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- [00:00]
Matt Fradd
G' day and welcome to the Ben Shapiro Show. I'm clearly not Ben Shapiro, so what am I doing here? Well, Ben's away today, so he asked me to do an intro, and it's an intro for a conversation that him and I had about a year ago in which we spoke about God and faith and the problem of evil and arguments for and against the existence of God. We spoke about Ben's Judaism. And I think you'll really enjoy the show. Thanks. I think one of the reasons I get uptight when people point to my sinfulness is because I'm afraid. Like I'm afraid I'm ultimately unlovable, that I am wretched at the end of the day and unsalvageable, as it were, that the Psalms speak continually as God as our refuge.
- [00:51]
Michael Knowles
And.
- [00:52]
Matt Fradd
And so one thing I like to say as a Christian, because I think it's true, is that Christ is the only refuge big enough for your poor and wretched heart. And you don't need to apply your own meanness and narrow little heart to his. God is infinite in mercy, and when your sin goes up against that, this is like a drop of water being flicked into a raging furnace.
- [01:14]
Michael Knowles
Matt Fradd is a Catholic apologist and the host of the popular podcast Pints with Aquinas. Originally from Australia, Frad is an eloquent defender of Catholic teachings and a champion of civil discourse around even the most contentious topics, ranging from pornography to religious philosophy. On his podcast, Frad often utilizes Thomas Aquinas objection and response style of discussion to break down complex religious subjects. Frad's guests have included the Daily Wire's very own Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, and most recently, Jordan B. Peterson. As an author, Frad combines his intellectual depth with a pastoral purpose. In his 2018 book the Porn Myth, he aims to discredit pornography through a non religious lens. Whereas in his 2021 work, how to Be St. Thomas Secret to a Good Life, Frad seeks to cultivate a greater appreciation for the Catholic faith in our modern world. In today's episode, we dissect ideas like toxic skepticism, the West's normalization of sin, and the pragmatic application of Catholic principles. We also explore what it means to be free and compare the ritual similarities between Catholicism and Judaism. Stay tuned for this fantastic conversation with Matt Fradd and discover what what makes Pints with Aquinas a must listen for anyone interested in faith, philosophy and the intersection of religion and modern culture. Welcome back to another episode of the Sunday Special. Matt, thanks so much for stopping by. Really appreciate It. Thank you. So let's talk about how you engage in discussion. Sure. With people who oppose you. Yeah. Because that's something that you frequently do. You don't like to term it debate, because debate is very often about winners and losers as opposed to discussion, which is really more about clarifying position and determining where people stand. So when you're discussing, say, atheism with someone, what do you find is the best way to approach that particular issue? When you're beginning a discussion with an atheist about believing in the Bible, believing in Jesus, you're obviously a Catholic. What's the best way to approach that discussion?
- [02:59]
Matt Fradd
Defining terms. What is meant by atheism? I think there's been something of a shift since the new atheists that would seek to redefine atheism to mean something indistinguishable from agnosticism. It seems to me, though, that there are three basic ways you can answer the question, does God exist? Yes, no, or maybe. And so it seems appropriate to me that there should be three terms that would identify the possessors of each belief. Atheist, theist, or agnostic. I don't know. Only the theist and the atheist has a burden of proof because they're the only ones claiming something. So I think that would be the first way to go about it. Are there good reasons to think that atheism is true? Are there good reasons to think that theism is true? And I don't like debates, not because I don't believe, leaving them because I'm not good at them. I find I get quite flustered and I don't think quite straight. I don't think I'm a very kind of confrontational person. But I do enjoy talking to people who disagree with me in a friendly way, like over a beer or something like that, which is what Pints with Aquinas is about, really. Just sitting down and giving each other the benefit of the doubt, not trying to corner each other, and just trying to understand where each other is coming from.
- [04:03]
Michael Knowles
So you mentioned there the kind of shift in the new atheist community from atheism to agnosticism, and that is clearly what has happened. I mean, there used to be an argument militantly anti God. God for certain, does not exist. You're a fool if you believe in religion or in a deity. And that has moved into pretty solidly. Well, I don't know and I don't care. So how would you engage that particular argument? Because that seems to be the more common one in today's day and age. And even people who tend to think that they're theists will say things like, I'm spiritual but not religious, which is effectively indifferent about the presence of God in their lives. How do you engage in the agnostic argument?
- [04:40]
Matt Fradd
Yeah, it's a good question. First of all, I just want to say, obviously there are atheists who have arguments against God's existence, and there are very intelligent atheists. But you're right, a lot of people just don't care. It seems to me that if God does not exist, we have dogmatic answers to the most important questions we're all most interested in asking, like where did I come from? Why am I here? Who am I? How should I live? And where am I going? It struck me that if God doesn't exist, then here are the answers. Where did I come from? I've been coughed into existence by a blind cosmic process that didn't have me in mind. You and I are accidental byproducts of nature. There is no objective mind, independent meaning for our life. We can adopt subjective meanings so we feel better about ourselves or something, but these aren't actually the reasons why we exist. How should we live? Well, we could live in a way that's conducive to the flourishing of our group, or we could not. And it doesn't seem to me that we'd be right or wrong to adopt one of these positions. If there is no moral, objective, moral law, where are we going? We will die, and not just individually, but collectively as a species. Cosmologists tell us that as the universe continues to expand, they'll eventually be nothing, you know, spreading out through seemingly infinite space, just cosmic soup. None of that is an argument for God existing. Of course, it might be that bleak and we might just have to deal with it. But I'm going to need a good reason to think things are that bleak. And I think when I was a high schooler, I didn't really vibe with Christianity. I didn't like what it taught. I didn't like the. I didn't believe in the witness of the people who went to church. And so I stopped going. I said I was agnostic. But I think questions like that, like, does it bother you that this is all meaningless? What if it wasn't? Would you want to know? Maybe those are the sorts of questions that could provoke desire to then have a more meaningful discussion about God.
- [06:42]
Michael Knowles
I mean, when you talk about that, I think realistically, actually the agnostic view is even bleaker than that because you're using active verbs to describe how people can react to the meaninglessness of existence. If you're a pure scientific materialist, the idea that you are self motivated, that you can self will, the sort of the ability for existentialists to claim agency that seemingly arises from nowhere, just from the processing of neurons, is something that I think is very difficult to overcome. And so it's not even that you can make a sort of Jean Paul Sartre argument that you can escape the bleakness of existence by acts of will, or the Nietzschean argument that shouldn't really even exist in a cold materialist universe because again, you're just a piece of meat wandering through space on a rock, effectively speaking. And so that sort of argument is again, it's very difficult, I think, number one, to build an individual life on that basis and also to build a society on that basis. And furthermore, when I hear people make that argument because they say, I'll say, so why is that argument important for you to make? And I'll say, well, because it's true. And then of course you're into Alvin Platengoland, like, okay, well what do you mean by true? What truth exists independent of, of simple evolutionary biology? You say that it's very important that you know this thing because this thing is true. But does truth have an independent meaning without an independent creator of that truth who stands above that truth?
- [08:00]
Matt Fradd
It's interesting that you mention Alvin Plantinger because he is famous for developing this idea of properly basic beliefs. In other words, we all have beliefs and some of those beliefs are basic meaning they're not based upon other beliefs. If we had to have an argument for every belief that we hold, that would lead to an infinite regress and we wouldn't believe in anything. But Planting has said that some beliefs are properly basic. That is to say, we are warranted epistemically to hold certain beliefs even without arguments. He would say without evidence. But it depends what you mean by evidence, such as the reality of other minds or that the universe wasn't created five minutes ago with the appearance of age and breakfast in my stomach, I never ate and things like this. It seems like we're all rational to believe in these things, even though we might not be able to give arguments for them. And I think most people believe in God like that. They're embarrassed to say that that's why they believe in God. They would like to have some awesome metaphysical argument that has completely convinced them. I don't think I believe in God because of arguments any more than I believe in free will because of arguments or that I exist because of arguments. Just sort of seems to make sense to me. And I know that that's not a reason why somebody else should believe in God, but it seems to be an okay reason for why I believe in God. And so therefore, if you want to disavow me of my belief in God, then I'd like to. I'd like a reason. Sort of like, what's his name? Neo, in the Matrix was given a reason by Morpheus to now doubt the reality. What would he thought of as reality?
- [09:31]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, I mean, I think that that is such a good point. It's a point that Michael Oakeshott makes. Just this idea that rationalism is essentially, if you take it to its logical extreme, it's like an Ouroboros. It eats itself. That most of the beliefs that we hold dear to ourselves are beliefs that we just know to be true 100%. And so this bizarre idea that most of the beliefs that we come to are things that we have rationalized our way to. Number one, it's incredibly arrogant because it's not true. But number two, it actually leads, as you say, to a sort of infinite regress because there is no root reason to assume that rationality itself exists as sort of an independent property of human beings. The idea that there is an independent reason and that reason and logic, governor, well, again, that's an assumption. And you're gonna have to justify that assumption based on something. But there can't be an assumption underneath that particular assumption. And this is one of the things that as I've gotten older and as you move away from being a teenager where you think, okay, I want a reason for everything, which is totally natural. When you're 17, 18 years old, you think, okay, my parents didn't give me a good reason for this, so I'm just not gonna do it. And then you get older and you realize, well, sometimes most of the time you're doing things not because there was a good reason to do them, but because there's a good reason not to do the alternative. And I think that that's really important and speaks to the sort of reality of what it means to be a human being. So much of modern politics, modern religion, modern thought is based on this bizarre idea that human beings are atomistic individuals who exist without any sort of presets. There are no presets in your being. And so you approach every argument with. With an equivalent weight on every argument as opposed to. Well, actually, you exist in this system and you have to be given some pretty strong evidence as to why you ought to disbelieve this system before you move outside of that system. I think that was the original point that you're making. You're gonna have to give me some good reasons as to why I ought to jettison things like free will, rationality, eternal truths. What's the pitch?
