Sean McDowell 0:01

Think50 listeners, welcome to a very special episode of the Think50 podcast. This might be the longest episode we've aired or close to it. I brought on a comic artist by the name of Todd McFarlane. Now he created the character Spawn, co-created Venom, iconically juiced Spider-Man in the 90s. And we had a two and a half hour conversation that I had posted on YouTube, but we're bringing it here in lieu of the weekly cultural update. And what's fascinating is he makes it very clear that he is an atheist and brings up issues like the problem of hell, the problem of evil. We talk about his career, we talk about culture today. This is a fascinating conversation. You're gonna want to buckle your seatbelts because I think this is one you're going to enjoy and maybe want to share with a friend. So enjoy. Todd McFarlane is one of the most successful and influential comic book creators over the past half century, creating both Venom and Spawn, co-creator. Venom of Venom. Co-creator, transforming the storyline and artistry of Spider-Man in the 1990s when I started collecting. Created McFarlane Toys, one of the top action figure manufacturers in the U.S. You're a collector of record-breaking baseballs, which is fascinating. A devoted father and husband married your high school sweetheart. I married my high school sweetheart as well. I thought that was kind of fun. Okay. And you're an atheist, which will particularly interest my audience. Oh, that's cool. We'll come back to some of that. We're going to spoil your beliefs about God, the afterlife, the supernatural. I want to start with your backstory, but first off, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Okay, look at before we get going, can I just add don't be shy in this interview, right? Because I I think I watched the interview with you and Rob or something. Yep. And one of your comments was that somebody said, I wish you had pushed him a little bit more. Okay. So push. Okay. Right? Today, today's a push. I got I I'm good. I'm I'm I got thick skin. I'm good. Like, let's make this. I don't want one comment to go, Sean. You didn't push him enough, right? Okay. That's it. That's all.

Sean McDowell 2:08

Fair enough. All right. You call it at the beginning. I love it. We'll jump in there and we'll get to that. Sure, sure. First thing I do, I just want to personally thank you because I love I started collecting Spider-Man in the early 90s. And the way you drew Spider-Man, I bought this issue 300, uh, just like it right off the newsstand, just captivated me the amount of joy you brought me. I brought my sons today. They're not going to be able to get Spider-Man. Yeah, so you brought more joy than I can even calculate. So I just want to start by saying thanks for what you do and for who you are.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Well, I appreciate that, Sean. Let me tell you, though, that what you're saying was the exact same thing that happened to me when I was collecting and buying, right? Like I was I was being inspired on a lot of different levels by books that I was buying, and the person drawing it was thousands of miles away. They were never going to meet me. I never met any of them. They had no idea that this work that they're doing in their room by themselves was impacting people. So it's always interesting when you do it because I go, I relate to it, not from like, oh, thank you, you know, because my 15 minutes of fame has lasted too long. But of going, I get it, because if I hadn't met some of the people I wish I could have, I would I would I would have said the same thing, right? That that they they were paying it forward and not knowing it. And so we're we're all doing, we're all doing it in an odd way, right? So and and the things that people thank me for, I I have to tell you to some extent I they were for selfish reasons, right? They were I was in a room isolated, and I needed to entertain myself, and so I wasn't thinking of anybody else at that moment when I was drawn, other than me getting through the grind of a 12 to 16 hour day, workday, five, six days a week, right? Just getting the work done. Luckily, whatever it was that was entertaining me went on to entertain other people. There was the luck, there is the luck that came in that piece of my evolution.

Sean McDowell 4:11

Well, I appreciate that humility about it, but the fact is that you created it, we got a lot of joy, so thanks for doing it. Sure. Let's j let's start with your family. Tell me a little about your family growing up, kind of who they were and how they shaped you.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Um, Dad, still alive, 90, 90 years old, um the man that I would like to be remembered as, right? He's just a good when when I was younger, when I go, hey, who's your like if you can be if you can be one person, but like it was always dad, right? It was always dad. Um not a slight to mom, but it was it it was dad. He was hardworking, I thought he was honest, I thought he was fair-minded, and I rarely heard him criticize people. He just went about his day, and he and he was joyful, and he thought that making people smile was sort of part of what we should be doing. Um and and he would show me real simple ways to do it. Just say hi to somebody when they're walking by, right? Tap on the window, give them a wave, whatever. So, because my kids would do that. They go, Dad, how come you say hi to everybody that you walk by? Right? They don't know that it was your dad. Yeah, it was it was dad, right? It's like, well, why not? The answer is like, why not? Right? Like somebody's walking by, the golden rule, right? Hey, how are you doing? If they don't want to respond back, I don't get to control that. But it's just like, hey, how you doing? How's your how's it going? Good. Um, so he was good. Mom, she was uh a homemaker. Uh she had at the beginning three boys. I have a brother a year younger, a brother you're older, and me. Now, I think any mom that has three male children that close at some point should get some kind of national recognition. Because I think I think it's it's exhausting. I think it's I think I think it's exhausting. Boy boys running around, going crazy, energy, whatever. Uh I think mom's worst part of the year was summer break. I got all three of them for how long? And we were in California, so it was three months. Uh at that.

Sean McDowell 6:27

What part of California?

SPEAKER_02 6:28

Orange County, and uh and then eventually moved up to San Jose. Um, and then later, ten years later, had a uh a sister that came along. She's out in Burbank. Um so and mom, she she was just she was mom, right? She was she was good, and uh she she passed away during uh the pandemic, right? One of those stories. Again, don't don't begrudge anybody. I assume everybody was doing what they wanted, but we couldn't get to the hospital. They weren't allowing visitors, and so you know those stories where people were passing away alone? It's painful, yeah. So, but uh, but again, we it was that was just where everybody was at, right? And so uh she's no longer here. Uh and and then my in-laws, both of them are are gone too. So dad's the only one, dad's the only one hanging tough right now.

Sean McDowell 7:22

My dad's 86, and similarly, he's my hero. Yeah, take more from him from anybody else, and I do little things. The older I get, I'm like, that comes from my dad, like even small things, like you described saying hi. What is it? What is it about comics that you love? Now, I've heard you say you use the term love, you reserve it. So you can qualify this however you want to, either passionate about what you like. What is it about love? Use whatever word you want to for comics.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

I I like them a lot. We'll just stay there. I like I like them a lot, right? Like in Dumb and Dumber. Um, and you're right. I I and it's a silly thing. We all have our little quirks. My quirk is I I do, I reserve the word love for my wife and my children. And I and everything else sort of go like because I can't use the sentence, I love pickles. I can't use, I can't use it. And I know, I know when I have this conversation with people and in my own family, you know, they're I'm going to so you somebody walks in, you've met them for three seconds, you go, Oh, I love your dress. You just you just threw that word like you love me and you love the stranger's dress, and three I've given you 50 years, like and and but what they everybody will always say is Todd, it's a different kind of love. I'm with you, I understand it. Then from my perspective, use a different word.

SPEAKER_03 8:46

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Don't don't use the same word that somebody has given you decades and decades of their devotion to uh that you just go, I'm gonna equate it to pickles, right? Can't do it.

Sean McDowell 8:58

So I so what do I would say before you tell me why you love or not love deeply about like a lot comics. Comics my dad, if I said when I was a kid I love pizza, he'd go, You like pizza, you love your mom. That's what her same thing is. That's the idea he's getting up at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

We just get into goofy things in our heads. That's a fair distinction.

Sean McDowell 9:17

Tell us why you deeply like comics.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

I'll tell you why I deeply like comic books because I think it's a medium, I and I didn't know this why. Again, let's just sort of back up a little bit. The definition of art that I agree with is for people. I don't know what art is, but I know what I like. Like you don't have to explain to people why some kind of art moves you and one doesn't. If I take ten people and I go to the museum and I and there's and there's a gallery going of paintings, and I say, go stand in front of the painting that you think is the best, moves you the most, whatever, whatever it is, go stand and if you can only take one home, go stand in front of it. They might stand in front of, I'm sure, ten different paintings. And none of them are wrong. It's right for them, right? So art is just, I like it, and and we shouldn't have to really sort of people shouldn't have to explain why they like art. Um so for me, the but as I got older, the one component that I sort of understood intellectually was that it was a combination of words and pictures, and that's not really true. It's not true for novels, that's just all words. Uh TV and movies are are pictures, right? It's it and the the words are being spoken, so you're not reading it, right? And so the that combo of words and pictures is sort of unique to comic strips in the in the in the old days and comic books. So uh I I think it's just its own sort of neat form of art over there, right? I've got to be the director, the writer, the actor, the the special effects person all at once when I'm putting it all together. And that one image mixed with those words has to convey what is in my head as much as possible. Otherwise, it becomes a sort of uh a confusion to the to the person at the other end.

Sean McDowell 11:11

Do you have an opinion on whether beauty, which a lot of art is about, is subjective or is objective? And what I mean by that is this is what philosophers debate in terms of beauty, because you describe like somebody being at say an art place, an art museum. That piece moved me, fine. This piece moves somebody else. But if someone's like a piece of dirt moves me and Michelangelo moves me, is it like, you know what? If you're not moved by Michelangelo, something's not functioning right inside of you. That's beautiful. That's uh opinion on that.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Yeah, I do, I I I I do, and here's what I would say. I think it's both. And here's what like art, just the act, just the look, just the visual of art, I think is completely subjective. How you then use that art past that. So for us in a comic book, I need you to pick up this cover, I need you to pick up this book, I need you to buy this item. So, how do I entice you? And now we're getting away from the subjective, we're actually trying to manipulate to some extent. It's called marketing. Um, and you put it together and then you start using, if you if you have it, you start using data points, and you start going, okay, when I do these five things, we seem to get a bump. And when I do these other five things, people don't care. So you start understanding a little bit about at that current time, and here's the frustrating thing, Sean, that data shifts because it can be trends and fads and the the swapping out of the audience as they age out and new people come in. So you're constantly re-guessing because everything's a calculated guess at best. Um, and so that that's it. So when when you put it together, the choice of me using, in this case, green, that was calculated, right? So again, whether somebody goes, oh, green's my favorite color, that wasn't why I was doing it. I was doing it for a specific reason, right? The the big bombastic of what's on the page, that's up to the reader themselves to go, hmm, I I like it or I don't like it, right? But we have to hook you at least, let's just stay with comic book. We have to hook you here on the cover. It's interesting. They always go, don't judge a book by its cover. You know that thing mom tells you? I know. Of course, what are you talking about? Of course we do that. We do it all the time. And in comic books, a hundred percent.

Sean McDowell 13:33

This is a hundred percent. Totally. Those are two of my favorite covers. I ask about beauty because one of the reasons many philosophers put forth for the exists is a god is like beauty that's built into the world. So if it's subjective, then it's just something that's entirely preferenced. If it's objective, like it's in the world itself, it would seemingly point towards maybe a painter. So like I look at a waterfall or a mountain, I'm like, that's beautiful within itself. Sure. And if somebody doesn't recognize that, most of us would say, I'm not sure they're functioning correctly by not seeing that beauty, which to me points towards something transcendent. How do you see it?

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Uh I think I I I'm I'm gonna guess for everybody. Uh like the beauty is around us every day. It's just a matter of whether we want to give it credit, right? So you're right. So I I can sit on the beach and watch the ocean break, right? And just and and it's serene and it's calming and it's soothing, and and I can do it for hours, right? I can I can take a song my wife can't do this, but I can take a song uh when I'm writing and put it on loop, and I can listen to it 200 times in a row while I'm writing, right? Because it just gets me into a zone or whatever. Oh so I yeah, I mean we like to marketing-wise, we like to try and tell the world what beauty is, especially for the female form, right? And I think it's aggravating to some extent. I think it's I think it's done uh a lot of harm to the the expectations of young women. Um but but beauty's in the eye of the beholder, right? Right? That's like shoot, I think my wife's the most beautiful woman on the planet. I I I don't need anybody else to agree with that. I'm good, I'm good with my observation of that. Might not be true, but it but it's an observation, and I'm good with it.

Sean McDowell 15:31

So, one more point on this because you're artists and then we'll keep moving on. It was interesting you used the term credit. Like when I look at the world and I look, I live near the beach in Southern Orange County. I'll go look at the waves, same thing, and it's like, man, that is beautiful. Yeah. Look at the mountains here in Southern California, look at a waterfall, look at certain pieces of art. Just like I give you credit for making this art, I look at the world and I go, Man, I give God credit for that because there didn't have to be sunsets, there didn't have to be beautiful oceans.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Right.

Sean McDowell 15:58

You obviously view it differently. Yeah, I do just say, so when you say give it credit, what do you what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Just I'm saying give credit that it exists. I'm saying give credit that it exists. That it's there, like it's right, it's right there if you look at it. Your your own family's right there, right? Don't take them for granted, I guess, is the thing. Don't think take things for granted. So I yes, I enjoy probably a lot of the same beauty you do. The difference, the difference probably, and we'll we'll we'll dive into it a little bit deeper. The difference between you and I, I don't have any want or need to know the origin of that beauty. I I I'm I'm just interested in that piece, right? So I can just enjoy the beauty for the sake of the beauty that day, going cool. So I'd like where the tree come from? Don't know. I can look at trees all day long. Don't need no more than that. And I enjoy looking at trees.

Sean McDowell 16:53

All right, fair enough. We'll come back to that. What what makes you different? Why have you had so much success in different realms? And a lot of people don't know you played Division I baseball, aspirations to play professionally. So you've had success in like maybe left brain and right brain areas. What makes Todd McFarlane different?

