Atheism, Science, and The Problem With Swearing w/ Jonathan Pageau 

Man I’m a protestant and I could listen to you guys all day.

I feel like Matt's facial reactions and questions represent most of us trying to understand Johnathan

I imagine my facial expressions are exactly like Matt Fradd’s when I listen to Jonathan Pageau. A mixture of fascination and delight and a kind of strained concentration as I try to grasp his every word 😆 Loved every second of this interview

I adore Jonathan Pageau. Please have him back on. I know he makes our brains hurt, but I’ve come to understand better what he is saying and it is the most coherent and reasonable way of understanding yourself, God, the world and reality. It makes so much sense in a deep down way.

I swear I almost had a transcedental experience listening to Jonathan explaining what swearing is. Great talk!

This is the best crossover. Pageau is a brilliant mind and guest. I really appreciate how Matt really earnestly tried to work within Pageaus framework

With respect, first title to the video was better. “Atheism” and “boobs” are catchy words, but “re-enchanting the world” is more true to what the whole theme was

I have never heard such a hilariously cerebral discussion about the dangers of taking a s*** on your kitchen table. "You will destroy your reality...." Oh my gosh, I can't stop laughing.

These conversations are so fulfilling. So many are hungry for this, keep up the superb work, please! ❤

I never would have thought that a discussion of swearing would, in a roundabout way, help me understand the crucifixion better. This is more personal than relevant to the conversation, but I'm thankful for it. I had always struggled with the description of the crucifixion as a payment of debt. Even seeing how Jesus' sacrificing His life shows the depth of his love for us, and that death has no power over him, I didn't see how His death itself won salvation for us. I'll let theologians argue the merits of these explanations. Perhaps I'll struggle less with them in the future. But when Jonathan described Jesus reaching up and down at the same time, into the sacred and the banal, and going "down into the bottom of death," I perceived that it was the incarnation again. I've been much more moved by the incarnation, that God loved us so much that He became one of us, living as we do, so that we wouldn't just be loved but also know His love for us. But if we feel small and alone in this life, how much more so are we in death? Before I saw the incarnation as God coming to us, and the crucifixion as God leaving us temporarily because of some theological technicality, and of course I did; I'm alive. I don't know what it will be like to die, but now I see that He chose even to be with the dead, so there can be no barriers to Him.

Early in my Christian walk I grew tired of the American rigid interpretation of the Bible. This video gives great insight on the synergy between God, storytelling, and humans

Brilliant, Matt, thank you so much for having invited Jonathan! Greetings from Romania

Thank you, thank you, so much for this collaboration!! 💖

Great conversation! Thanks for having Pageau on. I backed his project day 1 and am thrilled to see it doing so well

This is such a fascinating discussion. I've never found someone so passionate about teleology. Thank God for artists and creatives.

This is truly a conversation that I’ve been waiting for for so long and the title threw me for such a loop that I got unfathomably excited

Wow, some real moments where I paused the video, where I had to contemplate what was said. Really good discussion, and much food for thought. Thankyou.

What a joyful Spirit Jonathan has! He makes me smile. Great conversation.

The first time Matt interviewed Jon was fantastic, and this is as well. Thanks Matt & Jon for all you guys do!

One of my favourite discussions so far this year next to Dr. Peter Kreeft! Thank you, Matt and Jonathan! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Been watching twice now, need to digest this!

I think this was one of the most helpful videos with Jonathan that I've seen, the way you went back and forth really helped to clarify his position. Thank you :)

Amazing conversation. Thank you both!

Very appreciate of the work Jonathan is doing!! My channel is dedicated to summarizing his brothers book, “the language of creation: cosmic symbolism in genesis" All humans worship something, everyone has a God! However, some people are too naïve to understand what it is they worship...

Your explanation of going to Mass and symbolism helped me, a ~50 yr old understand why my millennial daughter loves the Latin Rite

By the way, loving seeing my favorite Catholic You Tuber with one of the people who led me to Orthodoxy

I work in a Catholic school in New England and the nurse sent out an email telling all the parents how to get their 5+ kids vaxxed early. The families don't see anything wrong with it. They need the prayers more than the children since they are obliged to their children by the Natural Law. I give it all to our Lady and whome we must all strive to have the upmost confidence in. She is more beautiful than all of creation combined, and her love and perfect intercession for souls is unfathomable to us. Hallelujah.

I watch both of your videos religiously ... pun intended ... fun to see Jonathan breaking Matt's brain with teleology. Both brilliant, logical, smart, and doing God's work.

Brilliant conversation, Pageau’s enthusiasm is contagious! Thanks for this conversation Matt, gave me a lot to think about :)

"Yes, you have to dump, but you shouldn't dump in the way animals dump." I want this for merch.

