Joshua Keith Craft

0:52 Well, you know, the best part about this dude is I got better coffee. So, you know, you do have better coffee. I'm drinking uh I'm drinking uh tea and lemonade. Death. Liquid Death. Is that Liquid Death? Liquid Death. I've heard it's I've heard it's like the they're they're uh they're not great, though. They're like demonic, man. Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah. So, anyways, that's a there's a great way to start off the uh the What do you mean? Uh what do you mean they're demonic? There was like Okay, so I've not corroborated this. I suppose the good thing about doing what we're Oh, you haven't verified this information. So, no, but that's 100% true then considering how people do things on the internet now. Dude, I saw a Reel on Instagram. It's guaranteed fact. But but the uh apparently he said he uh he like praised to the death. Who's he? The the CEO of Liquid Death.

1:44 Oh, wow. Okay. Um so, let me see. Based on marketing campaigns, public slave CEO of Liquid Death , Mike Ceero has not actually prayed to the demo. Instead, the company has utilized satirical marketing stunts related to occult themes to promote its murder your thirst brand. Oh, man. It's all just spin. Well, but also I mean like kind of Oh, this this is where this is where it came from. In 2019, they hired a witch doctor to curse a batch of their water as a publicity stunt for Halloween. Yeah, that's a man who does not understand the power of spirit. That's probably uh that might that might be the definition of playing with fire. Like literally. Yeah, quite literally. Just joking around about spiritual things. Yeah. Also, I wonder how much you paid him, you know, on a practical note. That's I Where do you even find a service? Where do you go? You just Google like witch doctors in my area at Craigslist. Glass Door has witch doctors. I'm sure we can find them there.

2:37 So man, what I was, you know, last last podcast, last episode, I think it was a good example to me in my opinion, I think is a good example of just the dialogue as a practice because I really felt like in our conversation, I was just stumbling all over myself. Okay. I did not expect you to say No, I Yeah. No, I really felt like, oh, okay, you know, we're going to talk about principles versus preferences, and then I I always um I don't always, but I getting into politics and stuff, I think it's such a it's it's messy. It's messy to talk about in general because so much of politics is uh ideological and so much of politics has become spiritual for people, right? And it has become spiritual. And so I think in my mind I was figuring it out while we were talking because you know I really believe I personally I really believe I'm an idealist you know I think compromise can work. I think compromise is one of the things that uh builds great anything. It builds great families. It builds great builds great societies. It's built a great country in America. You know, America is kind of built on this idea of a lot of people from all different places coming together and working together with each other's ideas to build something better together than it would be if it was separate, you know, if it was just like one one person's idea. Um, but also like as I thought about it after we did that because I told you, you know, I almost didn't want to post that episode.

4:10 Yeah. I I was actually I actually didn't think we were going to and I was like, "Oh, there it is." So, well, I think we might have lost some people. Some people might not like the conversation, but I think that's the point of having dialogues, you know, because you you just I think you you have to admit, and we all have to admit, right? There's just some uh uh there's some things that I think I know about that I don't know that much about, you know, or there's some there's what's interesting to me, and I I don't know how to say this correctly, so hopefully it makes sense. Uh there's things that I think that I'm sure of that when I start talking about them and try to explain them, it's like, oh, I'm actually not that sure. Yeah. That I know what I'm talking about here. But that's a lot of people, man. I think, you know, the thing that's that's interesting, Josh, like I I I don't know. I feel like people talk to me more about this podcast than they do to you.

5:04 I don't know. Maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong, but um that's true. I don't But I don't I don't see people a lot. I avoid people. So, they gota they got to catch they got to catch me somewhere. Praise the Lord. Come to uh 7500 Teal Parkway on Sundays. 8500. I don't know what 7500 is. You can go there, too. But I was trying to throw them off, man. Yeah. Anyways, yeah. 8500. You I I should know the church address. I've been going 8500 to Parkway, Frisco, Texas. There you go. But uh no, but I think that that's one of the things that people the feedback I've had is that I think people like being able to explore the way they think because I mean this has been the joy for me is that that I didn't see coming is that it's forced me to look at a lot exactly what you just said. I've looked at a lot of the stuff that I think about and I've gone, "Okay, what's the sub layer below this?" Because that's what's so easy about popping off on social media or what a lot of what people quote unquote hold true these days is that they never have to have anybody start to poke holes in it. And so I think what's what's unique about you and about this podcast is you're willing to go down the road of someplace and like yeah I don't know where we're going to end up and we may not actually get the answer. And that's like well why are you putting that in a podcast? It's like well because if you can stir thought processes and conversation amongst other people off of that great you know I mean like that's the whole point is that that through dialogue right that we reveal knowledge.

