EP: 235 The Possessed Press with Seth Dillon of The Babylon Bee

Seth Dillon

It's self evidently the case that certain things are not true. And yet people are embracing those ideas anyway. And it's just pure evil. You know, the effort. I think if you hate children and want them to suffer, you'll affirm them when they're wrong about who and what they are.

You'll cultivate confusion in their minds. And then affirm them when they've completely lost their sense of who they are. That's what you'll do if you hate them and want them to suffer. That's what you'd do if you were a demon. Trying to have the most diabolical impact on this world that you possibly could have.

And like what we have going on in our culture. That's what you'd do if you were a demon.

That's what you'd do if you were a demon.

Nate Henry

The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine. Enjoy the journey, the Smithsonian. That if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere, was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right. Because if one person's right above the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen charity and the problem with the modern day church.

They have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Hermon event. Welcome to Blurry Creatures. Creatures. And this guy defects from the kingdom.

That's a big deal.

All right, Luke. We started with memes, and who knew. Who knew what blurry creatures become? I think sometimes we try to have fun conversations. And we don't take ourselves too serious.

And we try to make. Use the eighties theme. We use a lot of satire to kind of, you know, whether it's about Bigfoot, aliens, UFO's, and stuff. To kind of bring people into this community. And, like, I think we have created sort of a.

An interesting thing. A lot of people. A lot of people try to have paranormal channels. But one thing we've seen is through the use of satires, that people kind of come around and embrace the community. Here at blurry creatures.

And I think we've created a. A welcoming environment. And we're gonna have the kings of satire or the king of satire on, on the show today. Seth Dylan. Yeah.

Luke Rodgers

No, I think, you know, I think there's something very interesting about humor. You know, I think we talk about this often, like you and I, you know, we love to laugh, and we talk a lot of dark things on our, on our show. Exactly. They're tough things to really, really sit in on. Right.

And so it's great to have a little levity. And today we get to talk with Seth Dylan, CEO of the Babylon Bee, which, if you don't know what that is, I don't know if you've been online in the 2020s, these folks make a joke about the great meme wars of the 2020. Well, it's satire. It's not memes. Yes.

They're the kings of satire. Right. Like, they're bigger than the onion. This is partly because from a biblical and christian worldview and poking fun at the powers that be and our culture and really speaking truth through humor, the Babylon be got locked out and put in Twitter jail canceled in 2022, and. It just made him bigger, dude.

It just really lit a fire in what they're doing. And so, yeah, super cool, because this is a fun one. It's. It's not so much in our space, but because we love the humor and the satire, we kind of kind of wrap that around the supernatural and the paranormal things we do. We kind of get to go, and today not even kind of say we're gonna talk to the guy that does it.

Really, in the geopolitical space and in the cultural space, on social media. Yeah. That's one thing we do here a lot, is try to have different conversations, and a lot of people are having the same nephilim conversation a million times. It's good to get out of those spaces every once in a while and have a broader discussion with somebody who's sort of on the front lines. Like you said, curating content, news, and satire all at the same time.

Nate Henry

And I think sometimes it's funny. They kind of run two channels. They run the satire site, and then they run that control news such a weird time that individuals now are bringing you more truth than entire systems. Entire media networks are just this totally polished piece of disinformation, and everyone's kind of waking up to it. So it's fun.

Luke Rodgers

In the last four years, too, right? We've seen this crazy acceleration, I think, in the depravity and the craziness of our culture. So much so that things like the Babylon bee, in taking things a step farther satirically, are actually predicting. They're predicting the future, and unintentionally, it's kind of like the weird things doing the Simpsons. Exactly.

And what a time to be alive. I think some of the comedy in comedians are really our last bastion of free speech, whether it be the Babylon bee or comedians that are out there doing it. That kind of brings me to another thing I wanted to talk about on. We have kind of been a long time, you know, thinking about free speech and how to protect our show and how to make our show grow. And, you know, where we want to go with blurry creatures.

Nate Henry

And we teamed up with tread Lively, who, in their name, tread lively is trying to kind of create this, this cancel culture free community of christians who are willing to kind of speak out about these subjects and not be canceled. And so you probably heard some ads on the podcast. That's a new thing here. We've. We've said no to that for a long time, but we felt like we finally found a group of christians in the Duck dynasty guys to team up with them and what they're doing over there to help support this podcast and keep it growing and fund it, spend more time doing what we do here at blurry creatures.