SPEAKER_02 17:13

All right. Um, I'm gonna disavow that. I'm gonna disavow it. I I I don't think I am different. I I think I'm just Todd. This is the piece, this is the piece that and again, the it's always interesting when you do interviews because you you have to really sort of psychoanalyze yourself. Most people during the day don't. They just live their life, right? Sean, I can tell you with a hundred percent honesty, there's never been a day in my memory. If I close my mind, I go back as far as I can, which is about kindergarten. I have clear recollections of kindergarten. I don't have a single recollection of not being the way that I am. So, and I'm gonna I'm gonna assume my mom's not here, but I know if she was, she would have backed it up that I only can go back to five, from from zero to five, she would have gone, oh yeah, oh yeah. I think I think this is just me out of the wound, it's just the DNA, it's personality. Obviously, environment sort of shifts and does things around you. But personality, I it's the for me, Sean, it's the one thing when I was younger, and I'm talking about my 20s, 30s, it was the one piece I didn't give enough weight to. Personality. Because some people are aggressive, extroverts, introverts, passive, conservative, liberal like all these words we we come up with. Some of it can be taught, some of it can be taught, but inherently it's personalities, and it's the one thing as I've gotten older that I I now give a lot of weight to. I can create the blueprint, I can take the horse, I can drag the horse to the water, I can even shove the horse's head in the water. If the horse doesn't want to drink, nothing I can do about it. So when I used to coach at a high level, I I every year I'd sort of say the same thing to the parents. Parents, look, there's three things I can't teach your kid. Can't teach them to throw harder. I can coach them up a little bit, but I mean they either have it or they don't. Can't teach them to run faster. Again, that's just inherent. I can I can get them to, if they're average, I'll get them above average. But they're never gonna be Hussein Bolt. And it's the last piece, the one you and mom and dad, you don't want to, you don't want to accept that. I can't get your kid to care. They either love what they're doing, they're either gonna work hard, they either are here for a reason that like just like or they're going through the motions. And no matter how many lectures I give, it's either there or it's not. You keep thinking they're gonna grow into it. I promise you they won't. I promise you they won't. They're either they're either fire eaters and they chew glass. My daughter's one of them, right? Takes after old man, or they don't. And I've got children, my my son, he's he and my wife, they're not glass eaters, which is okay. And the thing is, I'm not even saying one's I I don't advocate one over the other. I'm just going personality factors into life in a bigger way than I had imagined when I was a younger man.

Sean McDowell 20:26

Fair enough. So you came out of the womb, competitive-driven, creative, risk-taking.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

And with two brothers? They just they just it multiplied. What are you talking about? Some combination of the bigger. Everything was a competition. When you got two brothers, everything's a competition. Let's go. Yep.

Sean McDowell 20:42

One of the things there's a lot of things I think you and I have in common, but I talk a lot about my wife and I talk a lot about my kids. Hence, I brought two of my boys. Yes, I've got to meet them. They're good. And uh they're they're great kids. And I love them, and I would use that word in the way that you're described. How did becoming a father change you, your worldview, the trajectory of your life?

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Um Wow. Uh I don't know if I made notes at that point. Here's here's I do know this, and and and and again, not to diminish, and I'll get back to your question. Sure. Having my first child, uh, my first daughter named Cyan, named after color blue blue. No, after color blue. Wow, no. Oh. After the color blue.

Sean McDowell 21:28

You name the character after her, after the color.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Color blue, which is part of printing, because my dad was in the printing business. Okay. Right? The four colors are black, yellow, magenta, and cyan. Cyan is blue, magenta is what people would call red. But the official term is yellow, black uh cyan and magenta. So we named our daughter Cyan. Um anyways, uh I knew I was gonna be a father, and that's when I left Marvel Comics. Right. And and part of it was because what had Sort of precipitated me getting to that point. And here's the piece: the unknown. I'd never been a father. I didn't know what it was going to be. I didn't know how much time it was going to take. I I knew nothing. So I went, all right, here's as good a time as any to make a bit of a life change, right? Because I was going into the unknown, and we'll just see where it takes it. So the plan was at that point, because I had had this odd moment, which was the cam, you know, the straw breaking the camel's back. And I said, I quit. I'm done. Oh, by the way, my daughter's going to be born in a couple.

Sean McDowell 22:40

Was that the juggernaut? Yeah, yeah. Story. Okay, we can come back to that.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

So, but my daughter's gonna be born in a couple weeks. I'm gonna finish this book. I'm done. That was, and that was the last book I ever drew. My daughter came two days early from what the doctor, and I'm always amazed how close the doctors can get, but she came two days early. So I wasn't done because I'm really good at deadlines. I go, okay, I'm gonna finish on this day. My daughter's gonna be born the next day, everything's gonna be cool. Uh, she came two days early, so I went up to the hospital, everything was cool. I had to finish those last two pages. If you and if you look, I'm I know it, nobody else knows, but the last two pages I did was a double page spread, which is two pages put together. Had the juggernaut on it, he's in it, and then he's bending over. There's a lot of destructions, a bent over uh post, and it's I think whatever, 42nd Street and Cyan, right? That was the name of the street. And I colored them in cyan blue. So my daughter's one day old, and I go, What? Okay, I'm gonna put her name in my last comic book uh and put it on there. But being a dad, the piece that was the scary part, and I'm I'm hopefully you can relate to it, is knowing like the scariest moment for me in being a parent was with our first child, and they give you the baby and they let you leave the hospital. 100%. And now, like you're looking at your wife, because she has the same.

SPEAKER_03 24:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

And you're and you're first off, you're going, do we have the baby strapped in right? So you're already starting the process. And you're going, this baby is completely dependent upon us, and we have no playbook. All right, let's just see how how long this goes, right? So I get like that. It it it literally is dependent upon our decision making, good, bad, or indifferent. And it was like, all right, time to start paying attention to a lot of things in the world that you didn't pay attention to when it was just you on your own, and or you and your wife or your significant other when it was just you're carefree, right? Here we go. So I that that's it. Just being having to sadly, I think what it is for me is just I just had to mature. And and and for a guy with my personality, that was that was a bit of a steeper hill than my wife, or it came a lot more natural.

Sean McDowell 24:58

Which is part of the purpose of parenting, arguably, to mature us. I remember the moment, not when they hand me the baby, but when we because they, you know, put my son 21 years ago into the car seat, we're like, okay, we're driving home, we can do that. We walked in the house, we're like, what do we do? I remember that like it was yesterday, and you just take one step at a time and you figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

Yeah. Now can I can add one thing about parents just if there's any young kids here? Because I think they miss a little bit, because I missed it when my parents were trying to do it to me. Is that when they try to give you advice at times or they do it, you're just like you we especially when you're teenagers, you get a little ornery, and I I did. I was the most obstinate teenager there was. Um what what I found out later, what they were trying to do, and what what my wife and I are trying to do is not to paint the future for them, not to tell them what's right and wrong, but to block the dead ends behind us. I'm old enough, my wife's old enough to know we know where the dead ends are. So if my my kids come and they say, Hey dad, I'd like to be president of the United States. I can't help them with that, really. I I've never been the president, don't know how that works. Here's what I can help you with. I can tell you how not to be the president of the United States. If you want to go down that alley and you want to be a wife beater and you want to be a drug addict, and you want to be a couple other things, I promise you you will never be the president of the United States, right? So turn around, the future's that direction. And I think that's all good people try to do, especially parents, is we're just blocking the places where you and I have driven over potholes, and we know there's potholes there. And we're just like, uh turn around, you go find your future. You don't want to go there. Promise, I promise you, son, daughter. Like that's that's a that's a that's a wasted direction. Go uh and and and do the best you can. So uh that's it. So we're not trying to we're not trying to define your life, we're just trying to prevent some unneeded time and a little bit of pain at times, emotions that are not necessary because we went through it. We went through the the the fires.

Sean McDowell 27:02

That's that's a that's a good word. I love it. Now I'm gonna sidetrack for a second here because it's gonna bug me. I'm gonna wake up at midnight and think about it. You said there's a marketing story behind why spawn was written green. What's the reasoning why it's or drawn green as opposed to some other color?

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Uh two uh two real simple ones. And again, let me tell you, don't overthink stuff, right? I always tell my my my employees would tell you, I'm always saying, stop overthinking it, right? Like the I can tell you that rarely in my life has my gut been wrong. Instincts are amazingly accurate. When we let the brain and the heart get in the way, right? That's when we start we start getting goofy. Um, number one, I knew he's gonna have a big red cape. Okay, right? And then I knew he was gonna have green power. So I go, okay, I want to do something that's complementary. Why? Just so that I'm not distracting people with three different things. I don't want to put a color here that is either gonna compete with the red. Like if I use purple or blue, no, I don't want to use a darker color. I need something that's gonna come out and pop. And, oh, by the way, since I knew it was gonna be green and red, Christmas colors. People recognize Christmas colors, right? Like, what are you talking about? Like that quick. So they're there at least the color palette. Sometimes I I'll use sports color palettes, right? Go, oh, that's a Denver Broncos, blue and orange, right? Like you just you pick colors that people recognize, yellow, green. Oh, okay. That's Green Bay Packers, that's Oakland A's, that's the like there's a lot of sports teams that use that. So things that people recognize, and oh, by the way, white would have worked strikingly well here because big corporations, Fortune 500 corporations have done data that says the easiest read of anything on a billboard or on a label, red background, white letters. They've got data that backs it up. And if they try any other one, that's the one that people go to. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's just the most pretty to look at, whatever, but it's clear. For me, when I'm doing art on the outside, I need I I have what I call a three-second rule, or the mom rule, whatever one you which is I go, mom, one, two, three. What did you say? She didn't have to be accurate, but she needs to be in the ballpark. And she needs to go. I it looked like there was a dinosaur and some people running, and it looks like it was called spam or something, whatever. Like I'm going, good, she got those three pieces, right? I I constantly anybody out there, do yourself a favor one day, look at billboards. I constantly look at billboards. I think 95% of billboards are horrible because you can't read them. They don't pass the mom rule. They don't, because I I I'm looking the whole time. I'm actually trying to read it. I'm in the passenger stream, I'm trying to read it. And I'm like, I don't even know what they're selling. You wasted your money. I don't even know what you're selling. The best billboards I've seen, and they're there, is the one that says 96.5, half the billboard. Soft rock.

Sean McDowell 30:05

That's a San Diego station. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

But I'm just saying, in in two seconds, you go soft rock on I6FM. I don't like soft rock. Then don't buy it, right? But you know it that quick. And here's the flaw, too, of things where sometimes I get credit in my career that I go, why? If I had a billboard company, every time somebody designed a billboard, I'd make it show it to me at six inches wide. Because do this trick, ladies and gentlemen. Next time you drive by a billboard, take your finger, your thumb, and your middle, your middle finger, and expand your fingers to the point of where the maximum size of that thing is. I promise you, even when it's at your side window, it won't be more than the width that you can spread your fingers. It will never be more than seven inches big. I don't know why they're they're trying to look at it on a computer and trying to design something. They're thinking about it as being 25, 40 feet intellectually, which is what it is. The human eye is only going to see it at seven inches. Design something that reads at seven inches and then go from there. But that's me. We're getting into art theory, but go.

Sean McDowell 31:14

No, I love it. Good stuff. I'm I'm curious how much you put yourself in your characters. And some things have jumped out to me is in episode four, you described Spawn as an atheist, and then again in a later character. Yeah. He either played baseball or has interest in baseball, he's got family values. Jack Kirby said, this appeared in the at the end of the Fantastic Four movie. He said, if you look at my characters, you find me. No matter what kind of character you create or assume, a little of yourself must remain there. So kind of two-part question. How much do you put yourself or your friends in your characters? And is there any character that at least is the closest to Todd McFarlane?

SPEAKER_02 31:55

Shoot, this is easy, dude. Um I try as much to put people that I've either met, whether they're strangers, momentary, friends, whatever, when you're I mean, we have to come up with hundreds and hundreds of characters over decades of a career. So you look at, I haven't invented anything new. I just take what I've seen in my life and I just distill it and put it in and put it in there. But if you're asking the other question, spawn is me. Period. Out. Like, look at there are a couple things: location, location, location, and stick to what you know, right? I stick to what I know. Who I know? I know Todd. I am an expert on him, and no other human being on the planet, not even my wife, right? So, so yes, so I go, okay, so it becomes real easy then, Sean. I just go, okay, if I was Spawn and I was that guy, and I've added some things that are not me, right? Like I was never in the military and whatever else, and all those other things. So I just go, I go, what would I do in this moment? And and and then and I I get him, I get him to react in those moments, which is why some of the early stuff he did was sort of personal to him, right? There's one time he needs to go get some information early in the game, and then he takes somebody, and then before he leaves, he takes the guy and he says, Go pay your alimony. Right? Like, how dare you, how dare you? He didn't, I didn't write this, but how dare you have children and abandon them and not pay your wife to support your children, right? Again, he just left. He didn't do anything more than that, just hoping he'd scare the guy into being a man, right? Like, that's your duty, right? Like, come on, man, step up. So, and that the character that the spawn character laments about the most in the book is his ex-wife. Her name's Wanda, my wife's name Wanda, not an accident. Uh the baby that they have with Cyan, my first daughter, Cyan, not an accident, right? So I don't know.

Sean McDowell 33:59

Terry Fitzgerald, I saw yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

So, like, look at if you if at some point it's your book. This is the great thing about doing something that you do on your own in your own time with your own money, is that you get to do whatever you want, and to some extent, nobody gets any input. This is the this is the great freedom of I just and like people come up to me now, we're up to I just sent issue 368 to the printers uh yesterday. And I know a lot of my peers think I'm a crazy man because they like go, I do 20 issues. Like, Todd, what are you doing? Like, like Robert Kirkman who invented The Walking Dead.

Sean McDowell 34:39

I remember a huge fan of the road.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

So I remember having a conversation with Robert and he quit. He he canceled The Walking Dead, I think, at issue 193. I'm like, why don't you go to 200? Come on, you can get this anniversary. And he's like, Todd, I wanted to quit 70 issues ago. He goes, and he knew I was getting close to 300. He goes, If I had to do another 110 issues, I'd put a poker in my eye. Like I did, I'm not built like you to I don't know what you do. Here's why it works for me. And again, this is personality. Yeah, that's fair. I deal with a world in which there are agendas, especially from adults, which is why I adore children. I just hang out and I try to be immature because I just I just like that they don't have agendas. Um but I can have sort of a really bad day dealing with corporations, dealing with people who have power over me, dealing with this. Because again, if I'm making a toy of Superman, they get to dictate to me, not the other way around. Um, and so all these things that I'm doing with, but at the end of the day, I've got the shining light besides my family and my wife. I've got the shining l light in my career, and it's called Spawn. And it's standing there with this light glowing down on it, and it just says, You can do whatever you want with that, and you don't have to get anybody's permission today, Todd. Go. And so for people who think that doing 350 issues of Spawn has been an effort, it's the opposite. It actually has been a good medicine for a guy like me. I need this book in my life because I I I I I need I need certain things for my personal comfort. This book has been one of those, right? So creatively.

