Speak of podcast sharing Jesus in every day of these and did to tread through the night of the light of the monster. Small faces with traces of mother's eye line appear up to the resident candy provider. And there to internation threads of baton lisp. Is this stomach of tomato? That's region by region, such as legions take thunder. Is this spectacle spectacle closing a wonder? Just how did our fair festive forebears conceive of this primeval practice called All Hallows Eve? The answer, if anyone cares to research, surprises, it rises from old mother church. On the cusp of the customary old saints today, the Christian kinsfolk made mocking display. These children of light both to tease and deride, the undarkness, the old down as the sinister side. In preposterous pageants and dressed diabolic, they hand to the damned just one final frolic. You see, with the light of the dawn on the mark, the sunrise will swallow such darkness and sorrow. The future is future of the forces of evil. And so they discovered in times medieval. But this is the nature of shaman room. In the gleaming and glory of the heavy room. These forces of darkness. So the Bible begins with this four results face. First grief in the blue. And the list of water. No matter what we do. Oh man. Yes, hello everybody. Hello. If we haven't met before, I'm Glenn. And I'm Paul. How are you pronouncing that? Paul. I don't know either. Hello, everybody. It is uh it's two days before All Hallows Eve. So yes, perhaps everyone's getting excited for All Saints Day.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I'm sure. All Hallows Day. But uh every every year we roll out uh this this video which uh we we made back in was it 2013 when it first came out? I think I think it might be the first one. Is it really that old? Yeah, it's me. I know, I know. Back back in the day we um I wrote that poem and then 'cause basically ten of those, the guys at Ten of Those, uh Jonathan Carswell in particular, said uh what kind of video resource could we make for Halloween? Which was kind of handing me a poison chalice. Because it's Glenn, do you want to wade in on the whole Halloween and Christians thing? Yep. And uh No, no, I don't really. Um But I think my yeah, my philosophy was let's let's aim for non-Christians and let's try to reach those who aren't in the church uh and and kind of leapfrog over a whole lot of intramural dispute within Christians because Christians take different views on Halloween. Have you noticed that, Paul? Do they? Really? Yeah.
SPEAKER_05No, surely not. Yeah, I mean it's it's very it's a strange one, isn't it? It's very controversial. Um in the UK at least. Right in America, I don't know if people bat an eyelid, do they? It seems much more cult like it's it's much more a part of the culture in America than it is here anyway.
SPEAKER_03It's I think it I think it is shifting in the States, but yeah, traditionally it's it's kind of been, hey, you have a house of horrors.
SPEAKER_05When you say shifting, that people are getting more up in arms about certain Christians.
SPEAKER_03Christians are less comfortable with with Halloween. And and I think Halloween itself has changed. It's you know, it's the second most um uh lucrative festival after Christmas, like for for all the supermarkets.
SPEAKER_05So it's a big money spinner more than anything.
SPEAKER_03It totally is, and and like I w I was just in the park with Ruby the other day and and s all these kids were just talking about Halloween's coming up, and I'm and I must have been at least like a month out from from Halloween coming up, and and that's they're talking about Halloween in a way that I never did.
SPEAKER_05I don't remember, yeah, as a kid. Like we I mean Halloween obviously came round like every year, but I assume so. Yeah, it did happen. Yeah. Um, you know, but we never it there was never a kind of big thing of like, oh we've got to go and do Halloween. And that wasn't just because we're in I I don't just mean in a Christian household, but like even my friends who weren't Christians, it wasn't they weren't really going around doing that, you know.
SPEAKER_03And people people sort of complain trick or treating, it's so American, it's not you know and it is the whole thing, you know, you teach your kids don't take candy from strangers the rest of the year, and then one day a year.
SPEAKER_05And then uh there'll always be someone posting the article as well, this you know, about the like razor blades in the chocolate, you know, like or you know, like the complete when you go on snopes and you it's all hoaxes, you know, but we've got a bit of scaremongering. Yeah, you know, where would we be without that?
SPEAKER_03So it's yeah, it tends to be that Christians kind of take these two views. I either retreat completely and batten down the hatches and pretend you're not in, which is not a lot of people do, Christian on not, when the trick-or-treaters knock. Um or the other thing is just kind of surrender completely to it. Um which I was saying earlier, i it was interesting watching Kate Butley, the the goggle box vicar, um, as she was she was commenting on Halloween a couple of years ago. I remember watching her see something on TV and comment on it, and she she she said something that that actually seems um really uh sensible. She she kind of said, you know, why why do we get up in arms when somebody dresses up like they're Hitler? You know, like like when when people uh at Halloween parties dress up like SS officers, we get up in arms. And yet every Halloween Members of the Royal Family. Congratulations, Harry, by the way. You've come a long way from dressing up like a Nazi. Um but yeah, yeah, we have a problem with that, but then we have no problem with dressing up Jimmy like his Satan. Yeah. Who is orders of magnitude more evil than Hitler? Let it be said. Yeah. So yeah.
SPEAKER_05They'd say that's the difference. Like maybe they'd say make believe, probably. Yeah. That'd be their thing.
SPEAKER_03So the but then there's a problem on both sides of that, because you you then say, uh do we just trivialise evil sort of thing. Which in a sense is the original Christian. Which is kind of what you get at in the video a little bit, isn't it? You mock the devil. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Martin Luther Luther said, uh, if the devil will not yield to uh verses of scripture, um, then you must mock him. That's because he cannot he cannot bear to be mocked. You know, he's he's the proudest of all individuals, is the devil. And so the best way, after after quoting scripture verses, the best way to have a go at the devil is to mock him. And so that's why uh Christians would dress up their kids with pitchforks and tails. Because that's a ridiculous thing. It's not because we think the devil's not.
SPEAKER_05I don't think a lot of people, a lot of Christians and uh know that background to it either, do they? Because they they seem just I think people are just slightly in the dark about uh some of the origins of it and where it's come from and there are kind of history wars about it, like who do you trust on it?
