SPEAKER_03

There is a secret cabal ruling the world, and we're here to tell you how to deal with all of that. My name is Glenn Scriveno. Welcome to the live cast. And with me as ever, there is Paul Fizzy.

SPEAKER_04

Hello, yes, that is me. Paul Feasy, I would like to say. Not Paul Fizzy. So YouTube, the YouTube auto captions did me wrong last week. And uh someone sent me a picture of the uh the live cast last week with myself saying hello, I'm Paul Fizzy. Yes, which then garnered quite a lot of comments.

SPEAKER_03

Well especially because the freeze frame it you did seem to be eking out some kind of fizz. Like something was fizzing out of me. Yes. It seemed to be quite fizzy. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and so um now I'm stuck with that. And actually all all Sunday at church I had people coming up, or from a distance, a social distance, yes. Making references to my fiziness. Wow.

SPEAKER_03

If you want to start a rap career, you could be P fizzle. P fizzle P to the A to the U to the L.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Yeah. And well I uh someone suggested I should just start using the phrase uh get busy with the fizzy. That's what we're doing here today, people. It's time to get busy with the fizzy. Yeah, let's get livey with the scrivy. I don't know. But I thought actually at the end, when I finished, like when I do my mic drop, I can just look at the camera and say, fizzle out.

SPEAKER_03

It's better to fizzle out than to fade away. Um I say I say scrivy getting livey, but we're not live again. And uh and we do need to apologize for this. Um we are we are getting the gear in place so that we can go live. But uh the the thing is, when you get such cool gear, you then need to have other gear that goes with the cool gear that you've got in order for it all to work together. So uh very soon we'll be going live and we'll be receiving your top chat comments uh along the way. We really miss those. Um but we thought we'd do a little bit of a mail mailbag to begin with. Uh, before we get onto the secret cabal that is ruling the world and uh discuss conspiracy theories together, we uh wanted to talk about the last couple of videos that we've done. And uh two weeks ago we did a live cast on Christian atheism, drawing on the wisdom of Slavoj Zizek and Douglas Murray and Tom Holland, and attracting all the viewers from YouTube who love getting their stuff.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and I mean I've only just had a quick look and I hadn't realised it had garnered such a response. I think it's got about 257 comments. Yeah. Um, which I'd not realised at all. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I've been going down into YouTube comments and uh You're a braver man than I. I know you usually YouTube comments, well sometimes YouTube comments can be the scuttling underbelly of the internet. But on this occasion, there were lots of people who are very glad to have found us and subscribed to us for the first time. So if you're new to Speak Life, then hello. And uh you'll get plenty more material like uh we just um created in terms of Christian atheism because we're just about to start reset, where we're interviewing people like Douglas Murray and like Tom Holland, and we're talking to them about how Christianity has built the West and what do we do if we've walked away from Christianity into a meaning crisis. Is there a way back? We think there is a way back. Uh hitting the reset button and going back to the beginning, to our ancient origins stories in Genesis. So we're really looking forward uh to that. We were hoping to have our uh Tom Holland uh interview ready by last Friday. Uh with uh again uh with with a few um a few kinks in the hose. Um we should be able to uh release it this week and uh and kick off a series where we've got sixteen interviews, seven episodes, and we'll be trying to get the best of biblical scholarship and the best of cultural analysis to figure out this meaning crisis and whether Genesis can still still speak today. So that was two weeks ago. We looked at uh Christian atheism, and then last week uh we looked at Cutties uh that very controversial film launched on uh Netflix very recently, and there's been a bit of uh feedback on that as well. What what are people saying in the mailbag?

SPEAKER_04

Uh yeah, so um number of people just glad to be having the conversation um and uh good to be hearing some kind of discussion around it that's positive in the sense of drawing something from it rather than uh just kind of shouting at it. Um I guess one thing that came up was uh i is who can comment on this? Right. Um so there are a few people who who felt that the it the story is a woman's story, a a female story, and therefore as two men, we shouldn't really be commenting on it or we've somehow missed missed the point. Um so I mean I I think I I I I'm not sure it came up in the actual live cast. Um I'm not sure I think we discussed it, but it may not have come into the actual final cut. But you know, we did talk at one point about us both being parents of girls. Yeah. You know, so we've got four girls between the two of us. Um so and and we felt therefore actually that there is a relevance to our discussion as fathers, uh that you know, talking about this thing where actually we're raising daughters in this kind of environment.

