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In this episode, Trent answers questions from his patrons on a wide range of topics including immortality, the Gospels eyewitness testimony, and tough transgender cases.
Narrator:
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers Apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Recently I sat down with Mr. Cy Kellett of Catholic Answers Live to share a bunch of questions that my patrons asked me at trendhornpodcast.com, and I’m going to share a few of those with you all today.
So, if you want to take part in future asking me anything’s or suggest future topics for rebuttal videos, definitely go and support us at trendhornpodcast.com. Now without further ado, here is my chat with Mr. Cy Kellett about all the awesome questions my patrons have asked me recently.
Cy Kellett:
If we discovered a drug slash medicine that allowed you to live forever, would it be ethical to take?
Trent Horn:
Oh, this is a good question. Let’s do the philosophical brainstorming here on this. Because the church does not… So, right off the bat, I would say the answer would be perhaps.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, really?
Trent Horn:
I think I would probably even modify it to probably.
Cy Kellett:
Why?
Trent Horn:
Well, the church does not have a specific teaching on this question. Because there is no such drug or procedure that could accomplish this to allow someone to have unending mortal life. Now, if you think about it, there is no… Even if we create a drug or some kind of thing that keeps our mortal bodies alive indefinitely, you will not live forever in this state.
Because eventually Christ will return in his second coming. So, it’s not the case that science will be able to create a situation where you will have an infinite amount of mortal life. In fact, there’s… You look at the universe itself, it’s going to entropy, it’s going to break down. Even if you had something like that, eventually the entire universe would be a black void except for you floating around in it and I guess, if you can even be sustained.
So, I think the real question is, yeah, would it be okay, is it okay to extend your life? And the church says, yes, it is acceptable under certain conditions. We don’t say that people have to extend their lives under any condition. You could be at a point where you are near death and a medical procedure would be disproportionate.
It would cause pain and suffering and not provide very much benefit to a patient, so you could decline it. But you can also do things to extend your life and you should. You can eat right, you can exercise. So, there’s nothing necessarily wrong that, or using technology to be able to do that. However, I think if we really did have technology that allowed us to live possibly unending mortal life, the church would deliberate about the ethical implications of that.
And part of it may be, Cy, that we as finite human beings, it may just always be bad for us to have that kind of existence. So, it depends on what kind of existence we’re talking about. When people say, “Oh, we’re going to have something that allows you to live forever.”
A lot of times what they mean by that is we’re going to create some technology to upload your brain to a computer. Or you can download your mind to a computer, upload it, and you’re going to live in this server forever. But I’m interested to see what you think of that, Cy. That’s not me.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Trent Horn:
That’s a copy of me.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Trent Horn:
That’s something that maybe, I’m sure if you just-
Cy Kellett:
That’s a simulacrum.
Trent Horn:
Oh, fancy $64 word there. I like it.
Cy Kellett:
Thank you. I brought my A game today.
Trent Horn:
It is a kind of facsimile simulacrum, if you will.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Because here’s the thing. Let’s say you did this procedure, you put the helmet on, and you’re going to get downloaded into this computer. And let’s say they turn the computer on, it sounds like you, it types like you. You take the helmet off, oh, I’m still here actually. Am I in two places?
No, I’m not in two places. So, that’s not me. And that really is the only viable way that I’ve seen transhumanists say that, “Oh, well, this is how you’re going to live forever. We’re going to be uploaded to a computer.” No, that’s just going to be a fancy file that can mimic me.
And I’m sure if you fed the Counsel of Trent podcast to an artificial intelligence, it might be able to create a chat bot that sounds a lot like Trent Horn, but it’s not Trent Horn. But suppose you had something that could keep our mortal bodies alive. Let’s say you did have a magic pill. Now there’s two different kinds of immortality if we look in fictional literature because immortality is a theme that’s often discussed in fiction.
One kind of immortality would be you have a body that does not suffer from disease or decay, but it could still be killed by some kind of a violent act. So, that could allow you to live for really long time unless your body suffers some kind of violence. The other kind of immortality would be that your body can always be reconstituted. It’s like wolverine’s healing factor. There’s nothing that can…
You will always continue to have mortal life. Well, honestly, if somebody offered me something like that, I would say there’s so many implications that would be so problematic. I as a human being, it would just warp my human experience and it wouldn’t be good for my human flourishing. And if I thought about it more, and I think if the church entered in on that, they would say it would be wrong because it would contradict our flourishing.
I’ll give you a few examples of this. Imagine if you, let’s say you could live another million years and you took this. Think about what’s going to happen. First, your human relationships would be very stunted. Human relationships would feel… They would be as consequential as your relationship with a fly. A fly lives like what? A few days and there’s some flies that have very short lifespans.
