Transcript: AAC — 10 Apr 2026 (Q&A)

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It is the 10th of April, 2026.

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I am Corey J.

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Moller, and this is At Any Cost.

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This is a Q&A episode.

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It is episode 24, and I do not have any housekeeping, so I will get right into the questions, assuming that there are no tech issues, and everything looks fine on my end.

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So hopefully that means that it is.

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The first question, I will actually just read the question.

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Question one, what are one or two one-stop shop Lutheran biblical commentary sets I can get, preferably on Lagos?

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So as far as Lutheran commentaries go, there are a number of excellent ones over the centuries at this point, and of course, you can go back further than that, because you could go back to Augustine and Aquinas, and you can go back to the orthodox teachers of the church as well, but specifically Lutheran for a one-stop shop, probably Kretzmann, but there are also some other ones.

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It just depends on how much you want to read, really.

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One of the things I would definitely recommend that you get is the Lutheran Study Bible.

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The footnotes are excellent, and they have many citations to Lutheran theologians, dogmaticians, church fathers, things like that, so you can always follow up, which is very helpful.

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But as far as various commentaries go, I will link in the show notes to that, so you can look at sort of how many pages there are, and things like that, and how much you want to read.

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But obviously, Luther is going to be high up in the recommendation because of the AE., the American edition of Luther's works.

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You don't have to know German.

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It's in English, modern English.

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And that's up to 70 or 80-something volumes now.

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They've not translated all of his works.

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The full Weimar edition is not translated, but many of them are.

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It's not inexpensive, unfortunately.

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Lagos charges a lot of money for them.

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I know I've acquired most of them in Lagos, and I have many of them physically at this point.

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But for that, I would say, buy the volumes that interest you, and then you can add to it slowly over time.

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His Genesis Commentary, which is the first eight volumes in the American edition, is excellent.

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His Commentary on Galatians is excellent.

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Those are probably the two big recommendations for Luther.

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And then from there, you can sort of expand.

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Romans is also a very good commentary for him, so maybe grab that volume as well.

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That one may be two volumes.

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I think that's two volumes.

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Maybe that's the Concordia series.

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But at any rate, the other ones would be Walther, Walther, however you want to pronounce it, CFW.

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Walther.

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He is an excellent writer, and his approach is going to be more pastoral, a little less heavy when it comes to not the accuracy and the value of his commentary and his theology, but he takes a more practical approach many times.

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And some men find that very useful, particularly pastors, obviously.

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So, basically, any volume from him is worth grabbing.

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His law and gospel is kind of a must read among Lutherans, so probably grab that one.

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There's a Reader's Edition of it, which is excellent.

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It adds some additional notes for you, some background if you're not as familiar with sort of the disputes and the things to which he's responding.

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Peeper is an excellent one as well, if you want dogmatics.

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He's less of a commentary series and more dogmatics.

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It just depends on what you want.

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If you want the dogmatics, go with Peeper.

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Gerhard has many volumes.

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He's more theology than commentary, so it depends if you want that, then that's an option.

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I already said Kretzmann.

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Chemnitz is going to be probably one of the best recommendations if you want a specific defense of Lutheran theology against Rome.

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Against the Reformed as well, to some degree.

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He has his four volume in the most recent translation of his critique of the Council of Trent, so that's excellent.

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You can see why Lutherans believe what they believe and why we do not agree with Rome, where we disagree, what we think they believe is wrong.

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Melanchthon's Lossi is excellent.

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That is a one volume, quite short.

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You can read that in an afternoon pretty easily.

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That's an excellent one to have.

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And then, other than that, the last two, I think I'd recommend to be Loypold, has some commentaries on Old Testament books and some other things.

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And then Lensky, but with some caveats, he's not my favorite.

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He goes off the rails sometimes, but overall pretty good.

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But I would put him at the bottom of that pile.

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Again, I'll put that in the show notes so it's easier to find than having to go back and look for all these German names.

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But that will certainly get you started.

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That's probably at least a couple hundred volumes.

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Question two.

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I asked a similar question before, so I'll keep this one more succinct.

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What are some ways that we, the right, in this case, can practically make political gains?

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Do you recommend that those of us who are single men try to run for a local political office?

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Should we try to start our own business so that we can participate in activism with fewer repercussions?

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Should we consider moving to a state that is already majority white?

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I'm failing to see how there is much of a political solution, if any, when most children currently be born in the US are non-white.

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I'm not trying to despair just being realistic and trying to brainstorm ideas.

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I did actually comment on this one in a previous episode, and perhaps someone can link to that on the forum later.

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I don't remember which exact episode that was.

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There are transcripts, though, I could search those and find it.

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But I'll comment on it again, because it's worth commenting on.

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It's an issue that comes up all the time and will continue to do so.

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I'm going to have a sip of tea first, and it's no longer hot tea.

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It's already in the 80s here.

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This is going to be one of those that depends on what talent Scott has given you, right?

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Maybe you're the sort of man who can run for political office, whether it's local or state, whatever it happens to be, and perhaps that is a valid path for you, and you can achieve things doing that.

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Not all men can.

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Just like not all men can be, you know, rocket scientists, right, or cancer researchers, or pick any job, really.

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Not all men can do it.

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And that's from whatever job you consider to be just manual labor and not high skill to the other end of the spectrum.

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Whatever that is for you, not every man can do everything on that.

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So it depends on the talents that God has given you, and where he's placed your resources you have.

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If you can run for political office by all means do so, we do actually need politicians, and local office actually matters.

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Now, everyone wants to have, you know, the senator, the congressman, or president would be great, right?

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But by and large, for the average man, your local politician is going to have greater influence on your day-to-day life, with the exception of things like gas prices, right?

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That is pretty much what the president is currently doing.

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As much as he does not have a lever that he just sets and chooses the price, his actions on the international stage do essentially determine the price of your fuel when you buy it at the station.

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But for things like approving building projects, approving a march or a rally, or speakers at a park, or any of a number of things, that's all local stuff.

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And if you have your guys in those local offices, that's great.

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If you can get elected to...

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Depends on whether you're county-elects or not, but if you can get elected as sheriff, or if you can get appointed as police chief, something like that, if we had more of our guys in those offices, that's great.

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We have some of our guys there.

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I know some of them, but more of that would be great.

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So there are many paths.

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Don't think that there's no path to influencing things.

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It's not that you have to change everything on the grand scale all at once.

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Any man who's making progress in his own area with what God has given him is doing a good thing.

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You're doing your Christian duty.

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This is similar to when people ask, how do I act as a good Christian in my occupation, or whatever it happens to be?

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And the answer, the correct answer is always, it's not by putting little crosses on every pair of shoes you make.

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Right?

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That's not what the Christian does.

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What the Christian does is, lives a Christian life and makes good shoes, assuming you're a shoemaker for the sake of the hypothetical.

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Your neighbor needs good shoes.

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He doesn't need shoes with little crosses on them.

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There's a difference between being showy about it and just doing what you need to do.

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This is the same sort of thing.

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You do what God has enabled you to do with your talents, your resources, etc., and you do the best you can.

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So, any progress is still progress and is still a good thing.

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Yes, things aren't in a particularly great situation in the United States right now, obviously, but it's not a reason for despair, it's just a reason for working toward a better tomorrow and then a better next year and a better decade.

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And I'm not saying that it will all be incremental and we'll just slowly win.

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Things will probably come to a head at some point in the next handful of years.

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But, like Luther said, even if I knew the world were going to end tomorrow today, I would still plant my apple tree.

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Just live a Christian life, do the best you can.

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So, yes, run for political office, and particularly if we can get guys into law enforcement, that's great.

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So, there are some challenges there.

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That's a matter of wisdom.

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Do it only if you can.

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Right?

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And that sort of politics is kind of nasty politics sometimes, but those positions really matter.

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They really do determine day-to-day life for many men.

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So, that's sort of the approach to take.

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And then also the previous comments I made as well.

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Hopefully, again, someone will link to those.

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But, yes, you mentioned the repercussions.

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Bear that in mind.

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You know, for the guys who are married, particularly if you have young children, that matters.

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There are risks you're going to take.

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There are risks single guys can take that you can't, right?

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If Woe and I had been married, children, all that, it would have made Stone Choir a lot more difficult, because there would have been considerations.

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You know, we have people running hit pieces on us and things like that, people doxxing him, all of that.

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It makes things more challenging if you have those additional duties.

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So, if you're a single man, if you're younger, and you're willing to take that risk, then it's much easier for you, particularly if it's not going to come back on family members and things like that.

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But do bear in mind, the media will come after you.

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They're going to.

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You know, I've had Hit Pieces run on me for a number of years, including by defunct leftist outlets at this point, which is ironic, but it happens.

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Question 3.

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What is your best couple of lines argument against pacifism?

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Both biblical slash philosophical.

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So, for philosophical, I know what answer I would usually give, but given that I am streaming on a number of platforms, there's only so much I can say, but generally speaking, most men who are pacifists, when they are punched in the face, stop being pacifists pretty quickly.

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Now, I'm not saying that that's a realistic approach, because you can still be arrested, right, even if the guy doesn't fight back.

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But what I'm saying there is that it's incoherent, and no one really believes it or holds to it.

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It's just complete and utter nonsense.

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It's absurd.

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So philosophically, it just completely falls apart, and there are plenty of men who have published critiques of it philosophically, so it's just not compelling at all in that, but scripturally, there are a few things that I would like to mention as soon as I can pull up Logos here.

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I think I will actually just pull up the full screen Logos for this.

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So there are three verses that come to mind for this that are going to be relevant.

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The first one I want to bring up, I want to bring it up because in the Septuagint, it's different from in the Masoretic text, and yes, you could sort of play the game, because most men are going to follow the Masoretic text, and you can sort of bring up the Masoretic text and just say, aha, I got you, right?

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And that would, of course, be Exodus 15.3.

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And in Exodus 15.3, and I have on the right side here, the Masoretic text and the left, the Septuagint.

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We'll go through the Masoretic text first, the ESV in this case.

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The Lord is a man of war, the Lord is his name, right?

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Pretty open and shut there if the Lord calls himself a man of war.

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It's not exactly what it actually says in the real text of scripture.

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The Lord, when he shatters wars, the Lord is his name, in the wording of the Septuagint.

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Now, what this actually means in the Septuagint, in the underlying Greek there, is that the Lord ends wars.

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And of course, he will ultimately do that in the final day when he brings all war to an end for all time.

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But in order to do that, you can't be a pacifist.

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Pacifists don't end wars, they invite them.

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And so that would be one verse you could bring up to argue against.

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You can bring it up in either the Masoretic or the Septuagint, preferably the Septuagint, but you are going to have to explain that little bit in the Septuagint, that just because the Lord ends wars, not saying he's a man of war, well, he still has to be the kind of man who can wage war to end wars.

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Pretty straightforward logic there.

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The next verse would be, I'll actually do the New Testament first, so open up.

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Another ESV window here.

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That's not what I wanted.

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Logos is great when it cooperates.

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So Luke 22.36.

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This one is going to be pretty obvious, and we all know what this one is before I even bring it up.

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But it's worth mentioning for someone who says he's a pacifist, right?