SPEAKER_03

Um where in the story the absence of Amy's father is actually a huge deal and and his terrible behavior, um his inability to limit his own sexual desires for the sake of others leads to a lot of pain for Amy and leads her to waltz off into sexualized, secular social media life um that that that actually you know and ends up dominating her in terrible ways. And even the director said that actually the sins of the father um were were quite significant in the telling of the story. And so, you know, I can see how if we're just two guys talking about the experience of an 11-year-old girl, what do we know? That's true. But I think the way we talked about it was to actually address things to men in particular, and to for men to get their acts together. So hopefully, hopefully we can say that thing to men, and others can say other things to women and Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_04

And w we are by no means the only people having these conversations. There's plenty of other people out there having conversations, so I mean obviously there are other voices on it, and that's that's absolutely fine. Um you know, and I I I think at the end of the day, I mean I'm quite nervous as well of of saying only these people can have an opinion on this or these people can have an opinion on that, because to me that that that's quite a modern idea that doesn't seem yeah just doesn't seem to stack up. It's not sustainable. I mean Well no, and also you you drive it down to the point we could have had a we could have had a woman on, I suppose, who who could have spoken here in the in the flesh. Um but you know, w would would she have reflected the the life of an 11-year-old Muslim girl in a dance troupe in France?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Where'd you draw the line? Yeah, and I'm not trying to be facetious with that. I mean I'm genuinely I genuinely think that's the level you can reach where you think, how on earth do you get anyone to talk about these things?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and we we did play clips from the director and what she wanted to get out of the film, and so we were trying to interact with with her view and and take her view seriously. Um and we also, interestingly, in um uh an interview I did uh a few days earlier than the live cast, I was interviewing Catherine Burbel Singh and I asked her about cuties, and she gave her opinion uh about cuties on on that program. So uh this is not in any way, shape, or form, attempting to eliminate or you know, erase the the voice of of women on these issues. Um but we're just saying let's because different people can speak from different uh perspectives, let's have more conversations, not less. And uh I look forward to hearing different opinions on cuties and and hopefully others can look forward to hearing some dads talk about dad stuff. Sure. You know. So that was Christian Atheism and Cutties. And uh, if you're not subscribed on YouTube, then you can go to Speak Life Media and subscribe to us in the link below. That would be great. Uh, we want to talk about the secret cabal that is ruling your world. Um because in the news again, uh QAnon uh has hit the headlines here in the UK and uh in the Observer newspaper over the weekends, there was a story about QAnon and not only how um popular or prevalent it is in the US, but actually there are instances of QAnon having uh an effect here in the UK. Um tell us what what what was the Observer article saying? Sure. Well, so I found one from The Guardian.

SPEAKER_04

Don't know if it was uh They are the same people, aren't they?

SPEAKER_03

Are they? I think on the weekends The Guardian becomes the Observer. Oh if we were live right now, we could be corrected as we go.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, absolutely. So yes, uh so QAnon is uh what's supposedly this far-right conspiracy that says there's this uh cabal of Satan worshipping pedophiles running a global child trafficking uh sex trafficking ring and that's plotting against Donald Trump who's battling them, uh, which will lead to a day of reckoning involving the mass arrest of journalists and politicians. And that day is sometimes called the the storm or the great awakening. So this seems to have started off kind of about three years ago, back on uh the kind of forum uh 4chan with this anonymous uh figure called Q, uh who posted, and they claimed to kind of be someone who had high-level security clearance um somewhere in the US and kind of posted quite cryptic messages and things. And they claimed to have this kind of classified information um about Trump, uh the Trump administration and his opponents and stuff like that. Um and you know, there seem to have been over time, I think 4,000 posts uh known as QDrops, which have kind of fuelled the growth of this kind of narrative. And it and lots of things are linked to it, so anti-vaccine stuff, anti-kind of 5G conspiracies, uh, anti-Semitic, anti-kind of immigrant kind of tropes and stuff like that. Um, and kind of saying that the people behind this are the liberal elites, so people in Hollywood and uh democratic politicians and other kind of high-ranking officials. Um and this is all kind of going on behind the scenes and it's hidden away, and they keep it secret. Um so I guess stuff like um maybe maybe the Epstein, you know, that kind of stuff. People would link those kind of things and say, look, there's this shadowy thing. Pedophilia is quite a big thing. It's a massive thing in it. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, it's a huge thing. So and it seems to have come out actually of the um the Pizzagate thing, again, about this paedophile uh a supposed paedophile ring involving um senior Democratic officials um that was being run out of a pizza restaurant in Washington and people were linking Hillary Clinton to it and stuff. So you you can kind of you can get a sense from that where it's come from. And now it apparently it also has some basis in something called the Elders, uh the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Oh so uh which to my understanding is uh an anti-Semitic kind of paper or a bit of writing, which has as been shown to be a faked kind of forgery thing, um, which had kind of been used in the early 20th century by people like the Nazis and others as well. Basically saying, you know, the Jews have this there's a this um plot for global domination by Jews and stuff. So it's very you know, there's a lot of that kind of thing in there.

