a miracle, but it was just a big coincidence. So let's just wipe out 99% and say no, no, no, you thought it was a miracle. It really wasn't. Let's wipe away 99%. Guess what that would still mean? There would be a million miracles nearly in the United States.

[Jordan]

Wow.

[Dan]

If we're going to assume that 99% of these folks are wrong about the thing they can't explain being a God based miracle, why can't we assume it's possible that 100% are wrong? There's no proof of anything here. And yet Lee is reporting on his self directed opinion poll as if it's evidence of a million miracles made it. When he's delivering this kind of information, it shines through how much his work, like this work is like intonation. He needs to sell things as meaning something. Because if he just delivered this flatly, it would sound so dumb.

[Jordan]

Imagine, imagine for a minute. No, no, close your, close your eyes and imagine that 99% of them aren't real. 99%. That's me being unreasonably unfair for my piece. Because you might think it's 50, 50, you might think it's 60, 40. But I am giving you secular Indiana University a 99 point head start. But if one of them is right.

[Dan]

Yeah. Jordan, I gotta tell you, there have been 10,000 reported cases of goblins.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Dan]

Out on the streets.

[Jordan]

Yes. And if 99% of those cases are bullshit.

[Dan]

Right. If just 1% is true, that's a lot of goblins.

[Jordan]

A lot of goblets. Maybe we got a goblin problem.

[Dan]

Yikes. This is dumb. So that poll that Lee did was part of a book he released in 2020 called the case for Miracles, which is part of his the Case for series where he pretends to present empirical evidence for religious things.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

Weirdly, one of the things he argues is a miracle in that book is the study about faith healings in Mozambique authored by Candy Gunther Brown. How about that it's almost like a bunch of. This new book is cut and paste from the other one that he published five years ago. Because who gives a shit?

[Jordan]

It's tough to write a new book and people really just want to hear the hits.

[Dan]

They don't care.

[Jordan]

They don't care. No, nobody's reading that book, being like, ah, update your miracles. It's just for the jolt of. Yeah, it's all real.

[Dan]

Yeah. Tell the story with a couple of. Change some adjectives or whatever. Forget that it's the same miracle.

[Jordan]

Absolutely. Because they're all the same miracle.

[Dan]

God, what a dick. Anyway, Satan.

[Jordan]

What about him?

[Dan]

He's the ruler of the world. Some say.

[Jordan]

Why? What's he up to?

[Dan]

That's. See, this is why you and Tucker would get along, because he has the same question.

[Jordan]

That's a good question.

[Dan]

Why is Satan.

[Jordan]

Why? What's he up to?

[Tucker Carlson]

There's a couple references, at least a couple references in the New Testament to Satan being the ruler of the earth.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes.

[Tucker Carlson]

What does that mean?

[Lee Strobel]

It means that in this realm, he in many ways has his way. In other words, he has access to be able to influence people and point them away from the one true hope that there is, which is God. And so he prowls about, as the Bible says, as a lion hoping to tear people apart spiritually.

[Tucker Carlson]

I mean, if that's not true, then explain the First World War.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

I mean, there is just. No, there's no explanation. Even now, over a hundred years later.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

For why that war started.

[Jordan]

Oh.

[Tucker Carlson]

You know, Archduke Ferdinand got shot to death in Sarajevo. Really? Okay. That's not a real explanation, actually. Why did Christian Europe commit suicide?

[Jordan]

Yeah. And.

[Tucker Carlson]

And there are many other wars and many other tragedies in all of our lives. Like, that doesn't make any sense. It's clearly, you know, supernatural forces are acting people.

[Lee Strobel]

I agree.

[Dan]

Or like the time you were asleep and a demon attacked you. Look, I think World War I was probably demons.

[Jordan]

I think it definitely couldn't be concentrating too much power in a small group of people who are somehow related to each other.

[Dan]

Well, you know, do you.

[Jordan]

Oh, okay. It could be demons.

[Dan]

See, but here's the thing that I like about this.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

This is a plot point in Eternal Darkness. My favorite video games that the. The. The. The Elder Gods.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Are manipulating humans into killing each other because they need the blood.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

So World War I is. Is just part of their. Their feast.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

And so I guess Tucker believes that about. About God.

[Jordan]

I mean, I do appreciate the motivated reasoning behind it because the other option is we all do government bad. That really fucks up everything that everybody's doing because maybe we should stop doing it, you know?

[Dan]

Yeah. And I think that a lot of the political preferences that Tucker has in specific.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Are ones that are definitely not, they lead to World War I ish type things.

[Jordan]

If he was going to build a society, it would look exactly like it did when World War I happened. Thus World War I would happen.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a high probability.

[Jordan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

So look, Satan. Yeah, right?

[Jordan]

Yeah. This guy, he's a bad guy, but.

[Dan]

He'S also gotta go, he's gotta go places.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

He's busy.

[Jordan]

Right. Well, I mean, he's got so much to do to rule the world. Yeah, absolutely. What's his administration frustration strategy like?

[Dan]

Well, I don't know if we ever get to find that out.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

But we do find out that he's efficient and he is good with time and is a prioritizer.

[Jordan]

Well, then put him in charge.

[Lee Strobel]

If Satan were smart, which he is, would he go around the country and around the world trying to possess or bother average everyday people? Well, you know what, how does he travel fishing to go to Hollywood and to influence a bunch of people there who are very influential in, let's say, the entertainment industry. And let's say he encourages them to create films and television shows that are funny and that are creative and are fun, but there's an underlying message to them. Feel like a normalization of immoral activity that makes it normal because, you know, when we laugh, it opens us up to, to various possibilities. When we laugh, our defenses come down. So I'm thinking of a wonderful, funny TV show like Friends. Remember Friends? The TV show was on TV for.

[Tucker Carlson]

Years, Satan's Friends, who never saw it.

[Lee Strobel]

But yeah, but underlying that is a very ugly sexual ethic that, that normalizes multiple sexual partners, you old sort of thing.

[Jordan]

The kind of thing that Satan would.

[Lee Strobel]

Love to inculcate into American culture.

[Dan]

Oh, Friends.

[Jordan]

Are you bitching about friends in 2025?

[Dan]

Y I mean, look, yeah, there's things that were on before Friends.

[Jordan]

I, I, I mean people have had sex for so many years.

[Dan]

Seinfeld was on before Friends. The Golden Girls.

[Jordan]

The Golden Girls got laid all the time.

[Dan]

At least Blanch.

[Jordan]

Absolutely.

[Dan]

So like, I mean, I mean, this guy sucks.

[Jordan]

This is amazing.

[Dan]

The devil made friends.

[Jordan]

Imagine what, what a fucking. And listen, what a fucking devil. That is, that is, that is a smart devil.

[Dan]

Could he be more funny man? The devil, you know, the greatest trick he ever pulled was The Rachel.

[Jordan]

That haircut I'm such a big fan of. When people have a genius evil villain who does exactly the dumbest possible thing that they think would happen because that's the only thing that makes sense. It can't be that people have fun.

[Dan]

Well, people weren't really fucking before Friends.

[Jordan]

That's probably true.

[Dan]

I mean, the central perk, it got people going.

