Oh, Facebook. OK. So thanks for showing up, everybody, who is right on time. I'm streaming both on YouTube and on Facebook. The audio and video quality is a little bit better on Facebook. So I'm going to try to monitor both chat rooms for questions as things come up. Feel free to ask questions at any time. And I'll go through. I also got a few questions from people who weren't able to make it to the live stream. We wanted to ask questions anyway. So yeah, I say spinning wheel. Of course. New technology, right? It's inevitable. It's inevitable. OK. How about now? I'm going to keep going. It looks like people on Facebook might be having a little better connection. So I'm going to let the chat and YouTube have it over to Facebook. So let's start right away. I want to answer a halfway-making announcement and answer a question that I get frequently about Bitcoin, Coin Cash, because you guys know I've been in the Bitcoin community for quite some time. And also, what's during the pot a little bit. So best question ever is, is Bitcoin Cash the real Bitcoin? Not strictly philosophy, but very relevant to my work. And I think it's very important in the crypto community that we have kind of clear definitions. So I get to make an announcement that I am officially writing my second book on Bitcoin, on specifically Bitcoin Cash. So I'm hoping to have it done by the end of the year. I had other things to write, but this is time-pressing.  To answer the question, is Bitcoin Cash the real Bitcoin? It depends on what you mean by the term, as the other question like this. So in a very important sense, Bitcoin Cash could be understood as Bitcoin. And in a very important sense, Bitcoin Cash is most certainly not Bitcoin. It depends on what you mean. So if what you mean by Bitcoin is the crypto asset that is traded on exchanges under the simple BTC that most people are referencing in Bitcoin when they talk about media. Oh, yes, choppy sound again. It's real bad to let you know and I'll pause it if I can fix that matter. If what you mean is the asset that is traded as Bitcoin, no, Bitcoin Cash is most certainly not Bitcoin. However, if what you mean is the crypto project that was started back in 2009, that's supposed to decentralize peer-to-peer electronic cash with the same design structure as what the creator of Bitcoin paid out, with the built-in proposition that transactions are supposed to be cheap and blocks are not supposed to be full, then, yeah, Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin. So I know that upsets a lot of people, but here's a way where I can make amends to BTC friends like David Bexler. In the sense where that really matters, which is maybe a technical definition for Bitcoin, which is majority hash rate, Bitcoin Cash is most certainly not Bitcoin. I think this is actually a really important definition. So if you guys are interested in mining basic principles of Bitcoin, you don't know what it is. What's the big deal about Bitcoin? It's the book that I wrote back in 2014 about this, but there's a bunch of miners who are contributing their computing power to maintain the Bitcoin infrastructure. And the vast majority of them, about 75% right now, are still putting their hash power, the computer virus horsepower, on the BTC blockchain. And there was a proposal by Gavin Andresen back in the day to say, hey, let's essentially call that Bitcoin, whatever gets the majority hash rate, mining this particular algorithm, we'll call that Bitcoin. I like that definition. So in a technical sense, I think BTC Bitcoin is Bitcoin for now. I think it's a very good chance, very good possibility, just the next couple of years, let's switch. The price power, the price of BCH, BTC switches, and the hash rate switches over, then Bitcoin cash would in fact be Bitcoin, but I don't think we're there yet. So I thought I'd give a good controversial answer to start off with. It looks like my YouTube connection is garbage. Okay, well, fortunately, we have Facebook. All right, so next question. I would be able to ask Steve, what's the constant proof of God's existence? It's a great question, and I got a similar question that I'm gonna answer later from my Patreon. It depends on what you mean by God. So if what you mean by God is a person who is non-physical and has some kind of a connection with humans and who maybe has thoughts and feelings and loves you, I think it's gonna be very difficult to make any kind of philosophic proof, anything that qualifies as proof for the existence of God. But if what you mean by God is the deistic conception of God, sometimes called the philosopher's God, then I think you can have various proofs. One that I'm actually rather fond of is you could call it the cosmological argument, essentially it goes like this. There is no such thing as an intimate, temporal regress, then progressed logically. It cannot be the case that if it's progressed chronologically, that was always the case that if an item must have a beginning at some point. If it's the case that you have a beginning, that means you have some non-spatial, non-temporal, prime mover, first cause thing that set up the chronological chain of events that we experience. And there's various versions of that, which I think are actually rather good. I think something like a first cause or a prime mover, an uncaused cause, I think those are necessary. They might even be logically necessary. This ties into my ideas about infinity, which I'm very happy to talk about. If you guys want to talk about why actualized infinities don't exist, that's my friend, Butter, I'll be talking about it. But that's what I think would constitute a proof of God's existence. Now I recently gave a conversation talk, whatever, with a group talking about more theist conceptions of God, about love and why I think there may be some kind of supernatural quality to love. But that's, I don't call those arguments proof. I think that people have personal experiences that point them in a particular direction towards maybe there's divine orchestration out there, maybe love is something that's super special, but it doesn't get in the realm of proof. All right, next question. Jeff Falzone asks, hey Steve, enjoying your work very much. What are the most important limits of logic and what happens when the limits are not well understood or integrated into one's worldview? Excellent question. And again, depends on what you mean by logic. So I wrote a book called, Square Run Foundations of Knowledge. If you guys are interested, it explains what I think logic is or what I mean by the term. So in one important way, there's no limit of logic. Logic, as I like to say, logic and existence are inseparable. So everywhere there is existence, everywhere there are things, you have logic, you can't really get out of the laws of logic. So there's no limit per se. What a lot of people mean by logic is something like real airtight reasoning. Okay, well just to Jeff clarify, meaning the square runs a core point. So if you're talking about what I mean by logic, yeah, I would say there's no limit of logic. There's no part of existence which does not play by logically, by the rules of logic or the laws of logic. So I don't, I think the danger is not understanding the limits of logic, the danger is not understanding that the laws of logic aren't limited or they are universal, something like that. A great example of this would be a recent conversation I had with an academic and then Graham Priest, who's a philosopher, sometimes works at Oxford, who has the positive belief in the existence of logical contradictions. He does not understand the limits of logic, namely that there are no limits of logic. And we had a long conversation, he argued that the Liar's paradox proves that in fact there are logical contradictions, but if you guys are interested in that, I highly recommend that conversation. Yeah, I hope that answers your question. All right, so more questions, pick up the one from a patron. Here we go. He says, I can't stay up late for your live stream, so I'll ask my question here. Time, what is it? Philosophically speaking. It obviously features prominently in our thoughts about reality, but it isn't something in the world separate from us, like much of the other things we talk about. It doesn't seem to be the product of our intentionality, we don't do time, we don't cause time, but it is experienced, however subjectively. The passage of time gives rise to memory of past times. You might not say, I'm unhappy about myself because of the past, and yet it is past and ceases to be. The future is an idea, but future time states have any genuine claim to existence prior to our consideration of them. Time is both a thing of the world and of our experience. It's both impersonal and personal, so what gives? Great question, a really easy one. That's sarcasm. Time is one of those ones, which baffles a lot of people. I don't have a good answer. Here's my unpolished thoughts on what time is. Time is a word that is used to describe the experience of chronological progression. So it's a way, definitely the thing we're concretely talking about is our experiences and a particular nature of our experiences and how they change. So to say time is of the world, well, if you mean time is physical, I think it is, but I know that time is experiential. That's actually the thing that I'm talking about. Now, just to say in a time is something that is personally experienced, doesn't really solve a lot of questions, like for example, the person said, does it make sense talking about future states before they've happened? Well, yes, I think you can reasonably say, I am predicting that I will experience a change in my particular mental state. I think that my experience will change along a particular dimension that is time. A helpful way to think about time is, we're talking about physics, is as the dimension, not a spatial dimension, people talk about the fourth dimension as if it's something like you have dimension here, x-axis, y-axis, z-axis, and a