So I think they have the same philosophy, is what I'm saying. And I think that it's cool to be a part of that. And I think with this podcast, I think you and I have always felt like there's something bigger going on here than just a paranormal show or just two guys who want a podcast. I think you and I have, have found ourselves in sort of the front of this weird spear that we never intended to. I don't think we ever thought anyone, anyone would care, honestly.

Like, maybe our moms and a couple friends would listen to this podcast. So it's really cool to team up with those guys who are, I think, trying to build sort of a cancel, a cancel free arm of media. And we're happy to be a part of that. So, yeah, we are. And I would say that in a time where the truth is harder and harder to find, our goal and our mission statement, if you will, here has always been to get better answers, to look for better answers and look for the truth through a biblical worldview.

Luke Rodgers

And that make our. Make that our lens. You know, in a time when the. When the. When lies are rampant and deception is rampant, you know, you and I are just.

We're sitting here, in some ways, just unintentionally got put in a position where we're doing our best to look for the. Look for the truth and provide and bring people on the show, because we just interview people that have done the research in our and are also seeking the truth. And so it'll be a fun conversation today with, with Seth Dillon talking about, because he's a completely different, you know, path than we. Than we are. But in the same way, he's you know, he's.

He's looking for and pointing to truth in culture. You know, I think our heart is to do the same thing. Yeah. In our space is to find. To find the truth in the weird.

And the way to do that, of course, is to find it in the things of the Bible. Yeah. If you want to have an ad free experience on the podcast and you like what we do here, but you can always become a member of the show and members get ad free, they get first shot tickets to events spaces behind the blurry in the blurry verse where members can connect. There's lots of cool reasons to support this show. So if that's new to you and you don't want that, you can sign up much as a cup of copy gets you the same old blurry creatures episodes that you're used to.

Nate Henry

So appreciate you out there. Thank you so much for supporting the show. Thank you guys for rallying around doctor Judd Burton. The fundraiser is just blown up in the last 24 hours. When this comes out, you guys have smashed through.

Just donations keep coming in. So thank you guys for supporting Doctor Judd. And like we said, the community here is important. So let's get Seth Dillon on this one. Thank you.

All right, welcome Seth Dillon from the Babylon Bee here on blurry creatures. I don't know if you know much about our podcast, but we are sort of like the paranormal meets a biblical worldview. We're both christians and we've had kind of a wild four years of our podcast. We talk about everything from Bigfoot to UFO's and all the weird, strange paranormal stuff that happens in the Bible. One thing, you know, Luke and I have, have ventured in when doing this podcast is kind of seeing how, you know, we had people like Doctor Michael Heiser on the show before he passed away.

I don't know if you've read any of his stuff, but he wrote a book called the Unseen Realm and there's this whole spiritual side to Christianity that people don't want to talk about. And on our podcast, we get into it. Well, that's, you know, everything from demons all the way to what are these gray aliens that people are seeing? Right? Yeah.

And how does that affect culture? And obviously you get a 5000 foot view from curating the news and making memes. And we actually make a lot of memes on our channel as well. But we have fun with that. But you'll offend my writers.

Seth Dillon

Don't call them memes. It's satire. We make memes. But yeah, you guys do the satire. There's a lot more thought that goes into it, but I'd love to have a conversation about the supernatural and your thoughts on it and how it affects geopolitics and the overarching, because that's a discussion we have a lot is just that people think it's just human on human.

Nate Henry

But the more we get into our show, there's entities. It's a spiritual fight. And I think sometimes it's easy just to think that, oh, there are political problems and things are going on in the world, and we don't want to have this spiritual discussion, and a lot of christians don't, at least, and they don't really have a framework. I certainly think it goes much deeper than just the politics, so. Oh, yeah.

Luke Rodgers

So that's what I would love to. Talk about today, but we kick off every episode on our podcast. What are your thoughts on Bigfoot? Do you have any thoughts on the big guy? And then we can go into it.

Seth Dillon

I mean, wouldn't we have actually found Bigfoot by now? If it really exists, it shouldn't be that hard to go to these locations where Bigfoot has been cited and actually find real hard evidence of his existence. I don't know much about Bigfoot. I don't know what species he's purported to be. If there's a category for that.

