 Hey mate, 40 here. Let's turn things over to Tucker Carlson. Let's see what Tucker has to say. Then we'll talk about the news and the under news. What's the difference between the news and the under news? All right, 200 interviews, believe it or not, for Tucker Carlson today over on Fox Nation. These are extended and very wide ranging interviews with people who never have time to sit down on a regular nightly show here on Fox. That includes some of the most prominent entertainers, authors, thinkers and generally interesting entertaining people of our time. You may have seen a couple of minutes of these interviews because we broadcast them at night sometimes. But on this show this evening we're focusing on just two people. The first is football legend Brett Favre. And the second is Hollywood actor John Voigt. And we're bringing you two extended portions right now so you can get a sense of what our Fox Nation show is all about. Here is part one of our Okay, I think we'll skip that. Okay, welcome to our daily celebration of love and light in a cold, cynical world. It's wonderful that we can come together here and celebrate that which makes America great. And we have in the audience many members of the thousand points of light that keep this country so amazing. All right, just anonymous Americans paying their taxes, going about raising families and in this cold, cruel, cynical world. We're not afraid to speak from the heart. We're not afraid to let our emotions overflow. We're not afraid to be open with each other and to talk about what really matters. This is a place where we celebrate love and light. And that's what we're going to do today. Topic number one was the difference 40 between news and under news. So the news is the news. All right, the New York Times NBC news. All right. So the news this week is how impressive Cassidy Hutchinson was what a devastating blow her testimony delivered to the whole Trump movement and to Donald Trump in particular. She was just just a killer, just very effective, used very low levels of makeup, very unobtrusive dress. There was nothing in how she dressed herself that said, look at me, look at me. He said she was very serious young woman, a dedicated patriot. All right, that's the news. The under news is how did how did she rise to be the chief of staff for the chief of staff? All right, this is highly unusual for someone who's 23, 24 years of age. So what was the nature of her inseparable close, close, close, intimately close relationship with Mark Meadows? And could it be that she gave him the admiration that he liked most older men so desperately crave from someone who's pretty and young? And maybe it's not her amazing political skills that got her to such a position of power. That's the under news which people who make the news and report the news won't talk about publicly, but they are talking about privately. So we'll see if the under news bubbles up to the regular news. So think about John Edwards. So the press court knew all about his adulterous affair with with a staffer, but they didn't talk about it for months and months and months, even years and left the story to the National Inquirer until finally they were forced to talk about it. Or in 2007, I reported that the mayor's marriage was over. He hadn't been wearing his wedding ring for eight months in public and no one in the news reported it. But when I put it on my blog, then three days later, the LA Times did a rejoinder saying that there was there was no truth to what I was saying. And then it came out that the mayor was carrying on an affair with a newsreader. I tried watching that Johnny Minoxide interview that he did with Ethan Ralph and his big dramatic falling out with TRS. In fact, I tried on at least two occasions to make some progress with that interview. But I just couldn't I just couldn't care. I mean, I really tried I thought, Oh, that maybe maybe we'll come up with some incredibly funny dysfunctional, compelling internet drama, distant right drama. But my mind would just wander. It just couldn't hold my attention. I did try for you on two occasions to come up with something. And I just couldn't muster any care. Right. Topic. What's the topic? Alright, I think I'm talking about USC and UCLA. Yeah, they're joining the Big 10. So now there are just two major football or college sports conferences. Alright, there's the now the Big 10 plus USC and UCLA. And then there's the SEC conference, the Southeast Conference. And that's it. I mean, the Pac 10 is small UCLA is effectively doubling its income. My alma mater. And UCLA doubling is income. So it's athletes. So professional sports, the big time programs are becoming more and more professional, right? College sports have become professional athletes now get to be paid. And the way that you win is by collecting a lot of money principally from TV rights. And so UCLA will be able to pay athletes UCLA will have sponsors who'll be after pay athletes. And so good news. Good news for USC and UCLA fans. Okay, blessings. Alright, let's let's just take a moment. Alright, death be not proud. Let's all celebrate the life and work of the famed musicologist Robert Morrell Stevenson. So he was at UCLA when I was at UCLA, he just retired from teaching the year before. And he was about 80 years old at the time. And I had a lot of meals with him, along with his friend Jules Zetner, who was an expert in Scandinavian literature. But Robert rel Stevenson, quite a complicated interesting guy. He was a relative of the great novelist Robert Louis Stevenson. And he was quite a mentor. He oversaw about 25 PhD dissertations. And he took a particular interest in our African American athletes from underprivileged backgrounds. And he pimped them out to the Hollywood Gay Mafia. And so he enabled athletes at UCLA to earn hundreds, even thousands of dollars, simply meeting the fantasies of the most powerful men in Los Angeles. So this was before it was legal to pay college athletes. So he didn't have to do this. Right. He just took a genuine interest in these guys. And he knew a lot of rich powerful gay people from his musicology work. And so he was able to connect like these underprivileged African American scholar athletes at UCLA, with you know, powerful, rich, you know, gay men who would pay really well for their sexual favors. And so I'm just remembering the scholar athletes that we had at Reber Hall at UCLA. And you could not find a nicer suite of bunch of people when they went raping and stealing and pillaging, right when like underneath the raping and the pillaging and the stealing, they were just like really like good guys. I mean, they were just filled with with the zest for life. And I mean, they were they were somewhat disruptive in the cafeteria. They kind of enjoyed, you know, throwing food on the ground and being jerks. And yeah, at parties they'd be raping co ads. But there's just a certain amount of rape that you need to put up with if you want to have a good football or basketball team. So for several weeks in 1988, when I was at UCLA, we had the number one football team in the nation. And you don't get to be number one, without a whole lot of raping going on. I mean, God forbid, I wish it wasn't that way. But those are just the facts of life. And one thing I really appreciated about the late musicologist Robert Morel Stevenson is that he, he accepted the facts of life. And he did not have some, you know, wildly high overestimation of the cognitive abilities of these scholar athletes. But he recognized that different peoples have different gifts. And so he set them along a path of where if you work hard, if you're diligent, if you meet the needs of the customer, you can do really well for yourself as long as you don't get AIDS and die. So according to informed sources of the sex work that he arranged for UCLA scholar athletes from a an underprivileged background was that the sex work heat that he arranged for them. Ironically, it turned out to be very similar in style to his own musical compositions, which were marked by kinetic energy, and set in vigorous and often accurate dissonant counterpoint. So Professor Stevenson was a Renaissance man. Now on the one hand, he could be pimping out underprivileged African American scholar athletes to the Hollywood Gay Mafia. On the other hand, he didn't hold by affirmative action. He just accepted the world as it was. And we'd have these wonderful conversations about Martin Luther King's plagiarized PhD thesis. And we talk about the glories of the civil rights movement. And apparently there wasn't much of a financial demand for getting these UCLA scholar athletes from underprivileged backgrounds into heterosexual sex work. So on the one hand, you're thinking, wow, that'd be amazing to get paid hundreds or even thousands of dollars for sex work. But apparently it wasn't men wanting to see their wives plowed by three UCLA scholar athletes from underprivileged backgrounds. It was all dudes. I'm not sure if Professor Stevenson ever availed himself for their services. He was never recognized for everything he did for our underprivileged African American scholar athletes. He never even got an NAACP image award. But some have speculated that the Oscar winning song it's hard out here for a pimp that was inspired by the good Professor Stevenson. So he was born in 1916. So when when I knew him, so 1988, so he was 72. So as an American musicologist, he studied at the College of Minds and Metallurgy at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he graduated with his BA in 1936. Then he went to Juilliard, studied piano, trombone and composition graduating 1939. Then he went to Yale, where he got a masters and the University of Rochester, where he did a PhD in musical composition in 1942. We often talked about religion together. And then he did a degree in literature from Oxford University in 1954. So he was well known. He studied with Igor Stravinsky when he was young. And he became a teacher of the influential minimalist Lamonte Young. His main area of interest was in Latin American music, but he wrote extensively on African American music and the music of the Protestant Church within the Americas. And in 1978, he became the founding editor of Inter American Music Review, which is now in its 13th volume, according to Wikipedia. He published 29 books, hundreds of journal articles, a large number of encyclopedia entries, and was just pimping out UCLA scholar athletes, African Americans from disadvantaged backgrounds, like he was incredibly busy. Like he's pimping, he's writing, he's composing, he was he was playing music. There's a recording that he made when he was 92. I mean, this guy, I mean, talk about a Renaissance man, talk about a triumph of the human spirit. I mean, death be not proud. He didn't quite make it to 100. He died at 96. So he gave a highly popular course on rock and roll music. He would present his own piano recitals as part of the curriculum. He was a master of European languages, and he was a great PIMP. He was just like, he had the strongest PIMP hand. I mean, the things that he did for these UCLA scholar athletes, African Americans from disadvantaged backgrounds, I mean, you don't get that above ground, right? You have to kind of go below