 here. So internet blood sports are great in the sense that you often get a really good fix of somebody's character when they're under pressure and through my three years of almost daily live streaming I've been engaged in constant debates and it's disheartening to see how out of touch with reality many people are that they have frequently people who come on the show just so frequently have this massively exaggerated sense of their own importance and there's this one story in the news here that touches on something more important remember the late Christian evangelist Ravi Zacharias so there's a good story about him in the Washington Post but here's a pattern I've always noticed people who exaggerate their credentials that's always just the tip of the iceberg so I don't know many exceptions to that I just don't know people who otherwise find upstanding honest but they just so happen to exaggerate their credentials I just don't see that it it seems to always be people who exaggerate their credentials that they are fundamentally dishonest there's something fundamentally rotten with them at their core there's a statement in the Talmud that you can tell somebody's character by what they like when they're drunk what they're like when they're angry and how they use their money so you can you can tell someone's character often through internet blood sports because you're gonna get triggered because somebody's gonna say something you think is unfair or incorrect and then how do you conduct yourself so I've been stunned when when I encounter people on these live streams who pronounce you know vast judgments on books they've never even read and again this is to me is always just the tip of the iceberg this is just like the 10% of the iceberg that's above the surface it's always indicative of some you know huge your character floor but there's just this little bit showing over the service which is credential exaggeration you know importance exaggeration leading to you know vast sweeping pronouncements on things that people don't know much about and it's fascinating the extent to which people are willing to suffer for a feeling of being important so how much would you be willing to give up so that you could give a prestigious answer to the question so what do you do right so I know for much my adult life is really important to me to give a prestigious answer to that question so what you do so I gloried in being able to say oh I'm a writer I'm an actor I'm an Alexander Technique teacher and and I know a lot of other people like that that they're willing to they're willing to you know run their own businesses and earn half the income that they would make if they were simply willing to be an employee willing to be a worker among workers right so all sorts of people are running their own businesses who really have no reason no rational business reason for operating their own business JP Morgan released a report in 2016's that said the average small business in the United States had only 27 days of cash reserves on hand now I'm not an entrepreneur but it seems to me that any small business that only has 27 days of cash reserves on hand is not a serious business so if that report is accurate and if I'm right that a business that only has 27 days of cash reserves on hand it's not a serious business then that indicates that most small businesses in America are vanity projects that people so yearn to be able to give a prestigious answer to the question so what do you do it's like oh I run a yoga studio or I own a coffee shop or I own a bookstore or I own a theater or I'm a vlogger or I make my living on YouTube or whatever whatever the delusion is right so a lot of people get incredibly deformed by their need to feel like a star right they need to feel like a star for themselves and then to present to others that they're special right so perhaps one one measure of one's destructive level of narcissism is to what extent are you willing to endure deprivation so that you can feel like a star such as you tell people that you own your own business or that you're engaged in some you know prestigious pursuit so would you be willing to take half as much income to be able to answer what you do for a living in some way that you imagine is prestigious or that makes you feel special unique like like a star I mean a lot of people they end up spending more money than they make in on their various business ventures like they spend all this money on webmasters and maybe videos and marketing and promotion and it's all just money spent trying to pump up their egos like people pursuing acting like they're people in Los Angeles who in pursuing an acting career for three decades and they're still spending hundreds of dollars a shot to get new photos for their acting portfolio so even though over three decades of pursuing acting they spent more money pursuing acting than they've earned acting now that's fine if you can afford it like I loved being in the acting world for about 15 months I pursued acting and it was fun it was a fun experience I got to meet a lot of beautiful young women it was it was exciting it challenged me I learned new skills so it was a good time so if pursuing acting as a hobby right and and your clear-eyed that this is just a fun hobby