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Let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.

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If Christ is telling you to sell your cloak, and in this case, this is your most important garment, the most important thing you possess.

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It's what keeps you warm on cold nights.

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And back then, unless you were a very wealthy man, you did not have a closet full of coats.

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This was the one you had to stay warm at night and not freeze.

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Christ says to sell it and buy a sword.

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Okay, you can't be a pacifist and square that with what Christ is saying.

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But insofar as these verses go, I think my personal favorite is going to be back, actually, in Jeremiah 48.

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And this one, right?

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Actually, I pulled up the wrong verse here.

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Let me pull up the right one.

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Why are we not pulling up?

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Yeah.

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All right, it's, that's what it is.

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The numbering is different.

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I did pull up the right one, but I was thinking the Masoretic numbering and not the numbering in the Septuagint.

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The Septuagint is Jeremiah 31, 10.

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A cursed is the one who does the work of the Lord carelessly by keeping back his dagger from bloodshed.

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That's pretty open and shut.

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There's no way you can possibly look at that and think that pacifism is an acceptable position that you can square with scripture.

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If someone wants to be a pacifist, he's not a Christian, he's something else.

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So, I think those three are probably sufficient.

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You can do a much longer critique of pacifism, but you said a short critique, so I think for this case, that's the way to go.

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Go with those three passages.

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And again, it's Jeremiah 48, 10, the Masoretic, or 31, 10, in the Septuagint.

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Generally, use the Septuagint, unless someone is just very stuck on, you know, I really like the King James, then fine, use the Masoretic.

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The fourth question, question four is, is it worth the time and effort to join a congregational church with a bunch of friends slash families, elect each other to the boards, and change the direction of the church?

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Many of the congregational churches in my area are shrinking in membership and growing with age.

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The polity of congregational churches certainly provides the opportunity.

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I think that's perfectly valid in many cases.

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Particularly if you have, say, a smaller church that owns its land and its building, then by all means, having a faithful group of men take that over is a step in the right direction.

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That's very much a way that you can take things.

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Just run the numbers, as it were, figure out how many men you need in order to enact that policy, see how long it's going to take you, and maybe check the Constitution bylaws, whatever the governing documents are, and see how that is going to either help you or hinder you.

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And bear in mind, they may very well try to sue you.

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So think about whether or not they have a war chest for that, just to sort of tidbit their strategy recommendation.

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In some cases, they probably won't, because they don't have the capacity to sue you, or they just aren't litigious.

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But generally speaking, the left-leaning Christians, Christians so-called, are going to be more litigious.

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They're going to be more willing to take you to court, to try and ruin you, and make life difficult for you.

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So it's a wisdom call.

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You're going to have to run that assessment based on the men in the congregation, and how they behave.

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So, just bear that in mind.

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But yes, this is a perfectly valid way to go about things, and there's nothing morally objectionable about it as well.

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So, absolutely, if you have congregations in your area that you can take over and turn back into Christian churches, definitely do so.

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Big bonus if you get a nice building in the process.

00:18:47.060 --> 00:18:51.080
Those were the four questions that I had for today from the forum.

00:18:51.080 --> 00:18:53.360
So now I'll move on to the questions from the chat.

00:18:53.480 --> 00:18:59.300
I have a backlog of questions as well, I know that, but I did not have as much time to prepare questions this week.

00:18:59.300 --> 00:19:07.280
It is spring and earnest here, so I'm out in the garden and doing stuff like that, and it's been eating up my time.

00:19:07.280 --> 00:19:09.200
Question five.

00:19:09.200 --> 00:19:15.680
What is the correct method to judge a foreign community in a land as invaders versus multigenerational sojourners?

00:19:15.680 --> 00:19:18.120
Reference examples I was thinking of.

00:19:18.120 --> 00:19:28.320
The German community in South slash Central America, Japanese community in the US., and the post-1979 Persians or Assyrians in the West.

00:19:30.960 --> 00:19:35.000
This is going to have a number of factors that build into it.

00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:36.900
I know this was asked previously.

00:19:36.900 --> 00:19:37.620
I did not read it.

00:19:37.620 --> 00:19:39.560
It's in my backlog.

00:19:39.560 --> 00:19:46.640
But you have a difference between people who go somewhere that is undeveloped and develop a community, right?

00:19:46.640 --> 00:20:01.700
That's basically most of South America didn't have much in the way of civilization when the Europeans arrived, with the exception of a couple of rather barbarous, cannibalistic, human-sacrificing civilizations.

00:20:01.700 --> 00:20:10.200
So they don't count because you don't have to consider them, because God's solution to them is eradication.

00:20:10.200 --> 00:20:18.680
So for the Germans moving to South or Central America, in the South America case, they were setting up a new civilization in some cases.

00:20:18.680 --> 00:20:22.780
Because some of them obviously moved after the war, and so they were sojourners.

00:20:22.780 --> 00:20:24.840
That's different.

00:20:24.840 --> 00:20:32.580
South America is a complex question, because it really, it's the melting pot that America is not.

00:20:32.580 --> 00:20:41.760
It is a mixture of peoples who have intermarried to the point where you have an all-new race of people, a couple of them actually, in a few different places there.

00:20:41.760 --> 00:20:45.200
And they're part European, they're part native.

00:20:45.900 --> 00:20:48.860
Depending on the country, they're part African as well.

00:20:48.860 --> 00:21:01.200
So that also plays into it, because how similar you are, how close you are to the people in whose country you are sojourning is going to change things significantly, right?

00:21:01.200 --> 00:21:08.080
I don't think the South Africans who are moving to the United States need to be sojourners.

00:21:08.080 --> 00:21:14.440
I think they can stay here and become part of the population, because they are our close cousins.

00:21:14.540 --> 00:21:17.240
They are compatible with Americans.

00:21:17.240 --> 00:21:19.840
They're not really aliens.

00:21:19.840 --> 00:21:24.040
So I have no problem with them coming here, staying here, becoming part of the nation.

00:21:24.040 --> 00:21:28.680
Does a South African who moves here become American just like that?

00:21:28.680 --> 00:21:32.640
No, but his children could be, and his grandchildren certainly will be.

00:21:32.640 --> 00:21:36.520
The same thing is true for a Brit or a German.

00:21:36.520 --> 00:21:42.160
Even though they are genetically basically our brothers, moving here does not just make them an American, right?

00:21:42.160 --> 00:21:42.960
It's a different thing.

00:21:43.780 --> 00:21:49.600
But because they are so close, their children or their grandchildren will certainly be American.

00:21:49.600 --> 00:21:51.920
In the case of, say, the Japanese, right?

00:21:51.920 --> 00:21:53.960
They are more alien, because they are different people.

00:21:53.960 --> 00:21:58.940
They are a very different nation from Westerners, from Europeans.

00:21:58.940 --> 00:22:05.360
They are definitely sojourners, and so ideally a sojourner does return home at some point.

00:22:05.360 --> 00:22:11.120
The Japanese behave themselves and don't cause problems, which certainly makes them better sojourners, right?

00:22:11.180 --> 00:22:17.880
We don't necessarily really want them to leave because they are causing problems, because they aren't causing problems.

00:22:17.880 --> 00:22:29.560
There is also only about three quarters of a million Japanese in the United States, which is not a trivial number, but in the scope and scale of the United States, it's a relatively small population.

00:22:29.560 --> 00:22:33.360
It's also concentrated in a handful of areas.

00:22:33.360 --> 00:22:44.780
For the Persians and the Assyrians, I don't know the numbers of how many of them there are, but ideally, yes, they would return home, and granted, that part of the world is just going to be a dumpster fire seemingly forever.

00:22:44.780 --> 00:22:48.760
So the question is, when and how, right?

00:22:48.760 --> 00:23:00.840
Well, given the way that things are trending, and given the way that the immigration debate, we'll call it, is developing, it's pretty clear that it's only going to turn out one of two ways, right?

00:23:00.840 --> 00:23:02.980
The left's gonna win, or the right's gonna win.

00:23:02.980 --> 00:23:05.440
And if the right wins, most people are going home.

00:23:05.440 --> 00:23:09.540
And that's going to include, certainly, both of the groups that you mentioned.

00:23:09.540 --> 00:23:18.800
But insofar as, is someone a sojourner, or is someone an invader, part of the question is, why is he here, right?

00:23:18.800 --> 00:23:32.120
You know, if you are a German, after World War II, escaping Victor's justice, and you move somewhere, it's pretty clear that you're at least a sojourner, if not a refugee.

00:23:32.120 --> 00:23:35.840
And part of it is also that intention to return.

00:23:36.840 --> 00:23:41.740
Someone who has the intention to return can still qualify as a sojourner.

00:23:41.740 --> 00:23:50.000
Someone who has no intention to return is a different thing, because he's no longer sojourning, he is now squatting or invading.

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:52.480
So part of it is that intention.

00:23:52.480 --> 00:23:57.280
People who do not have the intention to return are not sojourners.

00:23:57.280 --> 00:24:00.700
So that's going to play into this as well.

00:24:00.700 --> 00:24:04.100
I think really that intent is a big part of this.

00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:06.460
Obviously, that's more difficult to assess, right?

00:24:06.460 --> 00:24:12.020
Because you're looking into someone's mind, but you can tell intent from actions as well.

00:24:12.020 --> 00:24:17.300
That is going to be the biggest part of this other than that compatibility, right?

00:24:17.300 --> 00:24:26.200
Because determining whether or not someone's a sojourner or a rightful, not necessarily rightful, but a permissible immigrant is a matter of race.

00:24:26.200 --> 00:24:27.700
That's a matter of genetics.

00:24:27.700 --> 00:24:31.860
But sojourner really is that matter of intent, because it's the nature of the term.

00:24:32.140 --> 00:24:38.020
The thing is, someone who is spending time somewhere with the intent to return.

00:24:38.020 --> 00:24:43.260
And so you cannot, literally cannot be a sojourner if you have no intent to return.

00:24:46.220 --> 00:24:48.560
Question six.

00:24:48.560 --> 00:24:54.720
Once you get above 170s, what is the nature of the difference per IQ point?

00:24:54.720 --> 00:24:56.980
What is the general experience at 160 plus?

00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:03.080
That is quite the expansive question.

00:25:03.080 --> 00:25:24.140
But I think, to sort of, not necessarily deeply address it, but at least give a treatment of it, one of the best ways to illustrate the difference between different levels of intelligence, and this is going to work for any particular level of intelligence.

00:25:24.220 --> 00:25:26.440
It's not just, you know, 100 vs.

00:25:26.440 --> 00:25:28.060
160 or whatever.

00:25:29.120 --> 00:25:48.000
As you go higher, or as you go to the right, depending on if you want to look at the curve, or you want to look at a table, however you're organizing your data here, you need less information to arrive at an accurate conclusion, because you are able to extrapolate more and more accurately.

00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:58.680
So, one of the definitions of genius that I have used in the past, and I find it compelling, I don't know if anyone said it before in that way.

00:25:58.680 --> 00:26:03.460
Similar thoughts have been expressed by many men, so I'm not claiming that this is mine.

