Matt (00:01.214)
Hello everybody and welcome to The Latter Day Lens. I'm your host Matt and with me today are Sean and Levi. It's so good to have you guys here today. How are you guys?

Shawn (00:11.159)
good, yeah great.

Levi Barnes (00:11.714)
Fantastic.

Matt (00:13.958)
Yeah, good. Right before we started recording, I heard some bad news about like, Ukrainian refugees in Utah. So I'm trying to be in a good mood, even though I'm like super sad. But if any of you guys know resources for Ukrainian refugees, where they can go if things turn bad, let me know because I don't know, things aren't looking good.

Shawn (00:35.519)
Is this, are these people that we have in common, we know in common?

Matt (00:39.984)
no, I don't think so. There's a, there's a Russian speaking branch in, Salt Lake city. And so a lot of the people we know are part of that district or that branch. And there's just stuff going on with immigration status and refugee status and all that sort of things. People, families being split up and people trying to figure out like how to survive or stay together. And, yeah, anyhow, it's not stuff we haven't heard in the news, right? Levi, you've heard this stuff all over the news.

Shawn (00:41.515)
Okay.

Levi Barnes (01:09.897)
With respect to Ukrainian refugees, I haven't really heard it, right? There's a Portland, there's some like Facebook groups and things and I've kind of, you know, people have said, hey, if there's stuff happening, we'd love to hear about it and show up to protect members of our community. But I haven't heard anybody say, oh yeah, we're rounding up Ukrainians.

Matt (01:14.001)
Yeah.

Matt (01:30.162)
Yeah, and I don't know all the details enough to say any reporting. It's just stories of people that need help, people that have lost status. People feel like they're going through the proper channels, right? Like they're doing all the things they've been told to do. They're going to all their court hearings and they're told everything's fine. And then suddenly, well, actually, if you haven't passed this hurdle by now, no more people are gonna be able to pass that hurdle. So as of today, you're an undocumented immigrant and you need to...

pack up your things and get ready to leave, things like that.

Shawn (02:01.596)
Sounds like the administration we're in.

Matt (02:03.836)
Yeah. I did see stuff like this happening in Los Angeles with, again, I didn't pay lot of attention, but where's these.

Shawn (02:10.69)
yeah, the National Guard was just sent to LA.

Levi Barnes (02:11.086)
Well, so that's what I've been hearing, right? Is that, yeah.

Matt (02:15.25)
Yeah. Yeah, so anyhow.

Levi Barnes (02:17.134)
Don't worry, Sean, they'll probably stay in LA. They probably won't come down south. This is a whole marine base between you and LA, so.

Matt (02:24.084)
Leelai is poking at you, Sean. Do not take the bait. All right. Well, I didn't want to, if I'm down, that's why I'm trying to not be down. But okay, so one of our listeners, apparently last week we read something from this listener and I was confused about the context. So they clarified. They said, my shout out was at seven minutes and 36 seconds of episode 119.

when you talked about how you gave me your very best advice on how to become president, even though I'm not going to be the president. That leads me to a great podcast question though, looking at president of the United States throughout history, but especially in post-war history, so many have held the office because they were born into a political family, a wealthy family or both. So this listener's question is, is America an aristocracy in disguise? Absolutely not.

I will take Sam's side. This is the land of dreams. This is the land of opportunity. Anyone can be president. Right, Sean?

Shawn (03:26.017)
Yeah, look at George Bush.

Levi Barnes (03:29.614)
And Mitt Romney, where'd that guy come from? He was, he didn't become president.

Matt (03:31.124)
That's a great example. Hillary Clinton almost did it. She's proof that you don't have to have connections to be the Democratic nominee. But no, the best example would be Barack Obama. Barack Obama came out of nowhere, really. wasn't, yeah. Jimmy Carter, he's another great example. Before that, yeah.

Levi Barnes (03:41.166)
You

Shawn (03:45.985)
Great example, yeah.

Levi Barnes (03:51.992)
Yeah.

Matt (03:56.478)
But listen, the fact that you have to be wealthy or connected to be president of the United States does not mean that it's an aristocracy. An aristocracy is something very different than that.

Shawn (04:08.395)
Yeah, good answer. Good answer.

Matt (04:08.818)
Yeah. Okay. All right.

Levi Barnes (04:10.988)
Because why is that, Matt? Why are we not an aristocracy?

Shawn (04:15.675)
this leave I disagree.

Matt (04:17.266)
because the power is not in the hands of the President of the United States. The President of the United States controls one of the branches of government. And although many members of the House of Representatives and Senate are millionaires, anyone, you have a really good chance of going from nothing to member of Congress. And so at least one branch of government is open to kind of anyone. And then even if you look at the Supreme Court, you know, they're not necessarily there because of their wealth.

Levi Barnes (04:25.294)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (04:47.154)
Members of the Supreme Court are there because of their education and training that they have. And many of them didn't come from like rich, elite, noble families to become. So just because that happens with the president doesn't mean that our country is ruled by rich, wealthy people. Do you agree, Levi?

Levi Barnes (05:07.134)
sure a lot of rich people in Congress, right? Like, I think you'd probably say that that Congress is an aristocracy. there's, there just aren't very many people that show up from...

Matt (05:10.151)
Sure, sure.

Matt (05:15.732)
you

Shawn (05:15.967)
I think Matt just said, I think he just said they're not right.

But you believe they are Levi?

Matt (05:23.508)
Like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez or Marjorie Taylor Greene or we can go down the list. There's 435 in the house. I could name probably 50 that came from kind of nothing into the House of Representatives.

Levi Barnes (05:27.352)
Yeah.

Levi Barnes (05:38.51)
Yeah, yeah, so you have, yeah, a good 20%, maybe a quarter of Congress would be.

Shawn (05:43.595)
Yeah, but hang on. But hang on though. Doesn't aristocracy suggest that this is inherited wealth? Many of the people in Congress earned their money. Did they not? Many did. Really?

Matt (05:44.188)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (05:54.484)
That's where you lose me, Sean. No, no, it's pretty much inherited wealth.

Shawn (05:59.711)
What? That's okay. Maybe we'll maybe bring this up as a litter topic because we can do research on that and find out. what doesn't doesn't by definition aristocracy mean just a few a few families in power because of the inherited wealth that they continue to maintain. I don't think that's at all what America looks like. No, no, no,

Matt (06:09.299)
Yeah.

Matt (06:18.3)
Okay. I agree. I'm arguing that same position, but for different reasons than you are. I don't want to get into the inherited wealth question because that will get Levi very animated. And he knows a lot about inherited wealth and he does not like inherited wealth.

Shawn (06:34.135)
See, I'm trying to trigger Levi back. That's what I'm trying to do.

Levi Barnes (06:35.054)
Do not. Do not leave money to your children.

Shawn (06:39.895)
Yeah

Matt (06:40.148)
All right, this week all of the thought provoker questions were written by Levi, which excites me because these are questions I would not have thought of. So we're going to start with JD Vance. I put a link to this because he said it in the Republican National Convention, but apparently recently he's also said that America is not just an idea, it is a group of people with a shared value and a common history. Is he right? What is America?

First, there's North America, South America, there are two continents. And Canada is America and Mexico is America. We're going to be really accurate. The United States of America is one piece of America.

Shawn (07:16.279)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Levi Barnes (07:20.472)
Okay.

Shawn (07:23.465)
Matt, Matt, thanks for taking us somewhat difficult and boring topic and making it a geography topic. That was great job, man. Good podcast topic.

Matt (07:27.124)
I think it really does drive me crazy though to hear people talk about America and they like yeah anyhow that's

Levi Barnes (07:32.386)
This is what our listeners come here for, is geography.