Think about if you live after hundreds of thousands of years, all the human beings around you, they’re only with you for decades. You’d feel very detached from other human beings. But as a human being, we are social animals. Our relationships with other human beings are very important. But if you live for millions of years, you couldn’t really form attachments to human beings.
They would pop in and out of existence. A wife you were married to for 80 years would be like some lady you met on the bus a week ago. It would be so fleeting in that regard. Number two, human beings are going to continue to evolve. We’re going to continue to change and adapt, language, the way we speak. I mean, look at homages from tens of thousands of years ago and they look different from us now.
Even now, we see the human beings, our facial features, anatomical features, they change over time. But let’s say you’re unchanging for a million years. You, Cy, in a million years would be a caveman living today. You might not even have the precise… Your mouth might not change as other human beings.
So, you might even be unable to communicate with other people. So, I love the people have dived into this to think about the questions related to immortality. Oh, here’s another problem. Let’s say you’re completely indestructible. What happens if you’re in a parking garage and it collapses on top of you?
Cy Kellett:
Don’t even. I hate these. These will keep me up at night if I start thinking about this. You’ll freak me out.
Trent Horn:
And you’re indestructible immortality.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, come on.
Trent Horn:
Indestructible immortality.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, this is horrible.
Trent Horn:
And they decide, guess what? There are no more survivors.
Cy Kellett:
This is the worst. I’m getting stressed. I’m sweating right now.
Trent Horn:
And they pave over it with a nice park and you’re underneath it-
Cy Kellett:
And you’re like Richard III under that, remember Richard III was buried under a parking lot in England. But you’re still alive for all this years.
Trent Horn:
But you’re still alive. So, that’s why I would say that if somebody… Like I said, the church hasn’t offered a teaching. I don’t know. There is no teaching on this question because there is no technology like this. But if I had to ruminate on what makes us capable of human flourishing, what is ultimately good for us.
Life is good for us, but we were not made for unending mortal life. We were made for unending eternal life with God. And so I think that the risks would far outweigh any benefit of having unending mortal lifespan. And so ultimately, it would be at the very least, unwise and probably immoral to engage in that kind of behavior. I don’t know. What do you think?
Cy Kellett:
I think that that was a very good answer actually. I would certainly not take that pill. Not a chance I would take that pill. And primarily because I’m only 58 right now and I already hate the new music. If I live to be a thousand, what am I going to think of the music then?
Trent Horn:
It’s just a bunch of horns and cats scratching.
Cy Kellett:
I am of this age now, every restaurant I go to, it sounds like they’re playing the music so loud. I feel like why do I…. I don’t even need music. I’m having a sandwich. I don’t need music with my sandwich, please just turn it off. But it’s always really loud. I couldn’t take it. If I lived to be a thousand, I would be so out of place. I’m already out of place. I don’t-
Trent Horn:
Yeah, I think the Bible is right, that if you are a strong man, you can live even to 70 or 80 is a full life given to one by the Lord even to a hundred. But unending life? Now the Bible does talk about patriarchs and others who are sustained in the Old Testament. This might be symbolic language, it could also be literal.
But even there, they lived maybe hundreds, centuries. And if God sustains you, gives you a particular mission, that’s one thing. Well, the question just said, if a drug or a medicine. If God said, I need you around for a while, that’s going to change the game a bit for me.
Cy Kellett:
That’s different-
Trent Horn:
Because the only example I can think of, of the people who live for centuries might be people in Genesis five, if that isn’t symbolic. But there, that’s the gift of God to them, not just something that we created that becomes a Pandora’s box that we’ve opened and wished we hadn’t.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, plus there’s the thing about… At a certain point, you do just kind of want to see Jesus. I don’t want to…
Trent Horn:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
How long do I want to delay this? I would like to see him.
Trent Horn:
And that’s a beautiful witness, Cy, when you meet people who are elderly, who are preparing for death and who are full of faith. When they’re full of faith and they have lived a life for Christ and for others, they are satisfied with the life they have lived and they have so much peace. And they usually say things like, “I’m ready to go home now.” And it’s just like, I’m ready to go home.
I’ve lived the life God wanted me to live. And it’s just such a wonderful example of faith to see that from someone who is prepared to receive that. Though it’s also a wonderful example from someone, let’s say you have somebody who’s more my age who has contracted a terminal illness who is full of faith and still derives their hope from God’s promises. That’s something we all should prepare ourselves to do.
