Ep. 163: Exploring the Path to Christ through Philosophy: A Deep Dive into the Last Superstition

What if we told you that the human mind is far more complex than any computer? In this riveting episode, we discuss the final chapter of Edward Feser's The Last Superstition, and the materialist philosopher's tendency to equate the human mind with human made objects like computers. We dive into some fascinating studies conducted by biologists that reveal which parts of the brain light up when thinking of happy thoughts, but also expose the limitations of these studies in recreating the full human experience.

We then explore the ironic consequences of contemporary science and philosophy, which inadvertently make the reality of irreducible theology even more evident. Join us as we reflect on the materialist approach to life and its impact on our understanding of ourselves, while also examining the beauty and wholesomeness of the Eastern Christian church. We consider the implications of reducing life to a chemical reaction and the potential risks of using chemical substances to paint over emptiness in life.

To wrap up our conversation, we announce the next book for our book club and invite you to join the discussion. Stay tuned for the big reveal, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Intelligent Design Collective page for more intriguing insights. Don't miss out on this thought-provoking episode, as we continue our fierce defense of the Christian Gospel.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

Welcome to the IDC podcast, your number one source for a fierce defense of the Christian Gospel. This is Aleko, and I'm glad you could join us. So today we've got the book club and we're going to be covering the last chapter of Edward Fazer's, the Last Superstition. At the very end of the book club, we're also going to be announcing our new book, so be sure to stay tuned for that. And if you'd like to join us for the next book club, when we get together and talk about all these things, please go ahead and send an email at cosmologylife at gmailcom, or you can send an email to our new address, idcaudocast, at gmailcom. So that's I-D-C-A-U-D-I-O-C-A-S-T at gmailcom. Finally, if you'd like to keep your finger on the pulse, please join us on Instagram and find us at the Intelligent Design Collective page, where we post all kinds of really interesting tidbits roughly every week. So let's get started on the book club.

Speaker 1: 1:32

Welcome to the IDC podcast book club, where we are talking about the final chapter of Edward Fazer's The Last Superstition. This is Aliko, and I am joined by my friends. Before they introduce themselves, brian, would you be keen to do an opening prayer?

Speaker 3: 1:47

Sure Father, God, thank you for bringing us together again. Just pray that you'd be with us in our discussion about this last chapter of Mr Fazer's book. Guide our discussion and thoughts, and may they always be glorified to you For the rest. In Jesus' name amen.

Speaker 1: 2:06

Amen, alright, so yeah, who's here, who's?

Speaker 4: 2:12

with us. It's Darren on the west coast area of British Columbia, canada, and, yeah, a busy week Did a bunch of work around the yard and refinished or started refinishing a table top for a kitchen or a dining table yesterday. So yeah, it's good.

Speaker 3: 2:37

And it's Brian in the northeast of England, in Yorkshire, where, after a pretty cold and wet start to the week, the sun has finally come out, as it should be in June. So yeah, life's looking good at the minute And we've got another bank holiday on Monday, so this is the good You're right, i've had it. Lovely, i've had it. Alright, we have a bank holiday this month. Sorry, we had a bank holiday this Monday, that's right. We had three in May this year, i think, so it's been quite a good month.

Speaker 2: 3:05

And this is Hillary in the northeast of England enjoying the sunshine.

Speaker 1: 3:11

Very nice. This is Aleco and I'm here in Duluth, minnesota, and also enjoying the sunshine, but thinking about the end of the summer we have. Well, we're about to book our tickets for England and Greece to go see family. So yeah, very much looking forward to getting out and getting some travel.

Speaker 4: 3:31

But was it just your brother in Greece, or do you have other family there as well?