- [11:28]
Matt Fradd
I think since Descartes, maybe we've had this idea that we have to have some un. Human, human inhuman way of being certain about things. As if the only reason I can be justified in believing anything is if it's indubitable or self evident or something like that. But you know, if you were to press me on how I know Australia is an island, I'd sound kind of silly. I'd be like, I've seen it in maps and stuff. And you'd be like, you believe everything maps show you. And I'd go, yeah. I thought, you know, like. Or you know, if somebody says, do you believe you have hands? And you're like, yes. And then they say, but do you believe you have hands? At that point some people would be like, oh, I'm not sure. And that's a trick. That's a trick in that emphasis. Of course, you know, you have hands, of course you could be dreaming. But everything we believe, we don't believe with this unusual degree of certainty. And so I don't think that theists should feel bad if they sometimes have doubts or something like that.
- [12:22]
Michael Knowles
This is one of the things that's been so weird about. I think our modern politics right now is the sort of radical skepticism that's set in of everything is actually, it's a universal asset. Skepticism is useful and necessary. But radical skepticism, meaning doubting everything around you, doubting every expert, doubting every authority, that's actually a road to nihilism. And I think that because one of the dangerous aspects of our politics and our institutions today is because they've failed, many of them in their missions, because so many of them have sold out their credibility for ulterior purposes. And the reaction of a lot of people has been to basically dispense with all institutions, to dispense with the process of reasoning itself, that a question is deemed just as valuable as an attempt to search for an answer. That so long as I'm tearing away at the thing and showing that I am not subject to these authorities, that that means that I'm an independent thinker as opposed to the reality, which is that you're going to have to accept some authorities from time to time or you're never going to get out of bed. In the morning. On what basis can you use your cell phone if you don't believe that there are people who put it together in a way that means that it's going to work? And I think that radical skepticism speaks to the destruction not only of the credibility of our institutions, but to the reactionary nature of human beings themselves.
- [13:39]
Matt Fradd
It's almost like in a time of chaos, we all seek order because we can't live in chaos. And so where are you gonna find that order? You might try to find it in the institutions, or you might try to find it outside of the institutions. Institutions. And it seems to me that just like there's a woke Olympics or a woke spiraling where people are becoming crazier and crazier to prove how enlightened they are, there's something like that on the right as well, where the more outlandish the things that you say are, the more enlightened you are. And I think the rest of us are just off on the sidelines, quite confused. Quite. Yeah. It's like the Internet, with all of this conflicting information, is making us weary, skeptical pragmatists. And I think a lot of people feel quite confused. I know I do, About a lot of things.
- [14:24]
Michael Knowles
I agree. I mean, I think that the Internet has made these things infinitely worse, mainly because it's allowed people to siphon themselves off into these bizarre silos of either radical skepticism or radical institutionalism. And in reality, the way that I think most people used to engage with their community or with God or with religion was just naturally in their daily lives. It's why the phrase that I've been using a lot on the show and in general is everybody needs to go outside and touch some grass. Yeah, I like that. Like, this is. Like this sort of attempt to either intellectualize everything or to anti. Intellectualize everything is incredibly dangerous. I wrote an essay recently for myself, wasn't published anywhere, just about, why believe in God? And the answer that I came to is that no one, quote, unquote, believes in God in the way that we tend to think about believing in God. I don't come to my belief in God, as you say, through a bunch of arguments and read the ontological argument and go, well, you know what? I'm there now. It's happened. It's more that the assumptions that lie at the core of my being and at the core of my action in the world are religious assumptions. And that's true for even agnostics. This is a point that I've made to agnostics is, you're relying on free will. You're relying on your ability to act. You're relying on the idea of an eternal truth. You're using bricks from the house that I built and that you've blown up, but then you're reusing those bricks and pretending that they came from nowhere and that you actually mixed the straw with the mud, and you didn't. I mean, all those bricks are religious bricks. And so when we ask whether people believe in God or believe in their community, the answer is mostly in how people behave in their regular life. But the Internet is not a place of behavior. The Internet is a place of signaling. And signaling is very important on the Internet, because when you're again, in a disembodied universe, then that's what happens. The way that you prove skin in the game in a disembodied universe is by taking radical positions. The way you prove skin in the game in a real universe is by doing things with other people. Wow.
- [16:13]
Matt Fradd
I'm gonna have to think about that for a long time. That's really interesting. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad you know. So the Catholic Church teaches that God, the existence of God, can be arrived at through philosophical argumentation independent of faith. First Vatican Council made that clear. Thomas Aquinas taught the same thing. Thomas Aquinas says, but God revealed himself to us as well. Because if he didn't, he says three awkward consequences would have followed. One, some people aren't smart enough to sort through metaphysical arguments for God's existence. I probably fit in that category. Second, people have stuff to do, so even if they weren't smart enough, they wouldn't have the time. And then thirdly, people who have enough time and are smart enough are kind of lazy, and so wouldn't have done it. And we would have come to all sorts of errors regarding God's existence. So I would say, though, when I assess arguments for God's existence alongside of arguments for atheism, I feel that the arguments for theism are much more compelling than the arguments for atheism. And when I look at arguments for atheism, I. I think the argument from the hiddenness of God or the problem of evil, I think are really the two most emotionally disturbing arguments that would bother me. But when I look at them next to theistic arguments, I think they get swamped personally.
- [17:28]
Michael Knowles
And I'd like to go through a couple of those with you because they're really interesting. The argument of evil or of suffering, that's obviously, as you say, the most emotionally troubling. When you see innocent suffering and you say, where is God in all of this? And we're not talking about the easy answer for human beings, which typically if a human being is harming another human being and you say, okay, well, that's not right. Free will, that has nothing to do with God but natural disaster or baby dies. How do you deal with that argument from a religious point of view?
- [17:58]
Matt Fradd
Yeah, well, I guess I would say that even if I don't have an answer to the problem of evil, I can still say, given my experience and given all these arguments I have for God's existence, which outweigh this argument, I can conclude evil exists. And I don't understand it. And that seems to me to be an okay response. Back to Plantinger. He was responding to people like J.L. mackey who would say, okay, if God's all powerful, he could do away with all evil. If he were all knowing, he would know about the nature and scope of evil in the world. If he were all good, he would want to do away with all evil. But evil exists, therefore God doesn't exist. Or if he does, he's either impotent, wicked, or something like that. Plantinger says that all you have to do to escape. The conclusion is to insert a fourth premise, which is namely God may have morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil and suffering in the world. You don't have to like that premise. You don't even have to think it's terribly convincing, so long as it's possible it shows that God and evil are not incompatible or contradictory. But at that point you might say, okay, fair enough. But surely the amount of evil and the kinds of evil would make it at least unlikely that an all powerful, all good God exists. But I don't know, maybe I'm just not in a place epistemically to assess the evil around me. Now, if my wife was to be seriously hurt or my children seriously hurt, I might lose faith in God. But the question isn't what would I do, but what should I do? So it seems to me, though, the problem of evil is felt most poignantly when we're experiencing a particular suffering in our own life. And at that point, I don't think apologetics is what people want at that point. They just want you to sort of sit with them and listen to them and mourn with them. So that's what I'd say to that.
- [19:47]
Michael Knowles
I mean, that's the answer of Job, right? I mean, everybody tries to explain to Job why it's happening to him, and he keeps rejecting Them, then God says, well, I'm God. You know, that's the only answer that's possible, which really is in the face of suffering, the only answer that really is. You're talking about the necessity of revelation. From a Catholic point of view, I can tell you, from the Jewish point of view, the necessity of revelation. Maimonides gives many of the same reasons as Aquinas. One of the fascinating things about Maimonides and Aquinas is they're writing at effectively the same time in two different parts of the world, and they're coming to a lot of very similar conclusions about the nature of the sort of the merger of revelation and reason, which makes sense, of course, because you have the discoveries of Plato again. And so a lot of the Neoplaton Platonists are. Are coming to the fore. And so they're reading a lot of the same sort of stuff. But the argument that I think, traditionally Judaism has made about the necessity for revelation as opposed to just natural law, is that once you believe that human beings are capable of sussing out everything, then you do end up with the sort of possibility of human beings going astray in terms of how they themselves interpret the law. And I wonder what you make of that from a Catholic point of view, because obviously Judaism is very much focused on the law, and it's focused on practice. And so when you read the first five books of the Bible, you know, it's filled with legalese and it's filled with specific injunctions to do and not to do. In my religion, we follow all of those, right? I mean, we actually take all of the laws about kosher seriously still after several thousand years. And so when we look at that, there have been rabbis who have critiqued Maimonides saying, because he tries to give reasons for those commandments, he tries to say, okay, well, the reason for this commandment is acts. And they say, well, we don't want you giving reasons for those commandments because the minute you do, you have now run into sort of the problem of Plato. Is the morality above the commandment, or is the commandment above the morality? They say, well, the commandment's above the morality. Like your moral take on the commandment is irrelevant, which is why revelation is necessary from a Christian point of view, where commandments are secondary to faith. Would that be fair to say, in Christ, or how does the logic work there?