00:26:03.460 --> 00:26:13.400
But the way that I've chosen to express it in the past is that genius is the ability to draw sound conclusions from seemingly insufficient data.

00:26:13.400 --> 00:26:25.560
Because a person of average intelligence, looking at the data set, whatever is available, is going to say, you cannot draw an accurate conclusion, this is insufficient.

00:26:25.560 --> 00:26:31.980
But the genius is going to look at it and know, in many cases, immediately, this is the right answer.

00:26:31.980 --> 00:26:35.020
I know the answer, I have enough information.

00:26:35.020 --> 00:26:44.760
It looks like magic, but it's not magic because it's just an ability to predict the future based on the present, right?

00:26:44.760 --> 00:26:48.340
It's extrapolation, it's forecasting, but accurately.

00:26:49.540 --> 00:26:59.840
This is one of the things that some AIs are pretty good at now, and why some men are looking at them in the way they are, which is a discussion for another time.

00:26:59.840 --> 00:27:01.840
There's some risk there.

00:27:01.840 --> 00:27:05.160
But I think that's one of the best ways to look at it.

00:27:05.160 --> 00:27:10.360
And then, insofar as, you know, what is daily life like, right?

00:27:10.360 --> 00:27:13.000
How is the general experience?

00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:15.900
No matter what your IQ is, you're still a man, right?

00:27:15.900 --> 00:27:20.960
You're going to have some different tastes, you're going to have some different experiences.

00:27:20.980 --> 00:27:28.080
Usually, genius is also highly correlated with certain, at least some of your senses being more attuned.

00:27:28.080 --> 00:27:32.140
So, genius may have a better sense of smell, taste, things like that.

00:27:32.140 --> 00:27:33.280
Little differences like that.

00:27:33.280 --> 00:27:40.100
But those things also vary, not necessarily always connected with intelligence, right?

00:27:40.100 --> 00:27:46.720
There are men who are very exceptionally good at some particular thing that is not connected to intelligence, right?

00:27:47.260 --> 00:27:49.960
And I'm not saying just the savant, right?

00:27:49.960 --> 00:27:57.960
I'm not saying just the person who has severe deficits in other areas and this extreme talent in one.

00:27:57.960 --> 00:28:01.660
But generally speaking, you know, the genius is still a human being.

00:28:01.660 --> 00:28:05.580
It's still going to be a general sort of experience everyone else has.

00:28:05.580 --> 00:28:10.420
You have to eat and sleep and, you know, drink caffeine and all those things.

00:28:11.760 --> 00:28:15.740
So the difference is not going to be per IQ point, really.

00:28:16.240 --> 00:28:22.220
It's very difficult to determine with that sort of fine grain.

00:28:22.220 --> 00:28:32.680
IQ tests should really be, you know, your IQ is this plus or minus some number, which the more accurate ones are going to give you that, you know, plus minus five, six, seven, whatever it happens to be.

00:28:32.680 --> 00:28:38.440
The real differences are those standard deviations or maybe half a standard deviation.

00:28:38.440 --> 00:28:44.180
There is a real difference between 100 and 115, and there is a real difference between 115 and 130.

00:28:45.300 --> 00:29:03.800
This also builds into relatability across those levels, because the man who is at 130 is generally going to find it easier to relate to someone at 115 than 100, and he is going to find it a world easier to relate to the 100 than the 85.

00:29:03.800 --> 00:29:06.120
And that does sort of scale.

00:29:06.120 --> 00:29:16.840
It's not that the person who's, you know, 160 or 180, whatever it happens to be, is so completely disconnected from reality and common man that you can't understand them.

00:29:16.840 --> 00:29:23.260
Because also bear in mind, the person with the higher IQ can more accurately simulate the mind of another man.

00:29:23.260 --> 00:29:31.500
And so the person with the higher IQ can have the argument in his head with the other man before he has the argument.

00:29:31.500 --> 00:29:33.940
So he's really just replaying what he's already done.

00:29:33.940 --> 00:29:35.700
It gives you some tactical advantages, certainly.

00:29:35.700 --> 00:29:38.320
You know, if you're an attorney, it has advantages in court, right?

00:29:39.560 --> 00:29:46.360
But there is a difference in comprehensibility once you get too distant.

00:29:46.360 --> 00:29:59.560
Certainly the man who is 85 or 70 or whatever, God forbid, is not going to be able to understand the man who is at 150 at all, other than the things that are common to humanity.

00:29:59.560 --> 00:30:04.440
Again, eating, sleeping, drinking, liking pretty women, right?

00:30:04.480 --> 00:30:07.040
That's universal, up, down the scale doesn't matter.

00:30:07.040 --> 00:30:19.580
But the experience of the world and the perception of the world is going to be so fundamentally alien for someone who is that far distant, that there's going to be no real understanding.

00:30:19.580 --> 00:30:23.400
The person who's at the higher end of the spectrum can understand a little bit.

00:30:23.400 --> 00:30:29.660
But not entirely, because there are some things where you kind of have to live it to understand it in a certain way.

00:30:29.660 --> 00:30:33.480
It's not because you necessarily have to do something to understand it right.

00:30:33.520 --> 00:30:36.440
It's not the person who says, how do you know drugs are bad?

00:30:36.440 --> 00:30:37.660
You've never tried them.

00:30:37.660 --> 00:30:39.540
It's a stupid argument.

00:30:39.540 --> 00:30:43.620
But do you gain something when you do something in terms of knowledge?

00:30:43.620 --> 00:30:44.580
The answer is yes.

00:30:44.580 --> 00:30:45.520
And that's true for everything.

00:30:45.520 --> 00:30:54.060
Like, you know, if I stabbed my hand right now with any of the number of sharp things on my desk, I would gain knowledge of how that feels.

00:30:54.060 --> 00:30:59.560
It's not knowledge I want, and I already understand it sufficiently without doing it, right?

00:30:59.560 --> 00:31:02.740
I know it's going to hurt, it's going to bleed, it's going to be obnoxious.

00:31:03.320 --> 00:31:04.960
I know all that without doing it.

00:31:04.960 --> 00:31:08.940
But I would still gain some knowledge by doing the thing.

00:31:08.940 --> 00:31:21.000
Similar there with the difference between the person living life at 70 or 80 IQ, insofar as he's even aware of what's going on, versus the person living life at 160, right?

00:31:21.000 --> 00:31:27.740
I think that's a general overview of it, so there are very few men who are 160 plus.

00:31:27.740 --> 00:31:30.280
I've given the number before, obviously, in the episode we did on IQ.

00:31:31.240 --> 00:31:32.840
It's not a lot of men there.

00:31:32.840 --> 00:31:37.440
Most men really are in that 85 to 115 range.

00:31:37.440 --> 00:31:39.520
That's just how standard deviation works.

00:31:39.520 --> 00:31:42.400
It's just how a standard distribution works.

00:31:42.400 --> 00:31:45.940
But I think that pretty much covers that one.

00:31:45.940 --> 00:31:49.140
If you have a follow-up, by all means, let me know.

00:31:49.140 --> 00:31:50.740
Question 7.

00:31:50.740 --> 00:31:55.080
Two questions from the same person, unrelated, though, so I will number them separately.

00:31:55.080 --> 00:31:55.560
Question 7.

00:31:56.380 --> 00:32:00.580
What are the rights of the Amerindian descended North Americans?

00:32:01.680 --> 00:32:05.780
There are really, I guess, three parts to this answer.

00:32:05.780 --> 00:32:20.560
The first part to the answer that I would give is that those who were here when we first encountered them, and we had our conflicts with them and things like that, they were not Christian.

00:32:20.560 --> 00:32:23.840
They were, in many cases, vile pagans.

00:32:24.120 --> 00:32:26.220
Many of them engaged in human sacrifice.

00:32:26.220 --> 00:32:29.020
Some of them engaged in cannibalism.

00:32:29.020 --> 00:32:31.500
We should have treated them like the Canaanites.

00:32:31.500 --> 00:32:35.480
That is obviously back then, right?

00:32:35.480 --> 00:32:50.640
It's sort of the same as the Israelites were commanded to wipe out the Canaanites, and then you have the book of Joshua and then Judges, and right, it's the narrative, the litany of all the times they failed, because they didn't do it.

00:32:50.640 --> 00:32:51.640
So that's in the past.

00:32:51.640 --> 00:32:52.860
That's sort of the first part of it.

00:32:53.880 --> 00:32:58.700
The second part is really two parts to the same analysis, right?

00:32:58.700 --> 00:33:02.840
The question is, what do we do with those who are currently here, right?

00:33:02.840 --> 00:33:06.940
It's not like the sojourner, we can send him home, right?

00:33:06.940 --> 00:33:14.480
If we have someone who is here from, you know, pick a country, it doesn't matter, I won't even name one, just pick one in your head.

00:33:14.480 --> 00:33:19.300
We can send that man back to his country, because he has a country.

00:33:19.300 --> 00:33:22.440
The Amerindians don't, so there's nowhere we can send them.

00:33:24.180 --> 00:33:30.620
So, that means we have to treat them differently, just because there's no other option.

00:33:30.620 --> 00:33:35.240
I would say the assessment comes down to, are they Christian, right?

00:33:35.240 --> 00:33:41.200
There are some number of them, and it's in the millions, I think it's three or four million, it's something like that.

00:33:41.200 --> 00:33:45.860
Someone can correct me on that, if I'm off by a little bit, I might be.

00:33:45.860 --> 00:33:48.480
Three or four million of them claim to be Christian.

00:33:48.480 --> 00:33:50.280
That's non-trivial, okay?

00:33:50.560 --> 00:33:59.720
We have individuals, whatever we should have done in the past, we did or didn't do, they're here now, they are Christians, they have nowhere else to go.

00:33:59.720 --> 00:34:03.700
I think those ones, we have to give some chunk of territory.

00:34:03.700 --> 00:34:22.220
It doesn't have to be a giant chunk of territory, it doesn't have to be their ancestral territory, it just has to be some territory somewhere that we give them because they're Christians at this point, and we owe Christians a different duty than we owe to the heathen, to the pagan, in the negative sense of the term.

00:34:22.220 --> 00:34:27.460
Those who are still pagan, who are still worshipping demons, we owe them nothing.

00:34:27.460 --> 00:34:31.060
And the previous solution that should have been enacted is still on the table.

00:34:31.060 --> 00:34:34.200
I think that's the three-part answer to that one.

00:34:34.200 --> 00:34:41.080
So, for the ones who are Christian, give them territory, tell them to stop building casinos, they're not allowed to do that.

00:34:41.080 --> 00:34:46.020
If they do that, they keep doing it, it's an act of war, then we handle it like we would any enemy.

00:34:48.180 --> 00:34:55.320
The second question from this individual, question 8, is it wrong to have a queen like England did?

00:34:56.680 --> 00:35:04.560
This is another one of those where a man who is familiar with the Masoretic text is going to be tempted.

00:35:04.560 --> 00:35:16.840
And he's going to be tempted because there is a passage in scripture that says, my people are oppressed and women are the rulers, right?

00:35:16.840 --> 00:35:20.420
That's in Isaiah, I believe.

00:35:24.780 --> 00:35:26.100
I will pull that one up.