ground to get to get someone who takes an interest in your personal development and your financial development like that. I mean, not many, not many professors are out there, you know, pimping for you. So his about mission in his work was to rescue the musical past of the Americas. He was an exceptional mentor, as well as researcher, he guided 25 dissertations. So those who are fortunate enough to do graduate research under his direction felt deeply inspired, not only by his erudition and productivity, but by the whole scope and depth of his investigations, and by his passionate commitment to pimping and to preserving and promoting a vast heritage of great music. Right. So a fellow UCLA musicologist says about Dr. Stevenson, there is a man on the UCLA campus who is a living legend. I mean, this guy is legendary, like what a PIMP, what a musicologist. In fact, according to people in the know, he is the greatest pimping musicologist of all time. There is no other musicologist who can match this guy for pimping. Like he walks, talks, performs, investigates, writes, pimps and teaches. He is a metamorphosis of continuity, change and inspiration. He is a genius. Just an absolute seminal figure in that crossover word between musicology, theology and pimping. And let us not forget that our president teaches us love is love. Professor Robert Morrell Stevenson touched many lives. He touched my life. And like the teacher grew me hero in the history boys. I prefer to believe that Professor Stevenson's furtive gropings are usually far more appreciative than exploratory. So good on you mate. That's that's my that's my death be not proud. That's my celebration of the life and work of musicologist Robert and Stevenson, one of the the compelling figures that I met at UCLA, who just you know, opened up vistas to me. I've never seen such intersectionality between theology, musicology and pimping. All right, so it's time to learn some social skills bros are rituals you have to master those rituals, or else you're going to be seen as awkward or weird. Number 10. You don't use back channel cues. And so people never know whether you're listening. Right. Okay, this is a terrific video and stop being socially awkward. Alright, 10 behaviors that make you look weird. Alright, so sometimes I'll be standing here and delivering such amazing insights into mother hunger, or Marta complex, or the, the dialectic between musicology, theology and pimping. And, and I'm not getting, you know, that that back talking cues. So, so here, learn some, learn some social skills bros back channel cue is just something like mm hmm. Uh huh. Oh, tell me more. These are back channel cues. I'm just not getting enough of that. Like I could stand here talking for an hour about mother hunger. And I don't think one of you would say tell me more. Or I could stand here and talk about Robert Stevenson, the great musicologist. And I don't think any of you would say tell me more. So you need to develop the social skill. Right? I don't want you to just go through life being socially awkward. Little things that we do to let people know that we're still listening. They give people cues that yes, I'm still listening. I'm still here. They're important on the telephone and they're important to face face interaction. If you just sit there, you think listening is about being silent. And someone's talking and you're just they're going to think you're awkward or weird. You might be listening really intently. You might be waiting for your chance to talk. But listening is actually an active thing that you have to contribute. Mm hmm. Uh huh. Oh yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Tell me more stuff like that. That lets people know you're listening. So if you don't give back channel cues, people are going to think you're not listening or you're not paying attention or you're just kind of weird. And number 11. I don't have enough fingers for number 11. You lack empathy. If people see you as weird or awkward, it's possible that you lack empathy. Now I have an entire playlist about empathy, which you should check out because it's too big a topic for me to talk about in this video. But it may be that you lack empathy. What that means is you may lack the ability to recognize other people's feelings or to accurately identify other people's feelings or to relate them to your own experience or to understand other people's perspectives, their plans, their goals, their intentions and their beliefs. You may lack the ability to say to acknowledge people's feelings. You may not have enough altruism or compassion when people are hurting that you reach out and do and say kind things in order to help relieve their suffering. All of these are elements of empathy. And if people perceive you a lot of the time as weird or awkward, you may not have mastered empathic listening and empathic skills, which have to do with feeling other people's feelings, identifying other people's feelings correctly, naming them, asking people to elaborate on them and then saying comforting things to them. As I said, lots and lots of other videos. This whole channel is kind of an empathy channel. So there's lots to learn if those are your skills. So there you have it. 11 specific behaviors that if you're not at 12 to 18 maybe maybe we'll revisit this important video there. 1012. What is it? Stop being socially awkward. 10 behaviors that make you look weird. Look, your mic seems pretty mild tonight. Turn it up a pinch. Well, that's just kind of how I am. I'm just kind of a mild retiring, reticent, 19th century Victorian gentleman. Boy, a lot of women don't know the meaning of the word reticent. Oh man, the chat is just popping. I can't even, I can't even keep up. I don't like to feel other people's feelings. That seems feminine. Now, I think, I think you're like me. I think you've had enough experiences where you've been immobilized, infantilized, not being at your best because you've been flooded by empathy and you're afraid. You're afraid of being flooded by empathy. Wow. I got 14 viewers right now and Kevin Michael Grace has 38. So if we can just like triple my viewership right now, I could have more viewers than Kevin. Wouldn't that be exciting? So come and tell me if this, if this resonates with you, that you've had experiences of being flooded by empathy and being immobilized because you feel so deeply for other people's pain and you're afraid of going back there because it makes you feel vulnerable. At least that's, that's my life experience. I try to apply the right amount of condescension to others based on a level of inferiority. Well, we're here to create a safe space where we don't have to play these games anymore. I rather just tell people the truth rather than try to feel their feelings and then give them some answer response based on the feels. That's what Jordan Peterson tells me. And it seems pretty valid. Even recordings of Eric Stryker increase testosterone levels. Ford doesn't want more viewers than a minion. Yeah, Professor Stevenson love to guide young black boys down the right path. Oh man, so much good information to share with you. But let's just get right to it. Let's get back to chapter three from Professor of Apocalypse, the many lives of Jacob Talvis. I mean, we love Jacob Talvis, don't we? And so chapter three is about his intellectual roots and grand themes from 1941 to 1946. So he was born in 1923. So who influenced Jacob Talvis? And number one was probably Carl Bart. He says I would up my membership level 40 if you moved into a hotel. Okay, so let's talk 19th century. Right. There was a quest by Protestant scholars, particularly in German speaking Europe to use the techniques of literary criticism, meaning modern humanistic scholarship to better understand their own faith. But by the end, the eve of World War One, that quest had a paradoxical outcome in the 19th century search for the historical Jesus Christianity almost destroyed itself. So the more Protestant scholars in particular, so as Protestants who led the way in biblical criticism, Jews and Catholics lagged far behind. So the more Protestant scholars explored the older New Testaments in their historical context, the more they understood the linguistic nuances and puzzles of the biblical texts, the more they're able to identify the various strands and historical layers within the texts, the more elusive their prey became, meaning they're seeking the historical truths behind the text. So rather than illuminating a single message, love your neighbor, love God, or even a single tradition, this scholarship revealed a struggle of competing trends within the Christian tradition, a struggle that went back to the texts of the Gospels. So there was no distinct portrait of Jesus. And in so far as one did, it was far removed from the Christ of Christian faith, which Albert Schweitzer showed in his famous 1906 book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. So scholars discovered that the earliest Christian communities as reflected in the New Testament or virtually no relationship to the Christian church as it evolved over time. And this was recognized by the most famous convert to Roman Catholicism in the 19th century in England, John Henry Newman, in his book Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which came out in 1845. So he solved this problem by a retroactive interpretation based on faith. So it says only these elements of the tradition that survived in the present age do we deem truly essential. But that approach is very comforting to the faithful, but it's fundamentally unhistorical. And I know everyone here right now wants to be historical, right? We want to be historically minded. Do we not, folks? Inch in America, this differs from country to country, but in America there's like about a 12 to 18 inch personal space bubble that should not be violated unless you're on sort of intimate friendly terms with a person. But in ordinary social contact in public, you have to respect this 12 to 18 inch personal distance bubble. If you're a close talker, right, who talked about that Seinfeld or somebody like that, you don't want to be one of those close talkers. You're going to be perceived as awkward, weird, and so on. People are going to make inferences about you and your social skills, even if you're a lovely human being. You must respect this personal space bubble. Now, this will, okay, this is a beautifully written book by Professor David Meyers from UCLA. It's called Resisting History, Historicism and Its Discontents in German Jewish Thought around the Finde Siegler, the turn of the century, the 19th and the 20th. And it's just so good. It's just so well written. Everything he writes is just so well written. A century and a half ago, Soran Kokigat issued a powerful indictment against one of the main pillars of modern intellectual life. So he was caught in the throes of spiritual turmoil. The Danish philosopher took aim at the kind of historical thinking that reduced the human experience to a long series of disconnected moments. So you're thinking 40 under the oppressive regime of historicism. My human experience has been reduced to a long series of disconnected moments. I come here 40 to get connected. I want to start living from the