[Jordan]

They. It was fret. So before Friends, everybody slept in the twin beds. You know, like, if you, you know, like in Casablanca, there's the twin beds, man. It's the same thing. But then Friends happen. Everybody's sleeping in the queen size together where you can touch parts.

[Dan]

Right.

[Jordan]

Disgusting.

[Dan]

And also, I think the legacy of Friends taken as a whole is quite monogamous. I mean, Chandler and Courtney Cox get together and they get married. Ross and David, everybody. Rachel. Yeah. I don't. I don't know if Phoebe and.

[Jordan]

And no, but they have.

[Dan]

Yeah, I don't think they get together, but they're kind of weirdos.

[Jordan]

Joey gets a spin off, though, so you've got that.

[Dan]

And then he does a movie with a monkey.

[Jordan]

Is okay.

[Dan]

But that wasn't him.

[Jordan]

If.

[Dan]

I mean, it wasn't in character.

[Jordan]

If. Friends. Devil. Joey, Devil. Yep. Or. Or did Joey just negotiate that himself? You know what I'm saying?

[Dan]

I think there was a lot of LeBlanc excitement. I think people wanted to see him.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

I think this is fucking stupid. And obviously there's a bit of anti Semitism to this Friends. With the way that it appears. It appeals to these classical narratives about Jewish people taking over Hollywood in order to erode the culture of the United States. But I think it's more important to point out that Lee is a dork.

[Jordan]

Can you imagine that? What. What devil is rebelling against God? So much so that they're tossed into the lake of fire and in the meantime is like, well, I got to do Friends.

[Dan]

The one where God threw me out of Heaven. That was the pilot. You should have known.

[Jordan]

We should have. We should have seen that in advance. Yeah, that all makes sense. It was a very distinct origin story. Story.

[Dan]

Yeah. So this is. This is all in service of making the argument that the devil is efficient and he wants to, like, use mass media in order to sway people as opposed to going and, like, whispering in your ear at your house.

[Jordan]

No, that. It does make sense because he can.

[Dan]

Only be in one place at a time. He has a limited amount of demons.

[Jordan]

I ask you this question. How did he get there?

[Dan]

To Hollywood?

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Hitched.

[Jordan]

Where did he start From.

[Dan]

I mean, the obvious answer is going to be hell, but then, like, we can't. We need a physical look.

[Jordan]

Exactly.

[Dan]

There's a hell mouth somewhere. I don't know.

[Jordan]

Why can't he be in more than one place at the same time?

[Dan]

Because he's. He has to be corporeal, right? I mean, yeah, there's. There's no way around that.

[Jordan]

Because he can't travel. I mean. Well, I would be interested to know, can he travel through the earth? Can he walk from California to China?

[Dan]

You know, does he have phasing power?

[Jordan]

Absolutely.

[Dan]

Through walls?

[Jordan]

If he can. If he can be in one place, it is. Can he teleport?

[Dan]

I think not. Because if he can be in one place at one time, then he has mass. Right?

[Jordan]

That is, that would be. Or at least. Yeah. There's no other way to explain it. Yeah, there's just no other way. Even. Even if he's like a floating consciousness that is spaceless, that is not. That is timeless.

[Dan]

Science will one day explain this, but for now, now all we got is Lee's dumbass.

[Jordan]

Apparently my science is shit.

[Dan]

So this, this idea of like influencing leaders is something that they, they start talking about.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

And they get into like, making priests abuse children. That's what the devil does.

[Jordan]

That feels very. Not like.

[Dan]

So the devil's up to.

[Jordan]

All right.

[Tucker Carlson]

If I were trying to subvert and destroy, I would go after religious leaders.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

I'd have them like molest kids or freaky sex lives or steal money from the church.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes.

[Jordan]

And you do.

[Tucker Carlson]

I've always noticed that the leadership of Christian churches in just like numerically way more likely to be screwed up than the people in the pews.

[Jordan]

Interesting.

[Tucker Carlson]

Do you know what I mean? You see these sex scandals with pastors and you're like, how many people who are going to church every Sunday have sex lives like that? Probably not very many, but a pretty high percentage of pastors. And I feel like that is outside influence.

[Lee Strobel]

Like a. Teachers too. Teachers who young kids look up to. You know, you can imagine when you were kindergarten, first grade, second grade grade, you looked up to your teacher.

[Tucker Carlson]

Not one time. There's not one teacher I liked.

[Jordan]

Oh, really?

[Lee Strobel]

Oh, I sure did.

[Tucker Carlson]

I never know. I felt it was a authoritarian situation. I was, I was totally opposed from kindergarten on one day where I respected or liked any of them. Not a single one.

[Lee Strobel]

That, that is.

[Jordan]

I'm serious. That is so fun.

[Lee Strobel]

I. I happened to go to public school growing up. And yet back then in the 50s and 60s, most of the teachers are Christian Christians.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Lee Strobel]

And so, no, I had some and they could hit. You taught me great lessons about life. So I.

[Jordan]

You grew up in a better America.

[Tucker Carlson]

Than I did in Southern California in the 70s. I thought they were all buffoons, freaks. I wasn't taking orders from them. I really dislike them.

[Dan]

Sorry.

[Tucker Carlson]

Excuse me.

[Jordan]

What a loser.

[Lee Strobel]

That's funny.

[Jordan]

But.

[Tucker Carlson]

But, but if you want to lead people astray, you subvert their leaders, I guess.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes, yes. Very much. Much so.

[Dan]

Yeah, that's that. Sure. So I'm sure some of the teachers that Tucker had at the various boarding schools his parents paid for him to go to were annoying, but, man, when I hear someone go off like that, it just feels like them venting their insecurity and their need to be better than any perceived authority figures.

[Jordan]

I mean, that's pathetic.

[Dan]

I don't believe that anyone can go through a full education without encountering at least one example of an amazing teacher. There are a lot of duds out there, but there are enough people who care and who are into what they do that I'm certain that any adult that says, I hated all my teachers. Teachers is a liar who's trying to look cool because emotionally they're still at that school.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And it's fucking sad.

[Jordan]

There are. There are more than there should be teachers who care about this shit.

[Dan]

I mean, I dropped out of high school and I had a miserable time through a fair amount of my time in that. You know, in that era of life. And I. There were a couple teachers that stick out to me as, like, amazing.

[Jordan]

Yeah. No, no, it's. It's ironic. But the reason that they can be treated so poorly is because they care so much about the students. They're willing to endure trash. Yeah.

[Dan]

And some of them suck, but.

[Jordan]

And some of them suck everybody. Some people suck.

[Dan]

But I would. I would say that I'm always siding with a teacher over Tucker. I think in this.

[Jordan]

Yeah, yeah, it would be. You know what? You're right. If there was ever any single person that could. Could defeat that. No.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Gotta be him.

[Dan]

So they, you know, they're trying to make friends the show.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

They're trying to get the teachers.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

And now they're trying to sway the kids by having drag performers read to them.

[Lee Strobel]

And you look at if Satan's gonna go after children. What is all this stuff about libraries doing children's readings of. And drag shows to little kids? Why. Why would that happen? Happen? You know what? Because if you can capture the mind of a child very young, it could influence them for the rest of their life.

[Tucker Carlson]

What happens? Because we put up with it.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah, we do.

[Tucker Carlson]

A healthy society would not put up with.

[Lee Strobel]

That's true.