SPEAKER_03And and one of the issues uh I saw in digging into the history of it a little bit is that um the new age want to claim Halloween for themselves and they want to say it's the Sowen thing, S-A-M-H-A-I-N, but in sort of Gaelic it's it's pronounced Sawan. Oh it's it's it looks like Sam Hain. Sam Hain. Yeah, yeah. I used to go to school with Sam Hain. Anyway, but it's pronounced Sawin. Um and so the there are these claims. Isn't he? Right. Yeah. That was Sarah. Um when it's written down. So uh Sowen you know, it is claimed, uh, you know, was this really ancient pagan festival, and that's what Halloween really is. But all the sources for that sort of come in the 1970s from a whole bunch of like new ages who want to claim the pagan roots. And I think far, far beyond far, far before any accounts that we have of Sawin, we have All Hallows Eve, which like literally from the fourth century you have people celebrating All Hallows Eve. Um and they they've shifted the date of when All Hallows Eve is in the calendar, so it wasn't always on the 31st of October, but um so uh but even e like let's let's imagine, let's even imagine that that the New Ages are right, that Sawan was the original thing. Is it the worst thing in the world to then plonk all Hallows Eve on top of it? And then to say, nah nah nah nah nah all hallows day follows all hallows Eve, and the light is stronger than the darkness. So like I I don't so even if there are the the pagan roots to it, and I dispute that, I think it can be quite a good gospel redemption of the whole thing. Yeah to say, yeah, we mock the devil on the on the on the evening, but then we we celebrate the light, you know, when the when the day comes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But that's the it doesn't seem it doesn't seem like in a lot of the conversations I see about this, I mean there doesn't seem to be that level of thought. It's just like here's a c this is a cult and it's bad. Yeah. Um and there's nothing else to it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Which, you know, as as a default instinct, okay, flee the devil. Yeah. You know, and and so, you know, if in if in doubt don't dabble and and the darkness is real and it's frightening and it's scary and it's powerful. Um and so um you know, we need to beware of that. But we also need not to cower in the face of the darkness. And we need to be much more robust in saying, yeah, but the light's stronger, isn't it? And that's why I love like light parties. I think light parties these days are actually they're pretty good approximations of what the ancient practice of all Hello's Day was all about. Yeah. It's basically about saying, yeah, the darkness is scary, but the light is stronger. Um and that'll preach. That'll that'll What's interesting to me is that on this subject, like my three-year-old is because she hasn't seen Star Wars, my three-year-old understands light and darkness better than most people. Because she's pre-Star Wars, she would never assume that light and darkness are these equal opposite forces that are just going back and forth, and you need to find balance between light and darkness. Yeah. You know?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but I I want to dispute that. Yeah, of course you do. See, uh surely bringing balance to the force, I always thought it meant it was the darkness had had set me had unbalanced the force. I never thought it was supposed to be it was supposed to be a balance between good and evil. Not light and dark. I'd always assumed that it was supposed to be light and stuff. I mean this is another topic, really, but We might get it we might get back to it, man. But really, uh I I I think people misinterpret what bringing balance to the force means. It wasn't like we've got to have light and dark. Because because you know, what did uh Obi-Wan say? You were supposed to destroy the Sith. Right join it, you know. Right, okay. So, you know, and even and he thought he was gonna bring balance to the force.
SPEAKER_03So I'm out of my depth, people. I am way out of my depth here. Yeah, don't speak by what you don't know guys, right? But George George Lucas is Buddhist, right? I don't know. Yeah, the light in the darkness. Okay. Yeah, so so which is which again speaks to the whole like darkness is not the same thing as evil in in the Buddhist frame. Um but yeah, okay. Alright. But but it yeah, it is interesting. We whenever you talk about good and evil, people are always saying to me, Ah yeah, if you if you have good, you've got to have evil. And then then they literally follow it up by saying, Because if you've got light, you've got to have dark. And you're like, Hello, not really. Like you you you switch the lights on. Yeah. You don't have to switch the darkness on ne next to it to have the darkness push back against the light. You know, it's it's seems obvious to me, but but I I just think Halloween is a great opportunity for teaching those sort of truths. That that actually there is a shadow, and the shadow is dark and scary. There's a ball valley of the shadow of death, but then you know the light triumphs, and let's you know, let's use the opportunity to see teach that. Yeah, the new day will come.
SPEAKER_05It's the Samwise guarantee, isn't it? And the light will shine out. That's right, and the two towers.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Um Yeah, I mean I think the Halloween thing. Uh I mean I s someone had messaged the other day actually to speak life about Halloween and what to do about it. And and they'd said they were thinking of they were asking if there are any good tracts and things like that, and you know while they all naff and bits and bobs and and I said, well, I I don't know all of them, here's a few. But um they were talking about possibly doing like a reverse trick or treat where they go round their neighbourhood giving stuff to people, not just like Okay, here's a track. Yeah, yeah, I d I don't know. Well, I don't know, like they they would give them something, right? But I just thought, well that's quite a nice reversal of what's going on there, and it creates a conversation, doesn't it? Okay. And people I think people are genuinely surprised when Christians do things like that. What are you doing? Oh bad. Um so it's treat or trick. Yeah. Is it a nice trick or treat? Yeah, I suppose it's like treatment, treat or treat, isn't it? It's just treating people. Um you know, I'd be interested to see if if they they do going around, do just doing good to people.
SPEAKER_03I know. That's crazy. It'll never catch on.
SPEAKER_05What do we think about and I've not I mean I'm not giving it a lot of thought, but you know, people talk about Halloween and they're saying, oh, it's like the gateway, you know, to the occult. You know, like is it the gateway to the occult? Do we think like it you know, people because my view of how a lot of people do Halloween is they just use it as an even adults, they just do it as an excuse to have a party and wear some fancy dress. Sure. Um now of course you're always gonna find examples of you know, just like there's a lot of people celebrating Christmas, but it's not necessarily doesn't mean it wasn't Jesus' birthday at the start. You know, they're not necessarily paid up doing Christian things because they're doing Christmas. Yeah. Just like a lot of people doing Halloween doesn't mean they're doing the work of Satan.
SPEAKER_03No, but it might it might you know, so people coming into a carol service, it might lower their threshold of uh um antagonism to to Christianity and it might make them more we hop we hope it makes them more likely to adopt the Christian thing and maybe the Halloween thing has that negative influence.
SPEAKER_05Maybe it it it's I was thinking more of people at Christmas who don't I mean not talking about go to church or anything, they're just they're just doing Christmas inverted commas there, you know. Yeah, they do the day with no real reference to anything.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. But we hope as Christians that actually they'll take a few steps towards Christ in that and we we hope to take advantage of that. And I wonder whether there are nefarious forces who the same way take advantage of Halloween.