6:19 And so I think in some ways we're kind of doing what we said we do. Uh it's just this is not like a neatly packaged uh you know we're not we don't have any publicity stunts to make it seem nice and clean. It's like sometimes it's like yeah we're going to go down this road and um we may take a left few left turns and a few right ones and go like oh well didn't think we'd be here we're going to figure it out kind of. So what did you what struck what struck you about last episode have you that you've maybe come to more clarity about? Um or did something strike you? Well, I think there's uh there's when when we're talking about principles and preferences, we're not talking about there's a difference. Well, there's a difference between talking about ideological and spiritual conflict and even principles and preferences, right? Because when you're talking about preferences, you're talking about uh beliefs, you know, like here's what I believe or here's what I think or here's how I think that should be. And beliefs are beliefs are these things that you like and you want other people to agree with you.

7:24 You know, I want I like a belief, right, would be uh you know um socialized medicine, right? Like I I don't personally believe this, but if if I believed that socialized medicine and that that healthc care was a right and that socialized medicine is something that we should all have, I would want as many people as possible to agree with me on that. Right? That's that's a belief. That's like a preference. So the the there's then you have a conviction. So a conviction is something you would die for, right? And most people most people wouldn't die for their beliefs. But yeah, the conflicts the conflicts that we have. So as much as as much as I believe personally in compromise and the power of compromise and that compromise really does make the world a better place um there are some things that you can't compromise about and and principles principles are those things where you say uh where you and I do say hey I'm willing to die on this hill actually right like I'm willing to this is so important to me this isn't a belief I mean it is something I believe but it's a conviction it's a deeper level of belief where uh I am willing to in this relationship, I'm willing to fight for this. I'm willing to, you know, whatever the consequences are for this conviction I have, I'm willing to just make a stand on that. I think those are those are those are principles, right?

8:54 And so I I feel like I feel like Go ahead. Sorry. No, I was going to ask you so because I'm just trying to understand your your your So, can you have conviction the way that you believe without if it's not principle-based? Because like some people would die for uh or like end a friendship for things that I would say are preference based. speaking from experience because I've had friends who were uh on the left side of the aisle decide they didn't want to be friends with me anymore which was really odd to me because I'm not like a raging conservative that's like you know going off you know like if you looked at my total social media post maybe there's like yeah you're not you're not you don't have an opinion about every geopolitical issue that takes place here I don't I just I I um well you have one but you just don't share it with everybody all the time man yeah and I and because I because I I because I think that your your opinion is only as valuable as the price paid to form it. And I don't spend a lot of time paying attention to what's going on in politics.

9:48 I think that's a really good thought and I think that more people should live that way. Well, there you go. Let's just end the podcast. We'll clip that. Put it on Instagram. It'll take five. No, I mean your opinion is only as valuable as the price you paid to form it. Like how many people are walking around like it's like I feel the same way. Like if you served in the military, right, and you you made sacrifices for this country, then I really value what those people have to say about like this war in Iran or whatever it is, right? The human sacrifice that it takes to advance freedom in the world and all that. I value that because of the price they paid to form their opinion. No one should really care about what my opinion is on war. I didn't go to war. I'm, you know, I didn't sign up to be in the military. Sure, I have an opinion about that, but like you're saying, it's not as valuable as the person who actually paid a price to develop the opinion that they have.

