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Kirk and Sheldon look at the world we live in and discuss what has led us to this point.
Creators and Guests
What is Quest with Kirk Durston?
Kirk is a philosopher, scientist, husband, and a legit Christian. His podcast is mostly about exploring assumptions and questions pertaining to God, philosophy, science and life that he ponders about, hence the name Quest with Kirk Durston.
Kirk wants you to join him on that Quest or perhaps you're on your own quest about such matters and you can explore together.
all right hello kirk how are you today
i'm doing well sheldon i um have a
double espresso here that should keep you
awake for a few minutes wow there's about
a like a five second leg maybe even
a ten second leg here before
Okay, let's see here.
You don't have the YouTube link open or
anything, do you?
Because you'll hear that.
No.
Check, check.
One, two.
Can you hear me?
Okay, try that.
Hello.
Hello.
Yeah, that's better.
I did have a tab and on that
tab was the YouTube link.
Sorry about that.
Yeah, no problem.
I realized I had my speaker set to
the wrong thing.
So I was hearing things through the mic
and so we're off to a great start.
Yeah.
Months and months and months.
Yeah.
But we're all back probably in our offices
for till next summer.
So
I think I'm traveling a little bit, but,
uh, yeah.
Well, I might slip out to golden BC.
I have a vacation coming up in December.
So just for Christmas.
So I might slip out there to see,
uh, two of our sons and their families.
And, uh, yeah, that's about all.
Oh, I just have to do a little.
Fifteen hour round trip up to speak at
a conference, uh, in October, but,
but I should be back.
Um,
Anyways, that weekend.
So it's just a weekend thing.
Sounds good.
Um,
let me know if my mic cuts in
and out for you.
It sounds weird for me, but, um, no,
it sounds fine to me.
Sheldon could just be the, uh, yeah,
I've got things set up here.
All right.
Well, um, before we get into everything,
um, how's everything going on your side?
What's, uh, what's new in your life?
Uh, well, um,
Fortunately,
there's no major disasters that are new
for the summer.
Right now,
I'm working on a series of YouTube,
not really YouTube videos.
They will be on YouTube,
but really they're for a lot of other
languages.
My YouTube presence may not be as
prevalent as in the past,
although we'll see about that because I'm
also writing a fascinating article.
And this has been, I don't know,
a couple of years in the making on
free will.
And specifically,
the theme of the article is,
what should the scientific default
position be?
That is,
what should the starting position be for a
scientist?
Because the trend for scientists is to,
oh, I'm a scientist.
The only thing that exists is the material
world, space, time, matter, and energy.
Therefore, we have no free will.
And so they decide on that basis that
they don't have free will,
but they
Pretty much all of them admit they live
and talk and work as if they do.
So I want to craft it though,
because I have talked with some scientists
about this.
And the thing about scientists is that
they often were very good in their area
of field,
but they haven't thought much beyond about
the possible non-material stuff.
So I have to craft it in such
a way that it is rigorous.
It's kind of like playing chess,
that when I'm done,
Um,
it's as close to checkmate as I can
maybe get.
Yeah.
Um, I'm looking forward to that.
And then we'll probably do a live stream
on that when that's done.
Yeah, for sure.
Maybe even one or two,
and maybe we even get a guest in,
maybe even a dissenter,
someone who has decided they have no free
will.
That would be fun.
Well,
will they actually be able to make the
decision to come on or is it?
That's just the thing.
They don't believe in free will,
but they do, uh,
They work with decisions anyways,
they'll take, you know,
it's really quite interesting,
especially when you get people arguing
whether they have free will or not.
No,
that is when you actually realize what's
going on here.
One guy is deciding that the other guy
is wrong,
but yet they believe he believes that
everything is determined by the initial
conditions of the universe.
We have talked a little bit about that
one, so it's just kind of funny, but,
um, yeah, we'll see what happens.
very good um yeah my side it's uh
running the ministry making sure
everything's going and um you know we're
doing some fun stuff but uh it's good
to actually get back into the live
streaming i know we've had a couple kicks
at the wheel trying to get it going
and then
things changed,
but I think it's important to get into
this.
Those of you that are watching that don't
know us,
Kirk Durston is a scientist and
philosopher.
Maybe get a little background just so
people know who you are.
Yeah, just for laughs.
Yeah, I did my first degree in physics.
It was an undergraduate degree,
and then after that,
in order to get a job,
I did another undergraduate degree in
mechanical engineering.
i worked as an aerospace engineer for
pratt whitney helping develop experimental
aircraft engines for a while and but then
i found people amazing they're far more
challenging than just technology and so
which does the same thing every time
unless you're working with quantum
mechanics
And so after four years of working as
an engineer,
I submitted my departure notice and have
worked with mostly university students and
done a ton of speaking at universities
across Canada, United States,
a little bit in Europe.