SPEAKER_03

Um, JFK is is there?

SPEAKER_04

Um I didn't oh I don't know, I didn't see any JFK stuff, but I mean I'm presumably the further down the rabbit hole you go, there may well be that kind of stuff in there. Um there's something blood libel, that was something they were talking about. So talking about again, anti-Semitic stuff, so that that people were taking the children draining their blood and mixing it to make the matter. To make the matter for passover and things like that. So there's all this kind of stuff in there. Um Right. But the interesting thing, I mean, and that as you say that, you kind of go, Oh, this all sounds absolutely crazy. Right. Who on earth is gonna buy this, but interestingly, it seems to be that it's it's taking some ground, that it's it's poking its head out into the into the world a little bit more than perhaps you would have assumed.

SPEAKER_03

Even to the point where those who are standing for election this November, some some of them have posted positively about Q and R. I mean, I think the presidents, I think Donald Trump has like retweeted something like over 200 tweets of Donald Trump's have either kind of.

SPEAKER_04

Last I had to seventy versus. Yeah, I can believe. I thought it was something, yeah, but I mean I think yeah, I've got here in twenty twenty in the twenty twenty US elections, so those coming up in a a month or two, there were fourteen congressional candidates on the ballot for November who expressed support for the theory.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

So there's been a couple as well, I think, who've who've mentioned it and then have backtracked on it as well.

SPEAKER_03

Um but when you say the theory, like your explanation of it like points to the fact that it's it's very eclectic. It's this sort of loose assortment of conspiracy theories. Yeah, I guess so. Which which gives plausible deniability at one stage, because you could be like, well, I believe that, but not that nonsense. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04

And I I don't know. I mean, I we we obviously had earlier in the year here in the UK we had people destroying phone masts and stuff like that, and I don't know whether that was specifically linked back to this. I mean they talked about 5G here, but I don't know whether those were an offshoot of this.

SPEAKER_03

I was I was at Eastbourne Seafront, this is about two months ago, and I I was with my son and my daughter, and I was waiting for my wife to come. So I I I got out my phone to see if she'd messaged me, and there was a girl like on on a bench over to my right, about twenty metres away, saying, You know that can harm your children? And I turned over and I said, What? She said, 5G. You know that will harm your children. Wow. Like as if I've got 5G my phones, you know. But yeah, so that that was the first time I'd kind of come across somebody who yeah.

SPEAKER_04

I actually got a post taken down off Facebook about 5G. Really? Because I I posted a a picture which was it was one of those things about it, it was like a uh take in the mick, you know, where it's like a bat that sends radar, a bat with co coronavirus sends it to the thing and it beams out to the through the 5G mast and it said like wake up, sheep and I put some comment above it, like which made it obvious that it was completely tongue-in-cheek, uh, what I'd put. But um obviously the algorithm just picked up the image, didn't read at all. I mean, I don't think the algorithm's good at seeing satire, yeah. Um, hence Babylon B in the past. Um but uh yeah, so basically it got taken down and I got a little warning for spreading disinformation.

SPEAKER_03

Twitter took down thousands of uh accounts that were linked to QAnon and and you wonder who gets who gets you know deleted like accidentally in that or gets swept up in in that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_04

But that probably only fuels people, doesn't it? Because look, it's the mainstream, like Twitter and they're being controlled. So it's the deep state.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. Drain the swamp. Yeah. And because QAnon like m massively sees that Donald Trump is the savior in all this, isn't that that that's that's one thing that kind of un unites Q and on. It's it it seems to be. It's it's it's very pro-Trump because not not necessarily that it's pro-Republican or even pro-right wing, but that it is anti-establishment and anti the powers that be. And Donald Trump is the the mythological saviour figure who comes from outside the system and he's gonna, you know, give the give the deep state a bloody nose, and and the storm is coming, isn't that one of the the the things?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, well this is this kind of supposed day of reckoning where there's this mass arrest of journalists and politicians. I I'm I believe so. This is uh Donald Trump presumably being the saviour arresting these people, and they were saying, well, they they'll be taken off to you know Guantanamo Bay or they'll face tribunals, even some people even saying executions, and that will usher in um the result of that will be a salvation and utopia on earth. Okay. So they have this very uh interestingly, there was this kind of slightly religious millennial kind of view that this will usher in this kind of thousand-year reign before Jesus comes back. Although although QAnon doesn't itself s doesn't itself seem to be Christian, there were these bits hanging round the edges where Donald Trump is this kind of figure who's gonna hasten the end of days. Right.

