Interview with John Lee: Arguments for Christian Theism, Free Will, and the Presuppositions Underlying Transgenderism

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Interview with John Lee: Arguments for Christian Theism, Free Will, and the Presuppositions Underlying Transgenderism

January 19, 2022

This week I interview a brother in Christ, John Lee. John is the founder of custommobile.app. Their boutique agency builds individualized mobile apps for podcasts starting at just $25/month. I am hoping to eventually take advantage of his service for my podcast! However, this was a small part of the podcast, we mostly spend our time talking about theological and philosophical problems in the church and world. We speak on a wide range of topics from apologetics, Molinism/Calvinism, and homosexuality/transgenderism. John had some AMAZING thoughts on transgenderism and I would definitely stay tuned in until the end to hear what he has to say! Thanks for listening!

Unbelievable? episode with James White and William Lane Craig arguing Molinism and Calvinism that was alluded to in our conversation. You can find it here. Choose wahtever podcasting platform you use at the bottom of the page!

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Transcript

If I could boil down, I think what transgenderism is. I think it's the belief that I was born in the wrong body. Would you agree? I'm born in the wrong body.

And when I thought about that, I thought, gosh, there's so much packed in there. Isn't there this idea that I, therefore, I am not my body? If I were born in a different body, then I am separate from my body. Also, if I am born in the wrong body, meaning like if I were, so I am born in a male body, if I were transgender, I would think, you know, I am female, but I was born in a male body.

I was born in the wrong male body. Yeah. Assume that that belief is the belief that my disembodied self is gendered as well.

Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life. That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do. Jesus Christ is Lord of your life.

Whether you serve him or not, whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him, he is the Lord of your life because God has given him a name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus Christ, every knee shall bow and tongue confess that he is Lord. Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron. And I'll not apologize for this God of the Bible.

[Music] Just going to do the audio. Yeah. It's more organic to have a face-to-face, right? Okay.

So welcome to the For the King podcast, everybody. I appreciate you tuning in on a weekly basis wherever your walk of life is, wherever you're at, whatever you're doing. We appreciate you listening to hear about the King and that King is the Lord Jesus.

And that is who this podcast is about. That's who we want to glorify and exalt. And I'm actually joined today with a brother.

So sometimes we have people on the podcast that maybe don't share that same biblical worldview, but we have a brother in Christ here with us today, also a follower of the King, which is awesome. And his name is John Lee and he is the developer of, he has his own business, right? Of a custom mobile app. And he could kind of walk us through that.

We're going to hear some of that from him, what he does, but on the side, right? As a Christian, he still does think about Christ and the biblical worldview. So we're going to get into some of that too, and just have a good discussion on kind of what he's doing. So John, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe your background, maybe a little bit of testimony stuff, a little bit of, you know, what's your business is, business model, that kind of thing.

So can you just kind of walk us through that and then we can keep going. Yeah, I'll try my best. I'm a product manager by day, I've got a day job as a consultant.

And on the side, I have a small business making mobile apps for podcasters. So that's the custom mobile.app website, if anyone wants to check that out. I am a Christian, it is my primary identity, and it's probably the lens to I do everything.

So I think for the past 10 years or so, my thinking around my belief system, my worldview has deepened, it's been a journey, but I've started I've kind of discovered philosophy in my early 30s. And I think around then, was when I started to think through what what what I believe and why I believe what I believed much in much more depth. And so I that's a big part of my life, I really enjoy thinking through the reasons for the things we believe as Christians.

And also kind of criticizing and critically thinking through some of the things happening in our culture, some of these trends. Maybe we can talk about some of those today as well. And I can share my perspective and maybe raise some questions that others may not have considered.

As we just imbibe some of the stuff that that we're showing in the pop of the culture. Yeah. Okay, yeah, that sounds great.

So I guess real quick question would just kind of you telling me and us about yourself, would you say you spent most of your time thinking about some of those deeper things of life who Christ is who you are as a Christian man, rather than or do you feel like it's kind of hard, there's this kind of tug since you're kind of in, you know, business, right? Do you feel that kind of tug? It is it is a central part of my life. So I start every day with my quiet time. And that's like a priority for me in the mornings.