[Tucker Carlson]

For five minutes.

[Lee Strobel]

That's true.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

Sorry. They drive them out of the temple immediately with a whip.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Sorry. Excuse me.

[Tucker Carlson]

So you think that you believe that demons roam the earth?

[Lee Strobel]

Yes.

[Dan]

Okay, sure. Great.

[Jordan]

So if I understand correctly, volunteering is what gets you kicked out of the church.

[Dan]

Yeah. Or I guess, you know, being gay or drag performer or you know, like that doesn't.

[Jordan]

That. No, there's no. You could just dress. You could dress in full clothing. There's a drag doesn't. Drag is a. Doesn't mean anything in this context. It's dragon. Just purely like a short term for anybody who looks different.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

No, of course. And the society wouldn't put up with this is. Boy, that's a standard that gets broad real fast.

[Jordan]

1950S America is your hero worshiping time period.

[Dan]

Yeah. I think that like that mentality that Tucker's expressing. A healthy society wouldn't put up with this. We would have driven them out a long time ago. Is exactly what everyone has always been like. This is what you're saying?

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

And now he's just. You can just say it.

[Jordan]

You're a Nazi.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So.

[Jordan]

Yeah. A functioning society would burn all of its undesirables.

[Dan]

Yeah. People are like outside the norm.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Or would be too threatening and must be gotten rid of.

[Jordan]

We should definitely have a bunch of scientists talk about how euthanasia is a. A preferable option.

[Dan]

It's empirical.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

So look, some people are evil.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

But what about places?

[Jordan]

That is a good question. Obviously places can be evil in and of themselves.

[Dan]

This clip bums me out because I think Tucker wants to talk about a haunted house and he just won't let himself.

[Jordan]

Oh my God.

[Lee Strobel]

I think there is there. Just as miracles tend to break out in a positive way in places where the gospel is breaking in, I think we probably see pockets around the globe where Satan has a stronghold. And I, I, I would think that physical places. Physical places.

[Jordan]

The Middle east, like.

[Lee Strobel]

I think Haiti is a good example of that.

[Dan]

Oh.

[Tucker Carlson]

I've been in some places in the US where I felt that really strongly. Like I've been. I was in a house once. I lived in a house once as a child. We're part of the house. There's something so wrong with it. And every person who lived in the house knew that sound.

[Lee Strobel]

Could be. Could be. Could be an occultic thing.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

What's a mystical dream Tell me about the haunted house. Tell me about your haunted house.

[Jordan]

I have a poltergeist.

[Dan]

I'm so disappointed that. With that pivot to tell me about mystical dreams.

[Jordan]

That's bullshit.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

If there was something in your house.

[Dan]

My childhood home was haunted.

[Jordan]

Absolutely. Tell me about your dumb fucking home. Haunting.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

God be great.

[Dan]

So mental illness is something that exists.

[Jordan]

Gotta euthanize them too.

[Dan]

Well, no, not really.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Dan]

Because they don't exist.

[Jordan]

Oh.

[Tucker Carlson]

There are certain forms of what we refer to as mental illness.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

Which is a phrase invented by people pretty recently.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

And clearly there are forms of mental illness. I think. I guess, whatever that is. But there are certain people who have visions that are very unpleasant.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes.

[Tucker Carlson]

And that bear, like, almost a precise resemblance to the demonic possession described in the New Testament.

[Lee Strobel]

They may be demonic. I don't know. I have to evaluate each one to try to determine.

[Tucker Carlson]

Of course, these are broad brushes, but you do. Is it fair to conclude that maybe not everything the shrink tells you is mental illness? They can never describe where it comes from or how to fix it. They have no idea. But whatever. They know nothing. To be clear. But is it fair to assume that maybe some of that is spiritual?

[Lee Strobel]

Yes, I think it can very well be.

[Dan]

So Tucker should probably just come out with it and say that he doesn't believe that mental illness is real and that people who don't conform to the sorts of behaviors he wants to see from them are probably possessed and should be beaten until the demon leaves them body. This weird middle ground where he's very clearly expressing that he doesn't believe in mental illness but also refuses to commit to that position feels dishonest and kind of cowardly.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

What Tucker is doing is saying that he doesn't believe that psychiatry and psychology have the answers for what society calls mental illness. So instead you should accept his even less grounded conclusions about demons. It's fine to think that mental health as a field, it doesn't have all the answers and can't provide magic. Solutions. Solutions to people's problems. But that doesn't validate the conclusion Tucker is trying to get to and replace it with.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

It's like they're forgetting to do the part where they have to actually prove there are demons. They're just kind of waving their hands around, whining about how we don't know everything about the world and then demanding that I take demons seriously. And I'm not going to.

[Jordan]

I mean, it's. It's funny. It's always funny and it's always fun. But then it's. It's like the real reason for demons is so eventually you can call people demons and then kill them.

[Dan]

Sure.

[Jordan]

That's why we have demons.

[Dan]

That's why we have the word demonizations exist.

[Jordan]

So eventually we can say that there is a person who needs to be killed. That's what it is.

[Dan]

Well, and it's unfortunate because that's, you know, the demon won't leave them.

[Jordan]

Yeah. I mean, hey, it makes me a good person for murder. Isn't that amazing how great demons are in that I can murder somebody. Somebody, but I'm a good person for it.

[Dan]

It's. It's merciful in a way.

[Jordan]

Crazy how good a person I am. Why am I wearing this swastika?

[Dan]

It wasn't original.

[Jordan]

Oh, there we go.

[Dan]

Is India. You know what I'm saying?

[Jordan]

There we go. Yeah, I learned.

[Dan]

So, ever speak in tongues?

[Jordan]

I've been to. I would.

[Dan]

I cough. Was part of my speaking.

[Jordan]

I've been to tongue speakings.

[Dan]

Really?

[Jordan]

Yeah, I've seen some speaking in tongues.

[Dan]

I don't know if I have. I mean, I've seen like trance people trying to, like, you know, speak for aliens and stuff. Definitely that I don't know if I've seen. Definitely not in person. I don't think I've seen speaking in tongues. It's weird, but it seems like it would be pretty easy. Based on.

[Lee Strobel]

Super easy.

[Dan]

What. What Lee says.

[Lee Strobel]

I have not experienced that personally, but I. You have credible people who do and have experienced that. There are other Christians, though, who say, no, no, no, that ended with the apostles. So that's one of those side issues theologically, that when we get to heaven, we can raise our hands and ask God, hey, what about that speaking in tongues thing?

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah, no, I know that there is a debate over it. I have no idea what I think about it, how it is. I guess, just as a factual matter, it's true that there are people who, seized by some unseen force, begin speaking in lang. Languages they have never learned.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes. And often this is a. Generally, I would say this is not a language that other people speak. It is a.

[Tucker Carlson]

Or have ever spoken.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah. Ever spoken. It's a spiritual language. But then there's someone. And this is a good corroboration, someone who can interpret that and they understand.

[Jordan]

That is a good corroboration.

[Lee Strobel]

It's a spiritual language. It's not Latin, it's not Greek. It's. It's a spiritual language. And that someone else is able to hear and they have a gift as well. To interpret what is being said.

[Jordan]

Ah.