Shawn (07:36.513)
Peace.

Shawn (07:43.659)
Well, so, so don't we hear, isn't this a common sermon from presidents? America is an idea. Joe Biden preached it. I don't think I hear Trump say those words, but he certainly preaches it, I think. But I mean, in the article that you referenced, it was interesting because they are basically saying that the, I guess the, what is the idea? And I think the common response was, the idea is the Declaration of Independence.

Matt (07:52.468)
Hmm.

Matt (07:58.046)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn (08:13.563)
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, endowed by a creator with uncertain inalienable rights, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Isn't that kind of the idea that most people would suggest is the idea if we're going to debate this?

Matt (08:28.798)
Yeah, I think that's probably the idea would be civil rights. The idea would be justice. Nobody's above the law. The idea would be that power comes from the people and not from necessarily a king chosen by God. Those would be ideas I think that America is based on. But I agree actually with JD Vance that America is not just an idea, but I disagree with what he says it actually is. I think America...

Levi Barnes (08:29.923)
Yeah.

Matt (08:55.144)
I always get this author's name wrong, but there's a new book out called American Covenant. It's about the US Constitution. And I like what this author says in that book. says that America is a diverse society that is built on compromise. And so I think if you get to the essence of what is America, well, at the founding, America was 13 different colonies with very different ideas of what should happen.

Shawn (09:11.037)
yeah, interesting.

Matt (09:23.368)
colonies that wanted self-determination, colonies that were afraid of a powerful central government, and they got together and created a compromise that would help all of them be better. so in my opinion, America is and always has been a diverse society built on compromise.

Shawn (09:42.997)
Levi, every now and then our political scientists bring something that proves that his years of schooling wasn't a waste. Like that was a sermon, Matt. You preached, I love that. That rings true. I mean, the idea, the ideas that I think that some people talk about, you nailed it. And then this idea that it's, it is a world of compromise. Like, okay, so just talked to a buddy who I guess knew Stephen Covey when he was alive. And he said, he watched Stephen Covey in situations where he'd be around many people. And if someone ever came up him and said,

Matt (09:49.554)
Yes! That's how I want it.

Shawn (10:12.139)
Hey man, I have an issue with what you said. I'd like to disagree with you. Can we talk? Stephen Covey's response never was, I'll try it. Go ahead and try it we'll get into this debate. His answer to, hey, I disagree with you on something was always this. awesome. Let's learn from each other. I'd love to hear where your passion, where your information is. Let's learn and maybe we can compromise. Maybe I can learn something. Maybe you can learn something. What a great attitude.

Matt (10:36.03)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, that's the idea. When we say compromise, a lot of people think compromise means I give up half of what I like and you give up half of what you like. And then we're both kind of miserable in the end, like we're going to buy a car or something like that. Right. But the idea of compromise in the U S context is we both come in fighting for the things we care passionately about. And in that try to find a solution that makes both of us happy. And then that leads to innovation. And so.

America is a society where compromise leads to innovation as people passionately argue for the things that matter most to them.

Shawn (11:12.919)
How wonderfully optimistic. Now Levi, you bring in the...

Levi Barnes (11:18.062)
The downside The the fascist leanings of this quote right here that I mean like I really do have a problem with this idea and and I agree with Matt that like America is not just an idea But yeah this idea I mean this is the this is leading us down the primrose path to fascism where he says look

Matt (11:18.214)
Latter-day lens? The latter-

Shawn (11:20.725)
I don't know.

Shawn (11:25.377)
Hahaha

Levi Barnes (11:42.092)
We are people with a shared, with a common history. And so if you, if your grandparents weren't here, you are not American. And I have a real problem with that.

Shawn (11:48.791)
Matt (11:50.514)
Well, I happen to be...

Matt (11:56.852)
A common history. A common history.

Matt (12:14.036)
Well, like I was gonna say before, Sean, I am a direct descendant of the people on the Mayflower. So I am an original inhabitant of the United States of America. no, immigration's not part of my...

Levi Barnes (12:27.502)
What was the Mayflower again, Matt?

Matt (12:29.908)
You

It was the first people to come to America.

Levi Barnes (12:36.637)
I see, okay.

Shawn (12:38.935)
Wait so

Matt (12:41.264)
We built a wall around Plymouth Rock and we just gradually expanded the wall.

Shawn (12:47.415)
Wait, wait. So Levi, so you're, if we took out the assumption that he's talking about immigration, would you have more of an agreement with where he stands or still against it?

Levi Barnes (12:58.67)
I think that you could finagle an exit for JD Vance here. Like if you said America is not just an idea, it is a group of people with shared values. And maybe those values are, you know, democracy and pluralism and compromise, right? Maybe those are the values, right? And a common history, which is that we all immigrated from somewhere else. Sure. I could be wrong.

Shawn (13:17.217)
Yeah, yeah.

Shawn (13:24.565)
Okay, but you're being you're being protective. Okay, but I like this, you're just being protective of the principle of diversity. And let's not confuse the definition of America as it's those of us who are here. And it's no one else, right? You're you're pro, you're pro immigration in the sense of the country was founded on immigration, right? The country is we are we are God's gift to the world. And we want to

Levi Barnes (13:37.516)
Right, right, right.

Levi Barnes (13:46.359)
Yeah.

Shawn (13:50.647)
everyone to be blessed. That's that's kind of what you're saying. Everyone comes sharing the gift. Is that what you're

Matt (13:56.862)
That's exactly what Levi was saying.

Levi Barnes (13:57.347)
Yeah, I did like the way you said, we're God's gift to the world, Sean. Our podcast is God's gift to the world, I guess. But...

Shawn (14:01.591)
Yes

Matt (14:03.924)
Hahahaha

I can count on one hand the number of things that JD Vance has ever said that I agree with. So I'm not even worried about if JD Vance was right. JD Vance is most of the time wrong. So I just take the question and say the right answer. Who cares what JD Vance meant by that?

Levi Barnes (14:21.699)
How dare you? Sean is right there. You can't disparage JD Vance in front of Sean like that.

Matt (14:25.735)
Sean, I didn't know Sean liked JD Vance. You like JD Vance, Sean? Yes.

Shawn (14:28.663)
I don't? What?

Levi Barnes (14:28.992)
Sean loves JD, he's always going on about JD Vance. JD Vance is...

Shawn (14:31.959)
No, no

Matt (14:32.595)
No, Sean likes Josh Hawley from Missouri, not JD. Sean likes us. We're the only people Sean truly likes and his family.

Shawn (14:43.935)
Yep, that's right. That's right. Okay. So I said, I'm glad I now understand why you asked the question Levi and that does, makes sense. I think, I think.

Matt (14:53.288)
I'm giving Sean the points on this because eventually he admitted he does not like JD Vance and I needed to hear that.

Levi Barnes (15:02.338)
But I'm all for giving somebody an out. So I'm giving Sean the points too there. Because yeah, maybe I should think about this as, yeah, in a little less paranoid a way, yeah.

Matt (15:12.968)
Yeah, don't assume fascism, Levi. Don't just assume fascism. Assume the best of people until they prove you otherwise. Okay. That's great. Yeah. All right, here's the next question. man, I'm gonna get depressed. At this point, 50,000 people, including 13,000 children have been killed by Israel in Gaza. Why do we see so little media coverage of this?

Levi Barnes (15:19.47)
You

Shawn (15:22.347)
That's good advice for us all. That's great advice for us all.

Matt (15:39.612)
What can be done and what is our responsibility as Latter-day Saints? This is a great question. My first answer is why do we see so little media coverage? It's because I think people are afraid to talk about it. It's a very polarizing, sensitive issue, right? Like if you criticize Israel, you don't want to criticize Israel because historically it's a persecuted group and...