inside. I'm ready to connect. Connect me 40. Beam me up 40 to a place of connection. I want to live with the inner party. I want to live from the inside. I don't want to be on the outside looking in. I want to get connected. I want to get energized. I want to create a shared reality with other people. I don't want us live to live in a series of disconnected moments, right? And so this modern mode of thinking, historicism reached its most offensive Kokigat lamented when applied to the personality of Jesus. So Kokigat at complete contempt for the efforts of European historians of his day to attempt a reconstruction of the life of the historical Jesus whom they portrayed as a decidedly human and flawed figure born and raised in first century Palestine. So Soran Kokigat wanted to stand against the historians. He wanted to insist that one could know nothing at all about Christ. Here's the paradox, the object of faith. He exists only for faith. We have to stand outside of rational investigation and go with our faith fields. All historical communication is a communication of knowledge. Hence from history one could learn nothing about Christ. History makes out Christ to be another than he truly is and so one learns to know a lot about Christ. No, not about Christ or about him. Nothing can be known. He can only be believed. So when you listen to Godward podcast videos on John, there's no historical sense. There's no understanding what's going on in history. It's entirely looked at through the lens of faith. And so when you look at anything through the lens of faith, you can believe absolutely anything. Forty is popped a lot of social bubbles. Yes, I have been, I've been thrown out of the best groups, haven't I folks? Fort's elections are edifying on every level. That's what Professor Stevenson told me. Bloody Casey has gone off the deep end. I, I, I, I, I, is that, is that fair? He's, uh, he's just finding his identity bro. He's, he's just, you know, discovering, discovering a muscular Christianity. But it does look a little weird. It, um, but that's the superficial. I think of it as being like the order of things, the, the whole, the unified field theory, something like that. So if this thing was in the beginning, that's the origin of everything, right? Okay, so no use for what happened in history, no use for critical scholarship. He has no inclination to use the tools that he got his PhD in, like literary analysis. He doesn't want to deconstruct his faith. He doesn't want to, uh, look at any critical skills. He doesn't want to ask like who wrote these books, you know, when were they written, for whom were they written? He wants to step into a world outside of history. He doesn't want to live anymore in a series of long disconnected moments. And he wants to live from the inside. And so he's playing with different YouTube video formats, but what's really going on? As I see it, I don't know what's actually going on with, with God with the human being. I only know a little bit about what Godwood podcast puts forth for public consumption. So what it seems like for public consumption is he's struggling to construct an identity. And it was with God and it was God. So here we have this weird claim where it's like A was with B and also A... The chat says 40 needs more wigged out content, ASAP, play grinder Greg, play Puerto Rican striker, play cock old Conti, play homosexual sounding Spencer, play Catboy Fuentes, play somebody alt-right. Really? You'd rather someone alt-right than Professor Pratt? Bro. He was B and so it's like they're basically the same thing. This thing, logos, is God. And everything that was made in the universe was made through it and with it and by it. And in that is life, light, the good. And it shines even now in the darkness and darkness still has not overcome it. That's the idea. And I take that to mean that like it also, there's an element where it's like life, intellect, you know, intelligence, sentience, presses on is still here. It's not like I'm above or beyond this same approach to text. I'm also happy to study text in my tradition purely with the assumption that God is the author of this text and we're not going to try to locate it in human history. And so the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. Okay. The Shroud of Turin filter. All right. So Soran Kierkegaard, like Professor God would fear that the most sacred and transcendent of realms had been infected by a destructive contagion, right? Historicism and the practice of modern critical theory. So the historians careful measurement of change over time, for instance, in depicting the history of Christianity after Jesus obscured for him far more than illuminated. So when you look historically, there's virtually no connection between Jesus historical figure living 2000 years ago and his disciples and what became the Christian church, right? There's almost no connection between them, but that doesn't really help your faith, right? That's not really comforting for a Christian and it's not comforting for someone who's desperately trying to construct an identity that will withstand the vicissitudes of modern life. Remember, the more freedom, the more chances you have to go mad. And so Professor Godward from public appearances seems to have experienced a tremendous amount of freedom in the past few years and so the need to construct an identity as a bulwark against the downsides of freedom is intense, hence the experimentation with different filters and different different formats. Right? So for Kierkegaard and for Professor Godward, right, they want to emphasize again and again that pertaining to the divinity of Christ the 1800 years have nothing to do whatsoever with the case. So Kierkegaard's complaint is hardly the first and not the last. Criticism of modern historical thinking is as common as the thinking itself. So the renowned missionary position Albert Schweitzer arrived at a conclusion. It is not Jesus as historically known but Jesus as spiritually arisen within men who are significant for our time and can help it. So the historical Jesus can't really help us. Like what really happened in first century Palestine for the Jesus, for the apostle Paul, for the disciples, right? What actually happened isn't really going to help you out. It's not going to fill you with energy and inspiration and willingness to sacrifice and to dedicate your life to to Christianity, right? The historical facts on the ground are not going to inspire you. So what's so distasteful or unsettling about critical thinking, historical thinking, literary analysis? Remember all these are fancy terms for simply seeking the truth wherever it leads. So I'd like to think that's generally speaking my agenda on the show and off the show. I want to seek the truth wherever it leads. So what prompts all these scholars of different disciplines and denominations to attack really the search for truth? So Friedrich Nietzsche bemoaned all this stuff in his 1874 essay on the uses and abuses of history. And there was another German Protestant theologian Ernst Troesch who caught attention to the historicization of all our knowledge and perception. See I don't believe you can understand anything, any literary work, any battle, any conflict, without understanding it in its historical context. So for me everything is like what happened, why did it happen, who wrote it, what were the interests of the clashing groups, what were they trying to achieve, right? Those are those are the basic questions I asked. So opponents of asking these questions realized that one could hardly think of an event from the past without relying on the causal logic of truth-seeking or modern historicism. And historicism, which is just a fancy word of seeking the truth, dictates that each event be understood as an individual unit asserted on its own terms and according to its own unique development. So in the fast-flowing current of history events now move by like petrified wood, they don't drift in a particular pattern or direction so each discrete event has its own distinct properties and the aggregate of all of these events yields no coherent design and many people find this a downer. So if you want more revisiting history, historicism and its discontents in the German Jewish thought, he goes on to look at how four German Jewish thinkers at the Finde Säkele struggled with the challenge of historicism and how they each made up approaches that enabled them to dispense with historicism and retain faith in the superiority of their in-group, right? So the main reason people don't like historicism, the main reason people don't like the pursuit of truth is that you find out that your in-group is not so special, right? You may go into it thinking that you're just a wonderful in-group that we have the monopoly on salvation or where God shows in people, but if you just look at a strictly fact-based, historicist approach then then the illusions you have about how wonderful your in-group is just kind of fade away and then where are you going to build your identity? But if you're building your identity on the basis of you belong to this amazing in-group and then you find out that your in-group is deeply flawed like every other in-group it can be quite discouraging. So the historical study of religious origins of Judaism, Christianity, Islam will tend to eat away at the fundamentals of religious faith and then eat away at the fundamentals of religious practice. So one response is to recast your religion in philosophical terms, right? Or even rational terms. So conceive of the message or the divinity of your religion as let's say about divine redemption, but rather this is an exemplary human being, right? This is sort of a precursor to Goethe. So especially among liberal Protestant theologians there's a tendency to portray Christianity in general Protestantism in particular is the root and origin of modern liberal culture and generally speaking people who hate classical liberalism tend to have a quite negative reaction to Jews. I remember my stepmother was so shocked when her family moved to England from 1970 to 1972 and she went to church and for the first time she met an identifying Christian who did not believe in the Trinity. So one response to the challenge posed by seeking the truth, one response to the challenge posed by the critical historical approach to religious faith is what came to be called a dialectical theology or crisis theology and there were Protestant thinkers and Jewish thinkers who proposed this and what they all had in common was the rejection of true seeking, rejection of critical historical approaches to the Bible which they they see as linked to the project of reconciling religion with the existing political and cultural establishment and establishment they identify with the disaster of the First World War. So this group insists that interpreting the Bible must begin not from historical science but from faith, meaning feelings. So you'll notice with philosophers they tend always to be the last to the party because the basic, the basis for almost all philosophy is the individual philosopher's feelings. So they tend to be the last of the party keeping up with the latest developments in various currents of thought like the whole