Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / TALKBACK: How Josh Keeps His Poise… and Are Christians Under Attack?

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TALKBACK: How Josh Keeps His Poise… and Are Christians Under Attack? · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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G'day, humans. Welcome to the Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas. Today, your dangerous ideas,
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your dangerous questions, my responses, and a little bit of interactive banter on this
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talkback episode of uncomfortable conversations if you're watching live on YouTube. G'day
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from a beautiful day in Sydney, Australia, and if you're listening on the podcast,
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lovely to have you back again. One question that we had from a listener who can't join us
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unfortunately, who's just had to drop out was Sasha, who said, we live in such a time of such
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inflamed discourse. How do you maintain your poise during difficult conversations?
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This is a relevant question, and one that I get quite a lot, especially this week after the
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episode with Jaron Lanier, the artificial intelligence expert, the man who coined the term
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virtual reality, the man who founded the first company to sell virtual reality products.
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If you haven't listened to that, it is kind of interesting. He started off the conversation a little
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bit prickly and annoyed because he wasn't able to log on, and I feel that that irritability
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just casts a pull over everything that we tried to subsequently talk about, and every time I tried
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to question the extent to which he is sanguine about AI and dismissive of artificial intelligence
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experts concerns about artificial intelligence. I felt like he sort of got his hackles up and found
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a way to feel that the whole line of questioning was invalid. Without necessarily articulating exactly
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why I was invalid, it was a tone of dismissiveness, which is a bit different to deal with in an
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interview than a tone of outright hostility, which also sometimes happens when we're disagreeing
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about profound issues that strike deeply at a person's core set of beliefs.
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The answer to how you deal with it is I suppose just to let it be water off a duck's back and
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recognize that a person is engaging with you using all of the normal, irrational, emotional
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aspects of humanity that define us all and to not treat that as being a trigger for meter
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respond in kind. Like the object is to get to ideas on this show, the object is to be rational
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on this show. The object is not to engage in a war of words. I don't want to dunk on people,
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I'm not about creating clickbait where Josh Owens, Jaron Lanier and crushes him or destroys him,
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but that's not the tone of this show. I really want to understand what people are all about,
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and in order to do that, you just have to keep that as the sort of defining guiding light on
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the hill and not allow oneself to be ruffled. When it comes to disagreements that are
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more substantive, less about prickliness and more about a fundamental disagreement about
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worldviews, then I think it's very useful just to have a kind of emotional empathy and
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intellectual empathy for where the person is coming from. I always go into conversations,
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even ones that I feel quite strongly about, with the recognition that I could be wrong,
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and so I'm really just trying out my ideas and my questions on somebody who might be a lot more
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right than me. In the case of a Jaron Lanier, he certainly knows more about the subject than I do,
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so my intuitions may well be leading me astray. There's no point in me responding to his antagonism
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with further antagonism, because that's not going to reveal to me what's wrong with my perspective.
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I want to actually understand what he thinks is wrong with my perspective. The only way to do that
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is to make him feel comfortable. That doesn't mean that I throw out my own opinions in a kind of a
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pathetic attempt to create phony conciliation, but it doesn't mean that I try to put myself in the
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audience members or the interviewees shoes and be as generous as I can to the way that they
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probably see the conversation going and the way that they probably view me, not just because
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that's the decent thing to do, but because it actually helps me understand my ideas better as well.
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It reminds me of the old adage that his opponent's point of view doesn't know his own either.
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I actually need to understand what people who are disagreeable are thinking in order to understand
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why I think what I think. I want to share with you something just before we get to our live
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audience members and thanks so much for joining us, which is I devoted about half an hour yesterday
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to responding to a group WhatsApp thread that I have with a bunch of mates of mine.
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And one of them is should we say conspiracy theory adjacent or just more interested than the rest
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of us are in the things that perhaps slightly wacky people on Joe Rogan say. And we'll occasionally
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share with us in glowing terms, incredible things that RFK Jr. has said revealing the truth about
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vaccines and the rest of us kind of smirk and nod and move along and put him down a little bit.