Speaker 1: 3:36

Aunts, cousins yeah, i haven't seen them in a long time. So I haven't seen my brother in Yeah, going on 12 years now actually. So, yeah, i definitely envy people who are near family. So I would like to, yeah. And then obviously my in-laws are in north of London, in the Hartfordshire area, so, yeah, it's gonna be nice to get out All right. So we were talking about the final chapter of Ed Fazer's The Last Superstition, and I'm definitely keen to hear everyone's thoughts on this, and then at the end I think we can maybe reveal the new book. I can't recall. Is it the? are we going on to the 11th book or the 12th book of the book club, or have I miscounted all together? I'm just assuming it's one of those.

Speaker 4: 4:34

I'm not counting, okay, yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Yeah, you are there All right. So Okay, let's go to a favorite part of the reading. Darren, did you have a favorite part of the reading?

Speaker 4: 4:48

Yeah. So my favorite section was when he was talking about the materialist philosopher tendencies to equate, say, the human mind and how we operate, to computer, with computer jargon So like using things like algorithms and information processing and computation and so on so that it can, in a sort of attempt, to equate the mind with, say, a computer as we know computers And I thought it was quite interesting, sort of around that discussion he was talking about, the materialists tend to use the idea of, let's say, equating what happens with the mind with electrical movements in the brain, so neurons and so on lighting up. And I'm no expert in this, but I had watched at one point some I think it was biologists that were studying this stuff. And it's really cool how, with these kind of probes and readers that they put on your head, these skull cap, almost type things, they can show you photos of different things and then map out exactly where things light up in your brain. So there can be this kind of tendency to say like, oh well, this part of the brain lights up when you think about, you know, let's say whatever, two kids playing in a field and you know something happy and that kind of thing.

Speaker 4: 6:49

But the problem that rarely gets talked about in those types of studies is that if you just take the electrical impulses and, let's say, absent any thought, you light up those parts of the brain, maybe it would give you a feeling of happiness, but it certainly doesn't recreate what you saw in your mind to spark that happiness in the first place. So it's very sort of one sided way of looking at the mind And I thought it was. Yeah, that is quite an interesting thing and something that gets missed a lot in this. That our minds are very, say, like, very, very rich and diverse And we, how they work and how they influence our body is really special. But if you're just talking about, say, lighting up parts of a brain, it's no different from, say, like a chemical drug, like if you take cocaine or fentanyl or some opioid or something like that, where, yeah, it might create a sense of pleasure or an absence of pain or something like that, but it's not a, it's not a healthy use of our brain's chemistry.

Speaker 1: 8:18

Yeah, really good points, really good points. And obviously, as Fazer has pointed out, and a lot, of, a lot of people have, that the materialistic perspective is merely reductionism. It tries to turn the human body into just a coincidental mechanism that sprang out of random selection sorry, natural selection And I tend to maybe fall in line more with Sharon Dirix Dr Sharon Dirix, who suggested it's more of a receiver, so that's why you might see things like certain areas lighting up during experiences. But I don't know.

Speaker 1: 8:57

I once read that the brain has more synapses and electrical connections than there are observable stars in the night sky. You know that it's this just hyper complex thing and you know how random mutation, you know, and in violation of entropy laws, could actually allow something like that to just come up spontaneously. There's my watch going off, let me turn that off. Yeah, i just. Obviously I'm not a brain scientist, but I think that's. I think just simple observation would tell one that that's. It's not an accident, i suppose the human mind, or any mind for that matter, and so just my opinion, all right, so we had Darren Brian, did you have a favorite part of the reading?

Speaker 3: 9:53

Yes, i think it pretty much changed what Darren was talking about, this idea where you know a materialist and naturalist tend to view the brain as a computer in the mind, as some kind of algorithm.

Speaker 3: 10:07

What I didn't really appreciate, that even as far back as C S Lewis, who was probably middle of last century, said that he says the argument for reason shows that materialism and naturalism, far from being a logical outcome of irrational investigation, actually undermined the possibility of any logical inquiry. So he's saying, yes, he's trying to say this, this idea of being able to, as you say, bring things down to a very simple naturalistic point of view just doesn't, doesn't cut it And that, although it's, it's an analogy, it's not a very good analogy to have the brain as the computer in the mind as the algorithm. So yeah, i, i like that part as well And I especially suppose I haven't really appreciated that this has been going on for 50, 60 years. Maybe just because of my age or 10, they assume that this is all the new stuff that's come very recently, but it's actually been going on, for this argument has been going on for quite a while.