then there's nothing wrong with spending more on it than you bring in but a lot of people are willing to to just suffer great deprivation just so that they can tell themselves that they're a star and meanwhile their peers who are no more intelligent no more credentialed and may not even work harder but because they're willing to forego this delusion of being a star and because they're willing to forego the need to sound prestigious they're just simply willing to be a worker among workers and and your peers will just vastly excel you and I'm speaking to myself here like my my need to be a star has dramatically deformed my life probably more than anything my need to be a star counts for why I'm a 54 year old bachelor with no kids and no savings for retirement instead I've just you know pursued you know my delusions to to extreme levels 22 wait 23 23 and a half 24 years of blogging and here I am hmm I didn't have some refreshing crystal light classic orange tastes so good so interesting article here in the the Washington Post evangelist Ravi Zacharias taught his followers to ask tough questions just not about his sexual conduct so there was a boy growing up in Canada Daniel Gilman Love Church as a college philosophy student he asked himself his God just an inspiring fairy tale does he exist and it was a celebrity evangelist and Ravi Zacharias who filled Daniel Gilman with confidence that it was possible to be an intellectual believer in a God who's real so what happens what does it say about you if you get taken in by a confidence man what does it say about you if you get taken in by a Christian apologist who's who's a serial liar and Philander I doesn't say anything about you I think it does so in my experience most people who do the type of public apologetics or outreach for their religion like a Ravi Zacharias or the Jewish versions they're invariably corrupt right in my experience the more charismatic the rabbi the more likely they are to be corrupt the more the rabbi specializes in outreach the more likely he is to be a sexual predator so Daniel Gilman became a minister with Ravi Zacharias as global 36 million dollar a year ministry built around a true seeking evidence exploring question and answer style of evangelism court apologetics so maybe I have a bit of a burn on my shoulder against Christian apologetics because starting in about third grade my father the Christian evangelist had me read 30 to 40 pages of Christian apologetics usually densely textured you know quite quite demanding materials and type of one-page summary to prove that I read and understood these 30 to 40 pages so over the course of about three years I learned all the intellectual reasons for why Christianity was true but at the same time had developed an enormous emotional hatred for Christianity because this time reading apologetics took me away from spending time with my friends but I mean the good thing about it is I learned to touch type so Daniel Gilman notes Ravi Zacharias says if evil is a category there must be good okay that seems logical if there is good and evil then there must be a moral law yeah if there is a moral law there must be a moral lawgiver okay so that all makes sense but now independent investigators hired by Zacharias's ministry is set Wednesday to release a report detailing serious sexual misconduct by the iconic Christian apologist until his death of cancer at age 74 in May Ravi Zacharias has been one of the best-known figures of American Christian radio and TV for decades so what does it say about the state the moral state the intellectual state of American Christian radio and TV that this lying Philander has been so successful in this genre my father used to teach college in Australia then he was transferred to Pacific Union College in California and when he shifted from Australia to California he had to assign half as much homework because his American students could not handle the homework that he gave his Australian students because in Australia leased up through the 1980s only about 5% of the population ended up going to University same with England while in America about 50% of the population and another thing my father told me about American Christianity is the Christianity in America is a mile wide and an inch deep so Mike Penn said at a memorial for Ravi Zacharias God gave us the greatest apologist of this century then White House spokeswoman Kelly McEnany broke down in tears on Christian TV talking about Ravi Zacharias the man who made it so people didn't feel they had to check their brain at the door as a Christian now Ravi Zacharias is accused of sexually harassing multiple massage therapist who worked in the 2000s at two D sparse he owned in the Atlanta suburbs so big warning sign if you're religious spiritual moral leader and massage businesses might be a bit of warning sign but another really obvious warning sign about someone is if they exaggerate their accomplishments and their credentials I always notice that this is accompanied by just a whole slew of other moral problems because the people have such a need to feel special right that's what narcissism isn't overwhelming need to feel special and to be recognized for being special and that in inevitably starts to deform people so the allegations