It's what I do. And I've been doing for probably a couple decades at this point. And I feel as I get older, I feel more and more than need for that to spend that time, reading God's Word being reminded of who God is, who he is for me, who I am to him.

So that's a daily thing. And that tends to trigger some time of reflection in the morning, some time to explore some of these deeper questions. And then once in a while, a question will just pop into my head.

And I can't get it out of my head until I've sat down and thought through what my position is on that question. Yeah, those don't happen as often they'll happen just I can't predict when they happen. But some of these questions that maybe we'll talk about today.

Yeah, some of these questions just hit me and I want to get to an understanding of what my position is not just accept the Christian position on that particular question or topic, but understand for myself, what is my position? And why do I hold that? And that happens, like I said, just kind of randomly, but it won't leave me until I get down to my own perspective on it. Yeah, yeah. Hey, I'm the exact same way.

I actually did not grow up a follower of Christ. I don't know how you know that that factors in for you. But I mean, I'm right there with you where I it would plague me, it would be something that I had to get to the bottom of is there God? You know, what am I here for? What's the purpose? That kind of thing.

So I'm right there with you. And I love to think deeply. And that's that's so was the first thing to come in philosophy? Or was it theology? Like, did you have a somebody come and share the gospel? Or was it more philosophy got you thinking about the questions? And then you found the solution in Christ? How that kind of workout? So I, I'm not an adult comfort.

I grew up in the church. So I grew up in a Christian family. But I'd say I probably made that my own in my 20s.

And then the philosophy came in, I think, toward my later 20s. And I realized there were these philosophical principles that I could think through the doctrine with like some of these philosophical principles help me understand the theology as well. So they kind of came together.

And now it's, it's a hobby is a passion. I enjoy thinking about these questions and coming to a perspective on them. Yeah.

Okay, great. So maybe before we get into some of those questions, we're going to walk through. Just give us a little bit about the custom mobile app, you know, it's for it's for it's geared towards podcasters.

How did that come about? Was that so that was later in your in your life, right? This is a very recent endeavor, right? side hustle. So give us a little bit about that. And let's get deep in some theology philosophy.

Sure. So yeah, it's a side project. I've got a full time job.

I've wanted to have my own business for a couple of years. So I started out trying to build like an app for myself, but that pivoted earlier this year to be more of an agency. So it's really the way I titled it.

It's we make custom mobile apps for podcasters. So they're branded for your show. It's an app on the app stores just for your show.

You're not sharing the app with every other podcaster out there. Yeah. So the I guess the value proposition of that is, it's just like your website where you want to attract your audience to your website so you can engage them further and nurture that relationship and ultimately convert them.

If you're a business to become a customer, or a financial supporter, whatever action you want your audience to take that happens on your own property. And in the past, it's been quite expensive to make your own mobile app from scratch. But the technology has come pretty far where it's it's pretty affordable now, if anyone can have their own app, and it'd be you know, beautiful and performant, just like a big business would have their own app.

So that's the opportunity. And I've been sharing the news pretty much word of word of mouth, doing no marketing. And we've got about 40 clients at the moment, hoping to grow that slowly over the next year and just see where it goes.

Yeah, it's more of a learning thing for me. But yeah, I'm enjoying it. Yeah, that's awesome.

And I hope to be one of those eventually, I just don't have the funds at the moment to do you know, commit to something like that monthly. But yeah, I get the pull of having an app that's the you know, you're closer to your audience because you know, the Apple podcasts and the Spotify can be kind of distant, you know, so I that totally makes sense. So if you are listening and you are a podcaster or know somebody that has a podcast that needs something like this, you can reach out to john and go to the website, custom mobile app.

And yeah, you can you can support our brother in Christ here. Okay, so that's cool. I'm glad I just I love hearing Christians not just, you know, wanting to be again, you're a deep thinker, not just stuck in the ivory tower, but you're also engaging the world and providing value, you know, for people as a Christian, right? So I just I think that's cool, like there's no really the secular sacred distinction.