And in the course of that,
I had to do a couple of more
graduate degrees because I wanted to dive
deep into two questions.
One, problem of evil and suffering.
So I did a master's in philosophy.
on the problem of evil,
just turn it off my dinger here.
Um, and then I did a, um,
PhD in biophysics, uh,
just to dive into the question of did
is,
did life get here just through all natural
processes or are there the fingerprints of
an intelligent mind on it?
And, uh,
I already pretty much looked like there
was with the information encoded in the
genomes of life,
but I wanted to really dive into that.
And, um, so that's, that's what it is.
So I haven't since published several
papers, uh,
several papers in philosophy journals,
secular philosophy journals,
and several papers in scientific journals
in my area of work.
Awesome.
All right.
Well,
let's get into the topic a little bit.
For those of you who don't know who
I am,
I run the Digital Strategies Ministry at
Power to Change.
Kirk's one of my teammates.
Yeah,
our thing is we just want to help
people know Jesus.
And so this conversation,
we don't have talking points or anything.
We batted around a couple of ideas,
but we wanted to talk a little bit
about the Charlie Kirk story.
I don't know what I'm allowed to say
on YouTube,
but what happened with Charlie.
And I think the place we want to
go,
because you can go and find a lot
of people that knew him personally and get
into that side of things.
I don't think, Kirk, you ever met him.
No.
I didn't either,
but I think we've seen a few of
his videos.
I've known him for years, but...
I think I've seen more of his videos
over the last four days than I have
before.
But I wanted to touch a little bit
on just how we got to this situation.
There's a politics aspect of things.
We don't really like to delve into
politics much.
We're more on the spiritual side.
And so I think there were a few
things that came to my mind because I
was actually...
I spent quite a bit of time on
social media,
researching different technology things
and stuff for work.
But I just happened to be on X
at the time that this happened.
So I think I was getting...
the initial video clips within like two
minutes of when it happened.
And so that journey of, okay,
what happened is it didn't look very good
right off the start,
but I think there is this, okay,
we've now entered a new,
a new experience that we've,
Persecution and stuff has happened since,
I guess, the beginning.
But in North America, it's been different.
And so it was a bit of a
shock to the system, seeing what happened.
But Kirk,
why don't you share a little bit on
that?
Like,
what were your initial reactions when you
heard and being somebody,
maybe if you can touch a little bit
on some of your background on speaking on
university campuses.
Yeah.
What are the kinds of things that came
through your mind when you saw what
happened?
Yeah.
Well, um,
one thing I didn't mention is that over
the last, uh,
I would say probably close to forty years,
I've done maybe somewhere around
seventy-five to eighty-five formal debates
on universities in those areas that I
mentioned, North America, Europe.
Mostly Canada.
And he did a lot of that.
Not so much formal debates,
but still semi-formal debates all over the
place.
And probably,
I don't know what his numbers are,
probably far more than me.
There were times where I was...
i was told i need to be killed
by members of another religion who took
exception as gracious as i wanted to be
in that particular debate um so i had
to look over my shoulder on the way
back to my car that night but i
would say and there were a lot of
people i i would say that um
I got the feeling that if some people
could dispose of me,
that would happen for sure.
But at the same time,
I always worked as if God's in charge
of me.
He decides what's going to happen,
what's not going to happen,
and I don't need to worry really about
this as long as I'm not being
irresponsible.
I also saw my debate partners as potential
brothers or sisters.
Possible someday they would put their
faith in Christ as well.
So over the years,
I wanted to build bridges.
That was really in the course of my
formal debates.
And I just built bridges,
tried to at least.
But despite that,
there were always a very small minority
who were extremely...
Some of them were enraged by the fact
that I am even talking about God on
the university campus.
One or two were enraged to the point
where they were scarcely coherent.
They could hardly talk when they got to
the mic.
So I did worry about that.
But when I got the word that this
had happened, I just felt, first of all,
a deep sense of sadness and grief.
I, why people would do this.
Uh, I mean, I have strongly,
strongly disagreed with some people.
I think in public people don't know how
much,
how strongly I might disagree with someone
because I just do want to build some
bridges if I can.
But personally, um,
there are people who I think have,
have promoted great harm.
great harm to our civilization to our
society to our country or whatever but I
still see those people as a created in
the image and likeness of God I have
no right whatsoever to even contemplate
negative attitudes towards and that was
one of the things Jesus made clear in
fact he says anybody who calls his
neighbor a
He used the word translate,
translate into a fool.
We use idiot a lot here, um,
is worthy of the greatest punishment
possible to humanity.
And so that's, I take that seriously.