- [21:50]
Matt Fradd
Well, I guess I would say that Catholics are champions, hopefully, of both faith and reason. So what has been revealed to us? We wouldn't necessarily know unless it were revealed. To us, there are certain things that one can know through reason alone. We already spoke about the existence of God. Perhaps one can come to believe, Aquinas, I think, would believe this, that God is all powerful, all knowing, et cetera. But then there are things that we can't know unless they were revealed to us. So in Christianity, the Trinity wouldn't be something you could arrive at through reason, though there have been people who have tried to do that. They were like, okay, if God is love, then you have the one who loves, one who is love and the love that they share, therefore. But that doesn't seem to work. I don't think the Eucharist would be something that we couldn't know, maybe the Incarnation. So there are some things that have been revealed to us that we couldn't know otherwise. And there are some things that have been revealed to us, such as God's existence, that we could know. But it would have been dangerous because we would have come to that belief and ended up holding a bunch of errors. But then once God has revealed something to us, then surely we can think about why that is reasonable. It would seem to me.
- [22:58]
Michael Knowles
No, I mean, I totally agree with that. But I think that the key element that Judaism puts forward, and sounds like Catholicism, too, is you don't do it because it's reasonable to you. You do it because God said so.
- [23:08]
Matt Fradd
Yeah.
- [23:08]
Michael Knowles
In other words.
- [23:09]
Matt Fradd
And that what God says would always be reasonable.
- [23:11]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [23:12]
Matt Fradd
It's not like you would come into a belief. Christians would say, any belief that's been revealed to us that we can't prove, we can at least prove that it's not unreasonable. So we wouldn't believe something that's absurd.
- [23:24]
Michael Knowles
Right. So when it comes to the conflict supposedly between miracle stories in nature, the way that Aquinas says this, and I think Maimonides too, but you know, Aquinas far better than I do, is that you're either reading scripture wrong or you're reading nature wrong. They're the same. That if the blueprint for the universe is in fact the biblical narrative, then if that comes into conflict with scientific discovery, then it's because 1.
- [23:46]
Matt Fradd
Bad science or bad faith, Right?
- [23:47]
Michael Knowles
Exactly. When it comes down to practical living for people, why choose Catholicism versus Judaism or choose Catholicism versus Protestantism, for that matter? Because many of these sort of natural law things that we are all able to suss out, and Judaism does have a version of natural law called the Seven Commandments, the Sheva Mitzvah Noach, the Seven Commandments of the Noahide Laws, and the Basic premise in the Talmud is that those are all discoverable by human reason. In the sense that there's a doctrine, Talmudically that's called tinochenishpa, meaning that if you were to find a baby in a forest, you wouldn't expect the baby in the forest to know about the laws of kosher. Right. You wouldn't expect that the person grows up, they eat kosher, they're not responsible for that. There's no way that they could possibly come to the conclusion that you shouldn't eat swine, but you should eat cows, for example. But there are certain things that every human being should be able to come to the conclusion about. And that would be things like you should believe in God, you shouldn't commit murder, you shouldn't commit sexually moral sins. All of those sorts of things are things that you can sort of discover on your own. So when it comes to Judaism, looking at natural law, there's obviously sort of boundaries to that. You've said the same thing is true of Catholicism. So why believe Catholicism as opposed to Protestantism or Judaism or any other form of sort of monotheistic religion?
- [25:03]
Matt Fradd
Yeah, I think the only good reason to believe anything is that you think it's true. So I think of Catholic apologetics, let's say, as a three story mansion. On the first level you might have theistic apologetics, which concerns does God exist and what is he like and has he revealed Himself to us or not? The second level might be Christian apologetics. Who was Christ? Do we have good reason to think the New Testament reliable? Did Christ actually rise from the dead or not? Did he establish a church? These sorts of things. And then the third level would be Catholic apologetics, which would consider those Catholic distinctives. So I think that God exists, that he revealed Himself most fully in the person of Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ established a church and gave that church teaching authority. And so that's why I'm a Catholic and not a Protestant, and that's why I'm a Christian and not a Jew.
- [25:57]
Michael Knowles
So when you look at sort of the development of Catholic doctrine over time, this is a question in Judaism too. What are the limits of proper interpretation? This is a huge question in Judaism because obviously you have a written document. That written document is handed down. Jews believe by God on Sinai. And then there's a whole body of oral law. And that oral law obviously has morphed over time. This is this sort of Phariseeistic rabbinical Judaism, that is traditional Judaism. And so the idea is that human beings have the authority to interpret, but not to remake. So if you were to go into Leviticus and just rip out a section of Leviticus and say this no longer applies, then in Judaism that's no good. By the same token, there's a constant process of interpretation and trying to figure out exactly how to apply those eternal principles to modern circumstances. How does that process work inside Catholicism?
- [26:44]
Matt Fradd
Yeah, I think the way it would work would be by saying just what you did, that nothing can contradict what has been given to us through scripture and tradition. So there are certain things that are non negotiable, such as that baptism is efficacious in our salvation, that it's not merely a symbol that the Blessed Virgin was free from sin from the moment of her conception, that the Eucharist is truly the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ under the appearances of bread and wine, that sodomy is always evil, that fornication is always evil. These sorts of things have been revealed. And so we might try to then understand things around that topic. For example, the culpability question, you know, so, for example, like masturbation is something that's condemned in Catholicism and has always been. But then you might go, okay, given now what we understand about psychology, can we ask the question how culpable, let's say a young person is, who is trying to figure things out, you know, or alcohol, you know, like if we know that drunkenness is a sin, but, you know, you kind of have to test alcohol before you know your limits. So what about that question? So I think. But that's why I would say that Christ gave us a church and gave that church authority to help us discern these things. So I don't have to go back into 2000 years of history, but I can submit to the church when it tells me things like Mary was conceived without sin and so on.
- [28:12]
Michael Knowles
One of the things that's really interesting, I think, about the anti religion view of religion is that you talk about sin and people get very upset. There is very little in public life that gets people more upset than the use of the word sin. The minute you say something is a sin, people get very, very uptight. They believe that they are being judged and they think to themselves, I'm not gonna listen to anything this person has to say. And what I think people who are not religious don't understand is that there's not a religious person alive, as far as I'm aware, who believes that we are capable of being sin free. The idea that the standard holds even when you don't Uphold the standard is something that I think is completely foreign to people who don't exist within religion. That's really troublesome. One of the arguments that comes up a lot in politics, and it comes up with religion, too, is the hypocrisy argument. And what I've always said is, that's not an argument, it's an emotional appeal. Because usually the people who are saying, okay, well, there's a priest, and this priest violated his own precepts when he did X, Y, and Z. They're not arguing that the priest did something bad. They're arguing that the standard itself is bad and that the priest is therefore worse. Because the priest says that the standard is good and has violated the standard. The sort of argument that's made in politics and religion all the time. To me, that argument is almost always an emotional attack on the standard itself rather than violation of the standard per se. I go through my life violating God's precepts, I would imagine, on a fairly regular basis. And that doesn't mean that I'm right to do so. It just means that I'm a human being.
- [29:38]
Matt Fradd
Yeah. If I can kind of preach for a second here as a Christian, I would say. And you can give me your answer as a Jew. I think one of the reasons I get uptight when people point to my sinfulness is because I'm afraid. Like, I'm afraid I'm ultimately unlovable, that I am wretched at the end of the day and unsalvageable, as it were. But the psalms speak continually as God is our refuge. And so one thing I like to say as a Christian, because I think it's true, is that Christ is the only refuge big enough for your poor and wretched heart. And you don't need to apply your own meanness and narrow little heart to His. God is infinite in mercy. And when your sin goes up against that, this is like a drop of water being flicked into a raging furnace. So if you talk about my sin or if I become aware of it, this makes me uncomfortable. And I think at that point, what I tend to do is want to downplay my sin or look at people who are worse than me. But I think the answer is instead to look at the great mercy of God and go, okay, this is my trust is in Him. He is my righteousness.
- [30:41]
Michael Knowles
Yeah. So this has come up a lot in terms of the topic of one of your books on pornography. So this has become like, a very hot issue in the United States, obviously, and in Europe, particularly, the sort of normalization of pornography. It's been. I wrote about this back in 2005. I wrote a book in 2005 called Porn How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future, in which I talked about the destruction of an entire generation of people because of the rise of pornography, the mainstreaming of pornography, the turning of porn stars into actual stars, and all the rest of it. I was chided as a prude at the time, of course, and then pretty much all the predictions came true that this was actually really devastating to the soul of human beings, that it really harms people. And yet to point out that pornography is indeed a grave evil, that it actually does harm to both the participants in it and the people who use it, that is now considered something that is utterly unsayable in public life. Is that right? I mean, I think that you can say it, but it's seen as weird.
- [31:41]
Matt Fradd
It feels to me like the tide might be turning a little bit. You know, I agree with you that most people would not want to say that pornography is wrong all the time. I agree with that. But it seems to me that you're hearing more, even comedians kind of making fun of things like masturbation and pornography. Pete Holmes is a good example of this. I'm not sure if you've heard this bit, but he says something like, masturbation isn't just gay, it's double gay. You're masturbating a man while being. Getting, you know, masturbated by a man.
