SPEAKER_1: It is the 10th of April, 2026.
SPEAKER_1: I am Corey J.
SPEAKER_1: Moller, and this is At Any Cost.
SPEAKER_1: This is a Q&A episode.
SPEAKER_1: It is episode 24, and I do not have any housekeeping, so I will get right into the questions, assuming that there are no tech issues, and everything looks fine on my end.
SPEAKER_1: So hopefully that means that it is.
SPEAKER_1: The first question, I will actually just read the question.
SPEAKER_1: Question one, what are one or two one-stop shop Lutheran biblical commentary sets I can get, preferably on Lagos?
SPEAKER_1: So as far as Lutheran commentaries go, there are a number of excellent ones over the centuries at this point, and of course, you can go back further than that, because you could go back to Augustine and Aquinas, and you can go back to the orthodox teachers of the church as well, but specifically Lutheran for a one-stop shop, probably Kretzmann, but there are also some other ones.
SPEAKER_1: It just depends on how much you want to read, really.
SPEAKER_1: One of the things I would definitely recommend that you get is the Lutheran Study Bible.
SPEAKER_1: The footnotes are excellent, and they have many citations to Lutheran theologians, dogmaticians, church fathers, things like that, so you can always follow up, which is very helpful.
SPEAKER_1: But as far as various commentaries go, I will link in the show notes to that, so you can look at sort of how many pages there are, and things like that, and how much you want to read.
SPEAKER_1: But obviously, Luther is going to be high up in the recommendation because of the AE., the American edition of Luther's works.
SPEAKER_1: You don't have to know German.
SPEAKER_1: It's in English, modern English.
SPEAKER_1: And that's up to 70 or 80-something volumes now.
SPEAKER_1: They've not translated all of his works.
SPEAKER_1: The full Weimar edition is not translated, but many of them are.
SPEAKER_1: It's not inexpensive, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_1: Lagos charges a lot of money for them.
SPEAKER_1: I know I've acquired most of them in Lagos, and I have many of them physically at this point.
SPEAKER_1: But for that, I would say, buy the volumes that interest you, and then you can add to it slowly over time.
SPEAKER_1: His Genesis Commentary, which is the first eight volumes in the American edition, is excellent.
SPEAKER_1: His Commentary on Galatians is excellent.
SPEAKER_1: Those are probably the two big recommendations for Luther.
SPEAKER_1: And then from there, you can sort of expand.
SPEAKER_1: Romans is also a very good commentary for him, so maybe grab that volume as well.
SPEAKER_1: That one may be two volumes.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's two volumes.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe that's the Concordia series.
SPEAKER_1: But at any rate, the other ones would be Walther, Walther, however you want to pronounce it, CFW.
SPEAKER_1: Walther.
SPEAKER_1: He is an excellent writer, and his approach is going to be more pastoral, a little less heavy when it comes to not the accuracy and the value of his commentary and his theology, but he takes a more practical approach many times.
SPEAKER_1: And some men find that very useful, particularly pastors, obviously.
SPEAKER_1: So, basically, any volume from him is worth grabbing.
SPEAKER_1: His law and gospel is kind of a must read among Lutherans, so probably grab that one.
SPEAKER_1: There's a Reader's Edition of it, which is excellent.
SPEAKER_1: It adds some additional notes for you, some background if you're not as familiar with sort of the disputes and the things to which he's responding.
SPEAKER_1: Peeper is an excellent one as well, if you want dogmatics.
SPEAKER_1: He's less of a commentary series and more dogmatics.
SPEAKER_1: It just depends on what you want.
SPEAKER_1: If you want the dogmatics, go with Peeper.
SPEAKER_1: Gerhard has many volumes.
SPEAKER_1: He's more theology than commentary, so it depends if you want that, then that's an option.
SPEAKER_1: I already said Kretzmann.
SPEAKER_1: Chemnitz is going to be probably one of the best recommendations if you want a specific defense of Lutheran theology against Rome.
SPEAKER_1: Against the Reformed as well, to some degree.
SPEAKER_1: He has his four volume in the most recent translation of his critique of the Council of Trent, so that's excellent.
SPEAKER_1: You can see why Lutherans believe what they believe and why we do not agree with Rome, where we disagree, what we think they believe is wrong.
SPEAKER_1: Melanchthon's Lossi is excellent.
SPEAKER_1: That is a one volume, quite short.
SPEAKER_1: You can read that in an afternoon pretty easily.
SPEAKER_1: That's an excellent one to have.
SPEAKER_1: And then, other than that, the last two, I think I'd recommend to be Loypold, has some commentaries on Old Testament books and some other things.
SPEAKER_1: And then Lensky, but with some caveats, he's not my favorite.
SPEAKER_1: He goes off the rails sometimes, but overall pretty good.
SPEAKER_1: But I would put him at the bottom of that pile.
SPEAKER_1: Again, I'll put that in the show notes so it's easier to find than having to go back and look for all these German names.
SPEAKER_1: But that will certainly get you started.
SPEAKER_1: That's probably at least a couple hundred volumes.
SPEAKER_1: Question two.
SPEAKER_1: I asked a similar question before, so I'll keep this one more succinct.
SPEAKER_1: What are some ways that we, the right, in this case, can practically make political gains?
SPEAKER_1: Do you recommend that those of us who are single men try to run for a local political office?
SPEAKER_1: Should we try to start our own business so that we can participate in activism with fewer repercussions?
SPEAKER_1: Should we consider moving to a state that is already majority white?
SPEAKER_1: I'm failing to see how there is much of a political solution, if any, when most children currently be born in the US are non-white.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not trying to despair just being realistic and trying to brainstorm ideas.
SPEAKER_1: I did actually comment on this one in a previous episode, and perhaps someone can link to that on the forum later.
SPEAKER_1: I don't remember which exact episode that was.
SPEAKER_1: There are transcripts, though, I could search those and find it.
SPEAKER_1: But I'll comment on it again, because it's worth commenting on.
SPEAKER_1: It's an issue that comes up all the time and will continue to do so.
SPEAKER_1: I'm going to have a sip of tea first, and it's no longer hot tea.
SPEAKER_1: It's already in the 80s here.
SPEAKER_1: This is going to be one of those that depends on what talent Scott has given you, right?
SPEAKER_1: Maybe you're the sort of man who can run for political office, whether it's local or state, whatever it happens to be, and perhaps that is a valid path for you, and you can achieve things doing that.
SPEAKER_1: Not all men can.
SPEAKER_1: Just like not all men can be, you know, rocket scientists, right, or cancer researchers, or pick any job, really.
SPEAKER_1: Not all men can do it.
SPEAKER_1: And that's from whatever job you consider to be just manual labor and not high skill to the other end of the spectrum.
SPEAKER_1: Whatever that is for you, not every man can do everything on that.
SPEAKER_1: So it depends on the talents that God has given you, and where he's placed your resources you have.
SPEAKER_1: If you can run for political office by all means do so, we do actually need politicians, and local office actually matters.
SPEAKER_1: Now, everyone wants to have, you know, the senator, the congressman, or president would be great, right?
SPEAKER_1: But by and large, for the average man, your local politician is going to have greater influence on your day-to-day life, with the exception of things like gas prices, right?
SPEAKER_1: That is pretty much what the president is currently doing.
SPEAKER_1: As much as he does not have a lever that he just sets and chooses the price, his actions on the international stage do essentially determine the price of your fuel when you buy it at the station.
SPEAKER_1: But for things like approving building projects, approving a march or a rally, or speakers at a park, or any of a number of things, that's all local stuff.
SPEAKER_1: And if you have your guys in those local offices, that's great.
SPEAKER_1: If you can get elected to...
SPEAKER_1: Depends on whether you're county-elects or not, but if you can get elected as sheriff, or if you can get appointed as police chief, something like that, if we had more of our guys in those offices, that's great.
SPEAKER_1: We have some of our guys there.
SPEAKER_1: I know some of them, but more of that would be great.
SPEAKER_1: So there are many paths.
SPEAKER_1: Don't think that there's no path to influencing things.
SPEAKER_1: It's not that you have to change everything on the grand scale all at once.
SPEAKER_1: Any man who's making progress in his own area with what God has given him is doing a good thing.
SPEAKER_1: You're doing your Christian duty.
SPEAKER_1: This is similar to when people ask, how do I act as a good Christian in my occupation, or whatever it happens to be?
SPEAKER_1: And the answer, the correct answer is always, it's not by putting little crosses on every pair of shoes you make.
SPEAKER_1: Right?
SPEAKER_1: That's not what the Christian does.
SPEAKER_1: What the Christian does is, lives a Christian life and makes good shoes, assuming you're a shoemaker for the sake of the hypothetical.
SPEAKER_1: Your neighbor needs good shoes.
SPEAKER_1: He doesn't need shoes with little crosses on them.
SPEAKER_1: There's a difference between being showy about it and just doing what you need to do.
SPEAKER_1: This is the same sort of thing.
SPEAKER_1: You do what God has enabled you to do with your talents, your resources, etc., and you do the best you can.
SPEAKER_1: So, any progress is still progress and is still a good thing.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, things aren't in a particularly great situation in the United States right now, obviously, but it's not a reason for despair, it's just a reason for working toward a better tomorrow and then a better next year and a better decade.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm not saying that it will all be incremental and we'll just slowly win.