Speaker 1: 11:10

Yeah, it's an interesting one too. Melanie and I have been, because I believe Melanie's is doing an, a master's degree in psychology, i think, right now, and she's getting into the idea of NDEs And I have been getting back into it. I've read a few, a few books on it And I think the big debate is is the ND experience a product of the mind? And there's a thousand reasons why they don't think it is a product of the mind. But you still get scoffers who don't read the material trying to reduce it to that. And how do you account for so many people having incredible experiences when the brain is declared dead for several minutes, when I say ND for anyone who wouldn't be aware, that's near-death experiences. So somebody's declared legally dead, or not always declared, but they do die during some type of event And they have these wonderful experiences of heaven or something like it.

Speaker 1: 12:14

And scoffers who, i guess, who don't read the material, as I just said, they'll often say, well, it's the brain's the brain dying and chemicals being released that try to make the sufferer feel better about it And it's like, well, it doesn't really. It's kind of a non sequitur. It doesn't follow that that would happen, considering what's happening to the person the fact that they're legally dead and the fact that you know how would that come about? by evolutionary process. You know what. What environmental condition would would induce something like that? All right, let's oh sorry.

Speaker 4: 12:58

The sort of sad part about that is, if you are a materialist, atheist, like if that's your philosophy, then you have no choice but to say that it is just a sort of illusions and functions of neurons and so on, because what else do you have to rely on?

Speaker 1: 13:22

Yeah, yeah, it's, it is said Yeah. And I think people like Richard Dawkins will very candidly say, yeah, it's sad, but we're more mature and we can just accept reality and say, well, i don't know if that's reality, i don't know if that's taking everything into account. All right, let's see. Hillary, do you have a favorite part of the reading?

Speaker 2: 13:46

The fact that we finished the book.

Speaker 1: 13:50

Yeah, fair enough.

Speaker 2: 13:51

I did write something down where Phaes wrote, and the greatest irony is that not only have contemporary science and philosophy not shown otherwise, they have a funny thing and despite themselves made the reality of irreducible theology even more evident.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Yeah, really good point.

Speaker 2: 14:17

So they say that basically their arguments against it are actually quite good arguments for it really.

Speaker 1: 14:30

Yeah, but I've nothing to add to that.

Speaker 3: 14:34

Yeah, I think there's quite a lot of it of teleology if that's how you pronounce it in this chapter, which I didn't really realise was such a big philosophical issue before I read this chapter. I'm just made the idea that things need to have a direction and a purpose and something to aim for.

Speaker 1: 14:55

So, yeah, Yeah, it's definitely something I've come across quite a bit, but I think that I think it's something I would like to get into more. In the book club I definitely put out a few books. That kind of The teleology is the focal point. But yeah, very valid points, definitely. Alright, let's see, darren, any opinions changed?

Speaker 4: 15:34

So, yeah, i don't know if it's so much an opinion changed, as it is something just really new that stood out to me, but it was his discussion about this couple of churchlands And again, i felt like this chapter, especially the first half of it, just really made me feel sad.

Speaker 4: 16:04

And it's not because I had a bad week and any other aspect or anything, my week was pretty good. But yeah, i just read this and I was like I just couldn't help. But there's something really profoundly empty about this whole materialist approach to the world. So the churchlands for the benefit of people who are listening is this couple that are the limit of materialist psychologists, i believe, and they basically boil everything down in their life to say like movements of chemicals, like chemical responses and that sort of thing in their body. So, for example, they would talk about the sexual act as being a sort of increase in sharing in oxytocin or whatever. And it's very like if you read what they say and what they do in their books and articles and so on that they post, it's really seems ridiculous at its first glance, but then I think when you really dive into it, it's just really sad that you could go through the world and philosophically force yourself into this kind of very small box And then everything that gives life purpose and meaning just becomes meaningless Things like beauty, love, all of that stuff. It's so much more complex than just a simple chemical reaction.

