 The story of Jesus is the greatest story ever told that helped shape Western culture. Teacher, leader, Savior, Jesus. Okay, enough of that. That's from the History Channel. It's a documentary, of course, on Jesus. They run it every year around Easter. And it's a way to try and attach some history to the whole Jesus thing in a way that really isn't very historical. And that whole topic is particularly relevant to today's show. I mean, that's what today's show is about. I have a Christian history smack down with a guy I really like and respect. Attorney turned author and investigative researcher, journalist William Ramsey, who was nice enough to kind of indulge me in this dialogue about this history. Here's a clip. The most quoted and referenced Christian thinker who knew Peter and all those other people, right? So that's also another kind of problem with the Josephus kind of view of the Gospels being, you know, pure political document. But there's some other elements within Christianity that don't comport with the kind of superficial, surface kind of generalized doctrines that Christians and non-Christians perceive as being what Christianity is about. Yeah, I just, that winds up sounding a lot like gobbledygook to me. I mean, there is no, just because there is no, you know, you can cherry pick out of Paul and we can cherry pick out of Buddha. And I mean, again, the part about Christianity that I think a lot of us sit back and go, how are you even processing that is to say, there's this special time. There's this special time 2000 years ago. Well, what about all the people that came before? Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I'm your host Alex Secaris. Today, we welcome William Ramsey back to Skeptico. William is an attorney, researcher and author. And the creator of William Ramsey Investigates, which I think is fantastic. It's one of my go to podcasts that I always listen to. And William was on a while back and we had just a great conversation. I learned so much. And if you know this show, you know, one of the things that's really influenced me on is this kind of deeper understanding of what's going on in this crossover occult reality, Hollywood, wink, nod and conflicting that or contrasting that, I should say, with kind of the atheistic secular wokeness. Well, none of that stuff could be true. So we had this super interesting conversation last time and the books that he's written, Children of the Beast, his book about Alistair Crowley, Abomination about the West Memphis Three, which is really kind of an interesting dive. And especially since so many people just don't know the facts of that case, but you do now that I've hammered on them for so many times. And then the Prophet of Evil, Alistair Crowley 911 in the New World Order. Is there anything else that you've written since then? Well, I've done a lot of kind of letters. You can see it on my blog, on my website. I've talked a lot about this group called the Order of Nine Angles. So more kind of occultism and some interesting topics. Is that going to make its way into a book? Is that an upcoming book or anything? Well, it may be. I mean, I think there's a lot going on. There's actually been the NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center put out a flyer saying the Order of Nine Angles is a very dangerous group. And some of their offshoots have been prescribed. It just happened last week in Australia, where Sonning Creek Division, which has been influenced by some of their ideology, was actually banned as a group in Australia. So they have like 16 band groups and then Sonning Creek Division, which is kind of esoteric or occult neo-Nazis. So, yeah, the Order of Nine Angles is a pretty interesting post-Crowley, post-Hitler kind of new religion. So I've kind of been researching that and writing about that and have done some interviews about that as well. I've heard a couple of your interviews on that. It's, you know, super interesting at one level and in another level. And what I was hoping to do in this interview is kind of crawl way up on top of all that stuff, if we can, because that's what really interests me is how does this stuff really fit together? And, you know, let me back up and actually say one other thing, because the reason I wanted to talk to you about the really big picture stuff is I wanted to approach the Christian part of this. And I wanted to do it in a way that kind of appeals to this kind of attorney, better calls all sensibility, if you will, that I get from you, you know, like you can talk about all this stuff. Like last time we talked about West Memphis Three and you didn't get emotional like pounding on the table and, you know, swinging a Bible around or anything like that. You're just like, hey, I've seen a lot of stuff. I know a lot of stuff happens. Here's how the facts fall in this case. And, you know, what I do with it is kind of another issue, but I can separate that from just kind of understanding. Do you come in? I mean, that better call. So I think so. I think so. I think that, you know, my look into the West Memphis Three, what sparked my interest was that Crowley was brought up at trial, right? So I'd already written a book about basically a bio about Crowley, which is Prophet of Evil. He thought of himself as a Prophet of New Age. So when Crowley popped up, then it was kind of like a riddle wrapped in enigma in the middle of a labyrinth trying to figure out what the actual truth of what happened in the West Memphis Three actually was. And luckily, all of those court cases are available online. So I could readily access them. And the general consensus was that there were railroaders and there were three innocent kids. And it was there was kind of like nice sound bites and PR tidbits for the public to ingest. And I believed it. For me, when I first heard they got out, and it's almost been 10 years, I figured that there was just some kind of mistrial or some kind of problem with the case that necessitated their release. But that wasn't the case. So then it was like a lot of head scratching to try to figure out what was going on with that case. In my position, opinion of that case and the conclusions that I made are definitely not publicly popular. You know, I think that they're, they're never and like many other stories or many other things that happen in the world, the kind of darker and deeper elements of that were overlooked and not emphasized in the media or by the corporate media or anything like that. And I think that that's actually very common in all of their kind of superficial analysis of a lot of problems and issues. And 9 11 is a perfect example of that is not looking into deeper things. So if you want to get into the Christian perspective, I think it's important to kind of parse through my version of Christianity, which is really a Bible Christian. I don't myself a Protestant or Catholic. Some people would want to put me in those two groups, but as a Bible believing Christian, I think that you