- [32:10]
Michael Knowles
Like this is.
- [32:10]
Matt Fradd
This is clearly cream puffery at its highest. To be a bit more serious, St. Dominic says, the man who governs his passions is master of his world. We must command them or be enslaved by them. It is better to be a hammer than. Than an anvil. And I think the man who continually kind of gives over his life to pornography is becoming emasculated. He's being robbed of the ability to be masculine.
- [32:39]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [32:40]
Matt Fradd
As a Christian, I would look at Christ's words, this is my body given up for you, and that this act was the most masculine act, and it's something that I should try to replicate with my own wife in that I deny myself for her good. But pornography trains a man not to say, this is my body given up for you, but the opposite. This is your body taken by me. I deny and forsake and trample over your dignity for the sake of my pleasure.
- [33:06]
Michael Knowles
So, yeah, I think this goes to. One of the most fascinating things about Catholicism in general is the focus on the embodiedness of human beings which runs directly counter to all modern strains of thought. So the way that these sort of posts, Cartesian world has taken up this argument is that the body is one thing and the mind is not. It's this weird gnostic dualism that exists in how we think about ourselves that, okay, so your body wants porn and your mind is separate from your body, so what damage could you be doing to yourself? Because you aren't your body, you're your mind. And so your mind's out here, your body's over there, your body's doing a thing. Who cares? It's just like any other act that you're doing is defecating or eating or whatever else it is. So what difference does that make? And Catholicism insists on the embodied ness of human beings. Maybe you can talk a little bit about why that's so important and how that the falling apart of that notion of embodiedness has really corrupted so many elements of our politics and thought.
- [34:00]
Matt Fradd
It's a great point.
- [34:01]
Michael Knowles
Yeah.
- [34:01]
Matt Fradd
We are our bodies. We don't have bodies. We are bodies. We are a composite of both body and soul, both equally a part of who we are. When I kiss my daughter goodnight, I really do that. I don't manipulate the husk, which is not me, and press it against the husk, which is not her. You know, if we weren't our bodies, then when we shook hands earlier, that would have been like, I don't know, we didn't ever come into contact. And that seems silly. If somebody slaps you, they slapped you. And we know that. Yeah. And so when we deny that we are our bodies, you're right. We can either act like, disgracefully, what I would say shamefully, or maybe we fall into the kind of thinking too highly of the body, as if that's the main thing, and then we neglect the soul. But, yeah, what we do with our body really matters. And so. But I do think it's important when we demonize pornography, which I like doing, that we say what the problem isn't. You know, like the problem with porn is not sex, sexual desire or nudity. The first commandment in the Bible from God to humanity is Genesis, chapter one, verse 28. And it was to have sex be fruitful and multiply. Sex is good, which is why you can make it bad. It seems to me that if the fact that you can make sex so ugly is a sort of indirect proof for why it could and should be beautiful. Because you can't make ugly things ugly, but you can make very beautiful things very ugly. Like if there was a pile of trash here. And I kicked it and then said, now look at it. It wouldn't look much uglier, it would just be ugly. You know, nudity is good. The body is good. The reason we talk about pornography degrading the body is because we believe that the body has grade to begin with. We don't talk about degrading paper clips and tumblers. We do talk about degrading the body because we just believe it seems to us that there is this sort of intrinsic worth to the body. So to sum all that up, I would say it's been said not by me, but somebody else. The problem with pornography actually isn't that it shows too much, it's that it shows too little. That it reduces the mystery and beauty of the human person to a sort of two dimensional thing for my consumption. And we just shouldn't be treating human beings like that.
- [36:19]
Michael Knowles
So one of the ways this is broken into the public debate, especially now, is with regard to what role religion should have in, say, government policy. So there's been a widespread debate over regulation of things like pornography. Now, for myself, I'm very much in favor of local regulation of pornography. The only reason that I might not be in favor of national legislation on pornography has nothing to do with the right to pornography. It has much more to do with the pragmatic approach to legislation. Can you govern a nation that has widespread disagreements on issues like pornography top down in that way without spurring a backlash that would be significant enough to actually topple other things that you're attempting to do? I think much the same way about abortion. I'm fully pro life, actually. I take a Catholic and not Jewish position on pro life positions, I would say. And with that said, there's a difference between my position on abortion and what I think might be the pragmatic way to actually achieve that long term. So the argument is really not one of the morality of banning pornography or abortion. If I were dictator for a day, I would absolutely do it. The question is one of the pragmatic effects, can you achieve that long term? So I've had this argument about abortion or pornography with regard to, for example, state level legislation. Take abortion. So I've suggested that if you're in a state like Michigan, going for a full scale abortion ban that is likely to fail is actually a mistake. What you should do is you should go as far as you can without losing the majority in the legislature, for example, and then accustom people to that idea and then move it back. And that's an immoral position. I get that that's not the full scale moral position. But also you have to sort of merge pragmatism with morality. How do you address the role of following these sorts of issues into pragmatic application?
- [37:55]
Matt Fradd
Yeah, we're definitely in your zone of expertise here. So I can only say what seems to me to be the case. We live in a democratic republic. So the idea that we're going to convince most Americans that all pornography is evil and should be banned is just not going to happen. So, yes, I would like to see pornography banned because I think it destroys the family. You want to destroy society, then destroys sex because sex is at the bottom of it. You know, it's like sex comes, comes together with a couple, which brings the family, which brings about society. So if you want to destroy society, aim your sights on sex. And I think that's what pornography does. So I would like to see it banned. But given that I have no ability to bring that about, nor do I think it's actually going to happen, then I certainly think educating people about the destructive nature of pornography, that over the last 40 plus years there has been a metric crap ton of studies that have come out of academia from neuroscience, psychology and sociology, and all of it says that pornography is detrimental to the consumer, to our relationships and to society as a whole. So it's a soundbite. But I like to say if you're pro love and pro science, you should be anti porn. Now, none of this is to condemn individuals struggling. In fact, I think we should struggle with pornography. What I mean by that is struggle doesn't mean give in to. It's not synonymous with you don't try. Struggling implies a sort of violent resisting. Yeah, so if somebody says to me I'm struggling with pornography, I would say, good, keep struggling. And so I certainly wouldn't want any man or woman out there who's watching this to feel condemned by me. I would have them realize that they were raised in a pornified culture. They were probably exposed to pornography at a young age and they can be free of this and they should be gentle and patient with themselves as they seek to gain mastery over this thing that's had mastery over them for so.
- [39:48]
Michael Knowles
So when it comes again to sort of the broader question of governance and one of the cases that I've made is that conservatism or religious morality or morality of any sort, it tends to be built, ground up, but it can be destroyed top down, meaning that institutions of American society have basically destroyed, I think, traditional morality at a Very local level, through things like national policy, by perverting incentive structures, by replacing, for example, the role of what a church was in a community which actually had sort of an economic role, it has societal role, a community role. And then government sort of supplanted that. That can be destroyed, but it can only it can't be rebuilt top down through sort of government mandate. And I think that's one of the big arguments that's happening on the right right now. There are a lot of people on the right who have sort of suggested, okay, if you gain control of the government, the first thing you should do is try to cram down morality as fast as possible. And that will change the nature of how the society works. Now, I'm not arguing that there's no situation in which that's possible. I'm just arguing as to whether that is practical. What do you think on that? That's more of an opinion matter than a moral matter.
- [40:53]
Matt Fradd
Yeah, it's a good question. Because law, it seems to me, is something of a teacher. So if I'm raised in a society where pot smoking is illegal, I might come to believe that it's immoral, whether it is or whether it isn't. But sometimes I think that from my experience, again, not the ideal, but what I'm seeing is sometimes it seems like things need to be let into society so that we can learn our lesson the hard way. Because it seemed to me like 5 or 10 years ago everyone was like, proclaiming the greatness which is pot smoking, for example. Whereas now it seems like there's a lot of people who are like, the cool people are like, here's why I've given it up. Here's how my life became better. Now, how much destruction does that leave in its wake? How many people have not learned that lesson? That's a scary thing. But yeah, once the cat's out of the bag, I don't know what the solution is to do except to educate people. Again, I'm not involved in politics or anything like that, so I'd leave that to better minds. I'd like to live in a country where pornography is illegal. I'd like to live in a country where the majority of people think, yeah, this destroys families, this perverts the most sacred human action. I mean, if what is the most sacred human action? It's not washing the dishes, as good as that is. I mean, it's not playing football, it's not having a drink. Clearly it's that act by which new souls come into existence. And it Seems to me that a society that perverts that is going to destroy itself. And I think pornography is one of the key weapons against the family and so therefore I'd like to see it banned. Is that pragmatic? Would that have backlashes? I haven't thought that through.
- [42:26]
Michael Knowles
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- [44:37]
Matt Fradd
Man in the clouds.
- [44:39]
Michael Knowles
Exactly. That doesn't actually wash with reality for them. And they turn away and then they come back and have sort of this second look at religion. So in a sort of bizarre way, it could be that the excesses of the left are pushing back, back into religion better than any religious argument could seems that way.