Speaker 4: 18:00

We know that through going back to, let's say, chemical drugs, that you can induce all kinds of temporary but empty feelings in your body through chemical substances. But we also know that those chemical substances are incredibly destructive and that absolutely nothing good comes out of them. They are. Now I should like qualify that a little bit. If you have a serious issue with depression or something like that, then there could be some room for you to use a chemical substance to balance things out in your brain while you process your depression And that might actually help you from getting in such a deep, dark place that you might say, like, do something extreme, like commit suicide.

Speaker 4: 19:00

But for I think by and large there's very little good that comes out of chemical substance use and abuse, and then particularly when you're using it to kind of paint over emptiness in your life. So yeah, it just was really really sad when I was reading this first half of this chapter And yeah, there's so much beauty in Christianity and in the more I don't know what I would say a wholesome perspective of life. And if people go into a particularly like an Eastern Christian church and you see the warmth of the church and the icons of the saints and the incense and the chanting whether it's Byzantine chanting or in the Latin tradition, in some places, mostly monasteries you may have Gregorian chanting And there's just something incredibly beautiful and wholesome about that experience. But when you go into this realm of materialism it's just all so meaningless.

Speaker 1: 20:25

To the point that you brought up. I mean you definitely, when you again, when it's reduced to a simple machine and everything is meaningless, as you say, i mean it really shows you that open door to relativism, where everything becomes relative. There is no good or evil, there's just. You know my truth and your truth. And however, you know, whatever makes you happy is fine, because it's all meaningless. We're just, you know, very fortunate clumps of cells that express our inner being or whatever, and I realize it's a bit of a caricature, but I think it's also pretty accurate in some cases of you know, certain perspectives of the world.

Speaker 1: 21:13

I once, you know, heard this is anyone who's heard the comedian Dave Chappelle. He's pretty dirty but he once reduced sex to quote unquote, borrowing friction. And you know, when you think of it like that, i mean it's funny, it's amusing, right. But when you think of it like that, i mean all things kind of become okay, right, you're just borrowing friction from someone, right? And I think that's When you consider the perspective of the Christ and you know the Our God, it's, there's something deeply, deeply spiritual and, to build off your original point, darren, that you know it's not something that Can be reduced to a mere exchange of chemicals or whatever right It's. It's. There's something much greater in in that act and and I don't want to focus on that, but I completely agree with yeah with you with the points he brought up. All right, let's see Brian.

Speaker 3: 22:23

Okay, so I think it was new for me this week was this term. The new essentialists What phaser says? think that the standard mechanistic and Empirical interpretation of science simply doesn't hold up, and the phaser seems to be jesting that they're basically just Going through circle again and reckoning, reckoning that About Aristotle started off two thousand years ago. He got a lot of things right. So again, a new terminology to me, this idea of new essentialists, and although they're not comfortable with using some very Aristotle a and a terminology, effectively they're just recasting their thoughts in Picking up the ideas that he had many, many years ago. So those perhaps slightly more positive and slightly more hopeful view that perhaps we will, we will get back to more sensible world view.

Speaker 1: 23:20

One could only hope, right Yeah.

Speaker 4: 23:24

Yeah, i thought, right around that area he he's talks about Dennett and I think his critique of Daniel Dennett well, going way back to the beginning of the book. He kind of promised that this book was going to be a critique of the new atheist, one of whom is Daniel Dennett. And Yeah, i think he he does such a good job where he talks about the Basically how Dennett uses Tileological and Aristotelian Term. Well, he actually creates a new kind of modernist term to supplant a Aristotelian or theological term and and does this kind of thing constantly and gets away with it because It makes logical sense to think tiliologically. But But then he goes on to, you know, deny any kind of tilogical Underpinning, let's say, to his philosophy, and then instead, you know, tries to pull it back to Materialism of the sort of sleight of hand. So I thought that was Phaser did a good job of critiquing Dennett's position there.

