CARM's 25 Year Anniversary Celebration

CARM’s Origins in Apologetics and the Early Internet

All right, everybody, welcome. This is the virtual celebration of the CARM anniversary, 25 years. It was actually yesterday, which was the 25th. That fell on a Sunday. So I figured what we'd do is move it to a Monday here, the celebration thing, and get people to come in and talk.

Whoever's interested, they could do that. And we'll have people joining in. We got one from zero to four just now. So people are gonna be coming in and we'll just see how it goes. We're in StreamYard, which means we're gonna have up to eight people in this area here that you're seeing.

And we'll get people in and out as they rotate through. So that's it. I expect to have a lot of people coming in. I let people know, and hopefully we'll get the missionaries in as well. And when they come in, we'll give them the floor a little bit, we'll talk to them and stuff like that.

So just letting everybody know about that. And I wanna thank everybody for your support of CARM. I know there's a lot of people who hate CARM who might be watching, but we also know that there are a lot of people who really do support CARM like Charlie here and Laura Anderson and Anthony Silvestro down there in the corner.

He's a, doesn't really help CARM in the formal sense of doing things, but he's a good guy, supporter. He's a great man of God. Known him for years. And so we have a lot of people, I'm sure, who are gonna be wanting to get in.

And just so you know, and maybe I can post a link in here. This is for chatting if you want to get in and be on the video here and you can check it out. So again, this is the 25th anniversary virtual celebration, Shindig for the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry.

I started the ministry 25 years ago. So what I thought I would do is tell you why I started it, what the reason was. And it's really kind of overly simplistic. It was more or less an accident because what happened was, get people added in.

Charlie, are you able to add people in? I can, if you'd like, yes. You can just control it, it'll be fine. Hey, Joanne. So actually, Charlie here, Charlie is the one who got me involved in apologetics.

We were at a Bible study. I didn't even met the guy, maybe a week before. And he read me a quote from Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith boasts that he did more than even Jesus to keep a church together. It's a real arrogant boast.

And it made me so mad that I snatched the paper out of his hand and I said, who said this? And Charlie said, well, Joseph Smith. I said, well, who's that? He said, the founder of Mormonism. And I actually said, well, Mormons are Christian, but this guy isn't.

And Charlie started to correct me. And one thing led to another, and we started studying with Jerry and Marian Bodine, which he was already studying with them, who were kind of disciple helpers of Walter Martin from the Christian Research Institute.

So we started studying this stuff. Well, I got pretty knowledgeable kind of fast. I mean, I was really intrigued. And so as things often happen, I got married later and I had already graduated from seminary.

And I was already answering a lot of questions for a lot of people. Well, there was this thing called BBSs. This is before the internet, the bulletin board systems. And what you would do is get your phone and you'd hook up to the computer and you would dial in and it would go.

And you'd dial in and you'd get online. I said to my wife, I said, I'm gonna be online on the BBS. She goes, okay, tell me when you're off. Couldn't use the phone. And so the BBSs actually had the scripts from back in 92, 93, when the BBSs were the thing before the internet was the internet.

And what you do is go in and read a post. You would copy it, put it into it and save it. And then you'd get offline. You'd write a response. And later an hour, two, three, four or day later, whatever, you'd dial back in and you'd go to that place and you'd post your response.

And so it was pretty slow, another form of snail mail. And so this is how it got started. And then one day my wife said, she said, well, what's this internet thing? And I actually said to her, I don't know where it is.

So I had to figure it out and figured out what the internet was. And then in the BBSs and now the internet had these things, forums and bulletin boards for that stuff. And because I'd been studying for so much for so long, I started answering questions.

And so I would have the same questions over and over again. So I started putting them aside in a Word document. Maybe it was WordPerfect back then. And then I would cut and paste in these various areas.

Then I realized, wait a minute, I've heard of those things called websites. Maybe I could just create a little website and just put the answers up there and just say, go here and look for the answer. Not that I had all the answers, it's just, hey, go here and we'll check it out.