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And he recently shared the appearance that Terence Howard had on Joe Rogan's show. Now I haven't
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seen this, but apparently this is a jumble of crazed ideas where Terence Howard, an actor who
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I didn't even know until he was on Joe Rogan is talking about how actually he's revolutionized
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mathematics and one times one does not equal one. It couldn't possibly one times one has to equal
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two and gravity is misunderstood and a whole bunch of things where he feels like he's literally
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taking down the establishment consensus about a whole bunch of profound issues that he has no
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expertise in. And I felt like our response to this individual in our group chat was somewhat
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uncharitable and somewhat unkind and it put me in a position of going, okay, well if I'm all
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about having uncomfortable conversations with people and I see a scenario in which someone is
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I believe misled by something online, something that probably shouldn't be online because Joe probably
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shouldn't have that person on unless he's also got a mathematician and a physicist to push back
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on them. How do I respond? How do we as a community as friends as family members respond when we see
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people perhaps slightly going off the rails in our estimation? And I want to read you what I wrote
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because I didn't want to waste a half hour of my work time in replying only to my friends in
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the WhatsApp. Let's call this individual David, shall we? So as to protect the names of the innocent.
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I said, let me try to bring my powers of conciliation to this conversation or mess.
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David's curiosity is admirable and his skepticism towards mainstream explanations has an honorable
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history. Powerful institutions have repeatedly had blind spots and biases that have lasted far too
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long and their attacks on dissenting voices have been smug and blinkered. Progress requires
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an open-mindedness that can appear to defenders of a mainstream narrative like credulity or whackiness.
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We saw far too much dismissiveness from mainstream institutions towards people who argued,
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for example, that the US government invented the Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify the Vietnam war
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or that Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs or during COVID that governments and the media were
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exaggerating the effectiveness of lockdowns and vaccines at eliminating transmission.
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I went on to write, but we also live at a moment when billions of amateurs now have access to
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amplification algorithms that are flooding the zone with shit. Those conspiracists enjoy an
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unprecedented platform thanks to the interplay of social media podcasts, disinformation, media bias
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and the splintering of audiences. Our job as responsible citizens, as good thinkers,
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good parents and good friends is to be neither sanctimonious about what we think we know,
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nor gullible about what we don't. I went on to say, in general, big lies tend to get debunked
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by dissidents who know a lot about the field in question. They understand the mainstream dogma.
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They see its blind spots. They've punched holes in it a million ways. They've endured criticism
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from their peers and they've diligently built up a well-informed alternative hypothesis.
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Then a tipping point comes at which the David's of the world say, you know what, the guy isn't
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actually crazy and we all pile on David and say he's a fool because from David's perspective
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we're brainwashed sheeple. And David's right in the sense that none of us is a mathematician,
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nor a physicist. The problem here is, nor is Terence Howard. On the spectrum between on the one hand
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well-informed dissidents who are being unfairly maligned by elites, and on the other hand,
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whack jobs flooding the zone with shit, Terence leans towards the latter. So the listeners'
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honorable instinct to be skeptical of mainstream narratives gets perverted and derailed by an
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information ecosystem that elevates dumb-dums as much as it does dissenting experts. And we're not
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really in a position to tell the difference, except via our instinct about whom to trust.
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One response I write to this cacophony is to reflexively side with the mainstream narrative,
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which in general will be more correct, more often than not. But in so doing, we can come across
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smug and unthinking to people who crave alternative explanations, which drives them further down
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the rabbit hole. I don't know what to do about this clash of perspectives, other than to
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devote my professional life to producing content that seeks to remedy it. But what I do know is that
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Joe Rogan's audience needs to show greater skepticism towards self-proclaimed skeptics,
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and the rest of us need to show greater compassion for people who instinctively side with them.
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Peace out. I hope that's useful. I think it's useful. I think it's a decent articulation of the way
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that I think that we need to respond to the moment that we find ourselves in that spirit.
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Let's go to some calls and some webcams. Susan, do we have, do we have Susan on the line?