basis of philosophy of ethics of ethical philosophy tends to be the feelings of the particular philosopher. So anyway, the crisis theologians develop a strategy of simply ignoring historical investigations of the Bible that we're just going to forget about the truth. And they simply going to begin with unprovable and unquestionable assumptions about the validity of their faith and then they critique contemporary society from their feelings from an assumption of the validity of their faith. And this is what Godwood is doing. He simply assumes that what he's reading in the book of John is divine truth. It came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He, John, was not the light but came to bear witness about the light. The true light which gives light to everyone. Come on, guys. Professor Godwood is talking about the true light and you want to talk about the war in Ukraine. Ukraine is winning on Twitter, bro. So yeah, there's a great cartoon of two Russian tanks taking a break in Warsaw and the tank commanders are enjoying a cigarette and one says the other but we lost the information war. Man, you're not really engaging didn't you hear that video on social skills? You're not really engaging with these profundities that are just dropping from my lips like diamonds. And you just want to talk about how dating women is gay and how the alt-right is gay. Yeah, I reserve the apricot sky clips for the high energy nights. Small Mexican man literally weighs 100 pounds and is into Cat Boys. This is the number one white nationalist, bro. Friday evening I was expecting some apricot sky clips. I'm giving you something better, man. I'm giving you Professor Godwood on the Gospel of John. Dating is different. Dating women turns you more feminine. Dating women puts you more in touch with your feminine feelings. What kind of dating have you been doing, bro? Dating women makes me feel more masculine. Why is Ukraine getting wrecked so easily? I was told Russia was falling apart, bro. I'm confused. Well, they're both getting wrecked. Right? Sometimes there are no winners in war. Sometimes you just have two losers. Supreme Court just crashed the EPA. Yeah, it said that the EPA couldn't just go out and do what it wanted. It had to confine its activities to the activities that have been commissioned by Congress and approved by the president. Begging dudes is strad now. Your mic volume is low. It's hard to hear. Turn it up a little. Okay. Was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him. Really? You want all right content when you could be getting this, this gold from Professor Godwood? I mean, what's wrong with you? How come you never have Rodney on it? Oh, okay. I'll send out advice see if anyone wants to come on the show. Hang on. Yet the world did not know him. This is how we know that the first versus about logos are about Jesus, right? Because it's sort of saying the same thing. And now it's about him, the true light. It's going to be about Jesus. And John is just there to announce it. He came to this is an important part here. It says in verse 11, he came to his house and his own people did not receive him. What does that mean? It means he came to the Jewish people in Jerusalem and they rejected him or put another way. God came down to see his people in Jerusalem, just like Grand Inquisitor. And they said, get out of here essentially, right? Sad. And then it says, the next verse says, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Man, you want all right content when you could be getting this absolute, absolute gold? Now I can pay attention to the show because I can hear it, says the chat. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Jews swiped left on Jesus. Oh man. Cliff Medley is the master. All right. Terrific book here. Professor of the Apocalypse, The Many Lives of Jacob Talbus by Jerry E. Z. Mueller. Okay. So the foremost Protestant practitioner of this intellectual move of crisis theology is a Swiss theologian, Carl Bart, with whom Jacob Talbus studied in a puzzle. So Carl Bart described the secular realm as the realm of evil. All right. That which is secular is evil. He was perilously close to Gnosticism which is regarded as a heresy in mainstream Christianity. So the Gnostics believe in an absent God that this world where we live is just run by the devil. Carl Bart contends that Paulianism, so the works of the Apostle Paul have always stood on the brink of heresy. And as for the radicalism of his position, he argued it was wrong to disguise the dangerous element of Christianity. Are you guys ready to grapple tonight with the dangerous element of Christianity? Or are you just going to keep talking about cat boys? So Jacob Talbus raised an Orthodox Jew ordained an Orthodox rabbi was much taken by many of Carl Bart's themes. So the idea that the world was an evil place right that resonated with Talbus after the Holocaust perhaps the the manifest absence of God's presence in this world could somehow be harnessed as evidence for the need of a supernatural God. Perhaps religious faith could provide a platform from which to chastise the secular world and its failings. So religion is most authentic when it is most dangerous. And Paul like Professor Stevenson is a seminal figure, right? I was a seminal blogger. Professor Stevenson was a seminal musicologist pimp and Paul was a seminal figure who stood on the edge of heresy and Talbus would spend his whole life way over the edge of heresy. Another intellectual influence Jacob Talbus was Professor Emil Bruner. He also abdued a critical historical approach to faith but he placed a higher value on the role of human reason in perceiving God. Then there was Martin Buber. His work formed a draw. Heidegger, right? So Heidegger took up some tropes of Christian theology and translated them into secular terms. These include anxiety as the basic mode of human existence. The attempt to escape from that anxiety through the comforting embrace of common opinion and the demand for more authentic forms of commitment. So Heidegger would take the notion that man only attains meaning by confronting the nothingness of the world. That there's no ultimate grounding for our existence. And only once we face up to that can we find substantial meaning. So in the years leading up to 1933 and after 1933 Martin Heidegger hoped that national socialism would provide a vehicle for combining modern technology with collective purpose. People want collective purpose. Why? Because it's only through collective purpose that we get energy. If you completely lack connections you're going to completely lack energy. Our primary source for energy is connecting with other people forming a a synchronicity forming an exchange where you're in rhythm with other people. Like we are here. Like you're speaking to my heart. I'm speaking to your heart. We're in rhythm. It's like we're engaged in an intellectual dance here. This is more fun than Studio 54, right? We're engaged in a collective purpose of truth seeking. And because we're all engaged in this we're forming a bond and our bond like all bonds both ties us together and blinds us and creates an ethic. When you form bonds you always develop a morality that comes out of them. Heidegger eventually became disillusioned with Nazism so he turned to a criticism of the technological attitude toward the world which is the view of the world as nothing but material destined for human manipulation. So Heidegger contended the roots of this manipulative world view were deeply rooted in the culture of the West and that led to a forgetting of what he called a being. So are you feeling your being right now? The present age is one where technology has replaced meaning, right? The iPhone has replaced meaning and this theme also appeared to Jacob Talbus. So Talbus would try to replicate Heidegger's attempt to recapture the primary experience behind religious and philosophical texts and try to break up familiar Greek and German terms to try to recover their original meanings and the experiences that lay behind them. Another influence on Jacob Talbus was Max Weber's secularization. So Weber was interested in the displacement of religious beliefs, hopes, concepts, and practices from the religious to the secular sphere. So Jacob Talbus did his PhD dissertation on Western eschatology. He explored the secularizing, the removing of the religious faith component of eschatological hopes, eschatology, meaning what will happen at the time of the end. So eschatology is the doctrine of final things. It's about God's rule on earth. Man, you want me to play the National Justice Party, protesting in the real world? Dug on my mic. This is not good, Rose. Not good at all. But at least you can read my lips, right? And that will be particularly powerful for the podcast-only audience. So the Jews eschatology is linked inevitably to messianism, the coming of a collective savior. The age is going to put an end to Jewish exile in this world. Christianity, it's all about the return of Jesus in the final days. So a secular approach to this is can we have some kind of redemptive ending of history? Do we continue with our illusions? Or is this desire for redemption in this history, in this world, is this desire? Sure, it's irrational or non-rational, but as a provider, it's the emotional energy for radical change. So Talbus's perspective seems to be that, yeah, religious eschatology is not literally true, but it's useful in motivating us to engage in radical transformative action and it fills us with hope that there will be ultimate redemption. Now, real-world results will never match up to our faith-based expectations, but this motivation, this belief in redemption in history provides us with a motor to move history forward. So secularization, redemption, eschatology, are all terms that have multiple meanings and it's a very imprecision of these terms along with their suggestiveness that make it difficult to evaluate the claims entailed in their use. So this allows for endless and unresolvable debates about their meaning and significance and it's for this content that you come to this live stream. Then Karl Schmidt had a big effect on Jacob Talbus. So Karl Schmidt is led by experience and inclination toward a deep skepticism of classical liberalism, especially the ability of liberal conceptions to provide an adequate framework for political stability under contemporary conditions. So many people think democracy, dictatorship are opposites, but in truth, every dictatorship contains, every democracy contains considerable elements of dictatorship because there will always be situations where the rule of law is not adequate to meet the situation. There will always be states of exception and you're probably an erotic state of exception right now. I mean the excitement level I can sense is just peaking here in our holy community. So Karl Schmidt was steeped in Catholic critiques of secular liberalism. He was steeped in Catholic critiques of the Enlightenment and then his own life course, his own intellectual development led him away both from the institutional church and from Catholic doctrine. So during the Weimar Republic, Karl Schmidt published interpretations of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution which allowed for presidential assumption of emergency powers when necessary and so these provided the rationale for the use of these emergency powers first by the social democrat Friedrich Ebert and then by the conservative president Paul von Hinderberg and ultimately by Adolf Hitler. So Karl Schmidt's anti-liberalism is entwined with his anti-Semitism which he generally kept under wraps during the Weimar Republic when he first became a major figure on the German intellectual scene. But after Hitler's ascension to power, Schmidt through his support behind the new regime worked hard to become its crowned jurist, meaning it's leading legal thinker. So he not only wrote articles supporting the Hitler dictatorship but he organized a conference to rid German jurisprudence. That means the philosophy of law of its Jewish elements. Now he was thwarted in his goal by opposition from other Nazi jurists who attacked him for his previous contacts and friendships with Jews and for his lack of full conformity to Nazi ideology. Karl Schmidt was not really a biological racist. So what was Karl Schmidt's main critique of liberalism and this critique had a profound effect on Jacob Talbers. So Schmidt thought that liberalism had an overly benign and naive view of human affairs that it overestimated the extent to which government could function based on rules and procedures alone or politics on the basis of reasoned discussion. So life was too rough, too unruly for that. And liberalism with its rationalist bias that all problems can be resolved through discussion and following the rule of law, following proper procedures. He thought liberalism was intellectually inadequate and politically faulty because it failed to account for the fact that human nature is not good. There are always going to be exceptional situations in which sticking to existing laws and procedures is fatal, right? Such as in the case of an incipient civil war. So he says liberalism fails to recognize that there is a need for decisions that cannot be reduced to simply following approved procedures and the most important decision that may well need to be made in such a state of emergency is to declare we're in a state of emergency. We're in an exceptional situation, right? It's like the bloke who's a good bloke until he gets into an erotic state of emergency and then he is no longer such a good bloke because when the the penis stands up, the brain leaves. So for Carl Schmidt, the real meaning of sovereignty is when there's an individual or a body that is empowered to decide on the state of exception. So Schmidt claimed that all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are really secularized theological concepts. So he said there's an intrinsic connection between early modern deism, deism meaning God created the world, but then he let it run on its own in liberal constitutionalism. So just as deists believe that God created the world with his own laws that do not require further divine intervention in the form of miracles. So to liberalism, liberals believe that government can be constituted by a set of rules or procedures alone and just let it run. So just as deists deny the need for and the possibility of miracles, Enlightenment liberal thinkers believe that personal decisions and the suspension of legal rules have no place in a proper functioning state. So the obverse of this is there is a connection between the religious belief in miracles and the political sovereign's ability to suspend the normal constitutional rules. So Schmidt saw modern politics as locked in an iron cage of economic and technical modes of thought leading to a flaccid existence devoid of intensity, right? You're tired of living in this iron cage. You're tired of your flaccid existence. You come to the 40 show to get some intensity. And intensity is what I'm going to give you. That's us. That's the leavers, right? Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. That is to say your identity, your birth, is in this, in logos, in Christ, in the true light, okay? Truth. And then you're a child of truth. You're a child of God. And that designation is of course very sort of appointed, right? Because the Jews thought of themselves as God's people. But this claim is that we're God's people. Like anyone who believes in the name of Jesus. And by the way, this idea of the name has always been very interesting, a little bit mysterious to me. You know, in the, in like Chronicles and Kings or whatever, it talks about building a temple to the name of the Lord. It's a strange phraseology. I think it just sort of means, you know, God, right? Which is ineffable, hallowed be thy name and so on, continuing. And the word became. So you're thinking 40, this biography of Jacob Talbot sounds amazing. Share me some video of the author. Okay, his name is Jerry Z. Mueller. It failed to account for the fact that there were exceptional situations in which sticking to the existing laws and procedures might be fatal to the polity, as in the case of incipient civil war. Liberalism failed, according to Schmidt, failed to recognize that on such occasions, there was a need for decisions that could not be reduced to following approved procedures. And the most important decision that needed to be made was when such a state of emergency in Ausnahmet Zustand actually existed. So for Schmidt, that was the real meaning of sovereignty. What individual or what body was empowered to decide on the state of exception? Now that's not the part that interested Talbot. Schmidt tied this political argument to a historical one that particularly interested Jacob Talbot. Schmidt claimed, and I'm quoting here in English though, all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts. So he argued, for example, that there was an intrinsic connection between early modern deism and liberal constitutionalism. Just as the deists believed that God created the world with its own laws and didn't require further divine intervention in the form of miracles, so liberals believed that government could be constituted by a set of rules and procedures alone. And just as deists denied the need for or the possibility of miracles, enlightened thinkers and their liberal heirs believed that personal decision and the suspension of legal rules had no place in a proper functioning state. The flip side of this for Schmidt was that there was some sort of analogy, and Schmidt was very vague on what this was, between the religious belief in God's ability to perform miracles and the political sovereign's ability to intervene and suspend the normal institutional rules. As so often in Karl Schmidt's writings, Schmidt's arguments about the links between theology and political concepts were more suggestive than precise, and that made them both stimulating and fodder for debate and discussion. So for example, in the many years later, when Hans Blumenberg could write a book-long refutation of what Blumenberg took to be Schmidt's thesis in Blumenberg's book, to which Karl Schmidt replied in his book, Politische Theologie Zweig, that no, that wasn't what he meant. All right, let's get back to this great book by Jerry Z. Mueller on Professor of Apocalypse and Many Lives of Jacob Talbus. So another thinker that influenced Jacob Yachov Talbus is Karl Loet in his secularization of eschatology. So Loet maintained that early in the 19th century, Goethe and Hegel developed a sort of halfway house between Christianity and secularism. So Goethe practiced a Christian paganism and Hegel attempted to retain the symbols of Christianity while radically reinterpreting them. So Hegel preserved elements of Christian eschatology, such as the belief in the redemptive power of history. So a lot of German intellectuals who lost their Christian faith developed a new faith in the redemptive power of history. So Hegel translated Christian teachings about the end times into a philosophy of world history as a story of increasing freedom and human self-realization. And this is a very common belief now that we're just becoming progressively more and more free. Now trans people are free and soon the polyamorous will be free. Like we're just ever expanding the realm of human freedom and human self-realization. So Hegel tried to unite antiquity and Christianity, guiding the world, the internal and the external, being and existence. And after Hegel, this attempt of mediating between these alternatives basically fell apart. So the rest of German intellectual history in the 19th century is a series of reactions against Hegel, culminating on the one hand in Karl Marx's radical rejection of bourgeois society. And on the other hand, you get Soren Körkegaard's radical rejection of any attempt to bridge the gap between Christian faith and the existing world. And Körkegaard's insistence upon the necessity of deciding between these alternatives. Then another thing is Ernst Bloch. So Marx noted that Marx rejected religion as the opium of the masses. But Bloch was fascinated by religion as a source of utopian longing and hope. So then there was Hans Jonas, a scholar of Gnosticism. So Gnosis is Greek for knowledge, and it denotes some secret or esoteric knowledge about the world. So Gnosticism turns the traditional Jewish notion of a providential creation on its head. The world as we know it is indeed a creation, says the Gnostics, but it is a world of evil created by an evil deity. So the possibility of a better world is open to those who recognize the current one as saturated with evil, which as much of my audience believes that this world is just absolutely saturated with evil. I look outside like two blokes can look outside, one sees mud and the other sees stars. Like two men looked out from prison bars, one sees mud and the other stars. So I see human beings as capable of great good and great evil. Other people just get depressed by all the evil around us. So in the Christian perspective, Gnosticism was heresy dating back to the second century, guarded as so heretical that its literary works were destroyed. And the only thing we really know about ancient Gnosticism is gleaned from attacks on it by Christian theologians. So Hans Jonas argued that Gnosticism arose in a number of societies in ancient Mediterranean about 2000 years ago and it arose because these societies faced a common experience that made the Gnostic myths and doctrines so appealing. So what led to the rise of Qanon? It was frustration with reality. And this eschatological hope that a much better time was coming when Donald Trump would put all the child abusers in prison. Guys, you're not really keeping up with these brilliant insights. I'm just not seeing a lot of resonance in the chat. So Hans Jonas wanted to recover the feelings, the perceptions, and the fundamental attitudes towards the world of the adherents of Gnostic doctrines. So for the Gnostics, the world is evil. Creation of an evil deity. There's an evil deity that made this world. And so their fundamental experience of the world was of being aliens in the world. Do you feel lonely, anxious, not understand what's going on? Do you feel not understood by those around you? Well, that's because this world's evil. So the Gnostic felt that without proper awareness, he would fall prey to forgetting his