And so I had to teach myself how to do internet. I remember calling up the internet provider and saying, how do I make a website? And he says, go on Yahoo, not Google, go on Yahoo and look up how to create a webpage.

So I had to teach myself how to do that, I had to teach myself HTML, I had to teach myself about FTP and SFTP and chmod. And I taught myself this stuff, it took a couple of weeks and learned, I can still teach HTML, it's easy, HTML is nothing, hypertext markup language.

And so I created the website and started putting some of the answers up there, things I'd written and done in seminary and other stuff that Charlie and I had done, various Bible studies and stuff. And I started putting it up there, I put a counter up on the page and I thought, well, this is cool because I'll be able to see how many people are coming to check this out, this site.

I didn't know what to call it, CARM. I came up with CARM, but one of the other iterations was, CARM is Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, C-A-R-M. And I thought, what I could do is call it Christian Research and Apologetic People.

But I figured the acronym C-R-A-P wouldn't work. And I came up with Christian Research Universalist Ministry, or Universal Doctrines, that'd be CRUD. And I had these different ones, I thought, no, that's not gonna work.

So I didn't know what to call it, I just called it CARM and produced this website. And a little bit later, I'll show you some versions of it. And so I still remember, I still remember this. I went out from the office where I had my little 13-inch monitor, which is like this big, and my Atari computer.

And I would take my hard drive and lift it up two, three inches and drop it on the table. And it would spin up. And then the floppy disks, I mean, it was really archaic. And what I have now would probably cost a million dollars back then.

But at any rate, so I'd get the site going and I'd go in. And I remember when we got 70, 70 page views in one whole day. In a 24-hour period, 70 people had come and checked it out. Hey, Han, 70 people, 70 people have come to the site and checked it out, really, that's a lot.

Well, it started to take off. And I started converting articles, started doing stuff. Next thing you know, it's just getting hundreds a day, then thousands a day. And we were up to 97 ,000 views a day until four and a half years ago, we had a server crash and we're hovering around 20 to 25 ,000 a day now.

And we're gonna slowly start coming up. We're rebuilding the site, that's another thing. It's a long story, it makes me mad what happened. It's a long, long, sordid story. It was a dark and stormy night and the server crashed.

And so there was that. So now I've been on radio for 16, almost 16, no. In January, it'll be 16 years that I've been on radio five days a week. So that's going on, I've written nine books and blah, blah, blah, all from this.

And I still remember my wife and I were in bed one night, just talking, going to sleep. And I said, that's after two years, I remember thinking two years of karma running. I was going, I wonder if I could ever do this full time.

And she's, well, how would that happen? I said, I don't know, but people are interested and they're starting to send us donations because I had these little manuals and I got lots of stories, but they were sending checks for $15 to buy a manual and it would cost us $11 to produce it.

So I had $4 profit, yay, big, big money. And so I wonder. And it wasn't until 15 years ago that I went full time in karma. When I was moved up here from San Diego at the Boise here area, and I was working at Hewlett Packard there and Hewlett Packard here.

And so I was working halftime at Hewlett Packard because I was doing karma halftime, so to speak. And I remember telling my wife, I said, what do you think about me quitting HP? And just trusting the Lord for this.

She goes, what? Quitting the secure job for this? Are you crazy? So every few weeks I'd say, what do you think about me quitting? What? Quitting. And the money was there and we were able to, I said, we could do it.

She goes, what? And then one day she goes, I think you could do it. And so I said, okay, I'll give my notice. Gave a two week notice and it was weird. It was weird that one morning I woke up, no more going to work.

My job was here. And I started working on the website and I would work and it just expanded and expanded. And 25 years ago, I started it. And here we are. So that's a brief history. That's a brief history.

So if anybody wants to add anything, maybe Charlie could, I've known him for more than 40 years. Oh yeah. If they want to read that quote from Joseph Smith, I'll post a link to it and they can read it for themselves.