00:35:26.100 --> 00:35:28.620
I don't remember the exact verse, so I have to look it up.

00:35:28.700 --> 00:35:30.480
Isaiah 3.2, okay.

00:35:31.840 --> 00:35:34.500
I will pull up the text so we can look at it.

00:35:34.500 --> 00:35:46.000
And of course, we'll look at both the Septuagint, wait, was it 3.2?

00:35:47.620 --> 00:35:50.060
3.12, that's what it is.

00:35:52.540 --> 00:35:54.580
So Isaiah 3.12, right?

00:35:54.580 --> 00:35:58.720
In the Masoretic, we have a pretty open and shut case, it makes it very easy.

00:35:58.720 --> 00:36:02.440
My people, infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them.

00:36:02.440 --> 00:36:04.460
Okay, that's negative, that's a curse.

00:36:04.460 --> 00:36:06.280
Women ruling you is a curse.

00:36:06.280 --> 00:36:08.140
Closed case, we're done.

00:36:08.140 --> 00:36:18.740
The problem is, that's not what scripture says, because the Septuagint says, oh my people, your exactors strip you clean, and your creditors lord it over you.

00:36:19.900 --> 00:36:22.780
That doesn't give us a condemnation of women rulers.

00:36:23.240 --> 00:36:29.700
And so, it seems like we're left with no condemnation, right?

00:36:29.700 --> 00:36:37.620
And there are no equivalent passages anywhere else in the Septuagint that would give us that, other than that one that I read from the Masoretic.

00:36:38.940 --> 00:36:50.840
However, the issue of whether or not someone should rule is not simply, can I find one verse that condemns this subgroup of people from doing this thing?

00:36:52.440 --> 00:36:54.420
What is the nature of ruling?

00:36:54.420 --> 00:36:57.880
The nature of ruling is exercising headship.

00:36:57.880 --> 00:37:01.720
And so go listen to the Stone Choir episode on headship.

00:37:01.720 --> 00:37:06.880
I will put that in the show notes, a link to that.

00:37:06.880 --> 00:37:09.220
A woman is never her own head.

00:37:09.220 --> 00:37:13.420
And so a woman exercising headship is per se wrongful.

00:37:13.420 --> 00:37:15.820
It is invalid, it's even incoherent.

00:37:16.680 --> 00:37:24.600
And so, you know, does a queen have a certain degree of authority by virtue of the fact that her husband is the king?

00:37:24.600 --> 00:37:25.560
Yes.

00:37:25.560 --> 00:37:33.460
The same as the woman of the house, we used to say the mistress of the house, but that term has gained negative connotations over the years.

00:37:33.460 --> 00:37:41.740
She has a certain degree of authority over those in the house by virtue of being the wife of the master of the house, the term we used to use for the head of the house.

00:37:42.720 --> 00:37:50.560
So, it's not wrong for women, per se, to exercise any authority, but a woman never has her own authority.

00:37:50.560 --> 00:37:59.900
It is always by virtue of her position with regard to her husband, or in some cases, you know, the princess has some authority because her father is the king, right?

00:37:59.900 --> 00:38:06.760
It's her relationship to her head, whomever that happens to be, because she's not her own head.

00:38:06.760 --> 00:38:08.480
So, should a woman rule?

00:38:08.480 --> 00:38:09.200
Absolutely not.

00:38:09.200 --> 00:38:10.060
Should we have a queen?

00:38:10.060 --> 00:38:10.780
Absolutely not.

00:38:11.500 --> 00:38:14.100
Does it mean that all women are bad rulers?

00:38:14.100 --> 00:38:16.480
No, those are different things.

00:38:16.480 --> 00:38:21.280
This is related to a point that I've made many times.

00:38:21.280 --> 00:38:25.320
When I say that women shouldn't go to university, I don't mean because women are dumb.

00:38:25.320 --> 00:38:27.660
I don't mean because women are incapable.

00:38:27.660 --> 00:38:41.640
I mean because God made them to do something else, and that thing is more important, because without women being a wife and mother, without them caring for the home and for children, there's no future.

00:38:41.640 --> 00:38:49.400
That's more important than whether or not she has a BA or a master's degree or whatever it happens to be.

00:38:49.400 --> 00:38:51.520
There are many women who are very capable.

00:38:51.520 --> 00:38:54.960
The IQ curves overlap significantly.

00:38:54.960 --> 00:39:04.240
Women and men are in the middle, so close over the course of the studies we've done over the decades, they may as well be identical.

00:39:05.340 --> 00:39:09.680
So, 100 is the average for men and 100 is the average for women.

00:39:09.680 --> 00:39:15.140
There are some studies that have said women are a little higher, and there are a couple studies that said men are a little higher.

00:39:15.140 --> 00:39:18.040
It's a rounding error, it's a fudge factor.

00:39:18.040 --> 00:39:28.660
Men however, produce more geniuses and more retards in the technical sense of the term, because the curve for men extends further.

00:39:28.660 --> 00:39:32.180
For women, it's narrow, which is to say the standard deviation is smaller.

00:39:32.860 --> 00:39:34.760
Most women cluster in the middle.

00:39:34.760 --> 00:39:37.440
Men, you get wider variety.

00:39:37.440 --> 00:39:41.720
This is the same for men with regard to basically every attribute.

00:39:41.720 --> 00:39:49.580
You get significantly greater variance in height for men, in weight for men, in strength for men.

00:39:49.580 --> 00:39:54.540
God did that with men because men need to serve a bunch of different roles.

00:39:54.540 --> 00:39:57.380
And so you have that variability in order to do that.

00:39:57.380 --> 00:40:05.420
You have the very highly intelligent men who can lead societies, you have the very strong men and things like that, you can fight for society, whoever it happens to be.

00:40:05.420 --> 00:40:07.340
You don't want them to be idiots, of course, when they're fighting.

00:40:07.340 --> 00:40:10.880
You can think of a quote from a famous philosopher on that note.

00:40:10.880 --> 00:40:14.700
But women are not dumb.

00:40:14.700 --> 00:40:21.080
It's just that they need to be doing other things because only women can give birth to children, right?

00:40:21.080 --> 00:40:26.140
So if women aren't giving birth to children, raising them, there's no future for that nation.

00:40:26.140 --> 00:40:27.880
That's more important than attending university.

00:40:28.480 --> 00:40:32.840
And because it's her place to be in the home.

00:40:32.840 --> 00:40:38.900
You don't want her out in the world doing the things a man is supposed to do because it leads to problems.

00:40:38.900 --> 00:40:41.060
You're inviting problems.

00:40:42.600 --> 00:40:52.060
So women ruling is bad because she's acting as her own head and as the head of her nation when she cannot do that.

00:40:52.060 --> 00:40:54.200
By her nature, she cannot do it.

00:40:54.200 --> 00:40:57.480
But it does not follow from that that she can't be a good ruler.

00:40:57.540 --> 00:41:04.000
I'm thinking, for instance, of Catherine the Great, one of the best rulers of Russia, was indeed a woman.

00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:07.880
Does not mean that she should have been there.

00:41:07.880 --> 00:41:10.960
So no, I do not think that having a queen is morally permissible.

00:41:10.960 --> 00:41:16.100
It is something that you're inviting judgment from God on yourself, and you should not do it.

00:41:18.260 --> 00:41:21.640
Let's see, my next question here.

00:41:25.180 --> 00:41:27.640
Actually, we'll scroll up in the chat for the next one.

00:41:27.640 --> 00:41:29.380
I did not copy it down.

00:41:31.560 --> 00:41:32.520
Right.

00:41:32.520 --> 00:41:37.080
Today, Woe called Augustine's just worth very profoundly evil and used some strong words.

00:41:37.080 --> 00:41:38.780
I was bothered by such language about St.

00:41:38.780 --> 00:41:40.000
Augustine.

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:41.420
Could you provide your own thoughts on that?

00:41:41.520 --> 00:41:46.500
I am actually going to answer that one next time.

00:41:46.500 --> 00:41:52.120
So it's not really the question nine, but I want to give a fuller answer to that.

00:41:52.120 --> 00:41:53.960
So I'm going to answer that one next time.

00:41:53.960 --> 00:42:01.160
Since, like I said, I did not have time to prepare as much this week, and also this one came in in the chat while we were discussing previous questions.

00:42:07.822 --> 00:42:17.602
Any speculation on why the game of chess is so dominated by Jews, I've been bothered about playing chess since realizing that it is, something about the nature of the game.

00:42:17.602 --> 00:42:23.062
I think that it's not necessarily, I don't know that it's necessarily dominated by Jews.

00:42:23.062 --> 00:42:28.202
Yes, there are many good players who are Jews, and they are statistically overrepresented.

00:42:29.562 --> 00:42:31.942
Chess is a game of memorization.

00:42:31.942 --> 00:42:36.842
I know that's going to make some men mad, but I feel like most people probably accept that fact now.

00:42:37.842 --> 00:42:42.602
Given that AI is significantly better than human beings.

00:42:42.602 --> 00:42:52.842
I think more people are willing to accept that chess is not so much a game of strategy and thought, as it is a game of memorizing how to respond.

00:42:52.842 --> 00:42:58.702
So, if you get an individual with an exceptional memory, he could be a very good chess player.

00:42:58.702 --> 00:43:11.662
I'm thinking of a parallel in the gentleman who won the Scrabble tournament in French without speaking French, because he memorized the French Dictionary, which seems like a weird way to do it, but it worked.

00:43:11.662 --> 00:43:17.962
So, if you have the memory for it, you don't necessarily have to be good at strategy.

00:43:17.962 --> 00:43:21.602
There are other games that are more in terms of strategy.

00:43:21.602 --> 00:43:23.902
I'm thinking of Go, for instance.

00:43:23.902 --> 00:43:30.622
That one seems like it's also slowly moving toward being a solved game, in which case it's not a pure strategy game.

00:43:30.622 --> 00:43:37.082
But for practical purposes, for a human being, that one's going to be a strategy game, just because you can't memorize.

00:43:37.082 --> 00:43:41.782
Chess, you can't effectively memorize enough that it's no longer a strategy game.

00:43:43.002 --> 00:43:47.322
Now, is it a strategy game for individuals who are new to it?

00:43:47.322 --> 00:43:56.222
Absolutely, because you're having to use strategy to determine what you're going to do, because you don't know the responses, you haven't memorized them.

00:43:56.222 --> 00:44:18.722
So, I think that in some cases, it's just a matter of Jews definitely do push education, and if you invest the hours in doing chess, right, in memorizing how to respond, and analyzing games, and watching games, if you have the intellectual capacity to store all of that, you can become a good chess player.

00:44:18.722 --> 00:44:21.022
So, I think it's time investment is a huge part of it.

00:44:21.022 --> 00:44:27.202
And certainly, the Ashkenazi Jews do produce some intelligent individuals.

00:44:27.202 --> 00:44:29.282
Their IQ is overblown deliberately.

00:44:30.102 --> 00:44:31.862
I know how they fudged the statistics for that.

00:44:31.862 --> 00:44:33.582
I know how they played the game.

00:44:33.582 --> 00:44:36.962
But they're not dumb, right?