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Get a Susan. Good morning. Good morning. Where are you? Sydney. Fabulous. Isn't it nice this time of year?
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It's gorgeous. I played tennis this morning, and apart from having the sun actually in my eyes,
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it was really a beautiful way to start the day. How fabulous. How early did you start playing tennis?
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Seven. Aren't you good? Aren't you good? It gets a little bit harder getting out of bed,
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doesn't it? When it's cold. There is that. What do you want to talk about?
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Well, leadership training, actually, I feel like we've got an obsession with leadership training
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and that everyone is expected to train as a leader, and I'm not sure why. I'm just
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not sure why we need everybody to want to be a leader. Do you mean like in schools or in
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organisations? Both. And I'm going to preface this by outing myself as someone who is not a leader.
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I don't want to be leader. I'm a good two I see. I like to get the job done. I don't like to make
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strategic decisions and take risks and do all those difficult things. I like to do analysis and
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test someone else's ideas with them, but I don't want to lead. But every job I've ever had has
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required me to do leadership training. I don't really want to get into the qualities and behaviours
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of a leader. I think that's really well covered by management theory. We don't need to debate it
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here other than maybe I'd like to suggest that you're only a leader if you've got people that
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want to follow you. But leadership training isn't really necessary for one's life work to be
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striving to lead, and it does start in primary school where kids are given these leadership
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opportunities, continues on into high school, and every employer of graduates is looking for
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leadership potential amongst the graduate cohort or the graduate recruits. But they can't
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surely expect them all to rise up to be leaders. But try going to a job interview and saying,
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no, actually I don't think I'm a leader. I'm a doer. You won't get very far.
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That's interesting, isn't it? Do you have people who are answerable to you in work at work?
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I did have, and I don't mind supervising them in all, but I don't want to feel responsible
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for giving them career advice because what would I know about that? I once went to a seminar
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where Amanda Vanstone, a former liberal senator was a keynote speaker, and she was always a bit
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of a straight shooter. And at the time she had left politics, and she was no longer representing
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the government in politics or as an ambassador. And at that time, the liberal leadership was going
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through turmoil and they were all rolling each other. When is it not? Well, that is true. But John
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Howard had lost his seat just recently and his leadership and his prime ministership.
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And the parliamentary party had been led by Brendan Nelson, if you remember those days.
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Yep, 2008. Followed by Malcolm Turnbull, followed by Tony Abbott. And Amanda
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Riley commented that surely not everyone can aspire to be a leader. And in fact, in politics,
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it's better if there's only one. You mentioned briefly, Susan, the qualities of a leader.
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I mean, when you talk about politics, like it has often been remarked that anyone who
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actually wants to be the leader of a country is probably not qualified to do so. And in fact,
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like the founding fathers of the United States, we're all about like, no one should be
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nominating themselves to be president. The president should sort of be chosen by a cohort of
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peers and grudgingly nominated and put the president should only want to do it for a short while
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and then go back to their civilian life. And now we've got a situation where there's a professional
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class of professional would be leader wannabes who are all scrambling for the top. And maybe they
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don't have the right characteristics of what you would want in a leader anyway, which is some level
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of humility, reality checking and self-effaciveness. And people that want to follow them.
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Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Okay. And do you think that maybe part of the focus on leadership
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is because the job market today is so unstable that you're going to have to be a self-starter and
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a go getter in order to get through because like, I don't know, the era that my grandfather lived in
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where when he was 15, he left school, walked into a shoe factory in New Zealand and walked out
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of the same shoe factory at the age of 55 with a retirement pension. Like that's not around anymore.
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Is it so doesn't wouldn't he have in today's world, wouldn't he be well armed if he did have
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leadership skills? Maybe, maybe that's why we have to do. Maybe it's like cooking or learning to
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change tyre. You just never know when you're going to be called upon. And so you need to,
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everybody needs to be trained to step up when the moment comes. But I don't know, I feel like
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there's people that have natural qualities as leaders and maybe they don't need to be trained.