magic axis. Think about time as a dimension, as a non-spatial dimension, but it's helpful to think about it that way because we can talk about, I got a pen here, we can talk about the change over dimension like this. There's a spatial dimensional difference between the pen here and the pen here. At one point, at one point, the time was in this spatial area, at another point of time was in this spatial area. Okay, so it's a change along a dimension, but what's the difference between the pen between now and now? There's a change, but it's not a spatial change. It is a temporal change between now and now. We can think of the only thing changing being the time dimension. So I don't know if that is explanatory, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's what I think time is. And what I would say is, given the phenomenon of the experience of chronological progression, I think we can note the Campion Infinite series of past events that either means there's a first cause or it means something which was suggested in the last conversation I had with somebody on this topic in a group discussion was that really chronological progression is kind of an illusion that at the most fundamental level, everything is static. And maybe that's true, I don't know. There's a chance, maybe that's true. Okay, next question. If you think professional academics are so stupid, then why do you keep interviewing them? Excellent. So there's a couple answers to that. There's three answers. Two of them are nefarious and one of them is less nefarious. The simple answer is to say there's not a lot of people who I can talk to about these ideas. So if I wanna have conversations about time and the physics of mathematics, you'll be dealing with a restricted set of people and a lot of those happen to be in academia. So that's a practical answer. There's a nefarious consideration which is, part of my explicit purpose of Patterson to Pursuit is to demonstrate to people that professional academics might not be the brilliant bulbs that we assume they are or that most people assume they are. So when having some of these conversations, I'm trying to demonstrate in real time the shallowness of a lot of these thinkers. And of course I don't say that to your face, but that is sometimes the ulterior motive of having a conversation actually with somebody on this. And I like to say that my conversations are excellent. My conversations are excellent. Are they interesting and really exciting?  And that's not actually the case. When I say a conversation was excellent or fantastic, it's very possible that what I mean to say is, oh, what a wonderful demonstration of the shallowness of this individual's thinking. And also what a wonderful demonstration of the status of the academy that we have these fools who are populating it. So that is, yeah, that's part of it. It doesn't sound nice, but that's the case. And the last kind of sinister motive behind Patterson and Pursuit and my thoughts on academia is that I argue a lot with people, I get emails from people all the time who like to tell me that I have encountered basic ideas. So I'm talking about alternative theory of calculus or why calculus doesn't solve Zeno's paradoxes. People think I've never encountered the idea of convergence or something. And they send me these funny, these are academics. And it's ironic because they reveal that actually they are the ones that haven't thought through the topic. But what I can do now is send them links about the conversations I've had on those topics. So when I talk about the Liar's Paradox, some shmo brings up how there are a lot of contradictions because the Liar's Paradox, as if I never heard it before, I get to say, oh yes, I actually am familiar with that.  You can listen to it here. So it's also a way to kind of stunt those criticisms. Okay, next questions. Will you be doing a post commentary on the Thaddeus Russell debate? Anything that surprised you particularly? Good question. I definitely will be doing an interview breakdown of that interview. I don't want to reveal too much. I would say that I think that might have been an example of the demonstration of incorrect ideas for my audience. I think that I disagree with Thaddeus on those topics. And I think I made a pretty clear case for the existence of some limited truth. But I have a lot more to say on that breakdown later. And Hi Steve, Pato says, Hi Steve, can you talk about your ideological position on anarchism? Yes, I would love to. Here's what I like to say about anarchism. It's a scary word. And I like the word because it's provocative. But really my political theory is one where I don't think there should be monopolies. That's all. I think that I have a little phrase, and I've got to a point in my career now where I can try out phrases where I can reuse. I like to say that my political philosophy, market anarchism can be summed up in a sentence that all of the services that are currently provided by governments can be more efficiently and ethically provided by private entrepreneurs. So whatever the service is, I think that there shouldn't be a monopoly provider of it. I think people should compete. I think it's for a lot of reasons. I think it for empirical reasons that everything the government does is incompetent and could be done a thousand times better and more professional businessmen. I think for ethical reasons, I don't like the idea of taxation in general, the idea that there's some group of people that says you have to pay for these services whether you like them or not at the point of a gun and if you don't, we're gonna put you in jail. I don't like that. And so that's one of the outcomes of having monopolies. I believe for economic reasons. I think that it should be surprising that governments are completely incompetent when you analyze the incentives of governments. When you have government market, when you have market actors that don't have a profit incentive, it shouldn't be surprising that they suck at delivering whatever products or services they're delivering. They don't get punished. Police would be a great example. If you have a robbery, consistently your house gets broken into and the police don't do anything, what are you gonna do? Stop paying your taxes. Police force doesn't care. Police force can be completely incompetent and they still pay a check. Versus, you go to Subway and the person spit on your sub or you don't like it, there's no money on the line. Subway has every incentive to make sure that you, the customer, are happy. So I just wanted to see that principle applied universally. Court systems, law, all of that. Mike says, I agree. I agree with you agreeing, Mike. And it says, what about corporations? They're monopolies. It's a good intuition, but I think it's a bit incorrect. So, and one sense corporations can kind of be monopolies when they're connected to government privilege, which is actually quite often. Historically speaking, corporations are kind of a grant of government, but I don't like that. I'd like to see market corporations that don't have the benefits, a special benefit of government. And it's not to say that corporations are somehow inherently bad. I think corporations make sense if you think about it. So imagine you're producing pens, right?  There's like two kids ingested in Arizona.  So that would be a scary circumstance. What corporations do is they say, okay, well, you're not personally liable for these types of products. You have this kind of other entity that takes on the legal responsibility. And I think that can be done correctly in a marketplace. I think it can be done incorrectly in a circumstance where you have government privileges giving handouts to corporate monopolies. And then of course you get bailouts and I think it's politicized. All right, Kyle Hodge says, you said earlier that part of the reason you do Patterson pursuit is to reveal inaccuracies in the worldviews of academics or to expose the Michelle thinkers. That's true. Are the majority of the folks you interview these sorts of academics? Do you worry that you'll stop being able to secure interviews if you maintain that one purpose of the Patterson pursuit as in some sense exposing academics? Great question. I have always thought that there would probably come a time where word gets out and I'm like blacklisted from interviewing academics. I'm okay with that. Fortunately, I'm a ways away from that. I don't have a particularly high opinion of most academics so I don't think they're gonna care or I don't think they're gonna do research.  So I'm not too worried about it. On the other hand, to be fair, I have found in my travels that there are quite a bit of academics out there who at least love the spirit of what I'm doing. I don't think necessarily tell them I'm exposing shallow thinkers in the academy.  A lot of them are very supportive. So I usually talk, well, this was more true when I was doing in-person interviews. It's less so now that it's on Skype a lot. But when I was traveling, I would talk to professors before and after the interviews oftentimes about the academy. But I'd say a third to a half of them, probably a third of them were explicitly, oh man, that's great. They thought that was a great idea. So, yeah, that's good news. All right. All right, let me go back to my other list here. All right, other question from a patron. What is your definition of God? Patrick asked, what is your definition of God? And does God exist? Familiar to your story of being overwhelmed with love and with proving the existence of something beyond yourself and universe. But I don't think you've definitively laid out your current beliefs and understanding regarding God. To be clear, I'm not talking about a Christian God or any of the religious interpretation of God. I'm referring to the conception of a supreme being slash creator of existence. How would you define such a being or thing? And do you believe in it? It's a great question, Patrick. And the reason I've not done this explicitly is because the ideas aren't sorted out as deeply as I'd like them.  