So, um, I was sad, very sad, uh,
as to what had happened.
And I, but at the same time,
I tend to have an engineering perspective
on things to a certain extent.
And that is,
I work in terms of probabilities.
And I know there's always random people
out there who maybe occupy a very small
set of humanity and there's random
killings.
And so I don't make a whole lot
out of the actual incident itself.
It could be an anomaly, for example,
and by and large,
in comparison to everything else that
normally happens,
it is a bit of an anomaly,
but what I do and have put a
lot of thought into
is what the response is by the culture
at large.
Because we're not talking about one person
shooting another person anymore.
We're talking about hundreds of thousands,
millions of people deciding what they
think and putting it online.
And there has been a huge spectrum of
some really outrageous
evil responses to very gracious responses
and everything in between and i would say
um it's it's not necessarily divided along
let's say democrat republican we don't
even have those here but we do have
liberal conservative because there are the
traditional let's say democrats or the
traditional liberals here in canada who
have still a very high like we're on
the same page when it comes to something
like this totally on the same page
So I'm, I don't,
I want to avoid simplistic thinking here,
but the reaction of the culture gives you
a,
you never live in a homogenous homogeneous
culture.
Like it's not like everybody thinks the
same.
You can't make general, uh,
conclusions about the entire culture,
but everybody,
I think probably knows that to some extent
or another,
but what I'm interested in is what
percentage of the culture.
thinks this way or leans that way,
what I'm dealing with,
because I still produce online content in
the form of articles and some of the
YouTube content.
And I need to know what people are
thinking.
And something like this brings out,
brings out the hidden stuff.
And some people, when it happens,
they're not too hidden about it at all.
I've been interested in two major things
I've looked at.
One is the sheer number of very hateful
things that are being said or just total
lack of sort of a moral compass when
it comes to the killing of an innocent
human being,
regardless of what they think they said
and promoted.
That's one thing.
The other thing that I find interesting is
the enormous numbers of people who've
really come out in support of
what Charlie Kirk was trying to stand for.
And what I mean by that is I
follow artists.
I follow a number of artists on social
media.
I am a, how would you put it?
I am an artist with no time to
do art,
but I was very much involved in it
in my younger days.
And I was shocked at the number of
artists that I had no idea.
I just assumed they were more on the
left end of the spectrum.
that actually came out and I don't know
for sure whether they're liberal,
conservative, Republican,
I don't know that,
but I do know they came out very
clearly in condemnation and in support for
Charlie Kirk and regarded him,
basically had a pretty high view of him.
Now,
the other thing that's difficult is what
sort of view is the honest view?
Because I know the Canadian media,
is using inflammatory terms to describe
him.
They're just simply not honest.
And in fact, right now there's a trial.
There's a, not a trial,
there's a human rights hearing against our
National Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
by a person who's a visible minority who
was hired as a news anchor and found
out that they just wanted a visible
minority to look good,
but they were not permitting him.
And one of the big things was to
represent
anything conservative.
They didn't want conservative people being
interviewed.
And there was one occasion where he did
from the conservative party and he was
severely reprimanded for that.
So we know what our liberal bias is,
but I hear things and I don't know
what to believe.
I need, you know, our sources,
but bottom line is I am mostly interested
in our culture, the two extremes,
even the middle.
And what that tells me about where we're
at as a culture and maybe what I
need to look at myself.
It's self-examined, Tory, as well.
Yeah,
and we've had a Discord conversation on
our team about some of the underlying
issues.
let's say, reasons or cause and effect,
whatever it is that Tyler,
the person that shot Kirk,
what he might have been feeling and stuff.
And I don't want to get into the
actual details of...
So some of that,
but I'm very interested in,
there's an article written on a sub stack
by History Can't Hide.
And the title is thousands of Gen Zers
don't feel bad.
It was actually,
that was the original title and then it
was changed to millions.
about Charlie Kirk's death.
And they have a couple of ideas,
but the first idea is around thoughts and
prayers don't stop bullets.
And so Charlie was a Second Amendment
He believed in the Second Amendment,
but he, in the process of debates,
said some things that people would have
seen as inflammatory, maybe.
Then the second issue in this article was
violence is more than just a bullet.
And so it talked about how
What we would have seen ten,
fifteen years ago as just basic Republican
talking points,
and even a lot of Democrats would have
believed this twenty years ago,
that's now considered violence because it
hurts people in the places they're at.
And if you don't believe in everything
that
are teaching now on university campuses,
you're actually violent.
So they've actually changed the terms of
what violence is to incorporate just what
I would have seen as, okay,
debatable policies.
And so it's a different world we live
in.
And as I was thinking through some of
that, I came back to the verse,
the battle is not with flesh and blood.