Sean McDowell 36:26

So you describe Al Simmons as basically being you. And that makes sense that you could write storylines and react out of instinct based on who you are. You also describe some of the storylines as like certain characters, people who abandon their family, and you're kind of making a moral point, like how dare you? How much do you weave in your books, like how you see the world, ideas about how society should be vet better versus entertainment? Is it one or the other? Is it both? How do you balance those?

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Um Yeah, you it is a balance, Sean. It is. Um I don't think that anybody should get preachy in uh uh entertainment, but it's impossible not to bring your own personal biases to what you that are things that you either believe or don't believe in or whatever else, and you put them in and you try to do it. For me, I try to do it in a way that is as entertaining as possible. That's the balance. And if you if you if you go too far one way or the other, you risk losing a certain portion of the audience, but but let's talk about audience just for a minute if I can deviate here. I don't need, and and there's been a big, big misconception for a lot of people, with a lot of people who try to sell stuff, but for me, let's just stay with me because that's all I can talk to you today about, is I don't need everybody to like or agree with what it is that I'm doing. That's never been the goal. The goal has been can I get enough people to enjoy it so that I can make a living so that I can do it again tomorrow. And if I can figure out that trick, and it's been 40 years now, I've had a 40-year career, and maybe I've got enough momentum. If I if I pay attention, I might be able to basically go to my grave being creative and being and being able to control that creativity that's in there. So I need enough. And so the question isn't that what I do, I check with the audience. I never check with the audience. Let me just be clear. I never check with the audience. No, no, no, I don't. Because the audience is already telling me by the sales. They're already, they're already voting, they're already giving me their comment. I did these three things, sales doubled. I did these three things, sales went in half. I have to be smart enough to be able to assimilate what of those pieces may have actually been the up or the down of those sales and try to either stay away from it in the future or replicate it and try and see if you can get another bounce another day. So on the comic book, on the comic book front, I I'm I'm I'm I'm trying to write because I can't what am I gonna do? I mean, I've created somebody told me the other day they did a count. 20, there's 2100 characters in the Spawn Comic book in the last uh 30 years. Some of them are just doctors, lawyers, cops, whatever. Like it's it's like it they're not all superheroes. But every time you write a character, and here's the thing that's always weird for people they don't understand, you have to actually sort of try and put yourself in their position. So if I'm writing a serial killer, I try to get into that as deep as I can. And sometimes people go, they look at me side-eyed and they're going, Todd, like what like what do you do? Like, what do you and I'm like, I'm not, hold a sec, I'm not advocating to be a serial killer. Of course. But if I'm writing a serial killer, it better be convincing. It's the same exercise as when I do a doctor. I'm not advocating for people to be doctors, right? I'm just saying it better be a convincing doctor when I'm writing them. And so all I can do is go, okay, if I was a doctor in my limited knowledge, or I ask people, how would I get there? So I just do it. Obviously, I can't ask about serial killers, so you just make it up, right? You go, if I was a serial killer. That's the piece. I think they're going, Todd, you're thinking about this way, way, way, way too much. So anyway, so I put I put a maybe some, maybe a lot. I don't know. I guess it depends on people's definition of what a lot is of my personal thoughts. Look at the whole concept. Let's just talk about the whole concept of spawn, right? As a whole, right? It's got this giant heaven-hell element to it, right? Which is weird because people are like, what? You're an atherist. Well, of course it. I think it has to be a guy like me, because somebody who's really devout would, I think, second guess themselves. I think they would overthink it. I think they would go to bed wondering, I don't believe I'm doing any blasphemy because I'm I I I don't I don't prescribe to that piece of it. So of course it has to be me. Uh so I go, okay, let's go. Al Simmons is just saying, and he's basically me, just saying apox on both your houses. Heaven and hell, be gone. We're flawed, but we're human. You want to give us true free will, get out of the way. Let us live our flawed lives as we see fit. Go. But they but they don't. Obviously, in my book, they don't. And so he's always in a constant sort of push and tug of both of them. And just so we know, in in the book that I write, they're sort of the same thing, just in different clothing, right? I I always say it in my book, the difference is one just has a better PR firm, right? Just like one, but when you get down to the checklist, they both have the exact same goals, right? I would I would argue the same thing here in our real world. The the goals are the same. So he's just saying, go, let us just be free. Let us just be free. That's all we want. He now knows that's impossible because he's seen it with his own eyes in my in the book. So now the question is, and it's a tough one, because it it would be me, a guy who disavowed all this forever, would go, wow. So there is something. The problem with him in the book is it's not what got taught in Sunday school, and that's that's where he's just like, oh, all right, now we've got to, I've got to keep up and I've got to recalculate all of this on on the fly, because there can be this may seem weird, there can be good demons and bad angels, right? It's it's this weird theology that I've created in my own book. I can tell you how it works, but anyway, that's that's it. So his whole thing is just we're flawed. Let us let us let us have true free will. Leave us alone. That's the that's the freest you can make us. Leave us alone. So temptation, take temptation away.

Sean McDowell 43:18

If Al wants heaven and hell to go away, and you're Al, it sounds like you're saying a world without God and the church and belief in the afterlife would be a better world. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_02 43:31

No, no, I'm not saying that. I'm saying what you're saying. No, no, no. I'm what I'm saying is let people come to whatever it is that makes sense for them instead of creating the roadmap. And the because the roadmap, once you start creating the roadmap, then that's where the gray matter and some of the chinks and the armor begin to come along the way, right? That you just go, oh, uh, now there's Blueprint. Now there's now there's a rule book that we have to follow. Oh, I see. So now we've got to follow it. Now we don't have free will. We got to there's this rule that's not free will. Okay, fine. So now we start getting, we start narrowing people instead of going, people can let them self-narrow. Let them self-narrow, right? Let them come up with it. And again, I'm guessing that it would probably start all over again. In all honesty, Sean, people would go and do it and let me see if I can give you an epiphany. And I've never had that many. But I I did have one epiphany. So so there's religion, and then you would I don't even know what you called me. There's atheist, whatever is at the other extreme. No, no, no, no. You're misstating it. There's atheism, and then there's like go four miles. Keep going four miles. That's Todd. Like, I am so far away from the other end. It is like again. Do I think it's better or worse? No. It's good for me. I'm not advocating it for any other human being, not even my own children. I'm just going, I'm Todd. I have dominion over one life, me, I'm this is how I choose to be. Everybody else, I'm with you. Like the golden rule. Good for you. I'll give you an epiphany, though. I was I was with my daughter. She was uh at med school, and she was doing it in Israel, right? And she was living in the second biggest town city in Israel. It's called Bersheva, right? There's there's there's Tel Aviv, everybody knows Tel Aviv, second biggest one is Bersheva. Bersheva is in the desert. Uh I I spent 30 years in Phoenix, Arizona, so I know the desert. And I went to go visit her one day, and then she said, hey dad, let's go to Jordan and let's go look at the sculptures, right? Uh the sand sculptures uh that are there in Petra. I'm like, yeah, okay, cool. I have to tell you, Sean, I I I couldn't believe what I saw between Beersheva and the Jordan border. I live in a desert and I felt like I was driving on the moon. It it there were times where it was the void it seemed to me of life. I was on another planet. At least we've got cactuses in Phoenix. And then here's where the epiphany came. I went, oh my god. So if some young woman 2,000 years ago, with three children between the ages of one and four, had to cross this desert. Vegas odds tell me three of those four children will pass away before she gets it to the other end. And probably all four. All four. Because there's nothing out there, Sean. There's nothing out there. But she's trying to find a better life for her kids. And as she's holding her last child, taking his last breath, she has two choices. She can either believe in something more than that moment and have hope. And that's what I think religion is at its core. It's what that one word, hope. Or you can believe in what I have, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, you're never seeing your kids again. Between those two, I actually get it. And if I was there 2,000 years ago, I might have created religion myself, right? Because hope is a generous thing to give somebody. So I understand religion at its core. That's it. Because that woman has to say, I'm never seeing these kids I've only had for a couple years. That's horrifying to me to think. Give her some hope. Give her some hope. So we've got mechanisms to give people hope. Good. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with it.

Sean McDowell 48:02

See me religion offers hope, but it's actually about truth. Is it true or not? So if it's not true, then it's false hope. If it's really true, it gives genuine hope. No, like that's the basic question.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

Yeah, so you can argue about the truth of it. We can we can put that to the side for now and talk about it a little bit and a little bit later. In that instance, I don't think we need to burden that woman with it at that point. I think we just have to give her the hope, the peace of mind. The peace of mind that that this isn't as good as it gets. For her at that moment, if this is as good as it gets, wow, that that's crummy life. That's a crummy life, right? My kids don't make it past five. I'm probably gonna die at 23 myself. I might not even make it out of the desert here. So so I get, I get it, I get the clinging of it. What from my perspective has happened is the the the sense of hope is now turned into trying to say that it's also true. And that's that's when you lose me. The P the that P. Oh, we crossed over a line. I check out. I don't we all have brains, I consider them to be computers, I have different wiring and switches than you, right? I you and I turn some on or off, or I might not even have the switches, or vice versa. So, as curious as I may be to you and your audience, can I also say you guys are equally curious to me because I can't do what you do and you can't do what I do. I would I would really like someday to be able to just body swap, to just go, how does that work? How because I can't turn certain things off, John. I can't. And so, and you might want to go, how how does he not? Like it would be an interesting experiment to go, oh, that's interesting, that's cool. I I don't know, it would be a it would be a good experiment, but it's never gonna happen. So I have to live with one simple fact. The name's Todd only rhymes with God. That's all I got. I I got I got me. I got me. I get to control me.

Sean McDowell 50:02

Okay, so the question about hope and truth. There's a difference between a lady losing her child and the dramatic scenario you laid out. Fair enough. I think a lot of what she would conclude at that state would be things that she's brought to it from before, right? Like she's lived a certain life and she has certain expectations, whether she believes in God or not.

SPEAKER_02 50:22

Or her environment, right. The environment she was in. Sure.

Sean McDowell 50:25

Yeah, a host of factors. So if I hear you correctly, it sounds like you're saying you think religion is invented and it was something created. We needed hope, invented religion to fulfill that hope.

SPEAKER_02 50:36

Nothing wrong with that. Yeah, nothing wrong with that. I again I I don't think people, I think 97, 98% of people don't act with malice. I think people do stuff, it might not work out, but people do stuff with good intent, right? So good intent, I like I applaud good intent. Like, let's go. And some and then along the way, we see it in businesses, we see it in family uh interaction stuff. Things sometimes get misinterpreted and distorted and whatever else. Here's I think a flaw that we have as adults when we're having conversation, you and I may have to do it a little bit here. I think we have to define certain words. Fair enough. So when when because there's too many subjective words and when when people are talking, and I think the problem that we have as adults at times is we're using our definition of a word and putting it on another person who grew up and has a different definition, and it's not the same. So let's just talk about a couple easy ones. Big, smart, fast, you know, intelligent. What like you and I can can go if we're gonna have a debate on any one of those topics. Let's define first what big is to you. Tall is it to some people, anybody over five, tens tall, and not somebody else? No, you gotta be seven, six. So you have to define it. You have to define it because this is the piece I tell people I go, you actually think that human being you're talking to has lived the same experience as you. It's not true. If I was born in Alabama, I concede right now, I would probably think differently. Not better or worse, I would think differently. Why? I was born in Alabama. And there's a structure and an environment that's around me that's going to form certain thoughts. And if I was born in India or Pakistan, I would have even another sort of thought process. I can see that, right? I didn't. I I grew up in whatever was the life that I've lived with what's around me, and that's sort of how I've distilled the world and for me personally.

Sean McDowell 52:36

So let me come back to the idea. I think there's a lot of things in religion that make sense that they're invented. I think we could point towards some. One of the reasons I'm a Christian, because I think there's certain factors that nobody in their right mind would invent. Things like the Trinity. Why would you invent that God is triune for starters? Like it's difficult to understand. It stretches the mind. Things like your Wow, Sean.

SPEAKER_02 53:00

Things like that. But you haven't read some of my comic books. You haven't read some of my comic books then. Come on, you're selling yourself way, way short. Okay, so let me make it. If you think that stuff in the Bible is good stuff, like, dude, I'll come up with ten times, but there's been a thousand people. We can come up, we can come up with crazy all day long, man. We can we can't crazy. Not crazy. I mean, I mean cool ideas. I'm sorry, my my my bad.

Sean McDowell 53:22

Not a good Trinity is a cool idea that somebody's inventing. My point is that's just one example. I would say things like the idea of a savior that comes who's crucified shamefully was the complete opposite of expectations and would be the worst kind of marketing, in a sense, conceivable. Teachings of Jesus, like if you just look at a woman lustfully or have an angry thought, you are guilty of adultery or murder. There are certain things that are less than intuitive and not just crazy, built into Christianity. If you're gonna make up a religion, die to yourself daily. It's like, uh, that's not exactly getting followers. If you want to be first, be last. So that's one of the things that at least gives me pause to assume that it's just invented for hope. Give me your thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 54:14

Um You just said something that actually put a smile on my face. And so I'm gonna applaud you for it. Because I can say that I've had conversations before with other people and they don't. You you you at least gave the phrase gives me pause. In all honesty, Sean, when I've had any sort of meaningful conversation with somebody that's really like just go to 99.9% there and leave at least that much doubt. Just give me that. But I run into, unfortunately, people who go, it's a hundred percent, it's true, there is no doubt. This and and that's that's I can't go there. And here's why I can't I here's why I can't go there. I'm just I'm just gonna just use the reasoning and rational that I have right here. It can't be true because we're here thousands of years later with human beings, and there is not one God. Like if there was empirical truth to anybody's God, not yours, anybody's, anybody's on the planet, empirical truth, and and let's define empirical. The definition of empirical truth is that every human being would come to the same result. Two plus two for every human being is four. The bump between our two eyes, once you define it, is a nose, and if you put your hand in fire long enough, unprotected, it will burn. There are empirical things that exist that are out there, okay, which means that if there was any empirical truth to anybody's God at any time in history, there would only be one religion on this entire planet because we'd all come to the same conclusion. We haven't, and we don't, so we have to start with the premise, I do, that there's no empirical truth. Okay. If you agree with me on that definition, then we can go from there and break it down.