Shawn (15:44.567)
You want to take it first Matt or me? And then we'll get Levi's take.

Matt (16:05.948)
I understand why people are hesitant to persecute, and especially if you listen to what Israel's rhetoric goes on this topic, they're like, we're just trying to defend ourselves against terrorists. it's so it's hard to criticize Israel at the same time. It's really hard to like be accepting of what Israel's doing because you see so many people dying. And so I think the reason there's not immediate coverage is because it's a very dicey space and it's hard to talk about the facts without really making people upset.

Shawn (16:35.831)
That's a good answer. That's good answer.

Matt (16:37.852)
Don't you guys think that that's true? isn't this a hard thing to discuss with friends? Like I have a Palestinian friend, every time I see her I just want to hug her and just say I'm so sorry for what's happening to your people. But that's a polarizing thing to do.

Shawn (16:53.459)
Yeah, I mean, I don't don't know if I agree with the sentiment that it's not in the media. Like I every single day am seeing news and coverage. Now, I think I get what you mean, Levi. Like, why is there not as much like like that kind of sadness and destruction should be headline news all the time. But I think for a while it was and I do get fed. I mean, I look at I read about it every single day. So maybe we're not seeing the same news sources. Do you not see anything on it, Levi?

Levi Barnes (17:20.856)
No, I guess I do maybe maybe what I ought to have said is we don't see any We don't see any political movement on this right like like I feel like yeah I do see media coverage of this and I don't see it in American politics American politics seems to have sort of Sorry Gaza, there's nothing we're gonna do you guys not feel that

Matt (17:46.726)
No, I feel that, but I feel like both politically and practically, there's not a lot that we can do as a country. Like, I don't know the solution to this problem. I think that if I were in a room making decisions about what should be done, I don't know. Like Levi, why don't they just release all the rest of the hostages? Why don't they just do that?

Shawn (18:08.023)
Well

Levi Barnes (18:17.496)
But by they, mean, I don't know who's holding the hostages, Yeah, Hamas, whoever that is, right? Like whoever's holding those. I mean, I don't even know that Hamas is some uniform and with a centralized leadership structure.

Matt (18:19.998)
Hamas. Hamas. Well...

Shawn (18:22.615)
Come on.

Matt (18:32.444)
Right. Right. And they've killed a lot of their leaders. Right. Right. So that's, that's the hard thing, right? When they, when they take these hostages and they haven't released them all yet, then it's, I don't know. Can I say to Israel, you got to stop doing this? All right. It's clear to me that Israel has objectives beyond just releasing the hostages, but, at, and then at the same time I say, do, do I not want to support Israel in their quest for greater security in the region? but at the same time, like,

How can we allow this sort of stuff to happen in Gaza? Thousands of people being killed, even more being starved and living in deplorable conditions. But I just think, Levi, the challenge is there's nobody proposing a solution that seems plausible. There's just the anger and the sadness.

Shawn (19:22.805)
Yeah, and I would,

Levi Barnes (19:23.982)
And when you say there's nobody proposing a solution, go ahead, Sean.

Matt (19:28.692)
Go ahead Sean.

Shawn (19:29.323)
Yeah, so I mean, I don't want to get too deep into this, but I do genuinely want to understand the other side of this because it's easy for me. So he asked, what's the latter day lens on this? Or we should ask what the latter day lens is. And I don't want to seem biased to your map, but the only, like I was just reading the other day in Mosiah 10 and it talked about how there was this prophet, I don't know prophet leader, Zenith, Zenith, and then the king of the Lamanites, King Laman. And the verses literally lead this.

The Lamanites were taught to hate the Nephites because of the iniquities of their fathers, believing they were wrongfully robbed of leadership and land. Their hatred was passed down over generations and deeply embedded into their cultural identity. So it literally says, thus they have taught their children that they should hate the Nephites, that they should murder them, that they should rob them and plunder them and do all they could to destroy them in the name of this, in this eternal hatred was in the name of like,

generations of wrong, you know, they've been wrong for generations. Now, when I read the 1988 charter of Hamas, it literally says the same thing.

Matt (20:34.772)
sure. But, but the thing is, Sean, like Hamas isn't the only group of people in, in Gaza, right? It's not fair to take whatever Hamas says and then say, that's what Palestinians think.

Shawn (20:46.627)
teach me that like the, like the news that I read says that Hamas is the one that is causing the violence. Hamas is the one that, that, that attacked Israel. Hamas is the one that was in leadership, not only political, but also like humanitarian leadership in, in Palestine for, since the eighties.

Matt (21:06.043)
Yeah, but what I'm saying, what I'm saying is if you equate Hamas with Palestinians, that's a category area, right? They're not the same thing. It would be like somebody saying Trump said this, therefore all Americans think this because he's the leader of your country.

Shawn (21:21.203)
Okay, but if you're saying that the Palestinians aren't the ones who commit who who you wouldn't say palette the Palestinians the Gazans are the ones that attacked Israel on that day, right you would say Hamas did right and so and so if Hamas Right, right, but I'm asking the question is Hamas Hamas not in control of the Gazan political system humanitarian system the infrastructure the hospitals

Matt (21:30.398)
Correct. Correct. And I'm saying Palestinians are paying that price.

Shawn (21:46.453)
the network of tunnels below the cities that are underneath the hospitals where the children die? is Hamas not the ones that did the attack and are in control or were in control politically, the infrastructure, all of it. how do you not retaliate to them and not have this awful collateral damage?

Matt (22:01.182)
Yeah, because some.

Matt (22:06.91)
Well, so that's the challenge. So then Levi, you were saying there were other people proposing solutions.

Levi Barnes (22:12.675)
Well, I guess I was asking what when you mean I mean, I think that there's a solution for The Israeli government like the Israeli government could solve this I Mean could come up with a pretty good solution right away, right and it is to stop the killing but But maybe you're talking about there's nothing the United States can do or are you saying there's nothing Israel could do either that that's not a That there's no

Matt (22:37.481)
Right.

Matt (22:41.978)
I'm saying there's no solution from our end, right? Like, I don't know what the United States is supposed to do in this situation. It's, it's clear if Trump asks, Benjamin Netanyahu to do something, Netanyahu does not feel obligated to do what Trump tells him to do. And so I just don't know that there's a solution that we could impose on Israel. I think that people have strong opinions about what should happen, but the reality is the opposition in Israel.

Levi Barnes (22:42.023)
solution from that side.

Levi Barnes (22:46.138)
Right, right.

Matt (23:11.838)
Benny Gantz, right? He resigned from the cabinet because he disagreed with decisions Benjamin Netanyahu was making. Like the reality in Israel is that Netanyahu is going to do what he wants to do and there's not a lot that anyone can do about it. So that's why I say it. Like if there's not a solution, then I think what is there to talk about?

Levi Barnes (23:33.703)
But a really good question, right? When there's tragedy and we can't be the solution, what do we do, right? Is that a time when we say, sorry, we just can't help you. Your cause is just, but I can do that for you. Did I just quote James Buchanan?

Shawn (23:33.782)
Yeah.

Shawn (23:51.063)
You did.

Matt (23:52.21)
And, and by the way, James Buchanan was right when he said that just, just to like reiterate, like that was true. There was nothing he could do.

Levi Barnes (23:58.428)
Yeah.

Shawn (24:00.727)
But Levi, I'm genuinely wanting to learn from you what your view is because you'd popped off, but let me just repeat real quick. So I was reading a Mosiah 10, right? And Zineth is trying to protect the Nephites against King Lehmann. And King Lehmann's mantra, their charter, their everything was basically this. The Nephites, no, we Lehmannites teach our children that we should hate the Nephites and they should murder them. And we should...