SPEAKER_03

But come on, everything's Christian, right? This is what we're learning. Yeah, that's true, we've seen that. So that yeah, so that even even the Christian se even the sects and the cults and um the conspiracies can't help but be shaped by a kind of a Christian vision of a saviour figure who upends pat the powers that be and and brings in a a new reign of peace. The trouble is, in this telling of it, is that gonna be a a bloody revolution? Like, how how is that gonna happen? Some some people are worried, you know, what what if uh what if November doesn't go well for QAnon? How are how are those people going to react to that sort of thing?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. And people were saying as well, you know, it if if Trump loses that they don't think that will be the end of it. Right. You know, that he almost becomes it's almost more proof. Yeah. Like if he stays in power, it's proof. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If he loses power, it's proof that they're out for him and some. So Right, right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_03

And I I I I did see something online online for someone who's really concerned for um the people who get swept up in QAnon, just just to say to somebody, um, look, one of the Q-drops said that Hillary Clinton would be arrested between 8.45 and 9.30 a.m. on this particular date in 2017. And she wasn't. Will you will you now rethink um the whole QAnon thing? But you know, what we all know what happens in a cult. You know, how many times did the Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, predict the second coming of Christ? You know, they they predicted it and repredicted it and re-predicted it and re you know. And yet when you get the person on your doorstep and you say, you know, what what happened, yeah, there will be an explanation, you know. Sure. Perhaps there was a secret incarceration of Hillary Clinton. And you know, in the same way that Jehovah's Witnesses think there was a secret return of Christ on on various dates and those sorts of things. It becomes very hard to shake people from it. And I w I want to know why. Like, what do you what do you think is attractive to people about a conspiracy theory?

SPEAKER_04

I mean, I wonder whether I mean, uh partly something I've been musing on from the Douglas Murray stuff is that Douglas Murray said in in one of the clips we used, we we've we've torn down so many things in our society that we may well be the first generation in the history of the world to have no real idea why we're here. And so there is this sense of like a bit of a meaning crisis. And for their the idea that there's this kind of shadowy world hidden behind what we see, um, it sounds like something out of a movie, you know. Um you can kind of see how that could be attractive to someone to kind of give a meaning to their life, you know. This is this is it this is something I can get behind, and I might play a part in overthrowing the dark powers or yeah, let's bring a kind of a an economic and perspective to it.

SPEAKER_03

Um you know, if if your economy's taking a 20% GDP hit as it has in the UK, and and if you know unemployment is rife, and if you can't even leave the house and you you feel impotent in that way, feeling that you're part of something bigger that's that's really pulling the strings of of reality, that's that's seductive, isn't it? Like the smaller you think you are, you just think you're a cork on the tide of of history. Um no no, you're you are in touch with the deepest realities. That's that's very that's very seductive, um, I think. Um and I think you know it's got massive overlap with um Gnosticism. Um you know, you you go back to even within the New Testament, I mean Gnosticism proper kind of develops after the closing of the canon. Um more sort of second uh second century than first century. What is Gnosticism? Gnosticism uh Gnosis means knowledge. So an agnostic is someone who just done no. I don't know. Agnostic. Um but a Gnostic is one who has knowledge and but they don't have knowledge by doing the hard graft of reading the great texts and and thinking deeply. It's a secret knowledge that is only available to the initiates. And there are various initiations into the secrets of reality. And it's it's it's very well most people say that Gnosticism is dualistic and that you've got the pneumatic way, the spiritual ones, and you've got the the psychic way, the the the the flesh flesh, the carnal ones. Um and most people are just rubes, right? Most people they're just they just got their work-a-day life and they just go to the office and they just you know um grind along in the world, but then there are the spiritual ones. And through knowledge, through revelation of secret knowledge, they can ascend through various spiritual levels. Um and one of the markers of Gnosticism is um real hierarchies. You know, some some people some people are just initiated into the first level. So right, like you know, you can probably think right now, like Masonic Lodges or that kind of thing, or Scientology. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, you you just do the personality quiz. The guy on the street tells you, come in, do a personality quiz, it's fun. You know, that's level one, right? And then you're told it's all about dianetics, and then that's level two. But you know, once you get to Tom Cruise's level, it's all about Martians on you know the planet's orb and it it goes really it goes really finally. Um so some people think Gnosticism is dualistic. Some people think it's monistic. Um, but but really what it is, it's it's an ascent towards spiritual reality by knowing. And therefore there's a there's a deep um there's a in Gnosticism, there's a deep mistrust of the physical, there's a deep mistrust of worldly structures. You want to escape the worldly and the carnal into the spiritual and the the the secret knowledge. So this is why I say this this crossover with conspiracy theories, because what what do you have with a conspiracy theory? You say, ah yeah, sure. Um there's the royal family, right? But you take off the mask and there are lizards underneath. They are lizard people, which is which is a part of the David Icke kind of conspiracy theory, isn't it? The lizard people are a big part. But it's like, you know, the the the the world is just the the myth that is pulled over your eyes. The matrix. It's the matrix, man. What you really are is this disembodied brain in a vat kind of thing. And the real the real world is um uh the real world is not what you think it is. But if you are very clever and if you've been inducted and and and usually it's quite costly to get through the hoops, whether in conspiracy theories or um cults or in Gnosticism, it's it's usually you pay the price to ascend the ladder of secret knowledge. And and the goal and the goal really is to is to know. Is to know. And this this this again I think is is massive overlap with a conspiracy theory. Um it would be wouldn't it be nice to know what's going on with COVID-19? Because we're we're totally at sea. You know, we don't know. Matt Hancock doesn't know. He he really he really doesn't know. Um and a conspiracy theorist goes, yeah, yeah, see, that's that's just that that's just a pot a puppet. You know, he Matt Hancock is just a puppet of a greater power, and we know what's really going on with COVID. Yeah. What's really going on with lockdowns. We know, you know. It's tempting.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