Sean McDowell 56:23

Should we should we talk about that first of all? Sure, sure, sure. Sure, sure. So I understand what is meant by empirical evidence, like pointing towards two plus two equal equaling four or some physical burning that took place. Ow, that hurts. But I would argue, I think this I would have a different view of what it means to be human and the cost of following God. Like believing two plus two equals four costs nothing. Right? We agree with that. It's obvious, helps us flourish. Realizing that doesn't hurt, it's obvious, keep your hand away from a fire to function. But when it comes to God, now it's like you've got to die to yourself, you've got to repent of your sins. So just like you said, you can have motivation to believe in God, you need hope. There can be a lot of motivation to not believe in God. And I've I I don't have a clue where you stand in this, but a number of people, even like Aldous Huxley, the agnostic, somewhere maybe close to atheist, is like we revolted against Christianity because of the way we wanted to live our lives. So there's gonna be psychological motivation on all sides. And I think I would number one, I would say I think there's really good evidence for God, but let me frame it before I come back to this.

SPEAKER_02 57:33

Let me respond to it. Okay. I agree with you.

Sean McDowell 57:35

In what sense?

SPEAKER_02 57:36

Everything you just said. Here's what, but it's not provable what you just said. That's the piece. That's the that's the line. So it's like so I get, yes, yes, all of that's yes, yes, yes, but it's not provable what you just said. So it like there's no it's the proof part that then falls apart. And we know because we're nobody's been able to prove it. So we know that to be the fact that's sitting it here. Because here's here's an interesting thing, Sean, and then I'll let you go. Uh have your question. It's an interesting from my point of view, and I I I and this is weird, because again, this is why I wish people could switch. People say, Why don't you believe in God? Right? It's an easy go-to question, right? I I think it's the wrong question for me. I think the question is, why do you? My my short answer is math. Math. Zero empirical evidence. Zero. Okay. Now you go and you tell me why you believe 100% of something that's zero, but go. And why and it's weird that I'm the odd guy given that I believe in the zero. It's just because there's no proof. That's why. Like, there's no proof. I empirical proof, there's zero of it. You keep trying to tell me that it's a hundred percent true when it's zero. So I don't know why I'm the oddball in this question, but I asked the question in reverse. Why, like, why do you believe in the hundred percent? You don't. You actually said doubt. So good on you. But I know people to believe in the hundred percent when it's a zero.

Sean McDowell 59:12

I agree with you. I think there's a hundred percent of people, there's people who say 100% God doesn't exist, and I go, that's nonsense. I do know 100%. Oh no. 100% God does exist. Some people might believe that, that's not me.

SPEAKER_02 59:23

So if you're talking about just so we're clear, you're here's my answer to almost every big question. I don't know.

Sean McDowell 59:29

That's more agnostic than which is fair. That's fine. So when we talk about proof, I'm not talking about like two plus two equals four. We can prove that definitively one hundred percent show it. Most things in life, like a court of law, is not prove one hundred percent. It's like beyond a reasonable doubt, where does the data point to? So for me as a whole, when I look at the world, then we could talk about some of the pieces of evidence I find compelling. You can give me your two cents, but I'm not saying do I have 100% that this is the case. I look at the world and go, what makes the best sense of how we're here on our moral sense and the origin of life and the fine-tuning of the universe and the math? What makes the most sense for you? That's what I mean. Well, not so what it when you say by you, No, for you. We each have to assess this, of course, through a certain grid, right? We analyze, but not for me, I'm talking about what's true in the world. Like again, if we had a court case, you wouldn't say, well, it's a person guilty or not for you. You'd say, well, where does the evidence point? Is the person guilty or innocent? Do we have sufficient evidence, not a hundred percent proof, to point towards that person being guilty or at least not guilty? So it's not about certainty for me. Right. I I would any Christians who say it's about that, like you, I would have a hard time with that as well. So the question is like, uh are are there things in the world that point towards God? And I in fact, I'd love to get into it a little bit and just get your sense on this. Uh I recently interviewed a hundred apologists, Christians who are defending the Christian faith. So these are professors, scientists, uh philosophers, theologians, historians. And I asked them this question. I said, what do you think is the single best piece of evidence that God exists? And I got dozens and dozens of answers, but a few of them kind of fit into bigger categories. Does that make sense? Like the and I did like a six, seven minute video on this. Some were unique arguments, like if you actually said beauty points towards God, we hinted at that earlier. But two of the top ones I love your take on. One of them is what's called the moral argument. And if I can the way I thought about this is I've read Spawn, a lot of your comics. There's good and evil, there's justice and injustice, there's revenge and love. These are moral categories. That all existed pre-Bible, correct. Okay, so for the record, I don't ground my morality in the Bible. That's a separate question.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:04

Many people on your side do, though.

Sean McDowell 1:02:07

I don't. I don't I actually think most don't ground it in the Bible. We would say the Bible expresses it, but it's not. Have you heard this one though?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:14

This is an interesting one too. Is well then where do you get your morals, Todd? What? Like, so I just want to so again, I think it's the wrong question.

Sean McDowell 1:02:22

Okay, so that's the wrong question. Let me push back for fun on this one, because you told me to push back. The question is not where do you get your morals? Yeah. That's not the question.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:30

No, no, no. But I've had people ask that question.

Sean McDowell 1:02:32

And that's like like the people with certainty, that's the wrong question.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:35

Yeah. Yeah, it is the wrong question.

Sean McDowell 1:02:36

So the the right question is if things like I think the right question is if there's good and evil, justice and injustice, revenge and love, which seem to be objective moral categories. I mean, you talk about Spawn, for example, one of the characters, Al Simmons, looked at a child abuser, pedophile, or even just a dad who abandons his kid and is like, how dare you do that? You've done something wrong, like objectively wrong. As an atheist, if you're four miles beyond spirituality, not where do you get your morals, but how do you account for justice and injustice, good and evil, actually being features of the universe. It's inherent.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:20

It's inherent. I think 97% of people inherently are good. I think people come out of the womb, not acting evil. I think they're just inherently good. You think locks on our front door stop people from entering our houses? Every door on every neighborhood I could get into a house in five seconds. We just are good people and we do things inherently good. Why? For me, not for any kind of gift. And the gift for most people is the afterlife. I don't need that. It's like it's because it's just the inherent natural right thing to do. This may still, I don't mean to simplify it that much, but there's a Christmas song, and I think it's got a great line in it. Be good for goodness' sake. You don't need any other reason to be good other than just be good. Because like it's natural, it's way natural, more natural to be good than it is to not. I I think you gotta work at being nasty, right? Being being being a bad person. I think that's I think that's way too much work. It's way easier to smile and say nice things to people and be charming. And I think this is what gives me my hope is that every I think most of us, 98% of us, are just at our core, just good people. I think we're good people. Right.

Sean McDowell 1:04:40

So, in part, let me push back to what I think the real question is. The question is not how do we know right and wrong. I think you're right that it's inherent within us. Now you might say that comes from evolution. I might say God wired into us. That's a separate question. We agree that we have an inherent sense of right and wrong. But when you say be good for goodness' sake, it seems to imply that there's such a thing as good within itself.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:04

And we each get to define that. We each individually get to define it.

Sean McDowell 1:05:08

Then it's then it's subjective. That would be a relativist ethical. Correct. So if you have a subjective morality, why shame the father who abandoned his kids? He goes, Todd, that's how I what I think is good. That's what I want to do. Why are you shame me? That's just your subjective preference.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:24

Correct.

Sean McDowell 1:05:25

So you don't think it's wrong for a father to abandon his kids within itself?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:30

No, I think I no. I do if you're asking, do I at times pass judgment on people? Of course I do. Of course I do. I'm as flawed as any other human being. I try to limit it, I try to limit it to disrespectful people. I try now again, who's disrespectful? Todd's definition. Everything is always going to be my definition of it. Why? Because it's the only person I get to basically control. So, yes. So in that case, somebody can make an argument going Hey, here's the reasons why the dad didn't pay alimony and he left his kids. Like, fine, you can make you can make it, you can make it like so. I just have my definitions of certain things that to me, I just go, no. So why forgive an adulterer? No. No, I won't. Why? Why? Oh, this is easy. Do you know how many lies you have to tell? And each time you tell a lie as an adult, you know you're lying. And theoretically, in the basic of like what's sort of right and wrong, telling a lie to your family, your friends, or somebody so that you can go do something that gives you personal pleasure. And you do that for two years. You told thousands of lies. That means you did something knowingly sort of wrong a thousand times and you kept doing it. That's different than somebody who maybe got drunk one time and ran somebody over. That was a one-time thing. I've got a lot more latitude, oddly, for that person than somebody who's repetitive in the wrong. And knowing as an adult, come on, man, as an adult, I give a certain level to adults. I expect, I personally expect a certain decorum from adults at times. And I think we lead and give bad examples to the youth with our behavior as adults. Shame on us. Shame on us at times.

Sean McDowell 1:07:26

So it sounds like you're willing to shame certain people. And I'm not criticizing you that. I think some people change actually.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:32

I'm not here, I'm not here to shame them. I'm saying if I was in charge, if I was in charge, if you changed it to God, not Todd, then I would have certain I'd have different rules than uh that are in that I'd have different rules.

Sean McDowell 1:07:43

Okay, so let let's come back to that. What I'm trying to get at is if there's a real thing like justice and injustice, or if it's all just subjective and opinion. And I'm sensing a certain tension with where you sit. It isn't, because we have laws. Let me clarify and then you come back. So there's a certain tension between it sounds like you're saying I don't want to judge certain people because that would be a wrong thing to do. We shouldn't do that. But there's also really strong condemnations within the comic book, and I agree with it. Murderers, pedophiles, like if it's all subjective, then they're not actually doing anything wrong. They just have their own opinions about reality. You don't like it, but it's not wrong. Right. So it seems to me that an atheist has one of two options. You can tell them if I'm wrong. They could say, yeah, there's real right and wrong, love, justice, injustice. There's a way we should live built into the world, but then they're having to explain right and wrong without there being a God. Or the atheist goes, Yeah, there's no God. It's all subjective. It's a matter of opinion. It's God, it's somebody else. But when that falls, then you can't literally say any behavior, even the most egregious stuff we could think in, that you rightly condemn in your comic books, is actually wrong. That's what I think the tension is.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:06

And for me, as someone It's wrong for that person, though. Shalin, you're missing it. It's wrong for that person. So let's let's stay with it. The struggle for Al Simmons in this comic book isn't that he has the answers, quite the opposite. It's who are you, Al Simmons Spawn, to even met out these decisions? Who are you? You're not judge, jury, and executioner here. What gave you the right? You start playing that game, Al Simmons, you become a de facto quasi-god yourself, the thing that you're trying to fight against. And that's the struggle. The struggle is going, oh, so how do I do this and not become like them? And the answer is that's the journey of this character. That's the journey of us as human beings. We constantly are trying to find balance and struggle to come up with these ideas that make sense for us and don't interfere, hopefully, with the peace and the paths of other people we get there. But if I start asserting, what I don't do is I don't assert it on anybody. I don't assert it on anybody. I don't have the authority. I don't have the power. If you want to make me the king of the state, shoot, I'll change a bunch of laws tomorrow. Yes, I get to make it in my my name, shoot, tomorrow. I don't have that authority. If I've got one, if I've got one regret, I don't I don't live with regret. If I've got one regret, it's that I wasn't born 2,000 years ago or 1500 years ago. Because when you had a dispute and you felt strong and your convictions were at your core, the way you resolved it was you take a blade and I take a blade, and one of us doesn't walk away. We don't get that anymore. We don't get that anymore. Right.

Sean McDowell 1:11:06

Fair enough. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:07

Because there's too many things that people can hide behind now today, right? Corporate backing, lawyers, suing, doing this, taking market shares away from you, all this other silly stuff. And it's like, you feel that strong, let's go out to the field, right? But it's like, ah, like that said, I just like, oh man, I should never watch Braveheart because I just like, oh man, I missed out.

Sean McDowell 1:11:27

So here's what I look at, and then we'll move, we'll move on from this. There's a difference between somebody you saying you have the authority to make a law, like a legal law, and there being a moral law. Now, our legal law should reflect a higher moral law, where those legal laws are all just prudential and we're coming up with them and they could have been differently. Spawn seems to operate in a world in which there are certain moral laws, like he kills and then he feels bad about it at times. But then other times he kills a character who's a pedophile, and we're all like, yeah, he did the right thing. So, what to me makes brilliant about the character is he's trying to figure out who he is. He's trying to understand what it kind of means to be a hero and do what's right with all the things that he does. But that only makes sense in a world in which there's right and wrong. Sacrifice means something. He ought to be a good father. So all I'm getting at is the root question is, if I can frame this, in a materialistic world, which we start with the particles, like you said in that interview with David Das Malchi, and it was interesting, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. That's it. I mean, four miles beyond the spiritual person. Where do these seemingly spiritual things come from, like love and justice that aren't material? Right. And you sure you sure seem to live your life and write in your comp books as if there's a real right and wrong and a real justice and injustice. I don't understand. Not where your beliefs come from, but how that fits within the world, or are you literally saying justice and injustice, right and wrong, are completely subjective?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:14

To some degree they are. And then and then we live in societies that basically control some of those, right? Which is the laws and the norms of society around us. You don't get to just everybody doesn't get to just do whatever they want because you get chaos at that point, right? You're not gonna have any sort of organized community and growth in that. So the question then for each of the individuals is can I live within the confines of whatever the government is, the society it is? And there's plenty of other countries. If you don't, you can we can if you have the time and effort and money, you can m make the move if you want. Some people don't have that luxury, as you know, Sean. Um, which is sort of the plight of poor people. Um so I I am not advocating or anything. I'm just saying from Todd's point of view, I I'm not I'm not saying that anybody has to agree with any of it. I'm not doing, I'm not giving a lesson. I'm just I'm here in the entertainment business. I'm just entertaining, I'm just doing it. I'm not writing a book, I'm not writing a book of laws that basically says, I believe in something because Todd told me to, right? Those are more scripture stuff. Why don't you like that person? Well, it says here in the Bible, and like, oh man, that's that's that like, but besides that somebody told you, why don't you personally like it? And then they and it keeps circling, it keeps circling back to the same thing. And I'm like, oh man, I I don't know. It's it's uh it's difficult. It's different. I'm gonna say something that may seem offensive, and that's okay, because let me just say that at its core, religion at its super core is offensive to me, and I'll tell you why in a moment. Um well let's get to it. I'll tell you why it's offensive. Tell me because every because it's as good. And here's the blind spot. I think you guys have blind spots. Okay. And I we all do. But here's where I think religious people have a blind spot. Uh you seem like a good guy. I'll use you as an example, you're here. You seem like a good guy, you seem like you're reasonable, you got good family, you got whatever else. But you adhere to something. I could invite you over for a barbecue, we could have a good laugh or whatever else.