[Dan]

What Lee seems to be describing is someone speaking gibberish and then another person making up a translation.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

If the only people who can interpret this language are also people who have a special gift. It seems to me that this is basically a short form improv game.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

Also, Lee is supposed to be the guy who studied this and really tried to prove that these miracles are real. And he hasn't seen anyone speak in tongues. Like you said, you've seen it. And if you give me a week, I probably could find somebody.

[Jordan]

Probably.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

What are you doing, Lee? It's. I. It's. It's one of my favorite things that's ever been invented. I think it's one of my favorite things to, to. To be able to pull this off. Right. This is, this is the simplest two man game in the history of religion. It goes way back. Because obviously if you can convince a bunch of rubes that you could speak in a language that only this other person could understand, you can fleece them forever. Everything.

[Dan]

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's, it's good.

[Jordan]

It's a great game. I would con people right now if I could.

[Dan]

I honestly think that it is an improv warm up. I think that doing that is a.

[Jordan]

I mean there's, there's probably something to it that now in. In a more like genuine way, but it comes from stealing from people. Yeah, that's. It's. Yeah.

[Dan]

All improv comes from stealing.

[Jordan]

Well, there's that. Yeah, that's definitely true. Or improv classes are theft.

[Dan]

At least.

[Jordan]

Least.

[Dan]

So have you died?

[Jordan]

Have I died? No.

[Dan]

Have you had a near death experience?

[Jordan]

I don't believe so.

[Dan]

Okay.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Do you believe in them?

[Jordan]

No.

[Dan]

Okay, well, you and Lee disagree on that.

[Jordan]

Seems right.

[Tucker Carlson]

What's a near death experience?

[Lee Strobel]

A near death experience is when a person is clinically dead. That is generally no brain waves, no respiration, heartbeat. Yeah.

[Jordan]

What?

[Lee Strobel]

Clinically dead. Yet they're gonna be revived. And so they're dead for a period of time. Clinically dead. But they're not permanently dead. So the body will be revived as somebody mostly dead.

[Tucker Carlson]

So by the measurements of science, they're dead.

[Lee Strobel]

That's right. That's right.

[Tucker Carlson]

So maybe right there. If we just pause, like maybe right there, we have further evidence that science, while useful, of course, and life improving in some ways, does not have the tools to measure the totality reality of the experience.

[Dan]

If Lee really believes that this is what near death experiences are, then it kind of makes Jesus's whole thing not seem that special. I'm not religious, but this seems like a heretical position. Lee's playing word games here because clinical death is a specific term that means that you're not breathing and your heart is stopped. For certain conditions, like aneurysms, patients can be put into a state of clinical death in order for the doctors to operate on them. It's risky, but it's manageable by modern science. What it is, Lee is saying that people who have near death experiences have no brain function. And that's not part of clinical death.

[Jordan]

These.

[Dan]

These people did not come back from having no brain function and no blood flow, or else Jesus wasn't that big of a deal. There's no third option here because you're dead. If your brain and your body are dead.

[Jordan]

Well, I mean, what your. If these people can die and then be revived by human made shit, then we have the same power over life or death.

[Dan]

That's true. If you can put someone into a state of death and then bring.

[Jordan]

And then bring them back.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

That's some Frankenstein shit.

[Dan]

Well, I think it's either Frankenstein shit or we need to update and refine our position on what, what death is. Because death does have to be the point of no return.

[Jordan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

It's just conceptually what that is.

[Jordan]

You're no longer a thing. Yeah.

[Dan]

And so if we can turn on and off hearts, you know, as we need to for surgeries and shit, then like, that's no longer death.

[Jordan]

Yeah, the faster we can figure that shit out, the faster we can figure out whether or not there's a soul.

[Dan]

Right.

[Jordan]

Because if death is what you're saying it is, then that is when the soul has left, left you, or the enema, or the breath or the whatever it is you want to call it.

[Dan]

Yeah. And I can't help but also say that this is a really good argument for why science like updates with new information.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Science would have told you that death is one thing previously. Now and then as we gained more information, learned more, the definition of death has to change.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Along with that.

[Jordan]

Because we've. Because we fixed it.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

So.

[Dan]

So I don't know. I think science is fine.

[Jordan]

Also, wasn't there the guy who was like, I'm gonna put some stuff on top of high places in case people have the near death experience where they can see outside their body, you know, like, hey, take a look. See if you can see this picture of my grandson on the top drawer.

[Dan]

I don't know about that. There is one story that he Tells of a woman who said that there was a red sticker on a. One of the ceiling fan.

[Jordan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

Things. But that's just a story from a preacher's book. Yeah, I don't know if that's true. There's no corroboration of it.

[Jordan]

That sounds right.

[Dan]

But while I was poking around, I did find that there. You know, when doctors are doing these surgeries, they have asked people afterwards if they had a near death experience. They had to turn off their heart.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And all of them said no.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So like the ability to recreate a near death experience has been unsuccessful.

[Jordan]

Almost scientifically.

[Dan]

Right. And so I. I don't. I'm not familiar specifically with what you're talking about, but I would believe that some asshole would do that.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And then be like, what?

[Jordan]

You see that? Yeah, you see that?

[Dan]

I know.

[Jordan]

Then you work dead.

[Dan]

I imagine some prick would do that to recovering patients.

[Jordan]

Very unnecessary.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Oh, you're gonna die soon. I'm gonna put this up there. Tell me if you can see it. Oh, really? Yeah.

[Dan]

So you. You're a no on souls, right?

[Jordan]

I'm a no on souls. I think I'm gonna go with a no on souls.

[Dan]

You can't be president.

[Jordan]

That's fair.

[Lee Strobel]

That's not only tragic, it's dangerous. Because if you. If you believe we are only our brain. We're only neurons that are fighting, hiring. That means technically, we have no free will. And seriously, you're saying we don't have free. How do you punish someone for doing something wrong if they really didn't have freedom?

[Tucker Carlson]

It also means we have no inherent rights.

[Lee Strobel]

We have no right and wrong.

[Tucker Carlson]

Does a rock have a right? No.

[Lee Strobel]

Exactly.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right. So maybe that should be. Two rocks don't make a right for leadership. If you don't believe human beings have souls, if that's not the basis of the way you understand other people. People is a separate person with a distinct and unique soul.

[Lee Strobel]

Right.

[Tucker Carlson]

If you don't believe that.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

You can have no power.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

In our society. Is that fair?

[Lee Strobel]

I like that. I like that. I never thought of that before, but I certainly wouldn't trust a person, personally, morally, if. If they believed only that we are.

[Tucker Carlson]

I wouldn't. I wouldn't give him a driver's license. That's scary.

[Lee Strobel]

It is scary.

[Tucker Carlson]

You don't think other people have souls?

[Lee Strobel]

Exactly.

[Tucker Carlson]

What, you're a psychopath?

[Lee Strobel]

Exactly.

[Dan]

All right, so now we're going to pass a law that you can't get elected to an office if you don't believe that people have souls. Right.

[Jordan]

That's good.

[Dan]

Yeah, let's do that. So what's. What's a soul?

[Jordan]

Oh, anything that I choose to keep you from being elected to office for.

[Dan]

If you believe the humans have souls, but like in more like an Eastern tradition kind of way, that conception of souls, can you get elected or do you have to have a Christian Western.

[Jordan]

Also, you have to be white.