SPEAKER_05I think there's a lot of Christian scaremongering, isn't it? Like overreaction and Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I yeah, so how do we take the darkness seriously while also like promoting the fact that the light is stronger and we have nothing to fear if we walk if we follow Christ and we walk in light and to be the people of light means that we call out darkness, but we're not threatened by it or cowering from it. Um because we've seen something stronger. Christopher Dempsey says, Hello, better late than never. No, no, it's not, Christopher. Next time. Next time. Come on, one o'clock. Although we are uh we are in fact a day earlier. Oh okay, I I'll let you off. I'll let you off. He says his second comment is if the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, and it is, what is the speed of dark? I like that. I like that.
SPEAKER_05See I can't see these comments. Oh really? I thought, you know, I I can I can see your that first comment, but I can't see anything else. I don't know what's going on here. Yeah. Oh, there it is. Now it's there.
SPEAKER_03There it is. What's the speed of Paul Feasy? Significantly less than 186,000 miles per second. Um but uh so the Halloween video, we would love you to use uh the Halloween video, uh, just share it online. Um we're gonna share it out from our page later this afternoon. It'll be um yeah, about four o'clock. Um so just hit that share button, share, share, share, share, share. Um and if you wanna if you want resources like uh uh Paul was talking about uh maybe tracts and that sort of thing, we've actually got um cards that you can give out to trickle treaters that take people to this video. Um and actually, Andy, do you want to show uh our festival's resource pack? If you go to speaklife.org.uk slash festivals, and you'll see all sorts of resources, not only for Halloween, but also for Remembrance Day and for Christmas. And so there you go, you've got the Halloween trick or treat thing. Um so that's the kind of card that you can give away to your friend. You can print off a PDF and and uh and uh uh give those to people. There's also a little three-minute talk uh I've got on there about Halloween that you might want to use in various uh situations, an all-age song called Jesus Our Risen Sun. And then Remembrance Day is coming up, uh obviously Sunday week. Uh we've got um that video that we made to end all wars uh from a couple of years ago, and then I've got uh a kind of a uh a talk that I gave on Remembrance Day 2014, so the beginning of uh World War One, and uh you can go there and uh figure out that uh talk if you want to rip it off, rip off any of this stuff. And then Christmas coming up, Four Kinds of Christmas. Um we've got on there all kinds of graphics that you can use for your PowerPoint uh presentations, uh also for your invitations to church. If you want to theme, you could theme all of our advent around four kinds of Christmas. I know churches that have done that, and there are churches uh that have preached through Are You Scrooge, Are You Shopper, Are You Santa, Are You The Stable, uh, which are the Four Kinds of Christmas. And uh so we've got uh a pack there that talks about um uh uh single sermon uh outline or a four-sermon series outline if you want that. And uh and then we've got uh the other Christmas um pack. In fact, we've got two more Christmas packs. We've got He Came Down, uh again we've got the He Came Down Nativity Play. If you want to um do a special needs nativity play in Rhyming Couplets, uh there it is. Take it, use it, it's yours. And then down we've got uh Meet the Nativity from last year. That was our four-part time traveling Christmas rom com. And uh what?
SPEAKER_05That was a great blur to say time traveling Christmas.
SPEAKER_03Time traveling Christmas rom com. I think we are the only so I'm gonna say we are the best Christmas time traveling rom com out there in the history of time traveling rom-coms. Um and uh if you want to show them in your church or local cinema, uh there are the uh high definition files. See, Andy is just uh our lovely assistant Andy. Modeling them here. Modeling them here. And uh and again, if you want to preach around uh Meet the Nativity, we've got um uh a resource pack there that takes you through either a single sermon that takes you through Meet the Nativity or four sermons that take you through the four characters of Meet Meet the Nativity. And there there's Advent for you. So we've got years worth of Christmas uh resources, we've got uh Halloween stuff, remembrance stuff, and it's all for free. And uh we'd love you to take it and use it. Why don't you share it on on uh social media because uh I know that there will be lots of uh Christian pastors who uh are at their wits' end, what do we do for Christmas? Well, here we go. You can use uh some of these resources, and they are utterly free for you to use. Uh this is what we love to do at Speak Life, so please share the wealth. Yeah, lots of good stuff there. Um on the subject of free, um not everything's free, is it? Sharing the wealth. We've just started a Patreon account uh because I mean Speak Life is uh supported by donations, it's entirely supported by uh by donations, and we tend to be supported by people um who uh are less aware even of our online content. So you guys, obviously, if you're watching us or listening to us on the on the podcast, um you guys are are pretty uh internet literate, but we are supported by uh a demographic. Of people who have been supporting our charity for decades. And my line about this is always that we are we are supported by the people who don't really use us, and we're used by the people who don't really support us. And so Patreon is is a way of getting support from you guys. We've just opened up that page. And uh there it is. It's uh patreon.com slash speaklifeuk. And there it is. Speak Life is creating award-winning media to reach the world.
SPEAKER_05Can you become a You could be the first person? Wow. You could be the first person, couldn't you, to donate.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Tell you what, if you're the first person, we'll send you a free book. How about that?
SPEAKER_05Signed photograph of Glenn and Paul. Yeah. Keep reaching for those stars. Love Glenn.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, how about that? First, the first onto Patreon, and we will um we'll send you a free book. How about that?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and hopefully with you know, we've got plans, haven't we? For the future. Got big plans. You know. Yeah. With a bit of um, hopefully we've exciting things ahead.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, what we what we really want to do here at Speak Life is to be a foundry that forges evangelists and evangelistic resources for the church. Um and I think we're in a unique position to actually um provide creative evangelists with experience and with training um that will set them up for life. Uh I think there are a lot of great training institutions if you want to be a preacher or a youth pastor. There are much fewer opportunities if you want to be an evangelist, and there's very little if you want to work in the creative media uh in in terms of uh evangelistically. So um we'd love to have some interns starting this September who will come along, they'll train with us. You can get a graduate diploma through union with us, uh a university accredited academic theological degree uh over two years. But then alongside studying with us, will you come on mission with us? Will you produce uh resources with us? We'd love to do this together as a team so it's not just Paul and me and Andy. Foundry.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, you know, and I think there's lots of opportunities there. I mean s when we went to the when I was at the Mind, Body and Soul thing the other day, right? Um when it was that Lucy actually said, Oh, you know, good to see you again, thanks for all your videos, you know, pioneering work. And I was like, mm-hmm, is it really? She was just like, Yeah, no one else is doing this. No and like and I thought about it, and I was like, Well but yeah, actually who else is really doing stuff online? Right. And then when we were at the Bathers, some of the guys there were saying, like, oh you guys put out so much stuff, like Yeah, you know, and they were like, How many people are there? Do we? But but actually the the reality is we do put out a lot, given that there's basically only about three of us really here most of the time. Yeah, yeah. You know. And I I'm just struck by if we can get stuff rolling and we get more people in, I just think there's so much more potential of what could be done and a breadth of materials that could go out there. Because at the moment, you know, we we do put out like our it might be a w uh a video a week on a thorny or something, and you know, we park that for a little while, but we'll come back. But that's just what you know, it's really we can only we've only really got the time to do one, right? Yeah, but then of course if others are on board, there's just there's so much more potential for stuff and Yeah. Yeah. Just imagine.