It's the battles with the powers and
principalities of this world.
And so it really helped me ground myself
and recognize that, okay,
we're not in the same space.
We're actually closer to the times of what
we see in the Bible and Acts and
even the death of Jesus.
There was a lot of
there was politics,
but it wasn't just about the politics.
It was about trying to protect the
culture,
trying to reinforce what was either people
wanted to see happen from a nation,
so the Pharisees and even some of the
disciples at the time, the public,
wanted the Romans out of the way.
And you also had the Romans who were
trying to protect their empire.
And so they're using,
the Pharisees used the Romans to do their
dirty work.
And it was very much one of those
situations where people were willing to
kill each other over this stuff.
And I think we're back to that.
Reading this article is very clear,
and as we see how people are...
how people have responded not only to the
death,
but just the fact that people are calling
each other,
half the country is calling the other half
of the country Nazis.
The other half of the country is now
calling the other half demons.
How do you live in a world like
that?
And I think we're getting back to what
we saw in those early church days where
people were getting stoned,
not with drugs, but with actual rocks,
and killed over what they were saying.
And it's a scary thing.
But it's not actually surprising.
So I don't know, Kirk,
if you have any thoughts on that.
KIRK SCHULZMANN- Oh, yeah.
Do I have any thoughts?
Yeah.
They're exploding, actually.
There's a large explosion occurring in my
head as you spoke.
This should not be surprising.
There's quite a few people who have
pointed out that the veneer of
civilization is very thin,
and I'm almost quoting verbatim a fellow
by the name of Terry Pratchett,
who used those words pretty much exactly
in Django in nineteen ninety seven.
And Sigmund Freud wrote about civilization
being a very fragile layer,
restraining the deeper instincts of
humanity.
Even Sigmund, well,
let's say Kenneth Clark talked about a
thin veneer over barbarianism.
or barbarism.
So I think,
but there's something else at play here.
There's something kind of nuanced a little
bit deeper about why people think the way
they do and why they see things,
the same thing,
but they see them from two very different
perspectives.
And I thought a lot about, in fact,
what is left?
What is right?
I mean, that was a problem for me.
It's always been a problem for me because,
and then I went to chat to you
earlier this week
What do you think about left and right?
You know,
and it gives me all sorts of different,
like politically left morally left.
There's a lot of stuff here, but.
that little, um, kind of disclaimer, uh,
I'll just put that out there.
There are some things that seem to be
a little more common in people who may
be on the left side of the spectrum,
uh,
more liberal aspect of the spectrum versus
those who might be in a more conservative.
And one of those things is the idea
that, um, well,
First of all,
changing definitions there that is the
area of, let's say, victimhood.
One of the ideas more on the left
side,
and I saw this arising in the nineteen
eighties,
is that a person is a victim of
their circumstances, of their upbringing,
the things,
the environment they were in at the time
and continue to be in.
and with the downplayment of personal
responsibility.
Whereas on the more conservative end of
the thinking scale,
you'll find that people tend to believe
that yes, your circumstances,
your upbringing definitely has an
influence on you,
But at the end of the day,
you have a responsibility for what you're
going to do with that and how you're
going to respond.
You're not just a hapless victim of your
circumstances.
So you'll see them interpreting things
different.
There's two major things.
One is the role of deception in this
world, and you've alluded to that as well.
and then there's the other view of one
side saying well violence is violence has
been redefined um the spectrum or there's
a fallacy discussed many years ago long
before we this became an issue in our
society it was called the unwarranted
expansion of the semantic field and what
that means is you take the meaning of
word and it doesn't quite
do it for you when you want to
really emphasize let's say how evil that
person is or how good they are so
what you do is you expand the range
that that definition applies to cover
those other things so in the old days
violence was normally seen as physical
violence then it extended to verbal
violence
But verbal violence has a whole spectrum
by itself.
And it could be,
I know one case where an eight year
old recently was being in a sex ed
class in his grade three class.
He's eight years old and the teacher was
talking about different forms of
sexuality.
he was he'd never heard this before and
he he responded with um it was with
one you mean this and that and the
teacher immediately sent him out of the
room he was suspended for two weeks and
parents were called in this is here in
ontario
And the teacher said that was hate speech.
That's violent speech.
And the kids still had no idea what
they were talking about,
but he was suspended for two weeks.
So on the one side, the
One side saw this as verbal violence.
The other side is when you take a
person and silence them for two weeks,
ostracize them from their society,
that's a whole other level of violence
because you are now denigrating that
person, forcibly requiring them to,
you know, et cetera, et cetera.