Speaker 1: 24:46

Yeah, a really good points, really points, and I think I've seen that among the, the new atheists Yeah, they. One of the the biggest tiliological stances that they attack is obviously the watchmaker argument, and I think it's actually it's quite clever. It reminds me of the Is it the Mars Hill speech that Paul gives in the act? in acts, where you take something that somebody knows and then you skew it And you, you know, it's more of a Interceptive, a bad idea than a direct blocking of a bad idea. Right, and it almost seems to walk hand in hand with what Christ did, where he was, you know, dining with tax collectors and sinners and all that. He wasn't, you know, he wasn't being Cruel, encountering them, he was going in and showing them a better way, but he wasn't Hating them or, you know, or picketing, or doing something really obscene to make a point. He was just, you know, going in and loving them, and I think it I maybe I'm making a connection very loosely, but I think it's.

Speaker 1: 25:50

It's a very clever idea in an argument for either side to take a point and Maybe turn it in the direction of, to maybe redirect it. You know the right way. All right, see, brian, opinions changed. Just done that one. Sorry, okay, hillary. Yeah, sorry about that When I've written about the new the search list as well, you could be at mine signal like For so little difference in the way you think you're thinking about it.

Speaker 2: 26:27

I'm a fool. So little different That was um to your point as well my point as well. Yeah, all right that would come full circle really.

Speaker 1: 26:42

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 26:44

Nothing new under the sun.

Speaker 1: 26:46

Good points points All right um questions or objections Darren.

Speaker 4: 26:56

Um, i thought that he did a really good job of Sort of attacking Dennis position or or not attacking some, but undermining, let's say, dennis position and his use of A set of slight of hand in terminology in this chapter. But as being a sort of concluding chapter I I thought that He left out the other new atheists.

Speaker 4: 27:26

He didn't really go into critique, um, say like Harris or Dawkins. So much in this chapter, and I I was kind of hoping that he would, um, he would dive into Dawkins a bit more, because Dawkins is the the atheist that a lot, of, a lot of people, particularly in They sort of um, let's say like 30 years old and over, atheist generation, look to Dawkins for, uh, for justification of the atheist position. But he's really discussed Dawkins in this chapter. So, yeah, i was, i was hoping there would be more there.

Speaker 1: 28:15

So I had looked into Dawkins and That that very point with my nephew.

Speaker 1: 28:24

I was a brilliant guy and um he, he pointed me in the direction of a couple of speeches and conferences and online and um, i I discovered after watching these and after talking to him that philosophers and very I would call them astute debaters don't actually take Dawkins that seriously.

Speaker 1: 28:49

They think, um, his philosophical arguments are quite, quite weak, um, but for some reason he's become the spearhead of that movement because, you know, people tend to fall in love with, you know rhetoric and they, they tend to fall in love with, you know, um, characters, right, people who have uh, big personalities. And Dawkins has a big personality, even even to his day, when you see him in his, you know, old age, he, he's, he's, he's got a, um, i don't you call it I hate using this term but the genese qua. You know he's, he's got, uh, you know It's something that people tend to like because he's so confidently in, you know, entrenched in his position. But Uh, his, his philosophical arguments are quite weak. But I think uh, phaser did address Harris a little bit more in five proofs, or am I misremembering that?

Speaker 4: 29:40

So he did discuss Harris in prior chapter.

Speaker 1: 29:43

Yes, yes.