SPEAKER_03Imagine having an intern and like one of them's a great videographer, and one of them's graphic designer, one's an illustrator, one's great with web. Um and yeah, what what's possible people who are good in front of the camera as well. You know, what's what's possible as we go on mission together and we record that as we do live broadcasts, not just from here in our studio, but you know, A, we can refurbish the studio and make it proper, and and B, let's take this show on the road and let's go around student unions and let's let's do a live cast at Southampton University, you know, student union, and you know, and broadcast it around the place. And the sky is the limit, people, and there are there are two point three billion users of Facebook every month. There are one point eight billion YouTube users every month. These are the largest countries on planet earth, and we want to be missionaries uh to those countries, as it were. So can you support us? Um yeah. Andy, do we have anyone supporting us yet? Do we have Where's our thermometer? What are we on now? What are we on?
SPEAKER_05Like anyway, this is like one of those telephones, you know. You get people to ring in, you know.
SPEAKER_03Enough of that. But literally, in like in late years of doing the podcast, we like we like never ask for money. This is like, yeah. So uh apologies for breaking the mould, but uh we'd we'd love we'd love you to partner with us in some of this work. Um so uh we thought about Halloween, um, but all Hallows Eve. October the thirty first. That's not really Halloween, is it? What day is it, Paul? Uh all hallows. All Hallows Eve. Yes. What else what else do we celebrate on October the thirty-first?
SPEAKER_05Let me give you a clue. Hang on, hang on. Reformation. Reformation day. Just for a second there, I'm going, where you where are you going? Where are you going with this?
SPEAKER_03Are we are we not talking about all Hallows Day? Oh yeah, yeah. Reformation Day. So Martin Luther pinned up the th the um I was gonna say 39 articles. Not 39 articles, the 95 Theses. The 95 Theses on All Hallows Eve because it was a massive festival and lots of people would be going through that church door so they'd see it. But uh so we kind of date the Reformation from then. And uh so it'll be the 501st anniversary of uh yeah, that time when Pinterest really mattered. Boom. Boom. Uh and this time last year we uh we put out a series of five videos. What can you can you take us through what these five videos were for?
SPEAKER_05So they were on the the five kind of solars, so the Latin is Latin, isn't it, for alone.
SPEAKER_03Um isn't it hilarious that the Reformation is all about like taking the Bible out of Latin and putting it into the language of the masses? And the way we celebrate it is by speaking in Latin.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, absolutely. So so we we did these five videos on these five solars. So we had uh Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone, um scripture alone, and God's glory alone. Yeah, that's it, isn't it? So we did a series of five videos released over five weeks, but actually you're gonna we're gonna get a clip in a moment, but you're also gonna see them over the next two and a half days. I think from this evening they'll be going out again. So if you've not seen them, you can check them out. Um hopefully you'll find them useful. And and I and I quote, someone said to me about the the faith one, they said they thought it was the best explanation of justification and works. Wow um the relationship between justification, faith and works they'd ever seen.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it is a good it is a really good video. It's it's it's your it was your stuff. It was like Faith Plus. That's obviously why it's so good. No, but it was yeah, it was really good. Check it out. So um yes, not only uh educational, it's also entertaining. No, we like we like to call it edutainable.
SPEAKER_05It's got everything, it's got nickelback references, it's got a lot more to read.
SPEAKER_03And it's got GraceAid.
SPEAKER_05Grace Aid. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Should we have a look? Should we have a look at this one from the Grace episode?
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SPEAKER_05What are you doing? Just doing a doing a video, the um the Grace One. The Grace One.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's got nothing to do with grace.
SPEAKER_05What then? What is Grace then?
SPEAKER_03Well, it's it's not a thing, that's for sure. Not a thing. Whatever. Grace is not a thing. That's the power aid view of grace, or what I like to call the cheese sandwich view of grace. Do you remember last time we thought about David and Goliath? David turns up to the front lines with some cheese sandwiches for his brothers, and he gives them the bread and the cheese. And sometimes people think that God's grace is like that. God gives you stuff that helps you to win your battles. But that is not grace in the biblical sense. It's certainly not grace in the reformers' sense. When the reformers spoke about being saved by grace alone, it's not a cheese sandwich that helps you win the day. You need your king, you need your champion, Christ, to come and win the battle for you. That's what grace is. Grace is not a thing.
SPEAKER_05And grace is not infused. That's another mistake people make about grace. The medieval church held the view that grace was something infused into us, like the grace aid or the cheese sandwich. Something that gives us the get up and go to change our behaviour and make us more just. But rather than grace being a thing that enables us to help ourselves, grace is the gift of Christ Himself, and it's He who saves us. Think of Ephesians chapter 2, verse 5, where we're told that God made us alive when we were dead. It's not that we were dead and were given something to start making ourselves alive. No, we're we're told that God made us alive. Being made alive comes from outside of us and it's something done to us. Can you imagine Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus trying to get Lazarus to save himself?
SPEAKER_04Lazarus! Come on!
SPEAKER_03Come on, Lazarus. Lazarus! You're making me look bad. Fine, you're on your own.
SPEAKER_05You know, we had a go.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05That feels like such a long time ago now. Yeah. It feels longer than longer than the year it was. A year. Man. So uh that we were new so new to it then.
SPEAKER_03I know. Now we're pros, obviously. Um so yeah, that's uh that's one of the videos, and and what I what I loved about doing especially the grace and the faith, is making sure that we see that Jesus Himself is the gift of God, who is offered freely, which is what grace is, and Jesus Himself is what we receive in faith. Yeah. So often we just think of grace is a thing that we get from God. And then faith is the thing that we drum up as though like, how do I pay for this thing called grace? Let me try and find this thing called faith within me.