So both sides actually feel violence is
being done.
but the left will feel that science that's
that violence or that justification a
little more let's say some of the things
i've heard you know the while the right
or the the he was saying such and
such which was hurtful to people and uh
so they would condemn the actual incident
but they would say we need to realize
that when you say hurtful things about
other people at least other people
interpret them to be hurtful
that you then can produce this.
This can be a backlash.
And when I've discussed this with people,
they are totally unaware,
let's say people on the left,
that the same goes for the right side
of the spectrum,
is that the right side of the spectrum
feels the left has done enormous harm to
our civilization.
Those parents felt the left had done
enormous harm to the little boy.
And this goes on,
but it's how they respond.
The right would not think that therefore
There's any justification.
They wouldn't even use that or mention
that as to,
let's say somebody doing the opposite
thing to somebody on the left.
It would not come to the mind because
they take responsibility.
Here's the situation we're in.
Those hurtful things were said.
Let's work through that and we'll become
more resilient people as a result.
We'll be able to weather the storms of
life better and so forth.
Whereas the other side say, no,
that we need to hammer down on the
people who are doing what we perceive
harmful.
And so you see people who are actually
sincere on both sides.
They actually think that there was some,
I don't know, maybe not justification,
but maybe mitigation.
Mitigation is just when you somehow reduce
the level of responsibility for the other
person because here's some other factors
to consider, whereas in reality,
I personally don't think.
there is any mitigation for the
termination of an innocent person's life.
But you also mentioned deception or
what's going on in the... Okay,
let's talk about Satan for a bit there,
because people, like, wow, they... Like,
if you're a scientist,
and I'm a scientist,
so I know you just don't walk down
the hall,
so what do you think about Satan?
Just look at you like, wow,
should this guy be in our department?
But we have to consider this carefully,
because there are things that happen in
our world for which we are...
They happen far more swiftly and more on
a global scale.
And it's almost like somebody organized
this.
Now,
some people will come up with the
conspiracy theories that there are some
high,
powerful
committees in this world.
And I don't discount that.
I mean,
I'd be naive to think that people don't
in high places,
don't get together and say,
make some plans.
Let's put it that way.
I don't discount that, but, um,
there's a real discounting that there is
another form of being out there or other
beings out there.
Um, no,
they might sort of acknowledge
extraterrestrials, maybe, you know,
and maybe there's more sympathy towards
that now, even in the science area,
but beings on the spiritual realm can
manipulate people can influence people in
a wrong direction.
Like Jesus, actually,
if you're going to believe that.
And I realize not everybody believes that
Jesus is the son of God,
but that's another,
we'll have to talk about that sometime
because wow,
you're gonna have a very difficult time
intellectually defending the position that
Jesus never claimed to be God and was
not God.
But we'll talk about that some other time.
But if you take anything that he said
seriously,
he very seriously
said there is a person that he called
quote the ruler of this world.
And it wasn't him.
Now that's a temporary position.
He made it clear,
but he's ruler of this world.
And he also described him as quote the
father of lies.
So let's contemplate that.
This means there is a being out there
far more intelligent than any human beings
walking around here.
Who is a master of manipulation.
There is a ultimate puppeteer.
who has an end game for humanity,
which is basically to bring it to
Armageddon,
and to cause as much harm and division
and strife and death and destruction in
this world as he can,
but he doesn't think like humans do.
A lot of politicians just think until they
get elected,
or if they're a despot dictator somewhere,
until they die,
and then who are they gonna put in
place?
This being has a plan that extends over
thousands of years.
And we see on a global scale that
often the case.
And this is part of what we have
to,
when we don't realize that the enemies
inside the gates,
let's say using medieval terms,
we've got a castle,
we've got some walls around it,
and there's a good,
Like Lord of the Rings, the movie,
there is a situation where the enemies in
the gates and you get an idea of
what it's like.
That's bad enough.
But if you don't even know the enemies
in the gates,
which I would say the majority of our
civilization is not aware of,
then you do a lot of reacting.
That's what I see reacting about what's
going on and how's this and accusations
come up with conspiracy theories.
Some of which might be true.
Others was bizarre.
But you don't ever.
You're just blissfully unaware of the
greatest enemy of all.
In fact, Jesus said, well,
Jesus indirectly,
God said through the Apostle Paul,
the Holy Spirit,
that our enemies actually are not flesh
and blood, but they are spiritual powers.
world forces of wickedness.
There are beings out there who are
devising the destruction of humanity,
and that's our only enemy.
So I always remember that because there
are people who I, as I said before,
vehemently, at least in my mind,
disagree with,
who I think are causing enormous harm
But I realize they're kind of victims of
this.
That person's actually a fellow brother or
sister, possibly someday.
That's not my enemy.
I don't care what politician you're
talking about or what despot you're
talking about or criminal you're talking
about.