00:44:36.962 --> 00:44:40.462
They still produce some highly intelligent men.

00:44:40.462 --> 00:44:42.162
The Sephardim, much less so.

00:44:42.162 --> 00:45:00.682
So if you have that combination of pushing education and all these hours invested in this thing, and bear in mind they don't play sports, so they're doing something else instead, usually it's music or something like chess, studying the Talmud, it makes perfect sense.

00:45:00.682 --> 00:45:05.362
If it were a game of pure strategy, then there would be some other more interesting questions.

00:45:05.362 --> 00:45:09.162
But given that chess isn't, I don't find it a particularly interesting thing.

00:45:09.162 --> 00:45:11.982
If you like chess, by all means play chess.

00:45:11.982 --> 00:45:14.262
Never was something that particularly interested me.

00:45:14.262 --> 00:45:19.562
I probably own a dozen chess boards because people have given them to me over the years for some reason.

00:45:19.562 --> 00:45:23.822
I mostly use them as a base for house plants.

00:45:23.822 --> 00:45:24.542
Just not my game.

00:45:25.782 --> 00:45:30.982
But I think that's basically the explanation of why you see that over-representation there.

00:45:33.882 --> 00:45:37.642
I'll actually write that down, so remember to put it in the show notes.

00:45:41.702 --> 00:45:43.282
Question 10.

00:45:43.282 --> 00:45:46.122
What do you think about the recent changes made to the US.

00:45:46.122 --> 00:45:47.582
Forest Service?

00:45:47.582 --> 00:45:52.162
I cannot answer that one because I did not actually look at what they were.

00:45:53.902 --> 00:46:07.402
There were some sensationalist headlines, and then I saw that they are moving their headquarters and that they're restructuring, but I didn't look at the actual overall impact, so I can't really assess it in a fair way because I don't know what they're doing.

00:46:07.402 --> 00:46:11.182
I could say that hypothetically, if they are cutting the budget, that is bad.

00:46:11.182 --> 00:46:21.502
The Forest Service is one of the handful of things the government does that is actually very good, and I think that we should have better funding for the national and state parks.

00:46:21.502 --> 00:46:24.482
National and state parks, they are a vital part of our country.

00:46:24.482 --> 00:46:31.082
They should be respected and protected, and we should be punishing literars significantly more heavily.

00:46:34.162 --> 00:46:36.242
Question 11.

00:46:40.742 --> 00:46:49.202
Given that the mind is obsessed with origin stories, to what extent is it knowable who or what was on the earth at the time of Adam and Eve?

00:46:49.202 --> 00:46:53.862
Surely, it was not just two people in a garden where the god's creation is part of creation.

00:46:53.862 --> 00:46:56.282
Genesis is literal.

00:46:56.282 --> 00:46:58.082
The creation story is literal.

00:46:58.082 --> 00:47:05.202
Adam and Eve were the first two human beings, Adam being created first, Eve being created from Adam.

00:47:05.202 --> 00:47:06.342
There were no other human beings.

00:47:07.062 --> 00:47:13.562
This is referencing the theory that there were other hominids and that Adam and Eve were elevated from them and turned into human beings.

00:47:14.402 --> 00:47:23.362
And that's trying to square the Darwinian explanation for the origin of life with Christianity, and the two are not compatible.

00:47:24.582 --> 00:47:30.542
Evolution and Christianity are compatible in the sense of microevolution and...

00:47:31.902 --> 00:47:42.162
I don't know if we necessarily have a term for it, but not speciation, but the creation of, essentially, subspecies, breeds, races, whatever you want to call them.

00:47:42.202 --> 00:47:43.902
We use different terms for different creatures, right?

00:47:43.902 --> 00:47:46.322
We call dogs breeds and humans races.

00:47:46.322 --> 00:47:48.322
Same thing.

00:47:48.322 --> 00:47:49.482
That happened.

00:47:49.482 --> 00:47:51.022
That's microevolution.

00:47:51.022 --> 00:47:58.782
You do not have the macroevolution of going from a fish to a human being.

00:47:58.782 --> 00:47:59.682
That's nonsense.

00:47:59.682 --> 00:48:01.162
That didn't happen.

00:48:01.162 --> 00:48:05.482
But yes, Adam and Eve were the first two human beings, and we are all descended from them.

00:48:05.482 --> 00:48:09.542
And everything in scripture relies on that being the case.

00:48:09.542 --> 00:48:11.662
That is how original sin works.

00:48:11.802 --> 00:48:14.142
That is how the atonement works.

00:48:14.142 --> 00:48:16.302
Everything relies on that fact.

00:48:16.302 --> 00:48:29.942
So, yes, every single human being living today is a son or daughter of Adam, for better or worse, because if you're a human being, then you have a final destination.

00:48:29.942 --> 00:48:38.362
For some people, it would probably be better, it would definitely be better, if they were not human, because then they would not go to hell for eternity.

00:48:38.362 --> 00:48:42.402
And I can safely say that, because you can think, of course, what Christ said about Judas.

00:48:42.402 --> 00:48:45.242
It would be better for that one, if he had not been born.

00:48:47.862 --> 00:48:50.582
Question 12.

00:48:50.582 --> 00:48:53.322
Have you ever had an encounter with an LDS missionary?

00:48:53.322 --> 00:48:55.182
It's almost like debating with a Muslim.

00:48:56.542 --> 00:48:58.402
That's true, actually, in my experience.

00:48:58.402 --> 00:49:00.162
There's almost no getting through to them.

00:49:00.162 --> 00:49:03.062
Any advice when running into those with false religions?

00:49:04.802 --> 00:49:14.982
So, insofar as that last bit expands it to all false religions, it's going to depend on the religion, right?

00:49:14.982 --> 00:49:17.642
Muslims and Mormons are going to be very hard to reach.

00:49:17.642 --> 00:49:20.882
Incidentally, Jehovah's Witnesses are also pretty hard to reach.

00:49:20.882 --> 00:49:26.082
They are also quite stubborn, and they're very bad at Greek.

00:49:26.082 --> 00:49:30.682
That doesn't help, which is relevant for them, of course.

00:49:30.682 --> 00:49:35.742
When the Mormons are the same, actually, they also argue a little bit of that.

00:49:35.742 --> 00:49:57.522
The Mormons, if you can get through to them with regard to the history, you can maybe make some progress, because the history of the Mormon so-called church is crazy stuff that does not strike any same man as being the behavior and the actions of a church.

00:50:00.982 --> 00:50:05.502
Like, the prophets were not good men in the Mormon faith.

00:50:05.502 --> 00:50:13.622
You know, you have them riding drunk through town naked on a horse, womanizing, sleeping with wives of their followers.

00:50:13.622 --> 00:50:15.542
There's all sorts of horrible things going on there.

00:50:15.542 --> 00:50:16.622
These are not good men.

00:50:16.622 --> 00:50:19.062
These are not the men you want to follow.

00:50:19.062 --> 00:50:22.902
And the claims of Mormonism are absurd.

00:50:22.902 --> 00:50:37.502
Don't even get into the, you know, you get your own planet and the harem of wives, and they spend all of eternity pregnant, and then you have enough children, you basically start your own universe, and they just, you know, it gets crazy.

00:50:37.502 --> 00:50:41.162
The historical claims are falsifiable, right?

00:50:41.162 --> 00:50:46.462
If you make historical claims, those are falsifiable to some degree, right?

00:50:46.462 --> 00:50:52.582
If you make a claim about this man like that person or dislike that man, that's harder to prove.

00:50:52.582 --> 00:51:04.782
But if you say that a giant battle took place in Missouri, well, we can go excavate Missouri, and if we don't find it, there's a problem with your religion.

00:51:04.782 --> 00:51:10.062
Every time they go and try to excavate something the Bible claims, they find the thing, eventually.

00:51:10.062 --> 00:51:16.962
Sometimes it takes them a while to figure out where it is, you know, Jericho or various battles or Egyptian cities and stuff like that.

00:51:16.962 --> 00:51:24.482
It takes them a while to find it sometimes, but they eventually find it, and then, lo and behold, it has the names we find in scripture.

00:51:24.482 --> 00:51:27.842
It is the same timeline we find in scripture.

00:51:27.842 --> 00:51:33.682
They find something that comes from Solomon or that comes from David or comes from a certain pharaoh.

00:51:33.682 --> 00:51:36.242
That doesn't happen with Mormonism.

00:51:36.242 --> 00:51:47.642
The Mormon Church has spent untold amounts of money, because they have billions of dollars, trying to excavate things claimed by the Book of Mormon and found nothing.

00:51:48.922 --> 00:51:49.482
It's not there.

00:51:49.482 --> 00:51:51.102
There's nothing there.

00:51:51.102 --> 00:52:12.102
There's also the fact that the Book of Mormon is weird fanfiction that was more or less originally a science fiction story that became a religion, so it kind of sounds like Elrond Hubbard, but you kind of have to try to get through to them in whatever way is going to work for that person, right?

00:52:12.102 --> 00:52:14.802
You have to find the argument is most convincing for them.

00:52:14.802 --> 00:52:16.842
Some people, the history will work.

00:52:17.522 --> 00:52:20.382
Some are just going to say, well, we haven't found it yet.

00:52:20.382 --> 00:52:31.222
Okay, that kind of person is going to be very hard to persuade because he's going to be persuaded by nothing, because he's always going to say, we haven't found it yet.

00:52:31.222 --> 00:52:34.302
It will always be yet for that person.

00:52:34.302 --> 00:52:43.202
And for Mormons, the biggest part actually isn't necessarily the theology and things like that, insofar as they have theology.

00:52:43.702 --> 00:52:50.122
It's more that if you leave the Mormon Church, you lose everyone.

00:52:50.122 --> 00:52:55.002
They will all shun you, they will abandon you, in some cases worse.

00:52:55.002 --> 00:52:59.082
You lose your friends, you lose family, you lose connections.

00:52:59.082 --> 00:53:02.682
They lose their entire support structure, and that's very difficult.

00:53:02.682 --> 00:53:14.362
So a big part of converting Mormons is coming alongside them when they convert and giving them a new support structure, right?

00:53:14.362 --> 00:53:21.942
They're going to need friends and connections and employment and all these things, because they're going to lose that when they leave Mormonism.

00:53:21.942 --> 00:53:28.882
And in many cases, they're going to have to move, physically relocate, to not be in a Mormon part of the country.

00:53:28.882 --> 00:53:38.102
So that's a big part of evangelizing and converting Mormons, is giving them another life, essentially, because they're going to lose the one they had in Mormonism.

00:53:38.102 --> 00:53:40.102
They need to have something else, or else they're...

00:53:40.902 --> 00:53:43.102
Very few men will make that jump, right?

00:53:43.102 --> 00:53:45.702
But there's nothing to catch them.

00:53:46.882 --> 00:53:58.302
But persuading them is very difficult, because they don't necessarily make a rational argument to each other.

00:53:58.302 --> 00:54:00.442
And so you're not addressing a rational argument.

00:54:00.442 --> 00:54:07.322
It's not that they have made this series of points and arguments and then concluded something based on that.

