The Brian Holdsworth Podcast

Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com Some highlights from the video: "More and more, such pragmatic thinkers are discovering that religion and certain religious practices… just work – even if we don't understand how. Study after study concludes that religious people are generally more happy and at peace than their non-practicing pears. Which is why psychologists like Dr. Jordan Peterson are eager to embrace the idea that even if you don't know if God exists, it's a good idea to act like he does – because – it works. It works for all the kinds of afflictions someone like him is responsible for helping relieve. " "Unresolved conflict and forgiveness are related to important relationships in your life. I'm not talking about the guy who cut you off in traffic or the person who was rude to you at the coffee shop, because those things are easy to forget about and move on. I'm talking about important relationships because when people who you share some intimate aspect of your life with hurt you, it can be extremely hard not to resent them and almost impossible to forget them. And this presents you with a choice. Every time you think of that person, you can indulge your anger and resentment and even thoughts of revenge – or you can choose to forgive them. If you choose the former – think about what that entails and to help illustrate this, I'm going to amplify the principle with an example that probably a lot of people can relate to. Imagine a parent who has done something that has seriously hurt you – like, I don't know, splitting up your family by getting divorced – not uncommon right, but also extremely hurtful for everyone involved. Now imagine one parent is more to blame, like they had an affair or something. Well, you're going to be confronted with your own emotional anger over what they did, and that's to be expected. We should be angered by that kind of wrong behaviour. But if you nurture that anger, as a habit, so that it doesn't recede, if you regularly feed it so that it grows in intensity and becomes something like hatred for that person, then think about what that does to you. Because that person, is going to feature significantly in your life up until that point. You will have memories of all the most important events in your life that include that person. Think about holidays, family events, formative moments in your life, graduations, weddings, the birth of your children. In order to hate that person, you will simultaneously be training yourself to hate important aspects of your own life – IOW you will be training yourself to hate, yourself by hating important parts of yourself."

There is a lot of fanfare when someone converts into the Catholic Church, at least among Catholics, and that's true whether you're a pop culture celebrity, like Shia LaBeouf or not. I was in my early 20s when I became Catholic and because it was such an unusual thing for someone with my demographic qualities to do, there was never a shortage of people who wanted to talk to me or hear my story – that is as long as I didn't say things that indicated I wasn't the exact same kind of Catholic they were. And, honestly, that's a good thing. We should want to hear converts' stories and learn from their experiences, but there are also risks that come with all of that fanfare, both for the fans and for those who are treated like celebrities for their conversion, again, whether they actually are celebrities or not. This is why, from within that excitement and celebration, we need to embrace the goods that come from conversion and converts as well as be mindful of the ways that all of that celebration and fanfare can cause harm especially when we put them in positions of leadership or influence because of that celebrity factor.

I once had someone initiate a conversation with me by saying, "you know what's wrong with your religion? It doesn't incorporate any physical exercises into it like yoga." And I suspect that this criticism is something that many people, including Christians, would find persuasive and why they might be attracted to something like Yoga or why they might want to embrace a kind of syncretism between yoga and Christianity. Jesus told us to seek first the Kingdom of God and live righteously and all the other things that you might want will be added to that priority. CS Lewis put it this way. He said "Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither." If you seek after God and the virtues he can instill in you by fidelity to his commandments and the infusion of His grace, then all the other goods will be more accessible to you. But if you chase after those things apart from God, they will slip through your fingers and you won't even know why. So why isn't physical exercise a requirement in the practice of Christianity or something that is emphasized within the teachings of Jesus or scripture?

My thoughts on Pope Francis' visit to my hometown and the effects of his actions here.

If you follow my channel, you might know that my family attends the traditional Latin mass on Sundays – which isn't something I point out to try to position myself as some elite Catholic, but simply to share some of what that experience has been like for me and how it has formed me these past few years since I started attending it. But every now and then, our family, either by necessity, or even to try to balance out our perspective, we will attend the novus ordo or the common liturgy of the Roman rite of the Church. And that's what we did a few weeks ago. Now that liturgy is one I attended for years and years and when you become acclimatized to something, it can be very difficult to notice things. Everything just seems normal, familiar, and comfortable. But comfort can breed complacency where we should be on the alert. On this occasion, something startled me that wouldn't have years ago when that environment was my comfort zone. It was during the presentation of the gifts when lay people from the congregation bring up the "gifts" of bread and wine which will then be consecrated in the mass and it's almost always a family carrying things up together.

For whatever difficulties arise for the Christian in accounting of the Problem of Evil, I think there is an even larger difficulty for a materialist atheist. Because materialism is the belief that the physical properties of the universe are all that exist. There is no invisible, transcendent dimension of reality – only what can be observed physically. But if you hold this view, and you want to arrive at some rational explanation for the kinds of evil I discuss in the video, you have to account for those events by appealing to exclusively material causes. But as soon as you do make an explanation like that, if one is available, notice what you've forfeited. What you cannot say after having observed such phenomena is, "That was evil or that was wrong." Because as soon as you admit that, what you're saying is, "Something that happened, and is therefore real and part of reality, should not have happened." In effect, you're saying, "I disapprove of those events which are part of the fabric of reality and, therefore, I disapprove of reality." To say that is to insist that reality and the events that constitute it should have been another way. Something else should have happened; specifically, that guy shouldn't have brutally murdered an innocent life. And he shouldn't have gloated about it afterwards as if he did something enviable with complete indifference to goodwill or the lives that he has now traumatized. But if all there is is material reality, how can you lay claim to knowledge of an alternate reality, which doesn't exist, and which you believe should exist – some invisible better world that you would have approved of?