That's what got you wound up to begin with. You wound me up all right. Am I going to get credit for it now or is that going to give me blame? I think blame is probably the real world, real thing. So anybody, hey, everybody wants to talk.

Do we have to mute them or do they can unmute themselves? Yeah, there's a lot of people trying to get in. So we're going to, I think cycle people in and out as their openings are available. All right.

Matt Slick, how are you today? I know that voice, Dave Neff, David.

Hey, so first off, I want to congratulate you for 25 years of CARM. I know we've had many great discussions and dialogues over the past couple of years. And I also want to say that was an, I didn't listen to the whole debate, but that was an interesting debate you had with Sam Shimon from the Islamic sites.

Yeah, it was an interesting discussion.

Yeah, I get a lot of comment about that, but you know, yep, it was interesting. Yes, I agree, yeah.

Yeah, so your opening about Mormonism was actually kind of interesting because that's kind of what I was kind of wanting to lead into with Mormonism. So what exactly is the Book of Abraham and all of this?

Well, I guess even a more basic question is how did Joseph Smith actually write the Book of Mormon?

He probably took the manuscript from the Solomon Spaulding issue. Solomon Spaulding was a Presbyterian minister in the early 1800s who wanted to write a novel in order to make money because it was very, very economically depressed in the area.

And he passed away and people who knew the manuscript and read the Book of Mormon said, it's the same thing. So there's some eyewitness accounts about that. And that's what we think is where he got it.

He made it up. He was not a true prophet at all.

Oh yeah, he was a lying sack of crap. Yeah, hell sock.

Yeah. That's what I call him, hell sock. A lying sack of crap, that's right.

I will say that if there is a hell, then I'm sure Joseph Smith is at the very bottom of it.

Yeah, along with Muhammad and others. Oh yeah, definitely. Oh, here's my wife. So yeah. Yes, you wanna come on in the camera?

Sorry, can we finally get to see your wife? Because you keep mentioning her and we never see her.

Okay, people are, okay, I'll get the chair for my wife. Hold on.

Okay, we wanna finally see her.

So here's my wife and I'm gonna put her right here and I'm gonna set the thing up so that you can see everything. Let's see. Here we go. All right. There she is. Now you saw her. Okay, see ya. Okay, oh.

Hi. This is my favorite wife, Anit. Can she hear us? What'd she say? Oh, she can't hear you. Let me put you on the speaker. On the, let's see, hold on, the system speaker. Let's see. Okay, where'd it go?

And that one. Oh, now I gotta do it this way on here. That's what I gotta do. Learning how to do this stuff. Okay, almost. Speakers will be high definition audio. Okay, now say something.

Something. Mrs. Slick, Matt never stops talking about you.

Unless it's heresy, then I'll stop talking about her. That's right. And he's right.

You're way too beautiful for him. It's true. It is true. When we were dating, my guy She looks just like her. Oh, she looks like she's one of the three girls she makes forward. That's Joanne.

It's so nice to meet you. It's so nice to finally meet you. This, where's Joanne down there? There's Joanne right there. Okay, you see her? I'm waiting.

So I told them about how the farm got started and how you asked me one night, what's the internet? And I said, I don't know. I don't know if you remember that. Do you remember that? I'm supposed to know everything and I didn't know.

So she mocked me probably. Probably mocked me for that one.

Joanne, I have a question. Matt always keeps claiming that he's six feet tall. Is he just exaggerating or is he telling the truth? I think he's lying. I knew, I knew he was Probably five, 11 and a half.

It's a bit of a bust. That's called cutting you down to size. Yeah, that's what she's doing. Thanks a lot, Joanne. I appreciate that. You can go now. It's really good. You're joking. The last time I measured, I was like an eighth of an inch under six feet.

That's when I measured myself. That's been a while back. But you get older, you start shrinking. That's true. You do. Yeah, and ask her about my weight. She won't, she'll not reduce that. That's right.