And God is one of those things where I have a bad history. I have a bad taste of my mouth from growing up as a Christian evangelical and just the word and being in, I'm very skeptical and it's got a bad connotation. So I like that you make the disclaimer not talking about the Christian God good. I'm not talking about religious gods either. To define, I guess here's what I would say. Himmler gives me some unrefined thoughts that for good reason I've put into a piece just yet. And I don't know, maybe you'll find it good. Maybe you won't. No guarantees of the quality of this. Still working through it. So in one sense, there is definitely some existence that I think is external to humans and governs the systems in which humans live. So I'm talking about laws. I think we can talk about the law of physics. I think we can talk about the laws of logic. And I think that actually I'm talking about something. There is something, there's some transcendent structure or rule system that is kind of godly or how you might think of like, instead of being God as a person, God is a set of rules that you can't get away from. That's much bigger, much, much, much bigger than a person. So I think that on the one hand, there is some kind of necessary being or structure to existence. And I think that that is probably worthy of being called something like God. On the other hand, that I'm more comfortable talking about because the laws of logic is kind of my bread and butter. But what I'm really unsure of and confused by is the connection or parent connection that beings like myself might have with a mindset that you could consider a Godly mindset or a defined mindset or the love mindset or the Jesus Christ mindset. So it's something, I guess I could say something like this. It seems like if you could personify God, the rules of the system, the big transcendent thing, if you could personify it as a person, it might act a particular way. And I think it would act always in a loving way. And I think that the human mind has the ability to maybe slip into that mindset, slip into that God mindset. It sounds transcendental and maybe in woo-woo, but that's just based on the experiences I've had and based on lots of conversations with people, most of them in private, who share similar experiences to myself. So it's a part of human existence that we have this ability to love in this profound, profound way. And it also seems to be connected with the traditional conception of God. So here's what I would like to say. I would like to say that the first cause of the logical necessity, laws of logic, maybe the laws of physics, some types of transcendental laws are necessary and external to humans will call those God. And there is some kind of transcendental mind that is also universal, that you have the ability to access, maybe through practice, maybe through psychedelic use, whatever. And if I could make the mind, the being logically necessary, that would solve the issue. Because it's like, oh yeah, God exists. He's this mind and solves all these logical problems. Boom, boom, boom. I cannot see the argument for a mind, a God mind being logically necessary. And so if it's not logically necessary, why would it exist? The structure of existence create a God mind. I think that seems odd to me. So if I could solve that problem, I would be, I might get something about it, but I have yet to. So I'm kind of ambiguous around where there's something here, but I can't quite exactly put my finger on it. Now, also I would say the last thing on that, I'm perfectly comfortable arguing for the God of the philosophers or the impersonal God, the universal God. I'm totally not comfortable making a rational argument for the other type of God. So that's the rub. So I don't know about probably to answer your question, but I tried. All right. Next question. Okay, I got to scroll up here. I have some good questions here. Government granted privilege is one thing, but what about regulations? Are all regulations on corporations inherently bad? Good question. It depends on the structure that you're in.  Maybe, I don't know. In the system, I think that should be created that you wouldn't have government regulations anyway. In market policies, you have super strict, super strong, devastating regulation, but it's all market regulation.   So there's a much stricter type of regulation that you get from capitalism. So something like, yeah, there's all kinds of ambiguous examples where you say, what about this regulation given that we're living in markets, or like a mixed system, do you support the regulation? And my preference is to say, look, the problem is the regulation in the first place, the government out and there's no problems. All right, Jeff asks, what is the philosophic influence to make that you're most wary of? That's a hard question. So I take the approach. I'm actually kind of a fan of Descartes methodology. I think we're gonna a little bit walk on some things. I like the intense, extreme skepticism, doubt everything that can be doubted. In fact, I'm working on another book that's gonna be out of a little ways called The Mind and the World talking about metaphysics where I take the perspective of, let's start from nothing and see if we can develop the theory of what the mind is and what the world is. So in one sense, very basic inductive reasoning I'm very wary of. So I am not, I have a philosophy where I'm perfectly comfortable talking about the physical world and physics, of course, but always with the caveat that the physical world might not actually exist, which sounds kind of crazy, but I'm starting from this standpoint of what I know exists in my experience, mental phenomena certainly exists. I'm not sure the cause of the mental phenomena. Maybe the mental phenomena are caused and correlated by external physical phenomena or maybe it's an evil in, I don't know. I don't have a positive belief that's an evil demon but I can't rule it out. So I'm always in the perspective of radically revising every single inductive inference that I make down to the point of even the existence of the physical world. So, all right. Ata asks, what do you think about the next proposition? Time is the product of the interaction of subatomic particles and since the time only exists is a variable because matter and energy change. Maybe I prefer to say time is a word that we use to describe a lot of progression of our experiences. It may be grounded in something like physics. It may not. It's still an open question. I mean, there was a big question in physics. Is time absolute or is it relative? Is there any kind of same thing in space? And I'd say it's actually an open question. There's a lot of people that have thought, well, a lot of everybody originally thought that time was absolute and then I thought time was relative but now there's an interesting case to be made that maybe actually time could be absolute if we make different assumptions in physics. So, I don't know. Who's the philosopher that whose views, who's the philosopher that your views line up with the most? I have none and not even close. I wish I did. In fact, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I agree with anybody on anything. I have a life motto which is also a false talk motto which is everybody is wrong about everything all the time. We get a tattoo of it or something. And I don't mean that literally, there's an exception. You know, the true statement is to say that almost everybody is wrong about almost everything, almost all the time but that doesn't have the same bring to it. So, what I like Descartes methodology, I like Socrates methodology. In fact, I really like his, go around talking to the experts, demonstrating that they aren't actually experts. I find a lot of inspiration in that. I think Compt might have been correct in some things that he said about the Nomina versus the Funamina. So I have little bits and pieces that I resonate with but to be honest, you know, when you start over from scratch, at least the worldview I'm building does not, doesn't really correlate more than 10% with pretty much anybody that I've read. Maybe that's because I don't read enough. I spend more time thinking about ideas than I do reading about ideas because I trust my methodology more than other people's methodologies. But to date, I've not found somebody I really deeply resonate with. That being said, there's one exception. There's a gentleman who you don't know who currently exists who is in California right now and he's doing some independent philosophy work. I was incredibly impressed by this gentleman. And in a lot of ways, we agreed on some fundamentals. We agreed on methodological things which is the most important things to agree on and maybe some metaphysical things that we didn't have that much time to talk. So there's an opening, there's an opening here. Maybe this particular gentleman is the person I most strongly agree with, but I won't tell you who he is. Yeah. Okay, good questions. Man, good questions. Okay, I don't know all of what your plans are going for, but if the word does get out about what are the purposes and patterns in pursuit, what would you likely do instead? Assuming that the blacklisting is extreme. I appreciate the fact that you raised my minority positions, finiteism and mathematics, dualism and metaphysics in the form of long form values as it would be too bad if it were lost. So what would I do if I'm exposed? What will I do when I'm exposed? Honestly, I don't think it's going to go away. I think that by that time, there will be enough of an audience where I can just keep introducing people that I find interesting. And the allure of coming up on the show will hopefully outweigh the hesitation.  