Cy Kellett:
And there are people like that. I’ve known them myself and they’re extraordinary people. So, yeah, we should kind of aim for that mindset, I think to be at peace and hopeful about meeting the Lord. All right, that was a great question, Trent. So, far I really, I like your patrons, Trent. They’re great.
This one comes from Arnoldo the patron. Excuse me. For those of us who are interested in a more serious study of theology, would you recommend studying at an online university? If so, which one? P.s not married, but already having a full-time job in another area.
Oh, I see. So, he’s not free to move in other words. Arnoldo’s saying, I can’t just pick up and go to whatever university you might recommend. Got it. Okay, Arnoldo.
Trent Horn:
Well this was the position that I was in, Cy, when I pursued my master’s degree in theology. So, at the time I had graduated Arizona State University, I was traveling the country doing pro-life mission work. So, I was doing that, but I wanted to continue my education. So, I enrolled in the Franciscan University City of Steuben at Steubenville’s Distance Masters in theology program.
Though that was back in, I want to say about 2009 and definitely old school. They sent me a binder full of CDs to listen to and I would take the CDs into my computer. Well, no, no, sorry, the CDs had data files on them. So, they would send you the data files on CD rom, put the CD in my computer, and I would download all of the lectures to my iPod shuffle, my little shuffle that I… Kids, you remember the shuffle?
Cy Kellett:
I know the shuffle, yeah.
Trent Horn:
It was just a little square and I’d wear it on my arm when I was working or exercising and I would listen to the lectures on my little shuffle. And so that was my distance rather than online education. But nowadays, I think all of the programs have interactive online elements to them. And I would definitely recommend that because I was in a position where I was working full time. I wanted to get a master’s degree.
And so what was nice was that I just set aside… And I was unmarried like Arnoldo. So, I set aside half of my income to pay for the degree as I was doing it, so I didn’t have to get into any student debt. Now that was back when you could get a $400 studio apartment in the middle of Kansas. So, I had some things helping me in that regard. But I definitely enjoyed that.
I definitely recommend it to others. If you’re going to get, especially studying theology, avoid student debt as much as you can. I have a few other tips on that as well and we’ll definitely share them with you when we come back.
Cy Kellett:
All right, Arnoldo, hang on. And we’ll get the other side of that answer from Trent Horn who has not taken the Infinite life pill. We’ve only got him for a short time, so let’s enjoy him while we’ve got him. Right back with more questions for Trent on Catholic Answers Live.
Arnoldo wanted to know if you would recommend studying online for theology. And if you would recommend anywhere to study online theology for a master’s degree. Go ahead.
Trent Horn:
Sure. So, I was saying that I was in a situation similar to Arnoldo that I was studying my first master’s degree in theology when I was working full time. I wasn’t married. And it was a great way to use my time. Now my social life definitely got curtailed. People made fun of me because nights and weekends I did school and I worked during the day.
But I was able to get a master’s degree without going into debt. And so I think that’s very helpful. And I would recommend others online master’s degree programs are an excellent way to be educated to get a degree and avoiding student debt. So, I highly recommend that. And now it’s really expanded.
So, I mean when I did it, I hadn’t really hardly any interaction with other students or faculty. But now, I’ve done other programs since then. I got an online master’s from Holy Apostles College in philosophy, a distance master’s in the University of Mary in Bioethics. And there, I’m able to interact, do live Zoom meetings with students and classmates.
And so there are a lot of great programs. So, I would just mention there’s three right off the top of my head. I’ll add a fourth. So, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Holy Apostles College and Seminary, University of Mary, the Augustine Institute. And if you look at a lot of really solid Catholic colleges, many of them offer online elements as well.
And so I do say then the question he says, well, for the serious study of theology. I will say this, the question of whether your study of theology will be serious does not depend on what program you’re in per se. It depends on whether you are going to do the effort to do the studying. Granted, there are some programs that will make you read a million books for homework and for assignments.
But if you don’t want to learn the material, you can just cram, get through the tests and then forget all of it just as people do in all other kinds of courses. Or there are other programs that might be lighter in an academic workload. And honestly, that can be helpful if you’re trying to learn and get a degree while you have something like a full-time job.
I would say that your ability to have a serious study resides in you voluntarily choosing to read the primary sources, to read the recommended reading that professors offer, to ask questions, to seek advice. And you can get all of that in an online program. So, I definitely recommend them.
Cy Kellett:
Arnoldo the patron, thanks very, very much for that question. I hope that answer was helpful to you. Trent Horn is our guest and thousands and thousands of people know him as the husband of Laura Horn. And Christopher the patron asks this, what are all your thoughts, he wants all of your thoughts. What are all of your thoughts on too far with Laura Horn? Christopher.