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_03It's like, no, it's just all about Jesus. It's like God freely gives me Jesus, that's grace. I receive Jesus, that's faith. You know, but it's not about a thing, it's about Jesus. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think there's I think there was there's lots of good stuff in without blowing our own intro, but there's lots of good stuff in those videos which I think you know is really helpful things to be reminded of, you know, that have come from the Reformation, so you know it's not things we've particularly come up with, you know. But um stuff that actually, as in your everyday kind of Christian walk, um can be really encouraging and helpful. I think also I think for some non-Christians there's useful things in there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. No, I I I really hope so.
SPEAKER_05Not just for the Christian.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and so like the the controlling metaphor for the whole thing is David and Goliath. But actually, with David and Goliath, what you have is the Christ alone, you know, David is Christ with a little C because he's just been anointed in 1 Samuel 16, in 1 Samuel 17, what he does as Christ is he alone wins the victory. So it's Christ alone wins the victory. And you know, he he he does it purely because of what he's like, not because of what his brothers are like. His brothers are cowards and fools, and Saul is a coward and a fool. But purely because of what he's like, as a gift, he wins their battle for them. That's what grace is. And then faith is not anything that the the brothers contribute. Faith is just looking to their champion and going, ah, he's done it. Well, hey, you know, faith is faith is looking. So anyway, that's the that's the um all you need series. Check them out on Facebook and uh and do uh share them with your friends. Um couple of other things that um I've been doing this week, I've done a couple of YouTube chats um with guys who've gotten in touch. Um both of them have happened to be uh atheists, and uh they've wanted to talk to me about morality and the reason why I believe in God. And uh we thought we'd just have a look at a couple of clips of these um chats that we've had, and uh and actually these chats they went on for like an hour and a half in each case. And um so in the first instance, we'll we'll have a look at a couple of things I believe. Um uh a couple of things that I say to Tom Jump and a couple of things he says back when he asks me about uh why it is that I believe in God, and I basically in the course of the hour and a bit, I I give him two two reasons that we get our teeth into. Um the the first reason I I say I believe in God is that well, for a start, let's not assume that materialism is the obvious default option. Well let's not assume that well, obviously we all know that the world is just matter in motion, and then Christians have to come in and they have to prove that there's anything in addition to matter in motion. I I I just think that's a really silly way of setting up the debates, as though what is obvious is naturalistic science and that the world is a grand machine that grinds along. Um and then you've got to kind of prove that there are any extra items in the universe. I just think that's that's silly. I think what's most obvious about the world is that I am a a conscious mind who's using rationality and language and emotion and rhetoric to communicate with you and other rational minds according to language. And and the what's what's most um what's closest to us in our experience is not even the material universe. What's closest to us are are things like metaphysics and minds and morals and music and mercy and all these kinds of immaterial M's. Yep. Um that that means that materialism is the least plausible account of of our reality. And I I happen to think the triune god is the most. Um so that's the bulk of uh the first conversation that I had with Tom, and let's let's have a clip from that.
SPEAKER_00From my perspective, if morality really was from a personal source, it would seem like that personal source would have created the most moral world possible and there wouldn't be all of this suffering. So it seems more likely to me that it was just uh like a superlaw like gravity that tends to make us inclined towards one certain outcome, but it didn't actually give us that. Because if it did, why wouldn't it have just made the most perfect world from the start?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and in you know, and I guess Spinoza's you know comeback was I guess this must be the best of all possible worlds, um, which is not the that's not the direction that I take things in, but I I I tend to think our experience of this world in all its uh ugliness and pain and horror um is exactly uh an experience of fallenness, um that every evil we experience is a privation of the good, and therefore it seems to speak of the kind of story that the Bible has, that we began with goodness and we have fallen into this hell of a pit. Um that's not obviously the end of the story. If if God, this most loving being um is to continue to love his creation, then he's going to want to enter into the pit to redeem us and and bring us to the best of all possible worlds. But I don't I I don't think we have any reason for thinking that there can't be a good reason for God to allow a fall if indeed his intention is to redeem and bring us to the happily ever after. So th that's that's some of the shape of my response to the question of evil and theodicy and that sort of thing. I I don't know what your reaction to that is.
SPEAKER_00So from my perspective, I think that if there was an all-good, all-powerful God, he would have created a world where each individual gets to decide for themselves both the positives and the negatives of the world in which they live. And in a world like that, any benefit or any reason God may have for making a fallen world would just be optional. So we wouldn't have to, we wouldn't force us against our will into this world. He would give us the option, and that would seem to be a more morally superior way the world could have been.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean it's it's always difficult by the nature of the case um to say what God could have and should have done um in in these sorts of situations. But I do find it interesting that I think we have millions of experiments where people try to tell stories that are meaningful stories that that sort of resonate with the human heart. And in none of these stories does it go, you know, once upon a time there was a kingdom of light and life and love, and everyone was happy the end. Um, you know, I've got a three-year-old daughter, and I tell that story to her, and she says, that's not how stories go. And she's right, stories, you know, there's a kingdom of light and life and love, and then the dragon comes and steals the princess, and then you know, the the knight has got to go and save her and you know, go go through sacrifice and a you know fight to the death and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and and then there's a happily ever after. And I I just think um we do have experience of trying to speak worlds into existence. It's called storytelling, um novel writing, plays, cinema. Um and in all these stories that we tell, we we do tend to have um uh a happy beginning of fall, a hero uh fight to the death, and uh and a and a happily ever after. And I um you know that's that's not a uh a watertight philosophical argument, but it is pointing to the fact that that when we do run the experiments, when we do try ourselves to speak worlds, that's the kind of shape those worlds take.
SPEAKER_00I agree. I think that uh suffering should definitely be an option, but I think it should be voluntary suffering. If you had the option to choose how much suffering you were going to experience or what kind of world you wanted to live in, you could choose to live in a world exactly like ours as designed by God with all the positives and the negatives. The only difference would be is those people who don't want to live in what they see as a very immoral, painful world, they would have the option to choose to live in one that they would prefer. And that seems like a much more moral outcome. And it seems like no matter what the reason God could have to have any other world, because that would always be an option in this world, because you can choose whatever world you want, then for there can't ever be a reason he couldn't provide this world. Because any benefit is going to be an option.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean I have to think about that, but I I mean one thing that occurs to me is that um a character in a play who chooses not to be part of that play, but to in some sense be the author is not really being a character in a play. Um if there is going to be an author to the play, and if we are not that author, it's I don't know, it seems to me that the author making the character into the the one who does a kind of a choose your own adventure that is to have a not an author-character relationship, you know?
SPEAKER_00But wouldn't the author be immoral if they forced the character to go through a lot of suffering they didn't want? Like wouldn't it be immoral for me to write a character who was a personal being who could experience morality and just have them just experience immense suffering that they never volunteered for against their will? Wouldn't that be horribly immoral?