have to kind of, I think it's easier to see kind of darker or be more attuned to picking up darker currents in criminal events or just general political events. So I mean, we can talk about the 2020 election of problems with that. I mean, so from a Christian perspective, I think that it is definitely a spiritual perspective. I think that it makes you more attuned to kind of parse out these things that really are real. Some of the people people do believe in Alistair Crowley. People are Masons. People have secret agendas. There are conspiracies. I mean, all politics is conspiratorial. I would argue from the beginning of time in any society. So yeah. So I mean, I think that that's really kind of the gist of my books really. And if you look at Children of the Beast, too, that really was an attempt to take a very broad angle lens at political and cultural events and see, hey, some of these people have a cold ideas. Some of these people are promoting whatever their cold kind of outlook is in in the public Timothy Larry Crowley himself. So I hope that kind of answers what you were trying to get at. It maybe does. And it maybe opens up the door for this kind of next level stuff that we might talk about. Because when I said this, Jimmy McGill better call Saul sensibility. What I think about and if people don't have a reference point for that Netflix series, then you might be lost in this whole kind of thing. But I just have to believe when I first talked to you, you know, you talked about your history as an attorney coming up in DC and just being eyes wide open to kind of thing where it's like, Oh, wow, you know, there's this whole other reality of how things really work. And all these people that I'm working with are kind of living in both realities. They're living in the reality of how politics is really parapolitics. It's all conspiratorial. It's all, you know, who's blackmailing who who has the goods on who who has leverage on who and then is an agent, right? Yeah, a member of a police data secret society, secret group. Absolutely. So so they're living in that reality. And then they're simultaneously living in this other reality, which is all the normies and normies just didn't happen in the last 10 years normies have been around forever. So when he went home and he kissed the wife and you know, went out and play ball with the kids, you don't talk about any of that stuff. You don't talk about any of that stuff with 90 the people 90% of the people you know, if you're an insider in DC. And I think the reason I've referenced in fact, a better call Saul is we kind of get that same thing from kind of Jimmy McGill, who's just, I relate from being you know, a kid from Chicago. And in Chicago, you want to be a sharp guy, you know, you don't want to be a chump, you don't want to be a fool. And that was part of less like, of course, this is how things work. Of course, the political system is corrupt. Everyone in Chicago knows that, you know, Richard J. daily electing, you know, John Kennedy, of course, of course, the entire police system is corrupt. I mean, anyone who didn't know that in Chicago, there were a lot of people who didn't know it, but they were just kind of on the outside. So you get what I'm saying in terms of that sensibility, and you bring that to the table. And but then there's a couple of different ways to divide that. So, you know, when you're talking about just stuff that happens, it's 9 11 or the 2020 election, the pandemic and all that sort of thing. Okay. But then you're also breaking it down on the spiritual side, which is where I think it's kind of a harder for a lot of us. When we encounter, when you say, I'm a Christian or I'm not Catholic Protestant, I'm just Bible, but it's like, whoa, wait a minute, isn't that the same kind of thing in terms of how are you parsing? No, that reality. Right. No, I mean, it's a good question. I think it's like, once you're even within Christendom, it's like, what are you? Like what, how much do you leave? How much have you read? What, what books are you reading? What's your denomination? You know, you can say that there's four or five major Christian denominations. So there's only one, it all started from one. Well, this is true, but there's definitely branches, I think in almost any major religion, even Judaism, which is fairly small compared to cat, you know, Christian, the large, broad tent of Christianity or Islam, all have variants and distinctions. And Shia and Sunni Christianity is Catholic and Protestant at a very general level. So it's really what you believe, what do these people teaching you? Or do you go back to the original texts? And I think that that's really the key element to really understand Christianity is really to go to the original Gospels, the four, the three synoptic Gospels. There are no original, there are no original Gospels. I mean, if we just from his from a straight up historical standpoint, and that's what I'm saying, it's like, what are you gonna do? Go back to the Council of Nicaea and Constantine, who is one of the most corrupt, despicable people in history, you know, he murders his son because he thinks he's fucking his wife, and then he murders his wife when he finds out she said, I mean, this is the most despicable. Yeah, he's a very opportunistic Christian, right? No, he's not a Christian. Very political. That's what he came out as. I mean, he's supposedly a founder of the Christian Church or like one of the original. Well, no, he's not, William. He's not. I mean, any kind of fair reading of that history. He never really changes his kind of cultish pagan, you know, I mean, he still has it on the coins and he still it's it's just it just looks like a total sham. The part of that history that I don't understand that Christians don't get is that we're all living rich, complicated spiritual lives. And they show up all over the place for Damien Eccles from West Memphis three. We don't know what his deal is, but we know he has a rich spiritual life and he's trying to connect with Alistair Crowley and demons and this and that, but he probably is also waking up at two o'clock in the morning going, Oh my God, you know, what is this going to do to my soul? Because everyone has those same kind of questions. Constantine certainly doesn't look like Saint Constantine looks like a very human guy, you know, who's worried about his wife fucking around worried about his son fucking around. I mean, he doesn't look like he's had some great spiritual experience with Jesus to me. Well, he might, but I mean, at least the common historical story is that he was going into battle and then it's changed. Well, that's what I'm saying. Well, at least that that is that the story is that that is how he became a Christian. So therefore, he was one of the founders of that, at least in 3000, one of the political founders Christianity. But I don't I don't see him as like a great religious figure, not like maybe some of these other posts, like Paul, for example, but at least that's