SPEAKER_1: Things will probably come to a head at some point in the next handful of years.
SPEAKER_1: But, like Luther said, even if I knew the world were going to end tomorrow today, I would still plant my apple tree.
SPEAKER_1: Just live a Christian life, do the best you can.
SPEAKER_1: So, yes, run for political office, and particularly if we can get guys into law enforcement, that's great.
SPEAKER_1: So, there are some challenges there.
SPEAKER_1: That's a matter of wisdom.
SPEAKER_1: Do it only if you can.
SPEAKER_1: Right?
SPEAKER_1: And that sort of politics is kind of nasty politics sometimes, but those positions really matter.
SPEAKER_1: They really do determine day-to-day life for many men.
SPEAKER_1: So, that's sort of the approach to take.
SPEAKER_1: And then also the previous comments I made as well.
SPEAKER_1: Hopefully, again, someone will link to those.
SPEAKER_1: But, yes, you mentioned the repercussions.
SPEAKER_1: Bear that in mind.
SPEAKER_1: You know, for the guys who are married, particularly if you have young children, that matters.
SPEAKER_1: There are risks you're going to take.
SPEAKER_1: There are risks single guys can take that you can't, right?
SPEAKER_1: If Woe and I had been married, children, all that, it would have made Stone Choir a lot more difficult, because there would have been considerations.
SPEAKER_1: You know, we have people running hit pieces on us and things like that, people doxxing him, all of that.
SPEAKER_1: It makes things more challenging if you have those additional duties.
SPEAKER_1: So, if you're a single man, if you're younger, and you're willing to take that risk, then it's much easier for you, particularly if it's not going to come back on family members and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: But do bear in mind, the media will come after you.
SPEAKER_1: They're going to.
SPEAKER_1: You know, I've had Hit Pieces run on me for a number of years, including by defunct leftist outlets at this point, which is ironic, but it happens.
SPEAKER_1: Question 3.
SPEAKER_1: What is your best couple of lines argument against pacifism?
SPEAKER_1: Both biblical slash philosophical.
SPEAKER_1: So, for philosophical, I know what answer I would usually give, but given that I am streaming on a number of platforms, there's only so much I can say, but generally speaking, most men who are pacifists, when they are punched in the face, stop being pacifists pretty quickly.
SPEAKER_1: Now, I'm not saying that that's a realistic approach, because you can still be arrested, right, even if the guy doesn't fight back.
SPEAKER_1: But what I'm saying there is that it's incoherent, and no one really believes it or holds to it.
SPEAKER_1: It's just complete and utter nonsense.
SPEAKER_1: It's absurd.
SPEAKER_1: So philosophically, it just completely falls apart, and there are plenty of men who have published critiques of it philosophically, so it's just not compelling at all in that, but scripturally, there are a few things that I would like to mention as soon as I can pull up Logos here.
SPEAKER_1: I think I will actually just pull up the full screen Logos for this.
SPEAKER_1: So there are three verses that come to mind for this that are going to be relevant.
SPEAKER_1: The first one I want to bring up, I want to bring it up because in the Septuagint, it's different from in the Masoretic text, and yes, you could sort of play the game, because most men are going to follow the Masoretic text, and you can sort of bring up the Masoretic text and just say, aha, I got you, right?
SPEAKER_1: And that would, of course, be Exodus 15.3.
SPEAKER_1: And in Exodus 15.3, and I have on the right side here, the Masoretic text and the left, the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_1: We'll go through the Masoretic text first, the ESV in this case.
SPEAKER_1: The Lord is a man of war, the Lord is his name, right?
SPEAKER_1: Pretty open and shut there if the Lord calls himself a man of war.
SPEAKER_1: It's not exactly what it actually says in the real text of scripture.
SPEAKER_1: The Lord, when he shatters wars, the Lord is his name, in the wording of the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_1: Now, what this actually means in the Septuagint, in the underlying Greek there, is that the Lord ends wars.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, he will ultimately do that in the final day when he brings all war to an end for all time.
SPEAKER_1: But in order to do that, you can't be a pacifist.
SPEAKER_1: Pacifists don't end wars, they invite them.
SPEAKER_1: And so that would be one verse you could bring up to argue against.
SPEAKER_1: You can bring it up in either the Masoretic or the Septuagint, preferably the Septuagint, but you are going to have to explain that little bit in the Septuagint, that just because the Lord ends wars, not saying he's a man of war, well, he still has to be the kind of man who can wage war to end wars.
SPEAKER_1: Pretty straightforward logic there.
SPEAKER_1: The next verse would be, I'll actually do the New Testament first, so open up.
SPEAKER_1: Another ESV window here.
SPEAKER_1: That's not what I wanted.
SPEAKER_1: Logos is great when it cooperates.
SPEAKER_1: So Luke 22.36.
SPEAKER_1: This one is going to be pretty obvious, and we all know what this one is before I even bring it up.
SPEAKER_1: But it's worth mentioning for someone who says he's a pacifist, right?
SPEAKER_1: Let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.
SPEAKER_1: If Christ is telling you to sell your cloak, and in this case, this is your most important garment, the most important thing you possess.
SPEAKER_1: It's what keeps you warm on cold nights.
SPEAKER_1: And back then, unless you were a very wealthy man, you did not have a closet full of coats.
SPEAKER_1: This was the one you had to stay warm at night and not freeze.
SPEAKER_1: Christ says to sell it and buy a sword.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, you can't be a pacifist and square that with what Christ is saying.
SPEAKER_1: But insofar as these verses go, I think my personal favorite is going to be back, actually, in Jeremiah 48.
SPEAKER_1: And this one, right?
SPEAKER_1: Actually, I pulled up the wrong verse here.
SPEAKER_1: Let me pull up the right one.
SPEAKER_1: Why are we not pulling up?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: All right, it's, that's what it is.
SPEAKER_1: The numbering is different.
SPEAKER_1: I did pull up the right one, but I was thinking the Masoretic numbering and not the numbering in the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_1: The Septuagint is Jeremiah 31, 10.
SPEAKER_1: A cursed is the one who does the work of the Lord carelessly by keeping back his dagger from bloodshed.
SPEAKER_1: That's pretty open and shut.
SPEAKER_1: There's no way you can possibly look at that and think that pacifism is an acceptable position that you can square with scripture.
SPEAKER_1: If someone wants to be a pacifist, he's not a Christian, he's something else.
SPEAKER_1: So, I think those three are probably sufficient.
SPEAKER_1: You can do a much longer critique of pacifism, but you said a short critique, so I think for this case, that's the way to go.
SPEAKER_1: Go with those three passages.
SPEAKER_1: And again, it's Jeremiah 48, 10, the Masoretic, or 31, 10, in the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_1: Generally, use the Septuagint, unless someone is just very stuck on, you know, I really like the King James, then fine, use the Masoretic.
SPEAKER_1: The fourth question, question four is, is it worth the time and effort to join a congregational church with a bunch of friends slash families, elect each other to the boards, and change the direction of the church?
SPEAKER_1: Many of the congregational churches in my area are shrinking in membership and growing with age.
SPEAKER_1: The polity of congregational churches certainly provides the opportunity.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's perfectly valid in many cases.
SPEAKER_1: Particularly if you have, say, a smaller church that owns its land and its building, then by all means, having a faithful group of men take that over is a step in the right direction.
SPEAKER_1: That's very much a way that you can take things.
SPEAKER_1: Just run the numbers, as it were, figure out how many men you need in order to enact that policy, see how long it's going to take you, and maybe check the Constitution bylaws, whatever the governing documents are, and see how that is going to either help you or hinder you.
SPEAKER_1: And bear in mind, they may very well try to sue you.
SPEAKER_1: So think about whether or not they have a war chest for that, just to sort of tidbit their strategy recommendation.
SPEAKER_1: In some cases, they probably won't, because they don't have the capacity to sue you, or they just aren't litigious.
SPEAKER_1: But generally speaking, the left-leaning Christians, Christians so-called, are going to be more litigious.
SPEAKER_1: They're going to be more willing to take you to court, to try and ruin you, and make life difficult for you.
SPEAKER_1: So it's a wisdom call.
SPEAKER_1: You're going to have to run that assessment based on the men in the congregation, and how they behave.
SPEAKER_1: So, just bear that in mind.
SPEAKER_1: But yes, this is a perfectly valid way to go about things, and there's nothing morally objectionable about it as well.
SPEAKER_1: So, absolutely, if you have congregations in your area that you can take over and turn back into Christian churches, definitely do so.
SPEAKER_1: Big bonus if you get a nice building in the process.
SPEAKER_1: Those were the four questions that I had for today from the forum.
SPEAKER_1: So now I'll move on to the questions from the chat.
SPEAKER_1: I have a backlog of questions as well, I know that, but I did not have as much time to prepare questions this week.
SPEAKER_1: It is spring and earnest here, so I'm out in the garden and doing stuff like that, and it's been eating up my time.
SPEAKER_1: Question five.
SPEAKER_1: What is the correct method to judge a foreign community in a land as invaders versus multigenerational sojourners?
SPEAKER_1: Reference examples I was thinking of.
SPEAKER_1: The German community in South slash Central America, Japanese community in the US., and the post-1979 Persians or Assyrians in the West.