They're not my enemy.
They are victims.
And I don't want to use that term
in the left sense that there are real
victims.
They are legit victims.
They have just succumbed to the father of
lies and that's going on here as well.
And so I always watch the reaction of
these sorts of things from that
perspective as well.
We can't blame everything on the devil,
like flip Wilson.
The comedian used to say the devil made
me do it,
but the devil does have an enormous
influence in this world.
Humans do too.
So we have to take our responsibility for
whether we're going to listen to these
voices of deception.
Yeah, and one thing that I was really...
When these kind of things happen,
my mind goes in all these different ADHD
areas or whatever.
But one of the things that I got
into was when the Roman soldier pierced
the side of Jesus.
So he's the actual person that killed
Jesus.
Now,
you and I would agree that he was
actually doing the will of God at that
time because he changed the history of the
spiritual world.
trajectory for humanity but when he killed
jesus i wondered like okay what happened
to this guy now there's a lot of
history of um or i should say tradition
or or some would say legend about this
guy but his name is longinus longinus
I didn't know that.
I haven't heard that, anyway.
Now, this is on Wikipedia,
so how it may be correct, whatever.
But it says,
an apostolic in some modern Christian
traditions is described as a convert to
Christianity.
And his name first appeared in the
Apocrypha, Gospel of Nicodemus.
But it's a very interesting way,
and whether that happened or not,
we don't know.
But I do think it's very interesting how
the right has been calling the left
demons, missing the point completely.
Because it's not, the left is not demons,
right?
No.
There are people like you and I.
There are people like you and I.
They are created by God in his image.
And so if Satan is wanting to,
Satan would love to see a war out
of this with death.
That's his goal.
Everybody kills each other.
He wins.
But if the Christians in the process—and I
know not everybody on the right is
Christian.
Oh, that's for sure.
So, I'm not talking to everybody here.
I'm talking to the Christians.
And there's Christians on the left, too.
But if you look at everybody as a
demon—
You're doing what the other side has done
in calling everybody a Nazi.
Yeah.
You're dehumanizing them.
You're taking away what God did by
creating them.
And I've watched a lot of Charlie's videos
over the last few days,
and there's a lot of things about
abortion, but...
one of the things he often talks about
is God knit this person in the womb.
Therefore that is the,
the moment of conception is when the life
is created.
We can get into DNA and stuff later,
but, um, probably not this conversation,
the DNA, but, um,
If we don't keep in mind that Timothy
was created by God.
Oh yeah, we just want him killed.
Let's get him out of there.
No, I actually, I grieve for the shooter.
This is a guy that could find Jesus
and turn into the Paul instead of the
Saul.
No, I have no ill feelings towards him.
I would have.
There was a good chunk.
I'm getting old now, okay?
So as you get old,
God has more time to work on you,
and that's the case with me.
And instead, I just feel sorrow.
I feel grief for that guy.
He is so lost.
He really needs the intervention of God in
his heart and mind.
so uh yeah it's it's like let's go
back to the soldier like i i think
the gospel said he was jesus was already
dead when he plunged that spear in and
he was doing the final you know let's
test to make sure um he was he
was the executioner he had to do his
job
And Jesus says, forgive them.
They don't know what they're doing.
And that's interesting that God also
brings in mens rea,
which is a Latin term that my atheist
ethics prof often raised.
It's guilty mind intention.
It's you knew what you were doing and
you did it.
So God, Jesus himself,
cut people slack because the guy and not
just that guy but the people stood around
mocking him had no idea that the creator
of the universe is right there in the
form yeah having become a human being to
get in touch with us to
redeem us to represent us to connect with
us there's no better way you can connect
with let's say i could connect with an
ant in an anthill and become an ant
maybe i'm not sure but don't sign me
up and don't hold me too close on
that but um here we have this and
and we have it from the creator of
the universe that there's um no matter
what you've done including i mean it's one
thing to terminate the existence of an
innocent human being
it's quite another when that human being
is a perfect person who has never done
even had an immoral thought and who loves
humanity to the point of giving his life
for humanity but that you would think that
got to be the ultimate you're really
guilty then but in that situation he said
forgive them they don't know what they're
doing
So it's not helpful at all, I think,
to have an attitude that's negative
towards people who are kind of at the
opposite end of the spectrum.
Which reminds me, as an engineer,
or even in physics,
there's a different coordinate system.
I don't like the term right and left.
Because I can go right and I can
see some heinous examples of humanity.
I can go left, I can see heinous.
I don't tend to think that way.
I tend to think in terms of what
we might call polar coordinates,
where you have a center,
you have an origin,
and then you just go out from there.
The further you go from the origin,
Well, the further off the beaten,
the further wrong you are,
but the arrow can go a lot of
different directions away from that
origin.