Speaker 4: 29:45

But but yeah, i find so. at the opening of this book he talked about you know how this book was not directed, let's say, to an academic audience per se, but it was supposed to be a more broad book and critique this new atheist movement. And I think where he I would say false short is that Dawkins and Harris are the two that I think most people in in today's world look to for kind of being the spearheads of the atheist movement, and Harris, especially with younger people, because he's got quite a successful podcast and all that stuff. So I guess I was hoping that he would critique that. And maybe he felt like, because he has phaser, i mean, has such sort of disdain for the philosophy of Dawkins and Harris, maybe he thought it wasn't worth the his time to spend to comment on that, maybe. But the fact is that they're very influential in the non academic circles And I think the book could have benefited from a sort of thorough dismantling of their philosophy.

Speaker 1: 31:06

Sure, yeah, just someone to systematically go through one by one and discuss all of them. Sure.

Speaker 4: 31:12

Yeah, i guess that's what I was hoping for.

Speaker 1: 31:17

All right, brian, questions or objections.

Speaker 3: 31:21

Nothing for me.

Speaker 1: 31:23

All right Hillary.

Speaker 2: 31:25

No, not really. I thought I didn't find that the conclusion was very satisfactory. I think I read the last chapter expecting it to summer What was going on, and it didn't really.

Speaker 1: 31:37

Sure Sure.

Speaker 2: 31:38

And then he wrote just a quick paragraph at the end. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:44

Yeah, fair point.

Speaker 4: 31:46

I felt the exact same way. I thought that his last, last line, where he's used that Chinese proverb of the moon pointing at the moon, and that people focus on the finger rather than the moon, and then, uses that which is really sort of too teleological argument again. But yeah, i thought it was a very sort of clever into the book but it was as a whole kind of unsatisfying.

Speaker 2: 32:15

Mm, hmm.

Speaker 1: 32:17

All right. Well, i guess I would ask before we get to your. I forgot to ask you to mentally prepare your one to 10 rating. But if you, if you want to maybe consider that while I ask one more question did anyone have any final thoughts about the book? Or do you want to just consolidate those thoughts with your one to 10 rating? You're welcome to do that as well. I suppose that makes more sense, doesn't it? So, while you consider it, i'll just I'll, maybe I'll do mine first and then you guys can consider where you're at with your final rating, because I have thought about it a little bit. I think I'll give a qualified six, in my opinion, to this book. That's one to 10. So, 10 being the best, i obviously.

Speaker 1: 33:04

I completely agree with everyone. I think that first chapter he came out of the gates very hot. But even to to anyone who is on the side that he proposes to be on, i think they would disagree with his, his methodology and his approach, and so it was kind of a turn off to me And I think it would. It would be to anyone who would, who would be rational enough to to read this book, that it was a bit too hot, a bit too aggressive, and I think it's good to have vigor and to be, you know to attack things, but also you know we should be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, as Christ said, and I think that you know just.

Speaker 1: 33:49

You know a lot of that early chapter and, peppered throughout the book, there's a lot of personal attacks, and I thought he could have been more clever than that, given given some of his writing. That being said, i think there's also a lot that can be gleaned from this book. That is quite, quite interesting, quite fascinating, and does agree with our worldview, but it needed some work. It was pretty rough around the edges, so it's a six for me. Should we just go in order of reading in terms of OK, so let's see, darren, what do you have any final thoughts and do you have a rating for the book?

Speaker 4: 34:26

Yeah, so I would echo pretty much everything that you said, with the added part that I think he didn't really do his job of critiquing the new atheist per se. He went in a lot of different directions and critiquing, let's say, like modernist philosophy and that sort of thing. But for materialist philosophy, but yeah, i, i think that's a good question, but yeah, i, i, i think I would give it a seven. Yeah, the downside being much the same of what you shared And I think on, i think, a bit more positive for me was he. He really shared a lot of detail around the How to put this, you share a lot of detail around the materialist positions in and did it in a way that I thought was quite understandable and fairly easy to digest, since he was talking about pretty complex philosophical topics. So yeah, i would give it a plus on that. Great, ok.

Speaker 1: 35:40

Brian, yeah, i'd probably go for a size.