Sean McDowell 1:15:37

Anytime, by the way, I'll show up just for the record.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:40

But here's the piece it just is always buzzing right there. At the end of the day, if I don't adhere to the belief that you do, my children burn. And you're okay with that. Either you're okay with it personally, or you bend a knee to somebody who is okay with that. That's the insult because there is nothing you or your family or your children could do that I wish harm upon them ever, ever. And yet I know that hell awaits them if they don't do this thing, and they're okay with that. As they're eating my burger, they're okay with my five-year-old frying. That's the piece that you guys, I wish you could get into my head, is the insult, the blind spot for a guy like me. I would never do that in reverse to you. Ever.

Sean McDowell 1:16:48

So if I can it sounds like you're saying that that's immoral and it's wrong objectively to send somebody to hell. Like that's an objective.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:58

Oh, you don't think it's I would never wish ill on your family.

Sean McDowell 1:17:03

So it's just personal, subjective you wouldn't wish ill, but you don't think it's morally wrong for God to do that. Like it sounds like you're taking moral issue with a God who would do such a thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:14

I I don't uh no, I don't. I don't take it issue with God because I don't believe He exists. So I don't take any issue with that. I I I take issue with the people who implement it. You're one of the implementations. So, okay, cool. And I understand it, and there's the hope part, and I get it. And then it gets to that point, and I go, oh, and they're okay with my family getting burnt. That's cool. What could they do in reverse that I would ever want that on them? I can't imagine it. I don't even know what it is. But you guys, you guys do you, you guys do you, right? There are certain lines that get crossed, and this is the this is the switching on and the switching the off, right? I don't believe in miracles. I don't believe in miracles.

Sean McDowell 1:17:58

Can we come back to miracles? Yeah, should that be okay? Sure. So So do you think hell biblically is physical where people are burning? I don't exist. It doesn't exist. From what Christians believe. You think we believe that hell is a physical burning place.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:14

It it it I believe the gnashing of teeth and sort of it's basically the worst possible thing you guys can come up with, right? So there's the lines that are in there. So I could come up with stuff that would curdle your toes of what I think the worst possible fate could be for your children. I would never say it out loud.

Sean McDowell 1:18:33

So I was only asking you to describe it as burning, and I don't think hell is a a physical burning place, like a God who's torturing us. And I'd also say I'm not okay with it. Christians wouldn't just say, Oh, I'm at a barbecue, I'm okay with your family burning. That's a part of the calling that we believe that there is a God, there's a moral order, we're a counter.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:54

But if my children, my family, but if we don't adhere to the rule, then we get punished. That's the piece. Like, look at I like the diamondbacks. You may be a Los Angeles Dodgers fan. I don't get it. I disagree. Oh, Red Sox. Okay, I'm a Yankee fan. That's even better. Oh. I so I'm a Yankee fan, you're a Red Sox fan. I don't get it. I think you're crazy, but I don't wish harm on you for not being a Yankee fan for not believing what I believe in. You you you do you, and hopefully we'll beat you in the playoffs every single year. I don't I don't need you to be a Yankee fan, and I don't wish harm on you for not being a Yankee fan. I'm gonna be a Yankee fan, you be a c a Red Sox fan, and I hope we beat you every single time.

Sean McDowell 1:19:40

Okay, fair enough. So when you say wish harm, I don't wish harm on anybody. I don't want anybody to go to hell.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:48

So I don't wish But the but the guy you advocate for, it's in the scripture, which is I've been told is perfect. So it's like it's in there. You don't get to this is the cafeteria Christian, cafeteria Catholic part of it. You don't get to like, or maybe you do it. Actually, they all do. You just sort of pick and choose sort of the.

Sean McDowell 1:20:07

Oh, I'm not picking and choosing. I'm not pulling out. But there's a difference between picking and choosing and wishing it upon.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:12

No, you don't wish it. The guy upstairs does.

Sean McDowell 1:20:14

I don't know. Well, it depends on what you mean by wishing it. In the in the Christian story, God has made us to be in relationship.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:22

If we don't follow his rules, we get punished.

Sean McDowell 1:20:24

So it's not so much about following his rules, we get punished.

unknown 1:20:28

Sure.

Sean McDowell 1:20:30

Wow. So so the story said that I missed that. So the story would be that God made us for relationship with him. So we can know God and we can know others. That's the purpose of life according to the But everybody doesn't get in, though. Everybody doesn't get in. Well, let me let me let me take a step back. So I I agree with that. But what does God wish? It says in 2 Peter 3 9, God wishes that we would turn from evil and turn towards repentance and be saved. That's God's desire.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:56

Right.

Sean McDowell 1:20:56

That's God's wish.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:59

He can fix that, but he can fix that. I don't understand.

Sean McDowell 1:21:01

Okay, okay. Maybe. Let me come back to that. You said at the beginning, why doesn't God just give us free will and let us choose and let us live? That's exactly, in a sense, what the Christian story says. God didn't make us robots. He didn't just make what's the free will. Free will is we have choice. It allows you to believe or not believe.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:20

So let's talk about the choice. Okay.

Sean McDowell 1:21:21

So let's talk before.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:23

Because I think this is another blind spot. But let's we'll get back to it.

Sean McDowell 1:21:26

Before we get there, at the root of the Christian story is that there's a God who's made us to know him and to know others. And some ways what's powerful about that is you talk about the most important thing to you is relationship, your wife and your kids. It's what you deserve reserve love for. Christianity would say life is about relationship. It's with God and it's with others. But to be in relationship with a holy God, we have to enter into on you might say God's terms, so to speak, rooted in his character. Why? Because God is holy. Why? And God is just.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:03

The peace. Oh man. Oh man. That's the peace. Why the ego, God? I wish, I actually hope. Can I tell you, Sean? I hope I am dead wrong. I hope I am dead wrong. I hope someday I get to meet this maker of yours. Because I'm going to have a conversation with this person. And at the end, I got to tell you, Sean, even if somehow he says, Todd, I know you're, I know, I know you. I've known you since I know this is how you come on in. I'm not going in. There's nothing that could get me to go into his Glee Club. Nothing.

Sean McDowell 1:22:44

What do you think his Glee Club is like and people doing there?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:46

I'm going to come up with rules. If you don't adhere to my rules, you're not good enough for me. The God of love has now got a criteria. If he was as good as what you guys said, that would be like a 7-Eleven. And that thing would be open 24 hours a day. Come in, come all, warts and all, come on. I understand, Todd, you were a crazy dude. I understand it, but I knew it. Why? Because I am God and I knew what you were going to be. This is the bizarre thing about me. Either God knows the future or he doesn't, right? So yeah, I agree.

Sean McDowell 1:23:25

Either he knows it or he doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:26

He doesn't.

Sean McDowell 1:23:27

So simple question.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:28

God came down, could he drive a stick shift? I don't know. Either no or yes. Okay. If the answer is yes, to me, we've got a problem. Because then he knew he knew me. He knew the moment he made me. He knew what I was going to do. He still put me into existence. He still knew I was going to be me. He still knew my thoughts. He still knows I'm going to my grave, never given him a single second of existence. And then he's going to sit there, and then this is where I get to have the odd conversation. I just want to, I just want to understand this, Big G. You made me. I didn't. I didn't ask to get born. You made me. I got born. You knew I was going to be Todd, because you made Todd. You wired Todd. I didn't wire me. You wired Todd. You wired Todd. The world wired it. But again, you made all that stuff too. So you knew the future. And now you actually knew this day was coming where I was going to be standing in front of you. And now I'm going downstairs because I am exactly to 100% specs of what you knew I was going to be in advance. You did this. You made this. So you want to punish me? This is on you. I had nothing to do with this one, right? Like, I'm you. So go ahead. This is a weird thing to me. But you do you, Big G.

Sean McDowell 1:24:58

Okay, so think about it this way. You've been married to your wife, Wanda, for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:03

40 years. We just celebrated our 40th anniversary.

Sean McDowell 1:25:05

40 years. Congrats. Just had our 25th, my wife and I.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:08

Congrats.

Sean McDowell 1:25:09

Uh thank you. It's there's obviously there's some differences here in this analogy, but there's certain things and rules you have to do to be in a relationship with somebody. And if you don't do it, you can't be in a relationship with your wife. A lot of things. And you've talked about being faithful to her and not looking at others in a commendable way. I totally agree with that. But there's laws and rules you have to follow to have a successful, meaningful love relationship. And if you break those, the relationship is done. Now you describe God as being ego.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:42

So what's the rule?

Sean McDowell 1:25:43

Well, okay, so let me take a step back to the first time. I play sports.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:45

I play sports. This is another reason I can't go there, because nobody's told me how the rule book works.

Sean McDowell 1:25:50

Okay, so let me let me come back to the rule.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:52

I go to ten people.

Sean McDowell 1:25:54

Well, let me let me come back to the rule book. All I'm saying is when we say God is egotistical. If I said, hey, you have skills to do art and I want to give you credit for this art, you're not egotistical to go, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:08

Why does he need me to bend a knee?

Sean McDowell 1:26:09

He doesn't need you to do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:11

Okay, then why does he punish me for not doing it then? Why why but if I don't do it, I get punished. I just there's the circular piece. He doesn't need me to bend a knee, but if I don't bend the knee, I get punished. My children get punished, somebody gets punished.

Sean McDowell 1:26:26

In part, God doesn't need anything. All right? And by the way, you said you're going to your grave not believing in God. Maybe it's a never.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:34

It's a never. Okay. It's a never.

unknown 1:26:37

Okay.

Sean McDowell 1:26:38

So it sounds like you're not going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:39

I'll give you another, I'll give you, I'll give you another never. I hate this is this is a cliche when people say never say never. I'll give you another cliche. I will never steal an elephant from a zoo, fly it in a helicopter, go to Pakistan and drop it on the heads of three children that are bathing in a river. I promise you I will never do that too. Now you can say never say never, Todd. I promise you I'll never do that too. I'm going to my grave like this. Like I'm going to my grave like this.

Sean McDowell 1:27:06

Okay. I mean that's that's fine. I think you have free will. You can make those. I don't have free.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:12

That's a con, but go ahead.

Sean McDowell 1:27:13

So uh okay. So let's go let's come back to we can come back to the free will and the miracles.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:18

Yeah.

Sean McDowell 1:27:18

Would you say, would you say you've had a good life?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:21

Oh, good one.

Sean McDowell 1:27:23

A great one. Great one. Like you love I love life. I love live it again if you could do it again and reinvine the colour. I love life to the fullest.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:33

And you know why maybe I love it maybe so much? Because there to me, there's nothing afterwards. I have to sponge this up, Sean. This is like, for me, this is it. This is my heaven. This is my heaven today. I go, because this is it. This is all the things you get. The five senses. I get to hold my my wife's hand. I get to hug my children. This is it. I go, wow. I don't want to turn it. I don't want eternity.

Sean McDowell 1:28:00

Oh, you don't okay. So again, another one we could come back to. I would if eternity is the way that I actually think the Christian tradition teaches. So the very things we value most in this life, relationships and people, that's what heaven is about, knowing God and knowing others. So we I'm just telling you what the Christian tradition is. For them. For Christians, for them. That's what I believe. That's what we understand. Right, I got it. I don't need it. I don't.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:28

I'll let you have that. I don't need any of it. So yeah, that's fine. So don't.

Sean McDowell 1:28:31

No, I'm just I'm gonna explain what I think the Christian tradition teaches. If you reject it, totally fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:37

I don't need it. I don't reject it. I don't reject it. I don't need it. I don't I don't have a want for it.

Sean McDowell 1:28:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:42

And I know that I know that's hard for people to comprehend. I understand, I actually even understand it. What? Why wouldn't you want to be with your children forever? Why wouldn't you want to see your family? Like I get all of it. I get it seems odd. I'll I'll I'll tell you why. Because right now I do have my five senses, and nobody has ever, ever proven, and it's unprovable that there is going to be the five senses thereafter. I also don't want to get in a debate that somebody's cloud's bigger than somebody else's. So I don't really want to get into, oh my gosh, I've got to deal with humans again, right? Like we have enough agendas. What's the agenda when we get up there? So if we have cognizant thought, all the flaws of humanity come back to us. But even more torturous to me is that we don't have the five senses, and I do not get to hug my children again. If you told me I had to spend eternity and never hug my child again, you know what that is called to me? Hell.

Sean McDowell 1:29:34

So you think heaven is just like immaterial. I don't know what heaven is. What Christians believe. Because Christians, I'm just telling you what we believe, and I could go into some of the evidence if it interested you why I think this is true.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:47

But is there cognizant thought?