It's attractive. And we and I suppose we see levels of that, don't we, on probably on our own social media feeds, you know, like so-and-so, Dr. Fauci in the States, or is it Chris Whitty over here, you know, or say this is what's going on with COVID, and we should do this and we should do that, etc. etc. Yeah. And then you've got, you know, on Facebook Gary the Plasterer saying, you know, oh, but they don't know what they're talking about, like COVID-19 isn't what they're saying. Actually, we should all be doing this instead, and this idea that this kind of idea that there are those who the there's these experts, but we're the ones who really see behind, you know, forget all their their knowledge, like we've got the secret knowledge, and I mean I was reading about the the myth of the what was it called, the myth of the untutored genius. That was so where you've got all the people who those suckers who spent all their time learning, or they've been, you know, they're just drinking in the Kool-Aid of the world, you know, being blind, you know, uh, you know, blinded to the reality, but then there's those of us who, despite not having done any work on these things, somehow have the had these things revealed to us and we know and we're the ones who listen to. Yeah, that's what my my gut says, you know. So Chris Whitty says this with his years of medical training and whatever stuff on viruses. Yes. But, you know, with my six years plastering. Yeah, yeah, maybe. I think I've got something on viruses, you know.

SPEAKER_03

That's the the untutored genius. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. I think with my my history of education, I'm I'm just a tutored moron. The untutored genius. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. I can see that. But then, you know, it is grist for the mill of a conspiracy theorist when the science like totally contradicts, you know. So that, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, don't wear a mask, don't whatever you do wear a mask. It's you know, it's it's been shown not to work and blah blah blah. And then wear a mask, or else, you know, you're like, okay. Yeah, yeah. The and then suddenly those authority structures break down in people's eyes. And where you would where in previous generations you had far greater trust in the media, you had far higher trust in um the church, you had far higher trust in scientists, like all of that is massively crumbling. So the the idea that you peer behind the powers that be and see the real what's really going on, there's all there's all the more um openness to that, I think, these days, as as people trust less and less. Yeah, absolutely. And I th I think we kind of there's here here are some things that I think conspiracy theories get get right. Um like there are unseen powers in the world.

SPEAKER_04

Yep.