- [44:53]
Matt Fradd
It seems, I think sometimes that Jordan Peterson, who I recently had on my show, is like a gateway drug into religion. He seems to have supplanted the quote, unquote, new atheists who are somewhat old now. And so I think you're right. The excesses of the left are causing people to take a look at tradition and to perhaps be more humble in the face of our ancestors and say, what did they know that we didn't? Now, I wouldn't want to hold to Christian belief like Dawkins seems to assume, you know, just because it would hold society together. Like I would want to hold the Christian belief because I think it's true. If Christianity is not true, if God doesn't exist, then I don't think we should believe those things. You know, when I was a kid in December, I would believe in Father Christmas. And that belief made me both happier and better behaved, especially around Christmas. But that's not a reason to go on believing in Father Christmas, Santa Claus, and it's, it's not a good reason to go on believing in God if he doesn't exist. But it's exciting to see people taking another look at it. And it's really exciting to see really kind of intellectually serious people, I think, like Dr. Ed Fazer, who you've had on the show, Bishop Robert Barron, who you've had on the show, and others kind of help people engage with the metaphysical arguments for God's existence to show them this isn't silly. Yeah.
- [46:05]
Michael Knowles
So on that last point, it's really interesting one, you know, the idea that you wouldn't believe in it if you didn't believe that it were true, even if you felt that it was societally good or societally useful. So one of the ways that I've seen Jordan talk about truth is in terms of pragmatic truth. Like, what does truth mean? Are we talking about a truth like two plus two equals four? Are we talking about a truth like murder is wrong? Which are not quite the same thing. So when it comes to the pragmatic truth of religion, it is easier to prove the efficacy of religion than it is to prove the factual truth of revelation on Sinai or Jesus rising from the dead.
- [46:38]
Matt Fradd
This was my experience. I was 17 years old. I was agnostic and angsty and went on this trip to Rome in Italy. And the thing that began to open my mind to the possibility of Catholicism being true wasn't their arguments at first, it was their joy. They weren't cynical, they were happy, they were kind, they were normal, they were good looking. And I'd be like, why do you believe this? I'd never met people like that. I thought they were like unicorns. And then they started kind of giving me reasons. But if I hadn't have seen that joy and that optimism and that energy, maybe I would have been less open to the arguments. To get back to your original question as to how do we convince people about morality, I don't know. I think showing them the consequences of their actions is sometimes the. The kind of camel nose under the tent, as it were. So when I would travel and speak on pornography, I wouldn't launch into a moral argument. I would say, Here are over 50 studies that show porn leads to sexual dysfunction. And here are 58 studies that show that porn supports the addiction model. And, you know, things like this, like, here's how it leads to erectile dysfunction, which isn't a boon within marriage or something, how it leads to premature ejaculation. Doesn't that sound manly? So I kind of make fun of it. I like making fun of pornography. Not the people who are struggling, but the thing, like, it's clearly a shameful act. And so to kind of point at it and go, isn't that gross? Like, wouldn't you, you know, when I die and someone gets up and says a few things about me, I wouldn't be proud if they were like, he was really into. Just loved it and he was passionate about it. And that's great. Good on him. You know, no one wants to be remembered like that. So I, you know, when it comes to specific moral issues, maybe beginning by pointing to the negative consequences that surround the actual and then bringing them into more of the heart of the matter, like you shouldn't treat people as things who aren't things, which is not all that convincing at the beginning, if you're really into porn, but at the end.
- [48:34]
Michael Knowles
It might be so. One of the sort of fascinating struggles, I think, inside religion is the struggle that a lot of teenagers feel between what they think are rules and freedom. And our society has elevated freedom above rules. And in fact, rules are now seen as impositions on the self. What your parents want of you is an imposition on you. What your institutions demand of you, an imposition on you. You're supposed to be a freewheeling individual who's free of all of these things. And freedom is the central. The sort of central goal. And I think that one of the things that I've been arguing for a long time is that freedom. And it's a place where I have some disagreements, actually, with some people who I'm very close friends with at the Daily Wire, and I've found some commonality with the aforementioned Michael Mulles, who's execrable in every other fashion, but he agrees with me on this, and that is that freedom is of instrumental rather than inherent value. This is a John Finnis argument that, effectively speaking, the idea that freedom is the highest value or that liberty. Liberty ennobles any enterprise as opposed to virtue, which does ennoble any enterprise. That is not true. There's an argument Joseph Raz makes, the Philosopher, that effectively, if you are told that there's a gun to your head and you have to kill the guy next to you and you do that, are you more or less morally blameworthy than if you say, listen, I chose to kill the guy next to me, right? Liberty has not ennobled the project in any sort of way. Liberty has actually made it significantly worse because now you bear moral culpability for it. So, in other words, the exercise of liberty was originally meant to exist within boundaries. And that's the whole sort of role of religion. It's meant for choice. When there is moral apathy is the wrong word. But there's no moral demand that is placed upon you to act in a particular way. And society, by championing liberty and rights above the roles that they were meant to exist within, has destroyed a lot that surrounds it. And I think that that's what you're seeing a lot in Western society is that the idea of the individual, the free, willing individual standing up against institutions, that has led to the destruction of many of these institutions. Right?
- [50:35]
Matt Fradd
I agree. Freedom exists for the sake of Love. And we can be free from things, but we are also free for things. As the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen joked, you don't go up to a cab driver and say, are you free? And when he says yes, you say, hooray for freedom. Freedom exists for something. And so it seems to me that in America and other countries, when you talk about freedom today, we often mean freedom from constraints, but we should be free for things as well. You know, like the man who can't say no to his next beer, is he free? No, he's kind of enslaved by his passions. The man who cannot say no to look at pornography, is he free? And so on and so forth.
- [51:12]
Michael Knowles
And this is the case that I've made that it's a huge mistake people make in quoting Exodus when they say, when Moses says, let my people go, there's an end to that verse, right? So that they may serve me in the wilderness. And everybody always forgets the second half of the verse, right? You need the second half of the verse in order to make sense of the first. The basic idea of just innate human freedom as the highest value is not a biblical concept. It really is not because you're supposed to be subject to, to the mission that God has placed in front of you. One of the theories that I've been developing over time is something that I'm sure it's not original to me, but I've termed for purposes of discussion, role theory. And that is that what religion really is, what the Bible really is attempting to do on sort of a practical level, is it sets up and enshrines roles for human beings. And there are a wide variety of these roles, as opposed to sort of virtue ethics, which is about cultivating virtue within yourself. And it's sort of hard to define because virtue can be interpreted in so many different ways. Or deontological ethics, the idea of a rule based ethical morality, which again, Judaism sometimes falls into this idea that there are rules for everything. But the suggestion that I make is that what those rules are really designed to do in Judaism, or the way that religion is generally designed, is in order to preserve certain important roles that you're meant to fulfill. The roles that basically are spelled out to Adam, you're supposed to cultivate the garden, you're supposed to be a husband, you're supposed to be a father, you're supposed to be somebody who is a creative force able to name the animals, right? These are all roles. And then liberty exists within those roles. But as soon as liberty begins to destroy those roles, then liberty has become libertinism and is effectively destructive.
- [52:39]
Matt Fradd
Yeah, whoever sins is a slave to sin. And the Lord is calling me to love my wife and to love my children and to put them above other things, above other pursuits. And all my other pursuits should be ordered towards those ends. But if I begin to engage in pornography or adultery or binge drinking, then my freedom to do that very thing that God is calling me to is now impeded, and everyone suffers as a result, and I become less happy.
- [53:05]
Michael Knowles
So on a broader level, what do you think are the biggest dangers to religion today? Because it seems like there's sort of bizarre optimism that has emerged between the two of us about the failures of secularism leading to a reversion back to more traditional religion. But that's not what the numbers are showing in, say, Europe or the United States. What they're showing is decline in church attendance in Europe and the United States, which is devastating, I think, on a general level. I mean, I've been calling for people to go back to church. As a Jew, if you're a Christian, go to church, you should. It's better for you. It's better for your kids. We need more Christians in American society, and we need them in European society. What do you think is the greatest danger to religion today?
- [53:45]
Matt Fradd
I can only. Well, I can't only. But I will only speak about Catholicism. It feels like to me sometimes that the church is being. Or the house is being burnt down from two sides. On one side, I would say it's the fire of Modernism. And this might be the most dangerous thing, namely trying to make the Church like the world, where we just kind of run after the world and bend down before the world and. But on the other side, it's a sort of a sort of set of a Kantism where we kind of reject the authority of the Pope of Rome and sort of set up ourselves as the arbitrator as to what is true and what isn't and who we should listen to and who we shouldn't. And those are two very kind of polar opposite things. I think they're reactions to both, maybe. And so we see the abuses within the church, we see certain sins not being condemned as forcefully and loudly as they should be. We see perhaps liturgies that are celebrated with a lack of care and reverence. And so, because that seems like such a threat, we rush to the other side and where, you know, we do have good priests, you know, preaching against the evils of abortion and things like this. But then maybe there are other errors involved here. That we haven't begun to look at does. Do you have something like that in your community?