were first reported in September by San Francisco lawyer Steve Borman who runs a YouTube channel called friendly banjo atheist so I notice in my disputes and debates that my harshest critics frequently just absolutely valuable because they'll frequently give me more more hard truths than say my my strongest and deepest friends so it's good to have critics so I welcome critics on this channel don't welcome abuse but I welcome welcome criticism because accurate criticism makes me better it makes this channel better okay investigators said in a brief interim report released in December they found significant credible evidence that Ravi Zacharias engaged in sexual misconduct over the course of many years so what's weird is when you have a powerful charismatic man who does not engage in sexual misconduct the reason that most men don't engage in sexual misconduct is that they don't have the opportunity but when you you are rich and powerful and charismatic in your public speaker you have a lot more opportunity for sexual misconduct so in 2017 he faced separate allegations of abusing his power with a much younger married follower and soliciting nude photos from her so yeah if your moral leader solicits nude photos not a good sign the final report is expected to be a dramatic come down for a figure not only a stapling evangelical Christian culture but served as the representative of engaged conservative evangelical evangelism at secular forums from the United Nations and Harvard University to Westminster Hall and Google headquarters his ministry sent teachers around the world to do talks ran classes for people at spiritual doubts and created materials to train people to evangelize a secularizing culture so it was Ravi a fraud and was his message fraudulent so he was married he had three kids and both his spouse and his kids worked in his ministry some of his followers are burning his books and his son posts even if these allegations are true there is no doubt that God actively blessed my dad so what these individuals the critics are saying is that God was wrong to do so so we must now correct God's blessing mistake by erasing my dad and his voice so Ravi Zacharias his ministry founded in 1984 he has offices in 15 countries with nearly two thousand three hundred staffers so I may have various criticisms of my father the Christian evangelist but I never ever ever ever ever saw even the slightest hint of either sexual or financial misconduct by my father or any exaggeration about his credentials yeah it's kind of weird why the head of a global Christian apologetics ministry owned two massage parlors touch of Eden and Given wellness and why was his personal masseuse on the ministry's payroll I remember my father's always very uncomfortable about receiving a massage so when these reports of misconduct came out Ravi's ministry offered the staff talking points urged them to say the allegations do not in any way reflect the man and friend I knew and the ministry will continue its work of helping the thinker believe and the believer think our openness to asking questions was a stated value of his ministry but the real value is loyalty so often the values that we state are very different from the real values so there was this woman Laurie Ann Thompson so she was 30 years younger than Ravi Zacharias and she would email with him or text with him and he would encourage her to first share details including her sexual abuse as a child at the hands of her father so in general if you're a you're a married man not not generally a good idea to to ask women to share intimate details of their lives with you unless you're a therapist and then eventually Ravi Zachariah started soliciting her nude photos she began to spiral because of his selfish and predatory behavior look his selfish and predatory behavior did not cause her to spiral she spiraled because of her own problems she finally told Zachariah she needed to tell her husband and then he responded if you betray me here I'll have no option but to bid this world goodbye I promise so I'm not a big fan of the word betrayal it's a very melodramatic term for other people not having the same priorities as what we expected so the Thompson's said that they would sue Ravi Zacharias or he could pay them five million dollars lovely lovely couple I'm not it not a big fan of filing lawsuits like this yeah one of the strongest motivations for aspiring cult leaders is increased sexual access but I mean that's the one of the strongest motivations for why men do anything there's not just cult leaders it's why men enter the entertainment industry or men work hard to get money I mean this is this is what this is what drives men and warning California could become the first date to make it illegal to remove a condom without consent I can't imagine ever doing that I've never removed a condom during sexual intercourse but yeah that is that is kind of creepy California could become the first date to make it a crime to remove a condom without consent okay but anyway back to Ravi Zacharias so how many famous scientists have groupies yeah so the sexual payoff for being a famous scientist is virtually no so that's a good point so if you have any success or if you're able to just spend time in the entertainment