SPEAKER_1: This is going to have a number of factors that build into it.
SPEAKER_1: I know this was asked previously.
SPEAKER_1: I did not read it.
SPEAKER_1: It's in my backlog.
SPEAKER_1: But you have a difference between people who go somewhere that is undeveloped and develop a community, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's basically most of South America didn't have much in the way of civilization when the Europeans arrived, with the exception of a couple of rather barbarous, cannibalistic, human-sacrificing civilizations.
SPEAKER_1: So they don't count because you don't have to consider them, because God's solution to them is eradication.
SPEAKER_1: So for the Germans moving to South or Central America, in the South America case, they were setting up a new civilization in some cases.
SPEAKER_1: Because some of them obviously moved after the war, and so they were sojourners.
SPEAKER_1: That's different.
SPEAKER_1: South America is a complex question, because it really, it's the melting pot that America is not.
SPEAKER_1: It is a mixture of peoples who have intermarried to the point where you have an all-new race of people, a couple of them actually, in a few different places there.
SPEAKER_1: And they're part European, they're part native.
SPEAKER_1: Depending on the country, they're part African as well.
SPEAKER_1: So that also plays into it, because how similar you are, how close you are to the people in whose country you are sojourning is going to change things significantly, right?
SPEAKER_1: I don't think the South Africans who are moving to the United States need to be sojourners.
SPEAKER_1: I think they can stay here and become part of the population, because they are our close cousins.
SPEAKER_1: They are compatible with Americans.
SPEAKER_1: They're not really aliens.
SPEAKER_1: So I have no problem with them coming here, staying here, becoming part of the nation.
SPEAKER_1: Does a South African who moves here become American just like that?
SPEAKER_1: No, but his children could be, and his grandchildren certainly will be.
SPEAKER_1: The same thing is true for a Brit or a German.
SPEAKER_1: Even though they are genetically basically our brothers, moving here does not just make them an American, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's a different thing.
SPEAKER_1: But because they are so close, their children or their grandchildren will certainly be American.
SPEAKER_1: In the case of, say, the Japanese, right?
SPEAKER_1: They are more alien, because they are different people.
SPEAKER_1: They are a very different nation from Westerners, from Europeans.
SPEAKER_1: They are definitely sojourners, and so ideally a sojourner does return home at some point.
SPEAKER_1: The Japanese behave themselves and don't cause problems, which certainly makes them better sojourners, right?
SPEAKER_1: We don't necessarily really want them to leave because they are causing problems, because they aren't causing problems.
SPEAKER_1: There is also only about three quarters of a million Japanese in the United States, which is not a trivial number, but in the scope and scale of the United States, it's a relatively small population.
SPEAKER_1: It's also concentrated in a handful of areas.
SPEAKER_1: For the Persians and the Assyrians, I don't know the numbers of how many of them there are, but ideally, yes, they would return home, and granted, that part of the world is just going to be a dumpster fire seemingly forever.
SPEAKER_1: So the question is, when and how, right?
SPEAKER_1: Well, given the way that things are trending, and given the way that the immigration debate, we'll call it, is developing, it's pretty clear that it's only going to turn out one of two ways, right?
SPEAKER_1: The left's gonna win, or the right's gonna win.
SPEAKER_1: And if the right wins, most people are going home.
SPEAKER_1: And that's going to include, certainly, both of the groups that you mentioned.
SPEAKER_1: But insofar as, is someone a sojourner, or is someone an invader, part of the question is, why is he here, right?
SPEAKER_1: You know, if you are a German, after World War II, escaping Victor's justice, and you move somewhere, it's pretty clear that you're at least a sojourner, if not a refugee.
SPEAKER_1: And part of it is also that intention to return.
SPEAKER_1: Someone who has the intention to return can still qualify as a sojourner.
SPEAKER_1: Someone who has no intention to return is a different thing, because he's no longer sojourning, he is now squatting or invading.
SPEAKER_1: So part of it is that intention.
SPEAKER_1: People who do not have the intention to return are not sojourners.
SPEAKER_1: So that's going to play into this as well.
SPEAKER_1: I think really that intent is a big part of this.
SPEAKER_1: Obviously, that's more difficult to assess, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because you're looking into someone's mind, but you can tell intent from actions as well.
SPEAKER_1: That is going to be the biggest part of this other than that compatibility, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because determining whether or not someone's a sojourner or a rightful, not necessarily rightful, but a permissible immigrant is a matter of race.
SPEAKER_1: That's a matter of genetics.
SPEAKER_1: But sojourner really is that matter of intent, because it's the nature of the term.
SPEAKER_1: The thing is, someone who is spending time somewhere with the intent to return.
SPEAKER_1: And so you cannot, literally cannot be a sojourner if you have no intent to return.
SPEAKER_1: Question six.
SPEAKER_1: Once you get above 170s, what is the nature of the difference per IQ point?
SPEAKER_1: What is the general experience at 160 plus?
SPEAKER_1: That is quite the expansive question.
SPEAKER_1: But I think, to sort of, not necessarily deeply address it, but at least give a treatment of it, one of the best ways to illustrate the difference between different levels of intelligence, and this is going to work for any particular level of intelligence.
SPEAKER_1: It's not just, you know, 100 vs.
SPEAKER_1: 160 or whatever.
SPEAKER_1: As you go higher, or as you go to the right, depending on if you want to look at the curve, or you want to look at a table, however you're organizing your data here, you need less information to arrive at an accurate conclusion, because you are able to extrapolate more and more accurately.
SPEAKER_1: So, one of the definitions of genius that I have used in the past, and I find it compelling, I don't know if anyone said it before in that way.
SPEAKER_1: Similar thoughts have been expressed by many men, so I'm not claiming that this is mine.
SPEAKER_1: But the way that I've chosen to express it in the past is that genius is the ability to draw sound conclusions from seemingly insufficient data.
SPEAKER_1: Because a person of average intelligence, looking at the data set, whatever is available, is going to say, you cannot draw an accurate conclusion, this is insufficient.
SPEAKER_1: But the genius is going to look at it and know, in many cases, immediately, this is the right answer.
SPEAKER_1: I know the answer, I have enough information.
SPEAKER_1: It looks like magic, but it's not magic because it's just an ability to predict the future based on the present, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's extrapolation, it's forecasting, but accurately.
SPEAKER_1: This is one of the things that some AIs are pretty good at now, and why some men are looking at them in the way they are, which is a discussion for another time.
SPEAKER_1: There's some risk there.
SPEAKER_1: But I think that's one of the best ways to look at it.
SPEAKER_1: And then, insofar as, you know, what is daily life like, right?
SPEAKER_1: How is the general experience?
SPEAKER_1: No matter what your IQ is, you're still a man, right?
SPEAKER_1: You're going to have some different tastes, you're going to have some different experiences.
SPEAKER_1: Usually, genius is also highly correlated with certain, at least some of your senses being more attuned.
SPEAKER_1: So, genius may have a better sense of smell, taste, things like that.
SPEAKER_1: Little differences like that.
SPEAKER_1: But those things also vary, not necessarily always connected with intelligence, right?
SPEAKER_1: There are men who are very exceptionally good at some particular thing that is not connected to intelligence, right?
SPEAKER_1: And I'm not saying just the savant, right?
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying just the person who has severe deficits in other areas and this extreme talent in one.
SPEAKER_1: But generally speaking, you know, the genius is still a human being.
SPEAKER_1: It's still going to be a general sort of experience everyone else has.
SPEAKER_1: You have to eat and sleep and, you know, drink caffeine and all those things.
SPEAKER_1: So the difference is not going to be per IQ point, really.
SPEAKER_1: It's very difficult to determine with that sort of fine grain.
SPEAKER_1: IQ tests should really be, you know, your IQ is this plus or minus some number, which the more accurate ones are going to give you that, you know, plus minus five, six, seven, whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: The real differences are those standard deviations or maybe half a standard deviation.
SPEAKER_1: There is a real difference between 100 and 115, and there is a real difference between 115 and 130.
SPEAKER_1: This also builds into relatability across those levels, because the man who is at 130 is generally going to find it easier to relate to someone at 115 than 100, and he is going to find it a world easier to relate to the 100 than the 85.
SPEAKER_1: And that does sort of scale.
SPEAKER_1: It's not that the person who's, you know, 160 or 180, whatever it happens to be, is so completely disconnected from reality and common man that you can't understand them.
SPEAKER_1: Because also bear in mind, the person with the higher IQ can more accurately simulate the mind of another man.
SPEAKER_1: And so the person with the higher IQ can have the argument in his head with the other man before he has the argument.
SPEAKER_1: So he's really just replaying what he's already done.
SPEAKER_1: It gives you some tactical advantages, certainly.
SPEAKER_1: You know, if you're an attorney, it has advantages in court, right?
SPEAKER_1: But there is a difference in comprehensibility once you get too distant.
SPEAKER_1: Certainly the man who is 85 or 70 or whatever, God forbid, is not going to be able to understand the man who is at 150 at all, other than the things that are common to humanity.
SPEAKER_1: Again, eating, sleeping, drinking, liking pretty women, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's universal, up, down the scale doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_1: But the experience of the world and the perception of the world is going to be so fundamentally alien for someone who is that far distant, that there's going to be no real understanding.