- [55:04]
Michael Knowles
Oh, for sure. So I think that, typically speaking since the Enlightenment, the big danger to Judaism has been the rise of modernism, the rise of individualism. The one thing that Jews held in common during the 1700 years or so, when Jews were effectively forced into ghettos, is that they were in the ghetto. So the idea was that they were forced together. Judaism was defined by keeping the law. And then the gates were opened, and then it was like, okay, well, you can now become a citizen of general society. And that forced a sort of crisis in Judaism that was approached from three different angles. One was a full sort of assimilationist ideology. My Jewishness should disappear. That would be good. And I should just become a citizen like any other. And then there was a sort of halfway position which was the best of the modern world can be taken in by Judaism and engulfed in Judaism. And Judaism can essentially filter out through the modern world, taking the best parts of it and rejecting the worst parts. And then there is a full scale rejectionism by parts of the Jewish community. And that was, okay, well, when you open the gates, you also let in a bunch of bad influences. And so you see that breakdown in, I would say, the modern world in terms of sort of Reform Judaism in the United States or Reconstructionist Judaism. That would be sort of the first more accommodationist, assimilationist view. The sort of modern Orthodox which I consider myself, which is the sort of merger of not secular values, but secular technologies with Jewish values and living in the modern world, having a job, you know, accommodating yourself to. To democracy, these sorts of things. And then you have wings of the Jewish community that would probably be termed ultra Orthodox by the media, where the goal is to just shut off all influences whatsoever, because you're so afraid that those influences are gonna draw your kid out into the open where they're going to be attacked. And you can see the truth in particularly the sort of rejectionist viewpoint that the danger is so great that you just can't allow yourself any sort of interface with Riya. The problem is, of course, that that removes the biblical commandment to be a light unto the nations. Because once you've stopped engaging with the world, in my viewpoint, from a Jewish viewpoint, then you've. What is the mission at that point other than to sort of just hold steady? And I think that that has tended to happen in. You know, I feel like that's mirrored in some aspects of Catholicism also, that a vibrant and functioning religious community has to have both an internal vision as to how you preserve your community and an external vision as to how you wish to transform the world and spread the light that you are supposed to bring to the world. And the more missional your religion is, the more it is likely to give your kids a sense of mission and lead to a sense of growth as opposed to decline. And I think that you can kind of tell it by its root. So one of the things about the state of Israel right now is that the state of Israel is the only Western society that has above replacement rates of birth, which is kind of an astonishing thing. You go to Tel Aviv, which is a secular center of Israel, and because there's sort of a national mission in Israel, people in Tel Aviv average over 3. The fertility rate's over 3 per woman. This is like a place that is secular as San Francisco, but they're culturally oriented toward the Jewish state. To take an example, without a common mission within Catholicism and a muscular mission within Catholicism, I think that it tends to wither on the vine as well.
- [58:18]
Matt Fradd
Yeah, 100%, yeah. I think there is a reaction to a sort of pansy Catholicism or a reaction to Catholics who apologize for the hard stances the church has to taken against so called homosexual marriage, which is a fiction or contraception or what have you. We've seen a lot of leadership, and then ourselves, we always like to point to leadership. We fail to point at ourselves, have maybe been too soft, too weak in proclaiming what Catholicism should be proclaiming. And so you see a reaction to that. And part of that reaction is fantastic. And then some of it might lack the charity. I think there's also, like a contingent within Catholicism that wants to go back to what they see as the glory days during the Crusades or something. But the way I see it, it feels like, I don't know, Christendom is kind of back to the first couple of centuries. And so our goal shouldn't be to go back to the 13th century, but to go back to how the early Christians lived in communities with each other, loving one another. You know, the Romans said, who are these people? They knew them by how they loved each other. So it was Stephen Covey in one of his books that talked about the sphere of influence, sphere of control, sphere of power, you know, And I don't know, I think more and more I want to be concerned about the things I have authority over, and I want to be less concerned about the things I can do nothing about. Because when I spend my days listening to the terrifying news that's taking place either in the country or sometimes within the church. I'm not actually dedicating my time and energy to the thing that God has given me authority over, namely my wife and my children and my apostolate, my mission. But what I find is when I actually dedicate my time there and sort of block out the noise, that shouldn't concern me because I can do nothing about it anyway, I find that my sphere of influence actually begins to grow. So I think a cause for. For a cause of anxiety among many people today is just this onslaught of bad things that are taking place. And it's kind of addictive. Like, it's really. I wonder how you do this every day when you wake up and stick your head in the toilet bowl and go, what's in here? How do you.
- [60:32]
Michael Knowles
That is news coverage. Yeah.
- [60:34]
Matt Fradd
How do you stay sane?
- [60:36]
Michael Knowles
You know, for me, the key is limiting the exposure. Right. So I don't have Twitter on my phone, for example, and that's a deliberate decision not to have Twitter on my phone. So I engage with it particular hours of the day, and then I just don't engage with it a lot of other times of the day. And when I'm not engaged with it, I'm engaged with my family full time. I'm engaged with my community full time.
- [60:53]
Matt Fradd
And is the Sabbath just awesome?
- [60:54]
Michael Knowles
The Sabbath is the greatest thing that God ever invented. It is the best thing. And, you know, the death of the Sabbath is the worst thing that I think has happened to Western civilization.
- [61:02]
Matt Fradd
Christians need to adopt this. I would like to see something like, maybe not exactly like this, but I think old people would benefit mentally just from totally detaching and unplugging 100%. What do you do with your lights on, like, Friday evenings?
- [61:14]
Michael Knowles
So we have presets. So you can get electronic presets these days. Makes it very convenient. So you can set the lights that they go off at a certain hour and on a certain hour, or you just leave them on before Sabbath. And you figure out, okay, like, I don't want the light on my bedroom, but I do want it on in the kitchen.
- [61:28]
Matt Fradd
Is your fridge still running?
- [61:30]
Michael Knowles
So they have a Sabbath mode on the fridge? Come on. So it actually keeps the fridge running, but the light is off inside? Yeah, exactly. So depending on the kind of fridge you have, virtually all of them now have a Sabbath mode where it can turn off the light. So modern technology has made Sabbath, like, super easy in certain ways. Cause you can actually preset all this stuff. There was a big controversy in Jewish Circles over how to treat electricity in the early days when electricity became very common. And so there was some talk about is this capable of use on Sabbath or not? So the way that Jews try to embody sort of broader ideas about the Sabbath is obviously with law. So, for example, the way that we define the Sabbath is we say there are 39 different Malachot, right, Actions that are rules about how you can act on Sabbath. We define those by things that were done in the tabernacle during the normal week, but you couldn't do them on the Sabbath, right? So you weren't allowed to do them. So we learned from that, from the Bible, right, that you weren't allowed to, for example, build, you weren't allowed to kindle a fire on Sabbath. So then you extend those principles out into a variety of sort of other laws. So the question was, how do you treat electricity? Is electricity a thing that is banned by these rules or not? And it was a big controversy at the time, the early 20th century particularly. And the kind of solution that Judaism came up with because it tends to be a religion that treasures the old as opposed to the new, was we are going to. Well, we'll come up with some kind of what I think are jerry rigged excuses for why electricity is not to be used on the Sabbath. So they suggest that it's akin to fire, for example, or that when you complete a circuit, that's a form of building. What's funny about this, I think, is that I was thinking about this a lot in the context of just generalized religious doctrine. So one of the big criticisms, obviously inside religion is too doctrinal, right? You get this in Catholicism too. So much doctrine. So why do you have so much doctrine? Why can't we just cut through the thicket? And the answer is, because in the absence of doctrine, you end up actually destroying the principle. And so I was thinking about this in the context of euthanasia, for example. So Catholicism has, you tell me if I'm wrong.
- [63:28]
Matt Fradd
You shouldn't kill innocent people, right?
- [63:30]
Michael Knowles
You shouldn't kill innocent people. But there is also the doctrine of double effect, meaning if you have, like an older person, you don't have to take abnormal measures in order to save that person's life. And also if you're attempting to alleviate pain by giving morphine and the person dies, because, and you might even foresee.
- [63:47]
Matt Fradd
That, but you didn't intend it.
- [63:48]
Michael Knowles
Exactly. So if you are a secular person, you're like, what difference does that make, what you foresaw or what you didn't Foresee you're just killing the person with morphine. Like, what difference does that make Sense? But it's the doctrine that protects against the abuse. Meaning that because Catholicism says, no, you're attempting to alleviate pain, you're not attempting to kill. That prevents you from just saying, okay, kill the old guy. Right, Right. And so I think that Judaism, you look at things like I was just talking about with regards to turning lights on and off on Sabbath. It's like, oh, my God, that's so legalistic. Why don't you just ask the guy to turn it on or turn on yourself? Like, what's the problem? But the whole point is that once you say it is okay to turn on the light, then it becomes okay to turn on the light. And once it's okay to turn on the light, it's okay to turn on your phone. Once it's okay to turn on your phone, then it's okay to do a wide variety of activities that you don't actually want people doing on Sabbath. And so there are a bunch of catch all terms in Judaism, like let's say something's not Shabbosic. Shabbosic just means in Yiddish that it's not something that you should do on Shabbos. It's not recommended. There's a lot of not recommended.
- [64:40]
Matt Fradd
What would be an example of something?
- [64:41]
Michael Knowles
Of something that's not okay? So, for example, I could theoretically leave on my TV all of Shabbos, right? I turn on just like a light. I could leave it on on Friday night before Shabbos comes in. I could leave it on. I could watch the ball game on Saturday. That would be considered not Shabbos stick. Right? Like, it's not in keeping with the spirit of Shabbos.
- [64:57]
Matt Fradd
How do you cook? This has now become me interviewing you.
- [65:00]
Michael Knowles
But I'm gonna keep going. It's interesting. I never get these questions.