Will you, hon? Yeah, I'm 220 at six feet tall. That's right. It's Brandon. Hey, Brandon Shaw. How are you doing, man? I'm doing all right. How about you? Good. Brandon lives about four miles-ish, five, six, seven miles from us right here.

And let's see, there's Matt Yester over there. He's six foot seven. There's Tyler Waymeyer.

What? I see the dentist. I see the dentist on Thursday nights. That's right.

Yeah. He has special mask and lighting to make him look good for a video. That's Dr. Anthony R. Silvestro. He's a good guy, too. I've known him for a long time. How are you guys doing, Matt? Congratulations.

It's awesome. 25. He's got a good radio voice. Hey, we're good radio voice, man. That's good. I like that. It's a special filter. Well, good. So anybody want to say anything? We're going to rotate people through because I know a lot of people are wanting to get in.

So Anthony, you've not really done anything for CARM specifically, which I'm not knocking on it like that, but we've known each other and done apologetic stuff off and on together for a while, right? That's right.

Well, actually, I think Andrew and I are going to be writing some articles here pretty soon, right? For CARM, yes.

Yeah. Yeah, we've got to replace somebody else's evangelism articles. And I'll have to teach you how to write the CARM style. Well, send me the format. It's just quick and slick. Get it done. One of the things I'll do with CARM is, for example, someone will type in, what is the Trinity?

And the article comes up, what is the Trinity? And then it'll give you eight pages of history. And they don't answer what the Trinity is. Me, I'll say, what is the Trinity? And the first sentence is, the Trinity is the biblical teaching, the Christian biblical teaching that there's one God who exists in three simultaneous co-eternal persons.

Boom. Then I expand on it. Oh, that's what that is. That's how we write.

Or I should say, that's how we roll. That's good. That's how I write too. That's good. It's interesting as a science guy, whenever I struggled taking English classes, even though I was really good at English, I could write well, but when you're a science guy, it's pounded into your mind to take a five page science paper and do your best to condense it to two pages.

Whereas when you're an English person, you're supposed to take five pages and put a bunch of junk in it and make it into 20. I'm the opposite. I know how to do things in a very short order and get the point across properly.

Hey, Dr. Anthony, what type of science work do you do?

Well, I'm a dentist professionally. I was a math and chemistry double major back in school. Okay, interesting. Yeah. And now I do apologetic stuff. We actually sold the dental office. It'll be two years ago, this reformation day coming up that we sold the dental office and to be able to focus much more on apologetics and teaching in churches.

And you worked in creationism a lot. A lot in creation, a lot in evangelism and increased up. I get so many calls to do teaching.

Speaking of which, I'm actually debating intelligent design versus evolution this week, I think this Thursday. Dr. Anthony, if you are interested in setting up a dialogue with me on that, I would be very interested in doing that.

Well, when you call yourself a young earth creationist? Yeah, that's correct.

Okay. So you distinguish yourself as intelligent design?

No, I'm actually, I'm an atheist. I am, I guess what you would call an evolutionist. So if you ever wanted to set up a dialogue with me, that would be great.

Oh, you know what? I would love to. We can have you on to apologetics live.

Yeah, I'm gonna actually, I just typed my email and the email address in the private chat. Do you see it? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I'll grab it. Yeah. I'll send you an email right now, actually. Okay, yeah, that sounds perfect.

But anyway, Matt Slick, I was having a dialogue with one of my friends kind of talking about eternal security. And he actually brought up a really good point about that. He said that it's logically impossible to go from a state of being regenerate to a state of being unregenerate and back to a state of being regenerate back and forth.

So that's kind of how he talks about the doctrine of eternal security. I'm just kind of curious as to what you think of that argument.

Yeah, I've had variations of that argument because regeneration is something that God does to us. It's an action that we're passive in. We don't create our own regeneration. So if we become regenerate in salvation and we lose our salvation, then what causes the unregeneration to occur?