the way he's regarded. I think the public Constantine, but I like, I agree. I think that he was there's tons of people who say they're Christians, you great without adhering to the fundamental tenets. And that's the same from all religions. I would actually posit and argue that a lot of these political beliefs in the United States, for sure, these guys who were the presidents, they just give lip service to Christianity. They don't really believe it. They shouldn't believe it because it's not it's not real. It's just something that was invented. Okay, well, that's your opinion. So you think that the Gospels themselves were something written by what Flavian or some kind of that's the argument. Here's where I'm coming at from that is like, I come at it back to where we started, like, you know, you want to you don't want to be a chump, right? That's the better call Saul sensibility. So when somebody tells you, you know, hey, those guys in West Memphis three, they're really great guys who just got railroaded out of town for wearing black t shirts. And then you read in and you come across the data, one after another after another, and you start putting the pieces together, you go, well, that's just bullshit. I don't know what the truth is. Like I'm saying, I don't know what Demian Eccles spiritual experience, spiritual reality is. But I'm pretty sure it ain't what he said it is. So that's where that's where I come in some stuff about it. Sure. So I think you're trying to make an analogy between the perception of reality based upon what people have about Damian Eccles, and then about Christianity. So like you're, you're making it to not be a chump and leaving Christianity, is that correct? Where I was really going was, so if you don't want to be a chump, then where do you start, you know, and like one of the places I'd start is like that history that I just said, for any Christian who can't resolve that history, you know, full stop, you better go figure out what the fuck, why you believe in this church that was founded by Constantine, when Constantine was this kind of despicable, mover and shaker kind of total agent of some kind of cult thing. So that that because we go through the history of Christianity, the same thing, look at the Catholic Church or Alexander, the six are right. The folks are not clean. Right. So I'm just saying, I'm just saying as a Christian, as a Christian, I would think that would be something, because I was brought up Christian, I was brought up Greek Orthodox like so a lot of people brought up in the church and then they start running into these kind of things and they feel a need to resolve them. But the other way, so that's one thing I think you have to as a Christian, you have to resolve the history and the history is irresolvable. I mean, you can't, you can't, but you have to look at it. No question. I don't think there's any doubt about that. So the crusades are loaded, you know, the crusades are loaded with tons of problems. They were real mind the crusades. I think the last crusade was really kind of a population control crusade where they wanted to take the excess population out of Europe and ship them out somewhere. So they took all the poor people and got rid of them. So what really wasn't really even having to do with the Mohammed or the Muslims. So there's a lot of things within Christianity. I mean, you can look at the Hundred Years War between the Protestants and the Catholics or just some of the most brutal non-Christian conflicts ever and tons of, you know, reasons for the creation of the United States and all this other stuff. A lot of it came out of these conflicts within these churches. So there's a lot of problems and a lot of Christian problems like justifications for racism, slavery, or the people who reference the Bible. So there's a lot of problems there. It doesn't, I think you can differentiate it from the original texts and the original Gospels, but some people can't. I don't have a problem doing that. I mean, I think that that's really it. So some people can apply to me or just general Christians. Hey, look what the Catholic Church has done. If you reject that, then how can that affect your concept of the original, you know, Gospel texts? Well, because I mean, the argument and then we can let it go because there's other more interesting stuff to talk about is there is no original. All right. Well, that's where you and I will respect. You can't even, you can't even, I mean, that's, I don't know how you can argue that. I mean, again, here's another thing. If you want to look at history, we know that I think was it Eusebius knew somebody who knew Peter and Rome. So these people who have met Paul are in the history texts. These are legit history texts that people knew these people existed. And these are outside of apocryphal texts. These are like legit biblical texts. So I think that kind of the idea that the Gospels were met to 2000 years out of whole cloth have a lot of problems. And also there's tons of saying that I'm not saying I'm not saying the whole cloth. I mean, what what what it looks like? I mean, what do you do with the Nakamati Library? I mean, you just can't you can't resolve that with quote unquote, the Gospels, right? Because what you have is this all this collection of writings and all these different translations and all these different historical accounts without even getting into the problem of Josephus, you know, which is enormous because he's just completely a propaganda agent for the Romans. So you just look at that, I'm saying from a big picture, you just step back and you say, okay, there's some history there. But I cannot Josephus isn't the only history. So I mean, if you're looking through it through the lens of merely Josephus, who actually had a kind of admirable reference, I think one full paragraph about Jesus about he was a miracle worker and a great man. And yeah, that so absolutely that reference is absolutely inconsistent with the body of his, you know, I agree with that. It's actually stands out. It's like an aside, his real interest is the history of the Jews. And it was probably an interpolation. It was probably something later on that someone added in because Josephus was the guy. So let's have him say this stuff about Jesus. I mean, that's the natural conclusion, I guess, if you're going to be at all, if you're going to be a sharp better call saw guy, you're going to be, hey, maybe I don't think so. I don't agree with you. I don't agree with you at all. I think that you're saying that some you're just assuming that somebody in history went in and re-edited Josephus's text. That's the general consensus among people. General consensus of who? Of people who've really, well, again, so look, like I'm saying, like, we can't argue that people argue that all the time and get it. What I'm just saying is from a, from a, this is how the world works. It's conspiratorial standpoint. To me, that's not even a hard one because you look at all of Josephus's