essential alieness that he would become assimilated into the world of evil. So Professor Godwood talks about how every white collar job is a scam and is basically satanic. And he doesn't want to forget his essential alieness from this world. He doesn't want to assimilate into the world of evil white collar work. He doesn't want to get alienated from his real origins, which lay in a much better and transcendent realm. So the first step toward real wisdom, Professor Godwood would argue just like the Gnostics, is to recognize that one is an alien in this world. And this is really a sign of your superiority to everyone else. So you're an alien in this world. You come from a much better transcendent realm, and you have a longing to return to the higher transcendent realm. So this Gnosis is a revolutionary doctrine. But it's not so revolutionary that it intends to overthrow the existing order of society and replace it with another. But there is this wholesale devaluation of the world as it is, and a replacement of reality with a fantasy world, a counterworld, an alternative interpretation of reality, the real God. Not the God's embraced by our fallen world, but the real God is out there, and ultimately redemption will come from him. So this results in a cosmic nihilism, an allegiance to a deity who is nothing, and a way of life that drives its meaning through negating reality. So those who have the consciousness of the true spirit, like Professor Godwood, they know the score, and they are able to break free of existing society and its norms. They're able to see through the BS, man. You notice this with a lot of people who spent time in insane asylums, that they see through the bullshit. They don't buy the conspiracy theories that everyone else buys into. They understand that the world around us is not as we see it, but there's something much darker and more sinister going on. They see through the bullshit. They reject this fallen world. They feel in their heart that they come from a much better, more transcendent realm. They long to return to that transcendent realm. They have consciousness of the truth, and so they are ready to be free. Let me break free of this world. Stupid, boring, white collar jobs. Let me just deny this society and its norms, because it's all corrupt and gay. Now, on the one hand, this can lead to moral anarchism and libertinism, because you can then go from there to do anything, and then it can possibly lead to new forms of self-denial and asceticism. So it's all based on this higher knowledge. Other people just see tawdry reality. We see the truth. What you get a lot from Professor Godwood right now is kind of a disdain for this world and its wisdom. These pneumatics, meaning people, eerie people, they see themselves as forming a privileged aristocracy, a new type of human free of the obligations and standards of existing society. White collar work, man, that's stupid and evil. I don't have to do that. So there's an unrestrained freedom now, leading to a sanctification of the sacrilege. So this type of character glories in demonstrating his distinction from the rest of society through his actions. Right? So there's a deliberate flouting of social conventions. This is kind of a declaration of war against the world as it is. So Professor Godwood seems mild-mannered. What's going on here? Professor Godwood is at war with the world as it is, and he is showing his disdain with his cloud of Turin filter. Flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Parenthetical verse 15, John bore witness about him and cried out, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, semi-colon, which is to say, correlationally, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Right? You really think the National Justice Party out there in the street protesting is more compelling content than Professor Godwood's commentary on the Gospel of John? I mean, what's wrong with you, bro? What's wrong with you? Okay, another figure who inferenced Yachov Talbus, the professor of the Apocalypse was Gershom Sholom. So to the pneumatic, the spiritual universe, which he inhabits, is an entirely different order from the world of ordinary flesh and blood. Right? So he lives by God's laws, not the laws of men. He is above sin. Me do as the spirit dictates. He doesn't have to take into account the moral standards of the fallen society around him. If anything, he is duty bound to violate and subvert this ordinary morality in the name of the higher principles that have been revealed to him. So I think this is what's going on with Professor Godwood these days. That's my interpretation, just based on the public persona. I have no secret knowledge of the real man behind the public persona. So Talbus claimed that beneath its rational and scientific sounding conceptual structure, Karl Marx's thought, Karl Marx's socialism, had an irrational charge that accounted for its appeal. So when Karl Marx says the coming of socialism is just historically inevitable, this is a non-rational leap of faith, just like the Christian and the Jew have their non-rational leaps of faith. So this idea that Karl Marx discovered the natural laws of history that give you insights into a more desirable social order makes no sense rationally, empirically. That only makes sense if you believe there is a divine plan for the world leading to a pre-established harmony. So otherwise it's just incomprehensible why the triumph of the material process should not lead to ultimate meaningless or slavery or anarchy or anything but communism. So for Jacob Talbus, Marx's arrest ultimately on a core of apocalyptic belief on a search for certainty that when the end of the current world arise in the beginning of a new and better one will then commence. So like other apocalyptics, meaning people who focus on the end of the world, Karl Marx sees history is divided in two between the evil realm of necessity which Professor Godwood wants to reject and the realm of freedom and justice that the ultimate truth, communism or Christianity or whatever your ultimate truth is, that the kingdom of God is out there or if you're secular, it's the kingdom of God without God. So the whole power of Marxism rests upon a theory of human salvation and the messianic vocation of the worker. So Marx like every major thinker has time bound and timeless elements but amid all the scientific talk in Marx there is a will, a hope, a non-rational longing that is eternal. It is the eternal longing of fallen man for redemption. Right? Are you a fallen man? Are you longing for redemption? So Jacob Talbus published his doctoral dissertation Occidental Eschatology at age 23. It was the first and the last book he would publish in his lifetime and it's a mishmash. It begins in the mode of 1920s existentialist expressionism then moves to a more academic genre of history of religion then concludes with some vague religious admonitions. Very from culture to culture. Norms of social distance are culture specific but in America it's about 12 to 18 inches so keep your distance. If you enter into that distance then people will feel violated that you're violating their personal space. If you stay three feet away when you're talking to someone they're going to think you're weird because that's too far away to be standing for an ordinary conversation unless you're in a group when the norms are for slightly greater distances and higher volumes and so on. So again study what you see in socially skilled people make those judgments and copy those social distances too much or too little distance will make you seem weird. Number three poor oral hygiene or poor general hygiene there's no way to say it maybe you smell maybe your breath is really bad maybe your body odor is really bad and here again there are culturally specific norms. In America there are these norms about showering every day that the smell of the human body in America is taboo you shouldn't smell your breath shouldn't smell your body shouldn't smell you should shower once a day and have all sorts of perfumey soap and deodorant and stuff like that on. In other parts of the world the normal smells of the human body are more acceptable and the norms about breath or body odor are different if you've traveled around the world you'll realize this because the people smell differently in different parts of the world but in America if you have if you don't brush your teeth if you don't use mouthwash and you come close to people they can smell your breath and it's really bad they are going to think you're unclean and they may then make other inferences about you being a strange isolated person that they don't want to interact with. So in America you can't have obvious body odor you can't have halitosis bad breath you've got to brush your teeth use mouthwash chew gum use breath mints and you've got to clean yourself you can't have perspiration. Okay great video here stop being socially awkward 10 behaviors that make you look weird and this is from a professor of communication just absolute gold that I'm sharing with you. All right let's go back to talking about Leo Strauss. So Leo Strauss probably the easiest way to understand his thought he wanted to create a world that was safe for Jews he was a secular person and he was an atheist but he believed that regular people should be religious and so he said that intellectuals have long recognized that they cannot out loud say that which is true so they always have to hide their teachings. So he had a whole cadre of followers who became many of the leading neoconservatives who helped lead us into the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last 20 years so his students reflected upon the political functions of religion but they were not generally inclined to investigate actual religious experience in the neighborhoods around the University of Chicago but Talbus by contrast was religiously adept so he had an interest in he had a taste for he had an ability to empathize with a wide range of religious experience so he gave the Straussians a novel encounter when he suggested they attend a Sunday service at a local African American church so Talbus says why does theology exist? Why do we need this systematic exposition of the nature of God a religious doctrine because with changes in circumstance and consciousness that's rendered the central doctrine symbols and myths of faith less plausible so modern theology is an attempt to make traditional religious doctrine symbols and myths plausible once again but there are major stumbling blocks to any such enterprise so theology Jacob Talbus posited arises out of religious crisis right so first of all you have the experience then eventually people write it down and then there comes a movement to create laws out of that experience right we have experiences you and I are having the experience right now out of this experience we form a bond out of that bond we form a morality and ethic so this is true for you and I so for you and me and it's true for people in general people a nation a tribe has certain experiences those experiences bond them together out of those bonds comes a morality an ethic and stories about how the world works out of the experiences and bondings then come certain forms of morality then