Trent Horn:
It hasn’t gone far enough yet. No, there’s room to go. So, my wife started this YouTube channel a few months ago. Now I’m very proud of her that she has entered into a niche for Catholics that hasn’t really been fully developed. And that’s just short form funny videos. Because a lot of Catholics online tend to take themselves a little bit too seriously.
Being online and online Catholic is often kind of an ingratiating, irritating experience, I guess is the word I would use. But she’s provided a place where Catholics can kind of poke fun at themselves and laugh and that’s her YouTube channel Too Far with Laura Horn. I help out to make the videos and I appear in them every so often and it’s a ton of fun.
And I’m very proud of her and what she’s doing in that regard to show that a Catholic woman can be out there, can be entertaining and just let people have a laugh. It’s good for our faith to have a laugh once in a while.
Cy Kellett:
I have to say, Christopher, I disagree completely. I think it’s horribly disrespectful and I am…
Trent Horn:
Oh, Cy.
Cy Kellett:
I’m going to be writing a strongly word letter, Trent.
Trent Horn:
Cy, you don’t want to say that because we still have to film another video where Laura impersonates Catholics and you’re on the list.
Cy Kellett:
No, but you told me she’s only going to do celebrity Catholics. So, I feel safe from Laura. She’s so funny, Trent. She’s really this naturally funny person. Some people express themselves in a way that is just funny you’re just…
Trent Horn:
And it’s genuine. What you see in the videos is what she get. This is who she is.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, I really like her office.
Trent Horn:
Yes, her office is the typical homeschooling mom’s office, which is just the laundry room.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Of course, I’m kidding. I think what she does is great work, especially when she really nails someone that I don’t like that much. I don’t want to name any names, but nobody really likes Father Mike Schmitz, nobody.
Trent Horn:
I remember when I spoke at the-
Cy Kellett:
Someone’s going to think I’m serious. I’m sorry, someone’s going to think I’m serious. He’s the sweetest guy in the world.
Trent Horn:
I like Father Mike, except when we both do breakout sessions and we’re in competition with each other.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right.
Trent Horn:
And there’s not a single female left in my session because they want to go and listen to Father cheekbones, I mean Father Mike.
Cy Kellett:
Father Mike.
Trent Horn:
He’s…
Cy Kellett:
All right, now I went too far.
Trent Horn:
You went too far.
Cy Kellett:
Laura at least does it in a funny way. Thanks Christopher the patron for that question. Next question that comes from patron Mark. Mark the patron says this, “Howdy Trent, what are your thoughts on Douay-Rheims Onlyism, specifically in light of King James Onlysism? They are similar in a sense that both sides insist on using a specific translation that all others are corrupt. But the reasons held by each camp are very different. And while neither cases particularly compelling to me, it does seem like each respective side is gaining adherence. Love the show. God bless Mark.”
Trent Horn:
Well, thank you, Mark. And yes, there are a group of Protestants and a group of Catholics that have a very extreme view about which particular translation of the Bible is appropriate to read or is even divinely inspired. So, among certain Protestants, among more fundamentalists, you’ll have those who will say that the authorized version, the 1611 King James version, is the only appropriate Bible translation to read, or the only one that is divinely inspired actually.
And that the others are not actually inspired. That would be more of a fringe view. And it’s based on the idea that only certain manuscripts are the ones that we should trust. And there’s a counterpart to that in the Catholic world among those who as described to what’s called Douay-Rheims Onlysism. So, the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible is a vernacular translation into English from the Latin Vulgate.
And when I meet Catholics that like the Duoay-Rheims, I think most of them, they wouldn’t say it’s the only translation allowed to read. They might say it’s their favorite translation. And that’s fine. People have different translations that are their favorite. For me, there are translations that I enjoy reading for personal study because they sound, they’re very close to the original text and the wording.
But there’s other translations… I have bible passages that I’ve memorized for personal devotion from translations that use more modern language because it’s just easier to remember. It’s not as wordy. It’s easier to wrap your head around without using a more awkward English words to translate what the original author was saying.
So, people have different translations they like and that’s fine. But to say that the only appropriate Catholic translation or that there is an official Catholic translation, that would be problematic. Because the church does not have one official translation of the Bible. Now, it’s true that the Latin Vulgate has a pride of place. And what some Catholics will say is, well, you have popes, you have Catholic authorities saying throughout history that the Latin Vulgate is free from all error. And that’s true.