[Dan]

Ah, shit.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Also, small flaw in this plan. If you don't believe anyone have souls, then, you know. But. But I still like. If I'm that person. But I want to get into power.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

There's no reason for me not to lie and say I believe in souls.

[Jordan]

It would be ridiculous.

[Dan]

Apparently without souls, morality is impossible. So lying isn't wrong for me in that situation. And I can't get into office if I don't say that people have souls.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

I think for the most part, you're never going to get someone running for office who's public about believing that humans are just piles of meat. True. It's not the kind of message that drives people out to vote. So. So I think this is a problem that solves itself for Tucker.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And I think that he's just being a little douche.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Yeah. The arguments are so fucking stupid. Especially because, again, if you think it's over when it's over, then you won't care so much about saving people's souls by letting them die in a bunch of different ways or killing them in a bunch of different ways.

[Dan]

Rather, soul had a chance.

[Jordan]

You'll be more like a. Oh, life is precious on account of it ends.

[Dan]

Well, see, but that's. That life is precious. Thing is, what makes me feel like this might be a crypto conversation about abortion and reproductive rights.

[Jordan]

Yeah, I would say so, but I don't.

[Dan]

They never make that surface.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

You know, they never bring it to the forefront. But it feels like maybe that's kind of what they're saying with this, like, acid test for.

[Jordan]

Well, I mean, ultimately the problem with the soul is that. That when does it go in there? Because when you're talking about abortion, you're talking about the soul. When does the soul enter the body or whatever it is?

[Dan]

Right around.

[Jordan]

Exactly. And then once you try and scientifically answer that question, you sound like a. It's the third trimester. What?

[Dan]

Yeah, but see, that's why you make noises.

[Jordan]

God puts the soul in the third trimester. Why?

[Dan]

It's around the. You know, that's. That's about when the soul comes okay.

[Jordan]

So when the sperm and the egg. What? Why is the soul already been in there? Do they. Something special happen? Do they put the soul in? If there is a soul, does it have mass? If there's no soul, then why can't there be fucking demons inside of you? If also there's a holy spirit?

[Dan]

Well, sometimes there's a bad soul.

[Jordan]

Okay, well, that's fair.

[Dan]

And sometimes there's collective soul.

[Jordan]

Sure. And then sometimes there's Aretha Franklin.

[Dan]

Yep. You gotta respect it.

[Jordan]

Gotta respect it.

[Dan]

So another thing you gotta respect is Cambridge educated people who want to. Well, what if they tell you that you have a soul? Then you gotta respect it.

[Jordan]

I don't think I trust them at all.

[Lee Strobel]

Interviewing my book with a PhD from Cambridge University in neuroscience, who says the evidence is so persuasive that yes, indeed, we do have a soul. We do have a spirit.

[Jordan]

Thank you.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes, thank you, neuroscience.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

This interview that he does with the doctor is named. Her name is Sharon Dirix, and she's the one who blew his mind about the smell of coffee.

[Jordan]

That sounds right.

[Dan]

In the interview, he asks her if there's good evidence for a soul in an afterlife, to which she replies, quote, there have been various studies conducted in the United States, the Netherlands and elsewhere. Of course, some stories could have been fabricated, but with others, there's very intriguing evidence. Her answer is, basically, people are looking into this and there's people making shit up, but some other stuff might be true that's not persuasive.

[Jordan]

Who knows? Is another way of rephrasing that.

[Dan]

Yeah. And she goes on to say, quote, I suspect we'll see more data as research continues. But think about it this way. All we really need is one documented case. That statement says a lot, because what it says most is that there are no documented cases of souls or the afterlife. The Cambridge neuroscientist is saying there's no evidence, but maybe one. For what it's worth. Dierix has a degree from Cambridge in brain imaging, but she doesn't work for the school. She's a lecturer for the Oxford center for Christian Apologetics. And almost all of her career has been writing religious books. Like her most recent release, Broken Planet, an exploration of how it's possible for God to exist when we have all these natural disasters happening.

[Jordan]

Oh, my God.

[Dan]

Probably not. Climate change denial.

[Jordan]

That is some good apology apologia, if you will.

[Dan]

Yeah, so that's. That's her thing. This is all just Christian apologetics.

[Jordan]

Yeah, this is. This is nuts. I mean, I get it. It's Pro. It's really hard now. It was a lot easier. I feel like the scales have tipped right. Back in the day. You've got the church behind you. If you say you don't believe in God, you get murdered. Right. So you're, you're riding high right now. People are like, well, answer these questions. And you can't because none of it's really real. So you get real mad at that. And now you got a Cambridge neuroscientist saying that it's okay for hurricanes and God to be the same. Like, what are we doing? Get back to basics.

[Dan]

Yeah, well, you know, I think that they sold too many books and people got a little too, too used to.

[Jordan]

That'll happen. Yeah, you sell too many books.

[Dan]

So we've got near death experience. And that's when someone dies. They have some crazy times. Sure. And then they come back to their body and they're like, whoa, I saw the light.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

But there's another thing that happens.

[Jordan]

Oh yeah.

[Dan]

And that's close to death visions.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Dan]

And that's people who die, but before they die, they like see a tunnel. Right.

[Jordan]

So nigh death experiences, if you will.

[Dan]

Right.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And Tucker, for some reason thinks that everybody shouldn't be on drugs when they're dying because they need to have these visions.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Lee Strobel]

If you have one of these experiences before you die, you think they're going to think I'm, I've got dementia. They're going to think I'm nuts. They're going to, they're going to think, you know, so a lot of people don't like to talk about it. So there's a researcher, he went to a huge hospice facility in New York State and they went to all the dying people and they said, please, as a favor, if you have a vision, a dream unlike any you've ever had, tell us. Would you tell us? And so 88% of those dying people had a pre death vision that they reported on before they died. 88. I think the other 12% probably had one, but they died before they were able to say anything or they were.

[Tucker Carlson]

So high on morphine they couldn't talk.

[Lee Strobel]

That's true. They get, people get drugged up. That's true.

[Tucker Carlson]

So there's that. I mean, obviously you don't want people to suffer. You want to alleviate suffering and alleviate pain. I'm totally for that. I'm, you know, want to be clear about it. But there's also this custom which has grown to ubiquity now. It's just, it's everybody who dies gets from the hospice nurses.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

They kill you with morphine. I mean, that's. No one wants to say that out loud, but I've seen it. They kill you with morphine.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

And.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay, first, we should just be honest about what's happening always. But second, we should be clear about the cost. So if people. If everybody on the way out is getting visions of some kind.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Tucker Carlson]

Maybe there's a purpose to those.

[Lee Strobel]

Exactly.

[Tucker Carlson]

Maybe we shouldn't short circuit that.

[Lee Strobel]

And Tucker.

[Jordan]

Maybe.

[Dan]

Maybe.

[Jordan]

I hate these people.