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I'm thinking of historical leaders and Moses and Jesus Christ and people like that. And then there's
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people like Vladimir Zelensky who managed to inspire a nation to follow him into war and in
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response to war. And he was a comedian, I think. I don't think he had leadership training.
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No, that's right. So maybe, do you think that true leadership is something that can't be taught?
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I don't know. I'd like to set up the Moses leadership training academy with you,
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says. And I think we do a roaring trade. Yeah, you're reminding me a little bit also of the
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fact that there are some companies that intentionally position themselves in the market as being
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non-leaders like that there's value. I mean, even like, you know, there are giant tech companies
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that are not usually first movers. They wait until they see someone else try to develop something
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hair-brained and make all the mistakes. They learn from the mistakes. And then they come along
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and slip into the slipstream and nail it. I wonder if we need instead of leadership training
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courses like, you know, how to be the best, how to be the best runner-up?
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Or how to just get the job done? How to be a good solid worker that produces output?
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We need those. How do you measure the output those? And I think maybe part of it is like the
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confusion in our contemporary society where it's very hard to measure value because the best
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value comes from ideas and from deep work. So we've reached a point at which there's a lot of
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busy work where people, you know, scurry around and get in early and stay late and look like
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they're doing things, but they're not actually contributing much in reality because they're just
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sort of making themselves look busy. And I wonder if leadership training programs are a proxy for
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trying to deal with worker bees? Because I got to say, I'm not very inspired when I hear you say,
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like, maybe all you want is someone who just gets the job done. That to me feels like,
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I'm going to get some hyper unionized person like you meet when you go to center link or the DMV
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and they're just not, they're going to technically do all of the things that they were required to do,
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but they're not going to put in an ounce more effort than they actually have to. And that's not
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a characteristic you want an employee either. No, but I also don't think you want the more competing
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with each other to try and rise above and be some sort of leader either. You want to focus
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on the job, not on their own personal ambition. And I do wonder for this leadership training in
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school is what leads us to people who find they can't lead any other way so they will become
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influences. That's how they can get their followers. I don't know. Yes. And the follower leader dynamic
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is obviously exacerbated by an online landscape where followers are the ultimate thing that you
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can have and the follow account. It's so depressing. Now that you put it that way, it's kind of
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depressing, isn't it? Like the idea that some some influencer with like fat injected duck lips and
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Botox and a boob job lying on a beach is a leader because she's got 10 million Instagram followers
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is mildly depressing. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Susan. Yeah. Yeah. No. Do you want to finish that
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thought? Oh, no, that's all right. Thanks, Susan. All right. Go follow. Don't lead. I like that.
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Who do we have next? Is John, I believe, on the line or Roger, Roger or John? This is John.
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Okay. Great. Where are you, John? John's literally what for people who aren't watching on YouTube,
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he's literally doing the I'm holding my phone up while I'm walking in a park and it's a jerky,
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but idyllic looking place. You're in Georgia. Yeah. I am walking on a canal in Augusta,
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Georgia. Fabulous. I assume Americans, but I am a graduate. I am a graduate of the union of
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Queensland. So I have spent some time in Australia. Fabulous. So I like to think of myself as having
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the reverse ZEPS perspective as an American who spent the time in Australia and has a lot of
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opinions on Australia. And I think that was the substance of the question that I wanted to get.
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Well, before you get to the question, what is what are your top three? What are the top three
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opinions about Australia that you developed? All the top three opinions about Australia. I mean,
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it was just so empty. I couldn't believe that there were so few people there from an American
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perspective. It boggles the mind. We have several states that have more people than the entire
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country. Yes, we have we have the population of Florida basically in the same size as the
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contiguous United States. Yeah. I felt like the wildlife kind of owned the place. I felt like,
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you know, the Australians would allow animals to come into public spaces and do things where
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Americans would never permit it. Like what? And I felt like there was a great, well, I mean,
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I think you actually had an episode where there was a cucumber where it was eyeing your food.