00:54:07.322 --> 00:54:13.682
Because if you have that, well, you can attack the points or you can attack the logic, you can attack the conclusion.

00:54:13.682 --> 00:54:17.922
The big thing for the Mormons is, do you have a burning in the bosom?

00:54:18.942 --> 00:54:26.702
When we talk about this stuff, do you feel inside of you that it's real, that this is...

00:54:26.702 --> 00:54:29.382
And that's a manufactured feeling.

00:54:29.382 --> 00:54:34.822
It's the same reason that traditional Christians object to Pentecostalism.

00:54:35.422 --> 00:54:39.082
Because Pentecostalism and Mormonism are brothers.

00:54:39.082 --> 00:54:40.302
They are related.

00:54:40.302 --> 00:54:45.322
I'm not saying Pentecostals go to hell, because Pentecostals happen to have better theology.

00:54:45.322 --> 00:54:49.162
I'm not going to say good theology, but better theology than the Mormons.

00:54:49.162 --> 00:54:50.902
They can be saved, they still trust in Jesus.

00:54:50.902 --> 00:55:01.082
But their arguments, their way of arriving at that, those are horrible, because they do the same sort of burning in the bosom, right?

00:55:01.082 --> 00:55:04.262
You feel a fire of the Holy Spirit, whatever it happens to be.

00:55:05.322 --> 00:55:07.282
You don't want to go down that road.

00:55:07.282 --> 00:55:12.162
And so, like I said for Mormons, it's very difficult to try to reach them.

00:55:12.162 --> 00:55:20.902
And I think part of it is going to be a state solution, because false religions are supposed to be suppressed by a Christian ruler.

00:55:20.902 --> 00:55:31.222
And I don't think there will ever be a true solution to the Mormons and other groups like that without a Christian prince, without a Christian state enforcing punishments for false teachers.

00:55:32.442 --> 00:55:35.922
Because most of them, you strike the shepherd, the sheep will flee, right?

00:55:35.922 --> 00:55:38.962
You're not going to have to convert every single individual.

00:55:38.982 --> 00:55:44.002
Usually, when you get rid of a number of false teachers, the sheep will wander into some other pasture.

00:55:45.362 --> 00:55:54.882
So, but insofar as trying to convert individual Mormons, you are probably going to have to figure out where the chink in the armor is, right?

00:55:54.882 --> 00:55:58.482
Where they have some doubt about the Mormon claims.

00:55:59.142 --> 00:56:02.202
And maybe it's the nature of the prophets.

00:56:02.202 --> 00:56:03.682
They were terrible men.

00:56:03.682 --> 00:56:05.902
Maybe it's the historical claims.

00:56:05.902 --> 00:56:07.922
None of them have proven true.

00:56:07.922 --> 00:56:14.682
Maybe it's the absurdity of the claims about, essentially, eschatology, right?

00:56:14.682 --> 00:56:18.522
You get your own planet and the harem of wives, you keep pregnant for eternity.

00:56:18.522 --> 00:56:23.542
This is not the sort of thing that someone takes seriously as a religion.

00:56:23.542 --> 00:56:32.702
That's more something that someone finds in a science fiction book written by someone in the 60s who was doing a number of substances.

00:56:32.702 --> 00:56:33.482
So it just depends.

00:56:33.482 --> 00:56:38.842
You're going to have to figure out how that man is going to respond to a particular argument.

00:56:38.842 --> 00:56:42.042
And part of it is just having the discussion with him.

00:56:42.042 --> 00:56:46.942
If this is someone who is a friend, and that's going to make it a little easier, take your time.

00:56:46.942 --> 00:56:53.822
Develop that argument, figure out what he believes about it, why he believes it, figure out why he's a Mormon.

00:56:53.822 --> 00:56:55.102
Maybe he doesn't really believe.

00:56:55.102 --> 00:56:56.642
Maybe it's just for business connections.

00:56:56.702 --> 00:56:58.162
That happens a lot.

00:56:58.162 --> 00:56:59.962
I know some men like that, unfortunately.

00:56:59.962 --> 00:57:02.742
I wish they wouldn't do that, but that's part of it.

00:57:02.742 --> 00:57:06.522
You have to figure out the man and the argument that will work for him.

00:57:20.442 --> 00:57:22.142
Question 13.

00:57:23.782 --> 00:57:28.462
What prophecies need to happen before Jesus returns?

00:57:28.462 --> 00:57:36.722
I have touched on that one in a previous episode, so hopefully someone will link to that, but I'll also briefly address it here.

00:57:38.102 --> 00:57:44.442
There are a number of prophecies that have not yet come true.

00:57:44.442 --> 00:57:58.842
Some of them are up in the air because there are multiple potential interpretations that I think are equally valid, and we don't know which one is true, right?

00:57:58.842 --> 00:58:09.842
So for instance, the two prophets in Revelation, we don't know if those are actually two prophets or if they are symbolic of, say, institutions or something like that.

00:58:09.842 --> 00:58:12.162
So are they extant?

00:58:12.162 --> 00:58:13.942
Are they two physical men?

00:58:13.942 --> 00:58:15.122
We're waiting for them to appear.

00:58:16.182 --> 00:58:17.882
We don't really know.

00:58:17.882 --> 00:58:23.422
And so maybe it's fulfilled, maybe it's not.

00:58:23.422 --> 00:58:28.602
I don't think things are bad enough for this to be the end of the period of tribulation, right?

00:58:28.602 --> 00:58:35.902
And you can interpret the tribulation as being seven literal years, or being a perfect time, because seven is symbolic.

00:58:35.902 --> 00:58:39.982
However you interpret that, things get worse near the end.

00:58:39.982 --> 00:58:44.402
I don't think they're bad enough yet that it qualifies as the end.

00:58:44.822 --> 00:58:46.682
So, they're going to get worse.

00:58:46.682 --> 00:58:51.522
Not necessarily for us, because maybe it's the end, maybe it's not.

00:58:51.522 --> 00:58:54.142
If it's not the end, perhaps it's cyclical.

00:58:54.142 --> 00:58:59.142
Things will get better and get worse, and get better and get worse, and eventually they get so bad, it's the end.

00:59:00.322 --> 00:59:03.262
So if it's the end, they're going to get worse.

00:59:03.262 --> 00:59:06.322
If it's not yet the end, I think they'll get better.

00:59:06.322 --> 00:59:08.622
I don't know which one of those it is.

00:59:08.622 --> 00:59:10.882
That's right, that's in God's wisdom.

00:59:10.882 --> 00:59:12.362
No man knows the hour of the day.

00:59:14.162 --> 00:59:30.122
But there are some signs that do not seem like they have taken place in their fullness yet, which is related to how scripture is often fulfilled in terms of prophecies in scripture.

00:59:30.122 --> 00:59:41.742
There's often cyclical fulfillment, which is to say that there are lesser fulfillments or typological fulfillments, and then the greater and full, as it were, complete fulfillment at some point in the future, right?

00:59:43.382 --> 00:59:50.462
This is similar to how you have typology with reference to types of Christ in the Old Testament.

00:59:50.462 --> 00:59:55.042
David is a type of Christ, Solomon is a type of Christ, Joshua is a type of Christ.

00:59:55.042 --> 00:59:57.962
Joshua, incidentally, his name is Jesus.

00:59:57.962 --> 01:00:02.162
That's just translated differently because someone felt like doing that.

01:00:02.162 --> 01:00:07.242
I've been reading through the Septuagint, through the Bible in the Ear podcast, and I've been calling him Jesus.

01:00:07.242 --> 01:00:14.082
We're in Judges now, but I was calling him Jesus when I was reading through Joshua, Jesus, whichever one you want to call the book.

01:00:14.082 --> 01:00:17.362
You have these types of Christ, and then Christ is the fulfillment.

01:00:17.362 --> 01:00:19.322
Christ is the antitype.

01:00:19.322 --> 01:00:26.062
You have the same thing with regard to various fulfillments of prophecies about the end times.

01:00:26.062 --> 01:00:30.042
You have some that are basically typological echoes of that.

01:00:30.042 --> 01:00:38.102
And so, to some degree, 70 AD is a type of the last day of the final judgment.

01:00:39.382 --> 01:00:40.682
That's a fulfillment of prophecy.

01:00:40.682 --> 01:00:41.922
It's a partial fulfillment.

01:00:41.922 --> 01:00:44.382
The full one hasn't happened yet.

01:00:44.382 --> 01:00:47.522
So some of these are going to be wisdom calls.

01:00:47.522 --> 01:00:53.922
Some of these we're probably not going to know until the trumpets sound, and it's the final day.

01:00:53.922 --> 01:01:00.682
So practically speaking, for Christians, it doesn't matter.

01:01:00.682 --> 01:01:02.242
It just doesn't really matter.

01:01:03.322 --> 01:01:11.602
If the last day, if the final judgment is going to come in 783 days, or if it's going to be in six hours...

01:01:11.602 --> 01:01:20.422
Again, I don't think all the signs are fulfilled, so I don't think it can be in six hours, but regardless of when it's going to come, how much does it really change your life?

01:01:20.422 --> 01:01:30.102
I can harken back to what I said from Luther earlier, even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree today, right?

01:01:30.102 --> 01:01:42.402
Same thing, you live your life as a Christian, even if it looks like everything is drawing to a close, because your duty is still to live your life as a Christian, and maybe it's the end, maybe it's not.

01:01:42.402 --> 01:01:49.242
It doesn't really matter for how you live your life, because you certainly shouldn't be waiting the last minute to repent.

01:01:49.242 --> 01:01:59.762
And another salient point that I brought out many times before is for all of us, heaven is an instant away, or hell.

01:01:59.762 --> 01:02:04.102
Hopefully not hell for anyone listening, but heaven or hell is an instant away, right?

01:02:05.942 --> 01:02:13.982
Just because the end times aren't going to happen soon, maybe they are, maybe they aren't, doesn't mean that I'm going to live forever.

01:02:13.982 --> 01:02:15.022
I'm mortal.

01:02:15.022 --> 01:02:17.682
I could have a heart attack while I'm recording this, or an aneurysm.

01:02:17.682 --> 01:02:21.262
I could, any number of ways I could die while I'm sitting here.

01:02:21.262 --> 01:02:27.082
So you should always live your life as you should, right?

01:02:27.082 --> 01:02:28.322
You should live your life as a Christian.

01:02:28.402 --> 01:02:34.902
You don't try to wait and have the deathbed repentance because you could get hit by a semi-tomorrow on the highway.

01:02:34.902 --> 01:02:36.862
Increasing odds of that due to immigration.

01:02:36.862 --> 01:02:43.982
But you live your life as a Christian, and God takes care of the rest.

01:02:43.982 --> 01:02:46.902
You can't guard against every sort of harm.

01:02:46.902 --> 01:02:49.942
You can't hedge your bets on everything.

01:02:49.942 --> 01:02:56.622
So you do your duty, and you let God take care of the things like when he's going to draw the universe to a close.

01:02:57.662 --> 01:02:59.062
Is it interesting?

01:02:59.062 --> 01:03:19.402
Sure, there's some interest there, but I find that when people focus too heavily on revelation and things like that, Daniel, it pulls them away from the things that truly matter, the things that are more important, and the things that are actually about living a Christian life, instead of being obsessed with the secret counsel of God.