And I think the origin in my case
would be truth and not just my truth
or your truth or whoever's truth we're
talking about.
No, Jesus says he is the truth.
And they didn't say, I am true,
because that would mean he's comparing
himself with some standard,
and by that standard, he's true.
No, he said he is the truth.
That means he defines reality,
creates the physical.
What does that mean?
He's created the world.
He's created all things that exist,
including the immaterial things,
like the axioms of math.
And I don't know if he's created those.
Those might just be attributes of God.
But certainly the fallen angels, Satan,
and actually in the bible says satan was
created and jesus has created all things
that have been created so jesus created
satan but big butt here he was created
blameless and flawless and probably the
highest of all the created angels as chief
of the cherubim
and it was his decision that he became
personally very impressed with himself and
became proud and it says that he fell
and his understanding became corrupted
that's a quote so it wasn't thinking
straight anymore and i see that is the
number one i would think it's the number
one problem of humanity is pride itself
but not just pride against your neighbor
but pride against God.
And how does that surface?
How does that manifest?
It's in thinking,
I don't need God for morality.
I'll decide my own theory of right and
wrong.
I don't need God to make it through
the day.
Well, of course,
a mushroom can make it through the day.
That's not the objective of our existence.
So there's a lot of things at play
here.
And the other thing is a deception.
You know you're deceived, right?
when you no longer,
when you really downplay personal
responsibility and start putting the blame
on other things.
Other people,
or in the case of a lot of
people who people might describe as being
on the left,
I would say they're way off,
away from the polar coordinate of truth,
is their circumstances.
And this is why gun control has been
so much talked about in the last week.
Is that, um,
the left and I'll use the left,
the terms left,
because people then will know what I'm
talking about more or less thinks that
it's a problem of gun control.
So by this, they mean if we,
because we are victims of our
circumstances, our environment,
if there's lots of guns,
we're going to be lots of people killing
each other.
If we remove the guns,
then people won't kill each other anymore.
uh at least not with guns uh they
might do it with vehicles knives or
whatever there's been some pretty shocking
examples in the last couple of years where
people who didn't have access to a gun
would do something else maybe i shouldn't
even say that word uh the the thing
that makes projectiles fly through the air
very quickly you don't want to get banned
here but um so uh but on the
on the other side of the spectrum
They would say, well, actually,
you need to hold the person who did
that responsibility.
But that itself seems terribly weak to me.
We have to start thinking about how did
we get here?
How did we get to this place where
Like where I grew up,
there were plenty of those unmentionable
things.
We even had school spirit week.
And one of those days of my high
school was shady character day.
And everybody was supposed to dress like
shady characters with trench coats, hats,
you know, and.
One of those unmentionable things that
hurled projectiles through the air.
So we saw everything in the hallway at
class change time.
I mean,
there were everything from toy replicas to
pellet BB guns to one guy brought a
souvenir from World War II.
It was a Sten.
I think it was a Sten gun or
something.
But there were rifle,
everything in the hallway,
but nobody had any thoughts.
I mean,
you have a thousand students all packing
guns to school for this particular day.
There was absolutely no concept of
misusing those things.
So when you look at that,
you've got to look back and say, well,
what has happened in our society?
that things have changed and so you can't
just say p well take some people say
guns kill people people say no people kill
people that's still too way too simplistic
you have to go deeper what is it
about our society now that has created
this environment where it's a where
there's a loss of personal identity there
is a tendency for violence in fact um
mary eberstadt who has authored the book
primal scream
she started this research and it's quite
an interesting book because she not only
presents her case, she starts with,
with mass shootings, uh,
identity politics, and mental health,
those three things.
And mental health,
people struggling in the area of mental
health has just skyrocketed.
And that cannot be separated from what we
see going on here.
She looks at those three things and how
did this happen?
What's going on in our society?
And people on the surface will blame,
well, it's guns or it's mental health.
It's like people saying violent things or
hurtful things or whatever.
So they have all these band-aid solutions
that don't do a thing.
She wanted to go deeper,
and what she found is that the bottom
line has to do with identity.
And this is an identity that naturally
comes through being raised in a family,
the old fashioned kind of family where you
had dad and mom, siblings, cousins,
uncles, and aunts.
And she saw that has been decimated in
the last couple, well, in the last, say,
forty years.
So then she said, OK,
so this is the cause.