I don't know. I've just seen the conspiracy stuff that you see floating around online, and it's never really. It's never really captured my interest. Yeah, well, we talked about that in the beginning of our podcast, and then we started getting into, like, sort of stories of ancient giants, and then there's this whole giant narrative that goes throughout the Old Testament. And so our show took a hard turn into that.

Nate Henry

And so we talk a lot about the weird stuff in the Old Testament. Like, okay, but where do you guys stand on Bigfoot? Oh, yeah. I mean, at this point, after four years of the stories, I mean, we've had everyone come on the show from I shot the thing to it rolled into my grandma's backyard, and she. She tells this great story.

I mean, I can't tell you, Seth, how many people come on our show, talk about something else, and they have a Bigfoot story. Almost. Almost half authors, doctors, everyone has a Bigfoot story. And it's. At this point, I definitely believe he's real.

I mean, he brought on every. Everyone you can think of to talk about this creature. All the scientists, all the academics. There are academics out there, like Doctor Jeff Meldrum, that collect, you know, up to 10,000 footprints and casts and all the above. So something's going on.

Luke Rodgers

Something's going on, and it's physical. Is it purported to be. I don't even know what the theories are. Is it purported to be something as intelligent as people, or is it like an ape, more so? Or.

Seth Dillon

Or is it just an animal? Like a bear? Probably not like a bear. You probably pulled out of the woods if it was a bear. I think there are some that are more in that category.

Nate Henry

But there is so many paranormal stories associated with Bigfoot. Everything from lights to orbs to UFO's. I mean, it gets really weird and bigfoot disappears. Time slippage. Hunters that are terrified have been in the woods for 40 years, and then they see this thing and it does things they never described.

I mean, this. The stories are wild. And after a while, you're like, if one of these is true, we've got to make room for it. And that's kind of where we started our podcast, and it's exploded into all these weird areas. And obviously, the UFO phenomenon is coming out now.

The government's talking about you have whistleblowers, so all of it's welcome on blurry creatures. Whatever you want to talk about that's blurry and weird. That's what we love to talk about. I will say this. You know, the conspiracy theorists are racking up a lot of wins lately.

Seth Dillon

So. Yeah, you know, more often than not, it seems like they're right about things, at least, especially when it comes to government and politics and things of that nature. But I would say, Seth. So is the bee, though. We was just.

Luke Rodgers

I was looking at the site today because I think it's so interesting. Number one, that sort of the rise of the Babylon bee and the footprint that you all have now. But the idea that, like, you get. That satire is pun intended with the Bigfoot stuff. Here we are.

Yeah, but I mean, the idea, the satire has become reality. It's almost like the Simpsons predicting things, you know, ten years before, like, you guys have. What's on your website was called a book of prophecy. And 89 to date is what I look today. 89 of.

Seth Dillon

Oh, there's more than that. It probably hasn't been updated in a while. I think we have in our spreadsheet, the latest spreadsheet. I think it's like 104, something like that. 104.

Luke Rodgers

So you're not quite at the Bible level. Right. But you're in 104. 104 prophecies that have come true. What does that experience like?

It's got to be somewhat surreal because you guys in your team, you poke fun at everyone, right? Like, I mean, especially the government and government officials, which got you into trouble in 2022. But you poke fun at sort of prognosticating, sort of at reality to the extreme, and then it comes to pass. And what is it like sitting on the other side of it? Well, it's weird because it's not deliberately predictive.

Seth Dillon

You know, we do. We call them prophecies. It's tongue in cheek thing. It's not predictive in nature. What it is is it's an attempt to, you know, when you're doing satire, one of the methods that you use is exaggeration.

So you're using, like, hyperbolic language and exaggerating what you're, it's like a caricature. When you draw a caricature of someone's face, you know, you exaggerate their features and it's comical. And when the, when satirists look at what's going on in the world and they, and they say, you know, what would be a funny exaggeration of this, to kind of draw out the absurdity of it, they're just going a step beyond the truth in the direction the truth is already pointing. That's all they're really doing. And then what ends up happening?

You know, if you're living in an absurd age, which we are, I think, you know, it was Chesterton who said back in 1911 that the world has become too absurd to be satirized, which, it's funny that he said that that long ago, because imagine what he would say if he were in. If you were alive today, right? But when you're living in an absurd age, and I think we are, I mean, we're living in an age where they're telling you that men can get pregnant and they're stuffing tampons in the men's restroom. And there are literally people who are telling you that math is racist. Mowing your lawn is, everything is racist.