SPEAKER_03Well that would that would make every story writer immoral. Um I don't think so. I don't you know I don't think Shakespeare was immoral for for writing Hamlet, you know, poor Hamlet, but um you know the the Christian version of that story would would be that Shakespeare writes himself into that play in order to take the tragedy onto himself and to turn it into a comedy and to turn it into a happily ever after. And I think when you're telling that sort of story, um I I don't think the morality of Shakespeare is in question at that point.
SPEAKER_00I I would disagree because I would think that if Shakespeare had the power to actually create living beings who could experience morality and suffering and he deliberately placed them into a story like that, I think that would be incredibly immoral. I think it's not immoral because it's just a story and there's no one actually being hurt by it, but if you could actually write a story that could hurt people, I think that would be immoral to do so. No different than like a gun or shooting someone.
SPEAKER_03No, I don't well yeah, I I I disagree. I think I think if we are um if we are talking about the author of life himself, um then we are talking about someone with whom we have an asymmetric relationship. Um we we do not exist on the same level of being as the author. We we are characters in the story being told. Um and I guess if we want to assess the character of the author, we have to take into account the shape of the story, and we have to take into account, I think, on Christianity, we have to take into account that he enters into the tragedy to turn it into the comedy and and offers all characters the happily ever after. So if you want to know more uh about that conversation, um Uh there is uh a long conversation. Uh it's on our Facebook page. We've uh we've linked to the YouTube video there that you can watch. Um we also get into a second reason why I I I I believe in Christianity, and the second reason is Jesus.
SPEAKER_05Always a good one. Yeah. Always a good reason. Probably should have led with that one. I was gonna say what to lead with, really.
SPEAKER_03Number one, Jesus. Yeah, I didn't do a lot of thinking in advance of the the video. I just sort of sat down and it's like, so why do you believe? I'm like, oh, okay. And away we go. But um, yeah. So yeah, my set my second reason why why I'm a Christian, which should have been my first, is well, here is this guy who comes into the middle of human history, and he's the kind of character who writes himself, he is Shakespeare written into Hamlet in order to take Hamlet's tragedy on himself and give him the comedy. Um and I think if there is gonna be meaning to this world, then Jesus is exactly the sort of person you need uh in this in this reality to make sense of this reality. He's the one who comes from beyond, and yet he's here to rescue us. Um and so in in Jesus you've got this interesting overlap between someone who definitely, definitely claims to be from beyond, and he definitely, definitely belongs to this historical moment. Um and so you know, really he's kind of the only candidate for mediator that you could possibly imagine. There are a number of people who've claim to be the Son of God, but we don't tend to take them seriously, we tend to section them. Um there are a number of people who wield power in the world and have great followings, but they don't say that they are God because they would lose those followings, and and somehow Jesus, the most famous man who ever lived, also claims to be God. I think we should sit up and take notice of him. So Yeah. Absolutely. And you can see what Tom said back to that. Um just go to our Facebook page and you'll uh you'll find that conversation there. Yeah, check out the whole conversation. Breath and then a second conversation I had uh was with Adam from Think Club, and uh really enjoyed this because uh uh uh we're both fans of Jordan Peterson. Um uh he and I. Ding. It's a Peterson Bell. He's got another mention. Uh we do mention Jesus more. Number one reason I'm a Christian. Jordan Peterson. Jesus. Jesus. Well, it just is interesting that how many people who I say, why are you in church now? when they say Jordan Peterson. So that is interesting. But so we've got a shared uh a shared appreciation for Jordan Peterson, also a shared appreciation for a guy called Jonathan Haid, who we've mentioned before. Uh we mentioned him on a on a thorny question uh recently, or in in fact a a video about Heyman Mater. Um Jonathan Haidt is also uh an atheist, same as uh well, Jordan Peterson, who knows who Jordan Peterson believes? Uh he doesn't know what he believes. But uh Jonathan Haidt is uh a very secular person um who uh as well as a he's a moral psychologist, and he wrote a book called uh The Righteous Mind that talks about w how it is that we make our assessments of the world. And uh, like all the Christians I know love this book, you know, every sort of Christian leader um says, you know, said to me for years, you need to read the righteous mind before I finally read the righteous mind, and and then I could see what they were they were talking about. So we start off having a conversation about uh Jonathan Haidt and the Righteous Mind, and then we get into the issue of uh morality uh and whether the Darwinian framework can give us a proper grounding for morality. So let's let's have a look at this conversation with Adam from Think Club. Um and I mentioned sort of Jonathan Haidt in that regard, um, that there does seem to be, with a certain brand of new atheists, um, a kind of a this enlightenment understanding that we are these rational individuals who kind of read the data completely neutrally. We just you know scan things like a barcode scanner and just blip blip blip and in goes the data and we process it. Um which I think John.
SPEAKER_01You don't buy that, do you?
SPEAKER_03No. Okay. No, and and Christianity has never ought not to buy that.
SPEAKER_01Christianity as a philosophy seems great to me because you're talking about how man is you know in is imperfect, and and the idea behind Christ is that he is perfect and that we're striving to perfect ourselves, but we always fall short. So as a philosophy, I think Christianity is great.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I think there's so much overlap between Jonathan Hyatt and what Christians have have always been saying. You know, every Christian I know, um, sort of in Christian leadership, says you've got to read the righteous mind, you've got to understand.
SPEAKER_01Oh, really? Interesting.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a he's he's kind of a superstar among Christians. Um of a certain sort of Augustinian bent.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if that kind of um I actually I actually just met Jonathan Haidt uh last week. Yeah, yeah. He is kind of a superstar, he definitely is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and so so he kind of frames things Hume's way, um, but I think Hume himself um was drawing on a lot of Christian tradition, he was obviously rejecting a lot of Christian tradition as well, but that the whole idea that moral intuitions come first and then rationalizations come later. Um I mean that's just that's just Christianity 101. We are self-justifying fools, we are, as Augustine said, curved in on ourselves, or Martin Luther in the Reformation, he said that we have a real bondage of the will, which is not that you you can't do what you want to do, it's that you can only do what you want to do, and you can't really shift what you want to do. Your heart is like the elephant in Jonathan Heights' analogy, and your your brain just yabbers along like the rider. And and Luther was saying that back in the Reformation. Um another guy, sort of uh Archbishop Cranmer, who wrote the Book of Common Prayer, and I'm an Anglican minister, so I use the Book of Common Prayer on a weekly basis. Um but he sort of summarized their anthropology, or or rather, someone summarized his anthropology as what the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.