I mean, that that is in a sense, because you are doing it for the glory of Christ, right? There's a sense in which that is sacred. So I appreciate you working hard on that. Okay, so let's get into some deep the deeper questions.

So you were talking about like kind of making, you know, your faith your own that kind of thing, like really believing in your mind, not I think it's right, because my parents are because the culture like I grew up in a Western nation, whatever, but like legit, like even if I wasn't an Eastern nation, even if I was surrounded by Buddhists or Hindus or, you know, Muslims, like I would still follow Christ. So maybe walk us through you had shown interest in, you know, arguments for theism and atheism. Sorry, so the difference is right.

So arguments for atheism, arguments for theism, you know, I would say the biggest God we fight in our culture would be, you know, a humanist, sorry, secular humanism, which is, you know, it is atheistic, right? Atheism would fuel that thought process. So how do you walk through some of those arguments? And where would you go? And what's compelling to you in that field of apologetics? Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of arguments for the Christian God. We talked about secular humanism, and that's an atheistic framework for moral values.

But those moral values are pretty, are derived from the Christian tradition, like the value of the individual, the value of human life, those principles and values have come from a Christian tradition. So I think one of the drawbacks of atheism, when it comes to morals is there isn't a an ontological foundation for those morals, unless that's a philosophical term. But like, I don't see a grounding for values like the worth of every human being.

Yes. Yeah, love thy neighbor, these kinds of moral virtues that we all hold in the West. And but not not the whole world holds those same values, right? Equal rights for men, women, children, animal rights, a lot of these more modern values and virtues, haven't been helped by most human beings for most of human history, and aren't held in every part of the world even today.

So what worldview gives the best grounding for those virtues that you and I kind of take for granted, and I think there isn't another foundation than the Christian, Judeo-Christian worldview for those moral obligations and moral values. Another one that I really like is kind of, I think it's called the maybe the rational argument for God, but I feel like rationality itself requires God. So that's there are a couple of steps in between there.

But maybe if I could break it down, I think free will is a requirement for rationality itself. So if I believe something, if I believe a proposition, I'm believing it because of good reasons, I'm basing that belief on good reasons and evidence. So I'm choosing to believe something based on the evidence.

There's a choice involved there. Now, if I were to believe something for other reasons, like I was if I were caused to believe something based on maybe a chemical reaction, let's say I got hit in the head. And because of that blunt force trauma, I believed maybe I was somewhere else than I was, like I was, I don't know, in a different city or something.

That belief by definition, because I didn't have a choice in believing it and it was caused because of that physical trauma to my head, or maybe some chemical reaction. That by definition is an irrational belief. So those two examples there, I think, when I think about those examples, I think for a belief to be rational, choice is involved.

And a free choice is required for rationality itself. When I think about what free choice is, what free will is, I don't see room for it within a purely naturalistic worldview. So in physics and in chemistry, there is no choice involved in the movement of molecules in motion.

So if you and I have free choice, have the ability to make free choices, that can't be accounted for by the physics and chemistry that that we're made of. So where does that come from? And I think on the atheist worldview, it's, I haven't heard of a good reason or a good foundation for where that free will comes from. And like I said, free will, if free will is required for rationality, the Christian worldview gives a ready explanation for where that freedom comes from, we are made in the image of God, God is free, and therefore we are free.

And we can make free decisions. So that's kind of a roundabout way of saying, I think even the argument of atheism itself, or maybe that a corollary of atheism that or determinism, like everything is determined, even our thoughts are determined, that belief, and that perspective itself seems to be irrational on its own merits, because there's no room for free will in that in that perspective. I don't know, that's probably not a great explanation of it.

But were you able to follow that? And what do you think of that? Yeah, no, those are. So I resonate more where I am right now with the first argumentation, rather than the second. So just to just to kind of interact with the second one about rationality and free will.

So I had just finished up a book by Bertrand Russell. So he was a I don't know, do you know the name? Yeah, yeah, very, very famous atheist from the 20th century. And he, in his book, Religion and Science, he finishes off the book talking about causal determinism, due to all the things you were laying out that if we are just creatures, you know, like, you know, bags, bags of chemistry, right? If that's all we are, we're just walking chemistry, then there really is no free will, and there's no free choice whatsoever.