You know, two and two doesn't equal four. It can actually equal five. Right? These things are like, they used to be jokes, and now it's taken seriously. And so when you get to a level in your culture and your society where what used to be comedy is now taken seriously, comedy will come true.

It's just inevitable. And so it's funny, and it's, at the same time, kind of disconcerting. I think the same way it goes for our shows, like, in our episodes, is that these ideas, like gray aliens, it's a Hollywood. It's a joke. It's not real.

Nate Henry

Bigfoot. It's a joke. And then more and more as time goes on, especially in the age of the Internet and cell phones, people are reporting some crazy stuff. And I think our show has gained some steam and kind of launched into a space that we never intended it to because so many people have a paranormal experience. So many people have something they can't explain happen to them.

This has been jokes. And, oh, yeah, Grandpa saw Bigfoot, whatever. He's kind of crazy. Drinks a little too much whiskey. But do you have any paranormal experiences?

What are your thoughts on the supernatural? And maybe tell us a little bit about how you feel about those subjects. Well, I'm definitely a supernaturalist in the sense that I reject a naturalist worldview that says the physical world, physics and chemistry, is all that exists. Matter and energy, physics and chemistry. I'm a supernaturalist, broadly speaking.

Seth Dillon

And then when you narrow it down, theist. And then more narrow than that, Christian theist. So I'm a Christian who believes that there is a God who created the world. And. And what comes along with that worldview is obviously that there is.

There's more to life than what you see on the surface and what you actually experience in. In the physical realm, there's also a spiritual realm. And I think that we do have firsthand experience of that as rational agents, as persons who have moral intuitions, and we're able to reason and conscious our own experience as embodied persons, I think, is evidence of the fact that the world is not just material. There is mind. Mind is a real thing, and I don't think it's reducible to matter.

So a supernaturalist, certainly in that sense, in the metaphysical sense, yes. But when it comes to the specifics of things like, do aliens exist? Are healings possible? And all those things, those are all conversations that you can have, and we can go down any path you want to there. But broadly speaking, yes.

Supernaturalist, yeah. I mean, the personal experience, I think, is, always seems to be the best conversations we have on our show is, like, people who have something they can't explain, and like we were saying earlier, like someone will come on trying to explain something else. They wrote a book about this other story, but they had this experience that just haunts them sort of in a way that good or bad, you know, where they can't quite place it anywhere, and they don't want to talk about it. People don't want to talk about these subjects, but they do want to talk about it on our show. And I think we've created an environment where people feel comfortable.

Well, I've never had a, you know, a paranormal activity situation where I felt like there was a ghost in the room with me or, you know, someone from the afterlife trying to communicate with me or something. I've never had any experiences like that. I have had experiences in my life, and I have to think about, you know, specifically what some of them are, where it seemed like, you know, God was working through that situation, like, the way things worked out just made sense. And so I see the hand of divine providence in things and how they work out sometimes, but I don't have, I don't think I have a single story. I haven't had a near death experience where I, you know, saw a bright light and looked and looked into heaven or, or, you know, some old, you know, ghost in a haunted house or something like that.

Never had, I've never had an experience like that personally, not once. You know, kind of that stuff aside, I think, you know, as christians and sort of in our different paths, like, I think one of the things we're looking for is better answers than truth. And I'm just curious from your standpoint. Like, how did, how does it feel to, in a lot of ways, be sort of on the front line of a fight on, you know, in, in the spaces you're in for the truth, right. Because it's, it's comedy's fascinating.

Luke Rodgers

I would see Dave Chappelle last year, and I think Chappelle's interesting in the sense that he's in a place where he's not really cancelable. And he, he said a number of times that, like, the comedians are supposed to be the jester. Supposed to be the one that speaks the truth to the king. Right. Comedy should have carte blanche like you shouldn't.

But you, you and the babylon be especially, have found yourself in this, in this situation where powers that be, especially in whether it be social media, government officials have decided that comedy, in a sense that in the satire that you created, is a bridge too far. Yeah. Yeah. What's it like using satire to really, to really, honestly, to push the truth? Right.

If we, if we're, you said you're a christian theist and we would say the same, then there really is a truth. There's a truth. There's not. It's not Oprah. It's not, it's not.