when people start writing things down you get sacred scripture this is just a purely secular approach to to scripture and then you see that a nation cannot live just by scripture alone you need detailed laws so you have a people number one number two you have experiences number three out of those experiences your people forms a connection and a common common ways of viewing reality out of these bonds comes an ethic a morality which gets written down and that forms sacred text for your group but the sacred text is never adequate for governing your group you need detailed laws and then as time goes by and you're interacting with other groups you may discover that some of the stories in your tradition look pretty silly so then you are incentivized to philosophize or theologize you are incentivized to try to make rational sense out of the traditions of your people and that's when you get ever more abstract philosophy and theology and so as philosophy and theology develops it becomes ever more abstract like ever getting closer and closer to mathematics and it becomes ever more self-referential like it becomes ever more aware how the position of the observer is an integral part of the data it becomes ever more reflexive right those are the inevitable trends of theology and philosophy and intellectual movements right so theology arises out of religious crises where the same old stories are no longer cutting it the the symbols and the stories and the sacred texts that at one time were a dramatic expression of your group's human encounter with God have seemed to have lost their plausibility in their original form so theology comes when a mythical configuration breaks down and its symbols are congealed into a canon and come into conflict with a new stage of man's consciousness so you have an experience you form a bond you develop stories about what happened you write it down you say this is how our group realized we were the center of the universe and then the stories that you develop they seem to come into conflict with a new stage in the group's consciousness so when the symbols and stories and teachings and laws that have developed to you know make sense of reality and no longer cutting it when when the ways that you've understood your special connection with God with the universe right and no longer working then you need intellectuals you need theologians or philosophers to try to interpret the original symbols and stories and laws in ways to integrate them within the context of a new situation right so you are going to re-present the myth in a new theological interpretation you got to re-present the story in a new interpretation but the result of this reinterpretation is always paradoxical on the one hand the original symbols are preserved by being reinterpreted so for example in 10th, 11th, 12th century Arabic the Arabs and the Muslims they were very much into the Greek philosophers they brought back the power of Greek philosophy and so the Christian church and Jewish rabbis tried to reinterpret their religion so that it would conform to Aristotelian philosophy so you had the challenge of secular Greek philosophy and Christians and Jews then reinterpreted their religion in the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th century in in ways so that it would conform with the new current intellectual trend of Greek philosophy so you reinterpret and that way you preserve your original teachings procedures stories scriptures laws practices rituals right you preserve the feeling that you're special in the universe on the other hand by reinterpreting the original symbols are understood in a new way that fit your new stage of consciousness but then when your culture and consciousness changes again existing interpretations are once again experienced as inadequate this creates a demand for a new theological reinterpretation of the original symbols stories scriptures teachings of the faith so when theology can no longer provide an interpretation that is experienced as plausible then the symbols lose their horn and die and so this according to people like Jacob Talbus is what's happened to much of Christianity and Judaism 40 is too intellectual you want me to talk about baked Alaska being on Ed Dutton yeah 40 one year at university at UCLA took poor maths, mathematics, physics and Albert Einstein 40 is pure quantum physics in my experience 99% of the time when I hear someone talking about quantum physics it means they're a charlatan all Aristotle would have had to do is claim that his writings were given to him by God and it would be considered a religion all right this is gripping stuff right I've blown your mind I mean I'm a humble guy I don't want to make claims that are not true you can tell me no 40 you haven't blown my mind it's just it's just another day it's just another Friday before the 4th of July right so what's the role you're asking yourself what's the what's the particular role of theology in Christianity and Talbus says well it goes back to the New Testament itself because in the beginnings of the story of the people who became known as Christians right there was this teaching that the end of the world was at hand so the these end of the world expectations of the people who became known as the first Christians right these expectations went unfulfilled and have gone unfulfilled for the past 2000 years so the the community that became known as Christian was thrown into history against their expectations against their will right and they struggled with how do we maintain our end of time symbols and teachings and beliefs of faith with man's continuing existence in this historical fallen world so theology was of vital importance to Christians from the very beginning as opposed to Jews where you did not get systematic theology for 2200 years after Mount Sinai right not until Maimonides proposed a series of dogmas for what every Jew should believe right Judaism was thousands of years old by that time so it was not until you get a code 13 central principles of the Jewish faith proposed by Maimonides in the 13th century this is the first you know widely discussed series of teachings of Jewish dogma so Jewish life does not tend to revolve around theology Jews tend to argue about theology Jews tend to argue about ritual practices and what's going on in this world in the pursuit of justice in this world so Christian theology has been the essence of the Christian experience from day one and it's always having to reinterpret its symbols such as the incarnation of Christ and man salvation the end of days in the light of changing historical circumstances so in the process of transforming an Adventist sect so the early Christians were Adventist Adventist means belief in the soon coming of Jesus I grew up a 7th Adventist 7th Adventist believed very intensely that Jesus was about to come back while other Christians had a little more relaxed attitude towards that so Christianity developed from being an Adventist sect meaning a small group of people awaiting the imminent coming of the Messiah in the end of days and it developed from that into a universal church so Christianity during that transition from Adventist sect to universalist church had to come to terms with this world and in effect it became profoundly secularized so all relation to external reality just breaks down if you take certain passages of the New Testament and dead earnest if you take your religion in dead earnest right in 2022 you're going to have a lot of problems you have to continually reinterpret re-understand your religion to navigate life in 2022 right if you take your religion in dead earnest then the world around you is an incredibly strange and alien place which is what Professor Godwood is experiencing so as the church moved from Adventist sect to universal church it had to mitigate and obscure these original Christian experiences of feeling totally alienated from this world and so over the past 2000 years the Christian church has increasingly come to peace with this world right they've transformed from an originally you know a nihilistic Adventist impulse into having a positive and pro-social and political orientation to this world so there is this perennial conflict between the basic texts of faith in the New Testament and then subsequent Christian theology and commentary on these basic texts it's a conflict between the eschatological symbols meaning the symbols about the end of time and the brutal fact that we live in continuing history history rolls on bro and a religion that you understand is no longer a religion for you right once you feel like you understand your religion you have stepped outside your religion so here's a thought theology must remain incognito in the realm of the secular and work incognito for the sanctification of the world so secular people by and large don't want to hear about theology so theology to be effective in this world according to this one perspective it kind of must remove the religious element the divine element of theology and kind of go underground to work for the improvement of this world so Jacob Talbus wrote about Judaism the same way he wrote about Christianity from the perspective of an external scholarly analyst so Talbus took for granted the results of modern scholarly inquiry that the Torah the Pentateuch was comprised of multiple sources composed by multiple authors so divine revelation at Mount Sinai just like the Christian doctrine of the incarnation was a mythical symbol his continuous reinterpretation was subject to scholarly analysis at the same time Talbus didn't want to just remain outside the dance analyzing it he also wanted to be in the dance he loved and longed for Jewish religious practice so for the high holidays in September 1955 he ventured to the Hasidic enclave of Williamsburg in Brooklyn to pray with the Satmar Rebbe Joel Titanbaum he said in a letter this is the only place where I can pray I get ill of the modern services in Williamsburg life and death is at stake in prayer even if I can only participate as an outsider I am more inside there than where I could belong according to my status in some liberal service yeah so it's a whole different experience when you pray when you worship when you hang out with people who feel that life and death is at stake in prayer creation that really smells or any other kind of body odor or the strong odor of food may not be fair may not be realistic and various from culture to culture but these are the norms in America and if you violate them you're going to be seen as weird number four lack of a filter you say taboo things that is you use profanity when you shouldn't you talk about religion or politics in ways which offend people you have no filter you say exactly what you think without regard to politeness or appropriateness to the situation or decorum or respect or poise or dignity you lack those things you have no filter you just say whatever's on your mind without regard to relevance or appropriateness and if you act that way without any filter people are going to think you're weird the norms of human behavior the norms of human communication dictate that you avoid certain taboo topics yeah guys let's let's stay away from the taboo topics you've debated Jones would