So I completely agree, they cannot account whatsoever under an atheistic worldview, your best bet would be determinism, causal determinism at the molecular level, but they can't give an accounting. Now, I would, I'm just curious about your language about the human having free choice. So in I'm a Calvinism, or sorry, I'm a Calvinist.

So that means, you know, I believe in Calvinism and that framework of so in a sense, I believe in determinism. But I would say we do make free choices. I think there's room for that in the secondary causes of nature.

So God primarily causes the world to exist. And then the secondary causes like, he's not the one making the ground wet when it rains. He's the one that made all the molecules that would like basically make an atmosphere available for there to be, you know, rain that would fall.

And so when you use that, so that's how I would account for freedom of choice. Now, I don't think that we are able to do freely choose good things apart from the grace of God. So how would you kind of have you kind of heard some of that before? And I'm just back on the freedom of choice thing where it's like, I think we're free to choose whatever we want.

But we're bound to evil apart from Christ setting us free, we can choose whatever evil thing we want. Right. So like, I'll stop there.

Yeah, let me know. Yeah, no, I don't disagree with anything you've said. I don't take a very specific technical view of that free will that free choice.

I know there are views like libertarian free will where Okay, which I may not understand completely. But I think that says a human being has equal there's an equal possibility in every given situation for someone to make choice a and not make choice. So that's a very technical kind of perspective on it.

I don't hold that view. I'm more with you on just the lay person's feeling and experience of freedom. Like I, I think I have the freedom to make choices.

And therefore I am morally accountable for those choices. Okay. And I also believe Yeah, I believe in a sovereign God as well, who is over and above all of human history and is the author of creation and of history.

So I guess we're compatible is in that sense, right? We're holding those things intentionally. Okay, there we go. Yeah.

Okay. So yeah, I wanted to probe a little bit because I just for you listening, I've never talked to John before. So that's cool.

We're on the same wavelength about that. So I appreciate you walking through that a little bit more because I was curious about the language some people would again, you know, when we're when we're having, you know, philosophical theological debate, there, one little word changes everything. So I just wanted to probe that a little bit.

But I think one thing and also I think, as I've gotten older, and maybe even exposed to other ideas and other domains, this idea of holding two things in tension is becoming more and more, I think, familiar to myself as well. It's not just God, sovereignty and man, tree will, it's like, at one point, I think I made a line down a piece of paper and I went like through all the things that fall on the left side of the line on the right side of the line and things that we have to hold together to make sense of reality because reality is not black and white. Yeah.

Even in science. Yeah, like light, for example, acts like a particle, but it's not a particle acts like a way which you make a third category, right? I think it's called like the particle wave theory of light or something. So we need other categories to hold together what seem to be like binary categories, but reality is more complex than our binary, our mental categories that we try to fit things into.

And so that's gotten me more comfortable with ideas like holding determinism, like sovereign God, sovereignty, and the fact that he does determine things and our free will together. Yeah, so that's just a side thing. Yeah.

And I don't know if you know this theologian or not, but I just recently listened to a debate of James White versus William Lane Craig, you probably heard one. But James White is a lesser known theologian and they were debating on Malinism versus Calvinism. And James White, I heard that episode too.

Yeah. Unbelievable. Right.

Unbelievable. Okay. So yeah, you listen to it.

Yeah. So, you know, they get into this. Obviously.

And then I listened to his James White's personal podcast where he interacts after the fact and he was talking about, do we not believe God is sovereign enough to somehow in the midst of his sovereignty to create a dramatic unfolding of human history that does include a sense in which humans do have free choice and are accountable for their actions. So that's kind of, I would fall, I agree. I think we got to hold it in tension, but we also got to remember the Bible was clear.

I would say I agree with Luther that the bondage of the will is to evil until Christ sets us free. And I would make that statement, you know, I would say the buck stops there in terms of our freedom, but I would say there is some kind of ability on God's part for this dramatic unfolding where people are really accountable for their actions, you know, and it's true. Yeah.