Levi Barnes (24:01.304)
Yeah, yeah.

Shawn (24:29.503)
rob them and plunder them and do all we can to destroy them off the face of the earth. And then when I read the 1988 Hamas Charter, how do I teach me how do I not look at this as if there's a good guy and a bad guy? That there's not? Okay.

Matt (24:43.444)
Well, because I can tell you the answer to that, Sean. That's really like there were there were groups in Israel that were bringing peace between Palestinians and Israelis. was Chad Ford had a group of people where they were playing basketball. There were all kinds of peace organizations like that hatred between those groups was not it's not forever. And it was going away like all of the attacks that are happening from and by the way, my friend who's a Palestinian, her hatred towards Israelis has nothing to do with historical injustice.

It has to do with the fact that the Israelis bombed her school and killed her friend. So like you can't just take the one side and say one side is good and one side is bad. Both sides are doing bad things. And the hatred comes from the things that people are doing.

Shawn (25:24.929)
Yeah, right. if you look, but if I study Israel, I see that there are Palestinians, Gazans who live in Israel. They're Islamic, members of the Islamic faith, who live in Israel, thrive in Israel. They're a part of the government. They're a part of the society. If I look at Gaza, there are no Jews because the literal charter is kill every Jew. They do not belong to be here, destroy them.

Matt (25:46.076)
No, that's not why. That's not the reason that there are no Israelis in the Gazan leadership. It's political decisions that divide that society.

Shawn (25:55.335)
You don't think that has anything to do with a charter that says that if you're Jewish you should be destroyed. What? Come on.

Matt (25:59.164)
No, Sean, that's like reading the Republican National Committee's platform and saying, this is what Republicans do. The charter for Hamas has nothing to do with the way Palestinians think or believe. The situation in Israel is there's both sides that are doing things that are harmful. If you're a Palestinian and you want to get a passport to leave the country or you want to get a visa to leave the country, where is the US embassy if you wanted to get a visa to go to the United States?

They moved it from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. When Trump moved our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he moved it to an area where no Palestinians are allowed to be. So Palestinians are not even allowed to go to the U.S. embassy. So there's all kinds of political decisions people make that create inequality and hatred and all that stuff on both sides.

Shawn (26:50.071)
So the conflict is just political. It's not the wrongs. I mean, that's not what I read, but I'll go with it.

Levi Barnes (26:57.095)
I guess I think it's pretty nuts to look at this and say, clearly the Palestinians are the bad guys. Like, I don't know. Maybe you're not seeing the same news I have because that's crazy.

Shawn (27:04.265)
No,

Matt (27:11.592)
Right, but you can't equate Hamas with Palestinians. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah.

Levi Barnes (27:14.309)
Yeah, think that's the mistake. I see. OK.

Shawn (27:14.625)
That's that's I'm not I'm not that's what I just did. No, I'm saying Hamas is the group that has is causing the violence. Hamas is the group that also controls the infrastructure, the political organization, like like everything in Palestine and has for instance, the 80s, right? It's been since the 80s.

Matt (27:32.67)
So I think the latter day lens on this is to recognize that these historical fights and these historical problems are not forever. Like when we were kids, this was all happening in Northern Ireland. The Protestants and the Catholics had an eternal hatred for each other and that has gone away. And the Republican or the conservative response to that would be, see free trade. When you open up free markets, that kind of cures those problems. But my perspective on that is cooperation and compromise.

Shawn (28:01.815)
nice.

Matt (28:02.386)
It doesn't have to be through trade. When you get people to work together on a common good or a common problem that's greater than the differences between you, can overcome, or South Africa with the challenges with apartheid. They had the truth and reconciliation stuff. There's still problems in South Africa, but the hatred, the deep-seated hatred is no longer there like it was before. So you can cure this stuff through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Shawn (28:28.865)
Wow, man.

Levi Barnes (28:29.639)
But don't you think that US pressure helped in South Africa and could maybe help here as well?

Matt (28:35.028)
100%. I don't I don't I agree US pressure can help. I don't think US pressure would help.

Levi Barnes (28:39.815)
I mean, just because Netanyahu is going to cave immediately doesn't mean we can't make a difference.

Matt (28:45.978)
I don't know, I think Barack Obama, I think Trump in his first term, I think Joe Biden, I think all of them have been trying to get Netanyahu to behave differently than what he's been behaving. And then the reality is I have a friend who's a Middle East expert who tells me that Netanyahu is actually the more liberal option that these factions would prefer to have. And when I say things like we should...

If Netanyahu weren't there, it would be better. He's like, no way. Like there are some hardcore conservatives that are very vocal and very powerful in Israel that Netanyahu is holding them together and trying to keep them moderate compared to what they want to do. So I think that there's

Levi Barnes (29:24.679)
What we're seeing now is moderation. That's surprising statement.

Matt (29:28.626)
Yeah, according, according, yeah, according. Yeah. I'm gonna pause real fast. Hey Levi, hold on, hold on.

Levi Barnes (29:33.831)
One thing that Sure Yeah, so one thing that that my wife and I were talking so we have some friends that are big supporters of Israel and they are Jewish and they fled their own country because of Persecution there and you know one thing that we've talked about a little bit is a thing that America could do is

maybe sort of assuage the fears of the worldwide Jewish population, right? By making it clear that they are very welcome in our communities and that I think sometimes Israel's response is out of this sort of existential fear that is obviously rooted in the Holocaust, that worldwide Jewish people are terrified of not having a homeland. And so that defense of Israel, you

Matt (30:27.828)
Yeah.

Levi Barnes (30:29.681)
can sometimes get a little extreme, right? Because it's rooted in some real trauma and historic, and maybe we can help to assuage that by making it very clear that we remember the Holocaust. We remember pogroms all through Europe, and we're determined to not repeat those and make it clear to our Jewish friends and neighbors that they're welcome.

Matt (30:52.412)
I have a good friend who served in the Israeli Defense Forces. His dad was in the Israeli Defense Forces and his kids are now in the Israeli Defense Forces. And he came out to visit Yellowstone when this all began and we were so excited to have he and his family stay with us. But when this all happened, his family who had been living in the United States were so afraid because of the anti-Semitism that

Shawn (31:03.788)
minute.

Shawn (31:07.678)
you

Shawn (31:14.423)
you

Shawn (31:20.385)
Thanks for watching.

Matt (31:20.846)
exploded in the United States that like we had to cancel a lot of things that we had planned and I don't know, I love the idea of getting rid of anti-Semitism in the United States but it's been on the rise for quite some time and if I were a Jewish person I would not feel safe in the United States or many other countries in the world. I think they're justified in their fear of other people.

Levi Barnes (31:45.511)
I'm sad to say I agree. Yeah, you're right.

Shawn (31:48.151)
Hey, thanks to both of you. Both of you get points because you know a lot about this. You studied it. It's a hard one for most of the layman like me to really understand and get on the side. I genuinely have lots of questions, but both of you kind of kind of gave some good insights. So I appreciate both of you.

Matt (32:05.364)
Hey, thanks for the points, Sean. I'm gonna give myself the points as well. I really like what I did there. I feel super good.

Levi Barnes (32:07.6)
I that was a good discussion.

Shawn (32:13.783)
Ha

Matt (32:15.664)
All right, next topic. It has been convincingly said that abandoning the fairness doctrine in the 1980s led to our polarized media landscape. Was it inevitable? How can we get back to a shared reality? What does it mean for the market to control media? So the fairness doctrine Levi, will you just explain real fast what the fairness doctrine is and what it means that we abandoned it?