you be willing to debate the craning issue with for example Eric striker oh striker absolutely he's a terrible debater I would make absolute mincemeat out of him I would like to debate somebody who's good at debating on this issue frankly but if it was for a good cause I would definitely debate striker and I guess it's a good cause because I'd like to I'd like to clean our movement out of these these russia shields who are an embarrassment to us all so somebody on gab the other day asked me if I have heard that the recent rant about me Greg Johnson on trs and wish to respond and my reaction to that was you know you know there was a time when I used to really like these people I used to really respect them I introduced them to my friends I promoted them at counter currents I tried to be as helpful as I could why because I thought they were talented I thought they were interesting I thought they were entertaining somebody like striker I've never respected I think he's contemptible he can't talk for five minutes without lying he just resorts to lies not as a last resort as a first resort I think he's mentally unstable in some way because he seems like a lot of people that I've encountered this movement who are basically paranoid and then have this this chugging psychological obsession with seeing the worst in everything and they seem to have no compunction about making up stuff to fit their narratives just on the spot and it's breathtaking when you see it I've seen enough of it to find it repulsive and I don't think people like this are useful at all because I think telling the truth is the most important thing that we can do I don't think having liars and fantasists in the mix really helps but if it's for a good cause I would even debate that guy so that's a good question thank you very much another guy wrote to me today on telegram and he said did I really say that the national justice party is a grift okay this might be related to the rant that was reported on or not my response was basically this and I think this is important because it's a way that uncritically repeating propaganda can damage your credibility and the credibility of your organizations and your movement it's a lesson in keeping it honest and not contradicting yourself one of the things coming out of striker's mouth and another thing that I've seen Mike Enoch asserting is a made in Moscow talking point that I heard starting in 2014 not so innocently passing on Russian talking points these talking points were made in Moscow they're Russian talking points designed to appeal to people in our milieu I started seeing this in 2014 and it's all back a lot of the same suspects are saying it we're actually gonna gloss over an event because we're mostly here to talk about this event have you debated in the mentoring candidate or the Truman show in order to exploit them politically like passing an unconstitutional domestic terrorism bill right after Buffalo uh yeah I think it's conceivable uh I don't know if it's true right about FBI involvement in nationalist causes and the trouble is that there really are people like Peyton Gendron who really are genuine white nationalists you know they're in they're concerned with the things that we're concerned with and they just make a very dumb mistake and do the shooting thing now some people have suggested that maybe what we have here is a case of people who are profoundly disturbed ticking time bombs first and then they latch on to our movement as a sort of after-the-fact rationalization for doing that kind of stuff that's possible too I would need to see evidence of that the truth is though that there are genuine people who do this kind of stuff and therefore if they're genuine people who do this kind of stuff the the government doesn't need to manufacture them however if these people didn't exist yes they probably would manufacture them I just don't see that we get anything politically by speculating about this in in the absence of fact I do not think that we gain anything by being people who immediately start saying it's a false flag it's like it's it's fake it's fake why is it helpful to just deny the reality of certain things upfront I just don't get it it's an expression of the fact you don't trust the establishment yeah fine I don't trust the establishment either but I don't accuse them of lying and hoaxing without actual evidence of that just because these people are capable of anything doesn't mean that you have evidence of them doing this particular thing right so I just think we need to wait and see about this there will be a trial almost certainly the more stuff will come out right this is Thomas Baden so I've been having to think about different things and I've decided to write a poem so I'm just going to read it out now it's called smelly mewn ferts by Keith Woods the only philosopher in the distant right the only guy that understands her plate surrounded by grug brains haven't read lyrics screechy right wingers complain about the dirks trying to lighten them trying to explain but it's the last cause because they ain't got my big brain reading nature and quoting their frame my fans think I'm a genius a phenomenon analysing a political essay by discards coming on a stream and smelling mewn ferts I'm sick of conspiracy terrorists ruining my cred I'm a hipster leftist and I wouldn't be seen dead but a Q and an alat who don't have my big brain and who ruin our movement like the cold and the rain they take a load of nonsense and I'm not impressed and they don't wear turtlenecks and they're never well dressed they take about Schwab and I'm laughing at me airs the reaction to covid was nothing but affairs the elites aren't trying to kill you the anti-scientific fools they obviously haven't understood the science that they teach you in schools why don't you trust the lab rats who are actually qualified stop taking bollocks and let's concentrate on weight genocide now the biden war crisis is going from bad to worse tonight as drug cartels human smugglers and human traffickers continue to exploit the poorest southern border for their own gain at the expense of american sovereignty and at the expense of the lives of migrants this week four men were charged in a human smuggling operation that left over 50 migrants dead in a tractor trailer in southwest san Antonio a sickening discovery that puts into perspective the disaster that is the biden border policy now meanwhile yesterday the supreme court ruled five to four in favor of biden allowing the administration to end the highly successful trump era remain in mexico policy that prompted texas attorney general ken paxton to respond i am disappointed in the supreme court allowing biden to dissolve the remain in mexico program one of our last and best protections against the democrats border crisis and ken paxton joins us now thank you sir i i have to say but might not like this but this is you know so i met temmie bruce once and then she was giving a speech to one of david horowitz's groups and then i went home and wrote a glowing blog post about it how she was like such a strong woman that i just wanted to kind of rest my head on her shoulder and she emailed me and said that you know i could you know spiritually rest my head on her shoulder anytime so good old temmie she she was so nice in person just and she was so nice over email the supreme court can be right technically that a new administration can reverse what another administration did and that they're not making a decision based on the importance of of the impact but isn't it true that with biden the things that have at least kept his administration from being a complete disaster have been the trump plans and policies and regulations that they continue to reverse i mean this is going to be a disaster not only for the country now but i think even more so for the democrats yeah you couldn't be more right i mean if romain amexio is gone and by the way we part of trafficking and now mass death uh this is what the biden's policies that delivered not only to us but to the migrants themselves absolutely look at alc is probably the least smart congresswoman congressperson history congress once you every time she talks about immigration she's wrong but the body the biden policies they keep going out in tautan that trump policies are inhumane their policies are humane well let's not let's break that down more migrants have died on the first year joe biden at any time in my 35 year career 700 now add 53 to that and two more today down to real grand valley yeah so more migrants have died over 100 000 americans have died from drugs that come across that border dea says 95 percent of fentanyl comes across southwest border because the border shows overstretching 70 percent of them are off the mine fentanyl is coming across the border joe biden has made current criminal cartels richard and it ever been people are dying because of his policies they're not humane and i have this people want to see trump's policy inhuman i work with president trump very closely when you have illegal immigration down 83 to 90 percent when you have illegal immigration at a 40 year low how many women aren't being raped how many children aren't dying how many migrants are dying how many u.s citizens aren't dying from drug overdoses his policies save lives well represented big and that's what we're getting back to here i think that when you see what's going on the nature of the the the the soul crushing horror that these people are put through uh as we see in every democrat city and clearly now here also at the border uh what do you think has been key when it comes to what the democrats have done as this is an unforced error reversing everything president trump did which saved lives across the board well they've been obsessed with unpacking what president trump did and president trump's policies were so successful and so that's why you get democrats right now we're saying hey wait a second i'm going to be held accountable for joe biden's bad policies and i don't want to be held accountable and so i would urge those people like representative quayer just come to the floor of the house i actually have a bill that would keep title uh mpp in place remaining mexico in place chip royce got one that would be title 42 we're trying to take it out of the speaker's drawer she's got a hidden there if he would come over with four five six other democrats great point don't like these policies we could actually revert back to the policies uh that we're working so well under donald trump that's so don't just talk the talk walk the walk with us rip quayer you know i mean because there are things it seems like there's nothing they can do but in fact it is a pretty close split you can just bring a few people over who care if they really care about the lives of migrants shouldn't they do exactly what you've suggested that is exactly what needs to happen here gentlemen thank you very much for being here with me tonight appreciate it now straight ahead the left covet lunacy continues okay thanks thanks tammy thank you thank you for being part of our community just shedding ever more and more and more circles of of light and of love in a cold cruel and cynical world so have a good shabbos take care