I agree. I also think in the Bible, it's really clear that this middle knowledge is there. Like this idea that what do they call it? Counterfactuals, right? Counterfactuals.

Yeah. And God has that knowledge because I just read today in my reading in John where Pilate talks to Jesus and says, don't you know, like I have the power to set you free or to crucify you, something like that. Jesus says, I'll paraphrase it, but basically you would not have the power you do unless God had given you that authority.

So I think he said, would you? He uses the word would there. And I paused after I read that and I was like, yeah, that there's a counterfactual, like God knows what would be the case in different circumstances. That knowledge is there.

Sure. I think probably where I disagreed with Molinism was on this libertarian free will conception of free will. And that didn't quite make sense to me.

Like if a person, like everything else is equal, the circumstances are equal. My brain chemistry is equal. And that at that moment of decision, that I'm equally likely to make a and not a, maybe I'm wrong in that formulation of what libertarian free will is.

But if that's the case, that didn't quite jive with me. Cause I, I, that didn't seem plausible to me that everything else being equal that I could, I'm equally likely to make choice and not a, so that's where I, and then I thought like, if that were the case, how could God know the outcome of that? So I think that's maybe another gap in where I got stuck. I was like, if libertarian free will is true, then how could God know the outcome? How could God have counterfactual knowledge? Because it's equally likely, right? Like it's like, how do you know the outcome of a, of a random it's by definition, like a random event.

It would be unpredictable by definition. So that's where I kind of landed. Yeah, it is.

I obviously say, yeah, I'm with the J I'm with James Y. I'm in that camp. You know, I thought it was, it was, it was a very interesting discussion as well. So yeah, I appreciate your interacting with that.

I mean, that's cool. You listened to it and we can actually engage on that. But let's go, let's bring it back to the arguments for theism and atheism because that's kind of where we started.

And then we got into some, but the root of that whole discussion was the atheist cannot account for basically this gap between humans and animals where they seem to be so clearly determined in what they do survive and reproduce, right? The evolutionary model, you know, it's just boom, they're just doing it. They're literally like honed in on that. And humans are like not bound at all by, in a sense, those, those same laws, right? There's, there's another law play, you know, which would be where may be able to God were separated.

There's a distance there. So I think that's a good point to push, but I loved your first criticism of atheism that you, yeah, the moral, like the moral groundings. They, they do this all the time.

They will reach into the Christian worldview. They steal whatever they like, and then they bring it back into their framework that like is literally a contradictory with what they believe. So like, they reach in and say, Oh, we should love people because people matter.

And then they bring it back in. And then all of a sudden they realize where they just brought it as a place where that person you're supposed to love is just another animal. And like, I was at my waltz down, we got married, so she's my wife now, but they have chickens at their house.

And we were watching their chickens and like in the matter of like two minutes, there was a potential rape because a hen, a hen got in there and they just jumped on the hen. And then like, they started to fight and they were like, it was like a legit fight. Like somebody could have died.

It was, it was like, they mentioned they had to break them up or whatever. But like, again, there's a difference there, right? And the morals, that's, that's what the animal kingdom looks like. We're not, we don't have the same morals as the animal kingdom because they're, you can look at that and be like, Oh, that's just chickens being chickens.

But if a person goes out and tries to do that, we're like, that's not a person being a person, that's somebody going against the image that they've been made in. And then we get into moments one and two, you know? So I love that point. What do you, what do you think about all that? Yeah, no, just as I think just to say it in other ways, I think atheists are crossing the is-ought gap.

Yeah, yeah. Illegitimately, right? So all there, if all there is, is science, right? You can describe the world in as much detail as you like through science, you're describing the world. You can't derive from a description of the world to the way the world ought to be.

And all of our values and all of our morals are kind of prescriptions for, I think, the way we believe the world ought to be. So they're crossing that gap illegitimately. Yeah, so that's maybe that's what I'm going to think about it.

Exactly. And a thing I've been thinking about recently with the whole, our culture is just whole giving away to homosexuality and just it's such a good thing. It's how it's good for society, all this stuff.