10:42 And I think probably the lowest level price you can pay is like an intellectual price. So people go, "Well, I went and read a book." Yeah. I mean, yeah, but you know what though, Josh, as much as I hate to say this, man, a lot of people don't even pay that price. And I and like I I I this is anecdotal because I've not done a study, but like you could I'm sure we could look at like how much time people are spending reading now compared to in the past. And like I mean I was on a call today with some clients and they were saying that like you can't even have a paragraph of copy on a product page because Americans don't read. And it was so embarrassing. his client's based overseas and like I just I said to them I was like this is a sad reflection on our culture but it's got to be bullet points and headlines and it's like that's so they just don't Americans that's in so you know so so people that don't know you're you're profession you're a marketer you do you do massive global stuff all over the world and uh the prevailing opinion on Americans is that we just won't even read a paragraph of marketing copy this is this is coming from somebody else that I work with in the in the marketing agency we're we're consulting with a client and one of the things we looked at was their product page to make sure it has a people have a good user experience and it was like a paragraph of copy and this the my colleague rightly said like hey you guys need to like clean this up and and and that's what I said I said bullet bullet points I mean if you look if you ever want to know how to do things well go to Amazon and what do they have a bunch of bullet points and and more pictures than anything and that's unfortunately that's how you get people to buy things pictures and a few bullet points with their like the FAQs you know TLDR that's what everybody wants like oh too long didn't read you should read But go but going back to the price that you pay. I think that I think that's a great Let me just like I think that's a great example of exactly what you're talking about that you know most people feel like their opinion is really important and they've paid like no price to form it.

12:27 They've done zero work to form an opinion but at the same time they're like my opinions are really that important. That's what social media is for man is it's like everybody can spout off their opinions and and but I do think that there's there there has to be like the price that you pay. Okay. I mean, so like if you Yeah, if you served, you definitely have a lot more authority, but that also doesn't necessarily mean that you're an expert because there's multiple sides that are involved because guess what? A lot of the people that are calling the shots, President Trump's never served. He's ordering air strikes, right? He's taking advice from people. So, it can't be that if you haven't served, you're not allowed to have an opinion. But it does it does you do have to sit there and go like, how well formed is it and what have you actually done? Because like I think for example you on when we start when you start bringing in the amount of the volume of time that you've spent reading assimilating theological philosophical knowledge into your thought process I do think that that puts you in like I don't think there's many people that have what that I've come across that have what you have. So in that respect I say you've paid a great price to form that. Yeah.

13:24 Right. Your own mental anguish like Yeah. Well I just mean uh I I would value it I would I would value it less. You know, it's like it's like Trump, you know, like Trump hasn't served, but he's surrounded by people who have served like, right, you know, Pete Hegseth, all those guys, right? Oh, yeah. And so, you're gonna listen more to someone who's paid a price to formulate that opinion. Um, but anyway, you we were talking about the divide and Yeah. Yeah. Because I was asking what I was asking if you can only have conviction about something that's principled because you said it's where you would like, you know, a belief is something that you hold, but a conviction is something you die for. And so I'm just trying to establish cuz like can you have a conviction about a preference, you know, like I that it's a legit question just to kind of Well, no, I think but I think that I think we did do a good job of talking about that on the last episode, but I think that's what we talked about about uh most people turn their preferences into principles. So they allow the preference dynamic to create division where preferences aren't really that important. like preferences can change, preferences can shift, preferences are trendy, but most people aren't clear on their principles. And so they they uh so it's almost like they either they either turn everything into a principle, right?

14:47 And there's so many people like that who everything in their life just has to be their way. And if it's not their way, like forget everybody else and forget everything else because I deserve to have it my way. There's some people who are that way and that's maybe one one end of the extreme. The other end of the extreme to me is people who uh have no principles and they think that everything is and they think that everything doesn't matter because everything's a preference. And this is what you see in to me the divide between Islam and Christianity. So, so the the the average and even Christians, you know, but like let's just say the average American, the average Western person, they don't really see Islam as a negative. They don't see Islam as a threat. They see Islam as a different a different belief system that in the West we should learn to be tolerant of, right? Like we should we should tolerate it.

15:44 Um the the problem you know and I actually do know something about this. I know more about this than I know about politics. So uh the problem with that is the whole foundation of Islam is completely antithetical to any kind of biblical or Christian belief system. Yeah. 100%. And so as much as I personally believe compromise can work when I'm what I'm learning how to how the way I'm learning how to talk about this at this point in my life is as much as I believe that compromise can work there are some things you just can't compromise about. Yeah. So compromise can work but there's some things you can't compromise on. So the foundation of um like I saw this really interesting thing like Zohran Mamdani, right? The the governor Yeah. the mayor of New York. He he acts like he's the governor of New York, but yeah.