writings, they would all be completely inconsistent with that one paragraph, that one paragraph. If that, if he wrote that, you could throw out the thousands of other pages that he wrote. Well, I disagree with that too, because he wrote the history of the Jews, which a lot of it's very consistent with Old Testament history. And they talked a lot about people who we know from history, all the Roman emperors and who was it? Justin, who was it? Who was it? Who was the Flavians? It was Titus and his father. It was the Spasian. It was the Spasian, the Spasian, Titus, and then Domitian. And yeah. Right. But I mean, you have all that stuff earlier. I mean, they found, I think they've even found Pontius Pilate's name in Latin in, in somewhere in Judea. So, I mean, there's differences there that keep popping up that kind of verify some of that story that's told in the Gospels, right? Yeah. But it's, I mean, again, if you don't see, if you don't see Josephus as completely a propaganda agent for the Romans, you just haven't read Josephus because look like it when I said, I have read Josephus. I have read Josephus. I've actually recorded some stuff with Josephus, but I don't see him. He's obviously a house Flavian, like he's part of that dynasty. Of course, he's going to tell the story of the Romans from the Roman perspective. And he actually, I mean, do you think that like what he retells of him giving a speech to the Jerusalem inhabitants who have been captured by the Romans by a huge blockade? Do you think that that's all fake? Once somebody is shown to be fake, once somebody is shown to be an agent, a disinformation agent, then I just don't know why we would follow him and try and parse out what's true and what's not. He's clear. Here's the, I can't believe. I've said this to so many people, so many Christians, they've never really read Josephus. Let me pull. I have. I'm telling you, I've read Josephus. Well, I haven't read the full history of the Jews, but I've heard, I've read the history of the wars of the Jews, which was, you know, the whole retelling of the Sacking of Jerusalem in 70 AD. So let me pull up what I sent you. So this is War of the Jews. Josephus is one of his first bestsellers, 6.5.4. So he says, but what more than all else incited them to war, that is incited the Jews to war, was an ambiguous oracle, likewise found in their sacred scriptures, to the effect that at the time one from their country would become ruler of the world. He's talking this kind of third person about the Jews, of which he is one. He not only is one, but he claims to be kind of a super Jew. And by that, he said, I was so Jewish from the time that I was brought up and I was so learned in the law that at 14 years old, I went to the temple and I was, you know, kind of talking down to the guys in the temple and telling them what's up, you know, of course, this is his account, which is completely ridiculous. And it is also, even that point, you know, if you talk to Jews who are really scholarly about this, they'll say, well, this, he contradicts himself because later in his writings, he doesn't seem to know the law very well, the Jewish law. So isn't the super Jew that he says. But anyways, here is his big pronouncement. He says, you know what really incited these Jews, you know, what really drove them crazy was that there was a sacred scripture that told them that at some time, someone would rise up from their ranks and become ruler of the world. And here's what he says. It's important. The Oracle, however, in reality, signified the sovereignty of the Spasian, right? Who are just saying is the Roman general who's just kicking their ass and killing them and become Caesar, who was proclaimed Emperor on Jewish soil. So he says, here's Josephus saying, you know what, I'm a super Jew, so trust me. But here's how our whole thing, here's how our whole religious tradition is based. We had it all wrong. It really wasn't about the Messiah. It was about the Spasian. And where we where we went wrong was in reading the Oracle, because what it did, what the Oracle didn't see is that when he was proclaimed Emperor, which is just kind of a little subtle fact that he was proclaimed Emperor in Rome, but he was on Jewish soil. And that's how he kind of is trying to sell this grand conspiratorial nonsense to his Jewish people that that's what makes him the guy. This is so clearly a bullshit propaganda. I just So Josephus is out the window. You can't you can never use Josephus again. He's completely an agent of the Romans. Well, I agree with that. But I think that you have to look at everything in context. I think you're in contact is important. But it's also kind of a logical fallacy. If somebody is writing something that everything else that they have ever written is null and void. I mean, it's kind of a extrapolation from one issue. I mean, I think that a lot of his stuff, at least the history of the Jews comports and follows Old Testament writings, right? I mean, he's talking about Moses. He's talking about Abraham. He retells the story of, you know, I think Genesis. So from a different perspective, this is what gets back to the first part of what we're saying. It's like you're in DC. And you're now being woken up to how this shit works, right? Well, of course, 90% of it is totally logical and flies, right? It's the edges. It's the Vince Foster case that you're talking about. I mean, 90% of it looks legit, except, oh, they forgot to put the gun in the correct hand and it doesn't fly out of the way. It's not like the whole thing is just completely made up. You only need to make up 10% of it. And you don't, if you make up the whole thing, it's exposed as a fraud. So it's just 10%. Okay. Okay. You're saying that because Josephus has problems that you're noticing, therefore, the whole story of the Gospels is a lie? Is that where you're kind of intimated? Well, slow down here for a second. Well, that's good. I mean, that's slow down for a second because this is, you know, see, this is like one of those things. This is like what would drive you crazy. It's about epistemology. It's right. What we believe, what we believe, right? So like here it is, but it goes back to the West Memphis three case, right? Hey, they didn't retry those guys. So obviously they didn't do the crime. Well, that's what you, I mean, I know what you're saying. Hey, get it, but they are still guilty of law. I think their probation ends in August of this year. But yeah, I mean, they're guilty of law. They could get retried. I mean, they got off. They got let out of prison. They don't let people out of prison. If these guys really signed on the dotted line that they were, uh, that they, there's enough evidence for them to have a conviction of first degree murder. So they let them out. They let them out. I'm saying, man, you get what I'm saying. I know. Well, I think that you're kind of, you're the approach that you're taking to Christianity is through Josephus. Therefore, all of the core texts that