Levi Barnes (32:39.631)
Well, I was hoping now that you'd know a little more about this because, yeah.

Shawn (32:43.275)
Well, how about both of you just sit down and I'll teach you. Rooted in the media world of like the 1940s and eventually backed by Congress in the 50s, the fairness doctrine mandated broadcast networks devote time and contrasting views on issues of political importance.

Matt (32:43.535)
okay, I do.

Matt (32:47.686)
Alright, Sean you tell us.

Levi Barnes (32:48.55)
Alright.

Matt (33:05.714)
Yes.

Shawn (33:05.909)
Subject to punishments and fines. Those are all my words.

Matt (33:10.022)
Yes. The punishments, the punishments and fines come from the FCC, right? The FCC regulates public media. And so, yeah, the argument is that when they, in the 1980s, when they said we're going to get rid of the fairness doctrine, news media do not have to present both sides of an issue. Levi's convinced that that led to our polarized media landscape. I'm actually not convinced of that. No, because cable news was not

Levi Barnes (33:12.007)
there.

Shawn (33:34.663)
really?

Matt (33:39.646)
governed by the fairness doctrine. and internet news is not governed by the FCC in the same way. So, the polarized media landscape, I think was just a result of new technologies and new media delivery systems. do think that, I do agree that the numerous options for selecting news leads to polarized media, but

Shawn (33:42.857)
really?

Shawn (33:47.767)
Shawn (34:09.313)
So you believe that capitalism leads to polarized media?

Matt (34:09.776)
I don't think

Matt (34:14.568)
I think that deep down everybody wants polarized media. People who want news usually want it from their own ideological perspective.

Shawn (34:22.913)
So I figured you'd make that argument. So I did some research. So have you heard of a company called Allsides? No, you have? Okay, so Allsides is a news source, but basically they take a topic that's hot in the news. They will find an article that they use their own grading system that is judged or graded as a left leaning article and a source. And then they'll take another article that is right leaning according to their grade. And then they'll take a centrist and they'll put these three articles together and then they'll do kind of their own conclusion.

Matt (34:29.808)
Yes. Yeah.

Shawn (34:52.983)
of how this is being presented. I love that. Why?

Matt (34:56.948)
Do you know why I've heard of them, Sean? Because they're the largest media company in the world. Goodbye, ABC, ESPN, they're going away. Goodbye, Fox News, because what's the name of this company again, Sean? Yeah, all sides, they're the huge, everybody.

Shawn (35:07.807)
All sides?

I know okay, I thought you'd say that now listen now I got my rebuttal to that so so how much take a guess how much revenue do you think they've earned in their four years of existence or in their one year the most current year they've only been in existence for like four or five years Take a guess take a guess

Matt (35:15.892)
Okay.

Matt (35:26.226)
What are we on the shark tank now? I gotta decide if I want to invest in all sides.

Shawn (35:29.941)
Well, you're saying they have no followers. You're saying they have no, no one's listening to them. No one's seeing what they do.

Matt (35:35.09)
I want, okay, revenue, is it profit or just revenue? Okay, that could be a billion dollars. I don't care if they have to spend all of it on advertising.

Shawn (35:37.975)
Revenue.

Shawn (35:44.191)
What if it was a billion dollars? Would you be like, I'm wrong. These people actually have followers.

Matt (35:47.86)
I would not think that, no I would not.

Shawn (35:50.207)
Okay, so there's no dollar amount that I won't even tell you the dollar amount because there's no dollar amount that you would you just will always believe that no one your belief is and this is interesting is that people just want confirmation of their own bias. So they're always going to look out for the MSNBC the Fox News, they always want people to wake up and tell them confirm what they believe.

Matt (36:08.764)
No, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there's an ebb and flow in the way things happen in the news. That Benjamin Franklin, who we all think of as like one of the great founding fathers, he was so influential because he had his own printing press. And at that time, the printing press was the technology of the day. And he could write stories that were favorable to his perspective. And then people would read his stories and laugh and buy his newspapers. And then he became an influential figure. So early on, all news

was partisan news in some way. You created pamphlets, newspapers, all that stuff to try to tell people your side and persuade them to agree with you. And it wasn't until like, you know, the early 20th century that with the New York Times, where you started having these national newspapers, where you started getting this idea of objectivity. So I just think there's an ebb and flow. People, when there's so much objectivity, they say, wait a minute, I want stuff that slanted in one way. And then when it gets too far that way, then they say, you know what, I'd like a little more objectivity.

Shawn (37:07.233)
Okay.

Levi Barnes (37:07.559)
Mmm.

Matt (37:07.678)
but I don't think it's the FCC rules that changes things.

Shawn (37:09.655)
Okay Levi, teach me, teach me.

Levi Barnes (37:11.601)
So you think we're on our way back, we'll swing back to valuing objectivity.

Matt (37:18.556)
I think that, yeah, people are, we're in that process now of people are tired of the anger. And so there's a space, News Nation is a cable news outlet that's trying to be in the middle. CNN is.

Shawn (37:30.369)
How big are they? Hey Matt, hey Matt, guess how big they are. They're the biggest, I was trying to do your voice and make fun of you pointing out a non-big media guy. I didn't do a good job.

Matt (37:41.076)
I'm saying they're popping up, they're popping up, but they're not the biggest, right? Fox News didn't go far enough, right? And so now Newsmax and OAN exist and MSNBC isn't far enough to the left. And so there's these other podcasts and YouTube channels that pop up. The demand for that partisan extreme stuff is huge. So what I'm saying is it's not about the rules you make.

telling Fox News that they have to have some liberal on there to give the other side from that time to time, that's not going to change their business model.

Shawn (38:10.039)
That's a good point. They do that. They do do that. That's a good point.

Levi Barnes (38:15.589)
Yeah, but don't you think don't you think Rush Limbaugh was the root of all evil? Don't you think he Rush Limbaugh ate my parents brain that's I I have real beef with Rush Limbaugh because

Shawn (38:20.961)
Hahaha!

Shawn (38:25.601)
But wasn't Rush Limbaugh the radio answer to the news media that became so liberal that conservatives felt like they had no voice. So Rush Limbaugh came up on this other medium and was like, I'll take this over. Like it was a response to it, wasn't it?

Matt (38:25.62)
But now it's Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro are doing the same thing. Gavin Newsom on the left.

Levi Barnes (38:29.83)
Yeah, yeah.

Levi Barnes (38:43.207)
No, I think that's ridiculous.

Matt (38:44.861)
Yeah, I so.

Yeah Levi, isn't that how you remember the history?

Shawn (38:49.6)
Was it not? Am I wrong?

Levi Barnes (38:51.641)
Yeah, you're totally wrong. Yeah. I mean, we used to have news media that talked about facts and rush got on there and he was like, I don't need facts. just say whatever I want. People cheer.

Shawn (38:53.867)
That's not right.

Matt (38:53.876)
you

Matt (39:03.002)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was a great business model.

Shawn (39:03.991)
Well, that's.

Levi Barnes (39:04.357)
Yeah, I mean, Rush was the beginning of news media that wasn't that had no, didn't value objectivity at all. Right. Is that, that's, that was my experience, right? He was.

Matt (39:14.292)
But it wasn't, but there, wasn't just rush, right? There was Dr. Laura back in the day. And there was like, there were a number of these like conservative leaning things that are like, I think Sean's, I think to Sean's point there was, and there is today, like there's this demand for content that fits with a conservative perspective. The conservatives feel like they're not getting in the mainstream network news.

Levi Barnes (39:20.999)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (39:42.036)
And I don't know Sean that is that they're craving objectivity though. That's I think where I would disagree.