Sean McDowell 1:29:48

Is there what? Cognizant thought. Yeah. There's thinking immaterial. Oh, and there's physical bodies. That's in part Jesus' resurrection, defeating death, and the new heavens and new earth will be physical. So my my only point about that is it wouldn't be egotistical for me to say, Hey, you drew that? That's amazing. Good for you, you go. Thanks. Well, if there's a God, if He gave you every breath and life and the ability to have senses, the ability to be here and do the amazing artwork that you've given, which I told you has been a gift to myself and to others. There's a sense where, like, wow, should just like I rightfully said thank you to you at the beginning, it makes sense if there's a God that made all this possible in your amazing life, if there were such a God, wouldn't it make sense to be like, wow, thank you for this life for my wife, no people that I know? You still would disagree, even if a God. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:44

And I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. I don't care about me at that point. I would ask a bigger question. I don't care that I got a good life. I don't care that he put me in front of a wife that I spent my entire life with. I don't care about that. I got bigger questions. Why did you who created everything? They keep telling me how good you are. Why did you not put drinking water everywhere where people were gonna be? You knew they needed to drink, you were the one that made that. You knew the need to drink, you made that. You knew the science that they need the water, you made that, and you stuck them in places without drinking water or rich soil. And here's my anger at this point. You invented water, you invented soil, you could have put it everywhere, and you chose either not to, knowing that they were gonna then starve to death with the things that you already invented. You just forgot to put them in the right spots. I don't want to be part of something where I think I'm smarter than the leader. I, if you'd given me your abilities, Big G, I would have put water everywhere. And I would have put rich soil so that those people could eat. I don't care what you did for me. I care about humanity at its core. And I think you missed a couple easy ones, and you invented it all. Shame on you. That's the piece, Sean, that I just like who cares about Todd.

Sean McDowell 1:32:52

So I get it. So problem of evil and suffering is it's a big one. And I I understand it's curable if you're God.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:00

Well, it's curable if you're God.

Sean McDowell 1:33:07

Let me take a step back. I teach a whole class on this, so I feel like I'd love to sit down and just flesh out the problem of evil and suffering. But every worldview has to make sense of why there's evil and suffering in the world. And so, on your worldview, you said earlier that this is just Todd's view. There's no objective morality. And that you got very amped about God for being shame on him, immoral, injust, arguably, because of the world he's created. Hold on, let me just clarify.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:38

Because the world that's going to die and he did it anyway.

Sean McDowell 1:33:41

So my only point is that's a moral condemnation of God. And yet in your own system, you said everything is subjective. So why God allows evil and suffering and how Christianity responds to it is a very important topic, and we could go down that road. But I'm simply saying earlier you said morality is subjective. This is just how did I get to do with you? Let me clarify. But then you're you're clearly saying God is out of bounds, done things wrong, done things immoral. That assumes the kind of moral standard by which you're judging God. Or if it's just on the flip hand, if it's just your judge.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:22

Sean, I like you need to get into my head. I'm judging a guy that I've been told my entire life can do anything. Okay. But he didn't. Forgot to put the water where people could drink it. Why why make the rest of infinity? You could like when why do you think that's the same? Why is that wrong, Todd?

Sean McDowell 1:34:49

Why is that wrong for God to have done that? By what standard are you judging God and saying he should have acted differently? That's the piece that I'm getting at. I understand the weight of your question, and we can talk about that. What is the Christian response? Let me just Hindu response, Buddhist response. I'm just simply saying if you're making it.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:13

Would you have liked to have had God put drinking water everywhere for people for the last 4,000 years? Would you have liked that? Okay, so that's of your guy. Would you have liked that from if he could have done it? If he could have done it.

Sean McDowell 1:35:25

Okay, so here's why here's my point. If this is just about likes and dislikes, it doesn't matter what I like and not like. If this is just Sean and this is just Todd and their subjective little realms, I go, Yeah, I I'd like there not to be water. You go, yeah, I'd like there to be water. Unless there's some standard or way of real justice and humans actually have value and there's right and wrong in the universe, where is it just? It doesn't matter. It's like chocolate versus vanilla. You like chocolate, I like vanilla.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:55

Where's go where's God culpable in all of this?

Sean McDowell 1:35:59

Okay, so culpability is a moral term that assumes there's right and wrong. I'm trying to get at how you have right and wrong in a subjective world without God. That's what's not being answered within your system, although I'm fully conceding that why God doesn't do this, those are sticky, difficult questions that need to be addressed. But the standpoint you're criticizing this assumes certain things that your worldview doesn't give permission to do so. Two things. One, human value. Like why doesn't he give water to human beings? Where do human beings even get value that we should give any care about them in an atheistic, materialistic universe? And second, we're still judging God. We're putting God in the seat by a moral standard. I am. And if it's your subjective preference and mine, it doesn't matter. Yes. Okay, good. We're making progress then. So morality is not subjective.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:03

For me, it's I said I will. I will put that subject moral value on everybody. Okay, so if I say I cannot sit here in any good conscience and try, wow, and try and excuse that mistake. You're trying to give me an answer why it's okay or mysterious as to why millions of human beings have starved in the world, and that somehow there's a deeper meaning to it when all you could have done was gone water.

Sean McDowell 1:37:40

Okay, so I'm actually not trying to give a reason why. There are what are called theodicies, which is ways Christianity makes sense of the suffering evil in the world. We could go down that route. I'm asking a more basic foundational question, which is how we even put God in a position we judge him morally. Why kids have any value and why it's wrong to not care for kids. That so again, let me just let me state as clear as I can. That assumes children have objective value. And I totally agree with you that they do. We're on the same page there. I agree with you that we shouldn't harm kids. Totally agree with you. I just don't see how that beginning point makes sense. If you have a materialistic universe, and correct me if the story is wrong, in the beginning was nothing, matter popped into existence, evolved through some blind, purposeless chance process arrives at today. We might have feelings that we should do one thing and not the other thing. But those feelings aren't grounded in a reality of things like justice and injustice and right and wrong, which are spiritual categories. They're not physical. That don't where does that come from?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:59

But it doesn't this is another interesting bit of a blind spot here, too, is that, and again, my answer to everything is pretty much I don't know. But a lot of times the comeback then is well, if you can't prove it, Todd, then it must have been this. So let's let me just give a value to God. We'll call it a unicorn. The conversation goes like this Well, prove to me that the unicorn doesn't exist, Todd. Well, first off, I'm not I'm not here to disprove anything. I'm I'm just saying I'm Todd, I have a proof, every every I have my beliefs, everybody else have yours. God bless you. Uh cool, everybody do it, whatever. But the but the conversation can't be. All we have is a brain that gives us reasoning and rationale. I and so that's all I've only got the tool that I have been given. So I'm applying those to it. That but it can't be that it's like we'll prove the God, of which is unprovable. Why? Because there's no empirical evidence. It's a zero over there.

Sean McDowell 1:39:58

Uh I don't concede that, but keep going.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:00

There's no empirical evidence?

Sean McDowell 1:40:02

I think there's again, I don't think proof means certainty. I think there is evidence we haven't even got to outside of the moral law for the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus. That's compelling, not conclusive, but compelling.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:15

Yeah, no, I'm with you on the compelling. No, I I'm not here. I'm going, I've heard lots of compelling stuff. Like I said, people bring it up to the 100%. That's when you lose me, right? That's when I always get lost. Is that the line gets we're on the same page with that? So so we're there. So for me, the I've had these conversations before. People go, well, Todd, well, then who invented the universe? I don't know. How did it come to be? I don't know. I I I have no clue. I'm a comic book dude. Um but the default is, well, if you can't prove it, it must have been the unicorn. Yeah, but we just said that there's no empirical proof that there's a unicorn. And your fallback is that although there's no proof that there's a unicorn, that then because I can't tell you how the universe was, it had to be the unicorn? It seems like a weird, kabuki argument that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That it's like, so it must have been the thing that we have no proof on, must have made the thing that made everything. Wow, okay. I can't go there, Sean. I just can't turn those levers.

Sean McDowell 1:41:17

Okay, so so fair. Let me just clarify that's not the route that I would go. That's not the kind of argument that I would make. I would say something like this. So C.S. Lewis was an atheist for a while, uh, writer, Narnia series, et cetera, professor at Oxford. And he said, when he was an atheist, his problem with the world is that things seem so unjust. A little bit like you raised earlier. Why is why is there rich and why is there poor? Why is there water and is there not water? He said, but then the thought dawned on me if there is no God, where do we get things like injustice from? Injustice assumes a standard of justice. A pent stick assumes a standard of straightness. When we say something's wrong, we're assuming that something is right.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:02

So where does your justice come from?

Sean McDowell 1:42:04

Okay, so I'm there's a difference between like the law. I'm saying justice, the source of justice is that God is just in his very character. These are not laws he invents. Right. The source is not the Bible. Right. It's the character of God himself is just, is holy, is loving. So things so since God is immaterial, it would make sense in the world that we believe in justice and injustice. We believe in things like love that are not material. And we believe in right and wrong, good and evil, and write stories that reflect we kind of think we live in a universe in which morality really reigns and is real. I'm not saying that proves God. I'm just simply saying this is a signpost. That's a proof. Let me let me frame how it let me frame how I look at it. I think this is a signpost pointing more towards God than materialism or an atheistic worldview. So if we really act and believe like there's a moral law, and you rightly push back, I get it. Like, why are these kids suffering? Why doesn't God do this? That's a cry for justice that's built deep within us. And we're like, that's injust, that assumes there's a standard of justice by which we can judge God. That doesn't fit within a materialistic universe. But if God is just and immaterial things are real, and I guess the way I would frame it is if there's a moral law, then there's a moral law giver. That would be the best explanation of the moral law. Doesn't prove God. No. But I would say, like, beauty, if there's really beauty built into the world, that points towards an artist, just like the beauty of these covers, and I think they're objectively beautiful, that points towards an artist, same with the world, morality. Your cry towards me, and I get it, you're like, this is wrong, this is evil, this is unjust, and I go, Todd, I'm with you. But that assumes a standard of right and wrong that makes no sense in a materialistic universe. You're acting like there's a moral law, which means there's a moral lawgiver. At least that's the best explanation of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:17

I disagree.

Sean McDowell 1:44:18

Okay, tell me why.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:20

Why can't the world just be what we make of it each day?

Sean McDowell 1:44:24

Well, then there's not a moral law if it's just what we make of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:26

It's there are human beings here. We have a brain, we have intellect, and we make decisions. Our perceptions, our decisions control what happens every single day. Done. Done. Why why why is there have to be an origin for it?

Sean McDowell 1:44:43

It doesn't have to be an origin for it. And that there is to be. So if if we're just brains acting in the world, we're human. Then certain things. So when we say we're humans, that still raises the question what does it mean to be human? Are we just body, just brain, or do we have a soul? I don't know. I think oh that's fair. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:00

So I think I've only got what I've got. I'm a human. I can only think with a human brain, human thoughts. That's all I've got. I've got I can't go up to any other tier. I only have to deal within what's in my toolbox. And what's in my toolbox is being a human being. That's all I've got today, Sean. I agree. And I and go, what makes the most sense for a guy like me is if there isn't any gods, not yours, anybody. It all makes sense. That actually makes the most sense. Why can would people be cruel? Why would people have agendas? Why would people do all this? Because they're human and they're flawed and they're greedy. And it's like, okay, cool. And they do stuff and we just do it. And why do we war? Because I don't know. We've got a hundred reasons why we do everything. And here's the problem with us. Here's our flaw is that we can convince ourselves, myself included. We all have our biases, that our perceptions become our realities. And that's that's the flaw in all of us that we get blinders, all of us, of going, oh, I believe that to be true, and I go and do it. We because nobody, it's hard for me to imagine, Sean, anybody acts without some cognizant thought, right? So I think you could go to a serial killer and say, Why did you kill? and they would give you reasons. We don't have to agree with a single one of them, but they would actually like go, well, here's why I did it. So they came up with a reasoning and a rationale. But having a reasoning and a rationale for all of it doesn't in and of itself basically excuse our behavior. So so if I go, huh, if there's nobody watching over us and nobody's paying attention and this we're on our own, yeah, this all makes sense. This all makes sense. If there's something that's supposed to be bigger and all the religions say there's something bigger, and they're just idly standing by for thousands of years, and not putting water and food where it should be, but we'll get to that another day. And mosquitoes, I don't understand mosquitoes either. Um, that like I that seems that seems cruel for a guy like me, Sean, that just seems cruel. And the reason is because all I'm doing, and here's my flaw, I'm gonna give you my flaw. All I can do is think on on those human terms, and even more specifically, Todd human terms, which actually should be the scariest sentence I just said today. Um and I just sit back and go, man, if I was God or one of these gods, the theory of God, I would have, I would, I would, I would, I would do things different. I gotta tell you, I would have done, I would have done things a lot. And so I can't go for the ride of somebody I don't respect. And I don't respect that somehow you've got some sneaky answer, not you, but him, answer as to why you didn't have to feed the creatures you made.

Sean McDowell 1:48:15

Do you respect Jesus?

SPEAKER_02 1:48:19

The man or or or the biblical thing? Like Jesus and God, they're all the same. So let's say but a man, I've I met lots of good people.

Sean McDowell 1:48:28

The Christian understanding probably you would take issue. You would talk to you. I don't think he is.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:33

I don't think he exists. In the version that they've written, I don't know. Is it like the man, Jesus probably exists? I'm sure he was a good guy. So he tried to do the best he could.

Sean McDowell 1:48:41

Miracles, teachings, don't trust any of that.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:43

No miracles.

Sean McDowell 1:48:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:45

Here, here, here, here's here's here. You can get me to you can get you can get me to miracles this quick. Right? This is easy. You can get me to miracles this quick. Um or I'll tell you one, I'll give you two, which is sort of silly. You got a small town, got ten houses, and there's a bit of an earthquake, and a boulder breaks off, it comes rolling down the hill fast as it can be, and it smashes headlong into that town. And it crushes nine out of the ten houses, and one is left untouched, no harm to it. There are a lot of people, given that circumstance, would go, oh my god, it's a miracle. Cool. So, why, when the same thing happens, when I'm out at the bowling alley and I throw that boulder right down the middle, and I smash all ten of those pins, and they go flying all over, and one of them is left untouched. Why isn't that a miracle? They call that an attempt at spare the next time I bowl. Why, why, why physically, when one thing happens, we we don't even pay attention to it, but another one we give an attribution to it of a miracle. But here's how you can get me to miracle.