If God is the one who generates us, regenerates us, then does he unregenerate us? And since he says he'll remember our sins no more, he was 1017 and other stuff, it would be problematic. So you should call in on the radio show for that.

Yeah, me? Yeah, I would definitely. Probably Wednesday or Thursday I'll call in.

We can have a discussion on that. We can do it on Discord also.

Oh yeah, that'll definitely be fun. So Dr. Anthony, I'm definitely looking forward to having a dialogue with you. And I am going to bail because I am getting a little bit hungry and tired and I know people want to come in.

But anyway, it was nice talking to you, Matt. And I look forward to your email, Dr. Anthony. So let's get that all set up. Sounds good. All right, man. It was almost not talking to you too.

Good night, guys. Good night, okay. All right. Eddie Van Halen from the other side.

You know, Matt, that's how you know that you've hit it big is when you have atheists that call in and congratulate you for 25 years.

I wouldn't be surprised if more atheists do that because I'm nice to them. I don't call them, you know, Satanists out there out to destroy inner evil people. No, they're decent people on the human level.

I just don't agree with their position and I'm polite with them. So, you know, I get a lot of kudos from the atheists. Now, is that a good thing or not? They know where my position is. They know. They know, so.

You know, and David, we've known him for a long time. He's always been very civil and very polite. And he's a treat to talk to because he's civilized. He's a good guy. He's a good guy. They're trying to get this, figure out how to do all these people in here.

So let's see, anybody else want to come in? Eddie Van Halen, he's in. I did. I thought Eddie Van Halen died. He did.

We have a really good internet connection. It goes into heaven. Or maybe other places. They got fiber optic. Fiber optic, that's right. I have something I'd like to say.

Okay. I'd just like to say that through CARM and I've shared this, but not with everybody. Our grandbaby has Asperger's and my husband had watched. My husband is Matt also, my Matt. And so he had been listening for many, many years and I only tuned in to see just how promising my little eight-year-old grandbaby could, how far she could go.

And from that. She's got a tender heart, everybody. She does. From that has come such growth that is definitely from the Lord. But it has been delivered through y 'all. I've made some of the dearest friends that I have through here and y 'all know who you are.

So I won't call out names and leave anybody out. But I just wanna say happy birthday and thank you for everything that y 'all have done. And Anique, I'm sure has, to be in the ministry and to be successful, there has to be a woman behind you that is very giving and she's done that.

And so this is She's right behind me. She is. You said behind me. And so, hey, Charlie. So that's what I wanna say is y 'all mean the world to me and thank you for everything. Well, you're welcome.

Praise God.

Joanne, before you go anywhere, if you can, I'm gonna send my email address in the private chat to you. Reach out at some point because there are holistic ways to deal with autism spectrum disorder, especially at a young age like this through diet therapy and whatnot.

We had to do that with our son. Some of the stuff that Matt had told me several years ago had helped out in terms of behavioral therapy stuff. But then there's a whole other side in terms of biochemistry that can be helped out tremendously through diet.

So we had been doing that stuff with our son for years and it's helped tremendously.

Usually it's heavy doses of sugar and caffeine. And lots of milk. And yeah. Lots of milk and no roughage. So yeah, it helps out.

Dr. Anthony, can I You're muted. No, I'm not. Can y 'all hear me? My Matt's saying I'm muted. He's behind. We hear you. Can you hear my wife when she talks? I can. She's quiet, but yes. She muted me.

I'm gonna put you on the

Do you need my email to send me that?

No, I just sent it in the private chat right now to you.

Okay. I really would appreciate that. She's just been diagnosed with... She should be reading 55 words a minute and she's reading 13. So she's in the third grade reading at a first grade level. She has a whole lot of specialists.

And I mean, God doesn't make mistakes, you know? And he gave her to the most perfect mommy that there is. And that's my baby. But, you know, any help is very encouraging. It's one heartbreak after another and not because of us, but because she struggles, you know?

And I feel like as she gets older, she'll find her knack and things will be great. It's just, you know, right now.