- [65:02]
Matt Fradd
How do you cook food?
- [65:03]
Michael Knowles
Okay, so the answer is that you're not allowed to cook on Saturday. You're allowed to reheat things, but, for example, so I'm not allowed to cook. It comes down to liquid versus solid. It gets very abstruse. So, for example, I'm allowed to leave something cooking from before Shabbat. This is why you see people eat cholent, right? Cholent is like a stew. It's very common in the Jewish community to eat cholent. And so you'll leave it on cooking, like all night. And because you didn't start the cooking process on Shabbat, you just left it there. But if you take the cholent off, you're not allowed to put it back on the flame. Right. Because then now you've started a new cooking process. Cholons actually started to become a thing because of the fight between Karaites and Pharisees. And Pharisees, because Karaite said, well, it says you shouldn't kindle a flame. And so if you're kindling a flame, that means you really shouldn't use the flame. And so the Pharisees were like, well, no, it says that you're not supposed to kindle a new flame. And so it became a cultural differentiator to actually start cooking something before Shabbat and leave it cooking over Shabbat to say, I'm a Pharisee, I'm not a karaite, for example.
- [66:01]
Matt Fradd
So, like, fascinating.
- [66:02]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, it's really interesting. So you're allowed to reheat solid food. So if I have, like. If I have, you know, chicken or something. Yeah, like chicken. As long as there's not too much sauce. Right. Because if the sauce turns it into a soup, it gets very, very detailed.
- [66:17]
Matt Fradd
No, but you're right. It's like with children, you know, we all understand, give them an inch, they'll take a mile. Well, we're like that as well. And so when you start to shut down these rules, the whole thing.
- [66:26]
Michael Knowles
And this is one of the things that I think is so fascinating about Catholicism, I've talked about this with Bishop Barron, is that Catholicism, Christianity started off as a rip on Phariseeism, obviously, from a philosophical level. Right.
- [66:37]
Matt Fradd
Our top guy was doing that. Yeah.
- [66:38]
Michael Knowles
Right. And again, that's not. That's actually nothing new in sort of Jewish history in the sense that Jeremiah does the same thing. If you read the prophets, the prophets are constantly saying things like, does God need your sacrifices? He needs you to be kind to the poor. He needs you to give charity. He needs you to think about virtue. Does he really need, like, roast meat? That's actually. Jesus is saying something. That's why Jesus is Jewish. I mean, he's not saying anything. That's actually super foreign to Judaism in the segments where he's criticizing Pharisee. But the attempt of Christianity to sort of get rid of aspects of the law, this is a question I have for Christians, ends up being backfilled by attempts to sort of reinstate the law, meaning Catholicism is rich in doctrine. So if Christianity started off as an attempt to get rid of many of the rules as unnecessary in order to reach the virtue that the rules were attempting to reach, then why is It. That there is so much doctrine in Catholicism. Catholicism. In terms of exact.
- [67:32]
Matt Fradd
Yeah. Can you think of an example within Catholicism? Be like. That's really interesting that you do that.
- [67:36]
Michael Knowles
So all the ritual, for example.
- [67:37]
Matt Fradd
Yeah. Like at Mass or divine liturgy, those sorts of things.
- [67:40]
Michael Knowles
Right, exactly like that. That sounds very Judaic, meaning, like Judaism mandates you're supposed to daven three times a day. There's like an actual set service. Right. And so three times a day, davening is praying. Sorry, I slip into the Judaic language. But you pray three times a day and you say the same service three times a day. And it's very ritualistic and it's very repetitive.
- [67:59]
Matt Fradd
And I have very ritualistic prayers that I pray every single morning. I have a very specific thing that I do every night. I have a very specific prayer that I pray. And these sort of anchor me throughout the day.
- [68:08]
Michael Knowles
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that what's fascinating is how the divergence, the original divergence, ends up becoming more of a convergence. If you watch how Catholics practice and how Orthodox Jews practice, there is similarity. There's a lot of similarity there.
- [68:21]
Matt Fradd
Yeah. I don't know if it was that we kept them. You know, we kept the moral law, not the Mosaic Law, because the understanding was now that the Mosaic Law wasn't what justified you or saved you or something like that.
- [68:31]
Michael Knowles
That.
- [68:32]
Matt Fradd
I have another question for you. Why don't you want me to be a Jew? Or do you?
- [68:36]
Michael Knowles
I don't care why that? Why? Because.
- [68:38]
Matt Fradd
Because I want you to be Catholic, obviously.
- [68:40]
Michael Knowles
Right. No, and by the way, I appreciate it. This is what I've always said to. To my Catholic friends, my Protestant friends, as long as you're coming at me with a book and not a sword, that's great.
- [68:48]
Matt Fradd
And they're not being annoying and berating you or something like that.
- [68:52]
Michael Knowles
I mean, even if. Even if you want to be annoying about it, that's fine. Like you care enough about my soul that you want me to be saved. I appreciate it. It's much appreciated. And we'll find out in the overtime period who is right and who is wrong. But the.
- [69:01]
Matt Fradd
But why? Yeah, why don't you. Because we talked about earlier, about the only reason you should believe something is because it's true.
- [69:07]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [69:07]
Matt Fradd
You presumably believe. I believe falsehoods and you believe true things. So why shouldn't you encourage me to abandon some of my beliefs and adopt some of yours?
- [69:14]
Michael Knowles
Right. So doctrinally, what Judaism believes is that the commandments of Israel were only given to Israel. Okay. Meaning that the seven Noahide commandments that I referred to earlier, those are incumbent on all of humanity because they're given to Noah right before the Jews actually arise as an independent family and people. And so those apply to everyone. So if you're not a member of the Judaic tribe, then those rules don't apply to you. So the 613 commandments that apply to me are boiled down to seven for you. And so what that means is that if you want to join in to do those commandments, that's not required of you. Welcome if you want. But certainly Judaism doesn't feel the necessity.
- [69:51]
Matt Fradd
To force, to evangelize and to bring.
- [69:53]
Michael Knowles
People together, because Judaism doesn't actually suggest being chosen doesn't mean being superior. I think this is one of the great misnomers of sort of history, is that when the Jews say that they're a chosen people, what they mean is that they're better than everyone else. It's like, no, in the same way that if I choose my oldest child to take out the trash, that doesn't mean that my oldest child is better. It means I need my oldest child to take out the trash. That's not the same thing. And so the sort of idea that Jews are in their own minds superior to everybody else because it is incumbent on them to do that, that's obviously not how Jews think. Especially because there are a bunch of commandments that are incumbent on men in Judaism that are not incumbent on women in Judaism. Does Judaism then believe women are of lesser value than men?
- [70:36]
Matt Fradd
But apart from little laws, there must be, like, metaphysical things that you hold as true that you would like me to believe, or at least you would like me. I don't mean to be confrontational. You clearly would want Christians to realize that Christ was not the Messiah, that he didn't. Maybe you don't want that, or maybe it doesn't bother you, you don't care one way or the other.
- [70:54]
Michael Knowles
Right? So the. So the way, like when I look.
- [70:56]
Matt Fradd
At, I look at Mormons, you know, I'm like, I love you. And this isn't a criticism on you directly, but Joseph Smith was not a prophet. My Muslim friend, I love you. But like, Muhammad was a liar or a lunatic. Maybe he was possessed, but he wasn't a. He wasn't a prophet.
- [71:10]
Michael Knowles
Right?
- [71:11]
Matt Fradd
So I have to say that in love. And so I would wonder. And maybe it's just that you have a public platform and so you don't want to get into that to a. Not necessarily, but in that, I mean.
- [71:19]
Michael Knowles
The Jewish doctrine is that as long as you believe in God, as long as. I mean, the actual seven commandments to non Jews are believe in God, no eating the flesh of living animals. Actually, one of them, you have to establish courts of law. No murder, no sexual sins, no idolatry, and I believe, no stealing. It's like seven of the ten of the big ten. Right? Like, we don't actually believe that non Jews are even bound by the ten Commandments.
- [71:44]
Matt Fradd
Right.
- [71:44]
Michael Knowles
They're bound by the seven commandments in Judaism. So it's. So it, like, boils even further down. So how you believe in God is of little consequence to me, so long as you do believe in the monotheistic God.
- [71:54]
Matt Fradd
What if I believe in a God that lives on top of a mountain and whose name is Geoffrey? So if he doesn't, and I say.
- [71:59]
Michael Knowles
That'S God, if he doesn't fulfill the fundamental properties of God, then that doesn't count.
- [72:02]
Matt Fradd
Which would be what?
- [72:03]
Michael Knowles
So the fundamental properties of God would be that he's in charge of the universe, creator of the universe, master of the divine, light, law, all powerful, all knowing, all loving would probably be in that category. There's debate in sort of Jewish circles as to whether you have to believe that God gave the commandments at Sinai, whether that's a debate between a couple of major rabbis, maimonides included, as to whether if you discovered those seven laws on your own, but you don't believe that they were given at Sinai, does that count? So there is some doctrinal debate there, but in general, the basic idea that there is only one path to God in the same way that there is in Christianity, I see that that doesn't exist in the same way.
- [72:40]
Matt Fradd
What about, like, a Mormon who believed that God was once a man, like, we are. Like, would you. Would you go. I'm not saying given much thought about this, but would that be a place where you'd be like, no, I need to evangelize you or not that word, but I need you to come to believe in God differently than you currently do.