SPEAKER_1: The person who's at the higher end of the spectrum can understand a little bit.
SPEAKER_1: But not entirely, because there are some things where you kind of have to live it to understand it in a certain way.
SPEAKER_1: It's not because you necessarily have to do something to understand it right.
SPEAKER_1: It's not the person who says, how do you know drugs are bad?
SPEAKER_1: You've never tried them.
SPEAKER_1: It's a stupid argument.
SPEAKER_1: But do you gain something when you do something in terms of knowledge?
SPEAKER_1: The answer is yes.
SPEAKER_1: And that's true for everything.
SPEAKER_1: Like, you know, if I stabbed my hand right now with any of the number of sharp things on my desk, I would gain knowledge of how that feels.
SPEAKER_1: It's not knowledge I want, and I already understand it sufficiently without doing it, right?
SPEAKER_1: I know it's going to hurt, it's going to bleed, it's going to be obnoxious.
SPEAKER_1: I know all that without doing it.
SPEAKER_1: But I would still gain some knowledge by doing the thing.
SPEAKER_1: Similar there with the difference between the person living life at 70 or 80 IQ, insofar as he's even aware of what's going on, versus the person living life at 160, right?
SPEAKER_1: I think that's a general overview of it, so there are very few men who are 160 plus.
SPEAKER_1: I've given the number before, obviously, in the episode we did on IQ.
SPEAKER_1: It's not a lot of men there.
SPEAKER_1: Most men really are in that 85 to 115 range.
SPEAKER_1: That's just how standard deviation works.
SPEAKER_1: It's just how a standard distribution works.
SPEAKER_1: But I think that pretty much covers that one.
SPEAKER_1: If you have a follow-up, by all means, let me know.
SPEAKER_1: Question 7.
SPEAKER_1: Two questions from the same person, unrelated, though, so I will number them separately.
SPEAKER_1: Question 7.
SPEAKER_1: What are the rights of the Amerindian descended North Americans?
SPEAKER_1: There are really, I guess, three parts to this answer.
SPEAKER_1: The first part to the answer that I would give is that those who were here when we first encountered them, and we had our conflicts with them and things like that, they were not Christian.
SPEAKER_1: They were, in many cases, vile pagans.
SPEAKER_1: Many of them engaged in human sacrifice.
SPEAKER_1: Some of them engaged in cannibalism.
SPEAKER_1: We should have treated them like the Canaanites.
SPEAKER_1: That is obviously back then, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's sort of the same as the Israelites were commanded to wipe out the Canaanites, and then you have the book of Joshua and then Judges, and right, it's the narrative, the litany of all the times they failed, because they didn't do it.
SPEAKER_1: So that's in the past.
SPEAKER_1: That's sort of the first part of it.
SPEAKER_1: The second part is really two parts to the same analysis, right?
SPEAKER_1: The question is, what do we do with those who are currently here, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's not like the sojourner, we can send him home, right?
SPEAKER_1: If we have someone who is here from, you know, pick a country, it doesn't matter, I won't even name one, just pick one in your head.
SPEAKER_1: We can send that man back to his country, because he has a country.
SPEAKER_1: The Amerindians don't, so there's nowhere we can send them.
SPEAKER_1: So, that means we have to treat them differently, just because there's no other option.
SPEAKER_1: I would say the assessment comes down to, are they Christian, right?
SPEAKER_1: There are some number of them, and it's in the millions, I think it's three or four million, it's something like that.
SPEAKER_1: Someone can correct me on that, if I'm off by a little bit, I might be.
SPEAKER_1: Three or four million of them claim to be Christian.
SPEAKER_1: That's non-trivial, okay?
SPEAKER_1: We have individuals, whatever we should have done in the past, we did or didn't do, they're here now, they are Christians, they have nowhere else to go.
SPEAKER_1: I think those ones, we have to give some chunk of territory.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't have to be a giant chunk of territory, it doesn't have to be their ancestral territory, it just has to be some territory somewhere that we give them because they're Christians at this point, and we owe Christians a different duty than we owe to the heathen, to the pagan, in the negative sense of the term.
SPEAKER_1: Those who are still pagan, who are still worshipping demons, we owe them nothing.
SPEAKER_1: And the previous solution that should have been enacted is still on the table.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's the three-part answer to that one.
SPEAKER_1: So, for the ones who are Christian, give them territory, tell them to stop building casinos, they're not allowed to do that.
SPEAKER_1: If they do that, they keep doing it, it's an act of war, then we handle it like we would any enemy.
SPEAKER_1: The second question from this individual, question 8, is it wrong to have a queen like England did?
SPEAKER_1: This is another one of those where a man who is familiar with the Masoretic text is going to be tempted.
SPEAKER_1: And he's going to be tempted because there is a passage in scripture that says, my people are oppressed and women are the rulers, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's in Isaiah, I believe.
SPEAKER_1: I will pull that one up.
SPEAKER_1: I don't remember the exact verse, so I have to look it up.
SPEAKER_1: Isaiah 3.2, okay.
SPEAKER_1: I will pull up the text so we can look at it.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, we'll look at both the Septuagint, wait, was it 3.2?
SPEAKER_1: 3.12, that's what it is.
SPEAKER_1: So Isaiah 3.12, right?
SPEAKER_1: In the Masoretic, we have a pretty open and shut case, it makes it very easy.
SPEAKER_1: My people, infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, that's negative, that's a curse.
SPEAKER_1: Women ruling you is a curse.
SPEAKER_1: Closed case, we're done.
SPEAKER_1: The problem is, that's not what scripture says, because the Septuagint says, oh my people, your exactors strip you clean, and your creditors lord it over you.
SPEAKER_1: That doesn't give us a condemnation of women rulers.
SPEAKER_1: And so, it seems like we're left with no condemnation, right?
SPEAKER_1: And there are no equivalent passages anywhere else in the Septuagint that would give us that, other than that one that I read from the Masoretic.
SPEAKER_1: However, the issue of whether or not someone should rule is not simply, can I find one verse that condemns this subgroup of people from doing this thing?
SPEAKER_1: What is the nature of ruling?
SPEAKER_1: The nature of ruling is exercising headship.
SPEAKER_1: And so go listen to the Stone Choir episode on headship.
SPEAKER_1: I will put that in the show notes, a link to that.
SPEAKER_1: A woman is never her own head.
SPEAKER_1: And so a woman exercising headship is per se wrongful.
SPEAKER_1: It is invalid, it's even incoherent.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you know, does a queen have a certain degree of authority by virtue of the fact that her husband is the king?
SPEAKER_1: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: The same as the woman of the house, we used to say the mistress of the house, but that term has gained negative connotations over the years.
SPEAKER_1: She has a certain degree of authority over those in the house by virtue of being the wife of the master of the house, the term we used to use for the head of the house.
SPEAKER_1: So, it's not wrong for women, per se, to exercise any authority, but a woman never has her own authority.
SPEAKER_1: It is always by virtue of her position with regard to her husband, or in some cases, you know, the princess has some authority because her father is the king, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's her relationship to her head, whomever that happens to be, because she's not her own head.
SPEAKER_1: So, should a woman rule?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_1: Should we have a queen?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_1: Does it mean that all women are bad rulers?
SPEAKER_1: No, those are different things.
SPEAKER_1: This is related to a point that I've made many times.
SPEAKER_1: When I say that women shouldn't go to university, I don't mean because women are dumb.
SPEAKER_1: I don't mean because women are incapable.
SPEAKER_1: I mean because God made them to do something else, and that thing is more important, because without women being a wife and mother, without them caring for the home and for children, there's no future.
SPEAKER_1: That's more important than whether or not she has a BA or a master's degree or whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: There are many women who are very capable.
SPEAKER_1: The IQ curves overlap significantly.
SPEAKER_1: Women and men are in the middle, so close over the course of the studies we've done over the decades, they may as well be identical.
SPEAKER_1: So, 100 is the average for men and 100 is the average for women.
SPEAKER_1: There are some studies that have said women are a little higher, and there are a couple studies that said men are a little higher.
SPEAKER_1: It's a rounding error, it's a fudge factor.
SPEAKER_1: Men however, produce more geniuses and more retards in the technical sense of the term, because the curve for men extends further.
SPEAKER_1: For women, it's narrow, which is to say the standard deviation is smaller.
SPEAKER_1: Most women cluster in the middle.
SPEAKER_1: Men, you get wider variety.
SPEAKER_1: This is the same for men with regard to basically every attribute.
SPEAKER_1: You get significantly greater variance in height for men, in weight for men, in strength for men.
SPEAKER_1: God did that with men because men need to serve a bunch of different roles.
SPEAKER_1: And so you have that variability in order to do that.
SPEAKER_1: You have the very highly intelligent men who can lead societies, you have the very strong men and things like that, you can fight for society, whoever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: You don't want them to be idiots, of course, when they're fighting.
SPEAKER_1: You can think of a quote from a famous philosopher on that note.
SPEAKER_1: But women are not dumb.
SPEAKER_1: It's just that they need to be doing other things because only women can give birth to children, right?
SPEAKER_1: So if women aren't giving birth to children, raising them, there's no future for that nation.
SPEAKER_1: That's more important than attending university.