Shawn (39:45.395)
Yeah, yeah. No, I wasn't suggesting that at all. I know he's an extreme on the right side. I just didn't. I was always under the impression that there was this like vacuum and it was all liberal media. so radio popped up and they're like, well, Rush Limbaugh can be the opposite voice, but I could be wrong there. I was just wondering.

Matt (40:03.006)
Well, no, and Sean Hannity walked right in that space. Like he had a college radio station. What's that?

Levi Barnes (40:07.459)
He was later.

But he was later, right? And the rush was kind of the pioneer of this fact-free conservative talk gradient.

Matt (40:13.288)
Alright.

Sean Hannity was really close to the beginning with Rush Limbaugh. Yeah, Sean Hannity was there.

Levi Barnes (40:20.591)
Yeah, but I mean my objection is not that he's right. My objection is that he Doesn't care whether the thing that he's saying is true, right? That was my beef with rush is is he didn't you know? And you can't when you you get on you speak for five hours. Yeah, the stuff you're gonna say is gonna be Below me right lots of stuff. You're gonna say is not true and And I think that was where I saw the problem

It's not a matter of right. It's a matter of true and false and rush didn't care about truth And then neither did Fox News behind

Shawn (40:52.693)
And do you and you feel like them and you feel like the reaction to rush in order and you feel like the reaction to rush in order to compete was every news media started doing the same thing.

Levi Barnes (41:06.769)
Well, I mean, Fox News certainly stepped right in and said, wait a minute. Shoot. This is great. We don't have to say true stuff anymore. Magnificent. Let's just say. Yeah.

Shawn (41:13.985)
Yeah, yeah, but so does MSNBC. So does CNN. So that like everything I get on is just clickbait. All of it is. And it doesn't seem like it's trustworthy at all.

Matt (41:25.33)
I'm nervous about the government saying you have to present both sides. That always makes me uncomfortable. And I'm uncomfortable with the government being the truth police. So I'm okay with saying you have to be factually accurate or strive to be. You cannot openly lie. Just like we have truth in advertising. I'm fine if you said had some kind of truth in media sort of thing, but the penalties would have to be civil penalties, not criminal penalties. Otherwise I would not be comfortable with that.

Shawn (41:51.529)
Nice. Matt, like it. Okay, in the absence of Sam, you start taking this like, this capitalist side of things. And it's fun to hear you say those words coming out of your mouth. It's fun.

Levi Barnes (42:04.231)
But I did want to look at that. So the last part of the question, I think is the one that's most important to me is what does it mean for the market to control media? And I think, Matt, you're starting to get there, right? That if we don't have a government that says, look, you have to present both sides. Like the government might not say, you have to present both sides of, is fentanyl a good idea, right? Like we might say, okay, let's all just agree that taking fentanyl is a bad idea.

Matt (42:05.182)
But we-

Matt (42:16.84)
Mm-hmm.

Levi Barnes (42:33.915)
We don't have to put, you have to have somebody else on there that says, fentanyl is good, right? We don't have to present the both sides of every issue. But then when we have the state steps away, the market steps in, right? And this is the thing I think that Sean and I have a beef with a lot is when the market has an agenda, right? And so rich people are gonna step in and they're gonna say, aha, I can buy at media.

Shawn (42:34.295)
Hmm.

Shawn (42:38.423)
B-B-B-

Levi Barnes (42:58.371)
like Ben Franklin, like William Randolph Hearst, and I'm gonna teach people the things that I want them to think. And I think that's a problem too, because then we get the perspectives of rich people and not the perspectives of everyone else.

Shawn (43:11.307)
But Levi, you had just said, you know, 30 minutes ago, government is rich people and government is just people and people have just the same biases and self-interest as a business does. So if we put the power in the hands of a government, you're going to get the same kind of bias. You're going to get the same kind of unfairness.

Levi Barnes (43:27.423)
well, except that, so the difference between a business and a government is that a business listens to you based on the number of dollars you have. The market will always respond to your wealth, right? And so if you have 10 times as much wealth, you have 10 times as much power in the market. And the idea behind democracy, at least in the abstract, is that it doesn't matter how much wealth you have. One person gets one vote.

And I think that it's okay to have a balance to have, know, sure, we have some media that's controlled based on the number of dollars you have. And then we also have, you know, things like NPR. We have maybe an FCC that steps in and says, I think maybe you took that a little too far based on the values expressed in our elections where we have one vote, one person.

Matt (44:16.094)
The challenge though Levi is that public radio is never going to be financially viable. Right? I love that PBS exists. I love that NPR exists. I love having a, I know Sean would disagree, but it's an unbiased perspective. At least they try hard to present both sides. I know that some people disagree with that, but, but it is a snooze fest. I cannot sit through an entire hour of PBS news hour. Right. And, CNN or C-SPAN is out there broadcasting everything for free.

Shawn (44:32.887)
They don't try too hard.

Matt (44:46.234)
and nobody's watching it. So, so I mean, I, I, I love, like, I agree. Let's have this public space, but ultimately the market decides things. Like you have the right to freedom of speech. have a freedom of the press enshrined in the constitution, but that doesn't give you the right as a news organization to exist, right? Your right to exist is based on the size of your audience. And, and

I don't know that there's a more fair way to do that than to say, if you're speaking, like especially with the democratization of media, the media landscape, where you can basically put your content out there for everyone to see, then what better way is there to decide who should have a voice than the people who are being listened to should have the voice.

Levi Barnes (45:34.203)
Yeah, I mean, except that we have, I mean, most of our news, like through social media is handed to us by algorithms, which are controlled by huge corporations. I mean, I know we try to believe that they're, you know, balanced and neutral, but I don't think that anybody really believes that's true anymore.

Matt (45:53.694)
Yeah, but people have choices even in that space, right? I have friends that are all on blue sky because they don't like Twitter anymore. MySpace used to be the thing until people stopped trusting MySpace and then Facebook became the thing. So like, I don't know. And I don't know that there's a ton of people on Trump's truth social network, right? Like in some ways, even then, even the algorithms or the people that control the algorithms, they have to do it in the right way or they're not gonna have people that keep using their platform.

Levi Barnes (45:56.74)
Yeah

Levi Barnes (46:07.676)
Yeah.

Levi Barnes (46:21.991)
Yeah. Okay, so all sides, we like all sides. like, you guys heard of the tangle? Tangle's another one that tries to, you know, tries to show here's the right side, here's the left side and yeah.

Matt (46:22.728)
They're not, they don't have unlimited freedom.

Matt (46:28.829)
No.

Shawn (46:33.863)
Do you enjoy that kind of media, Levi?

Matt (46:34.483)
Yeah.

Levi Barnes (46:37.809)
Sure, somebody that says, yeah, here's what the right says. But I try to not live in a bubble, right? I try to follow people that are conservative just to see what conservatives are saying. Plus, I don't know, as a Mormon, there's plenty of conservative ideas floating around.

Matt (46:55.547)
I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal and to the New York Times and to the Washington Post and I get USA Today and NPR and like you can just read the news oh and I watch ABC News at night and Inside Edition like you can get your news from a variety of sources.

Shawn (47:09.623)
Who knew Levi who knew that this cool kid from Ogden, Utah on our mission would become the nerdiest of nerds as an adult. I watch it. You spliced it off like 10 news sources and cease and C-SPAN.

Matt (47:14.407)
you

Levi Barnes (47:19.781)
that watches nine different news channels. Yeah.

Matt (47:23.452)
I do like to reward people who do journalism. I'm willing to pay money and have reporters report the news. I know that there are, I have plenty of friends that want to just get their news from Instagram or YouTube or whatever, which is fine. The other day my wife saw what my algorithm on YouTube was showing me. She's like, what do you watch on YouTube? Your algorithm's messed up. I'm like, YouTube is my fun place. It's not my information space. And right, you just have to choose.