01:03:19.402 --> 01:03:28.242
God reserved those things for himself in large part, and when he wrote about them, he wrote about them in a way that in some ways is open to interpretation.

01:03:28.242 --> 01:03:30.202
I think he did that deliberately.

01:03:30.202 --> 01:03:40.942
He's very clear about the parts of scripture where he wants us to have no question, and then he deals with all the figurative stuff in Revelation.

01:03:40.942 --> 01:03:43.722
So, just don't put too much emphasis on it.

01:03:43.722 --> 01:03:48.582
Focus on living a Christian life instead, and things will end when they do.

01:03:50.642 --> 01:03:52.542
Hopefully the dog's barking is not coming through.

01:04:01.179 --> 01:04:05.059
Okay, question 14.

01:04:09.859 --> 01:04:18.979
How are we as Christians to view historical leaving of infant abandonment in the context of rural populations in countries such as Iceland?

01:04:19.039 --> 01:04:20.579
So, exposure.

01:04:21.599 --> 01:04:34.579
This is a way that they used to deal with unwanted infants, which is to say that it was effectively a post-birth abortion, which sort of gives away my answer.

01:04:34.579 --> 01:04:44.859
It is not morally permissible to leave infants or invalids, others, out in nature and let them die from exposure.

01:04:46.739 --> 01:04:52.039
Anyone who is born, we have a duty to care for that person as best we can.

01:04:52.039 --> 01:05:11.799
Now, under starvation conditions, which certainly have occurred in some of those countries, for obvious reasons, you know, the crop fails, and you don't have sufficient stores, then yes, you're going to have to make some hard calls, but you do not deliberately start killing members of your population in order to deal with that.

01:05:14.299 --> 01:05:19.399
It doesn't mean that there's an easy solution, because often in life there are no easy solutions.

01:05:19.399 --> 01:05:27.659
These days, we don't have those problems, thankfully, but it was not a morally permissible thing to do.

01:05:27.659 --> 01:05:31.379
That is not an acceptable form of eugenics, so no, they should not have been doing that.

01:05:38.127 --> 01:05:40.727
I'm not going to number this one, but someone asked me when to shave my beard.

01:05:40.727 --> 01:05:41.507
Very unlikely.

01:05:55.605 --> 01:05:57.525
The question, what is this?

01:05:57.525 --> 01:06:01.425
15, question 15, how did Cain find a wife?

01:06:03.765 --> 01:06:07.245
Not all of the children of the patriarchs are recorded in scripture.

01:06:07.245 --> 01:06:16.305
There are individuals for whom scripture records all of their children, and there are those for whom scripture does not record all their children.

01:06:16.305 --> 01:06:21.005
And in many cases, it says that the person lived X years and had other sons and daughters.

01:06:21.005 --> 01:06:22.025
That's the case for Adam and Eve.

01:06:23.145 --> 01:06:29.845
So, he married a daughter of Adam and Eve, which, yes, means he married his sister.

01:06:29.845 --> 01:06:35.185
But back then, they did not have the genetic problems that populations have today.

01:06:35.185 --> 01:06:37.165
And this is...

01:06:40.405 --> 01:06:54.225
This is an important point to make, because one of the reasons that we have so many problems in certain populations in the world is because they've engaged in inbreeding, usually first-cousin marriage, over many hundreds of years.

01:06:54.225 --> 01:06:56.685
That leads to the genetic issues they have.

01:06:56.685 --> 01:07:15.645
The reason it does that is that if you have a defective gene, right, or you have some part of your DNA has some problem, and then you pair off with someone who also has that problem, you pass on the problem, guaranteed, to your children.

01:07:16.405 --> 01:07:30.945
But say, if you have one defective gene from one parent, and a non-defective one from the other parent, and assuming that the non-defective one expresses itself, assuming how the dominance works, then you're still fine.

01:07:30.945 --> 01:07:44.005
And if you pass on the defective gene to your child, but you have paired off with someone who does not have the defective gene, the child doesn't have the problem, assuming again, dominance of the non-defective gene.

01:07:44.625 --> 01:07:47.965
Or maybe you don't pass on the defective one.

01:07:47.965 --> 01:07:57.165
These problems, as you can see, concentrate, if you have a population where there is a defective version of the gene, and then they inbreed.

01:07:57.165 --> 01:08:02.765
That's the issue in places like India and large parts of Africa, for related but different reasons.

01:08:02.765 --> 01:08:04.305
They're distinct there.

01:08:05.405 --> 01:08:08.525
This was not a problem back at the time of Adam and Eve.

01:08:08.525 --> 01:08:13.545
God even hadn't enacted the laws yet against marrying your close relatives.

01:08:14.085 --> 01:08:17.705
Because it was not a problem at the time.

01:08:17.705 --> 01:08:23.465
It has become a problem due to degeneration after the fall.

01:08:23.465 --> 01:08:32.825
If we were still perfect, unfallen, like Adam and Eve, maybe God would have enacted that law for other reasons.

01:08:32.825 --> 01:08:34.805
Maybe he would not have done so.

01:08:34.805 --> 01:08:37.885
But the biological issues would not have arisen.

01:08:37.885 --> 01:08:43.705
They have arisen due to the fact that we are degenerating, which is, incidentally, a condemnation of evolution.

01:08:43.705 --> 01:08:45.925
We're not getting better, we're getting worse.

01:08:45.925 --> 01:08:49.085
So, yes, he married his sister.

01:08:49.085 --> 01:08:50.985
Incidentally, so did Abraham.

01:08:50.985 --> 01:08:54.785
But it was not morally impermissible at the time, so he was not sinning when he did it.

01:09:04.305 --> 01:09:06.665
Question 16.

01:09:11.505 --> 01:09:15.565
I think I'll maybe answer probably one or two more tonight.

01:09:15.565 --> 01:09:16.605
Scroll through the chat quickly.

01:09:17.085 --> 01:09:19.525
I'll copy the ones that I don't answer tonight.

01:09:20.585 --> 01:09:24.685
What are the benefits of exclusively using pen and paper, which you seemingly do?

01:09:24.685 --> 01:09:29.485
There must be sufficient advantages that compensate for the transcription time.

01:09:29.485 --> 01:09:35.605
I do actually type some things, but certainly essays and things like that, I handwrite them first.

01:09:35.605 --> 01:09:47.725
If I have a homily, which I do every so often, more often than I actually type them up and read them, but those I handwrite, essays again I handwrite.

01:09:47.725 --> 01:09:52.925
All of my articles were handwritten first, except I think maybe one was not.

01:09:52.925 --> 01:09:59.245
The benefits of pen and paper, these days you have the benefit of a physical copy, right?

01:09:59.245 --> 01:10:06.465
So you could do the same thing if you print it off, except then you have to fight with a printer, which is the worst piece of hardware ever invented by humanity.

01:10:06.465 --> 01:10:14.745
But, that aside, there are psychological benefits to physically writing.

01:10:14.745 --> 01:10:16.765
Yes, it helps with fine motor control.

01:10:16.765 --> 01:10:18.885
That's more of a concern for small children.

01:10:18.885 --> 01:10:23.985
One of the reasons we should still teach children cursive, it teaches that fine motor control.

01:10:23.985 --> 01:10:33.905
You see greater problems with that in Gen Alpha and even Gen Z, because they did not learn cursive, versus Millennials and older, we did learn cursive.

01:10:33.905 --> 01:10:37.285
Not all Millennials, some schools had abandoned it, mine had not.

01:10:38.605 --> 01:10:49.685
But you actually think about things and process them differently, when you are forced to slow down, and you're also engaging more of your senses.

01:10:49.685 --> 01:10:54.745
You're engaging physically with the work that you are doing.

01:10:54.745 --> 01:10:57.365
And human beings are physical, right?

01:10:57.365 --> 01:10:58.405
We are our bodies.

01:10:58.405 --> 01:11:05.265
We're not, again, I say this all the time, but you are not a spirit piloting a meat mech, or however you want to think about it.

01:11:05.265 --> 01:11:06.385
You are your body.

01:11:06.385 --> 01:11:07.465
You are your soul.

01:11:07.465 --> 01:11:08.525
You are your mind.

01:11:08.525 --> 01:11:09.605
You are all of those things.

01:11:09.605 --> 01:11:14.625
You are the sum of them greater than the part, than the parts, right?

01:11:14.625 --> 01:11:17.525
Engaging those additional senses is important.

01:11:17.525 --> 01:11:25.105
And on a practical note, or perhaps impractical note, depending on how you want to look at it, it's just more pleasant.

01:11:25.105 --> 01:11:25.805
It's nice.

01:11:25.805 --> 01:11:31.785
It's a hobby to some degree, collecting, you know, pens and inks and things like that.

01:11:31.785 --> 01:11:32.905
It's nice to have the options.

01:11:32.905 --> 01:11:37.825
You can pick what color you know, if you happen to like one color more than the other.

01:11:37.825 --> 01:11:47.325
I had someone who was asking me about the sailor ink that I just started using, and so I have certainly that color now.

01:11:47.325 --> 01:11:49.485
So that's the color of it.

01:11:49.485 --> 01:11:54.025
It's actually quite nice, light blue, sort of almost turquoise.

01:11:54.025 --> 01:11:56.905
It's just more pleasant, but I do think it is also beneficial.

01:11:57.025 --> 01:12:01.885
So I think people would benefit from at least writing a little bit, even if it's just keeping a journal.

01:12:01.885 --> 01:12:03.405
That's perfectly fine.

01:12:03.405 --> 01:12:06.125
Journal, diary, whatever you want to call it.

01:12:06.125 --> 01:12:08.085
It does not make it feminine if you call it a diary.

01:12:08.085 --> 01:12:09.805
Diary just means a day book, right?

01:12:09.805 --> 01:12:12.205
It's from Latin for day.

01:12:12.205 --> 01:12:14.365
But that's basically the reason that I do it.

01:12:14.365 --> 01:12:20.325
And like I said, it is nice to have the physical archive because I do keep the physical notebooks and just store them.

01:12:44.142 --> 01:12:52.502
I think that is pretty much it for the questions in chat for this week.

01:12:52.502 --> 01:12:54.142
Let me see if there's a little more.

01:12:58.382 --> 01:12:59.482
One more question I'll answer.

01:12:59.482 --> 01:13:10.182
Someone asked about, I will be charitable, countries like Somalia and Congo that have problems, which is an understatement.

01:13:11.022 --> 01:13:14.302
Will their IQs increase if they ban first cousin marriage?

01:13:14.302 --> 01:13:15.922
How many decades will it take?

01:13:15.922 --> 01:13:32.462
This is actually, maybe I shouldn't have opened this can of worms this time, but because it's an important question, and I think I will touch on it later in greater fullness, but I will touch on it briefly right now.

01:13:32.462 --> 01:13:43.782
This is a fundamental issue with regard to the difference between Christians and Darwinists, right?

01:13:43.782 --> 01:13:46.562
Darwinists, whatever you want to call them.