were there, whether it's the writings of Paul and the original gospels are, we're not getting to that. We're not talking about that. We're just talking about just what you're insinuating. And that, because that's what you're saying about like how you're applying my, my view of, you know, DC, how like you could have the scales fall from your eyes and see things differently when you're there up close. Where I was really trying to get to, and we will get there eventually, is that spirituality is real. And we're in this strange situation, which is something we would agree with, and then your spirituality is different than my spirituality. Here's what's super interesting, I think, and important about your work and what comes through again and again. And where it intersects with kind of my worldview and what I've been pounding on is that the denial of spirituality, the denial of the idea that each of us has this rich, spiritual, non physical experience is part of the agenda. And it's part of the agenda that comes up again and again with, you know, the postmodern, you can't really believe anything, the wokeness, the, it comes in with the scientific, Luciferian, you know, merged with the machine, you really have no soul. Communism, you could say that to communitarianism. It is an agenda. It is, it is what's being sold. It's a social engineering project. Because if I can separate you from your spirituality, then, man, you are easier to control, right? You are not, you are not an infinite spiritual being. You're just fricking a biological robot. Yeah, worse, you're just an accident of time and space, right? That's all that. The whole evolutionary outlook is that you're just a random event and a random cake cosmos, right? So there's, there's two. So to me, this is kind of my worldview is that there's two steps to this. Well, there's many steps to it. But one step is that, you know, one way that I can kind of get to you is to separate you from your spirituality and convince you that you really don't have a spirituality. You are, what did you say, an accident of time and space? You know, you are a biological robot in this universe is what I always put it. But then the second point, I guess, that I'm driving towards is that if that doesn't work, the next thing that I can do is take your genuine spiritual experience and then try and co-opt it. And I see religion as a way of co-opting it, right? So you have a genuine spiritual experience. So you have a gent, you know, William Ramsey has a spiritual life, and his spiritual life is a direct connection with Christ consciousness, if you will allow that, you know, but I totally accept that you are having a spiritual experience with this thing. And I'm just putting that label on it Christ consciousness and that I don't, I don't, I hold loosely the connection with that and the historical Jesus. I'm not saying it's not there, but I'm saying it isn't necessarily as kind of detailed. It has to fit perfectly in order for your spiritual experience to still be valid. And here's where I'm trying to head with that because the reason I put it together that way is primarily because of like when I went looking for this, I went looking for the science and the best science I found is near-death experience. So with near-death experience, people are dead. They no longer have that brain. They no longer have that biological robot thing. And they are now they are infinitely more connected to the spiritual. And there's plenty of people that are super connected with Christ consciousness in that realm and all sorts of different levels of Christ consciousness, but some like literal, you know, I touched the hands, the blood kind of thing, which I don't know what to make of that. But I accept that. I would say it's a false interpretation of what Gospels is. Obviously, if you look at the Last Supper, Passover is coming up tomorrow, today, right? I mean, the Last Supper is obviously symbolic, but within Christianity, they've made it more literal, especially the Catholic Church, at the wafer in the wine or literal transmogrification of blood and his body, which is deranged. Okay. So symbolic, it's to be symbolic. It's clearly symbolic because even in the Last Supper, he's using it as a symbol. He doesn't cut open his thumb and drop blood out. It's ridiculous. Well, my only point, even the one, even, I mean, we can go in, even within Christianity, people say the blood of Jesus, it's obviously a symbol. It's not the literal blood of Jesus. Yeah. And where I was going with that, William, is I've spoken to a number of people that have verifiable near-death experiences. And by verifiable near-death experiences, we can say all the medical conditions that they report and we can verify would suggest that they were dead, right? And then these people have these experiences and they report back, having spiritual experiences that they identify as being with Christ consciousness. Now, one of the ways that I evaluate whether those experiences should be taken seriously is how they live their fucking life. If they come back and they're walking the talk and living spiritual lives and being good people, and that's what they're about, is love and compassion and goodness, then I say, hmm, that seems to be evidence that they maybe had that good experience. If they come back and they're lying, deceptive, cultish kind of secret society people, which none I've never encountered or even heard of in the thousands of cases that they've been reported, I've never heard of someone saying I went to the light after I clinically died and I came back and I decided to go do, you know, sex magic and bringing forth the anti, I've never zero cases of that. I think that evidence is important and it's impenetrable to the quote Christian beliefs. Well, it's, well, yeah, well, it depends. I mean, depends what version of Christianity or kind of what happens when you're dead. I mean, I think the general outlook is you pass away the resurrection you're judged, then you go on to heaven or hell right so that's a very general term, but Paul even Paul like we all shine on the sun, the moon and the stars right that whole line or whatever it is from Lenin was taken from one of Paul's Missives. So even the Mormons, they actually key into that as some kind of, you know, not resurrection, but reincarnation kind of outlook. So there's a little bit, I mean, if you want to really get into like more esoteric aspects of what people have written, at least Paul too is probably, you know, had the most of all, for sure, the most quoted and referenced Christian thinker who knew Peter and all those other people, right. So that's also another kind of problem with the Josephus kind of view of the Gospels being, you know, pure political document, but there's some other elements within Christianity that don't comport with the kind of superficial surface kind of generalized doctrines that Christians and non-Christians perceive as being what Christianity is about. Yeah, I just, that winds up