Now, when I say Latin vulgate, by the way, we don’t have the same Latin Vulgate that St. Jerome wrote 1600 years ago. That’s why Pope St. John Paul II approved the translation of the Nova Vulgata, the new Latin Vulgate translation. Because we have newer manuscripts, newer ancient manuscripts now to help us understand where errors may have crept in the copying of St. Jerome’s original Latin Vulgate.
So, the Latin Vulgate does have an important place, especially within the Western church. But that doesn’t make it the official translation of the Bible because you have very old manuscripts, sorry, very old translations in other parts of the church. For example, in the eastern part of the church where you have the Maronite rights, for example, these other Eastern rights, you have the Peshitta, which is a fifth century Syriac translation of scripture.
And we can use that with Greek manuscripts and compare that to the Latin Vulgate. And see where in the Latin Vulgate you might have a translation that’s not as good. Because the problem is there are people who will say, “Well why wouldn’t you just use the Vulgate of the Duoay-Reims because the church says that it’s free from error.” Well true, it’s free from theological error and moral error.
If you read it doesn’t have a heresy in it. But that doesn’t mean that it’s always the best translation. For example, the Latin Vulgate has a verse in it that now we’re almost certain was not in the original letter of St. John. So, in first John, there is a part called the Johannine Comma where it talks about the three witnesses. And it references these three witnesses are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
And it’s a very Trinitarian verse. So, that would be great to show, hey, here’s the trinity explicit in one Bible verse. But now in our studies of ancient manuscripts, we’ve seen that this particular verse from First John, it’s not in any of the earliest manuscripts. It arrived later, so it’s not original to the text. So, it’s no longer in Bibles even though it’s in the Vulgate.
So, this is an error. I mean it’s not a theological error. You read it, you believe in the Trinity, that’s great. But it is not a good translation because that’s not what was there originally. So, a good text that I would recommend to read on biblical translations and what the church teaches about them. If you look at Pope Pius XII 1943 in cyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, here’s the part in section 16 that I find interesting.
Where he says that St. Jerome strove earnestly to achieve as far as the science of his time permitted. To this also aspired with untiring zeal and no small fruit, not a few of the great exegetes, biblical interpreters, of the 16th and 17th centuries. Although the knowledge of languages then was much less than at the present day. In light manner therefore, ought we to explain the original text.
Which having been written by the inspired author himself, has more authority and greater weight than any even the very best translation, whether ancient or modern. This can be done all the more easily and fruitfully if to the knowledge of languages be joined a real skill in literary criticism of the same text. So, notice what Pope Pius was saying here, what is the inspired text is the original text. What Luke wrote in Greek, what the Old Testament authors wrote in Hebrew or Aramaic.
And we use the science of textual criticism to reconstruct that original text. That is the inspired text more so than any even the best translations. But we still need translations. Most people can’t read the ancient languages. Even if you can, you may not understand the context involved in them. And so that’s why the Catholic biblical scholars are free to pursue a variety of translations, though they require the permission of the church before they formally publish something like a translation of the Bible.
Cy Kellett:
What a great question, Mark. We got to take a break though. We’ll take that break. Be right back with more patron questions for Trent Horn on Catholic Answers Live. Elizabeth Loftus proved that our memory is often unreliable. How do we know that the memory of the apostles was reliable?
Trent Horn:
Yes, this is something that critics of the New Testament have been proposing for a while now, of taking our modern studies of memory. And then using that to cast doubt on the historical reliability of the gospels. Because even if you take an early date for the gospels and say they were written before the destruction of Jerusalem between the years of 50 and 70, for example. And many scholars will take a later date.
They’ll say that maybe Mark was written in the ’60s and the other gospels are written later in the ’70s, ’80s or ’90s. Even if you take between the years 50 and 70, the earliest you have now is 20 to 40 years after the events took place. So, the question is how reliable are the recollections that are involved. And how should that relate to our faith and understanding of it.
And Benjamin references the work of Elizabeth Loftus. I think she’s published a book called Eyewitness Testimony and has been used in very high-profile court cases to cast it out on the reliability by witness testimony. And there certainly is a place for that. But I think we have to make a distinction between eyewitness testimony in court cases and the kind of eyewitness testimony that would’ve been the foundation of the accounts and the gospels.
So, what Loftus and others have shown is that… And this is difficult because a lot of times in criminal cases, eyewitness testimony is really powerful. If you have somebody who points and he says, that’s the guy. Is the guy here in the courtroom today that broke into the store? Can you point to him? Let the record show they pointed to Mr. Cy Kellett, whoever they pointed to.
Cy Kellett:
Or whoever they pointed to.