01:13:46.562 --> 01:13:49.882
Many of the neo-pagans, of course, being Darwinian in their views.

01:13:50.962 --> 01:13:58.802
The Darwinian, the evolutionist, the atheist, believes that we are trending upward.

01:13:58.802 --> 01:14:05.982
He believes that given sufficient time, we can simply get better, right?

01:14:06.622 --> 01:14:13.902
The humanity of 3026 will be superior to the humanity of 2026.

01:14:16.182 --> 01:14:18.302
That is not the case.

01:14:18.302 --> 01:14:20.002
We are not getting better.

01:14:20.002 --> 01:14:31.682
We are getting worse, because, and this is the Christian view, due to the fall, and due to the separation from God, creation is falling to chaos.

01:14:31.682 --> 01:14:33.342
It is falling apart.

01:14:33.342 --> 01:14:34.842
Things are coming undone.

01:14:35.562 --> 01:14:39.522
And so, we have more problems than our ancestors.

01:14:39.522 --> 01:14:42.502
We have health problems they did not have.

01:14:42.502 --> 01:14:45.042
They were superior to us in some ways.

01:14:45.042 --> 01:14:57.722
I don't necessarily think that our intellectual capacity has decreased too much, because I can look at writings from thousands of years ago, and they don't seem to be wildly more intelligent than we are.

01:14:57.722 --> 01:15:02.182
But things are running down in a very real way.

01:15:03.162 --> 01:15:13.422
So, you have this sort of biological optimism over in the Darwinian camp, that if we just enact the right policies, things will get better.

01:15:13.422 --> 01:15:30.102
And this bleeds over into Christian views as well, because you'll get Christians who think, if these countries that have all these problems would simply enact policies X, Y, and Z, you get the really simplistic, crazy ones, who they adopt the Constitution, right?

01:15:30.102 --> 01:15:31.702
Then all their problems go away.

01:15:31.702 --> 01:15:35.402
And then you look at Liberia and, well, Liberia.

01:15:37.522 --> 01:15:46.262
Those measures will not solve the problem, because the degeneration and the loss is a one-way street.

01:15:46.262 --> 01:16:01.002
The races of men, the nations that have degenerated to the point of somewhere like Somalia, will never rise back to what they could have been if they had not been demon-worshipping savages.

01:16:01.002 --> 01:16:02.502
That is a one-way street.

01:16:02.502 --> 01:16:05.162
The loss is permanent in this life.

01:16:05.162 --> 01:16:17.902
God will restore the ones that convert to Christianity in the next life, and so they'll be what they would have been, absent that long chain of wickedness that turned them into what they are today.

01:16:18.962 --> 01:16:26.282
But no, if you ban first cousin marriage, it does not increase the IQ of your country, it just stops the slide.

01:16:26.282 --> 01:16:27.702
That's all you can do.

01:16:27.702 --> 01:16:30.542
You can arrest the descent.

01:16:30.542 --> 01:16:33.782
You cannot reverse it, in most cases.

01:16:33.782 --> 01:16:39.222
That doesn't mean, of course, that you can't increase the overall population to some degree, right?

01:16:39.222 --> 01:16:48.562
Because you can incentivize the more intelligent, healthier, more capable individuals in your population to have more children.

01:16:48.562 --> 01:17:02.042
That's eugenics, and that does work, but you will note, you are not rising above the level of the best in your population, you are just bringing up the average in your population to what is the best in your population.

01:17:02.042 --> 01:17:03.882
Because there's a ceiling.

01:17:03.882 --> 01:17:08.022
The same thing is true for somewhere like Somalia, it's a much lower ceiling.

01:17:08.022 --> 01:17:18.262
So, this is why we touched on the issue of race and things like that, and treated it so extensively with Stone Quire.

01:17:19.302 --> 01:17:24.102
Because once these things are lost, they are lost forever in this life.

01:17:24.102 --> 01:17:25.782
You cannot bring them back.

01:17:25.782 --> 01:17:29.102
Now, yes, someone's going to say, well, what about CRISPR?

01:17:29.102 --> 01:17:45.882
Okay, assuming we somehow achieve perfect insight into our genome, yes, in theory, you can craft an artificial human being that is better in the sense of not having some of these defects.

01:17:45.882 --> 01:17:47.662
That is an entirely different can of worms.

01:17:47.842 --> 01:17:52.722
There are many problems there, and that is a pretty big assumption that we could even do it.

01:17:52.722 --> 01:17:54.042
Can we cure some small things?

01:17:54.042 --> 01:17:55.382
Absolutely.

01:17:55.382 --> 01:17:56.882
But what are we doing?

01:17:56.882 --> 01:17:59.922
We're curing the defect.

01:17:59.922 --> 01:18:02.722
We're not making humanity better.

01:18:02.722 --> 01:18:05.602
We're not creating a superior human being.

01:18:05.602 --> 01:18:07.142
Again, a topic for another time.

01:18:07.142 --> 01:18:16.382
But the basic answer here, and sort of the foundational, the fundamental issue, is that it is a one-way street.

01:18:17.862 --> 01:18:25.762
Which is why it is so important to enact policies that prevent us from becoming that.

01:18:25.762 --> 01:18:31.362
Because if we become that, we're never getting back to where we are.

01:18:31.362 --> 01:18:53.462
If Europe were to pursue the same sort of wickedness and evil over thousands of years, or hundreds of years, depending on the intensity of the wickedness, that say India and some parts, most of Africa, some parts of Asia, most of the New World, if we did the same thing and ended up like them, we would never get back to what our ancestors were.

01:18:53.462 --> 01:18:59.922
Because those individuals in those other nations will never get back to what their ancestors were.

01:18:59.922 --> 01:19:02.962
Ham was not a Somalian, right?

01:19:02.962 --> 01:19:04.662
The father of all Africa.

01:19:04.662 --> 01:19:07.002
He did not have an IQ of 70.

01:19:07.002 --> 01:19:10.942
His progeny have IQs of 70, sometimes lower.

01:19:12.682 --> 01:19:20.702
Because of the effects of that accumulated wickedness, and in large part, the harsh reality of biology.

01:19:20.702 --> 01:19:28.542
Particularly sexual sins wind up with these dire consequences biologically.

01:19:28.542 --> 01:19:32.922
And this touches back on the issue of cousin marriage, right?

01:19:32.922 --> 01:19:34.162
That's a problem today.

01:19:34.162 --> 01:19:43.842
If you pursue that, if you engage in first cousin marriage for many, many years, you will wind up with the same sort of problems that you have in parts of the world doing that.

01:19:43.842 --> 01:19:47.422
India being one of the chief among them.

01:19:47.422 --> 01:19:50.162
Which again is why this issue is so important.

01:19:50.162 --> 01:20:00.262
Because if you don't stop that sort of slide into evil and degeneration, you will never crawl out of that pit because it's a one way street.

01:20:00.262 --> 01:20:06.862
And like I said, I'll probably touch on that more in the future, but it's a large topic because it's so important.

01:20:06.862 --> 01:20:14.762
And it's part of what so many miss when looking at why different groups believe what they do, right?

01:20:14.762 --> 01:20:31.602
If you believe that simply enacting the right policies can make humanity better in terms of biology, you're going to have a different outlook on what we should be doing versus someone who believes, in line with scripture, that all we can do is arrest the slide.

01:20:31.602 --> 01:20:33.282
We can prevent things from getting worse.

01:20:34.102 --> 01:20:46.102
Because there's a greater urgency when any fall is permanent versus someone who thinks that, oh, it's fine, we'll just enact better policies, and we'll get better over.

01:20:46.102 --> 01:20:52.362
If that is impossible, then it's more important to prevent that fall from happening.

01:20:55.182 --> 01:20:59.622
But I think that will probably be it for this week.

01:20:59.622 --> 01:21:05.802
I did see that there were some other questions, and I've noted them for next week.

01:21:05.802 --> 01:21:11.062
As always, if I missed your question or didn't answer your question, you have a follow-up.

01:21:11.062 --> 01:21:13.402
By all means, please post it on the forum.

01:21:13.402 --> 01:21:19.462
That is preferred, because it just helps me to prepare the answers, and other people to find them, and things like that.

01:21:19.462 --> 01:21:24.502
It's just for the sake of cleanliness, as it were, for the sake of order.

01:21:24.502 --> 01:21:26.862
Germanic love of order, right?

01:21:27.962 --> 01:21:30.922
But that is omnifora.com is the site.

01:21:31.082 --> 01:21:33.722
It should be in the description for all of the streams.

01:21:33.722 --> 01:21:38.602
It's in the show notes for each of the shows after the show.

01:21:38.602 --> 01:21:44.102
Hopefully, within a few days after, I release the higher quality audio.

01:21:44.102 --> 01:21:52.022
So, if you want to listen to audio only, then by all means, you can do that, or if you want to archive it, you could download from YouTube, of course, if you want.

01:21:52.022 --> 01:21:56.942
But you can add that to your RSS reader, whatever that happens to be, your podcast app.

01:21:59.222 --> 01:22:02.162
Other than that, I try to do this on Thursdays.

01:22:02.162 --> 01:22:05.042
Usually, it winds up getting pushed to Fridays, at least recently.

01:22:05.042 --> 01:22:08.682
Maybe one of these weeks, I'll actually wind up on Thursday.

01:22:08.682 --> 01:22:10.782
But that is it for this week.

01:22:10.782 --> 01:22:13.882
Thank you for those who submitted questions and participated in the chat.

01:22:13.882 --> 01:22:15.582
And of course, thank you for those who donated.

01:22:15.582 --> 01:22:16.942
That's always welcome.

01:22:16.942 --> 01:22:20.962
I do enjoy buying things sometimes, so, you know.

01:22:20.962 --> 01:22:23.862
And like I said earlier, we're all human beings, we have to eat, right?

01:22:25.202 --> 01:22:27.162
So, thank you for those who did that as well.

01:22:27.162 --> 01:22:30.542
And again, if you want to submit questions, you can submit them on the forum.

01:22:30.542 --> 01:22:31.222
That's preferred.

01:22:31.222 --> 01:22:36.262
But Telegram, X, in the chat, wherever, I try to find those.

01:22:36.262 --> 01:22:39.022
I have an ongoing thread with the questions I've not answered.

01:22:39.022 --> 01:22:40.522
It's sort of my backlog.

01:22:40.522 --> 01:22:44.522
If you do not see your question there, it means I probably didn't notice it.

01:22:44.522 --> 01:22:47.562
By all means, please get it to me some way so that I can answer it in the future.

01:22:47.562 --> 01:22:51.562
I didn't just avoid your question most likely, unless it was something insane.

01:22:51.722 --> 01:22:53.802
Then, maybe I avoided it.

01:22:53.802 --> 01:22:55.002
But that's it for this week.

01:22:55.002 --> 01:22:57.002
So have a good weekend.

01:22:57.002 --> 01:23:01.222
It's Friday evening, so I hope you have some good plans for the weekend.

01:23:01.222 --> 01:23:03.082
Go for a hike or something.

01:23:03.082 --> 01:23:06.382
And of course, go to church on Sunday.

01:23:06.382 --> 01:23:09.122
I will see you all next week, and until then, God bless.