SPEAKER_03

Right. And Boris Johnson is not in charge, you know. We can all agree on that, Jim. Matt Hancock doesn't know what he's doing. Like, there are unseen powers in the world and and that you know, like Christians are taught, like from Romans 13, okay, God, God has put a servant in charge of you, and he's got the power of the sword, and he's the magistrates, and kind of, yeah, pay your taxes. But like, and and so Christians, yeah, be a good citizen, pay your taxes, say yes sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir, you know, pray for the pray for the emperor, honor the emperor, pay your taxes, be a good citizen. But just no, they're not really in charge. Yeah, absolutely. Like, yeah, because there are there are the whole realm, uh, there are there are multiple realms of powers that are going on that are not what we see with our eyes, you know, and so there are the principalities and powers that places like Ephesians talk about, and then there is the secret cabal in charge of the world, Father, Son, and Spirit together, like are are in charge. Um and it is kind of yeah, and and and not everybody knows the ruler and authority that that is in charge of this world. Not not everybody knows, not everybody's in on that secret knowledge. Yeah. Kind of Christians, Christians kind of have have that too. Um we're not as free as we think we are, and there's a sense in which people are blinded to the truth of it. Right. You know, absolutely that kind of thing, isn't there? Right, right. And so interestingly, in the in the New Testament, obviously New Testament is first century, and Gnosticism really gets going in the second century, but there are kind of these proto-Gnostics, Gnostic in Bud kind of um false teachings that are going around. And in Ephesians it it talks about things like that, in Colossians it talks about things like that, in 2 Peter, in 1 John. Um even in the even in the early church, there there is there are these claims about secret knowledge, and so like Colossians 2 is is fascinating because Paul says, My purpose is that you may be encouraged in heart and mind and in love, so that you may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that you may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures and wiz of wisdom and knowledge. Um and if you read on in in Colossians 2, um you'll see that he's kind of speaking against these Proto Gnostic um sects. But what he's really saying is, hey, if you really want to know about secret knowledge, if you want to know about them the mystery at the heart of all things, ah, Jesus. Yeah, it's right there. It's right there on full display to the whole world. So you don't need to ascend through these different initiation ceremonies or rites or rituals, you don't have to pay money, you don't have to be clever, you don't have to be powerful. Christ has come all the way down and revealed to you the mysteries of the universe. Like, this is what God's like. And most people look at that and go, nah, it can't be. Um but those who do, ah, their eyes have been opened. So there is there is kind of a crossover.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_03

Um and I think I think like I I do think that Christians can be more susceptible to conspiracy theories than most.

SPEAKER_04

And didn't you you did didn't you have a little video about this? I think with with a couple of guys, you chatted about this. Yes, that's right. During the lockdown period.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think I I think yeah, Christians can be more susceptible to conspiracy theories because we we think there's a secret cabal show to the world, right? Because I think um Yeah, that we're not as free as we think we are, that the rulers are to be obeyed, but um they're not really what's pulling the strings in this in this world. So I think we're more susceptible to conspiracy theories, but I I also think um we've been more skeptical of bad governments down through history than most. Um because we've been told a story where the ultimate power comes down and divests himself of power and tells the truth and upends everything. And it turns out that even though the world crucified him, he was right and the powers that be were wrong, like we inhabit that story, and so um so we're more likely to believe that Gary the plasterer. Because we we believe in Jesus the carpenter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and it wasn't Cicero that saved the world, and it wasn't Socrates that saved the world, it was a carpenter. So I think Christians are more likely to believe Gary the Carpenter Plaster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As long as Gary the Plaster has truth on his side, and that and that's where I I think, you know, um, yeah, we we need to be, in a sense, more and more skeptical. Um and what I think we can say to the world is um everybody believes weird stuff, and everybody is gullible about stuff. Um so a few years ago, um uh Darren Brown tweeted out Um we'll put it up on the on the screen. Um it's it was brilliant. It's the f it's the the one time Darren Brown interacted with me on Twitter and I corrected him. I was right and he was wrong. Um so basically Darren Brown tweeted out on December the twenty-third, twenty thirteen um he just he retweeted something that's saying, Oh, in Vatican III, the Pope declares that all religions are true. That's very interesting, and he just sort of tweeted it out there. And I um I just commented and said uh that's a hoax, by the way. There's no such thing as Vatican III, be more skeptical. Winky face. And then and then Darren Brown actually, what does he say? He says, Ah, dear me. Pope's supposed liberal statements were a hoax. Thanks, Glenn Scrivener. And it's it's fascinating to me because like who has made his career out of being skeptical? Mr. Skeptical, right there. Yeah. Showing you how like other people can be fooled. And it was just and so he wanted to believe that the Pope was heading in a certain direction and might say a certain thing. Yeah. So just unthinkingly retweeted something. That's something anyone any of us could do. But just interesting that he could fall for something that is untrue like that. Or m my other um example that I love is when Stephen Fryer just went off on one on QI about how Christmas um is really just a repackaging of Mithras. Uh did you catch it first time around on QI?

SPEAKER_04

Yes.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. It's done the rounds. Let's have a look.

SPEAKER_01

Let's just take a few moments then together and try to remember why is Christmas Day on December the 25th?