16:40 Uh the uh the socialist dictator of New York. Uh tell us as I wear my New York Yankee shirt here. Well, you know, we could we can like the Yankees. They they've been there since before. Um that's right. And they'll be there after America. Yeah. But I don't know. the Dodgers are gonna it's the you know it's yeah it's it's it's all just an exercise but keep going. I'm not distracted with baseball at this as you drink more liquid at this point at this point in baseball. We're just we're just pretending like there's competition here. Well, we'll see. World Baseball Classic's coming up, man. That's all I'm paying attention for. Come on. Yeah, we're get all the Americans together and try to try to beat try to beat the Japanese. Um it's gonna be a good good one. Anyway, um so he comes out and he he says he says this really interesting thing which makes sense if you don't understand the history of Islam. So he says uh you know uh Muhammad was an immigrant and he was a foreigner and we should try to be uh towards people like like these countries were towards Muhammad, right?

17:42 Um and he says something like that. I'm totally paraphrasing, right? I don't have a desire to go find this direct quote from Mamdani. That's it's not worth my time. But it's so fascinating to me that he would say that because the found if you go read this, the foundation of Islam is conquest, death, invasion, destruction. Uh Muhammad was sent on a on a quest. He was sent on a literal war like a war path from God to destroy everything that was not going to align with Islamic thought and belief. So yes, Muhammad was an immigrant, but he was an immigrant that came into all these countries, brought an army with them and destroyed everybody and killed as many people as possible to take over the country in the name of Allah, Allah, whatever.

18:34 Right. Yeah. And so Islam is this thing that the more you read about it and the more you learn about Islam, it's it's just diametrically opposed to any kind of Christian belief system. So So for me, you have to if you're thinking about leadership and you're thinking about what you allow and what you compromise on in the context of uh the West, the West fundamentally is built on uh Judeo-Christian ethics, Judeo-Christian worldview. and to tolerate Islam as another um as another part of as another part of that discussion pulls us away from the foundations of who we are and and the foundations of even Christianity, right? Well, if you're if you're a believer in the if you're a Christian and you're a believer in the Bible and that Jesus Christ is the son of God, you cannot coexist with Islam simply because like literally they say that Jesus was a prophet but not the son of God and that the uh that the the death on the cross was actually faked.

19:42 Yeah. You mean like it's it's interesting because they taught Jesus's name is in the is in the Quran more than Muhammad's name is. Yeah. I I don't think that I don't think I think it's like 26 times or something and Muhammad I don't think he's he's in there one time. Yeah. Yeah. And there's well and there's the religious aspects to it, right? And I haven't read the Quran, but there's the religious aspects to it. But it's not even about the religious to me from a principles and preferences perspective. It's not about our Christianity and Islam compatible. It's is is the West and Islam compatible? Right. Right. So the Western world was built on principles that are drawn from scripture, whether that's Hebrew scripture, the Old Testament, or the New Testament. Um, you can't have a society that's built on that stuff that that allows things that are antithetical to that to become uh prevailing thought processes that we begin to turn into principles of these nations, right? Right.

20:42 It's it's not even you know- Islam and Christianity are completely incompatible. But even beyond that, this is where this is where to me I think I want to bring greater clarity on the on the difference between uh principles and preferences. Islam is not a preference thing, right? Islam is a Islam has a certain set of principles. It has a certain ideology. There's a certain level of uh spirituality to it. And when you get when you and I get to the point where we have ideological or spiritual conflict, we're we're disagreeing in principle. Right. And we have to be I think we have to be clear enough on our convictions that we go, okay, I can't I can't um I can't I'm not necessarily going to win someone over. You're not going to you're not going to win over like you can you can intellectually debate with a Muslim. You could you could talk to them about the um the belief in Jesus as long as or or the perspective on Jesus and all that as long as they're open to have that conversation.