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Oh, yeah. Well, I've never had a bird actually try to take my food in the U.S. But but in
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Byron Bay, I have. It's just when you said that we allow wild animals to do things that Americans
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never would. I have images of like a couple of kangaroos masturbating each other on the harbour bridge,
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which doesn't happen frequently. Well, I used to live in an apartment that had windows with no
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windowed screens on which is unthinkable for us. And I had a huntsman spider crawl in and I was
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just thinking, oh, I see. I never have any of these. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yes. Yes. My
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American husband is also is also always remarking on this that we'll leave our door because the
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climate is so pleasant for nine months of the year. You just leave your doors open without
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fly screens because too much hassle to keep opening and closing them. And we don't have tons of
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midges and mosquitoes the way that like the American Midwest does. So we just, yeah, tolerate it.
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And occasionally there's a spider inside and my husband is always like, keep it outside and teasing
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Australians for being like, oh, it's the spider's home just as much as it is our home. Where the
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interlopers let the spider be. So yes, carry on. Oh, I think there's a great deal of tolerance
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or the wildlife and a great deal of reverence for the natural environment. I see so much of the
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Australian coast has been not overdeveloped in the way that a lot of the American coast has.
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So yeah, did you know that in Australia, you have to the coastline like the shoreline is
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all mandatory public land. So there's no, by law, it's not like in Europe. I'm not sure what
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the situation is in the States where there are a whole chunks of the coast where a private resort
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will be able to put up a bunch of deck chairs or a person's house will block access from one
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part of the coastline to the other part because some rich shit poke has a has a beach at their
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property. The entire the entirety of the of the island coastline of many, many thousands of
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miles is all public. And I made good use out of it while I was there. Excellent. All right,
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what do you want to talk about? So my question was about there's been a lot of remarks from you
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lately about the difference in values between Australia and the Americans with Australians being
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more collectivist and not having the same commitment to individualism that of course Americans
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instinctively have. And you know, that plays out with regards to public health and COVID. It plays
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out with regards to the free speech issues with the provision of social services in healthcare
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or all of those things. But in my experience in Australia, I was just amazed at how much I saw
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of Chinese people, Chinese culture, Chinese money in Australia. And I'm wondering if you think
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that in addition to the intrinsic cultural difference between America and Australia, Australia
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is becoming a little bit more like China. That's fascinating. Well, I don't think it's becoming
23:05
more like China because of a Chinese siop or because like Chinese, you know, spies are infiltrating
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our media or something like that if there's any of that insinuation in the question. But it is
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interesting. I mean, it was really revealed most starkly during COVID, John, where you know, you had
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there's something that sociologists talk about which is horizontal trust and vertical trust.
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So some societies are more trusting horizontally and some are more trusting vertically and they
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have different levels of each kind of trust. And you can think of horizontal trust as being
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trust in your fellow citizens and trust in the common man. But that might be paired with low
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vertical trust, meaning low trust in elite institutions and in authorities. So, you know,
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I don't know, countries like Greece, for example, might have strong horizontal trust,
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but low vertical trust in the sense that you might leave your door open on an island in Greece
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or in a town and you wouldn't worry about someone robbing you. And you know, you would trust someone
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to do the right thing, but you there's no way in hell that you would trust the government as far
24:11
as you could throw them. And then there are countries with strong vertical trust and low horizontal
24:15
trust. Often this is in East Asia, for example, I mean, China would be the archetype. But even in
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democracies like Japan, there'll be a strong sense of trust in authorities and in doing the
24:28
right thing as it is defined by the people above you in hierarchies. And you can have religious
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communities which are like this as well. And most of the Anglo-democratic world does not have
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very strong vertical trust. And America would be the exemplar of that. Like Americans do not trust
24:47
authority and have an instinctive suspicion of anything the government tries to tell them to do.