sounding a lot like gobbledygook to me. I mean, there is no, just because there is no, you know, you can cherry pick out of Paul and you can cherry pick out of Buddha and, you know, Buddha's 500 years before, or there's all these great spiritual people that have had these downloads. I mean, again, the part about Christianity that I think a lot of us sit back and go, how are you even processing that is to say, there's this special time. There's this special time 2000 years ago. Well, what about all the people that came before? What about all the people that we encounter in our lives that never had any contact with that experience, that Christian experience, that Christian education and our more spiritual, we would all say, are what we aspire to be in that spiritual sense. But I don't even want to go there because all the answers are just gobbledygook. What I would kind of bring back in, and this is an effort to try and understand the Christian perspective in a really kind of no bullshit way, which I don't think, and I appreciate you doing this because I've never been able to. I'm not worried. You can ask me any question. So, you know, the next thing with the near death experience, like, so number one, I just interviewed this I just interviewed this guy, Bruce Grayson, who's been probably one of the most well known near death experience researchers 40 years at University of Virginia, hundreds and hundreds of paper influenced all these people grew up in a very secular household. No belief in any of this stuff and now believes in God and is is able to say that after, you know, it's taken a long time to be able to say I just can't get around the evidence. But of course he isn't a Christian, because anyone who encounters a near death experience research, one of the things that comes through to that is there's no exclusivity. There's no Christian is right kind of Christian the primacy of Christianity. It just does not come through in those accounts. So if you want to throw out all that research and you just want to say, well, I don't know whatever they're having. It isn't it's non Christian. So I'm going to ignore it all. You're stepping over probably the best science we have for understanding the reality of spirituality. Well, I mean, I think they're stepping over one thing. I mean, I think at least in Christianity, they talk about the gifts of the spirit. So people leave their bodies, they talk to whatever they drive in inspiration or the Holy Spirit. So I think some of these NDEs could be put into that context. I don't think that I mean, you I think when you're talking and you're talking about Christianity, you're talking about it in a very general sense, which I don't mind. But I would say my outlook is not pretty independent. So but I do believe my outlook is definitely Bible based. But well, it can be based. Yeah, you can you can you can control that. But just make let me make sure I mean, here's even better. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ could be seen as a near death experience. So just let me make explicit what I'm saying is there's thousands of near death experience accounts at this point that have been recorded. And you can kind of study them in two ways. And you have to first you have to study them from a kind of physiological neurological medical standpoint and say, OK, were they really dead? And did they really have the experience? You know, so like one of the things they do, William, is they ask people to recall their resuscitation. Well, if your brain is out, your brain is flat like your brain is not active in producing consciousness, you should not be able to recall your resuscitation. So it's kind of a good control, simple experiment to see if there really is this extended realm, right? So the science there confirms there is this extended realm. So that's the science on one hand. Then what you can do is start looking at the content of those experiences, right? And you can say like overwhelmingly, like 90% what people come back and say, God, they say, you know, hey, for lack of a better term, call it light, call it love, call whatever you want. I experienced. I can't even call it love. There's no words for it. But I'll try and describe it to you because you want to hear it. But it's just complete acceptance, complete love, complete divinity, complete something higher. That is overwhelmingly the finding from the near death experience literature. It's not tunnels. It's not dead relatives or anything like that. It's God and it's love. So that's the second finding. But the in those findings, the other thing that comes through consistently, if you're going to accept that data, is there is no primary religion. There is no Christianity is the way it just, they say no, they say there's all sorts of different ways for to reach that God to reach that divinity. And there's no special place for Christianity. If you're gonna so you can reject that and say, well, that's just bullshit. I know because I'm a Christian and that's what I've been taught. But if you're going to follow that data, but yeah, but I most of my reading and researching it is self taught. So nobody's ever taught me anything other than myself. Right. Well, I wish you'd take that one step further and say, you know, you just have a direct spiritual experience because anyone who has a direct spiritual experience, like if you pray to Jesus or God or whatever, and you get an answer, I'm down with that. Because to me, that's how the data reads. It's like, you don't, you don't need an intermediary. Why would you need an intermediary? You don't need an intermediary. You don't. Why would you possibly need how I don't know why people fall for that? To me, that's like such a scam. It's like, really, you need somebody up there that that guy up at the front who says, okay, give me your money. Take this bread. And now I will interpret everything for you. Why would you? Good question. But here's the thing. Have you ever compared like Christian kind of views of people who have died and supposedly stood before God or experienced God to non Christians or other people have experienced NDE's and looked at the similarities or differences? Yeah. And there's a lot of other people have done it a lot better than I do. But the main thing that comes through that is key, I think, for Christians to, I don't want to say understand because that makes it sound like I know something just to go investigate on their own. Is this thing about judgment? Because the consistency and this is like, to me, it fits back to what we're saying about the classic way that things get co-opted. And that's why I think Christianity is a co-opted spiritual experience. And one other thing I wanted to mention was this Gregory Shushan guy. But before I get there, I don't want to bury the lead. The lead is it's completely about judgment. Every, not every act that you do, every thought that you have, everything will be judged. But you will judge. You will stand in judgment of yourself. Your soul will