Speaker 3: 35:44

Again, just summing up what I think both of you have already said. You know it's an expression I grew up with was hate the sin but love the sinner, and I think he was pretty much hate the sin and hate the sinner even more Because they put you tend to take in this book, which I don't really see that that's a very Christlike example And if that's the position he's this underprimeing his philosophical arguments.

Speaker 3: 36:07

So a bit disappointed in that I you know. Harking back to the five proofs, i think if I hadn't read that book first I would have quite struggled with the concept is going here, i think because I was coming out the second time it made it quite intelligible. So I just wonder, if I read this book first, i think I might really have got quite lost in some of his arguments. But obviously it's can't, can't be That I can't carry out that experiment. But I know he was aiming it as a sort of non-academic book. But I'm just thinking I think if I read this call I could really quite struggle to grasp some of the things he was doing trying to try and to elicit it. There you go Well to the comments I want you to said. For me it was just like getting back in a cold water again.

Speaker 1: 36:55

I wasn't ready for it And also, in fact, i think I remember reading the book. First I said that I had this sense of relief that it was way easier to read in the first chapter And then, when we got into the second chapter, i'm like, oh no, this feels like homework again. This is tough. All right, hillary. Yeah, i think I would give it a five because I think that if you, not many people would actually read it. I think it's going to be a little bit more difficult to read.

Speaker 2: 37:23

I think it's going to be a little bit more difficult to read, but if you not, many people would actually read all the way to the end because he was so, so negative about all sorts of different types of people. You know there were, there were a time we got to the end There was like one very small group of people that would have agreed with all the concepts that he was pushing forward, and so a lot of people would have, you know, got to chapter three and went off, for goodness sake, and just put in a corner and not bother to continue. Sure, i just don't feel that he'd. You know. Okay, yes, you can go on about refuting the new atheists, but I think he just alienated far too many people in the process.

Speaker 1: 38:25

Sure, yeah, that's fair.

Speaker 2: 38:26

And if I hadn't been reading it this for the book club I would I would have just Burn it. Burn it. I think Yes, Put it on the fire.

Speaker 1: 38:37

Even if it was in your phone, on a Kindle, just burn the phone, just threw it in the fire.

Speaker 3: 38:41

I was slightly worried and just said that Yeah, because we haven't had a electronic phone.

Speaker 2: 38:45

Yeah, we do. Oh, you know the metaphor well. I would have printed it out and then shredded it, but that's usually the best way to go. in my experience, and you know, i think he could have been more positive about things and just kept people on board, rather than just going right down and saying, well, you are a load of idiots and you're rubbish and you're just stupid and you guys will forget it And you know he was like a very niche number of people at the end who would actually agree with everything.

Speaker 1: 39:31

Yeah, i think I mentioned I was. I don't I'm not on Twitter anymore, but I was on Twitter to. I was encouraged to be on Twitter to. You know, pay attention to some of the arguments coming out and it's Twitter is just a cesspool. I can't be on that thing anymore, but I was following Fazer and, yeah, he, as I mentioned, i think, two weeks ago, he just kind of prowls Twitter like the chicken hawk on Looney Tunes looking for a fight and I, you know I get it, i get what he's doing, but I think that there has to be a better way. So, yeah, okay. So let's see six, seven, five, five. That's 23, 23 out of 10. So that's a pretty good score for for Fazer all right.

Speaker 2: 40:25

Well, yeah, it was a.

Speaker 1: 40:32

It was an interesting book, definitely, and I have the, the new book and we have, so we have two 200 responses. We have our responses from the MailChimp survey that was sent out. We also have our Instagram responses and I'm kind of surprised by the book that was chosen. It it eked in by just a hair. Does anyone want to guess what it is, or is anyone hoping for a particular outcome?

Speaker 2: 41:06

probably for the Richard Dawkins book, just to make his read some more dribble sure yeah, okay, all right, anyone else?