SPEAKER_02

It's the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Is that a very, very small fire or are those huge It's the mid-winter solstice. It's a pagan festival that's been appropriated by Christianity. There is a great deal of truth in that. I get the points back.

SPEAKER_01

It was indeed there's a Teutonic, Celtic, and pagan view that if you survived the winter solstice on the 21st of December, you have a feast to celebrate. But also, there was the Roman god. Was it Saturnalia? There was the Saturnalia, it was also that Tonia, but there was Mithras.

SPEAKER_02

Just the two of them were there.

SPEAKER_01

Well, there are amazing things claimed about Mithras, and I'll read you some of them. He was a saviour, Mithras, sent to earth to live as a mortal, through whom it was possible for sinners to be reborn into immortal life. He died for our sins, but came back to life the following Sunday. He was born of a virgin on December the 25th in a manger or perhaps a cave, attended by shepherds, and became known as the light of the world. He had twelve disciples with whom he shared a last meal before dying. His devotees symbolically consumed the flesh and blood of him. Because Mithras was a sun god, he was worshipped on Sundays. Is he a tribute band? He looked pictures with a halo around his head. And Mithras gave each other gifts on December the 25th. The leader of the religion was called a Papa, and H. Q was on Vatican Hill in Rome. And you're not kind of writing off the chances. It's just a massive coincidence. And then one day they they all went to the Vatican and went, uh, hang on. Well, a lot of Christian uh scholars have since been very angry at some of this research which came out in 1903 about Mithras, and they claim it's nonsense.

SPEAKER_03

And what can be said to the uh except um to play Lutheran satires uh Horace Ruins Christmas, where he takes Stephen from his thesis to the woodshed. Let's have a look.

SPEAKER_06

Behold, it is I, Mithras, Roman Celtic god of the something, something, and by you all believe that you've been celebrating the birth of Jesus. You've really been celebrating the birth of me. For you see, I, Mithras, was born of a virgin. I, Mithras, had twelve disciples, and I, Mithras, gave those disciples a meal consisting of my body and my blood. Sound familiar Christian dummies.

SPEAKER_00

Actually, Mithras was born from a rock, not of a virgin. He had two companions, not twelve disciples, and the Mithraic meal was one he shared with the sun god, where they feasted not on his own flesh, but on the flesh of a bull. But even if those claims were true, Christians were already confessing the virgin birth, recognizing the twelve apostles, and celebrating the Lord's Supper before they ever encountered any Mithraic cults. So I'm afraid that you've taken neither the holly nor the jolly out of our Christmas Mithras.

SPEAKER_06

Oh, you must have misheard me. I I'm not Mithras. I'm uh Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

I mean, the wonderful thing about that, the brilliant irony, of course, is that QI sets out, doesn't it, to to show you there are all these things that you traditionally believe which are just actually completely false. Yes. And then Stephen Fry does the very thing that the show is aiming to do.

SPEAKER_03

So Ugh. I mean, if you could name two yeah, I don't think you can name two more sceptical uh people in the public eye. You know, people famous for debunking stuff. Very much so. And you're just like, yeah, okay, so we can all we can all buy into myths that we want to be true. We can all do that. What's the what's the answer to that? And um I I just think Matthew 10 is amazing on these things. Um rather Matthew at Matthew 11. Matthew 11, yeah. Matthew 11. Um Jesus has done a preaching tour and people are not responding. And you would think that Jesus would say, Oh gosh, um I'm I'm threatened by people's unbelief in me. He's not he's not threatened by that at all. Instead, at that time, verse 25, Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. So um there are those who think they are so clever, who they've figured out the kingdom. They've figured out how God's operating in the world. What is what is the true operating system of the world? I'm wise, I'm learned, I figured it out. And Jesus is like, no, God hides things from the wise and learned and reveals them to little children. That's his good pleasure. And then he says, All things have been committed to me by my father, no one knows the father, no one knows the son except the father, and no one knows the father except the son, and those to whom the son chooses to reveal him. So there is the cabal, the secretive cabal in charge of the world. And you know, if if you had to end the verse halfway through verse 27, we'd be in great trouble. You know, no one knows the son except the father, no one knows the father except the son. Okay, so no one knows anything except God. But then, those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him, there is a way of knowledge, and he has revealed himself to little children, so that you don't come to him having jumped through the hoops, you don't have you don't come to him having ascended the ladder or paid any price or sacrificed or done any rituals or initiation ceremonies. You just come as little children and it is revealed to you. And you come as a little child, and then verse 28, he's just so universal. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle and humble in heart, and you will find a rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Um you might you might think that coming to QAnon or coming to some kind of conspiracy theory that gives you a handle on the world will give you rest. It doesn't seem to be. Like I've I've seen a few of the YouTubers who are QAnon, they don't seem to be at rest. You know, they seem to be very agitated, very exercised. Um in a in a sense, you know, the thousand-year reign is down to them. You know, can can we figure out the cue drops and can we and how different to come to Jesus and have rest, because I'm just a little child, and the Son of the Father's gonna sort it all out for me. And then he says, take my yoke on you and learn from me. Um that is a free education, free at the point of access, you know, universal, comprehensive education that Jesus gives to people. You don't have to pay money for it, you don't have to jump through hoops, but you do have to walk the way of Christ. And I think this is the secret that unlocks the world. Apparently, the world belongs to Jesus. It belongs to the crucified one, and therefore it belongs to the ones who walk in his ways, so that the meek inherit the earth. Who's in charge of the earth? Well, there's a father, son, cabal. Um, but by the Spirit that's opened up to you, and now it's meekness, it's Christ-likeness, it's sacrifice, it's love even of your enemy, love even of the rubes who don't get it. So that I don't feel proud because I'm on the inside of this secret. The secret is that I should live my life for the world, turned out towards them in sacrifice and self-giving. So I think that's that's kind of it so in some ways it sounds like a conspiracy theory, you know.