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And what happened during COVID was interestingly, Australia and New Zealand seemed to exhibit the
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same kind of vertical trust that you would expect from East Asia. And a lot of horizontal trust as
25:04
well. There was a lot of just trust in in your fellow citizen not to break the lockdown rules,
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for example. So it didn't actually need to be policed very strongly because Aussies love a
25:14
rule and we love abaying things. But the fact that there was we were so unruffled by public
25:22
health officials and politicians telling us to arrange our lives for quite a long period of time
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was more I mean it more closely resembled an attitude that you might find in
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Korea or Japan or China or Japan than that what you would find in the UK or the US. And I'm not
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quite sure what mechanism that happens by because you're right. There is definitely a different
25:45
attitude towards collectivism. You know we have universal health care mind you everyone has that
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pretty much apart from the US. We we have a sort of egalitarian ethos the idea of giving everyone
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a fair go and a fair shake and we're less hung up about ensuring that our individual freedoms
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aren't trampled on by the boot of the big man. Whether that is because of high rates of Chinese
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immigration and Chinese investment in Australia I'm more skeptical of I don't know I'd love to
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talk to a sociologist or an anthropologist about what the mechanism is by which societies might
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evolve that way like if Australia and New Zealand were located geographically not in the South
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Pacific slash East Asia but were located I don't know where the Azores are or something like in
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the middle of the Atlantic would you have the same characteristics of kind of national
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collectivism or would we be more independent and hardy it's a good question I mean it has to
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I guess being very multicultural societies you need a certain amount of horizontal trust in order
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to incorporate large numbers of people from different communities and different ethnicities
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and trust them and not end up in a civil war but where does the vertical trust come from where does
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the compliance come from I mean as much as anything John it may be just a consequence of having
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good governance like maybe to the extent that you have shitty that you're run by shitty governments
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it corrodes your trust I mean the reason why Greeks don't have trust in their government might
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be because their governments are all incompetent and it may be the same in the United States partly
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like you know Al Franken the former Saturday night live writer and alum and former senator has a
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saying that I like which is that Republicans run on the platform that government doesn't work and
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then they get elected and prove it is actually an incentive in some ways for for people who whose
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whole stick is that government is bad to get into government and then gum up the system and
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make it not work and then they can turn around and see say say see I told you so and for some
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reason that doesn't quite exist here I must say the what the biggest one of the well the biggest
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changes in my moving from the states where I lived for about a dozen years in New York City to
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moving back to Australia a few years ago was noticing how much less stressful it is to deal with
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the tax office and how easy it is to get a driver's license and how easy it is to lodge things on
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a government app on my phone whereas in the states you know the IRS login code would be something
28:28
like I recently applied for a new internal revenue service US tax login and I get to the final
28:36
page after this 25 minute I do us thing of having to look up a code that was on my last tax return
28:42
that I lodged and I who knows where that tax return is why do they need that why don't they just
28:46
leave my social security number but I find it I get it and then the final page says your new login
28:51
will be mailed to you in four to six weeks I'm like I need to do this stuff now that doesn't happen
28:58
so much in Australia and the other thing that I noticed was the sort of nanny stateism of Australia
29:03
the fact that everyone drives at the speed limit the places a wash with speed cameras that catch
29:08
people there is a very reliable and systematic presence of the state in governing what you can do
29:15
where you can drink how much you can drink and those things I think are remarkable to note on
29:21
when you move back here but I'm I think it's a bit of a long bow to connect it to China do can you