Like, again, let's go back to that is-ought thing. If it's permissible for one person to be gay, right, be homosexual, then in the same note, right? Sorry. Yeah, don't worry.

No, okay. I'm on the phone. Thank you.

Giddos. Are they your kids? Yeah, there's a play date going on. I have to go to jump into like five, 10 minutes.

But yeah, sure. No rush. Yeah.

I was just getting into if it's permissible for one person to be homosexual, then it logically follows that it would also be okay for everybody to be a homosexual. And then what would happen if that happened? The whole human race would implode and completely go against evolution, right? Survive and reproduce. You've completely went against every like under their model is what I'm getting at, right? Yeah, that's interesting.

I think what you're saying is even evolutionarily, homosexuality seems to go against evolutionary like instincts because it's it's it doesn't promote survival. It doesn't promote yeah, like the perpetuation of the species. So it seems to be like anti evolutionary, anti biology.

Yeah. So there's some there's a contradiction there. Yeah, exactly.

That's kind of what I'm getting at. It's the heart of my thing. There's a contradiction there.

And if you say it's well, it's okay if a part of the population is like that. But you know, if a part of the population could be like that, then it also falls that everyone could be like that you wouldn't have a problem with it. And that completely goes against you know, evolutionary model of surviving, reproducing and propagating yourself.

Right. And again, like they're saying, if if, if people say that homosexuality is morally acceptable, then again, you're smuggling in like, this, this value of the way the world ought to be. Yeah, you're not just describing the way the world is you're bringing into the picture, this conception of the way the world ought to be.

And if you're not a Christian, and let's just say you are a pure natural materialist, and all there is is evolution, we are products of biological evolution, then it's hard to square that, that homosexual activity would have derived from, yeah, like a purely evolutionary process. It doesn't start evolution. Again, yeah, totally agree.

I'm glad I'm glad you at least saw what I was getting at there. Because again, it's not me trying to be harsh against that community of people. In a sense, the Bible is clear that that's wrong.

But there is just a walking contradiction there that we have to call out as Christians. And the Bible is clear that it's wrong and evil, you know. But yeah, so I've just been thinking about that recently.

It just it just baffles me. Okay, so we got five stuff. Yeah, just kind of based on that, like, this kind of brings us to the question about like transgenderism.

I don't know if that's the actual phrase for it. But like, when I thought about, like on an afternoon, like what that was, and what that implied, I went down rabbit hole thinking about that as well. So like, yeah, if I could boil down, I think what transgenders and is, I think it's the belief that I was born in the wrong body.

Yeah. Would you agree? I'm born in the wrong body. Perfect.

And when I thought about that, I thought, gosh, there's so much packed in there. Like, isn't there this idea that I, therefore, I am not my body, right? If I were born in a different body, then I am separate from my body. Okay, so that's, that's pretty interesting.

Also, if I am born in the wrong body, meaning like if I were, so I am born in a male body, if I were transgender, I would think, you know, I am female, but I was born in a male body, I was born in the wrong male body. Yeah, assume that that belief is the belief that my disembodied self is gendered as well. So there's this idea that I am a disembodied person.

And, and yet, just like gender seems to be like a physical embodied description of reality. How can a disembodied self be gendered? Yes. How does that work? There's also this kind of belief, like, being born in different bodies seem to think like, okay, am I some kind of a spirit? And then I am implanted into a fetus in the womb? Is that how things work? Like, if so, like, let's talk about that.

These are really interesting presuppositions. Oh, my goodness. How do you guys make sense of these, these presuppositions of transgenderism? Like, how do you make sense of the soul? How do you make sense of we are not our body consciousness, gendered consciousness apart from his body? Like, these are really cool questions that I think I'd love to have.

I just haven't had them with folks yet. Yeah. Wow.

What a thought. That's a heck of a thought. That was, I never really heard that before.

So I don't know, you didn't hear that anywhere. That's just original to your mind. It's just John's mind.

I think so. I was just thinking through like, what does that mean? That's really interesting. Like, so you folks believe that we are spirits.

Okay, I believe we are disembodied spirits. And then, oh, you also believe that the disembodied spirits are gendered. So I was like, oh, how do you account for that? And that's, I'd love to hear how that works.