Tell us your truth. There is no your truth. There, there's, there's absolutes and, well, it's funny. You know, people will say that that, that relativistic stuff, you know, like your truth is valid and whatever. But, but you, you realize that these people that say things like that, they still do believe in objective moral values, because they will, they will point out all kinds of things about your behavior and your beliefs that they think are morally despicable.

Of course they do. And so, you know, they will hold you to a standard and they will say, oh, well, bigotry is wrong. They'll say that, and they'll say it across the board. It's always wrong, you know, and they're right about all, I think. So.

Seth Dillon

I think bigotry is wrong. Rape is wrong, you know, murder is wrong. They'll have all these things that they will say are, in fact, wrong, and they're not relativists on those things. And so I don't think that anybody can really consistently live out that relativistic worldview. I think you have to at some point, plant your feet somewhere.

You can't, you can't plant them firmly in midair. They have to be rooted in something. And even the people that will deny that there is an objective truth or objective moral standard will appeal to it all the time. And judging other people's behavior, you see it with atheists all the time, too. Some of the strongest moral language you'll hear comes from people like Richard Dawkins, who denies that there even is a moral dimension to reality.

He denies the existence of God. He says, we're all just dancing to the tune of our DNA. And then he says, how dare you do this? It's like, well, where are you getting the moral obligation and values from after you just tossed the worldview out the window? That would provide an ontological foundation for it in the first place.

But when it comes to communicating truth to culture through humor, what's interesting is there has been an attack on comedy. And I think I used to think it was just humorless scolds who didn't like our jokes and had a problem with what we were saying because they were actually offended by them or something like that. They're just humorless. But I think it actually goes deeper than that. This is where you get spiritual in the whole thing.

There is an aversion to the truth itself, and that is really rearing its head in our culture. We are a post truth, even anti truth culture right now. And so when people are confronted with the truth, whether it's stated seriously or even in comedy, the truth can be said in jest, and it's extremely offensive. And you have to shut down the person who made the joke. The joke that got us suspended from Twitter was we accurately referred to a male person as being a man.

That man, Rachel Levine, actually happens to identify as a woman. But we said what was true rather than what you're supposed to say, and that's what got us in trouble. And so it's, the humor is a vehicle for truth delivery, and that's why it's a threat in an anti truth world that hates the truth and wants to stamp it out and assert these things as fact that are in, that are actually the opposite of fact. A man can become a woman. Men can get pregnant.

Those types of ideas, there's no factual basis to them. And. And ultimately, I do think that that is a. It's a futile way of thinking because reality does smack you in the face at some point. You come to, you come to grips with reality very quickly when you actually have a situation like, oh, you know, this person needs an emergency surgery.

Do we treat the patient as a man or a woman? Well, you know, if they're biologically male, you're going to have to treat them as a man no matter what they said they were before they got to the hospital. Yeah. Do you ever feel like you guys, is there any instances where you feel like you've gone too far or you feel like you wish you hadn't done something or said something? I mean, how does that work?

Yeah. Well, so the tough thing with. With making jokes, you know, in engaging in mockery, is that occasionally you will, you can potentially do it in the wrong spirit. Your jokes can be misinterpreted at times. Sometimes you might make a joke too soon after somebody died or something like that.

It can be inappropriate and offensive. We've stepped in it a few times. I think the biggest controversies that we've had over the years have been people uncharitably misinterpreting what we're trying to say and suggesting that we were trying to make a point that we weren't making. That's often you could be criticizing a racist and doing it in a way where stupid people think you're actually being racist, if you get what I'm saying. Yeah.

Yeah. And so, you know, comedy, especially satire, which has layers to it, there's a certain level of intelligence that's required in interpreting what's actually going on with the joke and what is actually the joke. What is the punchline of the joke? Who is the joke really targeting here? You have to kind of think through that sometimes, and people often get that wrong?

But it is, it is possible to engage in the wrong spirit on, on things and just be, you know, mock somebody for the purpose of hurting them and putting them down. But our mission, what we're trying to do, like, if I were to summarize like, our mission into a single statement, which we don't really have a mission statement, but if I had to, I would say it's to ridicule bad ideas. And when you're ridiculing bad ideas, you're doing that for, there's a moral purpose for doing that. You know what CS Lewis said, that good philosophy has to exist if for no other reason than because bad philosophy needs to be answered. And I think satire is necessary for exactly the same reason.