stand in judgment. And most people, as soon as they hear that, they kind of have a big sigh and they go, yeah, I kind of knew that. I kind of knew that all along. I knew that from the time I was a kid and I was tempted to take that candy from the store. And there was something inside of me that said, I should do it or, oh, I'm really hungry. I really wanted or I don't do it. It wasn't something outside of you. It was you. It was your soul's journey. And so what the end of years say is that you, when you die, you're completely supported, completely loved. And the fact that you are now going to face the judgment of what you did through your own experience, that's, that's hard enough for you. We don't need to have on top of that and judge you. You judge yourself. So, so, so according to your post depth view, then you will go to some place and self judge and then what happens? Well, there's a lot of questions about what happens. And there's not a lot of definitive answers, but that's where I was going to throw in this last guy, super important guy for anyone who is interested in kind of exploring this. So, I interviewed this one guy. There's some real tie ins to the other conversation we're having because this guy's name is Dr. Gregory Shoshan and a super PhD guy, Oxford guy, barely eking out a living within academia because he's, of course, studying something spiritual, which makes him completely persona non grata. So the way he gets around it is he kind of talks out of both sides of his mouth, you know, he's talking about all these near death experiences in other cultures. That's his work near death experiences in other cultures throughout time. So he has hundreds and hundreds of year olds accounts from Polynesians from Native Americans, South America, South Africa, all over the place, right? And he's analyzed those over time. What he's found is that in virtually every culture that he's found, the near death experience forms the foundation of the afterlife beliefs of the group, right? And what he found that's even more interesting and confirming of it, he said in some of these kind of shamanistic cultures, they will have a belief about the afterlife. And then, you know, William will be out there and get hit by a tree and die and he'll come back and he'll say, hey, this is what happened. And it is such a compelling account that the shaman will go, wait, William, exactly, William is right. William must be right. We need to change our beliefs. It's powerful research because when you go cross culture and you go cross time, you really sort out a lot of the wheat from the chaff kind of thing. I'd agree. I mean, don't you think there's a lot of similarities and experience between different cultures that are prevented from being understood through language? Like a lot of these people have spiritual views similar to yours and things like that. They believe in the reincarnation or afterlife or something like that. Absolutely. But I guess the other thing, you know, tying it back to what we're talking about is you have to consider the evil part of it, you know, because the evil part of it is the deceptive part of it is the how do I gain control of someone? How do I dominate someone? Absolutely. Look at all the religious beliefs the teachers here that are really popular. They're worth millions of dollars. Some of them want time like that. What was the cult you were talking about at the beginning? Which one? Order of known angles? Yeah. So again, it's a mixture of this brew of, you know, these beliefs. And then how can I kind of get in between? It's consistently done over time, you know, whether it's Jim Jones or whether it's the Mormons, which I would throw in that category, whether it's Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists also at their right. Everyone, even if you want to look at the sex within Christianity, each one says they're correct. And then they turn the screws, the Catholic Church says we're the only true church, right? So how could you believe in anything else? Therefore, you got to give us money. You have to pay for these priests. And then they engage in the kind of same behaviors that Christ railed against when he was in Jerusalem. So what you can see is Christianity, even Judaism for that matter. A lot of those things are condemned, at least by the faith's founder. I think that even the structure and look at the Christ's teachings of the original gospels, church, he's outside. He's talking to people in their homes. They invite him to his place. Really the only religious place outside the synagogue which he got kicked out of was the temple, right? And that ended, you know, ended disastrously. People would say that there's no connection between the fall of Jerusalem and Christ's death and resurrection. But I would say that's a direct consequence and even kind of prophesied that, you know, no stone upon this place will live on, will be there after a time. I don't remember the direct quote, but you could make a very good argument that the original Christianity is taught by Christ was not a kind of churchy entity. It wasn't about these structures. But like you said, I think a lot of these people who came after him said, oh, God, I have a church, we got to have all this, you got to pay for this, and we need to have a priest. So then there's priestcraft, pastorcraft, and you got all kinds of problems. And that's what I mean. My read of all that is, yeah, a lot of it came before him, too. There's nothing super special about, I mean, Jesus, as those teachings come through, our truths, our spiritual truths, and they were always accessible to everyone throughout time, because we all have a rich spiritual experience. We all have a connection with the divine. We can all know what the truth is, everyone throughout time. 50,000 years ago, an aborigine on the plains of Australia could access the same truths, but they could also access the same, it seems like, and we don't understand any of this stuff, and I'm not claiming I'm doing, it's just my conclusion. They could also access some of the not so great things, you know, and not to zoom is on the hill and he's tearing the hearts out of people. That's before Jesus, but he's still and he's still tapping into that satanic energy that says, destroy, conquer, dominate. That's a good point. Absolutely. Okay, man. Totally. You've undergone the grilling. No, I'm kidding. I appreciate it. I don't hear these conversations enough. Well, let's do it again. Let's talk more about, I will come back with greater proofs that I need to look at the historical proofs, but things like that, but the things that differentiates Christ's teachings from even the other so-called great, you know, teachers, wisdom teachers, whether it's, you know, the Buddha, Muhammad supposedly, what is it? What was the guy who started Zoroaster? You know, some of these other teachers, even Moses. Yeah, but I mean, I think really, ultimately, if you do agree with that last thing that I said, and it sounds like you