It's groom, I don't care. I think my show is going to be much bigger than that anyway. I mean, if somehow I can't get interviews about these topics, I'll just have to do it to the microphone. This is stuff I'm interested in and I can't go anywhere. Although that being said, it might go somewhere someday, but I'm going to keep correct the next question. Sounds like you've sublimated the idea of infinite sets into a wonderful psychological experience. Yeah. I've not experienced infinities. I don't think anybody ever could. Okay. Eric says, give me encouragement. Facebook Live's the way to go. Maybe, maybe maybe this is going to be a regular question. All right. Thanks, thanks.  I like Plato. Yes. Okay. Tom Gorbin asks, Steve, do you believe there might come a time in the far future where you can, where you, when you think I can't live long enough to answer these questions, therefore I'm just going to assume a stance of trust. Dare I say faith? In some set of beliefs that at least seem to work for me. Excellent question. I was just thinking about this. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, but today too. I would have said that I would have thought prior to this pursuit that I've never, you're not going to really arrive at an estimation. It's kind of an, it's the Patterson pursuit of truth that is out there. To my surprise, I find that's not the case at all. In fact, I'm coming to a crap ton of conclusions about really hard things and making a lot of progress based on a methodology that I find credibly rigorous and compelling and better than anybody else that I've read. So, I actually think, I actually think I'm coming to a point now where there's a few big questions I need to sort out, God is of course a big one. How does this kind of get that clear? I'm actually transitioning right now to a period of writing where I'm going to write about the conclusions after a decade of introspection and more than that now, I guess at this point. And I think I am going to keep moving on. I thought philosophy was going to be this indefinite thing, but now I'm finding, oh, you can make progress in philosophy, you can make conclusions in philosophy and it doesn't need to keep being rehashed. This is something I've actually struggled with in my personal life and with my relationship with my wife because I've also discovered some truths about the importance of love that I have treated as if they are kind of sterile academic truths. The analogy I use is I discovered a truth. Okay, I put it in my, it's like an arrow in my quiver and I keep searching for more truth than my quiver. But that's a fine methodology for maybe most truths when it's abstract and not that important. But when there are truths like the most important thing in the world is that you get yourself into love mindset. That's not an arrow you want to put your quiver. That's an area you want to go, wow, I found it. That's actually really important. I need to remind myself that that's something that should drive my life. And sometimes it's hard for me to do that because in the process of putting arrows in my quivers. That's a long way of saying, I think the opposite is going to happen. I think I've discovered enough arrows where my burning curiosity about some of these issues is actually being answered in a way that I find compelling. And I've said from the beginning, my work is for me. I'm pursuing truth for me. I'm doing my writing for me. I'm trying to make money so that I can keep doing it so that I can figure out the truth and then I can try to communicate it to people who are interested in it. So if I, at the point where I feel like I found quite a lot of them out, I'm going to communicate them and then, hey, I don't know, I might be a chess player and musician, I don't know. We'll see. I got it probably another decade in front of me already, work, but after that, I really have no idea what's going to happen. All right. Let me go back to my other set of questions. Do you really not believe in circles? That's the best question ever. That gets the award. So I am very glad that on these things, I get to talk about math and a metaphysics of math because just it's a fascinating topic that's not talked about enough. My position on circles is that I simply don't believe in one circle. I believe in the existence of a plurality of circles and I believe in one less circle than most people. And this circle that I don't believe in has remarkable properties, like nobody's ever experienced it. Nobody's ever seen it. Nobody's ever really clearly visualized it or I would even say clearly conceived of it. All of the objects we see here, I've got this, for example, this mysterious object, not a circle, nay, nay, this is some other, this is some crude thing, I don't know, this is not a circle. By standard orthodox mathematical reasoning, the perfect circle is the only real circle. There's only one of them out there and it's got all these magical properties, like, for example, the ratio of the perfect circle's diameter to its circumference is pi and what is the exact value of pi? Well, you see nobody actually knows. It's never been clearly determined. It's full of work in progress, but the ratio exists and the circle still exists even though nobody's ever seen it. I don't buy that story. So I have a different conception of mathematics that mathematics describes the phenomena we experience like every other area of thought and if your mathematics does not describe any phenomena that we could ever experience, that's a problem with the mathematics and the metaphysics. That's not a problem with an alternative theory. So I have a belief that circles are unique. They are constructed from a finite number of units, finite number of base units, just like every other object. When you see circles on your computer screen, they're composed of pixels. You see squares, they're composed of pixels. Every other particular thing has made up a finite number of parts. So if it's the case that all shapes are made up of a finite number of parts, then there is no such thing as a perfect circle, it's not a coherent concept. And so I don't believe in that circle. Now the crazy thing is it's completely reasonable and debatable that idea is that is treated as if it is the craziest thing you can see about. To say that there is no perfect circle or to say that pi is a rational number because it's discreet for any given particular circle is seen as like being a flat earth there. It's even worse than that. Oh man, alternative theory of mathematics, what are you, what are you crazy, what are you nuts? I think this is kind of a leftover. I think math is this one area that did not meet the sunshine in the enlightenment. I think it's just staggering amount of dogma. I could talk people's ear off about that. But no, I do not believe in the perfect circle. I believe in actual circles. Okay, next question. Do you think that at some fundamental level, chemistry and physics blend together? I would say at some, yes, but I would say at a more fundamental level, the way that I conceive of the physical world is as a system of a finite number of bits that are interacting with one another according to a certain set of laws. And so all physical phenomena can be completely reduced to the change in position and state of fundamental units of space time. So I would say chemistry is a way of describing how physical phenomena changes in the physical system. Physics in general is a way of, unless you're talking about quantum physics, the Planck's, physics can be understood as talking about changes in the position and state of matter. I would say the same thing about biology, maybe about psychology, about like brain structures that can all be reduced in the physical system to changes in position state. Now, that being said, I'm a metaphysical pluralist or at least a dualist, I guess. Where I think there is more at play in life. So I think there are conscious systems, mental systems that are not reducible to changes in position and state of matter. I don't think that the brain produces consciousness. I think that there's a relationship between the brain and consciousness, but it's not something in physical system. It's not physical. And I'm open to the idea of there being other kinds of realms. So there's the physical system, the physical realm, there's the mental realm. Maybe there's other types of realms. Maybe there's a spiritual realm, maybe. Maybe there's another one we can't even think of. I'm open to all of them. I don't have a positive belief in the existence of realms that I can't conceive of because I can't conceive of them, but it's a possibility. Actually, that's going to be a big part of the mind in the world. The other book on metaphysics I'm writing is reducing the physical system entirely, position and state of units of matter and spacetime. Okay, do you know if there are solid arguments to the Big Bang theory and string theory? Do you share those theories? So there's definitely solid arguments to the Big Bang theory that the universe came into existence. So yes, I think that the universe, I think that the spacetime came into existence. And string theory depends on what you mean by string theory. String theory is kind of a bundle concept. And no, I don't have sophisticated enough analysis to say that I think string theory is plausible or not. I mean, I have such a radical disagreement with the fundamentals of mathematics and the relationship of mathematics in the world. I would not be surprised at all if it's the case that string theory is a load of hogwash, just like a lot of pure mathematics is. But I don't know, I mean, it might not be. There's an area right now that anybody that's interested that I'm researching called loop quantum gravity, which is a theory of kind of discrete spacetime, which solves a bunch of problems and doesn't include infinities. And that's a physical theory that I find very plausible. Okay, other questions, we've got a few more still. Have you read Homo Deus by Yuval Harari? Do you have any thought, no I have not. Do you have any thoughts on how AI would rationalize or think, or when a broad AI comes into existence? That's a great question, actually. I do have thoughts on that. You know, when I spent some time in Silicon Valley talking with rationalists