Perelandra (C. S. Lewis's novel) addresses the scenario of meeting Eve before she sins. I really wish Jonathan Pageau would discuss it sometime

Thanks for the show, guys! I really had to stop and ponder about these topics.

Excellent episode. Please have Jonathan over again in the future!

Hi Matt! I just met you in Colorado Springs recently. I have now watched a few of your videos and am really excited for this one. I appreciate you candor and generous spirit sir. Lord bless you!

Wow!!! Opened my eyes! Thank you to you both!! God Bless

This was a really good conversation. I never understood Pageau so clearly as in this conversation. Either he's getting better at explaining symbolism for dummies like me or I'm getting less dumb every year:) Either way, I'm re-watching this in a couple of weeks. It was fantastic.

This is one of my all-time favorite conversations. Matt, I LOVE how you played devil’s advocate and asked such great questions. Jonathan, your enthusiasm and profound sense of wonder are infectious. Glory to God for His gift to us in the variety of saints comprising His beautiful Bride!!

The light produced when an western and eastern angel are in the presence of one another is a beautiful site to witness. Awesome conversation

Marvelous! Made to happen! Well done to you both! 👍

Man! Thank you for bringing Jonathan on! I'll be re-subscribing to him!

"Give me an atheist trope and let's se what happens" 😂🤣🤣🤣

This was great! Matt if you have another chance to talk to him you should ask how his thought relates/competes with metaphysics. Your questions really helped make Pageau explain things in a way that made them more understandable.

Excellent discussion! I hope you make a separate clip of the swearing discussion. I thought it was really interesting and would like to share

I can’t decide if I like the original title or this one better 😂 Can’t wait to listen!! also that graphic novel looks amazing

I truly enjoyed this conversation. The book sounds quite interesting. I do believe that in the topic of swearing my mother said it best. "The only reason curse is that they do not have a large enough vocabulary."

loved this conversation!

Another amazing long conversation! Cheers 🍻

Jonathan, you definitely broke my brain 😅

This gives a whole new meaning to “The Purpose Driven Life”

I'm glad to see Pageau on the channel!

52:51 Ritual and connection to addiction This is an amazing talk, I’ll need to rewatch this with a thesaurus and a lot of coffee. 😂

Thank you Jonathan. I love that you are waking Catholics up. The east is lovingly correcting the west. United in Christ we are going to bring the world back to Christ the King.

I have to make a road trip to QC to buy a few pints for Pageau. An in person conversation with him would be mind expanding.

What Jonathan says about naming being directly connected to purpose is absolutely true; this is clearly exemplified in the classroom environment when studying life sciences--let's say for instance Anatomy & Physiology. Every part of an organ or a tissue or a cell is carefully mapped out according to function and has a name, distinguishing it from another otherwise indefinite area contained within the same organ, tissue, etc. The brain is an excellent example of this: it is divided into hemispheres, regions, lobes, gyri, sulci, etc and characterized by sensory vs motor function, et al, but of course you wouldn't immediately know that by just seeing a whole brain specimen in front of you. You would at the very least look at it and go "ok, that is a brain". I often find myself in awe while I'm learning all of these structures at how such complex facets of human biology were ever broken down to the fine level of detail we have today (probably much to students' dismay); that is to say, scientists had to really break them down incrementally and fine tune their taxonomies over time. And overall, it is meaningful to do so because that is how humans, let's say in medicine, communicate valuable (potentially life-saving or ending) information with each other. We all need to learn the medical verbiage and speak a common language so we can problem-solve more efficiently and effectively/cooperatively.

Yes Jonathon, you break my brain, but you always put it back together again better than before! Matt, you did a great job of reeling Jonathon back in and slowing him down so us mortals have a chance to comprehend what he’s saying.

Jonathan's answer to the last question about Eve was exactly the thought experiment CS Lewis performed in his science fiction series, with exactly the same conclusion.

in a 19th c. Hungarian epic poem, in which the hero adventures in distant lands like in Odyssey, he met the dog-headed Tartars.

God bless both of you 🙏🏻

Tremendo, gracias por el laburo

God bless the work you both bring to the table.

Amazing podcast, thank you

This was an interesting encounter between a mind educated into a Western, logical take of the world and a mind working in a different framework. Jonathan has the impossible task of explaining things that are unexplainable via the usual vocabulary and conceptualisation. Matt has the impossible task of letting go of the assurances of the logical take and leap into the fluffiness of this weird other framework. When it comes to more experiential subjects, they meet beautifully.

Love the thoughts on ritual! Beautiful!!