industry unless you're completely retarded you're gonna get laid because the entertainment industry attracts people who let's say are quite quite generous with their with their sexuality so yeah what about making it illegal to puncture a condom prior to use sure so it's hard not to get into trouble once you're sexually promiscuous and it's a lot easier just to have one partner and get married once you're promiscuous things can spiral okay but here's the here's a tell on Ravi Zacharias so he massively exaggerated his credentials okay so there are all these Christian leaders who have used the title doctor despite only having honorary degrees so according to the biography posted on his ministry's website Ravi Zacharias received a master of Divinity degree from Trinity International University never heard of Trinity International University has conferred 10 honorary doctorates including a doctor of laws and a doctorate of sacred theology so I've had friends who when they put up their website people lose all sense of proportion about themselves and they love to describe themselves as award winning so I try to discourage them don't don't describe yourself as award winning people don't like it so yeah maybe Australia's got tall tall poppy syndrome but you know people have an acutely tuned sense when someone is getting uppity reading from a New Zealand op-ed when they are beginning to believe their own BS and when the self-belief is undeserved so don't describe yourself as award-winning on your own website and don't praise yourself remember getting this book on the virtues of modesty by an orthodox rabbi and he just made these like exaggerated proclamations about himself and his own abilities in in the bio on the book like he's publishing a book about modesty and I haven't had any key for today I felt I felt maybe I've been eating too much key for so today I had three pieces of string cheese and a whole bunch of guacamole with peanut butter pretzels yeah most normal people expect highly successful notables to show humility and self-effacement so don't describe yourself as award-winning people look ridiculous when they set up their websites like don't praise yourself you should keep self praise to a minimum let other people praise you we we are constantly on the lookout for behavior which shows people are getting above themselves or being pretentious or false yeah so the easiest way to avoid this is as a general rule don't praise yourself okay so for many many years Ravi Zacharias on his ministry's website did not use the phrase honorary doctorates instead it said he'd been honored with the conferring of six doctoral degrees so I do you know any exceptions like people you know or know of when it's found out that they've exaggerated their credentials or accomplishments this seems to always always always just be the tip of the iceberg of much deeper character issues look let's take a simultaneous sip of crystal light classic orange or bring us closer right you can feel free to share any part of your life with me right this is a safe place to share simultaneous sip last sip of my bottle of crystal light classic orange so good and it's so good when it's chilled so just imagine posting on your own organization that you'd been you'd been honored with the conferring of six doctoral degrees and the site always referred to him as Dr. Zacharias kind of made me wince my father would would refer to refer to himself as Dr. Ford and my father was not a medical doctor unless you're a medical doctor don't call yourself doctor I remember going to a Shabbat dinner and everyone around the table introduced themselves by their first name except the chiropractor and the chiropractor said and I'm Dr. Cohen please please chiropractors are not doctors it's quackery and his organization said doctor did appear before Ravi's name in some of our materials including our website which is an appropriate and acceptable practice with honorary doctorates however because this practice can be contentious in certain circles we no longer use it yeah so if I start calling myself Dr. Ford you know I've lost the plot and his publisher Penguin Random House used to say he holds three doctorate degrees okay now now they corrected that to honorary doctorates an honorary doctor it's not a doctorate so don't go around calling yourself doctor unless you're a medical doctor so an atheist blogger named Steve Borman launched a campaign to investigate Ravi Zacharias and accused him of correctly of overstating his role at institutions including Oxford University Cambridge University in Alliance Theological Seminary so I think anyone can take summer classes at Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge I pretty much anyone can take summer classes at pretty much any university to the best of my knowledge and so many people who take these open access summer classes then go list in their resumes that that they studied at Oxford or Cambridge now you may be asking how does how does Fordy describe himself so I wrote my own bio on my website so oh so key for intolerance this is what I use so I had a bit of I had a bit of key for tolerance but I just took three lactate so it helps with dairy so without that I was releasing like prodigious amounts of gas that seemed like seemed