over there, everybody's worried about AI taking over the world. Oh my gosh. Nobody, so everybody kind of had this assumption that what we think of as reasoning is definitely 100% reducible to computation. And I just don't find that compelling. I think there's a huge part of reasoning which is maybe all of reasoning is conceptual. And I had not the evidence that there's conceptual reasoning on computational systems. Now you can kind of maybe pass turing tests, like you can make a system based on computation like it's the appearance of internal conceptualizing. Maybe, I mean, sure, why not. But the idea that independent conceptualizing something programmed into artificial intelligence, I'm not sure that's even possible. Especially being a dualist, I think there's mental phenomena there. Do you believe that the biological human will become redundant and could be a non-biological rational being have similar revelations about the love concept you said recently, boop, he says. I think in the long run, I think our current biological state will be completely irrelevant and completely archaic. I mean, in the longest of runs, yeah, I think we're gonna, here's my mixture of economics and futurism and religion. I think that in the long run, we are going to be love manufacturing devices. I think we're gonna be able to assemble matter into a particular state that yields particular structures that yield love. So we're gonna be like transforming cosmos in this like love, I would say the cosmos is kind of already a rough love generator, but we're gonna make it more fine tuned. That's my idea of maybe heaven or something. Which beverage would you prefer, milk or orange juice? Neither right now, let me tell you, avoiding dairy and avoiding the sugars that are in orange juice, but I like orange juice a lot. I'm a fan of Magnus Carlson, the best chess player in the world. He's an OJ guy, so there's probably something to it. Oh right, how does praxeology fit into your epistemology? Good question. It seems consistently impossible to acknowledge the validity of the a priori of action and then not work into your epistemology as a key part of this good point. I'm not saying your guilty isn't consistently. I'm genuinely curious as I've not read your book, so I do not know if you touch upon this. Oh Nick, you must read this book. Come on now. Praxeology is an interesting one. I actually have the next article I'm gonna release, I think it's within a month, maybe in a couple of weeks, is going to be called the abuse of a priorism in economics. And I have a position that I've not seen many people take, which is that economics is a priori, but it doesn't tell you practically anything about the world. If you want a priorist economics to tell you anything about the world, you have to include empirical assumptions. That being said, so here's what I think about the action axiom. I was listening to a lecture. I don't remember if it was in person when I was working for Phi or if it was I was editing it and I was just listening to it when I was working for Phi. Anyways, it was Israel Kursner. And Israel Kursner was talking about his conversations with Mises because I believe Kursner was a student of Mises. And they were talking about human action and Mises was working through the fundamentals, the fundamental logical arguments. And Kursner said, why do you believe that humans act? And Mises' response according to Kursner was we observe that humans act. That I think Mises is correct. And so a lot of a priorist think wouldn't say that. They'd say it's necessary that humans act because if you deny it, it is itself an action and therefore you've affirmed it. Let me give you my thought on that because it's really interesting. I think that human action as laid out by Mises and those are concepts. Those are conceptual analytical tools that we apply to interpret the phenomena that we experience as human action. So in other words, I don't actually see human action itself. What I see is color blobs in my visual field when I see people walking around and I make a bunch of conceptual inferences about my beliefs about what types of objects are in the world and how they interact. And if one of those color blobs meets the conceptual criteria of me calling a human, I say, oh, these creatures act in accordance with their beliefs and their ideas and their choices and they make decisions because they have a scarce amount of ends that they meet with a scarce amount of means. But that interpretation could be wrong. So maybe it's the case that the color blobs I'm seeing in my visual field is a hallucination. And I'm not actually seeing human action. I don't know. So I'm with Mises on this, which is that you develop the a priori conceptual structure to explain the phenomena that you experience and you keep an open mind as to whether or not the conceptual structure applies to the world. Excellent question though. And I love this topic. All right. Just heard the Magnus Carlson comment. Are you a Chesaficianado? Yeah, I am very much so. I love chess. Chess helped me learn about philosophy and truth. I think as Bobby Fisher said that really the purpose of playing chess is to discover truth. I think that's beautiful. I think there's a lot of truth to it. I think that you learn so much in chess. You learn about truth and falsehood. You learn about care, philological deduction. You learn about certainty and epistemology and methodology. It's fun.  I'm very much a chess fan. All right. I have reached the bottom of the comment section. Any other comments? Let me see if let me go to my list and see if I have any more. Don't have any more from my patrons. Any more questions from you guys? We've been going out for an hour, so that was good. All right. Thanks for sticking in there, sticking with me. Let's, I'll leave it for maybe another couple of minutes and then we'll call it a night. All right, this question. Do you have any thoughts on war at this time of humanity? I do, I do actually have thoughts. Some nice thoughts that I'm working out. So, it might be the case that human psychology is the root of a lot of evil. Humans, you might say, but human psychology where when humans are looking for an explanation for why their lives are poor, they don't look within. They don't observe their minds. They don't think, they don't think clearly. They look externally for scapegoats for some external reason for the problems in their life. And if that goes on for long enough and if it's supported by enough people in a society or maybe in the broader culture, academia, government, I think tensions and confusions might build until you're just kind of a natural point in which war breaks out. So I wouldn't be surprised in the States if we have something like a civil war within the next 20 years based entirely on human psychology and the abandonment of reason and kind of cultural forces that people aren't in control of that bring people together and then make them stab each other. So I think it's tragic, but I do think it's possible in terms of international war and I don't know.  So that seems like a circumstance in which you could have some bad things happen given a long enough timeframe. So I don't know, I was just talking to my wife about this.  And I think maybe what you do is you flee. So maybe there's more thing to do if you suspect war is just be like, okay, I gotta uproot myself and find a more peaceful place, ride it out. Now I have the next cycle and you have a long set of time where things are violent. All right, we got other thoughts, but they're still in development. All right, another question. What do you think of the golden rule? Treat others the way you want to be treated. Can not almost any action be boiled down to self-interest? Two questions. So what do I think of the golden rule? I think it is the best distillation of morality ever. I think it's brilliant. I think it's rational.   People work together and do unto others as they would have others do unto themselves. It results in peace, prosperity, harmony. I would say good recipe for love. So I'm a big fan of the golden rule. I would also say that as a partial aside, some of my thoughts about Christianity and God and religion grown from these experiences that I've had, I found there's a very dogmatic rejection of a lot of religious ideas that intellectuals and our current culture go through. It's very natural. You grow up in a religious household.  You get rid of it and make fun of it the rest of your life. That's like a normal story that people go through. But unfortunately, they might be thrown out the baby with a bathwater there because a great example of there being truth to be found in religion just understood a little bit differently is there's a part in the Bible where it says that it's describing love. And I've heard it a million times growing up. My mother loved it, this part. It says something like love is patient, love is kind. It does not give in to anger, blah, blah, blah. Everybody's heard that. So I heard it a million times growing up as a Christian evangelical. And I heard that as somebody telling me to do something, like it's prescriptive. Like you should be loving, you should be kind. You shouldn't do this, you should do that. I never found that particularly compelling. Then I had love experience and I realized, no, no, no, no, no, no. I totally misunderstood. I threw out the baby with a bathwater. That particular part of the Bible is describing love. It's not prescribing anything. So the way that I might explain it is if you have seen or experienced this thing called love, you will understand it as love because it is patient. It is kind. It does not give in to anger and whatever the list is. Purely describing this state rather than prescribing any kind of rules. So I think that could be understood more generally with a morality and religion in general. Is there these rules that maybe they aren't prescriptive? Maybe they're descriptive. Okay, that wasn't a bit of an aside. Last question. Can almost any action, cannot tell us any action people of that kind of self-interest? There was a framework, you know, a rational actor theory which says that everybody is fundamentally acting rationally, which could be understood as acting in your own self-interest. So you can understand it that way. I think there's a lot of truth to that. I think the rational actor theory is very powerful. All right, two more questions. Any thoughts on Elon Musk? Is he the next to Vinci? Will he make real changes or is he only a good lobbyist? Good question. I don't know that much about Elon Musk, but from what I understand, I think he's an autodidact, which I appreciate. If I remember correctly, he's described part of his work, maybe this was like in his Twitter account, something like starting over from first principles to do what he's doing or learn what he's learning. I love that. I mean, I'm all about starting over from first principles, definitely. So I like that part. I'm not a fan of government subsidies at all. I think he's very much an excellent lobbyist. In fact, when I think he does better than anybody, this doesn't sound nice, but I think it's true. Is he knows how to market to people that are easily impressed by tech ideas. So the Hyperloop, this incredibly economically inefficient technology, it's called the Hyperloop and it's so cool.   