Yeah, this even the statement, again, just to run with that a little more and tail to the statement, I think I'm a girl. So biologically, you're one thing, but then to say, I think I'm a girl that I'm is entailing some spiritual thing, right? A soul, I'm me, the real me is not this, the real me is a woman, right? So I completely agree that language has a sense of, again, there'd be a metaphysical understanding there, which is religious, right? It's metaphysical. So the I'm that I'm talking about that doesn't match up to my body, that person, that, you know, that ethereal person.

Yeah, that's such a good thought, John. Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that to me. That's really good.

I'm gonna have to think about that more. But I agree. I agree.

So there ought to be, I think this worldview behind transgenderism that, you know, could be fleshed out, it could be kind of better defined. Yeah. And I wonder if we went through that exercise, whether it would kind of fall apart, or the weaknesses of it would be seen more, more obviously.

Yeah, I imagine to some extent, it boils down to postmodernism, the absence of truth, right? But then again, you just even when the statement being said, the truthfulness of how they feel in their spirit, right, in their soul, the thoughts that they're having about their gender dysphoria, right? I mean, even then, it's really not postmodern, because there's still a sense of truth there of what they ought to be. I should be a woman based on my feelings, right? So I can't even know if I can, I don't even know if I can call it postmodern, you know, that there's a subjective understanding of it, right? I mean, in a sense, it is, right? The truth is internal. They're saying, my truth is that I'm a woman.

So maybe there's a sense in which they're claiming a subjective truth. I don't know. What do you think? Is there a subjective nature to it? So I haven't thought too deeply about postmodernism.

I haven't connected that framework to this current topic. But I think people, I mean, people don't live as if there isn't truth with a capital T. Yeah. I do like the belief that we believe the way we act, I think our beliefs are acted out, embodied in our actions.

So if you want to know what people believe, you should observe how they behave and how they act and what decisions they make more than what they say they believe. And when I look at myself and look at others, I think I don't think there's a human being out there that doesn't live as if there is a right and a wrong way to live. There are morally good and morally detestable ways to live.

And so we all live as though there is a moral law and objective moral law that we're all bound to. So yeah, I think in that sense, you can say whatever you like about morality, I don't think unless you're a sociopath, and there's something like physically wrong with you in the brain, something like medically wrong with you. Yeah, I don't see people living that belief that morals are relative, and there isn't an actual truth to the matter.

Yeah, it's not livable. And my some I did my undergrad at Indiana University, really good philosophy school, I had a minor in philosophy, and Philosophy 101, they they propose they showed us cultural relativism or relativism, right, that that morals are relative. And the TA and that this was the professor's position to the TA said, we're just going to tell you what it means, we're not going to teach on it, because it's literally impossible to hold this world that view and to be a fully functioning human, you would be forced to say what the Nazis did was perfectly fine under relativism, right, just relative to them, they were doing what was fine, right relative to them.

So they in my secular university, they said to me, this is, this is too stupid for us to present it to you, right as a good worldview to take. But again, there's been plenty of smarter people than I that have thought it was pretty good, right. But I agree, you cannot escape it, you cannot escape that reality.

Anything on that? Or I know you said you had five to 10 more minutes. We have one more question on here about injustice, but maybe we can save that for another discussion, because I would love to talk to you again. Yeah, let's do that for the next discussion.

Okay, thank you. Cool. Yeah.

Yeah, this was this was great, john, really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. And after we had some great thoughts. So I appreciate your brother telling me some things.

Yeah, Christ is the king. And do you have anything else you'd like to leave us with anything about your nap or anything you're doing? Um, thank you for the time, Rocky. Thank you for the conversation.

I'd love to have another conversation with you maybe sorry in a quieter space. Yeah. Christmas week.

But yeah, just really talking to you. Let's do it again. I love these conversations.

I don't have enough of them. Yeah. So appreciate.

Okay, awesome. And I always end with first Timothy once on the team to the king of the ages, mortal, invisible, the only God be honoring God forever and ever. Amen.

So we may be of the warrior. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.