Sean McDowell 1:50:03

Can I talk about that one first before we talk about you getting there?

unknown 1:50:06

Okay.

Sean McDowell 1:50:07

No, go. So go. All I would say is how we identify a miracle is not just a chance, one pin that stands up. It's a certain kind of event that resists or doesn't have a naturalistic explanation. And it's often the time and place that it happens. So the fact that I believe miracles happen and could point towards some is a little different than a bowling alley where one just remains standing. And we could talk about some of the criteria for miracles, but I don't know that that maps on to the kind of case that I would make is it. It's like, so, anyways, okay. But tell me what will convince you, and then I've got a I got another follow-up for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:45

Okay, no, so this one would get me in ten seconds.

Sean McDowell 1:50:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:49

Amputate somebody's arm, grow an arm back. Grow an arm back. You made the arm. You you're the inventor of the arm. Most people, when they come out of the womb, have two of them. So somebody just got their arm cut off. Grow one arm. You usually give us two, but just grow one arm back. You'll have me. And yet there's no record of any of us seeing the arm come back. We attribute 20 kids falling down a well and one of them living. That's just odds and circumstances. That's like dropping 20 eggs, one of them doesn't break. This is just randomness. Sadly, randomness. Grow an arm, go cut off two people's legs, get them to grow back. I'm with you.

Sean McDowell 1:51:37

Keener, Craig Keener, New Testament scholar, did a two-volume academic study of miracles in 2010, I think it was. Did a follow-up and argues there's even cases that can be carefully documented of limbs and others growing back. Now, the only reason I say that is there's actually pretty good evidence for miracles for those willing to look at it. I'll give you one example of a supernatural phenomenon. Uh I've done I've done extensive interviews with him. Uh I think it's there. Now if you're Okay. This week, interestingly enough, had an agnostic friend of mine. We were having coffee and no interest in God, didn't seem he had his mind made up as firmly as you seem to, but had no interest in God, didn't really matter to him when I brought up spiritual things. Rushed to the hospital, had surgery, and describes to me, he goes, I I I died on the bed, was resuscitated back. He goes, I had an out-of-body experience and was able to look down at exactly the kinds of things that happened. And I came to it and I said, Were you freaking out? And he goes, No, it was calm, it was clear, I could hear things, I could see things. When I got out of it, I described to the sturgeons what happened, and they're like, How could you possibly know that? He was not seeking after God, he had no interest in the supernatural. And he goes, It seems like you know the universe is kind of looking out for me. And I said, Well, if you describe the universe looking out for you, that sounds like a person, that sounds like a mind that's doing this. Like universes don't have minds, they don't look out for anybody. He goes, Okay, fair enough. I said, Well, if it's looking out for you and keeping you alive, it sounds like this is a God who loves you and who cares about you. And he goes, Ah, I don't know if I'm quite ready to go there yet. I gotta think about this. It's not somebody who didn't believe in spiritual things, not looking for it, not an isolated case. There's over 500 cases of like peer-reviewed, near-death experiences of people seeing things and knowing things that could not have been seen or known in that kind of state. That's the kind of thing that doesn't give me certainty, but gives me pause and says, maybe this body is not all there is. Maybe there is a soul that continues after. And it's empirical evidence in the sense you can still talk to and interview a ton of people I have on my channel. That's one line of evidence. So to to step back for me, I look at the existence of, say, the moral law, we believe in justice and injustice, and just say, using my brain like you did, what makes the most sense that we act and live and breathe as if these things are real? I think there's really a moral law. Hence there's a moral law giver. Look at things like near-death experiences. And I go, maybe we're more than just the body, there's something else going on here. That's a kind of empirical evidence, and that's only two of like a ton I could.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:48

I'm not I I I wouldn't disagree with any of that. As a matter of fact, I've heard those same stories. I'm not, again, I'm not here to like I don't know what happens once we die. There could be a million possibilities. We'll find out when we get there, you and I. We'll find out when we get there. But because somebody had a near-death experience or whatever else, again, doesn't go back to the unicorn. Like everything all of a sudden defaults.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:13

That's not my argument, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:15

Oh, you go the the the God was watching out for you. That's the unicorn again. We go like why? Why couldn't it be why can't it be another option? Why why can't it be something not unicorn related at that moment? Why can't it just be, huh? So maybe the evidence says something else might be out there. Doesn't mean that it advocates for anything that we know prior. It just means maybe something happens to us. Done. But everybody wants to go to their like their little corner with it and go, aha, so that proves my thing. No, it proves that maybe potentially if it's proven anything, or potentially proven anything, is that it's not ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Because people are coming up and saying that that it's not, that there's more. But it doesn't then qualify any of the other theories that were there behind it. We keep going back straight to that to that in a straight line that there's no other possibility. There's no other possibility other than the Big Bang theory.

unknown 1:56:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:20

And and anybody's around the globe, God. It's weird that nobody argues about anything. Like there's got to be like a million in between. There's got to be a million possibilities. We all get sort of thinking about it, that there's other possibilities. I don't know what they are. I'm not smart enough. I'm a common guy. But I'm going, it can't just be A or B. This is weird. Science and religion argue it's either A or B that like there might be a whole alphabet. We don't know about there's like nobody wants to argue the other letters in the alphabet because there's not a strong enough belief in that. So again, Sean, I'm not here to disavow anybody's life experiences that are there. I'm just saying that at the end of the day, that experience with your friend doesn't then change the zero on my on my board. Doesn't change the zero. That's fine. Doesn't prove it doesn't prove because that thought isn't the empirical of then everybody would come to the same result of what happened.

Sean McDowell 1:57:21

I so I I agree with that, and I'm not here to change your mind. Obviously, I have your views, I have mine. Talk these through and uh No, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:30

So just a real clear, Sean. You're a good guy. I I hope I'm okay. I'm not gonna be as good as you. I'm okay. I don't know about that. I'm okay. The the the the we're not here changing isn't I don't I don't think it's our any of our jobs to change anybody. Our job is to enjoy the colors of the rainbow that are in like uh like people being different is a joy in my life. I actually find it to be joyful. I I I I I I I punish myself at times to go, man, I wish I could be more like that person or more like that person. I wish I knew more about that subject. I wish I knew more about that. Like that person's always got a smile on their face. That person's so giving, right? I just like I go, I know I can't be like that, right? All the time. I just and I I admire a lot of things in the world. And and my personal frustrations come when instead of trying to add to the color palette, we try to, we try to narrow at times the color palette uh with these sort of sort of beliefs at times of like this is sort of how we should be doing stuff over here instead of going live and let live, right? Like as long as they're not doing harm to you, what do you care? Right? Like, what like I don't understand. Now the internet has exacerbated this.

Sean McDowell 1:58:56

Let me say with that.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:58

That the internet gives everybody an opinion I don't understand, right? It's weird to me why anybody cares who Taylor Swift is dating, right? Don't understand it. Why does it matter? I don't know. Here's how I wish I'm gonna give you a weird one. Here's how I wish if I could pass a wand, I wish people live their life. I wish people live their life. Most people like the way they shop at a grocery store. You walk in a grocery store, thousands and thousands of things are presented to you. And you get to see them all if you go up and down, because you got to do your weekly shopping, and you take your cart and you put in your cart what you personally enjoy and you think is a fair value, and you think it's good and healthy, or whatever it is for your family. You think it's this is the good stuff, this is what I want. Um and then you pay your bill and you walk out. What you don't do, what we don't do at a shopping one is go, uh, could I see the store manager? Um, just for the record, I hate Brussels sprouts, and you've got a whole section of Brussels sprouts there. My children have to walk by the Brussels sprouts. I hear they're terrible. I think they're terrible, I don't think they're healthy. How dare you have those things in the presence of my family? Instead, we don't do that. We don't do that. You know what we do with Sean? We just walk on by. And we take what is good for us and we leave. And I wish we could live life more to that. My critics, Sean, I've only had one comeback to my critics for the most part for 40 years. When they say whatever they want to say, and they're they're allowed to have whatever opinion they they want, because it's they bought it, it's theirs. If they were in front of me, I would gently tap them on the shoulder, and I've done this to some, and the answer is always the same. If you don't like what I'm doing, then you should spend your time and money on things you personally enjoy. I can't I can't fix this for you. Yeah. This is a you thing. So just go get some stuff that you like. Uh but I I don't understand why you need to go to the internet and talk about. I've said it before in interviews, you maybe have heard me. I have I I I I don't like Brussels sprouts, but I don't go to Brusselssprouts.com and complain about them. I just don't consume it. I just don't consume it. So people that I perceive, that I judge, because I am as flawed as anybody else, Sean, I don't hang out with. It's complaining. It's done. And so I just go, here's I I'm ultimately in charge of my own personal happiness. And I I I get to make the choices that get me there. And if I'm doing things that aren't happy, then it's a weird one. Because I've had plenty of people come up to me and they go, My dad drives me crazy. 50-year-old people, my dad drives me crazy. Why does he drive you crazy? Because whenever I take the kids over, he's mean and he's obnoxious to them, which isn't fun. And I understand why. And it's like, well, well, how long have you been doing this? Oh, almost his whole life, but for the last 20 years, he's always mean to the kids. I don't know. I'm I'm I'm at times I can be black and white. I think that there's two options at that point. And I'm overly simplistic, so whatever. One, don't visit your dad anymore.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:28

It's an option.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:28

But that's a hard one. It's a tough one. The other option is, well, I can't, I can't cut my dad out of my life. No, I understand that. Actually, actually, it makes way more sense. Then you've got to go in knowing exactly that that tiger has stripes. So you've got to turn to your kids and go, look, it, we're gonna go see grandpa. He's probably gonna say a couple nasty things to you. Just get ready for it. Let's go. Let's go. And you just go. So when he does it, you all wink at each other and you go, She told you. I told your grandpa was gonna do it. Remember, we had a bet. Was he gonna do it at minute five or minute ten? Jimmy wins. Make a game out of it then. All right, instead of making it tense, just just enjoy it. Enjoy the look at I've got a mother-in-law that's has dementia.

Sean McDowell 2:03:13

And it's harsh. Family members, too. I get it.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:15

It's harsh. So all you can do, and her memory now is probably 30 seconds. It's tight. All you can do is just be in the moment for 30. And then if she asked the exact same question, be in the moment for that 30. And you may have to answer the question. I've done it. I've had to answer the question 20 times. But it's new to them every single time. Let's go. I don't, I don't use words like, hey, don't you remember I told you, I don't do that. I don't insult her. She's got dementia. And I don't go, hey, we've talked about this before. I don't do any of it. I just go, this is groundhog day. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. And if I can't do that, then I shouldn't be visiting her or I keep my visits short. But I can do it. I can I can actually do it for hours, right? Like, oh, let's have a good time. Why? Because every time you give her the same information, if it's a happy memory, it puts a smile on their face and you go, wow, she got 40 smiles. In a normal circumstance, she might have only smiled once because she would have remembered that information. But she got told that information 40 times and got to smile 40 times. What's wrong with that? Not bad. I mean, obviously we wish she didn't have dementia. But here we go. So you, I don't know, you at times you have to just make lemon aid out of the lemons that are dealt you, Sean. That's and that's that's all we got. But those are personal decisions. And I you and I, everybody, we have to find inner peace. I've got my things that give me inner peace, as odd as it may be for people, and I understand my oddness. Let me tell you, my mom scratched her head many times, Sean, about her own son. So she would have, if you would said, Shirley, her name is Shirley. If you would said, and she's not here, but if you said, Shirley, tell me about Todd, here's what I know her first reaction would be. She would roll her eyes.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:06

That's great.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:07

She would go, because it would be the where to begin. Where to begin with Todd. He has been in trouble since the first day. I have been on a first name basis with every principal at every school I've ever gone to, right? So I again, I'm not advocating anybody to be like me on any level, not even my children. I don't wish me on my children. I just know that the life I've lived, given the adversity I've had to go against with building my career and status quo that I've had to rail against, I've had to just build this Todd. And it works. It works for me. I don't like I go to MBA, sometimes I talk to MBA classes, and the first thing I do is I go, I'm not telling you how to make money. And they hate it. Sean, I gotta tell you, they hate it. Like 80% of them are sitting there and they throw their pencil down, they look at their guy and they're going, bro, you're not gonna tell us in 10 steps how to make a million bucks. What are we here for? You know what I talk to them about for the most part? Keep your integrity. I think it's the only thing that goes to your grave with you is your integrity. Right? Money, that's fleeting, right? Like we we can, it comes and go. And oh, by the way, if you're gonna be a douchebag, make sure you're making money for somebody.

SPEAKER_03 2:06:31

Right?

SPEAKER_02 2:06:31

Because nobody hangs out with bad people willingly. They only do it because uh he serves a purpose. And then you can see they're all like, uh, and out of usually a hundred people, and all honesty, about a hundred people, I I know I'm only talking to four because everybody else is already baby sharks. They're gonna sell their soul, they're gonna go to Wall Street, whatever else. But sometimes I I end it with this. I go, hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me, I appreciate it. Uh I was just gonna go, there's a couple more things, and I'm gonna go appreciate your time. Uh, let's just do a hypothetical here. You wake up tomorrow, you're not feeling very good, and by noon, you're feeling terrible. So you make a phone call, they said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can squeeze you in the doctor's office. You go to the doctor's office, go see the doc. They take draws of blood, and they said they're gonna run it out to the lab, run all the tests, you go in the lobby, you wait. So you go out there, get your phone, look on yourself for a while. 45 minutes later, doc comes out, he's got a dead serious look on his face. And he comes and he says, I need you back in the room. You go back into the room with the doctor, and then he breaks it to you. We ran all the tests three times. You have inoperable cancer. Modern medicine can do nothing for you. It's too late. You will be dead in three weeks. I'm sorry to have to deliver it to you. Now, I'm gonna ask you two questions before I go. One, given that you know that to be a fact, and that you're gonna be dead in three weeks, I'm gonna assume everybody in this room has somebody they care about deeply. And if you care for them, I'm gonna assume they care for you too, just as deeply. But in three weeks, that human being is gonna be without you. Can you imagine the heartache and the pain and the grief that human being is gonna go through? It's gonna be it's gonna be trying. So, my first question if you could pick one person to help the one that you love the most, to soft land, to just be there, to comfort them, to just be a shoulder through that time when you're not gonna be there. Who would that person be? I'll give you 15 seconds to think of them. And I do, Sean, I stand in silence for 15 seconds, and then I go, I'm now before I go, I'm gonna ask you my very last question. The person you just chose, are they the richest person you know, or are they the best person that you know? Why not be that second person? You guys are chasing money, and when it mattered, you didn't go there. Not even you. Be be good. Just be good. Somebody will always want you. You're gonna always be needed. Nothing wrong with that.