genuinely did, there's really nothing more to talk about. I mean, it's like the truth is there. The truth is available to everybody. The truth is certainly available through Jesus Christ, what I call Christ consciousness. Anyone can access it. It's not, doesn't need to be filtered through some book. If you pray to Jesus, the statistics show four out of five people who genuinely pray for help from, for Jesus to do good things, you know, their prayers are answered and that you can do good things. You can be a good person, you know, it's not, and you can be an evil person too. And it doesn't depend on what you read or anything like that. It's like, you know, what to do and what not to do. I don't know, it doesn't seem that complicated to me. I'm thinking when you really parse it down, it's not that complicated. It really isn't that complicated, but people make it overly complicated. It's very simple, very simple doctrines. Yeah, so I mean, right, that's basically it. I mean, I mean, everything that the law and prophets are based upon loving your fellow man and loving God, that's it. It was all Christ just distilled it down into two simple principles, right? Yeah. So I mean, why you don't have to overthink it, then you can just build on that. You can talk about first Corinthians, what is love, you can talk about these other explanations of the proper behavior for the individual. But I mean, I just don't see, I guess, I guess the real distinction in like the Christian view is the primacy of Christianity overall, like it's the pearl of great price. And I think that people outside of Christianity have a real problem with that they have a month. I mean, I would think that they have, there's more paths to God, whereas like Christ says, I'm the way the truth and the light. So I think that that's really a lot of the people who are outside of that very, very, very wide tent of Christianity really have a problem. Well, you could turn it around and say, I think that's the problem that Christians have. Right, right. I mean, if you can't, if you're Christian and you can't see that there's unlimited paths to God, then I don't, I don't know how you're reading the data. It's the fact like I said, I just don't, like I said, go read the near death experience accounts. Go read the near death experience accounts and go tell me those people aren't having genuine spiritual experiences. I wouldn't say off the top that they are having genuine spiritual experiences. Well, then if they're in and then they're a lot, but I like, I've interviewed, like, I've interviewed a ton of people like one guy interviewed us that Ian McCormick and he had an unbelievable near death experience. I mean, this guy was dead for like, he was in the morgue in this little island, you know, he was swimming, he got stung by box fish deadly and he was in their little makeshift morgue for like seven hours. He had this experience and he saw Jesus Christ consciousness. Fantastic. But he comes back, he goes around to churches all over the world and says, Hey, near death experience is real. There's an afterlife, but let me tell you, if you don't see Jesus, you didn't really have one. It was Satan faking you. It's like, fuck you Ian, you're so full of shit. That's just a stupid interpretation of the data. It's just as crazy and as cultish as, you know, Damian Eccles sitting around thinking that, you know, the Antichrist is the way to go for, you know, it's just stupid. And that's what gets me about the Christian thing. If you can't see that it's all about love everyone and tell the truth. So, oh, of course, anyone can get there by doing that. Then I don't know what game you're playing. Think it's exclusive. If you think it's exclusive, I don't know how you, you fit that with the data. Yeah, I don't. I don't, I don't, I don't think that. Yeah, I think within Christianity, or, you know, the view is, is that the people outside of it are going to obtain the same blessings and benefits of being inside that wide tent. But that's silly. That's silly. Right. I mean, look at all the people who lived and passed away prior to the advent of Christ and look at how many people have not heard the gospel. It's hard for me to believe that there's no, it's hard for me to believe that those people are, there's not some kind of spiritual address for them from God. William, what's coming up for you? What are you gonna, what are you doing? I'm just exhausted. I've been working on a project, so I'm hoping to get it done within the next week, but a William Ramsey investigates a William Ramsey investigates project or some other. Yes. Yeah. Well, good, proper 400 page book. Really? Yeah. See, I pumped you at the beginning for what book you're working on. You really keep, you keep it under your hat that much, huh? You don't, you have to, you have to. Why do you have to? Because your publisher, your publisher requires, no, no, no, there's all kinds of problems. People steal your ideas and people claim stuff. Oh yeah. Oh man. Very cool. I'll tell you stories up on it. Great. Okay. It's kind of like a small little community. So people are always saying, this is my idea. I came up with this. Let it be known. I came up with this mistake. Wow. But, but so the inside, the inside word is kind of keep, keep your eye on William Ramsey investigates because something big is coming, huh? Well, hopefully. Well, let's see. Things are very interesting. Things are happening. There's no question about it. Playing it close to the best. I love this. Always have to keep the cards close to the chest, right? Right on baby, right on. Hey, William, thanks again. Our guest again has been William Ramsey of William Ramsey investigates. Be sure to check on his website because I just told you he's got something good coming. I kind of have a feeling it relates to something that we might have talked about, but I don't want to push him any further because he's not saying it might be, it might Well, I think, I think it'll go with the theme. There's things under the surface that you know, people might not be aware of acrolysm or these other kind of modern currents. They're actually pretty dangerous. Very, very intriguing. William, as always, it's just so awesome talking to you and really appreciate what you're doing out there and appreciate you having this kind of open ended conversation about Christianity. My pleasure. Great to talk with you, Alex. Take care. Thanks again to William Ramsey for joining me today on Skeptico, the one, the only question to tee up from this episode. Primacy of Christianity, yes or no. This is a topic, particularly the Roman, Josephus, conspiratorial, parapolitical part of this that has really, really grabbed my attention. So I have a number of shows coming up on this. So if this at all interests you in the way that it interests me, then hey, you got some good content coming up. If not, you might be taking a little break from Skeptico for a while, but I do hope you stick around. Until then, do take care and bye for now.