Maybe not, but it's such a cool idea. You know, so that he gets government funding for it. So I don't particularly like that. But yeah, I don't have other strong, I know a lot of libertarians don't like them for the subsidy thing, but I don't have enough knowledge or strong enough opinions. Say much more about that. All right, any other questions? I hear my voice getting a little bit hoarse. So I'm gonna be ending it soon, one way or another. Any last questions? Thanks again, guys. This has been fun. Good questions. Anything else? No? Don't be shy. All right. Well, thanks everybody. I think to the comment too, whoever said we've got another question, so I'll answer it. Oh, two questions. Okay, see, because we're shy. We'll shout out to whoever said I should do this more, I should do it on Facebook live more. I think that'd be right. I think this is a good platform. I mean, the YouTube platform screwed up so this one is better. All right, another two questions. Leftist collectivists based in critical theory are creating the groups like the alt-rights, therefore summoning the devil. Oh, summoning the devil they chant for. Yes, Jess is talking about this the other day. So yes, I do think that the social justice people are literally creating the enemies. They're literally creating enemies where there are none. So the whole Nazi thing.  Low Nazi.  I mean, it's not, it's just silly. Of course, the handful is obviously sevens. The idea of this being anything worth, worthy of respect wasn't even on the table. Well now, what all these social justice warriors have done is they have screamed this name.    Well, that's very enticing to people who really don't like the social justice warriors. So suddenly, these people are literally creating enemies where they're warned, it's not just the Nazi-ism, it's about the alt-right, it's about any of the figurative people that they conjure up as being the cause of social ills. I think they are in fact creating, unfortunately, it's tragic. All right, so that wasn't, and that was just a statement. I think it is time for me to get some food in my belly. This has been great. Thank you guys so much. And yeah, how to sign off, I should have thought of a sign off. Hope y'all are gonna have a good day or something. Actually, if you guys were interested in talking about Bitcoin, Bitcoin, you're gonna kill our interview coming out this Sunday, which goes into great detail about why, it's gonna be called Watch Out for Bitcoin Cash. So if you're interested in crypto, make sure you tune in to Sunday. All right, thanks everybody. Have a good one if I can figure out how to end this live video. There we are.


You're welcome everyone. Before we begin with someone open us in prayer, if anyone can open us in prayer. Okay, I'll pray. Father, we thank you Lord for this time.  Lord, we pray that you would lead this class Lord, you would open our eyes to see more of who you are. We pray that as we look into your word Lord that we would draw closer to you. We pray our blessings over everyone gathered here in today's class and in our other classes as well Lord. We thank you Lord for this time together. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Okay, so today we're just gonna look at the letters of Paul to the Philippians and to the church in Colossae. So the letter of Philippians and Colossians. So the letter to the Philippians is written by Paul himself. We see in the first verse of the first chapter Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus. So both these letters Paul also includes Timothy's name as one of the contributors to the letter. But we recognize that more as an inclusion of Timothy who is learning and being mentored by Paul. But understand that these Paul's letters were written by Paul himself. We also see in chapter three of Philippians where Paul is talking about himself and so these are two indications that the letter was written by him. In chapter three he's talking more about his qualifications as a Jew. Okay, and so if someone can read that three, chapter three versus four B to six either from the slide or from your Bible. Philippians chapter three was four. If someone else thinks they have a reason to put confidence in the flesh, I have more circumcised on the eight day at the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrew in regard to the Jew, a regard to the law, a Pharisee as the seal, a persecuting the church as for righteousness based on the law. Paul is talking about some of his qualifications. So these are two reasons why we say that the letter is written by Paul. And in the beginning of the letter, he also writes who he's addressing the letter to, which is the church at Philippi. And here, this is unique to the letter in Philippines, where he actually names bishops and deacons. So where he's naming church offices, which we don't see in the other letters. So here, not only to the church, but especially to the leaders in the church, the this letter is addressed. The date of writing, we, it most probably was around AD 61. This is when Paul was under house arrest. So we read at the end of acts that Paul was arrested, and he was in Rome. But he continued to minister from there. And this is when he wrote a lot of his prison episodes. So Philippians is one of those letters that he wrote. And it's thought that it was towards the end of his time there, because he writes a lot in this letter about looking forward to being released from prison or being confident of being released from prison. So maybe towards the end of his time in under house arrest. So the main theme of the letter of Philippians, it doesn't have a lot of correction, like we saw in the other letters, where he's addressing issues in the church, he's telling he's addressing sin in the church, he's correcting people, he's rebuking people. We don't see that in Philippians. Philippians is much more a letter of friendship and gratitude to the church. So the church has sent him a financial gift. And they've sent it through one of their church members. And so Paul writes back to them to say thank you. And so the whole letter is more of one of gratitude and friendship. We'll just read this quotation here from four, chapter four, verses 15 and 16, if someone can read that for us, please. You can read from your Bibles as well. One of the great sister? Yes, sister. Chapter four, verses 15 and 16. Now you Philippians know also that in the beginning of the Gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church shared with me concerning giving and receiving, but you only for even in Thessalonica, you sent aid once and again for my necessities. So this just captures the what Paul is talking about in the letter in general. We also seen second Corinthians eight to again, where he mentions about the church supporting him. So why does Paul write this letter? One is to encourage the Philippines. If someone can read one, chapter one, verses 28 to 30. Philippians chapter one, verse 28 and not in any way terrified by your adversaries, which is to them a proof for nation, but to you of salvation and that from God was 29. But to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake was 30, having the same conflict, which you saw in me and now here is in me. So the first is the church was experiencing suffering. And so Paul is writing to them to to stand firm in the midst of that suffering. So he's saying, remember how I suffered when I was with you when Paul took the gospel to the church. He had experienced suffering. And so he's saying, remember that and continue to stand firm even in the midst of the suffering that you are experiencing. The second reason for writing is because of disunity in the church. If we can read chapter two, verses one to two, someone read that for us, please. Chapter two, verse one, therefore, if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the spirit, if any affection and mercy was to fulfill my joy by being like minded, having the same love being of one accord of one mind. Okay, so he's encouraging them to unity. And he then uses the example of Christ, how Christ humbled himself. So that is that famous passage, which we won't read, but will come up in the rest of this discussion. And then the last part is to to thank them for the gift that they had sent. So we see that in chapter four verse 18. Some background on the city of Philippi. So we talked about in the inter-testamental period, right, between Malachi and Matthew that there were many different groups of people that were ruling over this area in which Israel was. And one of the groups of people were the Greeks. We talked about how Alexander the Great came and conquered large parts of large parts of Asia. So Alexander the Great's father