SPEAKER_01Interesting.
SPEAKER_03And there's a great there's a great sort of dialogue online with Jonathan Heid speaking to um some Christians uh in New York. Uh there's a ministry called uh Mockingbird, and uh and they they bring him that sort of phrase from Cranmer's anthropology. And uh yeah, and they're they're just like two hearts beating together. This this it's I I find it a profoundly Christian anthropology uh to say that we are not these rational individuals who calmly and neutrally assess the data and formulate our ideas. Uh we are tribal, we are self-justifying, we employ motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, all that kind of stuff, I think, is there from page one of the Bible, really.
SPEAKER_01So Peterson and Haidt both have a very materialist view of morality. I mean, if you look at Jonathan Haidt's moral foundations theory, he's proposing a very mechanistic view of morality. And one of the things that I think the anti-theists get wrong at their own peril is there are there are answers to these questions from a very materialist perspective that they're just unwilling to accept. And I think ironically, the one of the reasons they're unwilling to accept it is that moral foundations theory really puts a lot of evidence behind the fact that Christianity is a like time-tested uh evolutionary model for for philosophy that's that's really adaptive, and their whole goal is to dispel Christianity with the idea that somehow this is going to make the world a more rational place, which I just think is kind of a fool's errand. So I think their more their moral blindness towards moral foundations theory or or Peterson talks about it in terms of personalities, I think really does them a disservice. But I I'm curious what your take is on that materialist mechanism view.
SPEAKER_03As I look around the world, there are there are things that I don't think fit easily into a purely materialistic frame. And I think morals is one of them. I think the fact that we have minds is another, the fact that we have aesthetics and music and beauty is another, um the fact that we have logic and rationality um is another. I I I just think that the kind of metaphysical furniture that there is in the universe um uh is not best represented as basically material with these emergent properties coming out of uh just uh matter in motion.
SPEAKER_01I think the the this multi, you know, very textured universe that we live in is is best accounted for um by saying that there is a kind of reality called moral truth, and there's a kind of reality called material, you know, materialistic science, and there's a there's a kind of um reality out there called aesthetics and beauty, and there's a I I mean I understand what you're saying about how grounding your morality in a supernatural being is helpful, and I completely agree. And I think from a mess mechanistic point of view, the evidence bears that out. But I I I don't I guess the question that I really have is why I mean I'm not a moral relativist. I'm not gonna say that the burning the widow is is okay. It's not okay. But there's rational reasons why it's not okay, and there's rational reasons why uh why Christianity passed like surpassed that because we got rid of that practice, it made our morality more uh evolutionarily successful. Like r evolution is very much driven by reason, calculating reason, right?
SPEAKER_03I well, I I do wonder whether evolution might undermine reason, though. In in terms of if if my mind has evolved purely uh in order to survive, then it is not evolved so much to respond to truth as to um win. As you know.
SPEAKER_01And so That's correct, yes. Truth is not important as far as survival and reproduction goes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So why does that not make you um very suspicious of your mind and very suspicious of what you would call rationality if your mind has purely been evolved in order to win rather than in a in order to find the truth?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's the separation that I would make would be between perception, my my personal perception, and actually what is going on in the physical world. In the physical world, I think mathematically we can calculate exactly what's happening with evolution, but my perception is always obviously going to be tainted.
SPEAKER_03So we had a free-ranging conversation across a whole bunch of things uh for about an hour and twenty minutes. So once again, you can go to uh Facebook and see uh the link to that YouTube video. Um but I think where we got to um on that issue of why trust your mind. I think that's that's what I've taken away from the conversation. Um because it does it does seem to me if my brain has been evolved purely to survive, it really hasn't been evolved to seek the truth. Um and and I think that that becomes a problem, you know. Why do I trust my rationality? Why why would I even trust my reasoning about evolution?
SPEAKER_05Well yeah, because he seemed to agree with you. Yes, it's adapted for winning, not for truth. But then you said there's a distinction for him. At least my understanding of what you said there was that you know there are things which are empirical things like maths in the world that you can measure and stuff, and then there are the perceptions which he's saying, yeah, we could be doubtful perhaps about I think that's kind of what he was getting at. Yeah. But uh I suppose why why would you think your mind could even weigh up the empirical stuff?
SPEAKER_03Right. You know. I think I think that's exactly right. I think I think it's a universal acid. I think I think if you if you think that all that's going on in life is the struggle for survival, I think that corrodes morality um in a in a pretty devastating way. I think it also corrodes reason in a pretty devastating way. Um because I d I think uh it means that there isn't this pure sphere in within my mind that is able to access the truth out there. Maybe there is a truth out there, but if my mind has not been evolved to access truth or to respond to truth, but actually only to win, then uh yeah, I really don't see why we why we trust our minds and and and it's not that there could be a world out there and that's the real thing that I can hold on to. The only thing that I'm holding with is my mind, right? If if the entirety of my mind is not a truth-seeking organ, but is in fact just a survival in a uh uh uh a survival-making organ, then yeah, this is Alvin T Alvin Plantinga's uh big argument against naturalism and uh and I I I think it's I think it's devastating, but um yeah, I'm sure Adam's got further further comebacks on that and I really in in enjoyed my uh my conversation with Adam and uh hope we uh get a chance to do it again. Yeah. We should we should we should do an away and a home leg. You know, I was I was a I was away for for that leg on his channel.
SPEAKER_05I actually thought my internet was broken when I was watching it because it was two people having a civil conversation about something on YouTube. Like there was no smack talk, you know, like even the comments were pretty the comments section is pretty uh pretty respectful.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So I think Adam's done a great job of because you know, it to one degree you're not responsible for your commenters and you're you're not responsible for your audience and what they do, but but I think it it does speak well of That's how I feel about love.
SPEAKER_05I'll speak loud to audience. That's right.
SPEAKER_03Can't be held responsible for Chris Dempsey and his tardiness for a start. But um but yeah, no, I really enjoy my my chat with Adam and I I yeah, I I really like conversations where like you could have conversations with two people who disagree about an issue. Um and you do get the two sides of things, and that can be helpful, but I really like conversations where you get two people who you would not expect to agree.
unknownSure.