There's a mental health crisis here
because of the loss of identity,
which is in turn is a consequence of
this not having this tribal
pack whatever you want to call it this
tribal identity from your extended family
so what has happened that has decimated
the extended family and so she went one
deeper and noticed all uh upswing and
divorces and just single parent homes and
absentee fathers and so what is what is
the problem here and it under that number
one thing the number one reason for the
disintegration of the family was uh
basically a sexual revolution where all
the
uh the cheating let's call it cheating
going on and the fixation on valuing
people according to how sexually
attractive they are and when they no
longer are sexually attractive you ditch
them for somebody who is more all of
this stuff is in place it's just well
then what what the sexual revolution what
what happens what caused that and she goes
back to the in the when it started
And then that correlated perfectly with
the research of J.D.
Unwin,
who found that no civilization survives
more than one hundred years once they've
had their sexual revolution.
But he didn't know why.
Mary Eberstadt in her book Primal Scream
explains why and which in turn explains it
doesn't necessarily explain random
anomalies like, say,
what happened to Charlie Kirk.
What it does explain is the response by
the population afterwards.
and even the the the sections of the
population who think we need to see more
of that we had one in canada who's
calling for yeah right on and that sounds
how about the execution of our prime of
our provincial premier including she and
and even including the the fact please and
thank you like you can't get more overt
than that and that's
Or a Canadian with the whole politeness
about it.
Said please and thank you at least.
I do want to come back to because
the solution that people are going to
immediately say is, okay,
we need to fix our school systems.
We need to fix this.
We need to fix this.
And now we have all these political
political solutions to a problem that's
not going to be solved.
No, no, you can't legislate niceness.
And you can't legislate.
You can try and legislate morality,
but your jails are going to have to
be really, really, really big,
large cities.
So,
so we believe that it's a spiritual issue
and we,
I've been around long enough to know that
the spiritual things,
it's not a politics solution.
You can't,
and this is where like when Charlie first
started and when I see some of the
stuff around Christian nationalists and
scare quotes on this,
my initial thing is I get why you're
doing it.
That's not actually going to solve the
long-term problem.
That might delay.
Yeah.
Delay it a little bit or whatever,
but you're only delaying it.
You're not solving the problem because the
problem is spiritual.
Yeah, it's deeper.
Yeah, exactly.
In fact,
Mary Eberstadt didn't go the next layer
deeper.
She pinned it on the sexual revolution.
But you and I probably from our own
perspective would say, well,
what was it about the population at the
time that made them so susceptible to just
tossing and abandoning their morality when
it came to sexuality?
And now we're talking at the spiritual
plane, which is the reality.
a slow you still have a christian
christianity was still very prevalent it
was the majority thing but that form of
christianity was uh wasn't the real deal
for for maybe the majority of the
population there was just no substance
there no spiritual strength there and
you're absolutely right sheldon it's
ultimate at the end of the day we
have a spiritual problem and my prayer is
that god would bring a massive spiritual
awakening to my country because i don't
see any other solution politics i i lost
hoping that uh probably a couple of
decades ago i mean there's a lot of
politicians doing their best but it's
they're spitting in the wind as they say
against a much stronger problem and that
is on the spiritual level is that spirit
spiritually people are dead inside that's
the way jesus would have described it we
actually have zombies all of us are
basically spiritually dead but physically
look like we can move around but he
offers us spiritual life
And only when that life comes can we,
and I'll stress the word, begin,
begin to become more and more and more
like Jesus Christ.
There's not a quantum change and we
suddenly become complete saints and
perfect, all that kind of stuff.
Like people expect that.
Well, that would be, but no,
it's a road we walk on for the
rest of our lives.
And when I look at my own life,
I see, yeah, there's a progression.
I wish it was way faster than what
it actually has been.
But there is clearly and definitely a
progression here,
and that comes from a spiritual source,
life,
and power that I just had to be
given by God because it wasn't in me.
So those of you watching,
thanks for sticking around as we walk
through this really unscripted,
unthought-through discussion.
But
yeah feel free if you want to leave
your comments do that please we would love
to hear what your journey through this has
been what you've been thinking about as
you've gone gone through this and
Yeah,
if you want to know more about what
we're talking about when we're talking
about the spiritual,
you can either comment or if you head
over to kirkdurston.com,
I'll put the banner up here so you
can see how to spell that.
But if you head over to kirkdurston.com,
you can jump into some of his writings
as well as send him a message there.
Yeah.
Thanks for going through this journey with
us.
I think we'll probably be around next
week.
I don't know what day yet.
So hit the bell to get notified of
when we are going to be streaming.
And yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
and we will respond.
So we will see you again,
and thank you, Kirk,
for going through this with me.
Well, thanks, Sheldon.
These are hard conversations,
but as we're probably going to be having
more and more hard conversations, I think.
We've got some really interesting ones
coming up, maybe a few guests too.
We've got a few guests possibly for some
of our live streams.
So we will see you all later.
Yep.
Bye for now.
Bye-bye.