[Dan]

So even if we just assume that everything that Tucker is saying isn't insane, then 88% of people who report having visions near death, that includes a lot of people on morphine. He's just making up a rule that morphine blocks God's visions so he can complain about end of life care in a way that seems desired around wanting old people to suffer for their own good. This was a study that was put out by the Palliative Care Institute. And as far as I can tell, it's not full of shit. But it also really doesn't seem to tell much. Basically, 88% of patients in end of life care reported having visions, but the range of what that means was wide. Some of them were comforting dreams, some were horrible and disturbing. And the report says, quote, religious content was minimal. The study specifically excluded people who had dementia. So all of those people who. They were aware they were in hospice care and that death was probably pretty close. It stands to reason that in that community you'd see a higher incidence of people subconsciously trying to make peace with the process of dying. And having these dreams seems like exactly what you would expect. It's interesting and it's good to have data like this to help normalize the grieving process and make death easier for every. Everyone. But it doesn't say anything about an afterlife. Also, if you're in the hospital, you can refuse any medication they give you. If you're dying and you don't want morphine, doctors aren't going to force it on you. But a lot of people at that point are in so much pain. I would so much rather live in a world where that's an option than one where no one's given painkillers in the last months of their life because Tucker thinks that they should have pain visions. Yeah, this is stupid. He is a asshole.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Like, it's not even just dumb. That's mean.

[Jordan]

Yeah, yeah. It's one of the problems with these people specifically, Right. Is that they're competing in this space where it feels like to them it makes sense as part of their argument that it would be like, isn't 88% enough to convince you it's more than even 60%. It's more than 70%. That's a solid B plus. Right. But we're in the world of God. We're in the world of is or is not. It's 100% or it is zero. But there's no middle ground.

[Dan]

Let me be even God. Well, but they got around that by saying that 12% died before they could report the. You know, they come up with excuses.

[Jordan]

For why it is 100%, but doesn't need excuses. He's God.

[Dan]

Let me do you one better. Even if that study came back and found 100% of these people had dreams that they thought were unique and amazing.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

I still don't think that's proof of an afterlife.

[Jordan]

No.

[Dan]

I think these people are probably preoccupied with. And dealing with death.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

They're dying in the hospital.

[Jordan]

If 100% of them reported getting an orientation dream for how to behave following the end of this life, I. I would go fuck. That is very specific.

[Dan]

Yes. I don't even know how you would go about finding that out, but.

[Jordan]

Ridiculous.

[Dan]

If you. Yeah. If there was something that was a little bit more like that.

[Jordan]

Like if they.

[Dan]

They went. Had this dream and came back with a uniform.

[Jordan]

Yeah, absolutely. Then something was.

[Dan]

Guys, we got to talk about this.

[Jordan]

This is the thing. This is the thing. But what are you going to do?

[Dan]

But as it is, like, I think that if you go to camp, you probably have last day of camp dream.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Because you're gonna go home from camp. Like, this is something that happens, people. Fucking idiots.

[Lee Strobel]

Yep.

[Dan]

Anyway, Let these old people have their trucks.

[Jordan]

Just fucking get them high and go to bed.

[Dan]

So, Jordan.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

What do you think about ghosts?

[Jordan]

You can't have. You can't have ghosts. If you're gonna go hard religion, you can't have ghosts. Ghosts have to be angels and demons, because otherwise ghosts are souls that God is specifically leaving on earth for some reason. Or.

[Dan]

Or they're the run or.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Or they're. They're actively, like, avoiding God's wrath or favor. Yeah.

[Dan]

So I realize that I've set up all these questions so poorly and I should be asking you to try and predict what Lee thinks.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

You have a take, and I think it's a solid take.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And I think Lee's all four ghosts.

[Jordan]

Well, I just.

[Dan]

I think that their feeling on it is largely. No one likes ghosts.

[Lee Strobel]

The Technical definition of a ghost is someone who dies but refuses to go into the afterlife. Their spirit refuses to go into the next life. I don't see that in the Bible. So I don't think that ghosts per se are from God. I think most likely an apparition that we interpret as being ghosts is most like a demonic apparition.

[Tucker Carlson]

I think people feel that.

[Lee Strobel]

I think.

[Tucker Carlson]

So ghosts have a bad rep.

[Lee Strobel]

Yes. Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

No one is summoning ghosts.

[Lee Strobel]

It's not like Casper, who's gonna bring you some flower.

[Tucker Carlson]

Generally, people are anti ghost.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Dan]

Ghosts suck.

[Jordan]

Ghosts are bullshit, brah.

[Dan]

They bring a party down.

[Jordan]

We are not fans of ghosts. Regardless, here's what I like about this. Let's leave the. The fact of their existence aside. They suck.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Bunch of douchebags.

[Dan]

No one's ever laughed with a ghost.

[Jordan]

No. Except for the times that they have.

[Dan]

But, like, ghosts have laughed at you.

[Jordan]

That's definitely true.

[Dan]

You're never laughing with a ghost. No one's like, why not? Slimer, maybe.

[Jordan]

Oh, there's definitely slimer.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Oh, boy. There's a lot of. In Ghostbusters, there's plenty of very funny ghosts.

[Dan]

I think that he's saying that they're a subset of demons. Right. I mean, like, that's kind of where he's coming down.

[Jordan]

Yeah, No, I. I mean, I appreciate that. I think that's the correct choice. You can't have ghosts because that would suggest people are capable of saying and off to God, which you can't have.

[Dan]

It has narrative cleanness.

[Jordan]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Dan]

Now let me ask you about psychics.

[Jordan]

Oh, absolutely not.

[Dan]

So he. So Lee doesn't like psychics.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

We know that. Tucker should.

[Jordan]

Tucker is a psychic. Well, he's not.

[Dan]

He likes Alex.

[Jordan]

Yes, exactly.

[Dan]

Who's a psychic.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Dan]

So it's kind of surprising that they both fucking hate psychics.

[Jordan]

Really?

[Tucker Carlson]

Are you pro psychic?

[Lee Strobel]

I'm anti psychic.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah, I am too. Why are you anti anti psychic?

[Lee Strobel]

Because the Bible says, do not consult mediums.

[Jordan]

Do not psychics. That's not very clear.

[Lee Strobel]

Multiple places in scripture. Do not do it.

[Tucker Carlson]

Oh, well, among the ancient Hebrews, that was a death penalty offense.

[Lee Strobel]

Exactly. It was.

[Dan]

Oh, man. This is bad news for Alex.

[Jordan]

I'm confused about what we're. Okay, see, now, I thought he was going to go with psychics are not real. Oh, I was a fool. Yeah, because he's to going. Going with psychics are bad. They're very real and bad because their powers are dangerous.

[Dan]

Right. When Tucker says that like it was a death penalty offense, he explains that it's like, because it was so dangerous.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Dan]

That these people we had to kill see the future.

[Jordan]

It was we. We. We even. Even if we wanted to use their knowledge, we had to destroy it. Otherwise it would have corrupted us.

[Dan]

Yeah. And I guess.

[Jordan]

I think that's what the Minority Report is about.

[Dan]

I don't see how he likes Alex. This is Alex's whole thing.

[Jordan]

I know. It's almost like he makes it all up as he goes along, and this is complete bullshit.

[Dan]

Almost.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

But along the way, as they make up stuff, sure. Lee has what I would describe as a very interesting view on ghosts.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Dan]

We get back to the idea of, like, people who've been visited by their dead relatives.

[Jordan]

All right.

[Dan]

And I think that this is so accidentally revealing.