Thankyou for the ebook 👍

Love this video guys. I have always loved Jonathan. Thanks a million.

For the question about meaning being objective. It seems that, like truth, meaning also converges to the similar ideas of loving and serving others.

My 'in' to Christ was through a thorough engagement with the Platonic tradition and I think Jonathan's thinking brilliantly exemplifies the importance of that tradition, particularly in today's world; the primacy of the one over the many, that all things invariably move toward the good. Great stuff!

Had to pause the video to go order the graphic novel.

@50:08 Everything with a name has a purpose; I wonder how this relates to Adam naming all of the animals in the Garden.

This was personally enlightening. Thank you.

Logos Rising, thank you Matt & Jon

I loved the explanation about swearing. I have looked at it also as the fact that God gave me the gift of being able to talk and so the least I could do is to try to use my speech wisely and beautifully. I don’t always succeed but I hope to persevere.

Ok folks now... this is epic 😎

I hope there is an 8 second video on the clips channel of “if you crap on the kitchen table, your reality will fall apart”

Just backed the graphic novel! Looks wonderful.

Love this Jonathan seems to have a lot of joy

Matt, to explore the idea of bottom-up explanations, you should definitely interview Paul VanderKlay. He uses the concept God #1 (revealed bottom-up through general revelation) and God #2 (revealed through special revelation). Same God, made known to us in different ways.

The framing of the end of materialism as looking at reality bottom up until you reach the top to create a ladder that goes both ways, is the most brilliant and easy way to describe the inevitability of spiritual reality.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning- CS Lewis

If you’re trying to understand dog headed men, think The Hound on Game of Thrones. He is not literally a dog, but is described and represented as such because it reveals his character.

27:00.........wowzers!.......I wasn't really "getting" Jonathan fully. awesome, awesome.......

That outlook on swearing is definitely gonna help me! Its soo hard when you dont even realize youre saying it 😩

Let me try to see if I followed the argument Jonathan was making: -The subjective experience contains the quality of "meaning" -If materialism is true, than the subjective experience can be entirely explained by/reduced to objective external factors -Therefore, if materialism is true, meaning must exist in the objective world, somehow. Interesting argument, but I'm not sure it works. Maybe talk about meaning doesn't actually have any semantic content. I can talk about a 4-sided triangle, I might even consume some psychedelic drugs and become convinced that I can envision a 4-sided triangle, but it doesn't seem to follow that 4-sided triangles have to map to anything in reality.

I've never had a video that made me listen intently, and actually all made sense. I have been learning about Christianity for the past year or so, and I'm excited to start going to my local Orthodox Parish this week. Thank you both.

I love that twinkle in Jonathan's eye when he says he has people writing him who became "usually the more traditional Catholic" ha! (1:17:49)

That "what would you say to Eve if you traveled on a space ship and could talk to her" question is the premise of CS Lewis' book "Perelandra."

The Liturgy of the Hours are for music what icons are for painting. Please make a video about the divine office. Chanted prayer in the domestic church can change the future of Catholicism; the laity can learn how to sing the truth.

I CAN'T WAIT TO WATCH THIS

That Four Horsemen of Meaning conversation was really cool, atheism is dead boys! now our time has come 😎 Although we need to be aware of the psychedelics stuff that is becoming popular too, maybe that will be the apologetics of the future 😂😂

1:16:06 A space traveler has the opportunity to stop an alternate world's eve from eating the fruit, and the traveler has to decide whether or not to intervene. This is literally the plot of C.S. Lewis' science fiction story "Perelandra", (and the protagonist takes a different course of action than Jonathan). Everyone need to read this book; "Perelandra" by C.S. Lewis. Especially Matt and Jonathan. Go!

You guys are a great duo.

So, Mr. Fradd, do we know when God's Dog is coming out? Sounds cool.

I didn't think Jonathan was going to be back on your show. Now, Jonathan, please do an interview with Christopher West!

Listening to Jonathan my mind gets blown wow alot to learn and New way to see things

55:38 hit me hard. So good and so true. Makes me understand the rituals of religion In a way that makes it seem so necessary, not really an arbitrary optional thing that can be forgotten. The absence of religious ritual will make room for unconscious lower level ritual.

Thanks for changing the title 👍🏻

More! Brilliant. Thanks, gentlemen.

"its probably better to think of ones own death rather than the death of the world ( which is a distraction")...well said !!

buy local whenever possible rather than online and at locally owned, family-run, small businesses.

Fr. Pine echoes the same ideas as Jonathan regarding stopping pornography; he says to focus on the virtue, rather than the vice.

The beginning did not have flow or much meaning and I would have almost missed listening to the rest of this! So thank you for clipping:)