It's an antidote to bad ideas and bad ideas when they're allowed to. When bad ideas are taken seriously, rather than derided and cast aside, they end up having catastrophic effects in our culture. And next thing you know, you have teenage girls who are chopping off body parts and identifying as boys and sterilizing themselves. So bad ideas taken seriously have catastrophic consequences. So ridiculing them, I think, is a moral imperative of the Christian.

It's a matter of, well, did you take it too far? Did you hurt somebody's feelings? Well, oftentimes people will, will put on this air of being offended, oh, you know, those jokes are too offensive. You can't tell those jokes. They hurt people's feelings.

Well, what if there's truth to it? And what if, what if that truth could actually help people when it's recognized? You know, feelings don't matter in that sense, especially when the feelings are being abused as a weapon. You know, people will pretend to be outraged in order to shut you up and stop you from talking because you're saying what's true. And so there's a lot there to that whole conversation.

I do think it's possible in some cases, of course, to go too far and to be hurtful on purpose and all of that. But our motivation is to mock foolishness for what it is so that it isn't taken seriously. Yeah. And that's supposed to be the function of free speech in its operational form. Right.

Luke Rodgers

We have just come a long way from really having free speech. Free speech is supposed to let the best ideas come to the top and sort of, and debate those other ones, as you pointed, bad ideas. Yeah, well, the free speech principle is the best response to something that you don't like is to, if there's speech that you don't like, then the answer is more speech. You know, refute it, rebut it, ridicule it if you want to respond to it. Or you could just ignore it for whatever reason.

Seth Dillon

Well, I can guess at the reasons and tell you what I think the reasons are. But instead of having that healthier outlook, where we invite a response or tolerate a response, there is a movement in our culture to prevent the response from being uttered. And so you're silencing people who challenge the prevailing narrative. And that's why it comes after comedians, all very aggressively, because comedians are some of the most effective ones at challenging whatever the popular narrative is. And so you gotta shut up.

The comedians, they're the ones who are making the tyrants look silly, right? I was gonna, I was gonna ask these movements, like, you know, we, since the last, since 2020, we've all, I think a lot of people have woken up to just how crazy and evil the world is. And if you haven't yet, I don't know where you've been, but people on our show, almost too awake, they send us links to thousands of things. And it's. Sometimes it's overwhelming what we receive on a daily basis.

Nate Henry

But when do you think things are demonic? When do you think there's demonic influence on some of the stories and the people in the leadership? That when you're curating stories and you're trying to figure out what the heck's going on in our world? Well, I think you could certainly say it of when you get, when you get into the spiritual warfare aspect of it, the anti truth state of mind that we're talking about, even the. And these, and these toxic ideas, you know, woke moral reasoning, which says that, you know, for the oppressed, everything is permitted.

Seth Dillon

And so, so if you fall into an oppressed category, you can do anything and it's justified. And these oppressors who are at the top of the hierarchy in wokeness, they can do no right, and anything that's done against them is fine. All of these ideas which flip morality and deny the truth are, I think, part of the spiritual battle. You know, it's a lot of these things. And the reason I think I can say that with confidence is because it just simply isn't.

It's very self evidently the case that certain things are not true, and yet people are embracing those ideas anyway, and it's just pure evil. I think if you hate children and want them to suffer, you'll affirm them when they're wrong about who and what they are, you'll cultivate confusion in their minds and then affirm them when they've completely lost their sense of who they are. That's what you'll do. If you hate them and want them to suffer, that's what you do. If you were a demon trying to have the most diabolical impact on this world that you possibly could have.

And like what we have going on in our culture, we're convincing all these young children that they're, that they're born in the wrong bodies and that they need medications and surgeries to fix that problem. It was never a problem in the past, it's only a problem now. Or we murder them in the womb. Exactly. Yeah.

If they even survive the womb, it's if they can make it into, into the world, but without being killed. We're going to cultivate confusion in them and then castrate and mutilate and sterile sterilize them and we're going to do it and we're going to call it healthcare, we're going to call it care. You know, if Satan himself were to get a job somewhere in the world on this planet, he probably would do so in a planned parenthood clinic or a gender clinic. So I certainly think there are demonic influences at play in these ideology. The radical ideologies, the dehumanizing that's happening there and the euphemisms that are used to cover it all up and make it sound like a murder and mutilation are referred to as care in our culture.