SPEAKER_1: And because it's her place to be in the home.
SPEAKER_1: You don't want her out in the world doing the things a man is supposed to do because it leads to problems.
SPEAKER_1: You're inviting problems.
SPEAKER_1: So women ruling is bad because she's acting as her own head and as the head of her nation when she cannot do that.
SPEAKER_1: By her nature, she cannot do it.
SPEAKER_1: But it does not follow from that that she can't be a good ruler.
SPEAKER_1: I'm thinking, for instance, of Catherine the Great, one of the best rulers of Russia, was indeed a woman.
SPEAKER_1: Does not mean that she should have been there.
SPEAKER_1: So no, I do not think that having a queen is morally permissible.
SPEAKER_1: It is something that you're inviting judgment from God on yourself, and you should not do it.
SPEAKER_1: Let's see, my next question here.
SPEAKER_1: Actually, we'll scroll up in the chat for the next one.
SPEAKER_1: I did not copy it down.
SPEAKER_1: Right.
SPEAKER_1: Today, Woe called Augustine's just worth very profoundly evil and used some strong words.
SPEAKER_1: I was bothered by such language about St.
SPEAKER_1: Augustine.
SPEAKER_1: Could you provide your own thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_1: I am actually going to answer that one next time.
SPEAKER_1: So it's not really the question nine, but I want to give a fuller answer to that.
SPEAKER_1: So I'm going to answer that one next time.
SPEAKER_1: Since, like I said, I did not have time to prepare as much this week, and also this one came in in the chat while we were discussing previous questions.
SPEAKER_1: Any speculation on why the game of chess is so dominated by Jews, I've been bothered about playing chess since realizing that it is, something about the nature of the game.
SPEAKER_1: I think that it's not necessarily, I don't know that it's necessarily dominated by Jews.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, there are many good players who are Jews, and they are statistically overrepresented.
SPEAKER_1: Chess is a game of memorization.
SPEAKER_1: I know that's going to make some men mad, but I feel like most people probably accept that fact now.
SPEAKER_1: Given that AI is significantly better than human beings.
SPEAKER_1: I think more people are willing to accept that chess is not so much a game of strategy and thought, as it is a game of memorizing how to respond.
SPEAKER_1: So, if you get an individual with an exceptional memory, he could be a very good chess player.
SPEAKER_1: I'm thinking of a parallel in the gentleman who won the Scrabble tournament in French without speaking French, because he memorized the French Dictionary, which seems like a weird way to do it, but it worked.
SPEAKER_1: So, if you have the memory for it, you don't necessarily have to be good at strategy.
SPEAKER_1: There are other games that are more in terms of strategy.
SPEAKER_1: I'm thinking of Go, for instance.
SPEAKER_1: That one seems like it's also slowly moving toward being a solved game, in which case it's not a pure strategy game.
SPEAKER_1: But for practical purposes, for a human being, that one's going to be a strategy game, just because you can't memorize.
SPEAKER_1: Chess, you can't effectively memorize enough that it's no longer a strategy game.
SPEAKER_1: Now, is it a strategy game for individuals who are new to it?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely, because you're having to use strategy to determine what you're going to do, because you don't know the responses, you haven't memorized them.
SPEAKER_1: So, I think that in some cases, it's just a matter of Jews definitely do push education, and if you invest the hours in doing chess, right, in memorizing how to respond, and analyzing games, and watching games, if you have the intellectual capacity to store all of that, you can become a good chess player.
SPEAKER_1: So, I think it's time investment is a huge part of it.
SPEAKER_1: And certainly, the Ashkenazi Jews do produce some intelligent individuals.
SPEAKER_1: Their IQ is overblown deliberately.
SPEAKER_1: I know how they fudged the statistics for that.
SPEAKER_1: I know how they played the game.
SPEAKER_1: But they're not dumb, right?
SPEAKER_1: They still produce some highly intelligent men.
SPEAKER_1: The Sephardim, much less so.
SPEAKER_1: So if you have that combination of pushing education and all these hours invested in this thing, and bear in mind they don't play sports, so they're doing something else instead, usually it's music or something like chess, studying the Talmud, it makes perfect sense.
SPEAKER_1: If it were a game of pure strategy, then there would be some other more interesting questions.
SPEAKER_1: But given that chess isn't, I don't find it a particularly interesting thing.
SPEAKER_1: If you like chess, by all means play chess.
SPEAKER_1: Never was something that particularly interested me.
SPEAKER_1: I probably own a dozen chess boards because people have given them to me over the years for some reason.
SPEAKER_1: I mostly use them as a base for house plants.
SPEAKER_1: Just not my game.
SPEAKER_1: But I think that's basically the explanation of why you see that over-representation there.
SPEAKER_1: I'll actually write that down, so remember to put it in the show notes.
SPEAKER_1: Question 10.
SPEAKER_1: What do you think about the recent changes made to the US.
SPEAKER_1: Forest Service?
SPEAKER_1: I cannot answer that one because I did not actually look at what they were.
SPEAKER_1: There were some sensationalist headlines, and then I saw that they are moving their headquarters and that they're restructuring, but I didn't look at the actual overall impact, so I can't really assess it in a fair way because I don't know what they're doing.
SPEAKER_1: I could say that hypothetically, if they are cutting the budget, that is bad.
SPEAKER_1: The Forest Service is one of the handful of things the government does that is actually very good, and I think that we should have better funding for the national and state parks.
SPEAKER_1: National and state parks, they are a vital part of our country.
SPEAKER_1: They should be respected and protected, and we should be punishing literars significantly more heavily.
SPEAKER_1: Question 11.
SPEAKER_1: Given that the mind is obsessed with origin stories, to what extent is it knowable who or what was on the earth at the time of Adam and Eve?
SPEAKER_1: Surely, it was not just two people in a garden where the god's creation is part of creation.
SPEAKER_1: Genesis is literal.
SPEAKER_1: The creation story is literal.
SPEAKER_1: Adam and Eve were the first two human beings, Adam being created first, Eve being created from Adam.
SPEAKER_1: There were no other human beings.
SPEAKER_1: This is referencing the theory that there were other hominids and that Adam and Eve were elevated from them and turned into human beings.
SPEAKER_1: And that's trying to square the Darwinian explanation for the origin of life with Christianity, and the two are not compatible.
SPEAKER_1: Evolution and Christianity are compatible in the sense of microevolution and...
SPEAKER_1: I don't know if we necessarily have a term for it, but not speciation, but the creation of, essentially, subspecies, breeds, races, whatever you want to call them.
SPEAKER_1: We use different terms for different creatures, right?
SPEAKER_1: We call dogs breeds and humans races.
SPEAKER_1: Same thing.
SPEAKER_1: That happened.
SPEAKER_1: That's microevolution.
SPEAKER_1: You do not have the macroevolution of going from a fish to a human being.
SPEAKER_1: That's nonsense.
SPEAKER_1: That didn't happen.
SPEAKER_1: But yes, Adam and Eve were the first two human beings, and we are all descended from them.
SPEAKER_1: And everything in scripture relies on that being the case.
SPEAKER_1: That is how original sin works.
SPEAKER_1: That is how the atonement works.
SPEAKER_1: Everything relies on that fact.
SPEAKER_1: So, yes, every single human being living today is a son or daughter of Adam, for better or worse, because if you're a human being, then you have a final destination.
SPEAKER_1: For some people, it would probably be better, it would definitely be better, if they were not human, because then they would not go to hell for eternity.
SPEAKER_1: And I can safely say that, because you can think, of course, what Christ said about Judas.
SPEAKER_1: It would be better for that one, if he had not been born.
SPEAKER_1: Question 12.
SPEAKER_1: Have you ever had an encounter with an LDS missionary?
SPEAKER_1: It's almost like debating with a Muslim.
SPEAKER_1: That's true, actually, in my experience.
SPEAKER_1: There's almost no getting through to them.
SPEAKER_1: Any advice when running into those with false religions?
SPEAKER_1: So, insofar as that last bit expands it to all false religions, it's going to depend on the religion, right?
SPEAKER_1: Muslims and Mormons are going to be very hard to reach.
SPEAKER_1: Incidentally, Jehovah's Witnesses are also pretty hard to reach.
SPEAKER_1: They are also quite stubborn, and they're very bad at Greek.
SPEAKER_1: That doesn't help, which is relevant for them, of course.
SPEAKER_1: When the Mormons are the same, actually, they also argue a little bit of that.
SPEAKER_1: The Mormons, if you can get through to them with regard to the history, you can maybe make some progress, because the history of the Mormon so-called church is crazy stuff that does not strike any same man as being the behavior and the actions of a church.
SPEAKER_1: Like, the prophets were not good men in the Mormon faith.
SPEAKER_1: You know, you have them riding drunk through town naked on a horse, womanizing, sleeping with wives of their followers.
SPEAKER_1: There's all sorts of horrible things going on there.
SPEAKER_1: These are not good men.
SPEAKER_1: These are not the men you want to follow.
SPEAKER_1: And the claims of Mormonism are absurd.
SPEAKER_1: Don't even get into the, you know, you get your own planet and the harem of wives, and they spend all of eternity pregnant, and then you have enough children, you basically start your own universe, and they just, you know, it gets crazy.