like a return of some of the worst aspects of World War two but I just popped three lactates before I drink my key for and the problem basically so also here are some other supplements that I really fall in love with Dr. Berg's gallbladder formula I used to have like often I'd have pain on by my right shoulder blade and it was gallbladder pain and I just take one of these before I eat before I eat anything with fat and problem solve no longer have that pain it's beautiful just take one of good old Dr. Berg's gallbladder formula oh also if you feel cold if you feel the cold very intensely like if it's 62 degrees outside and you're shivering or at 65 degrees in the office and you're shivering I found some testosterone supplementation or some seaweed which stimulates your thyroid anything that gets your these hormones going I find really reduces over sensitivity to cold and then had the Sheila recommended lemon balm leaf which is a it's a nice sleep aid so it just kind of calms you down have you watched the new Adam Curtis document it can't get you out of my head now I haven't watched the exercise is also good for improving circulation but just take testosterone supplementation a thyroid supplementation or some seaweed I find that really helps reduce extreme sensitivity to cold so Adam Curtis I mean they're interesting documentaries to look at and they're interesting ideas I just I just can't take them seriously so to me I relate to Adam Curtis the same way I relate to Richard Spencer like a romantic who sees much more to reality than than's there I remember for him to get an audience like he needs to make you know really big claims about otherwise you know unknown perspectives on the world so just like Richard Spencer's a romantic who habitually reads far more into reality than is really there Adam Curtis seems to be the same way he gets these deosyncratic perspectives and then you know blows them up as these you know completely innovative ways of looking at life so I find him moderately entertaining and I'm open to perhaps he has something important to say but he's not someone I look to for truth get a Rook how's it okay so let's see how how narcissistic is my own website bio raise the seventh day Adventist at Avondale College in Australia look forward move to California in 1977 I think I'm just sticking to the facts he graduated from Placer High School in 1984 reported the news at Cahide Cahill Radio for three years attended Sierra College and UCLA slightly bedridden by chronic fatigue syndrome for six years and converted Judaism in 1993 from 1997 to 2007 Luke mate is living from blogging living by Beverly Hills now teaches the Alexander technique in 2011 Luke completed a three-year teaching course at the Alexander Training Institute he is the author of five books Luke lectures on topics such as Judaism Christianity blogging protecting one's reputation online addiction and Alexander technique so that's true so that's my online bio oh then I know Luke has appeared in the USA today the New York Post New Times Los Angeles cover story Los Angeles Times Sydney Morning Herald Rolling Stone Village Voice the independent on Sunday GQ Salon online journalism review composite the forward New York Times details magazine the Jerusalem report Los Angeles magazine LA weekly Los Angeles Daily News Jewish Journal and other publications his TV appearances include Entertainment Tonight Fox Files the E true Hollywood story disinferred nation the National Enquirer's TV show uncovered each one's Center for Babylon and Hollywood Blackmail 60 minutes can be seen news and ABC news he's been interviewed by over 50 radio stations around the world including Los Angeles's talk radio powers KFI and KLSX son of a Christian evangelist Luke grew up in Australia until moving to California in 1977 in the 1980s he wrote for various newspapers including the Auburn Journal studied economics at UCLA so that's that's my online bio I don't think it's I think it's exaggerated but there's some stuff in here I can remove so let's do that maybe later oh yeah that's the the Wikipedia entry so Ravi Zacharias is 2015 by I described him as a visiting scholar at Cambridge University but it was amended to clarify it was just some affiliate of an affiliate of Cambridge University and another line about him serving as a senior research fellow at Oxford University was also removed John Stackhouse a Christian scholar at Crandall University in Canada said in a Facebook post I've been worried for 20 years about someone finally doing exactly this calling Ravi is a zacharias to account for inflating his academic credentials credentials questioning Ravi Zacharias is questionable biography has been quietly mentioned among fellow evangelicals for decades he's certainly not the only one who has done it so there are all these Christian leaders who adopted the title of doctor without having Ravi Zacharias always came off as a grifter during your supposed debates and talks yeah that does seem to be quite the grifter in him and then what does it say about the type of people who supported him so there have been all these Christian leaders who adopted the title of doctor without having earned doctorate degrees was war builders founder David Barton evangelist Joyce Maya Donald Trump