Trent Horn:
I always love that-
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
You don’t have them say it, they dramatically point. Let the record show they pointed to this person. But we’ve done studies to show that eyewitness testimony can be compromised in a lot of ways. But it’s not really directed to what happened when with the gospels.
So, for example, if someone is the victim of a crime and they are attacked by another person, it’s often a very fleeting encounter. Or if someone is asked to be an eyewitness in court, it’s usually because of something they saw for a very short amount of time, like somebody breaking into the store that looks like Cy Kellett. Even if it’s an attack or other things that it… Usually people will say to the police, “Oh, it happened so fast.”
And especially if the attacker is someone of a different race than the victim and they have a weapon. When someone has a weapon in an attack, the victim tends to focus on the weapon rather than on the attacker’s face. So, when you have all of these elements put together, it can show that eyewitness testimony can often be very unreliable in picking out this person did it versus that person did that. But what we have with the gospels and what Loftus in her own research has shown is that repetition is key for eyewitness testimony being reliable.
So, if you see or hear something over and over and over again. As a human being, you’re more likely to imprint that, to be able to retain that. Events that had a very impactful moment in one’s life. You’re able to remember even ancillary details. So, they did an eyewitness study of people who were in Denmark when they were liberated after the end of World War II.
And interviewed them 50 years later and they could still remember what the weather accurately was that day, for example, when they were liberated. So, repetition, when you have similar interests, ethnicities, and strong para bonds, that increases the reliability of eyewitness testimony. And I’ll give you an example of why I think.
So, at the basement level, just saying the foundation of our faith is the belief that Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead. How would eyewitness testimony relate to that? Cy, can you remember however many years it was ago you graduated high school? I’m going to guess what, eight. Let’s see here.
Cy Kellett:
I didn’t graduate high school in the year eight. Is that what you were saying?
Trent Horn:
No, eight years ago. I was trying to be flattering, Cy.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, I thought I graduated in the year eight.
Trent Horn:
You’re 880 at Jerusalem high school. So, let’s say-
Cy Kellett:
Trent Horn:
1982.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
All right. So, 40 years, your 40th anniversary.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, I went to my 40th reunion.
Trent Horn:
There were people there? Now I just took a sharp left turn. [inaudible 00:31:31] is the only one.
Cy Kellett:
No, there were no people. It was just…
Trent Horn:
You’re the only one who made it.
Cy Kellett:
And people sent cards and led letters said, my hip hurts, I can’t come.
Trent Horn:
But do you remember 40 years ago at your high school grad, do you remember talking to a really good friend or spending time with someone? And all you’d have to remember is you talked to a specific person and they were alive.
Cy Kellett:
Yes, I remember these things.
Trent Horn:
Yes. And that’s just what we would just need from the apostles to have the foundational bedrock of the Christian faith. Which is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We also have to remember when the apostles and others who are writing the gospel accounts, it’s not like the resurrection happened, they went off and got another job. And 40 years later they decided, “Hey, I think I’m going to write about this crazy stuff that happened to me 40 years ago, 30 years ago.”
They were involved in an active preaching mission. And so I remember once I was with student government in our high school, I had to go to different schools to run a particular event and it had a motivational speaker. And I heard the guy give the same shtick every time. And by the fourth time, I was sitting there mouthing all of the words, because now I hear it over and over and over again.
But guess what? The apostles would’ve heard from Jesus traveling with him during his ministry. They would’ve been familiar with his teachings. He gave it in a very poetic, lyrical quality that often-included puns to make things memorable. So, you have a lot of details together. And it’s not just one person, by the way. You have a web of witnesses who preserve these accounts both in a written form and an unwritten form that are able to corroborate one another.
And so all of that together I think shows that the eyewitness testimony within the early church preserving the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the earthly ministry of Jesus, is very different from the unreliable forms of eyewitness testimony we call into question today. So, I think that could help to sway the doubts that people might have when this is brought up in relation to the reliability of the gospels.
Cy Kellett:
Some atheists claim the biggest evidence that God doesn’t exist is the self-contradictory nature of the definition of God that I most commonly hear from apologists. God is supposedly a timeless, spaceless, disembodied mind. To say that something exists is to say that it has location in space time or is space time itself. How would you respond? Benjamin.
Trent Horn:
Well, I would say that this is not a contradiction in saying that God is timeless, spaceless. I wouldn’t call God a disembodied mind. God doesn’t have a mind like you or I, but I would say God is immaterial. God is pure intellect. He is just knowledge and truth itself. But God is not bound by, he is not in time or space.