[Lee Strobel]

Here's my concern. So many times the people have contact with these dead people. These are people that lived ungodly lives, and yet they say, everything's fine, I'm fine, everything's good. Just take care of the family, tell everybody I love them, I'm good, don't worry about me. That's the general message people get. Well, what does that say to someone who. Who is thinking about, what do I need to do to live a life that will bring me to heaven and to God? Well, Uncle Tom came and told me he's fine. He was a adulterer and he never came to faith in Jesus. He's a bad guy, and yet he says he's fine in the afterlife. Wouldn't that be something that a demon might want to imitate to send a false message?

[Dan]

I think think maybe this is totally cool and empirical. Maybe demons are trying to trick you by impersonating your dead loved ones. This is a guy who applies rigor and critical thought to his beliefs and doesn't just shoot off, you know, from the hip. This is the stupidest shit. But Lee accidentally revealed something about his psychology in that clip that I think is pretty damning. Pardon the pun. He's saying that a lot of these returning relatives were ungodly people, and they're coming back and saying that it's all good. You don't have to be godly to have peace after death. This is a crafty trick that demons are playing on you to get you to not be godly. Buried in that statement is the understood but unspoken premise that no one wants to be religious. It kinda sucks. And if a ghost came back and told you that you didn't have to follow all these weird rules and you'd still be fine after you died, there's no reason why someone like Lee would continue doing it. This is either Lee's perspective of himself or how he views his. The general religious people who are his audience.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

The reason this is a problem for Lee is that God is love. And even if a deadbeat relative came back as a ghost and told you that you didn't need to worship God, you should want to anyway, because it's good. It's what powers you. It's what gives you connection to others and the world. And no dime store, blinky, Pinky, Inky or Clyde is going to change. Change that shit. It's unfortunately a very revealing thing for Lee to express here because it's kind of the underpinning of this whole school of Christian apologetics. This school of Christianity is built on arguing why people should be okay with being religious because they know that their version of Christianity sucks. And a lot of their audience are just a couple bad days away from losing faith. And then who's gonna buy these dumb books about deep demons? The struggle for me here is that, sincerely, I don't hate Christians and I don't hate religious people, but this shit makes the position hard to defend. Sure, this stuff sucks.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

This dude is fucking garbage. And I mean, but that's just showing it all over.

[Jordan]

That's the problem. That's the problem with the book. Right. Is that it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. Everybody. Right. So if you put your same name under something that you believe completely different things about, then people are going to use that to exploit the differences. You know, they're going to use that.

[Dan]

That's true. And the church has gone through tons of different characters over the, you know, the span of its existence, and the one that is becoming ascendant and most prominent now sucks.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And it's like this.

[Jordan]

I mean, like, it's mostly a commercial enterprise, them being like, oh, can you believe the concept? The idea that people wouldn't have free will. That was what you guys believed for a thousand years. What are you talking about?

[Dan]

And you still kind of do.

[Jordan]

Exactly.

[Dan]

So wild. I just. I find. I find this guy to be like. Like I said, I think he seems pleasant in a lot of ways.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

But also on a level, I think he's worse than Tucker.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

I think Tucker sucks a whole lot.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

But I think that, hey, these just. There's a. There's a.

[Jordan]

Whenever I was with these people, right. When I was growing up in the. In the faith, as. As is the. The phrase. Right. These were the type of people that Drove me insane because it was so obvious how stupid and awful this stuff. Stuff is. And it was so obvious that the other people that I was with in the church were fine, Totally fine. They were fine people. Right? They were just. They were just everybody. But whenever they hear this in that same intonation and they're like. And they prayed all night, you can see their hearts, like, bubble up with the. The truth. There's something beautiful out there.

[Dan]

You know, it's the genre we like, right. It's something that we. You do like this. We like hearing this.

[Jordan]

Right? And it's like, these are perfectly fine people and you are with them and you are up for doing it. Yeah.

[Dan]

And. And I think a lot of the people who especially I think maybe it's my experience because I was in a lot of youth groups and stuff, but, like, I think evangelical Christianity is like a particular thing where it's targeting youth, too.

[Jordan]

Oh, it's rife for abuse. Yeah.

[Dan]

Well, but I don't even mean abusing you. I mean, like, trying to look cool to youth and like someone like Lee Strobel and like the Christian apologetics, like, there is this tendency to be like, hey, people might think you're a dork because you believe in God, but here's why you should. Why God is cool.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

You know, like, that's the God's not dead, that kind of vein of, of Christianity that's meant to appeal to. To people who don't know that you're fucking with them.

[Jordan]

I mean, here's the. Here's the one thing that always got me, my dad, and I'm putting his business on the streets here. But he did the million dollar bills thing for a while. You know that you tip a million dollar bill with your like, four bucks and it's got like, oh, have you heard about Jesus? He's worth a million dollars on the There, right?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

And it is. It is very much like they don't understand it. But if you needed to do that, there is no God if God can't handle his own business. If God needs you to trick people with poorly worded bills, you fucked up.

[Dan]

And odds are like, the only people you're targeting with that, like, are going to be people who are like, in a bad place in a. Yeah, they like, it's going to be a product of, oh, shit. Yeah, there's. There's gonna be something unhealthy that leads them.

[Jordan]

There's no. There's no. It's one of those, like, do the means justify the ends kind of Thing where it's actually the means and the ends are the same. If you are deceiving people to your God, your God is a deceiver. It's the end. Yeah.

[Dan]

And I think that that's a part of why I wanted to do this episode and why this stuck out to me was that, like, I feel like that distinction is really important. And. And I. I don't think that we need to. Or the impulse to be, like, super anti religion. Sure is healthy, but I get it. I understand when people like this are ascendant and Tucker is doing an interview like this bullshit.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Like, I get why people would be like this, Christian and all that. I don't agree with that, but I get it.

[Jordan]

Sure.

[Dan]

How can you not? I mean, if this is your face, then how about.

[Jordan]

How about we put it this way? I understand where people are coming from, but I look at it as more like Dan Snyder owned the. The Washington Commanders now, I think is what they're called when they used to be called, what they used to be called. And he's a gigantic piece of shit. Everybody hates this guy. The. The name is awful. The way he behaves is awful. The. The fans need to rise up and get rid of the leadership because the Washington football team is fine. Right. The football team just plays football, man. You're a fan of the football team. Don't let the owner like this fucker tell you what to do.

[Dan]

Yeah. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the team or the sport. There's just something wrong with the branding. And it. It's a problem that won't go away on its own.

[Jordan]

It won't go away on its own.

[Dan]

And. And I think it requires people who care and people who have good intention as opposed to wanting to destroy.

[Jordan]

No. Take your Christianity back.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

So though there's miracles out there.

[Jordan]

I doubt it. No. What? Yeah.

[Dan]

Do you know what a miracle is?

[Jordan]

Yes. Something that cannot happen.

[Dan]

Well, here. That's a good definition, but Lee's got a better one.

[Jordan]

One.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay, last question. Miracles.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

What is a miracle?

[Lee Strobel]

A miracle is an event brought about by the power of God that is a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature for the purpose of showing that God has acted in history. So, in other words, a lot of people. Thank you. That's from Robert Patil, who was a philosopher. I thought that was the best definition I'd heard.

[Dan]

That's a great definition of miracles.

[Jordan]

Is it?