SPEAKER_1: The historical claims are falsifiable, right?
SPEAKER_1: If you make historical claims, those are falsifiable to some degree, right?
SPEAKER_1: If you make a claim about this man like that person or dislike that man, that's harder to prove.
SPEAKER_1: But if you say that a giant battle took place in Missouri, well, we can go excavate Missouri, and if we don't find it, there's a problem with your religion.
SPEAKER_1: Every time they go and try to excavate something the Bible claims, they find the thing, eventually.
SPEAKER_1: Sometimes it takes them a while to figure out where it is, you know, Jericho or various battles or Egyptian cities and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_1: It takes them a while to find it sometimes, but they eventually find it, and then, lo and behold, it has the names we find in scripture.
SPEAKER_1: It is the same timeline we find in scripture.
SPEAKER_1: They find something that comes from Solomon or that comes from David or comes from a certain pharaoh.
SPEAKER_1: That doesn't happen with Mormonism.
SPEAKER_1: The Mormon Church has spent untold amounts of money, because they have billions of dollars, trying to excavate things claimed by the Book of Mormon and found nothing.
SPEAKER_1: It's not there.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing there.
SPEAKER_1: There's also the fact that the Book of Mormon is weird fanfiction that was more or less originally a science fiction story that became a religion, so it kind of sounds like Elrond Hubbard, but you kind of have to try to get through to them in whatever way is going to work for that person, right?
SPEAKER_1: You have to find the argument is most convincing for them.
SPEAKER_1: Some people, the history will work.
SPEAKER_1: Some are just going to say, well, we haven't found it yet.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, that kind of person is going to be very hard to persuade because he's going to be persuaded by nothing, because he's always going to say, we haven't found it yet.
SPEAKER_1: It will always be yet for that person.
SPEAKER_1: And for Mormons, the biggest part actually isn't necessarily the theology and things like that, insofar as they have theology.
SPEAKER_1: It's more that if you leave the Mormon Church, you lose everyone.
SPEAKER_1: They will all shun you, they will abandon you, in some cases worse.
SPEAKER_1: You lose your friends, you lose family, you lose connections.
SPEAKER_1: They lose their entire support structure, and that's very difficult.
SPEAKER_1: So a big part of converting Mormons is coming alongside them when they convert and giving them a new support structure, right?
SPEAKER_1: They're going to need friends and connections and employment and all these things, because they're going to lose that when they leave Mormonism.
SPEAKER_1: And in many cases, they're going to have to move, physically relocate, to not be in a Mormon part of the country.
SPEAKER_1: So that's a big part of evangelizing and converting Mormons, is giving them another life, essentially, because they're going to lose the one they had in Mormonism.
SPEAKER_1: They need to have something else, or else they're...
SPEAKER_1: Very few men will make that jump, right?
SPEAKER_1: But there's nothing to catch them.
SPEAKER_1: But persuading them is very difficult, because they don't necessarily make a rational argument to each other.
SPEAKER_1: And so you're not addressing a rational argument.
SPEAKER_1: It's not that they have made this series of points and arguments and then concluded something based on that.
SPEAKER_1: Because if you have that, well, you can attack the points or you can attack the logic, you can attack the conclusion.
SPEAKER_1: The big thing for the Mormons is, do you have a burning in the bosom?
SPEAKER_1: When we talk about this stuff, do you feel inside of you that it's real, that this is...
SPEAKER_1: And that's a manufactured feeling.
SPEAKER_1: It's the same reason that traditional Christians object to Pentecostalism.
SPEAKER_1: Because Pentecostalism and Mormonism are brothers.
SPEAKER_1: They are related.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying Pentecostals go to hell, because Pentecostals happen to have better theology.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to say good theology, but better theology than the Mormons.
SPEAKER_1: They can be saved, they still trust in Jesus.
SPEAKER_1: But their arguments, their way of arriving at that, those are horrible, because they do the same sort of burning in the bosom, right?
SPEAKER_1: You feel a fire of the Holy Spirit, whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: You don't want to go down that road.
SPEAKER_1: And so, like I said for Mormons, it's very difficult to try to reach them.
SPEAKER_1: And I think part of it is going to be a state solution, because false religions are supposed to be suppressed by a Christian ruler.
SPEAKER_1: And I don't think there will ever be a true solution to the Mormons and other groups like that without a Christian prince, without a Christian state enforcing punishments for false teachers.
SPEAKER_1: Because most of them, you strike the shepherd, the sheep will flee, right?
SPEAKER_1: You're not going to have to convert every single individual.
SPEAKER_1: Usually, when you get rid of a number of false teachers, the sheep will wander into some other pasture.
SPEAKER_1: So, but insofar as trying to convert individual Mormons, you are probably going to have to figure out where the chink in the armor is, right?
SPEAKER_1: Where they have some doubt about the Mormon claims.
SPEAKER_1: And maybe it's the nature of the prophets.
SPEAKER_1: They were terrible men.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe it's the historical claims.
SPEAKER_1: None of them have proven true.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe it's the absurdity of the claims about, essentially, eschatology, right?
SPEAKER_1: You get your own planet and the harem of wives, you keep pregnant for eternity.
SPEAKER_1: This is not the sort of thing that someone takes seriously as a religion.
SPEAKER_1: That's more something that someone finds in a science fiction book written by someone in the 60s who was doing a number of substances.
SPEAKER_1: So it just depends.
SPEAKER_1: You're going to have to figure out how that man is going to respond to a particular argument.
SPEAKER_1: And part of it is just having the discussion with him.
SPEAKER_1: If this is someone who is a friend, and that's going to make it a little easier, take your time.
SPEAKER_1: Develop that argument, figure out what he believes about it, why he believes it, figure out why he's a Mormon.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe he doesn't really believe.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe it's just for business connections.
SPEAKER_1: That happens a lot.
SPEAKER_1: I know some men like that, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_1: I wish they wouldn't do that, but that's part of it.
SPEAKER_1: You have to figure out the man and the argument that will work for him.
SPEAKER_1: Question 13.
SPEAKER_1: What prophecies need to happen before Jesus returns?
SPEAKER_1: I have touched on that one in a previous episode, so hopefully someone will link to that, but I'll also briefly address it here.
SPEAKER_1: There are a number of prophecies that have not yet come true.
SPEAKER_1: Some of them are up in the air because there are multiple potential interpretations that I think are equally valid, and we don't know which one is true, right?
SPEAKER_1: So for instance, the two prophets in Revelation, we don't know if those are actually two prophets or if they are symbolic of, say, institutions or something like that.
SPEAKER_1: So are they extant?
SPEAKER_1: Are they two physical men?
SPEAKER_1: We're waiting for them to appear.
SPEAKER_1: We don't really know.
SPEAKER_1: And so maybe it's fulfilled, maybe it's not.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think things are bad enough for this to be the end of the period of tribulation, right?
SPEAKER_1: And you can interpret the tribulation as being seven literal years, or being a perfect time, because seven is symbolic.
SPEAKER_1: However you interpret that, things get worse near the end.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think they're bad enough yet that it qualifies as the end.
SPEAKER_1: So, they're going to get worse.
SPEAKER_1: Not necessarily for us, because maybe it's the end, maybe it's not.
SPEAKER_1: If it's not the end, perhaps it's cyclical.
SPEAKER_1: Things will get better and get worse, and get better and get worse, and eventually they get so bad, it's the end.
SPEAKER_1: So if it's the end, they're going to get worse.
SPEAKER_1: If it's not yet the end, I think they'll get better.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know which one of those it is.
SPEAKER_1: That's right, that's in God's wisdom.
SPEAKER_1: No man knows the hour of the day.
SPEAKER_1: But there are some signs that do not seem like they have taken place in their fullness yet, which is related to how scripture is often fulfilled in terms of prophecies in scripture.
SPEAKER_1: There's often cyclical fulfillment, which is to say that there are lesser fulfillments or typological fulfillments, and then the greater and full, as it were, complete fulfillment at some point in the future, right?
SPEAKER_1: This is similar to how you have typology with reference to types of Christ in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_1: David is a type of Christ, Solomon is a type of Christ, Joshua is a type of Christ.
SPEAKER_1: Joshua, incidentally, his name is Jesus.
SPEAKER_1: That's just translated differently because someone felt like doing that.
SPEAKER_1: I've been reading through the Septuagint, through the Bible in the Ear podcast, and I've been calling him Jesus.
SPEAKER_1: We're in Judges now, but I was calling him Jesus when I was reading through Joshua, Jesus, whichever one you want to call the book.
SPEAKER_1: You have these types of Christ, and then Christ is the fulfillment.
SPEAKER_1: Christ is the antitype.
SPEAKER_1: You have the same thing with regard to various fulfillments of prophecies about the end times.
SPEAKER_1: You have some that are basically typological echoes of that.
SPEAKER_1: And so, to some degree, 70 AD is a type of the last day of the final judgment.
SPEAKER_1: That's a fulfillment of prophecy.
SPEAKER_1: It's a partial fulfillment.
SPEAKER_1: The full one hasn't happened yet.
SPEAKER_1: So some of these are going to be wisdom calls.
SPEAKER_1: Some of these we're probably not going to know until the trumpets sound, and it's the final day.