You two ought to connect and talk. And I'm sure that Anthony's got some good advice and stuff. So I put you on a different microphone now and she'll be able to hear me and my wife equally. Okay. I'm gonna mute.

Okay. All right. Let's keep going and see who wants to say something. Laura.

I'll jump in there, yeah. And then I'm tired of looking at my face on this screen. So I'll jump out. I just wanted to say, you know, when I started out listening to you, I was listening to Christian music, but Caleb got sickening.

And yeah, they don't promote Christianity anymore, but my husband would listen to you all the time. And I was like, oh, who's that blowhard? You know, I just, so I was like, I didn't like it. And then I got to where I was wanting to just listen to ministries and got really attached to you.

And then when I had to quit working and that's when I got to watch you all the time. And I've really, I've just so much enjoyed all your material and oh my gosh, now that I'm helping edit, I really know how much material you've written and it's crazy.

And I've had to share a lot of it. And, you know, I first started out with your doing your schooling, your online schooling. And that was just amazing. And started getting people at church to do your classes.

And so it's just been a blessing to be able to help and to see all the people that you're reaching. And it's been a wonderful experience, Matt. Thank you. Well, you're welcome.

But I wanted to back up a little bit because you're telling people how great I am. My wife's sitting right here. So could you let her know how great I really am? Because I don't think she's convinced.

Okay, really, I've been editing all of his stuff. And he's not a good writer, okay? I'm kidding, Matt. He's a great writer. He just doesn't know how to spell. I'm joking. That's true. I use a speech program.

No, Matt is great part. Oh, okay. Matt is so great. He is so great. All we talk about in my house is Matt is so great. Wait, my husband will agree with me. Say hi. How great is Matt? Where are you? He's a good ballerina.

No. No. No. A voice for radio. And a voice for radio, he said. And a face for radio, apparently. No, he didn't say that. Anique's trying to, we're telling her how good you are, right? That's right.

She's not convinced. I can tell. Trust me, she is not impressed with me.

Well, the night's still young, Matt.

Okay, well, good night.

I'm not just paying you to say all that, Laura. I do wanna say, though, it's been really nice when you have your shows during the day and getting to have so much family now that I've just fallen in love with as we pray together, we share, and that's been on top of just the learning experience and is having this bigger family that I just love very much.

Well, praise God. Yeah. Praise God. So I will scoot on out of here and I will miss you a lot. Thanks a lot, Laura. God bless. God bless, yeah. Bye-bye.

Bye. Okay. Well, anybody else wanna jump in? Let's see, we've got the, who's this Tyler Maymeyer guy? What is up? You called me out.

I did. What's up? Yeah, I'm 16 and I had some questions about SDA. So I talked to my pastor and he showed me you guys. So I started reading into it. I'm still confused, but it's been helping a lot. SDA bad.

Yeah, well, I was watching a YouTuber. I forgot his name, but he was SDA and I didn't even know. So I kinda got brainwashed, but now I'm trying to get into like church history and karma has been helping me.

Good.

Well, good, if you want, I have a file, I gotta put them up someplace. It's a searchable thing of the church fathers. And if you're interested in that, I can give that to people, things like that. It's a really good tool.

It's years and years old, but I still use it occasionally. Now I don't have everything on Logos, but that's one thing. So you're 16, huh? What state do you live in? I'm in California.

Where in California? Bakersfield. Oh, I'm sorry. Bakersfield. I was watching your live a couple of days ago. Someone else was from Bakersfield, so.

Yeah, I've been through Bakersfield. They have a good McDonald's there off the freeway. It's a big McDonald's. I remember I stopped there a couple of times. You gotta go up, was it the 95? Is that what it is?

Oh, I don't know. I'm really bad with location, but I'm planning on leaving. I'm gonna Tennessee or something.

All right. Well, good, man. Good, I'm glad you've been learning from Karm and other stuff, and so praise God.