He transcends these things. He has causal power over everything within space and time. But he exists beyond space and time. God does not have, in his divine nature, does not have a spatial or a temporal location. Now the second person in the trinity does in virtue of the incarnation. But God in his divine nature does not. So, this is not a contradiction, this is just the argument.
The argument seems to be going like this, in order to exist a thing must have a location in space and time or be space time itself. God does not have a location in space and time. And God is not space time itself, we’re not pantheists, therefore God does not exist. And I would say that’s a valid argument, but it’s not a sound one because I can doubt the first premise.
Why should I believe that in order for something to exist it must have a location in space and time? Why should I believe that? To defeat that premise, I could offer a few counter examples.
Cy Kellett:
Fairness.
Trent Horn:
Right. So, one example might be, what about subatomic particles like electrons? When you study things like quantum physics, normally when we read a textbook and it shows us an atom, it looks like little balls connected by little pipes and they’re circling. It looks like a little solar system. The atom, you think about the atomic symbol, it looks like a mini solar system with the electron planets orbiting the nucleus sun.
But atoms don’t actually look like that in real life. In real life you have the nucleus and then you have what chemists and physicists would call an electron cloud of where the electrons are. But because of something called the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, if you study these subatomic particles, there is no… You can’t ever get their exact location and velocity at the same time. They always exist in a kind of probability until something like the waveform is collapsed.
I don’t want to get too deep into quantum physics. But I would say that this kind of definition would… You could say electrons or corks or subatomic particles don’t exist. They don’t have a precise spatial location. Another example would be universals. So, we have, for example, I have a green can here and there’s green grass.
They all seem to have something in common that is objectively real, the color green. But then my question is, does green exist? Is green a real thing or is it something we invented? It’s a name we give to things. Well, it’s kind of weird if we invented it because it seems like we are actually locating a real thing that exists. But green would still be a real thing.
Even if you destroyed every green object, it would still be a real concept, areal thing. Well, that leads us to the philosophical idea of universals. That there are these universals that exist that are embodied in concrete things. So, it’s similar also to numbers. Do numbers exist or did we invent them?
Well, if we invented them, that’s kind of weird because numbers work the same way across the universe, across cultures, time and space. There seems to be a lot of mathematicians hold that numbers have a real existence. So, when we talk about two plus two equaling four, we’re not referring to… Now we did invent numerals.
You have the numeral Roman two, the Arabic two. We invented numerals, but not the number itself. So, universals, numbers, these abstract objects, it’s at least debated among philosophers whether they exist. But it certainly cast a doubt on the idea a thing must exist within space and time in order to have real existence.
A final example I would give would be consciousness. Do I exist? I could put it this way, do my conscious thoughts exist? I’d say, yeah, they do. But where are they? It doesn’t seem like they can… You can’t really isolate them just to one particular part of the brain.
Even if you did, that part of the brain, if you had those little clump of neurons, that’s not identical to my thoughts. My thoughts have properties, the neurons don’t. My thoughts are about something. They have aboutness, they have intentionality. A clump of neurons is not about anything. So, that is not identical to my thoughts.
I have not located my thoughts. I’ve located something necessary for my thoughts to exist. But it seems like my thoughts don’t have a purely spatial location. So, when I would go against this argument, I would say that it’s a dubious premise. It’s a very materialistic premise to say something can only exist unless it’s within space and time.
Why should I believe that? What about parallel universes? At least they’re not in our space time, but they still exist causally disconnected from us. So, I would say that this argument against God, I don’t think it gets off the ground.
Cy Kellett:
So, this one comes from Jackson. Jackson asks the following, Trent. Hi Trent, in your video, the one question transgender advocates can’t answer, you define a woman as someone who is ordered towards gestation. A med student friend challenged me by bringing up the case of someone who has complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. In the case he mentioned, the person appears female and was raised as a female despite having male chromosomes.
Under your definition, it seems the person would be a man since they are naturally ordered to impregnation despite having female sex characteristics. I hope you understand this, Trent. This is difficult on an emotional level since the person was raised as a woman, appears to be a woman. And in some cases even gets married to a man, invaluably I assume, before finding out about their disorder. What do you make of this case?
Trent Horn:
Right. So, I think that whenever we propose a definition there are always going to be borderline cases where we’re not sure if the definition applies. But the hard cases don’t invalidate the general rule. An analogy I often use is with brain death. What does it mean if somebody is alive?
That normally we talk about having electrical activity in the brain using the total brain death criteria. But there are cases involving the complete cessation of electrical activity in the brain where the body still seems to be alive. It’s not decomposing, it can still metabolize energy, digest food, things like that. But just because there are some of those borderline cases, it doesn’t mean that we have to reject the life death binary, for example, or that life and death are just subjective concepts.