SPEAKER_1: So practically speaking, for Christians, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_1: It just doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_1: If the last day, if the final judgment is going to come in 783 days, or if it's going to be in six hours...
SPEAKER_1: Again, I don't think all the signs are fulfilled, so I don't think it can be in six hours, but regardless of when it's going to come, how much does it really change your life?
SPEAKER_1: I can harken back to what I said from Luther earlier, even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree today, right?
SPEAKER_1: Same thing, you live your life as a Christian, even if it looks like everything is drawing to a close, because your duty is still to live your life as a Christian, and maybe it's the end, maybe it's not.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't really matter for how you live your life, because you certainly shouldn't be waiting the last minute to repent.
SPEAKER_1: And another salient point that I brought out many times before is for all of us, heaven is an instant away, or hell.
SPEAKER_1: Hopefully not hell for anyone listening, but heaven or hell is an instant away, right?
SPEAKER_1: Just because the end times aren't going to happen soon, maybe they are, maybe they aren't, doesn't mean that I'm going to live forever.
SPEAKER_1: I'm mortal.
SPEAKER_1: I could have a heart attack while I'm recording this, or an aneurysm.
SPEAKER_1: I could, any number of ways I could die while I'm sitting here.
SPEAKER_1: So you should always live your life as you should, right?
SPEAKER_1: You should live your life as a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: You don't try to wait and have the deathbed repentance because you could get hit by a semi-tomorrow on the highway.
SPEAKER_1: Increasing odds of that due to immigration.
SPEAKER_1: But you live your life as a Christian, and God takes care of the rest.
SPEAKER_1: You can't guard against every sort of harm.
SPEAKER_1: You can't hedge your bets on everything.
SPEAKER_1: So you do your duty, and you let God take care of the things like when he's going to draw the universe to a close.
SPEAKER_1: Is it interesting?
SPEAKER_1: Sure, there's some interest there, but I find that when people focus too heavily on revelation and things like that, Daniel, it pulls them away from the things that truly matter, the things that are more important, and the things that are actually about living a Christian life, instead of being obsessed with the secret counsel of God.
SPEAKER_1: God reserved those things for himself in large part, and when he wrote about them, he wrote about them in a way that in some ways is open to interpretation.
SPEAKER_1: I think he did that deliberately.
SPEAKER_1: He's very clear about the parts of scripture where he wants us to have no question, and then he deals with all the figurative stuff in Revelation.
SPEAKER_1: So, just don't put too much emphasis on it.
SPEAKER_1: Focus on living a Christian life instead, and things will end when they do.
SPEAKER_1: Hopefully the dog's barking is not coming through.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, question 14.
SPEAKER_1: How are we as Christians to view historical leaving of infant abandonment in the context of rural populations in countries such as Iceland?
SPEAKER_1: So, exposure.
SPEAKER_1: This is a way that they used to deal with unwanted infants, which is to say that it was effectively a post-birth abortion, which sort of gives away my answer.
SPEAKER_1: It is not morally permissible to leave infants or invalids, others, out in nature and let them die from exposure.
SPEAKER_1: Anyone who is born, we have a duty to care for that person as best we can.
SPEAKER_1: Now, under starvation conditions, which certainly have occurred in some of those countries, for obvious reasons, you know, the crop fails, and you don't have sufficient stores, then yes, you're going to have to make some hard calls, but you do not deliberately start killing members of your population in order to deal with that.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't mean that there's an easy solution, because often in life there are no easy solutions.
SPEAKER_1: These days, we don't have those problems, thankfully, but it was not a morally permissible thing to do.
SPEAKER_1: That is not an acceptable form of eugenics, so no, they should not have been doing that.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to number this one, but someone asked me when to shave my beard.
SPEAKER_1: Very unlikely.
SPEAKER_1: The question, what is this?
SPEAKER_1: 15, question 15, how did Cain find a wife?
SPEAKER_1: Not all of the children of the patriarchs are recorded in scripture.
SPEAKER_1: There are individuals for whom scripture records all of their children, and there are those for whom scripture does not record all their children.
SPEAKER_1: And in many cases, it says that the person lived X years and had other sons and daughters.
SPEAKER_1: That's the case for Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_1: So, he married a daughter of Adam and Eve, which, yes, means he married his sister.
SPEAKER_1: But back then, they did not have the genetic problems that populations have today.
SPEAKER_1: And this is...
SPEAKER_1: This is an important point to make, because one of the reasons that we have so many problems in certain populations in the world is because they've engaged in inbreeding, usually first-cousin marriage, over many hundreds of years.
SPEAKER_1: That leads to the genetic issues they have.
SPEAKER_1: The reason it does that is that if you have a defective gene, right, or you have some part of your DNA has some problem, and then you pair off with someone who also has that problem, you pass on the problem, guaranteed, to your children.
SPEAKER_1: But say, if you have one defective gene from one parent, and a non-defective one from the other parent, and assuming that the non-defective one expresses itself, assuming how the dominance works, then you're still fine.
SPEAKER_1: And if you pass on the defective gene to your child, but you have paired off with someone who does not have the defective gene, the child doesn't have the problem, assuming again, dominance of the non-defective gene.
SPEAKER_1: Or maybe you don't pass on the defective one.
SPEAKER_1: These problems, as you can see, concentrate, if you have a population where there is a defective version of the gene, and then they inbreed.
SPEAKER_1: That's the issue in places like India and large parts of Africa, for related but different reasons.
SPEAKER_1: They're distinct there.
SPEAKER_1: This was not a problem back at the time of Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_1: God even hadn't enacted the laws yet against marrying your close relatives.
SPEAKER_1: Because it was not a problem at the time.
SPEAKER_1: It has become a problem due to degeneration after the fall.
SPEAKER_1: If we were still perfect, unfallen, like Adam and Eve, maybe God would have enacted that law for other reasons.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe he would not have done so.
SPEAKER_1: But the biological issues would not have arisen.
SPEAKER_1: They have arisen due to the fact that we are degenerating, which is, incidentally, a condemnation of evolution.
SPEAKER_1: We're not getting better, we're getting worse.
SPEAKER_1: So, yes, he married his sister.
SPEAKER_1: Incidentally, so did Abraham.
SPEAKER_1: But it was not morally impermissible at the time, so he was not sinning when he did it.
SPEAKER_1: Question 16.
SPEAKER_1: I think I'll maybe answer probably one or two more tonight.
SPEAKER_1: Scroll through the chat quickly.
SPEAKER_1: I'll copy the ones that I don't answer tonight.
SPEAKER_1: What are the benefits of exclusively using pen and paper, which you seemingly do?
SPEAKER_1: There must be sufficient advantages that compensate for the transcription time.
SPEAKER_1: I do actually type some things, but certainly essays and things like that, I handwrite them first.
SPEAKER_1: If I have a homily, which I do every so often, more often than I actually type them up and read them, but those I handwrite, essays again I handwrite.
SPEAKER_1: All of my articles were handwritten first, except I think maybe one was not.
SPEAKER_1: The benefits of pen and paper, these days you have the benefit of a physical copy, right?
SPEAKER_1: So you could do the same thing if you print it off, except then you have to fight with a printer, which is the worst piece of hardware ever invented by humanity.
SPEAKER_1: But, that aside, there are psychological benefits to physically writing.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, it helps with fine motor control.
SPEAKER_1: That's more of a concern for small children.
SPEAKER_1: One of the reasons we should still teach children cursive, it teaches that fine motor control.
SPEAKER_1: You see greater problems with that in Gen Alpha and even Gen Z, because they did not learn cursive, versus Millennials and older, we did learn cursive.
SPEAKER_1: Not all Millennials, some schools had abandoned it, mine had not.
SPEAKER_1: But you actually think about things and process them differently, when you are forced to slow down, and you're also engaging more of your senses.
SPEAKER_1: You're engaging physically with the work that you are doing.
SPEAKER_1: And human beings are physical, right?
SPEAKER_1: We are our bodies.
SPEAKER_1: We're not, again, I say this all the time, but you are not a spirit piloting a meat mech, or however you want to think about it.
SPEAKER_1: You are your body.
SPEAKER_1: You are your soul.
SPEAKER_1: You are your mind.
SPEAKER_1: You are all of those things.
SPEAKER_1: You are the sum of them greater than the part, than the parts, right?
SPEAKER_1: Engaging those additional senses is important.
SPEAKER_1: And on a practical note, or perhaps impractical note, depending on how you want to look at it, it's just more pleasant.
SPEAKER_1: It's nice.
SPEAKER_1: It's a hobby to some degree, collecting, you know, pens and inks and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: It's nice to have the options.
SPEAKER_1: You can pick what color you know, if you happen to like one color more than the other.
SPEAKER_1: I had someone who was asking me about the sailor ink that I just started using, and so I have certainly that color now.
SPEAKER_1: So that's the color of it.
SPEAKER_1: It's actually quite nice, light blue, sort of almost turquoise.
SPEAKER_1: It's just more pleasant, but I do think it is also beneficial.
SPEAKER_1: So I think people would benefit from at least writing a little bit, even if it's just keeping a journal.
SPEAKER_1: That's perfectly fine.
SPEAKER_1: Journal, diary, whatever you want to call it.
SPEAKER_1: It does not make it feminine if you call it a diary.
SPEAKER_1: Diary just means a day book, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's from Latin for day.