21:42 Right. Right. You're you're not gonna you're not going to create a world and this is what people think can happen. Right. In the Western world, you can't create a world where Islam and Christianity coexist peacefully at the same time if here's a big caveat. if the people who are you're talking about actually take it seriously 100% because if you and I like let's be honest um like we I think sometimes you know you you have quote unquote the other guys painted as like they're all these zealots like the you know the taken seriously everyone's a jihadist or whatever yeah they're they're just they're here to take over and I'm like hang on one of my best friends growing up was literally an illegal immigrant from Lebanon. I found out he was illegal in high school. That was a real revelation. Uh this was post 911. Um or actually no I was still I I was in high school pre 911. But the point being when we found out post 911 it was like what we went through high school with you and you were like illegal the whole time. Now his his every I watched him observe Eid and uh Ramadan and like ate ate the meal with him and like you know observe the culture. I can tell you his country his family has zero interest in like death to America. They they live in a great house. They all have nice jobs. They're comfortable man. they got their piece of the American dream now. So like this, you know, so I think it's really interesting to note like there are people there's ways that it can coexist, but I don't think there's ways that it can coexist if you are like 100% allin because on the same on the same token, the way that you talk about how people think, oh, we can live peacefully because they'll hear things like it's a religion of peace and all that sort of stuff. If you talk about this all the time, if you can't really even know what you stand for and like what the Bible says about things, why would you ever know what somebody else's belief system or religion says about it? You know what I mean? Like it's weird because it these are principles, but I think sometimes people take them with the seriousness of preferences like you know what do you prefer ketchup or mustard on your hot dog? Yeah. Right. And like that's I I'm not signing to be insulting but really that's like the some I I don't think people consider truth.

23:42 No. That's and that's, you know, and that's what I was saying earlier was you have this on one side of the side of the spectrum or whatever. You have people that turn every preference that they have into a principle. Right. Right. On the other side, which is what you're talking about, you have people that there's no such thing as pre principles. It's just preferences. So, it's just like I'm not against religious freedom, right? I'm I'm not saying we should be intolerant of other belief systems or of Islam. That's like that's not that's not even that's not biblical. It's not biblical to be an intolerant person or to be bigoted, right, against against things. Yeah. Um what I am saying is that in a society and in a world that's built on a certain on a certain uh set of ethics, okay, a certain set of principles to allow other people who do not share those principles to represent their principles, you have to abandon yours.

24:43 Right. Right. So this that's the difference between that's the culture clash. Yeah. That's the difference between between principles and preferences. That's ideological conflict is when you get to this point where you go, okay, um a um a person who really really believes in again the fundamental kind of way that Islam gets advanced. the person who really believes in that they're a religion, an ideology of conquest, okay? They just they just fundamentally are. So, we're going to come in, we're going to bring our own laws, we're going to bring our own way of doing things that's all based on our principles. Okay? Yeah. You can you can create a world where uh those people can live but you can't you can't create a world where those people get to decide what the laws are right which is what is beginning to happen in the western world like it's what's happened in uh it's what's happening in the UK where you used to live it's what's happening in places like Germany it's what's beginning to happen in America it's what's happened in in Australia and that that's not like oh man I'm I'm afraid or we have to rise up. It's just the problem is that so many of us The problem is in in life. So I'm I'm drawing that perspective not because I want to, you know, do an episode on Islam versus Christianity.

26:10 I'm drawing that perspective because that's understanding that might be the clearest example of being divided on principles that that exists in our modern world. So when you have these things that are completely incompatible, for me to compromise, right, so for me to compromise with that means means that I would be compromising my principles, right? I wouldn't just be I wouldn't just be compromising preferences. So right, you know, there's I I I wouldn't like if um socialized medicine got passed in America or like the singlepayer system. I wouldn't like that. I wouldn't like how that effect affected my taxes. I don't necessarily agree with that. But that's not an ideological conflict to me personally. That's not a principle-based conflict because I believe that people should take care of their health.

27:06 The preference is how do we do that, right? Where we disagree uh in in preference, we can sit down and talk and find a find a solution. Right? the founding fathers of America uh agreed even though the the the constitutional congress and all that was like massive disagreements and a lot of these people didn't even like each other they agreed on the idea of America right you know which is amazing yeah so they agreed on the principle so then the preferences it's like okay well let's figure out okay there's like a federation of states and what does the federal government do on and on and on and on well what what we're dealing with what we're navigating a lot right now is stuff that's not it's getting painted as religious tolerance. It's getting painted as preferences, but it's all principles.

27:59 Thank you for listening to The Dialog. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe. And also, if you think someone else would enjoy this, please send it to them. If you want to get in touch or learn more about me, what I think, speak, and write, you can go to joshuacraft.com. Or you can also follow Nick and I on Instagram. Our handles are in the show notes. We'll see you next time.