appointee Darrell Scott beyond raising issues of misrepresentation and character doing so is illegal in some states an audience generally is impressed with one's credentials for about the first two minutes one speaks and then you are what you are if you're good the audience appreciates it if you're bad no amount of credentials will make up for it but yeah have you noticed any examples where people who overstate their credentials in their accomplishments that this isn't always this is always just the tip of an iceberg of just a whole series of problems so Steve Bowman apparently an atheist did a blog post back November 13 2017 the Christian industrial complex shields its own so Ravi Zacharias became the best known Christian apologist the last 30 years and in his book the real face of atheism he said nothing is as important as the truth and Steve writes as a summer of 2015 and as is my practice I was searching the internet for smart Christian apologists who might ruffle by atheist paradigm found a video lecture by a Cambridge and Oxford scholar his credentials included several doctorate degrees in a stint at Cambridge studying quantum physics the man demonstrated convincingly that in the sixth century before the common era the prophet Daniel predicted with stunning precision the rise and fall of Alexander the great two centuries later now if you have any acquaintance with biblical scholarship you know that the biblical book of Daniel was written about two centuries before the common era so about 200 years after the prediction after the life of Alexander the great but by placing it in sixth century BCE he's able to make you know some stunning prediction Chuck Colson called Dr. Ravi Zacharias the greatest apologist of our time had a weekly radio show playing on over 2000 outlets worldwide he published 25 books guess millions of YouTube hits he presents himself as though he has impeccable academic credentials in ways that differentiates him from the ordinary circuit riding preachers he makes sure we know that he got he's got the resume to go with the suit he litters his lectures his writings and his publicity materials with references to famous universities with which he claims to be professionally connected and the strategy works Christians worldwide hail him as God's answer to the secularist cancer that has infested the economy I should know by now that for every 30 seconds it takes a Christian apologist to make a fulfilled prophecy claim takes a few hours of tedious research to see that it is bogus that's just the way extravagant prophetic claims work the howl lindsay's of the world cash their checks before anyone has the time to scrutinize their theories yeah that's what it seems like to me is a longer it takes you know quite a lot of time to say learn about the voter fraud now to read several books do some research they spend 1012 hours minimum before I could start to debunk all these nonsense claims claims that were bringing in thousands of people who are peddling lies yeah I look at the success of people like you know what academic agent you know it's just peddling absolute nonsense about the election just just either deliberately lying or just shilling and grifting for his audience you know just bringing a massive audience massive super chats peddling lies and the overwhelming scholarly consensus is that the book the biblical book of Daniel was written after Alexander the Great's time so Daniel had predicted something that had already happened how predictable that doctor Dr. Zacharias himself had known full well that the dating of Daniel was controversial he admits as much in his memoirs made me wonder what else Dr. Zacharias had been dishonest about so yeah once you get intimations of one example of someone being dishonest there's usually a whole series of examples just as when you have a problem in one area of your life say you're putting too much time into Twitter you've got you've got this problem you know throughout your life problems in one area of our lives usually symptoms of you know much deeper seated and more widespread problems throughout our lives and what surface with Ravi Zacharias is far worse than the usual sex or money scandals that embarrass so many professional men of God the doctor with no doctorates and the scholar with no scholarly work since the early 1980s Ravi Zacharias is assertively referred to himself as Dr. Zacharias represented himself as hoarding multiple doctoral degrees and his major publishers such as Harper Collins Penguin Random House have been fully on board but he's never so much as enrolled in a graduate level academic program much less completed a doctoral degree he has a bachelor's degree at a non-academic master of vanity degree both from obscure religious institutions he's racked up numerous honorary doctorate degrees over the years from supportive Christian schools that's it so you routinely fail to disclose his doctorates and merely honorary Ravi's publisher bios describing as a recognized authority in philosophy but I found no peer reviewed scholarly publications by Ravi Zacharias nor evidence that he has ever presented a paper at a scholarly conference that Ravi Zacharias was a complete academic non entity masquerading as a polished scholar okay that's it for now