SPEAKER_04

Sure, yeah. And and and we see in the gospels that that's there is that element, isn't there, of uh a conspiracy theory put up forth, isn't it? Well, let's just say that when the the body is gone, right, we'll pay the soldiers and we'll tell them to say the disciples came and they did all this stuff. So that yeah, you can see how people in some sense wanted there to be this, you know. If this isn't true, it's a conspiracy and stuff behind it as well.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah, that is interesting. That yeah, yeah. So what's the alternative to Jesus rising from the dead? I guess it's a conspiracy of the disciples to pull off the greatest hoax ever. Um but then you know, what what do Christians want to do with that claim that that it was just a conspiracy theory? Do we do we go, oh, I guess we just we we we happen to trust the conspirators, you happen not to. Um We don't do that, do we? We we investigate the conspiracy theory and we we figure out, well, no, let's think about what it would involve for this conspiracy theory to be true. You know, would Peter and Paul and all the rest of the disciples give up their careers and lives and safety? Yeah, yeah. Go to their deaths and to proclaim a lie, a lie that they knew was a lie. That didn't really benefit them in their life. No. You know? No. And in in so doing, pen the greatest work of moral philosophy of of the ages while founding everything on a lie. And then somehow having that having their movement work. Like it w somehow it worked. Like fishermen, idiots, you know, like like the you know, when I don't say fishermen are idiots, I say Peter was an idiot who happened to be a fisherman. And somehow it somehow it came off.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

You know, and so Christians don't say, yeah, believe the believe the conspiracy theory. They they say press into press into it. Do you do you think do you think there's a conspiracy theory of the disciples that have pulled off Christianity? Um Well, look into it, look into the evidence, and and Christians aren't aren't afraid of the evidence and and and researching into it. But if you if you happen to not believe in that conspiracy theory, therefore what are you left with? Okay, Jesus rose from the dead, and there's this much better conspiracy over here in which the son is conspiring with the father by the spirit to love the world and to invite the world, you know, to himself, so that there won't be that distinction between the outsider and the insider. But that you're freely offered a place at the table, same as everybody else. So I think that's that's the kind of stuff I would say to people who are involved in conspiracy theories. Like, in one sense, you're more right than you know. Like there is more going on in this world than we ever give credit for. Um But it's more wonderful. It's not it's not there are reptiles in charge of the world, you know. Yeah. Good news. Come on home to it. Um That'll that'll zoo about the secret cabal ruling the world.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Brilliant. Uh if people want to catch up with us more, Paul, where can they find us?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, well you can head over to the website speaklife.org.uk, um, where you can find out all about us. Uh, but if you want to kind of keep up to the minute with stuff, then obviously find us on Facebook, Speak Life UK on there, uh, and on our Twitter feed, Speak Life there as well. You can find us on Instagram as well. So we're still Speak Life Speak Life UK everywhere, basically, is the place to find us. So any social media feeds or the website, that's the place to go.

SPEAKER_03

That's the place to go. And uh stay tuned for Douglas Murray coming out. We've got a eclipse video where we've got the ten uh greatest things that he said on the subject of religion, and we've got my uh hour long interview with him, which was uh fascinating. I learned loads. I hope you will too. Thanks so much for joining us, and we'll catch you again next time. God bless. Fizzle out.