Speaker 4: 41:17

Brian Darren yeah, well, this was so long I I honestly I like looked at, skimmed through the titles and I think I was just like click, click on two of them and put it in sure yeah it's like. It's like going to the grocery store and choosing a box of cereal is too much, too much going on.

Speaker 2: 41:37

I can't believe that I actually looked at all those books and I am.

Speaker 4: 41:42

Hillary, and that's a better person than.

Speaker 2: 41:47

I checked the summary and and decided whether I wanted to read it or not.

Speaker 1: 41:56

Oh, Brian, and were you hoping for a particular one, brian?

Speaker 1: 42:08

okay, so so, okay, i'll give you the runner-ups right now. So the third place runner-up was when the church was young voices of the early church fathers. The second place runner-up was praying like monks living like fools, and the winner can anyone do a drum roll or is that even possible on a terrible, terrible, okay, um, the first place was here. It is demonic foes. My 25 years as a psychiatrist investigating possessions. So, um, this was done. I believe the gentleman's name was Richard Gallagher, let me, let me look him up real quickly on Kindle. I watched, yeah, richard Gallagher.

Speaker 1: 43:05

So I watched this gentleman give a.

Speaker 1: 43:08

He had a one-hour conversation with Cameron Bertuzzi at capturing Christianity, which is a really popular YouTube apologetics page, and Cameron Bertuzzi, for anyone who might be listening, was also the one who, um, kind of bolstered the pints with Aquinas gentleman I can't recall his name who's now quite famous as a Catholic apologist, but, um, he's also got a pretty incredible channel where he he explores all topics with very qualified individuals. Anyway, this gentleman came on, gave it was. It was actually was around 90 minutes and he discussed some of the most you know I don't know if I'd call it incredible, but just really odd stories of him, um, working with people that he believed to be possessed, and he was a very rational, uh, even keel, um man, even temperament, just just a sane man, and he didn't seem like someone who would be given to, um, you know, flighty concepts or beliefs and just very matter-of-factly said you know, i saw these things and these happened and these were the circumstances and this is why I believe them to be you know, something you know, not in our, our natural or materialistic worldview, and I don't know much about the gentleman. I don't know if that led to a conversion or if he maybe was just, uh, you know, and been raised to you know, catholic or Christian or something like that. But, uh, he said a really interesting story and, um, so, yeah, i think this one it could be a lot of fun, but if he starts diving into philosophy in chapter two, i think, uh, i'm going to burn, burn the book as well.

Speaker 4: 45:00

So, yeah, just like a quick question, aleppo. So, um, we kind of talked about doing a, a book that was a critique or let's say like took the opposing position.

Speaker 1: 45:12

So how much appetite was there for the god delusion 23% for the god delusion and then demonic, demonic foes, was 69.2% but 23 puts it like where on the list of 11 oh well, it doesn't, i think. Well then, it would fall in line with okay, give me a second here oh, maybe you could go back for the several things yeah yeah

Speaker 3: 45:40

single transferable vote system.

Speaker 1: 45:42

Yeah, let's see one, two, three.

Speaker 4: 45:52

This the thing is, um, that would make it, because I'm, i think it'd be fifth place, um, yeah so it wasn't like completely out of the running, but it seemed like people were, on the whole, more interested. Uh, of course I know Brian went on his VPN and logged in through 185 different. Uh, this is again.

Speaker 1: 46:20

It's not saying 210, so obviously 10 of them were were kicked out by uh, by uh, like it was super filter but the thing is, you know what's funny about that, and I would have been fine with with doing Dawkins, um, i've read Dawkins before, but uh, he is what. What would have been ironic is he's a curmudgeon on the flip side of the coin, so it would have just been like, you know, we back-to-back curmudgeons just criticizing the opposing side, um, but I think it was a little more excessive, i think, with the Christian side that's, i don't think you know what to. You know not retread old ground, but you know, i think it was not something I shouldn't have been expected from Fazer, but, uh, yeah, anyways, all right. So demonic foes. My 25 years as a psychiatrist investigating possessions by Richard Gallagher.