29:28
think of a mechanism by which China would be responsible well yeah so to be clear I'm not going
29:35
for the strong will sort of conspiratorial version of it in most cases but Americans I think
29:40
sort of presume that our our power projects over the world and that that's the only one you know I
29:45
don't think that CIA operatives planted pictures of Michael Jordan and Hudson Africa but you know
29:51
they got there somehow right American culture gone everywhere so I think it's possible that if you
29:55
have enough Chinese tourists and Chinese students that the country will sort of passively shine
30:00
without any you know plot behind it right the other thing I will say the other thing I will say
30:06
is that I was last in Australia in 2019 and it was right when the transition in Hong Kong was
30:14
happening and we had a couple of visitors from a medical school in China and one of the Australian
30:22
medical school faculty came to us before they got there and said don't ask them about Hong Kong
30:30
and I was just flabbergasted I believe like that was any of his business the same and so in
30:35
that case I think they're probably using direct financial interest in the amount of money
30:39
that the Chinese government puts into Australian education which was clearly quite large yeah
30:43
then I mean that if you're talking about the education sector if you're talking about universities
30:47
and colleges and tertiary education there's a massive conflict of interest between the amount
30:51
of money that they get from Chinese students and Chinese sponsors and the extent to which they can
30:55
question the Communist Party's behaviour Hong Kong Taiwan Tiananmen Square I think it's I
31:02
can't see because so much of our culture still it is it comes from the United States and the UK
31:11
like I don't there is no Chinese show on an Australian television that is being translated into
31:16
English you know there is no there's no overt mechanism by which it would be disseminated but I
31:21
take your point that yeah I'll keep an eye out for it there's probably more there's probably more
31:27
influence of a an East Asian collectivist perspective bleeding through Chinese money into the
31:34
education system than there is into the broader culture at large but I suppose it's only a matter
31:38
of time before one becomes the other as university students grow up John enjoy Georgia when you
31:44
first said Georgia I wasn't sure if you met the nation of Georgia or the state of Georgia but I'm
31:48
glad you're in the state of Georgia it's probably Sunniah um yes it's actually it's night time
31:54
here since I'm on the other far side of the world and it's gonna be a very pretty something just
31:57
a minute lovely beautiful thank good great to talk to you John thanks for charming in let's
32:04
let's have a chat too do we have Roger on the line hi Josh how are you doing hello nice good to talk
32:10
to you thanks for joining us I just want to first of all say I want to I wish I could trust my
32:16
tech stack as much as John did walking in a park while I know taking this call I know it's it's
32:22
bold it's by exactly that's right that's his US rugged individualism just strolling through a Georgia
32:28
park I mean yeah there's a whole conversation to be had about the quality of Australian technology
32:32
and the failure of Australia to keep up with high internet speeds and I say this as someone who has
32:37
an NBN technician at my house right now fixing the national broadband network but that's a conversation
32:43
for another day maybe get Turnbull on yeah I know I've had Turnbull on uh yes I should get him
32:51
back um go for it Roger what's uh what's on your mind um I want to preface this by saying that
32:58
I have been on both sides of the religion debate uh well uh in the church and then um
33:06
went through a very conscious process of uh becoming a different kind of spiritual and
33:11
agnostic to organised religion but the question I want to ask today is um our Christians under attack
33:19
now there's been a few lines of this in the news uh with Trump saying that Christianity has been
33:25
cancelled and using as I suppose a Christian nationalism platform and I'm no fanboy of
33:32
Scott Morrison but he does receive some disrespect that's uh I feel a little bit off towards his
33:38
religious beliefs and a great example of that is a recent interview and podcast on the briefing
33:43
with Antoinette LaTouf I believe uh where she asked him whether he wanted to seek forgiveness or
33:49
repent for his policy decisions while in office so I'm just looking to get your opinion on what
33:55
this says about the state of affairs um and uh in a world that has so much empathy for other
34:00
causes and other areas um is Christianity the whipping post uh I mean is uh uh don't
34:07
aren't those two questions though because someone being snide in a in an interview I'm not sure
34:12
that it's illegitimate to ask a deeply religious person who wears their religion on their sleeve
34:17
if they when they acknowledge that they've done something wrong whether or not that means that they
34:21
should repent for it uh but I didn't hear that so but anyways parking up setting aside whether
34:28
or not that's a legitimate question to ask in an interview because I mean like if he was a closet
34:34
pentacostle that would be one thing but I mean he's public about his Christianity and he frequently
34:40
talks about how important it is in his life so if he was talking about something that he
34:45
where he thought he made a mistake I don't think it's illegitimate to say do is that something that
34:50
you know would be such a mistake that you would that that would be a spiritual mistake or a
34:54
religious mistake as well and how does that mesh with your with your faith and your doctrine
34:59
but on the broader question of like who's winning or losing the culture war I'm just enormously
35:05
cautious about re-vivifying the Christian identity by giving it a by allowing it to have a
35:12
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