Yeah, I wanna prove my faith more. I got into philosophy, and I think I can prove God. I just can't prove Christianity yet, and that's why I'm getting into our founding fathers.

Well, I'll tell you what. The next guy I wanna talk to you is Matt Yester, and he and I do Discord, and he knows a lot of philosophy and some other stuff. There are ways to demonstrate that God exists.

I'd recommend that you check out Discord, become friends with he and I, and follow us around. Not that we're great or anything. He's great, but I'm not, but you can look and learn. We have some good guys there who can really open your mind to another direction of apologetics and philosophical argumentation, logic, the necessary preconditions for intelligibility, moral absolutes, things like that, abstractions, transcendentals, universals that we use.

So there's all kinds of stuff, all right? Yeah, I'll look into that.

I'll type in my email, and then I'll let more people come in.

All right. Yeah, you have to email us, or just go to Discord and just look for Matt Slick. I'm Matt Slick on Discord. Most people have nicknames, and Matt Yester, he goes by Matt Yester. So, we don't hide behind nicknames and then throw rocks at somebody, and we're not cowards.

Of course, some of the women, I understand, they gotta have nicknames, but I can understand that. But that's why Dr. Anthony R. Silvestro has a nickname. I think his real name is Bubba. Just one word on his birth certificate, Bubba.

I think, I think, I'm not sure, I've heard stuff.

I'll get off, too, so somebody can have my place. All right. Bye, Joanne. Okay, god bless. Bye. See ya. Bye, Charlie.

Bye, Dr. Dennis. I don't know what to do. Hey, Charlie, Charlie's working it. We'll get you out there. Let's see, yeah, okay. And, oh, there's Luke Wayne down there. Well, let's get Matt Yester first.

Hey, man, welcome up. Welcome, buddy. Sure, man. Yeah, let's say happy anniversary to CARM. Happy 25th birthday, and god bless you, Matt Slick, and to Gubby, Lori. First met you, or heard about you, back in about 2010, 2011, I think about 2010, and saw someone who was reviewing your interaction, or made mention of your interaction with that lady from the Rational Response Squad going way back to the late 2000s, early, first decade of 2000s there, that's it.

All right, I gotta check this guy out, and then got into your show. You were Ustreaming at that time, and, yeah, just was totally addicted to that, sort of watching the shows, taking notes, and then you made mention of PalTalk at the time, so we got on PalTalk.

That's how I first heard you, you know, on some other different media and stuff like that, and got to know each other on there quite a bit, and then once we got into videos and stuff like that, you know, once we got on Google Plus and stuff, and then, yeah, people started signing up for the Hangouts and stuff, so we moved to Discord, but I think it's been about a decade.

We've known each other. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, learned a lot, and really got me studying stuff a lot deeper, and, yeah, pretty much made me a Calvinist, you know. First heard you, I wasn't a Calvinist, and everything brought up, I'm like, okay, I need to refute this guy, and started studying out in order to refute you, then I couldn't refute the arguments, and heard a count of rebuttals.

They weren't really flying, so, yeah. Listened to you enough to turn me into a Calvinist, so. And you were predestined, it was predestined to happen. It was predestined as well, of course.

When I first heard of Matt at first, it was back in, it was a couple of years ago. I was still, like, in my teens, and there was this geocentrist Catholic guy that I was interested in, and I just saw him debating Matt, and I kept hearing Matt's, like, but the only context I was hearing of was negative.

Like, everybody wanted to destroy him. So I was interested, like, I was interested to know why does everyone want to destroy this guy, Matt? What does he do, right? So that's how I first discovered Karm, and then I just got into the website, and now it's sitting on my bookmarks, and it's crazy that he's been doing this for 25 years.

Well, just the website for 25 years, apologetics for another 15.

I haven't even been alive for 25 years, and

Yeah, I know, we talk a lot, and I can tell your mental age is way down there. Yeah, yeah, probably. Actually, folks, me and I, we talk a lot. He's smart, and I'm trying to work with him, let's just say.