SPEAKER_1: But that's basically the reason that I do it.
SPEAKER_1: And like I said, it is nice to have the physical archive because I do keep the physical notebooks and just store them.
SPEAKER_1: I think that is pretty much it for the questions in chat for this week.
SPEAKER_1: Let me see if there's a little more.
SPEAKER_1: One more question I'll answer.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked about, I will be charitable, countries like Somalia and Congo that have problems, which is an understatement.
SPEAKER_1: Will their IQs increase if they ban first cousin marriage?
SPEAKER_1: How many decades will it take?
SPEAKER_1: This is actually, maybe I shouldn't have opened this can of worms this time, but because it's an important question, and I think I will touch on it later in greater fullness, but I will touch on it briefly right now.
SPEAKER_1: This is a fundamental issue with regard to the difference between Christians and Darwinists, right?
SPEAKER_1: Darwinists, whatever you want to call them.
SPEAKER_1: Many of the neo-pagans, of course, being Darwinian in their views.
SPEAKER_1: The Darwinian, the evolutionist, the atheist, believes that we are trending upward.
SPEAKER_1: He believes that given sufficient time, we can simply get better, right?
SPEAKER_1: The humanity of 3026 will be superior to the humanity of 2026.
SPEAKER_1: That is not the case.
SPEAKER_1: We are not getting better.
SPEAKER_1: We are getting worse, because, and this is the Christian view, due to the fall, and due to the separation from God, creation is falling to chaos.
SPEAKER_1: It is falling apart.
SPEAKER_1: Things are coming undone.
SPEAKER_1: And so, we have more problems than our ancestors.
SPEAKER_1: We have health problems they did not have.
SPEAKER_1: They were superior to us in some ways.
SPEAKER_1: I don't necessarily think that our intellectual capacity has decreased too much, because I can look at writings from thousands of years ago, and they don't seem to be wildly more intelligent than we are.
SPEAKER_1: But things are running down in a very real way.
SPEAKER_1: So, you have this sort of biological optimism over in the Darwinian camp, that if we just enact the right policies, things will get better.
SPEAKER_1: And this bleeds over into Christian views as well, because you'll get Christians who think, if these countries that have all these problems would simply enact policies X, Y, and Z, you get the really simplistic, crazy ones, who they adopt the Constitution, right?
SPEAKER_1: Then all their problems go away.
SPEAKER_1: And then you look at Liberia and, well, Liberia.
SPEAKER_1: Those measures will not solve the problem, because the degeneration and the loss is a one-way street.
SPEAKER_1: The races of men, the nations that have degenerated to the point of somewhere like Somalia, will never rise back to what they could have been if they had not been demon-worshipping savages.
SPEAKER_1: That is a one-way street.
SPEAKER_1: The loss is permanent in this life.
SPEAKER_1: God will restore the ones that convert to Christianity in the next life, and so they'll be what they would have been, absent that long chain of wickedness that turned them into what they are today.
SPEAKER_1: But no, if you ban first cousin marriage, it does not increase the IQ of your country, it just stops the slide.
SPEAKER_1: That's all you can do.
SPEAKER_1: You can arrest the descent.
SPEAKER_1: You cannot reverse it, in most cases.
SPEAKER_1: That doesn't mean, of course, that you can't increase the overall population to some degree, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because you can incentivize the more intelligent, healthier, more capable individuals in your population to have more children.
SPEAKER_1: That's eugenics, and that does work, but you will note, you are not rising above the level of the best in your population, you are just bringing up the average in your population to what is the best in your population.
SPEAKER_1: Because there's a ceiling.
SPEAKER_1: The same thing is true for somewhere like Somalia, it's a much lower ceiling.
SPEAKER_1: So, this is why we touched on the issue of race and things like that, and treated it so extensively with Stone Quire.
SPEAKER_1: Because once these things are lost, they are lost forever in this life.
SPEAKER_1: You cannot bring them back.
SPEAKER_1: Now, yes, someone's going to say, well, what about CRISPR?
SPEAKER_1: Okay, assuming we somehow achieve perfect insight into our genome, yes, in theory, you can craft an artificial human being that is better in the sense of not having some of these defects.
SPEAKER_1: That is an entirely different can of worms.
SPEAKER_1: There are many problems there, and that is a pretty big assumption that we could even do it.
SPEAKER_1: Can we cure some small things?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_1: But what are we doing?
SPEAKER_1: We're curing the defect.
SPEAKER_1: We're not making humanity better.
SPEAKER_1: We're not creating a superior human being.
SPEAKER_1: Again, a topic for another time.
SPEAKER_1: But the basic answer here, and sort of the foundational, the fundamental issue, is that it is a one-way street.
SPEAKER_1: Which is why it is so important to enact policies that prevent us from becoming that.
SPEAKER_1: Because if we become that, we're never getting back to where we are.
SPEAKER_1: If Europe were to pursue the same sort of wickedness and evil over thousands of years, or hundreds of years, depending on the intensity of the wickedness, that say India and some parts, most of Africa, some parts of Asia, most of the New World, if we did the same thing and ended up like them, we would never get back to what our ancestors were.
SPEAKER_1: Because those individuals in those other nations will never get back to what their ancestors were.
SPEAKER_1: Ham was not a Somalian, right?
SPEAKER_1: The father of all Africa.
SPEAKER_1: He did not have an IQ of 70.
SPEAKER_1: His progeny have IQs of 70, sometimes lower.
SPEAKER_1: Because of the effects of that accumulated wickedness, and in large part, the harsh reality of biology.
SPEAKER_1: Particularly sexual sins wind up with these dire consequences biologically.
SPEAKER_1: And this touches back on the issue of cousin marriage, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's a problem today.
SPEAKER_1: If you pursue that, if you engage in first cousin marriage for many, many years, you will wind up with the same sort of problems that you have in parts of the world doing that.
SPEAKER_1: India being one of the chief among them.
SPEAKER_1: Which again is why this issue is so important.
SPEAKER_1: Because if you don't stop that sort of slide into evil and degeneration, you will never crawl out of that pit because it's a one way street.
SPEAKER_1: And like I said, I'll probably touch on that more in the future, but it's a large topic because it's so important.
SPEAKER_1: And it's part of what so many miss when looking at why different groups believe what they do, right?
SPEAKER_1: If you believe that simply enacting the right policies can make humanity better in terms of biology, you're going to have a different outlook on what we should be doing versus someone who believes, in line with scripture, that all we can do is arrest the slide.
SPEAKER_1: We can prevent things from getting worse.
SPEAKER_1: Because there's a greater urgency when any fall is permanent versus someone who thinks that, oh, it's fine, we'll just enact better policies, and we'll get better over.
SPEAKER_1: If that is impossible, then it's more important to prevent that fall from happening.
SPEAKER_1: But I think that will probably be it for this week.
SPEAKER_1: I did see that there were some other questions, and I've noted them for next week.
SPEAKER_1: As always, if I missed your question or didn't answer your question, you have a follow-up.
SPEAKER_1: By all means, please post it on the forum.
SPEAKER_1: That is preferred, because it just helps me to prepare the answers, and other people to find them, and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: It's just for the sake of cleanliness, as it were, for the sake of order.
SPEAKER_1: Germanic love of order, right?
SPEAKER_1: But that is omnifora.com is the site.
SPEAKER_1: It should be in the description for all of the streams.
SPEAKER_1: It's in the show notes for each of the shows after the show.
SPEAKER_1: Hopefully, within a few days after, I release the higher quality audio.
SPEAKER_1: So, if you want to listen to audio only, then by all means, you can do that, or if you want to archive it, you could download from YouTube, of course, if you want.
SPEAKER_1: But you can add that to your RSS reader, whatever that happens to be, your podcast app.
SPEAKER_1: Other than that, I try to do this on Thursdays.
SPEAKER_1: Usually, it winds up getting pushed to Fridays, at least recently.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe one of these weeks, I'll actually wind up on Thursday.
SPEAKER_1: But that is it for this week.
SPEAKER_1: Thank you for those who submitted questions and participated in the chat.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, thank you for those who donated.
SPEAKER_1: That's always welcome.
SPEAKER_1: I do enjoy buying things sometimes, so, you know.
SPEAKER_1: And like I said earlier, we're all human beings, we have to eat, right?
SPEAKER_1: So, thank you for those who did that as well.
SPEAKER_1: And again, if you want to submit questions, you can submit them on the forum.
SPEAKER_1: That's preferred.
SPEAKER_1: But Telegram, X, in the chat, wherever, I try to find those.
SPEAKER_1: I have an ongoing thread with the questions I've not answered.
SPEAKER_1: It's sort of my backlog.
SPEAKER_1: If you do not see your question there, it means I probably didn't notice it.
SPEAKER_1: By all means, please get it to me some way so that I can answer it in the future.
SPEAKER_1: I didn't just avoid your question most likely, unless it was something insane.
SPEAKER_1: Then, maybe I avoided it.
SPEAKER_1: But that's it for this week.
SPEAKER_1: So have a good weekend.
SPEAKER_1: It's Friday evening, so I hope you have some good plans for the weekend.
SPEAKER_1: Go for a hike or something.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, go to church on Sunday.
SPEAKER_1: I will see you all next week, and until then, God bless.