Sean McDowell 2:09:34

It's not too far from some of the teachings of Jesus. No about uh winning the world and losing your soul in many ways. There's some overlap about what matters. Hey, you've been super generous with your time, Todd. I'm gonna just I'm gonna in a minute, I'm gonna ask you if I miss anything, anything else you want to throw in there. But for people watching, I just uh it implant an idea. If you ever want to just continue this conversation, I do it in a heartbeat.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:58

So again, so let me let me let me just throw something, just hopefully I haven't offended too many people here and whatever else. That that I I have to be this guy because the results of it that at times and you sort of said at the beginning, oh Todd, you you did some things that I enjoyed, it had to come from that same place, right? So let's just talk about, and you've heard it, the the creation of venom, right? The creation of venom comes as a complete happy accident, but it also is because of my rebellious attitude, right? So if it wasn't there, there may be no venom. I mean, it's true. And so I'm a young artist, I finally catch my break, I prove my worth, I have a chance now to maybe do a Spider-Man book, which is really a big deal in a in a in a young creator's career working at Marvel in DC. You get to do a character that your mom and dad have heard of. That's big. And but he's wearing that black costume. And and I just go, and here's the rebellion part. I think 99.9% of young kids who were trying to work for Marvel and want to do it would have just gone when they said to me, We're gonna give you the amazing Spider-Man, would have said, Oh my gosh, thank you. I'm phoning like out, out the door, not taught. On one condition, I said. Like condition. They just gave you the goose that lays eggs. On one condition. Gotta get rid of that black costume. I can't draw it. What are you talking about? I can't. I've been this is this is me being a 10-year-old kid. Spider-Man, that's not Spider-Man. This isn't Spider-Man to me. I'm a 10 year old kid.

Sean McDowell 2:11:44

Not that you can't physically draw it, but in your mind, who Spider-Man is shouldn't be wearing the black suit. Just for people not tracking it.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:50

I work hard. I work hard to get to Spider Man. It's like it's like drawing Batman with polka dots. I don't like I'm going, come on, man, I gotta draw Spider Man. And so it's like, let's just get him in in the red and blue again, right? With the Webbing and stuff. And they're like, uh no, the editor-in-chief, Jim Shooter at that point. Editor-in-chief and and some of the other people, they they like they like the costume. And and he came the costume pre-existed in Star Wars, right? Or not Star Wars, Secret Wars, excuse me. Star Wars. Sorry, George. Sorry, George. Secret Wars, uh, which was a comic book at Marvel. And so so my I again, I would just I had an easy solution to it, Sean. Well, why don't we just take the costume of Peter Parker and put it on another somebody else? We'll just invent another character. I'll just like here. This is easy. And then we can still have the costume, the black costume, and then we can have Peter Parker, and I can draw in the way I want to draw. Done. And they thought about it and went, okay, let's see the drawing. And so I went, okay, uh, Secret Wars that's taking place on another planet. Aliens, okay. And so I drew that drawing to Venom. Big alien-looking thing. And I handed it and they signed off. Everybody was happy. Costume stayed. We get another villain. Peter Parker comes, everybody goes, whatever else, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We had no idea what we were about to unleash with that character. Venom. It's still being unleashed.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:08

It's still being unleashed. But but I sit there and go, a normal employee, young, trying to go there, would have said, yes, ma'am, yes, sir.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:22

Thank you for putting me on your flagship book. And walked out.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:25

And the like this is the piece that my mom would go, of course he did, right? Of course he put a condition on it. That's my boy, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:13:36

Like, and so sometimes it gets me in massive trouble, which is why I was on a first name basis with the principal. And other times you get these accidents of pushing against stuff and doing it, and it works. And I wish I could replicate it. I wish I knew what that formula was. I'd be doing it all the time. I don't. So, so the two things that I know with 100% certainty. Okay, all right, let's go. Death. We're all gonna die. And change. It's been coming since the dawn of man. Otherwise, we'd be in caves. And we dress different and we transport ourselves different. It's change is always here. And the thing that I've said before that I think is the greatest enemy for young people getting in is is the wall, the guardian guardianship of status quo. And status quo to me, Sean, is yesterday. And I am so disinterested in yesterday because I always think, even at this ripe old age, that my best day is in front of me. It's either today or tomorrow. And I hope I get another 40 years. And I probably will never achieve that holy grail I have in my head. But that's the thing that keeps going. And the and the and the yesterday part, right? Is like it's you you can learn, you can learn a little bit because you find where the potholes are. This is why as parents you block them. Yep. But but yesterday is like change, like so. I did a Spider-Man that worked, and I the only thing that bugs me is that my look of Spider-Man has now become the status quo somewhat over there. It has. And why and they were railing against it the whole time. Why wouldn't you allow young people like your your son to come in and go show show Todd and all these other Spider-Man artists, they didn't know what they were doing. Go. Why wouldn't you encourage like that? Because they might come up with something 10 times cooler. But instead, we we we find out ways to narrow it. Look at we got a we've got a disease, and I'll I'm I'm I'm I'm rambling, but we got a disease called called cancer. And you know how we try to solve it? You know how we try to solve cancer? Even arguably to today, but in the back, they want, we got this bad thing, it's called cancer, it's gonna kill lots of us. We like we have a survival instinct, we'd like to we'd like to get it fixed. So we've got to come up with a solution for it. But before we do that, because we gotta come up with as many answers as we can to try and see if we can eradicate this thing, uh, I'm gonna need all the females in the room to leave. Because females, they can't be doctors, can they? And sometimes, depending where you're standing, the people in brown and black skin, we need you to leave the room too. And now we're gonna solve the problem because this is who can be in the medical profession at certain times in the history of mankind. And this is the flaw of us that we're trying to solve a problem that will that will be helpful to the entire world, and our first step is to narrow the possibilities instead of expanding the possibilities. I this is to me, I this is the colors of the variable. I like to expand, I like variety, I like all the letters and the alphabet. I think it's I think it's good. It's chicken noodle for my soul. So I'm I'm I'm a curious being and I like to see people find personal inner happiness any way they see fit.

Sean McDowell 2:17:14

Well, you've certainly given some to myself and my two boys and plenty others. A lot of we have dozens of comics and a bunch I bought in the early 90s when that came out. 92, right? Sponge came out in 90.

SPEAKER_02 2:17:26

Sponge came out, yeah, 1992. Right. Just after just after Youngblood. After it, that's right. Rob Rob Rob came out.

Sean McDowell 2:17:34

I bought that one off the stand too.

SPEAKER_02 2:17:35

Can can I give a little props to Rob Liefeld? Please, yeah. Because Rob Rob Liefeld, as you know, he's like the he's on he's on the other end of me, but we are dear friends, right? Rob Liefeld, he is a good, energetic man. And that I always say, like, the moment that Image Comics, uh, which is where Spawn comes from, we're the third biggest, right? Marvel DC, everybody knows that. Image is number three. If you ask, well, what's after that? It's always been us for 30 years. Jim Lee, who was the choir boy, uh, we got picked off. We needed him. But I gotta tell you, if there was no Rob Liefell, there would be no image. We he was he was rocket fuel to this for this for this endeavor. He was young. I look at it, I met Rob when he was in his teens, Sean.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:30

He was a kid. We were all kids, and so you can imagine how crazy. If you think we're crazy now as old men, you should have seen us. Like it was awesome.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:41

It was nuclear what we were, because we were completely fearless, especially Rob and I. But Rob, I couldn't have done it alone. I couldn't have, if it was just me and the group group, it would have never worked. If it was maybe even if it was Rob, whatever, but we just we needed each other. Everybody played a part. And Rob Liefeld, and I don't know where it comes from, and it came from his spirituality or not. I don't know where it came from, where that DNA came from. But I am thankful that it was there because we needed it. We all needed that, and that's one of those colors that that is like I'm I'm good. I don't care how you bring it, just bring it, be good people, and and we're gonna get along, right? Done.

Sean McDowell 2:19:23

Love it. Those of you watching, Rob Liefeld was on here talking about his faith. You mean by the other end of this perspective, he's gone to church for 20-some years, believes in God. His dad was that was a pastor. His dad was a pastor, uh, and that story was interesting. Maybe in the future we could sit down with you and Rob and just that would be entertaining. Would you you'd be inner entertaining would be that's like the understatement of the year.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:47

You would have to say go tell me a little about yourselves, and then we would just blow dose you. Oh man, you wouldn't need to be able to do that. Don't mess up my spawn comic, just for the record.

Sean McDowell 2:19:56

By the way, if there's anybody on the planet that could mess up my spawn comic, and I'd be like, I'm good, it's you, Todd. That's it. Hey man, I've I have so many more thoughts. Like when we start to jump into some of the evidence, I totally agree with you. There it's not about certainty. I look at things like near-death experiences and I go, okay, what does this suggest about what it means to be human? Maybe there's a soul, maybe there's not just a body, maybe there's an afterlife. I look at things like the moral law, and it suggests to me a moral law giver. You mentioned the big bang, and maybe go, yeah, if the universe banged into existence, that suggests a cause outside of the universe that brought it into existence. Now, you and I would differ on some of those things. Yeah. But I would just say to me it's not a question of certainty. It's are there certain signposts that point beyond this world to something supernatural? We differ there, but maybe at some point we'll die.

SPEAKER_02 2:20:46

But here's what I admire. Here's what I'm going to say that I admire about you and probably millions like you. I admire your loyalty. I I I'm a big advocate of loyalty. And so I'd I admire the loyalty of people defending what they believe is right for them. I I I think that's admirable. Um and so the the the slight gap, I think, and I think there's a slight gap here, uh, is that I get it. Somebody will, I'll use a bad analogy. I'm a sports guy. Somebody thinks the Chicago Cubs are the best baseball team ever, ever, ever, and they'll like, and they go. And I just admire that every year that they never waver from that and they go. Got a commitment to it. It doesn't, it doesn't mean that it's true. It doesn't mean that they even have any evidence to it. It just means that in their core, they believe it and and it's good for them. I'm with that. I'm I'm always with, I'm with the people who just go, no, let's go. We're there, we're there. The piece that that guy would cross over is if he just was to tell me that under no circumstances that the Cubs are 100% the best team, and that there's I'm not gonna have an argument on any intellectual way of any of the other team. Then I'm like, oh man, I was I was actually admiring you up to that point, right? Like, just be a Cubs fan to the death. That's cool. My brother was.

Sean McDowell 2:22:20

But of course, just you know, we're wrapping up here, but not much is at stake with what we believe about our favorite sports team, but believing about heaven and hell and and eternity, and those things have a lot more weight, obviously, than a baseball team would be.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:36

With that said from your perspective, right?

Sean McDowell 2:22:39

Well, yeah, fair enough. We will leave it at that. Todd, if you had, I mean, if someone had told me in eighth grade when I was collecting Spider-Man comics, and you captured me with the way that you drew him, we'd be sitting down here, and I think if I'm not mistaken, my teams here that we had the longest conversation, you gave me that time. I don't think I would have believed it. So I've thoroughly enjoyed this. You haven't remotely offended anybody. My my people who follow my channel are like going super interesting, go two more hours and talk about miracles and Jesus and Bible, all that stuff. I'm like, we are good. Oh man. So you have been incredibly generous. Last, really quickly, what just tell us something you're working on that you're excited about?

SPEAKER_02 2:23:21

Um I get excited about everything, but uh it's weird. Compute, but what are you doing, Todd? It's like comic books and toys and a little bit of Hollywood stuff. Like, like at some point as you get older, you you're you're you start walking the same rut a little bit. So I actually get way more enthusiasm watching the youth because it's like what what surprises what surprises are they gonna sort of put upon us, right? Um but yeah, I mean we're marching towards issue 400 of spawn. Uh the toys we're always we've just signed a couple big licenses we're gonna do, and we're still we just made an offer to a director for the you know a new spawn movie. Okay. So, but again, we've been talking about that for way too long, so I I don't want to say anything about that publicly till till we've actually got the deal done and we're sort of we've got a production date. And then I then we can then I can talk about something that has evidence instead of going, no, no, we're gonna make a movie. Uh like I want to be able to say the contracts have been signed, we're making something, and now I can like give them something they can get excited about. And then that's just gonna blow up all the people that have been what I call in the bubble, which is the comic book industry, they've been collecting all those spawn comic books. Once you get outside the bubble, then all of a sudden it's like, well, where's that come from? Oh, from the comic book, all the sales, like all the books. It all ties. Your five dollar book's gonna go to 25 bucks, your $25 book's gonna go to a hundred bucks, right? Like everything's gonna, if the spawn movie works and is successful, well, everybody go, I've got a box of spawns. Like, so uh I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to get it out of the out of the bubble in a big meaningful way, like Walking Dead. Not to that degree, but sure. But he got out of the bubble, right?

Sean McDowell 2:24:59

Well, when it comes out, if you want to talk about it more and spread the word, I'd love to probe more into spawn.

SPEAKER_03 2:25:04

All right.

Sean McDowell 2:25:05

Todd, super generous with your time. Sure, we've got some personal books. I have zero interest in selling them, but for my collection, giving a couple away, if you humor us and sign as many as you have time for, would be would be pretty fun.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:18

We'll do it. I appreciate the time today.