- [72:53]
Michael Knowles
So the answer to me is I'm going to go with the, I don't know answer, like, pretty much everything. There's, like, major debates on all of these. There's debate for a long time in Judaism over whether, say, trinitarianism is monotheism or if it's not monotheism. Right? Like, that's, like, that was a serious debate in Judaism. It's come down on the side of it's monotheism. Okay. So I wouldn't know the answer. As far as Mormon doctrine specifically, let's put it this way. If you're talking about like pagan paganism, Judaism would have a problem with paganism. So let's say that you believed that there were a hundred gods and they all ruled over different aspects of humanity. Then Judaism would say that does not fulfill the seven.
- [73:32]
Matt Fradd
And if you were in dialogue with somebody like this, would you feel obligated to try to help them? Help divest them of that era so that they could be saved?
- [73:40]
Michael Knowles
Sure. I mean, yeah. So then I would feel obligated to actually, in the same way that if somebody believed that adultery was morally acceptable, I would feel the obligation to say, well, no, actually adultery is not morally acceptable and it's better for you to not believe that. Okay. So Judaism is very weird that way. And historically speaking, it's kind of interesting to see whether that is an outgrowth of the direction of Jewish history or that was inherent to the religion. Right. Because obviously when Joshua comes into the land mass conversion takes place. Right. In the pre Christian era, Judaism was one of the fastest growing religions in the Roman Empire. A huge percentage of Alexandria was Jewish. There were huge Jewish communities in Egypt. And so it was an actual more proselytizing religion. And so one of the questions of Jewish history is sort of, how did that change? Was the Jewish move away from proselytization historically driven or ideologically driven? Or is it a sort of ideological justification of how history had gone? In the same way that, for example, if you look at the historicity of matrilineal lineage in Judaism, if you read the Bible, it seems pretty clear that lineage is through the Father. Right. But in Judaism, lineage is through the mom. Right. So the question is when that sort of shifted. And historically speaking, that's probably around the time of ezra. It's like 400 BC or something like that. But there are all these sort of weird issues in sort of biblical adherence as to when things shift and how the history of that goes.
- [75:06]
Matt Fradd
Well, thank you. One day I'm gonna have to have you on my show and just ask you questions for a couple of hours again.
- [75:10]
Michael Knowles
You should. I know what I know. There are rabbis who know way more than I do. I would definitely recommend that you talk to and so you can get sort of the basics from me and then I'll tell you that I don't know a lot of things on that show. But yeah, I think that the one thing that comes through just kind of sum up in terms of where we are religiously and this Is the case that I've been consistently making is that when we talk about the west and Western civilization, that a muscular pursuit of religious values and in the west you're talking Christian values is absolutely necessary to the upholding of the west. That all the fundamental premises of the west are built on these Christian values. The reason people say Judeo Christian is just because many of those values are held in common with Judaism. And obviously Christianity and the New Testament are based on the Old Testament originally. But the eternal values of Judeo Christianity, of biblical living, those haven't changed with time and they can't change with time and they shouldn't change with time. What do you think is the best way to insulate those values from the predations that we've been talking about against.
- [76:11]
Matt Fradd
Say the family or.
- [76:12]
Michael Knowles
Yes, I mean the attacks on the family would be an excellent.
- [76:15]
Matt Fradd
Yeah, I think withhold. I think I'm being hyperbolic. Okay, so if people stretch this too far, they'll misunderstand me. But get married before you're ready, have more kids than you can afford and then move into a bubble of other like minded people and raise them in the faith. Now of course I could qualify all of those things. Obviously you should discern, you know, obviously you shouldn't have more children than you can afford or if you're, you know, it's dangerous to the wife or something like that. And by bubble, I don't mean solipsistic living where it's insular and we don't engage with the outside world. But there's a sense in which all of those things are right. You know, people talk about communities today as bubbles disparagingly, but that's how humans have lived forever. This new way of living where we live on a street next to people we don't know, this is unusual. So I live in a little town in Ohio. It's not a very pretty town, but there's a lot of fantastic people who live there and we kind of have the same values. And so my 15 year old daughter doesn't have a cell phone and it's never really occurred to her to ask for one because we hang out with other homeschooling families who also of course wouldn't give their child a smartphone. Living life in kind of common like that, where my children don't have to feel like freaks because they don't have Instagram is really helpful. You know, like if I was to send my child to a school, be it Catholic or public, and he didn't have a phone or she didn't have a phone. They would be a sort of. They'd feel like a social leper by the time they were 9 or 10. So I'm a big fan of homeschooling. I don't think it's the only way, but it's the way we've chosen. But then I also think you clearly want to have your children engage with the world. And so we speak really openly with our children from very young about. Like, I teach my kids about pornography from the age of six. I say something simple like pornography is pictures or videos of people showing parts of their body that their bathing suit should cover. And you should always tell me if you see it. Very unscandalous, you know, so educating them in that way and I don't know. And then just having other attractive. By attractive, I mean just good, normal people in their life. So it's not just my head saying these things. It's the next door neighbor, it's the friends. It's. Does that make sense?
- [78:32]
Michael Knowles
Not only does that make sense, I live very much the same way. I think that the loss of community is the single greatest factor in the decline of religion. Yeah. The supplantation of community by government in terms of even things like financial support. Like one of the things that church used to provide and it still does. Where I live, if there's somebody out of a job in my community, we all try to find that person a job. And if that person falls in.
- [78:53]
Matt Fradd
I love how Jews do that. I wish Catholics were more tribal like that. That's awesome.
- [78:57]
Michael Knowles
Yeah. I mean, it's. But I think that's true for church. I mean, Mormons do, too. I mean, like, I don't think it's unique to Judaism, in other words, but yes, we definitely do.
- [79:04]
Matt Fradd
Mormons are great like that, too.
- [79:05]
Michael Knowles
Yeah. I mean, like, I think that, you know, if somebody in our neighborhood is having a hard time, people immediately step up and, you know, will move to pay their bills and try to help them out. And that sort of economic interdependence actually creates a thriving society. And that's how things used to be. I mean, it also means that rich people hang out with poor people. Right. Class divisions go away when you're all attending the same synagogue or the same church and you're all pointed in the. You're praying in the same direction. You're not praying to the richest guy. You're praying toward the front of the church. Those bonds cannot be duplicated. You can't remake them in a sad social fashion like it's bizarre. You had the Surgeon General of the United States say that loneliness is a public health issue. And I just thought to myself, yeah, but the government can't solve that public health issue. The only way to solve that public health issue is you need to go to synagogue or church. Like, that's the only way to solve that issue. Because there's nothing quite like being engrossed in a community. And that does set social standards. I mentioned the birth rate in Israel. One of the reasons you have that birth rate is because everyone around you has four kids.
- [80:04]
Matt Fradd
That's great.
- [80:04]
Michael Knowles
I mean, like, in our community, like, four is a bare minimum. Like, when we had our fourth kid, it was like, okay, welcome to the club. Now, where are the other four? You know, like, that sort of generalized social expectation and a recognition that that requires community support. Meaning if you're at the playground, a kid is acting badly. In American society, if someone says something to your kid at the playground, then you are supposed to get mad at that. How dare you parent my child. That's terrible that you're parenting my child. Well, in a traditional religious community, if somebody parents my child, the answer is good. They should be parented. Like, if I'm not watching and my kid does something bad, I want somebody to discipline my kid. Because we all hold the same standard, and that's why we have to hold the same standard when we live in these. In these sorts of communities.
- [80:41]
Matt Fradd
It would probably be unchristian to suggest that we come up with a bumper sticker that just says, outbreed the bastards. Would that be wrong? I don't know. But so that's cool. So Judaism, you guys have a lot of kids. Mormons have a lot of kids.
- [80:54]
Michael Knowles
Outbreed is Catholics try. Yeah. I mean, that's gonna be. That is gonna be. The future of humanity is gonna be the. Unfortunately, because we just need to breed.
- [81:02]
Matt Fradd
But then not have them indoctrinated into atheism and modernism. So I was at the store the other day, my wife came out and she went, there was a family in there, and they had a lot of kids. And I went, were they neat or disheveled? Neat. Ah, Mormons. If they look terrible and stained, those were good Catholics.
- [81:18]
Michael Knowles
Well, Matt, it's been amazing to have you here. I really appreciate it. You should. Everybody should go check out your work, because it really is fantastic. Again, thank you for the time.
- [81:24]
Matt Fradd
Thanks. Hey, thank you very much for watching that episode. If you want to learn more about what I do, go to YouTube and type in pints with aquinas. Thanks. It's okay not to be perfect with finances. Experian is your big financial friend and here to help. Did you know you can get matched with credit cards on the app? Some cards are labeled no Ding Decline which means if you're not approved, they won't hurt your credit scores. Download the Experian app for free today. Applying for for no Ding Decline cards won't hurt your credit scores. If you aren't initially approved, initial approval will result in a hard inquiry which may impact your credit scores. Experian this episode is brought to you by Lifelock. It's Cybersecurity Awareness Month and Lifelock has tips to protect your identity. Use strong passwords, set up multi factor authentication, report phishing and update the software on your devices. And for comprehensive identity protection, let LifeLock alert you to suspicious uses of your personal information. Lifelock also fixes identity theft, guaranteed or your money back. Stay smart, safe and protected with a 30 day free trial@lifelock.com Podcasts Terms apply.