SPEAKER_03To agree. You know, th there was that really refreshing, unbelievable episode where Tom Holland and Tom Wright were on together. Yeah. And so Tom Holland, just like a cultural Christian, but he he's not a believer, doesn't go to church. Yeah, yeah. Um and you know, former Bishop of Durham, Tom Tom Wright, and and yet they were just they were just like two hearts beating together on the issue of the the historical Christ, on the issue of the the impact of Christianity on the West. And it was just such a wonderful conversation. So so convers I I think we need to see more conversations where people just uh are in not two people who you'd expect to agree agreeing, but because that's just an echo chamber, but but but two people who you wouldn't expect to agree finding common ground. I think that's that's quite a quite a good way forward. And I'd always I'd yeah, I'd uh uh maybe I shouldn't give away all my thoughts, but I but but I would l I would love to see a show where you kind of uh uh put people in each other's shoes and you ask them, can can you literally give the other person's argument? Like what Jordan Peterson said. The steel steel man the other person's you know, I'd I'd yeah, I'd love to see more and more of that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it was really good. I I enjoyed watching it. And I thought he'd there were some interesting bits in there, like like his his view of uh the kind of anti-theists and how he he quite wanted to distance himself from them. Right, right, right. And I thought it was interesting you said he said the new well Christianity is a time tested moral philosophy, but actually the new atheists can't engage with that because all they want to do is tear it down. Right. So they can't even acknowledge any goodness. Right, right. So that so they won't even look at a materialistic um kind of the evidence. They will look at the evidence. Yeah, they w they're not even prepared to give a materialistic reason for why this morality might have grown up because they're too busy trying to tear down that and I think someone I mean it wasn't on that video, it was on one of our other videos, someone has uh quoted something about uh Sam Harris, you know, said as an ideologue, you know, he he never understand the nuance of the Bible or Christianity. So in a sense, you know, you you can't uh you can never get this discussion past a certain point.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I think I think therefore Jordan Peterson needs new conversation partners, that's what a lot of people are saying. And and maybe Jonathan Haidt, why do why do we you know recommend Jonathan Haidt as a as a conversation partner for him? And he he certainly has d done dialogues with with Haidt before. Um but yeah, uh so I I just think people should just be I just let's be m more curious. Let's all be more curious. Why why is it that the West has built this kind of civilization? I don't think you can say because of the climate or the terrain of Europe. I don't think that's a convincing argument. You definitely can't say because of the ethnicity of Europeans. Like I mean, first East Asians are smarter than than Europeans, like in every kind of I I IQ test that's done. So um it's gotta be this story, it's gotta be the Jesus story that has actually made the the West. It's you know, the Bible that's built our world. So be more curious about why on earth why on earth would it be this story that's that's kind of built the world and and why on earth would it be human beings who were the only ones who are sentient who had this moral sense. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And and maybe maybe I misinterpreted what was being said, but I mean it struck me that a lot of it came down to you know, he felt uh you you both agreed here's this good uh system uh but you think it's true and he thinks it's just a kind of uh he thinks it's true in the sense that he thinks it's true in the sense that it's just it's it's evolved and it's the best thing out there. Yeah. But I'm not sure uh whether you quite got around to um the the the deeper question of well, but is it actually true? You know, like it is could it is this Jesus there's all very well talking about the Jesus story and he was saying I can see how the Jesus story is a good motivational story. Yeah. But maybe there is an opportunity to push deeper and say, but yeah, but is did this happen? Right. Was he that person? Right. Did the things he that are written about him actually happen? Did he do these things? Right. Yeah. Because then that changes the conversation a bit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't know, did we did you ever quite get into that? I had to watch it quite quickly.
SPEAKER_03So No, no, and uh yeah, so if we have another conversation, I'd love to get into that. He said he grew up Christian and and sort of then moved away from it. But then by the end of the conversation, he said he hadn't really been to church. Yeah, I know. I don't know if I don't know if he meant hadn't been to church since then or whether he he'd ever gone to church for any length of time. I don't know. So it'd be really, really interesting to look at that. Um but I but I think true, if you're a materialist, um, has to be in the scientific or in the logical realm. Um and I guess I would just want to say there are other kinds of truths. You know, there might be historical truth that you need to assess in a different kind of way, and there might be moral truth that you need to assess in a different way, and there might be aesthetic truth that you need to assess in a different way. And um so there are different ways of assessing truth. And I I think you kind of you kind of tie your hands you you tie at least one hand behind your back when you sort of say the only ingredients in my universe are matter in motion. That's the only thing. And therefore, that's what's true, and then everything else is just, you know, in inverted commas true. Everything else is just metaphorically true. Uh and so we we we tended to have that that kind of argument. And so for me, I was saying, look, when you reach for the language of metaphorical truth, I think what you're really wanting to do is to say that there's a moral realm that is just as real as the mathematical realm and the material realm, but it's different and it's assessed differently. Whereas he was just wanting to say, no, what's really real is the mathematical and the material, and we don't have a space for the moral realm. Um but yeah, Barry Barry Cooper, um who's been on the show before, he he watched uh our discussion and and he said that you know the difference between you two. He said, Glenn, uh you say it's true, that's why it works. Whereas he says it works, that's why it's in inverted commerce true. I think yeah, I think that's a really good summary of of where we got to. But um yeah. Have have a watch, have a share, and see if it gets some conversations going uh on your social media uh platforms. That would be great. Yeah. Awesome. Well that will do us. It's 2.05. Golly. Golly gosh. Uh so look out online for uh the Halloween video. Do share it uh among your friends. Do look out for the all you need videos. Um and do look out for another piece of uh uh media coming out from the Brefos uh conference that we went to last week. Or is it two weeks ago? Um anyway, a while ago. Two weeks ago. Two weeks ago. Uh an interview with Professor John Wyatt, Professor of Neo Neonatal uh Pediatrics. And uh yeah, I love that that was my my favourite video to do, really. Um so that's gonna come out on That's Thursday evening o'clock hitting Facebook. Excellent. Um then this will come out on Friday as a podcast. Absolutely. Fantastic. Is there anything more to to cover? Any other business? Any other business. I don't think so.
SPEAKER_05I think we've we've mentioned quite a lot today. We've got through a lot of stuff as always. We've got through it all.
SPEAKER_03Brilliant. And Christopher Dempsey, still struggling with Patreon. Keep going. Keep going, Christopher Dempsey.
SPEAKER_05Someone else will swoop in and get that book.
SPEAKER_03If you really want a book, just go and buy one. No, no. Keep going. Go to patreon.com slash speaklifeuk and uh get it for yourself. All right, that'll do us for today. See you later. Thanks everyone. See ya. Bye bye.