Levi Barnes (47:30.033)
Yeah.

Shawn (47:32.275)
I like that. I like that. Yeah.

Levi Barnes (47:46.107)
Ha ha ha.

Matt (47:53.31)
Where are you gonna spend your time and money?

Levi Barnes (47:55.151)
And money. think that's a really good message, Matt, is pay for your news, right? Yeah, pay for your news. Yeah.

Matt (48:00.006)
Yeah, if you want good news. Yeah. Okay, here's the big question. I'm so excited about this big question. my goodness. Okay, so.

Shawn (48:01.527)
haha

Levi Barnes (48:07.995)
I'm a little nervous about this big question, if I'm honest. All right. Okay.

Matt (48:11.728)
Okay, so and I get I might have the physics wrong, but I did my daughter is Melanie is a physics major and she told me this the other day and I might have it a little wrong, but she says that if you look at like statistical physics and something with mechanics anyhow, okay. What I learned Levi knows those words mean I think I recently learned that many particles in physics do not individually.

Shawn (48:27.095)
Good start.

Matt (48:38.054)
adhere to what we think of as laws of physics. So as an example, like quantum physics is all about the idea that subatomic particles do not adhere to Newton's laws of motion, like as an example, but there are other examples. So while the individual behavior of like these countless particles is impossible to predict or track, their collective behavior can be understood and predicted using probability and statistics. And that is what leads to what we think of as laws of physics.

In behavioral sciences, it's the same thing. I can't predict like what each person is going to do, but I can predict like what a group of people are likely to do. And laws of nature, think probably function in about the same way. So my question is, now Sean firmly believes in these laws, natural laws that can be learned and adhered to. And I think that what if, what if these laws are not really laws, but it's just that like God is omnipotent.

And he sees all of these statistical probabilities and all of these tendencies and all of these things. And so what he gives to us as laws aren't really laws. They're just like tendencies in general, like rules of thumb and the way things kind of generally work. Now I know that there's scriptures that say that there's laws, but my question is what if laws don't really exist? It's just this thing that God uses to try to help us comprehend eternal concepts like time.

or endless punishment or eternal life, but they don't really exist.

Shawn (50:12.309)
This could possibly be one of my favorite questions that has ever been asked on the Latter Day Lens. No, let's just start with Levi though, right? Because he needs to fix half the things you said probably.

Matt (50:15.572)
Tell me Sean. Okay.

Levi Barnes (50:22.791)
Wait, but I love it too. I love it too. And I thought, there goes Matt trying to make physics woke. And I was going to say physics is woke, Physics has always been woke. But I like this concept that, I mean, it is true, right? That if you try to treat an electron like it's a particle, you'll be super confused because it's not going to obey an individual electron, right? You can observe things that are clearly not consistent with Newtonian physics.

And you'd have to say, oh, whoops, Newtonian physics must be wrong. And it is, right? But it's a really good approximation when you have, yeah, these collections, right? And when I have collections of particles, I can say, OK, when I do this experiment a million times, I can predict what I'm going to see. And I agree that it applies to social things, too.

Matt (51:09.576)
But real quickly, Vi.

Real quickly, Newtonian physics is these laws of motion, right? Inertia, an object in motion stays in motion. Yeah, okay. Just so listeners who don't know physics kind of understand.

Levi Barnes (51:21.67)
Yeah.

Levi Barnes (51:25.913)
Right, right. Yeah, force equals mass times acceleration. Yeah, that sort of Newtonian physics, when things get small enough that they kind of start to break down and you can do experiments like a two slit experiment and you can say, wait, electron didn't do what Newton said it should do.

Shawn (51:42.795)
Okay, so based on that evidence, Matt, you're basically suggesting that my claim, that my fight for absolute and universal law and truth maybe isn't quite true, but instead relative truth is more what governs us and God is just putting us in this little mortal box and using these laws to help us understand and comprehend things in a mortal way. Is that right? Is that your case? So, I mean, there's a couple of answers to that, right?

Matt (52:07.24)
That's a possibility. Yeah.

Shawn (52:12.695)
Maybe, maybe we just don't understand the laws well enough. Maybe mankind observing the collective or observing the individual just doesn't have a great understanding of the law. Okay, if you don't like that, because the face you're making, I'll maybe go back to this. listen, my favorite, there's like three or four accountings of the creation story. And my favorite one by far is the Pearl of Great Price in Abraham 4. He goes through

every day of the creation. Then he ends it with this. I'll just give the last day for an example or the whatever, fifth day. The gods organized the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night, with the lesser light set the stars also. And the gods set them apart in the expanse of the heavens, right? Commanded and then they put it all in order, caused it to all happen. And then at the end of each one, it says this, and the gods watched those things which they had ordered until they obeyed. So maybe, Matt, maybe all matter has agency.

And if that's the case, then maybe we're observing disobedience to the laws that exist and not the absence of the law.

Matt (53:16.166)
Yeah, okay. What do you say to that Levi?

Levi Barnes (53:19.151)
I dig it. I love this. Yeah. And I've thought about this too, is I thought, if electrons have agency? what if, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because there is a certain randomness. Like that's the thing that we discover in physics is that it's truly random. In an electron's behavior, there's something there that's, that it's not about something that is there that we can't observe. It really is truly probabilistic. Yeah. So I like it.

Matt (53:29.095)
And so then...

Shawn (53:45.619)
Levi, tackle my first thought that maybe we just don't understand the laws well enough. Am I totally off on that? Is there enough evidence that we have a good grasp on these theories and these laws? Or is it true that maybe you guys are just all wrong? Or is there enough evidence to go, no, no, no, look, these things work. That's how we can create this and that's how we developed this.

Levi Barnes (54:08.487)
We don't understand the laws of physics. Is that what you're saying? I think that's certainly true. I think that's 100 % true. Yeah, obviously we don't understand the laws of physics. Yeah

Shawn (54:11.66)
Well, just

Matt (54:14.932)
How dare he? How dare he?

Shawn (54:16.637)
Look at Matt, get upset. Look at Matt's face right now. Matt, you experts don't have it all right.

Matt (54:22.503)
I've...

Matt (54:26.248)
Well, I think I can say this at the beginning. I do not like to follow rules. And I don't like the idea that God created laws, that it's super important for us to obey laws. And I also don't like the idea that God is both omnipotent and subject to laws. Like that doesn't sit well with me. And so when I think of commandments, I don't think of it as like,

Levi Barnes (54:46.001)
Mm-hmm, right.

Matt (54:51.644)
Okay, take that verse that says, is a law irrevocably decreed before the foundation of the world upon which all blessings are predicated. And when we receive a blessing, it's by obedience to the law. I don't think that that means that God sat up and he said, these are the commandments I want people to follow. So if they follow these commandments, these are the blessings I'm gonna give them for following those commandments. I think it's more likely that he said, this is the way things are, eternally. And,

There are these tendencies and these ways that like, if you do these kinds of things, you're going to be happy. And if you do these kinds of things, you're going to be sad. And so he frames it as this is a commandment or this is a law, not because he cares if we obey the law or don't obey the law, but because he wants us to understand these broader tendencies of all things in nature. And he's just kind of giving us counsel and guidance and saying, do this.

Shawn (55:42.107)
So that theory of yours is suggesting that there are absolute universal truths. Not everything. There's also relativism. there are objective absolute universal truths.

Levi Barnes (55:42.801)
Mm.

Matt (55:50.356)
absolute and universal tendencies that are probabilistically predictable, but not immutable.