Similar to being a man or a woman, that there are cases that we might call that fall under the rubric of intersex cases. So, intersex would be individuals that have genetic makeups and biological makeups, genotypes and phenotypes from both sexes. The older term for that was hermaphrodites. Now we would use the term intersex to describe this.
And there are cases though, even in the vast… So, 99.9% of people who identify as transgender, they are not intersex. It’s very clear whether they are a biological man or woman, a male or female. And even among intersex cases, you can still determine this. You have intersex cases caused by chromosomal abnormalities. That would be, for example, the sex chromosomes.
If you have only one X, you would have 45 chromosomes, but you would be a female but with stunted female development of female secondary sex characteristics, things like that. If you’re XYY, you are a male, 47 chromosomes, Klinefelter syndrome. A male with stunted secondary sex characteristics. So, those would be intersex conditions caused by chromosomal abnormalities. And other kinds of intersex conditions can develop because of hormonal developmental abnormalities.
And this will be the case of androgen insensitivity syndrome. This can occur partially or in a complete way. Partial androgen insensitivity syndrome and complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. And that relates to the body’s ability to respond to hormones like testosterone or androgens that would stimulate the development of secondary sex characteristics. So, the case being described would be a genetic male XY who does not respond…
Complete antigen sensitivity syndrome means they don’t respond to testosterone at all. So, they don’t develop male organs. They lack male reproductive organs. But they would also lack internal female reproductive organs. They would not have a uterus, they would not have an ova. They may not know this until reaching puberty and discovering that they…
Thinking they’re a woman and then not menstruating because they don’t have a uterus actually. They have very incomplete female genital organs. So, while their secondary sex characteristics like hair growth, body shape may look feminine, they would not be a female member of the human species. And so what I would say is that when we have these cases, once again, the unusual cases don’t negate the norm.
We have to be compassionate with people who have developmental difficulties. And there may be cases where doctors disagree about… Especially if we have both a genetic and a hormonal abnormality, it might be very hard to make a determination in those very, very rare cases. But in the case, that’s being described here, I would say that we have a male who unfortunately highly resembles the female member of the species.
And that is a very difficult cross to bear. But it doesn’t make this individual female just because almost anyone looking at this person would think that they’re female.
I’ll give you an analogy here, there is a woman named Shauna Rae who was featured on the learning channel. Although I think it’s now called TLC, because you don’t do a lot of learning anymore on the learning channel. And so Shauna Rae is in her ’20s, but she looks like an eight-year-old girl. So, she’s three foot 10. From all intense words looking at her, she appears to be eight years old. She looks just like an eight-year-old.
But we should not treat her like an eight-year-old. She is a 22, 23-year-old woman and should be treated as such. And understood in that way regardless of how she looks because we have objective ways of determining her actual age. And I think that’s a similar… While we should be compassionate in this situation, we can apply that to these other cases of things like complete androgen and sensitivity syndrome and other things like that.
But I hope that, that is helpful. For those who have more questions, if you have a really nitty gritty, like a case where I’ve heard about this, I’m not sure what should be done, or this is happening at our hospital, we don’t know what the best former treatment would be, I’d recommend the National Catholic Bioethics Center. And they can provide good recommendations if you have or know someone who has a difficult intersex case.
Hey guys, thank you so much for watching. And once again, if you want to support us and take part in future AMAs like this, definitely go to trenthornpodcast.com. I want to leave you with one thing I didn’t include in a previous answer. So, on the first question about could you extend your life to have earthly immortality, I did find later after recording this, a quote from Pope Benedict XVI that at least represents his thoughts on the matter.
So, here is what he said. This is from the Theological Commission. And the second quote comes from Moham Alli, he gave in 2010. So, from the Theological Commission, when he headed it up as Cardinal Ratzinger, he said that disposing of death is in reality the most radical way of disposing of life. And in 2010 in a homily, he said that the idea of postponing death indefinitely would lead to humanity becoming extremely old.
There would be no more room for youth, capacity for innovation would die, endless life would be no paradise. So, I thought that’d be cool to add in there. I found that after we recorded all of the episode. But in any case, once again, thank you guys so much. I’m really excited to start 2023 with everybody. My camera was a little bit on the fritz earlier when I was putting this all together, so that’s why I’m recording here with my cell phone.
But yeah, we got a lot of great episodes. Rebuttal coming out on Wednesday that I’m very excited about. So, stay tuned for that. And yeah, I just hope you have a very blessed day and a very blessed new year.
Narrator:
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