was Philip, and Philip was the one who established the city of Philippi. Okay, and after the Greek empire ruled over this region, the Romans came in and they began to rule. So it became a Roman province. But it was quite a unique city in that they had a lot of freedom under the Roman Empire. It was they were given a lot of free land to Roman military. And so the people there was it was a mixture of Romans and Greeks. About one third of the population was Roman. And the rest of it was Greek. So there were a lot of Roman citizens as well in Philippi. The church at Philippi. So we first read about this church being established. If you remember, Paul and Silas go on their second missionary journey. Okay, and then while they're going on their journey, they take Timothy with them. This is when Timothy starts to join them in their missions work. As they are trying to go into Asia, they feel that the Holy Spirit is not letting them go into Asia to minister. And then Paul has a vision of someone from Macedonia, inviting him over to come and minister. So this is when Paul and Silas and Timothy, along with Luke, go over to Macedonia. And they establish the church, the first place that they stop at is Philippi. So part of Paul's first missionary journey, he lands in Philippi. And that's where they begin to minister. If someone can just read Acts 16 12 for us. Acts chapter 16 verse 12. And from there to Philippi, which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia, colony and we were staying in that city for some day. So that's where they landed in Macedonia and began ministry. So here we read about Paul meeting Lydia at the marketplace. So there were not a lot of Jews in this place. There was no synagogue. They were meeting at the Riverside on the Sabbath. And this is why Paul goes to the Riverside. And that's where he meets Lydia. So there were some Jews, some Gentiles who had become Jews or who believed in Jewish faith. And one of those people is Lydia, who he ministers to. So some of the just a little recap of what happened when he went to Philippi. He meets Lydia, she and her whole household come to faith. And they begin to start the first fellowship, the church fellowship. We also have the story of the female slave who was freed from demonic possession. And then that causes trouble because her masters are no longer earning money from her. So that is part of the suffering that Paul is talking about. I you saw the suffering that I had, right, so that he's imprisoned Paul and Silas. I'm present and flogged at that time. And it is during his time in prison that he's able to minister to the jailer and his family and they also come to faith. So those are some of the things that happened at Philippi. And like we said, it was a primary Gentile church. There were more Greeks than Romans in the church and not a lot of Jews. Okay, so characteristics joy is something that is talked a lot about in Philippians we see rejoice in the Lord always again I say rejoice. So all of that comes in Philippians. There are no Old Testament quotations again, probably because he's addressing a Gentile audience. And then we see that passage on Christ emptying himself and becoming a servant that is on in Philippians two five to 11. The theme of Philippians is rejoice in the Lord, the joyful Christian experience. And we have a few of those verses here. We won't go into them. We'll just do a quick outline. So this is not in your textbooks, the outline. But I just wanted us to go through what the book of Philippians talks about. So we start with as regular letters start with an opening, a greeting to the church, thanksgiving and prayer. So thanking God for the church and praying for the church. He then goes into this important we know all of us know this verse to live is Christ to die is gain. So he talks about how in his chains as a prisoner of Christ, he's seen the gospel progressing forward that people have seen his chains and they've been encouraged and they've started to go and share Christ because they've seen his chains. So some do it out of false motives. Some do it because of their love for Paul. But his whole goal is that Christ is preached. So let's just read chapter one verse 18 from that section. Philippians chapter one verse 18 what what then only that in every way whether in present tense or in truth Christ is preached and in this I rejoice yes and I and will rejoice. Okay so that is he says the his main goal and then he goes into to live is Christ whether he continues to live or he's put to death after he's in prison. His whole goal is that Christ is preached. He then goes on to encourage them to stand firm. We read that passage in the midst of suffering stand firm in your faith. He then talks about unity through humility. So that is following the example of Christ who emptied himself and became obedient even to death on the cross. And then the last part of chapter two is to walk blamelessly. So put away all sinfulness and walk in holiness as as believers in Christ. He then commends Timothy and Epaphroditus who he'll be sending with this letter. After that he talks about righteousness through faith. So it it seemed like there were some Jewish people who had come in and who were again preaching about circumcision. And so he is talking about righteousness through faith and not through the law. If we can read verses seven to nine of chapter three. Someone can read that for us please. My people came to again to me then I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ. And we found in him not having my own righteousness which is from the law but that which is through faith in Christ the righteousness which is from God by faith. Thank you. So here he's saying if you are giving up on Christ to follow the law again you're losing out on that gift of Christ himself. And so he says I'd rather know Christ than have anything else. So even though he mentions all of his qualifications we read about that right. He's a Jew. He was circumcised on the eighth day. He was a Pharisee, zealous for the law. But all of those things now he considers as rubbish compared to knowing Christ himself. And so that's why he's encouraging the church to not go back to the law. Then 3 17 to 21 he calls them to follow his example as someone who is not relying on his flesh but is living in the hope of Christ's return. So living in the hope of the glory that will be as when Christ comes back. He concludes chapter four with this instruction finally stand firm in unity rejoice and then he we know those verses on think about such things right. Whatever is pure whatever is noble whatever is lovely whatever is admirable think about such things. He then says thanks them for the support that they've sent and sends his final greetings. So with that we come to the end of Philippines. Colossians any thoughts on Philippines before we move into Colossians. Anything that you all want to share passages that you all think are an important part of Philippines that have ministered to you all. Okay again pointing back to chapter two versus five to eleven that is an important and a very well-known passage from Philippines about Christ right the Christology of Christ emptying himself and coming in human form. That is something that all of us have heard a lot and that comes from this letter in Philippines. We'll move on to Colossians the background of Colossians. We see in chapter one verse seven mention of someone named Epaphrys if someone can just read that for us Colossians one verse seven Colossians chapter one verse seven as you also learn from Epaphrys our dear fellow servant who is faithful minister of Christ on your behalf. So here he's talking about the gospel being preached to them verse six is saying this is the gospel that you heard and then verse seven he says that Epaphrys is the one who brought the gospel to you. So this church was not founded by Paul himself and we see as we read the letter that he actually doesn't know the church he hasn't actually traveled there or met the people that he's writing to. Again in 412 to 13 he also mentions Epaphrys but how Paul is related to this church is that Paul stayed in Ephesus and from Ephesus a lot of his work spread into Asia Minor. So it's believed that Epaphrys was one of the people who heard the gospel in Ephesus and then went from there to Colossae. So if you look at where Ephesus is on the map and Colossae it's about a hundred miles apart it's not very far from each other. So from Ephesus there was a lot of ministry that happened in all of these cities. Again Paul is writing around the same time he wrote Philippians when he was in house arrest in Rome. We see the author Paul again so if someone can read Colossians 1 1 and 1 23 just to see how Paul introduces himself. So why are we reading these verses because Paul uses unique ways to introduce himself in each letter depending on what he wants to talk about in the letter. So we'll just read this 1 1 and 1 23. Colossians chapter 1 verse 1 Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God and Timothy our brother was 27 23 sorry ma'am 23 if indeed you continue in the faith grounded and seat fast and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you hear which was preached to every creature under heaven of which I Paul became a minister. Okay so Paul again in this letter we see that Paul is including Timothy as one of the co-writers of the letter. He addresses this letter to the Christians in Colossae. So two people are mentioned Nympha and it's also believed that Philemon had a church here in Colossae because we see two people who are mentioned both in this letter and in Philemon that is Archipis and Onesimus. Both of them are mentioned in both letters. So the fact that they are both mentioned in connection with Philemon probably means that Philemon lived in Colossae and so one of the churches met in his house. So this letter is written to Colossae and we'll see later on in this letter that Paul asked them to send the letter to Laodicea. So you can see Laodicea is right