Shawn (55:57.929)
What what? Explain then why?

Matt (56:01.428)
I can, my son the other day was saying to me, dad, you told me I was gonna wind up like on drugs and in jail and I was gonna waste my life. And look, I turned out to be something better. And I was like, okay, well what happened with all of your friends? Well, they're addicted to drugs and they're in jail and their lives are no good. And I can say, I said to him, well, don't you think then it was a good prediction on my part that if you keep going down that path, you're gonna end up like your friends ended up. He's like, yeah, but I didn't. And I'm like, well.

Shawn (56:10.956)
Hahaha

Matt (56:28.532)
That's because you'd show something different, but the odds were you were going to end up in that situation.

Levi Barnes (56:33.863)
So I had this conversation with my daughter the other day and she We had the same sort of idea right that I watched my friends and most of them, you know did some dabbling in drugs and alcohol and and Most of them turned out fine, right and a few of them, right you see them posting now on social media and they're like Hey guys, I'm 10 years sober and you see that that's been like a real hardship. That was really

Shawn (56:34.869)
Levi, you're shaking your head. You like that example?

Levi Barnes (57:04.142)
of a disaster in their life, the use of alcohol. And I pointed this out to my daughter and I said, you know, when you watch your friends, everybody's gonna go out drinking and 90 % of them are gonna be great. But what about that 10 %? And she said, that's pretty good. She said, yeah, five out of six people think Russian roulette's a really fun game.

And I was like, yeah, exactly right. Because you got out OK, you think that that was, you took the right path. Maybe you just lucked out. And maybe we owe something to the people that rolled badly.

Matt (57:26.576)
you

Shawn (57:42.263)
But Matt, is that example, explain to me how that confirms a point you're trying to make, as applied to...

Matt (57:49.524)
God is all-knowing, right? And so God knows all of the general tendencies, perhaps even to the point that he can like look at our specific situation and say, look, this is what's gonna happen in your life, or he can guide you and say, look, do this or do this. But that, okay, maybe our tools of estimating probabilities are not as, let's say as accurate as his are, that he has more information, more knowledge, more ability, so that my general principles, I might've gotten it wrong with my son.

but he knows so much that his probabilistic knowledge can really predict really well what's gonna happen, so much so that he can create these things that we think of as a law, but it's not really a law.

Shawn (58:28.535)
So you created, you asked the question purposely to trick us, because you didn't take the path that you were intending to take, So to wrap it up, because you love the annuacoptus, right? The phrase annuacoptus, you love that. That's the phrase on our great seal of America, the annuacoptus.

Matt (58:40.136)
Go!

Matt (58:46.836)
I don't even know what that means.

Matt (58:53.456)
I forgot to bring my great seal with me tonight. I wasn't... Sean, do know the last time I looked at a dollar bill? It's all Bitcoin now, Sean, it's all Bitcoin. Is Anio Kaptas on the Bitcoin?

Shawn (58:56.841)
It's on the dollar bill. It's on the dollar bill, right, Levi? It's on the dollar bill. Go.

Levi Barnes (59:01.703)
Ha

Shawn (59:02.615)
And

Shawn (59:08.479)
It might be. I don't know.

Levi Barnes (59:08.857)
Matt's dealing with 20s and lower, hundreds and and above that's dealing with. Rolling in the Benjamins over there at universities.

Shawn (59:12.503)
Not the great sill of this country.

Matt (59:19.23)
You

Shawn (59:19.477)
Matt the great seal says and your copters which means Providence prospered our endeavor, right principles govern laws absolute universal.

Matt (59:29.492)
I did not persuade you. I can see I did not persuade you, Sean.

Shawn (59:32.587)
Wait a minute, I thought that was the point you were trying to make, is that these laws do exist. You did say that. that's what you're calling it.

Matt (59:37.042)
No, probabilistic tendencies. He just calls them laws, but they're probabilistic.

Levi Barnes (59:42.181)
Well, and man, think that quantum mechanics was, think thermodynamics is the place that you want to deal in, Like thermodynamics talks about these bulk properties of matter, right? There's no such thing as a temperature for a single atom, right? Temperature is the thing that we use to describe bulk groups of matter, right? And so,

Shawn (59:44.607)
Levi, what's the difference between that?

Levi Barnes (01:00:11.269)
I think that's what you're saying is that God said, look, I look at you guys as a big bulk of humanity, a big mass of humanity, and here are some laws that are really important. But individually, we might have, there might be different things going on, right? They might not apply necessarily to all of us individually. Is that closer to what you're saying, Matt?

Matt (01:00:35.09)
No, but I really like what you said.

Shawn (01:00:35.703)
Well, Matt, let me try this clarity. Maybe a little bit. Not if you're close. I think the only evidence that could... There is evidence that could support your theory, your weird theory. Because whenever... Because it does... I have always been interested in how when God talks about... For example, D &C 132, right? For all those who have a blessing at my hands shall abide the law which was appointed for that blessing and the conditions thereof.

Levi Barnes (01:00:36.423)
No, not even close, huh? Okay, Sean, you take a stab again.

Shawn (01:01:02.615)
That language says that there was a genesis of the blessing or the consequence that comes from that law, right? You said irrevocably decreed, do the, keep going with it, what does it say?

Matt (01:01:13.672)
before the foundation of the world, upon which all laws are predicated.

Shawn (01:01:18.059)
But what was the first part of it?

Matt (01:01:20.648)
There is a law irrevocably decreed before the foundation of the-

Shawn (01:01:22.593)
There you go, there you go. So that suggests perhaps that there was a Genesis, right? At one point it was decreed to be such, right? That doesn't necessarily suggest that it's always, he didn't say, look, there's an absolute internal law that has always existed and we're gonna apply it now. So there is common language in scripture that says, I appoint this law, like as if there's a Genesis to the law, or it was decreed at one point, which means it was created, right?

Matt (01:01:29.798)
Mm-hmm. Sure.

Matt (01:01:37.682)
Mm.

Shawn (01:01:48.08)
So I can see that that language is in scripture, but I don't think that's strong enough language to say that there isn't absolute and universal law. I don't know.

Matt (01:01:56.41)
Okay. I love it. I just wanted to talk with you guys about this because you guys are smart. I know that Sean loves law and I know that Levi loves physics. So.

Shawn (01:02:01.814)
What? I want-

Well, I want to final opinion from Levi. Levi, are there laws that are absolute and universal or as mad as lying and spitting off right now? I'm just kidding. Is there no law? Everything is relative. There's just, what do you call it? Probable.

Matt (01:02:21.214)
Probabilistic tendencies.

Shawn (01:02:22.261)
Yeah. What do you stand Levi? And you answer directly man. Don't you go off on your your your genius gobbledygook.

Levi Barnes (01:02:25.879)
Matt (01:02:28.724)
Please, please Levi, we're in trouble. We need a direct answer.

Levi Barnes (01:02:29.265)
No, no, I-

Shawn (01:02:34.482)
Hahaha

Levi Barnes (01:02:35.055)
I know I do think that there are some universal laws. I'm never confident that we know what they are. Like I'm never, I'm always skeptical of somebody that says, I know what the laws are. I don't think you know. But we search, we keep searching.

Shawn (01:02:39.051)
Yes, yes, yes.

Matt loses.

Shawn (01:02:51.487)
I like that. I love that. I love that and I love that Matt just lost the big final question debate. I love it. That's great.

Matt (01:02:51.944)
That's awesome.

Matt (01:02:59.636)
Hey, we're going to have that be the last word this week. That was great, you guys. Thank you so much. This was fun. And listener, let us know what you think and we'll talk to you again next week.

Shawn (01:03:02.849)
Ha ha ha ha.