[Dan]

I'm gonna offer my own.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Dan]

Crows, ghosts, the Midnight coast, the wonders of the world. Mr. Reeves, the most. Just open up your mind and there ain't no way to ignore the miracles of every day.

[Jordan]

It's a dark carnival.

[Dan]

Yes, it is.

[Jordan]

That's what we're out here for.

[Dan]

Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. Yeah. That's a better definition of miracles. A lot of people, you know, they make fun of the magnets.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

What have you. A lot of better lines.

[Jordan]

Listen, the magnets are, the magnets are rough. We all accept that.

[Dan]

Because I was so mad at this dude and he's talking about miracles. I ended up watching that music video and then watching a bunch of ICP music videos.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And I had a fucking depressing realization.

[Jordan]

What?

[Dan]

You remember that song, Juggalo Island?

[Jordan]

No.

[Dan]

We can let our nuts hang in the water.

[Jordan]

No.

[Dan]

I don't know. It was a, it was about Juggalo Island. Sure. Like, what if they had an island?

[Jordan]

Naturally?

[Dan]

I mean, I hang out together.

[Jordan]

I've already leapt to the end. I will tell you what. In a very short snippet, I have leapt to the conclusion.

[Dan]

Quite simple premise.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

That came out 15 years ago. That's, that made me so sad.

[Jordan]

Oh, man.

[Dan]

Because it felt late. It felt like late.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Icp.

[Jordan]

Nope, nope. Time flies as, as it goes.

[Dan]

Yeah. So we have one last clip here, and it's talking. There's a point that Lee makes a couple of times, and I think it's a val. Valid point.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Dan]

And that is that a lot of this stuff, like demons, angels, all this, a lot of normal mainstream Christians don't want to get involved with it because they know it's crazy.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And they don't want to be treated like people who are running around hunting demons.

[Jordan]

Yes, exactly.

[Dan]

And Tucker's like, then stop being Christians.

[Jordan]

I accept. I think that's a fair argument. Yeah, that's a fair argument. Argument.

[Lee Strobel]

I, I, I think we, we shy away because we, we, we want to be accepted as normal. I, I, I, I, I don't know.

[Jordan]

Why would you get out of bed.

[Tucker Carlson]

On Sunday to sit in a church where they're, like, pretending that nothing they say is true?

[Lee Strobel]

It's, it's, it's a good point.

[Jordan]

If we believe, if it's not supernatural.

[Tucker Carlson]

Like, why are you bother us?

[Jordan]

It is a good point.

[Lee Strobel]

Jesus, you got to believe in angels, you got to believe, believe in demons, you got to believe in Satan, you got to believe in heaven, you got to believe in hell. Because if you believe in Jesus, he taught on all those things, so, my goodness, how could you not? I agree with you. How could you not.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah, I mean, go on, move on to something else.

[Lee Strobel]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

Go play tennis or something.

[Jordan]

Hey, go play tennis.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

That's literally what I did.

[Dan]

You love tennis. So I think that, that clip. I think that's a really good summation of this because it is expressed a belief that you also hold in many ways about religion.

[Jordan]

True.

[Dan]

Like, if you're looking at the text, why are you doing something other than what the book says? Yeah, it's.

[Jordan]

It's.

[Dan]

You are not doing the thing anymore. You're doing something else.

[Jordan]

Be your own thing.

[Dan]

Right. And in some ways, denominations of Christianity have not achieved that goal. But you still use the same text. Sure, whatever.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

The reason that this is, you know, a good parting is that, like, this is Tucker and to a more jovial extent, Lee expressing, we are not going to tolerate other Christianity within our Christianity.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

Whereas in the past there was a more. Maybe a more tolerant view in the mainstream. Of course, the mainstream is going to be taken over by this.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And this is. They're going to force out more tolerant Christian voices. And that's bad for the brand.

[Jordan]

Yeah. I mean, you know, for the longest time, they kind of tolerated these people because they were an almost. They were like a remnant to the more magical times, you know, whenever men of faith walked the earth and moved mountains and all that kind of stuff. Stuff. But now, you know, if you let them in and give them power, they're going to take over and they're not going to tolerate you. It only goes one way.

[Dan]

I don't. I don't know, like, outside of this being kind of, you know, I mean, he's doing an interview on Tucker's show, but, like, I don't know how much this is wildly out of sync with like. Like what Lee strobel was doing 10 years ago.

[Jordan]

It's what I was. It's what I was listening to when I was a kid.

[Dan]

Right.

[Jordan]

It's Dr. James Dobson.

[Dan]

Right. But it was confined to, like, church areas. These books would just be on a bookstore. Like Christian bookstores.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

And you wouldn't. You wouldn't. I don't know, you would see. People would see demon interviews on top.

[Jordan]

People would read them and they would go, hmm, that's interesting. And they would take little things that. It would be basically self help. It would be like, oh, yeah, I should clean more. Like, that's what they would get out of it. There would be the side excitement of being like, you should clean more for. Because God, you know, and that's. That makes it more exciting. Yeah, this is not good.

[Dan]

No, it's broken loose.

[Jordan]

Yep, yep. It's. It's gotten free.

[Dan]

And we are all going to be demons.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Dan]

In their definitions, that's what demons are for. But you know what? Until before that point comes, before the demon feast, I'm going to get to work on MacGyver. I'm going to watch some more MacGyver.

[Jordan]

You'll have about 15 minutes at the. The end to solve everything.

[Dan]

Nice.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So, yeah, I don't know where, where are you at?

[Jordan]

You know, I would have. I like it whenever. If you've got a. If you've got a mythology that involves massive battles between heaven and hell, give me a little bit more than like, well, they don't have bodies. What is that? What are you. What are you about? Talking. Talking about then what did they do?

[Dan]

They didn't marry.

[Jordan]

Right. But I mean, so like essentially what happened then is if the. If you've already admitted that they have no bodies, no corporeal form, no aspect other than some sort of will we.

[Dan]

Learn later, they don't actually have wings. Or at least not all of them.

[Jordan]

Right, Right. So then you're telling me also that there was a great moment where these angels were fired out of heaven. Right. Which also doesn't have a spot.

[Dan]

No.

[Jordan]

Or place.

[Dan]

No.

[Jordan]

Right. So where did they go? How did. Who forced them out? How did they get. Did God, like kick them out individually? Did he send them out with a bus? Like. Right, exactly. Like, what are we talking about? Where you've created this mythology and then the coolest parts are actually not possible to happen?

[Dan]

And why is it that the devil is fucking busy as hell and all the demons seem to be able to do is trick you into thinking they know stuff.

[Jordan]

It is so great.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Yep.

[Dan]

Anyway, we'll get back to maybe something a little more normal next time, but I want to take a little wacky break. Dark demons.

[Jordan]

I loved it.

[Dan]

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So we'll be back, but until then we have a website.

[Jordan]

Oh, it's knowledge Fight dot com.

[Dan]

Yep, we'll be back, but until then. I'm Neo. I'm Leo. I'm DZX Clark. I am the mysterious Professor.

[Jordan]

And now here comes the sexual robots.

[Dan]

Andy in Kansas, you're on the air.

[Lee Strobel]

Thanks for holding.

[Jordan]

Hello, Alex, I'm a first time caller. I'm a huge fan. I love your work.

[Dan]

I love you.