here and he asked them to take the letter that he had written to the Laodician church and to read it for themselves. So the letter was meant to be a circular letter that went from there to another church. Yes, written like we said about the same time he wrote the Ephesians and Philippians. A little bit about the city of Colossae. So it was not a very big city like we've read about some of the work that Paul was doing in other big cities. Colossae was not a big city at all. In fact, it was a city that was slowly dying out in importance. At the same time, it was on a main highway between Ephesus and the Euphrates River and so because of that, there was some travel that happened on that highway. The sad thing is that the city disappeared a few years after Paul writes this letter. So there was an earthquake and a lot of the city was destroyed after Paul wrote the letter and in later years it was also captured by the Turks and so there's no record after that of the city itself. We don't know what happened to the church there. But at this time, this city was in the region of Phrygia. So last week we talked about Phrygia, Galatia being a province in Asia Minor. So this was in Phrygia and here religion was very, very important. There were Jews as early as the 6th century and all the religions that were there seemed to have been influenced by the culture. So the culture was a little bit, we'll see in the letter as we're talking about it, but there was a lot of this spirituality, asceticism that was in the culture and that starts to come into the church. It started to affect Judaism. So a lot of that religion that was practiced there was also influencing the culture within the church. So why Paul writes this letter is because there was a lot of wrong teaching that was coming into the church. One was that they were being kind of led astray from recognizing that Christ is most important. Christ is first, he's the head of the church. So we see Paul addressing that a lot in this letter. The second is against Jewish ceremony. So he talks against circumcision, against Sabbath, against religious festivals, things that the Jews were kind of bringing into the church. He talks against asceticism and then he also talks against philosophy and vain deceit. We'll read a few of these passages as we look at the outline. So the main theme of Colossians is the preeminence of Christ that Christ is most important. He is the center of the church, the head of the church. We see the keyword head used three times and the key verses 118 and 210, if someone can read those two verses for us please. 118 and 210. Colossians chapter 1 verse 18, and he is the head of the body, the church who is beginning, first born from the dead, that in all things he may have the preminence. Thank you. 2.10. Chapter 2 verse 10, and you are complete in him who is the head of the all-principality and power. So both these places and emphasis on Christ being the head of the church. So with that we'll just go through the outline of Colossians and we'll close with this. The first part of Colossians focuses on the person and work of Christ. So it begins with the usual salutation, thanksgiving for the Colossians, prayer for the Colossians. Then it goes into what is the gospel itself and presents the gospel as Christ being supreme. Christ being all in all and it is this Christ who has reconciled us through God. So it is through Christ that we are reconciled to God and then he ends that chapter with talking about his own suffering for the sake of Christ. Maybe we can just look at chapter 1 verses 27 B to 28. So Colossians 1, 27, the end of chapter verse 27 to 28. To them God willed to make known what are the, sorry, chapter 1, 27, right? Yes, 27 and 28. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles which is Christ in you the hope of glory. Him we preach warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. So this is Paul talking about why he is suffering, right? So his goal is to make Christ known among the Gentiles to make this mystery known. What is that mystery? That is Christ in you the hope of glory. He is the one we preach. He is the one we teach about so that everyone will have that wisdom and everyone will grow in maturity in Christ. From there he goes into comparing Christ to all of these different heresies that he wants to address. So the first one is the heresy or the wrong teaching of philosophy that was coming into the church. We'll just read chapter 2 verse 10 just to give us an idea of what Paul addresses. Let's just read verse 8 to 10 sorry, Colossians 2, 8 to 10. Beware least anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ for him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily and you are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power not legalism but Christ. So Christ here is better than any philosophy teaching that can come into the church. The second is better than any legalism. So here he is talking about the Judaic teachings on circumcision Sabbath festivals. Christ is better than all of those things. Then verses 18 to 19 Christ is better than mysticism. 20 to 23 Christ is better than asceticism. So we'll just read chapter 2 verse 23 and then chapter 3 verses 1 to 4. 2 verses 23. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in prompting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. Thank you. So asceticism is basically causing suffering to your own body to overcome the desires of the flesh. So he's saying that is not going to really help you. It's only Christ who gives you victory over the flesh and then we'll just read chapter 3 verses 1 to 4. I think this is like the center of all Paul's teaching in this letter. Chapter 3 verses 1 onwards. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with the Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears then you also will appear with him in glory. Amen. So just calling the church back to focus on Christ himself and to live their lives with that knowledge that Christ is coming back and we are going to share in his glory. So the way we live here on earth is in anticipation of the glory that is to come. That is to be us when Christ comes back. He ends the letter with practicing the life of Christ. So he talks about this is actually very very similar to the book of Ephesians. If you look at Ephesians chapter 4 to 6, the things he's talking about here are quite similar to those things and we talked about that last week where a lot of what is in Colossians is also in Ephesians. So he talks about in our personal lives in the church practicing the life of Christ. So walking in holiness, walking in unity, he talks about how households should function wives and husbands, slaves and masters. He talks about being a witness. So how are we being a witness to the outside world of the faith that we're living? So this is where he says that we should be like salt, our conversation should be seasoned with salt. This is where he says that in Colossians and then closes with final instructions and greetings to other people within the church. So this actually has a long section of greetings at the end of the letter. So with that we come to the end of Colossians. We'll stop here and continue. I will post a video on 1st and 2nd Thessalonians for us and then we'll continue on Monday from there onward. Any thoughts, anything you would like to share from these two letters? Sister, can you tell something about the pre-eminence of Christ? Okay. So why Paul is bringing this up is because there were other things that had that were kind of drawing the church away from Christ. So like we looked about all of those different teachings, one of mysticism that is where they were going into all of like spirituality, right? That was something that was in the culture and was starting to influence the church. So they were practicing this form of spirituality where they're just sort of like meditation, that kind of practice rather than recognizing that their salvation was in Christ. So Paul is really here emphasizing that Christ himself is essential to the church. He is the one who is at the center of what we believe and if we let go of him, then all that is ours in the gospel is being lost. So he is calling them back to recognize that we have to hold on to Christ. Christ is the head of the church and he is over every power, over every authority, over every other form of teaching, whether it's from the law of the Jews or from the mystics or from asceticism. So asceticism is like what I said, where we are kind of punishing our bodies, trying to get rid of our desires that we have, right? So removing all those physical fleshly desires that we have and trying to do that through sacrifice, like punishing our bodies or making huge physical sacrifices for the sake of getting rid of those desires. So all of those things he's saying will not work, Christ himself is our hope. So that's the main thing that he is trying to teach the church about in this letter. Yeah, thank you sister. No problem. Any other things you want to share? Anyone wants to share? Okay, so I had encouraged us in the beginning of this course to be reading each book as we are discussing it in class. I know initially we were doing longer books that would have been harder, but all of these books are very, very short. So I would encourage you to read whatever like we're going to do first Thessalonians, second Thessalonians, first Timothy, second Timothy. So read those letters in advance before we come into class, because then when we're talking about it in class, you will be able to connect it to what you've already read. It won't be just information that I'm giving you, but it'll be something that you have yourself read and you're able to understand why Paul wrote those things. So yes, next week we'll do first and second Timothy after we finish with first and second Thessalonians. I think we can close. So I'll see you all on Monday and also I'll keep you all posted on the other class video. I'll let you all know on Google Classroom. Thank you.