You can't get there without some underlying spiritual influence. Just a darkness in people's souls and minds clouding their judgment and making them view wrong as right.

Luke Rodgers

It's like John Ten, what I think of right away, right, like the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. And like that's a. The initiatives being pushed upon our society, culturally vast majority are, is stealing, killing and destroying of the things that God has created and called good. But it's like a twisted morality. Like what you see is, it's like they're all, they all agree to this different alternate morality.

Nate Henry

I mean they believe they are in the moral majority, they believe they're doing the moral thing. And what we see in scripture and historically is that scripture is twisted. There are two moralities kind of going head to head. And it doesn't feel like it's just a free for all. There's like a large group of people that seem to be agreeing on this alternate morality.

Luke Rodgers

Almost like a dogma. They've created their own sort of dogma. It's a religion. It is a religion. It is.

I mean, it's a competing religion. It's been described as a mind virus that spread. Well, why is the mind virus so, so effective? And why are people so susceptible to it? I don't know.

Seth Dillon

Maybe read the screw tape letters and take that in, and that's a great book. And maybe you'll start to get an understanding of why exactly these ideas are not just planted, but. But flourish there. I do, of course, yeah. I believe that there are forces at work that are playing a role in that.

Nate Henry

I think that's kind of what we do on our show, is give people answers to the paranormal and the strange things, you know, as aliens coming out in the news and people having. There was like that Miami incident and the. The Nevada, the Vegas incident. And people are just curious, like, are these entities showing up? Do you believe that the veil is thinning?

Do you think that more paranormal stuff is happening around the globe? Or is it just we have this technology now to. To communicate more? Or are we getting towards some sort of end times? What do you think about that?

Seth Dillon

I don't know. I'd be interested in hearing what you think about that. I would guess that you probably think the answer is yes. I do think that the spiritual war has ramped up. I do think that the bad philosophies that Lewis was talking about that need to be countered by good philosophy are getting more traction and are spreading like wildfire.

I think there's a lot of factors in that. I think social media has played a role in that and the advances in technology and communication and the social pressure that comes along with being connected to so many different people in that way. So there's a lot of practical and obvious answers to why some of these things are happening. But then I do think, obviously, that because of how things have escalated so much, you know, when I mentioned that, Chesterton, back in 1911, said, the world's become too absurd to be satirized. What would he say if he was here right now and seeing the kinds of things that are going on?

I mean, he would think that the spiritual war had just gone completely ballistic, and he couldn't have even fathomed the kinds of things that we're seeing right now in our culture that are being accepted and tolerated. Imagine Chesterton at a Sam Smith concert or something, or one of these drag shows for kids in a public library. We're like in the water that's being brought to a boil and not noticing the temperature rising as easily. I think we become numb to it because we're steeped in it all the time, but you take somebody from a prior time and plant them today in our culture, and I think they would just be absolutely shocked by how depraved it is. And so, yeah, the spiritual sickness, it is a cancer, and it is killing the host.

So does that mean that we're in the end times? I don't know. I'm sure people would have thought back when world War two was happening that we were certainly in the end times, the world felt like it was coming to an end, and then we had bright days on the backside of that. So I don't know when exactly, and no one does knows exactly when, when the end is near. But, yeah, it can.

It can certainly feel that way at times when things escalate to the extent that they have. How do you feel like you've been spiritually attacked doing what you do. I know when you, when you take on such a big project, a lot of times it's a battle in your, in your life, in your head, and between people everyone's trying to sabotage. It's. It's crazy.

Nate Henry

It could get you crazy. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of criticism that comes, that's very open and out on the surface where people are explicitly attacking you. As far as behind the scenes spiritual attacks, those are harder to detect. It's harder to know exactly where those are coming from or when they're happening or what they are.

Seth Dillon

But that can be every, I referenced this screwtape letters earlier, and that kind of stuff can be so subtle, it can be as simple as you getting easily distracted during your prayers or church service so that you're not focusing on what you should be focusing on. It can be very subtle, little things that draw your attention away from what should be your priority. And it's, and you can be completely, it can be sitting in a blind spot where you don't realize that it's a, that it's a spiritual influence. So I don't know, but I'm certain that there are attacks, you know, whenever you have, whenever you're trying to take a stand for the truth and what's right, you're going to have forces at work trying to prevent your voice from being heard and then trying to also get you to trip up so that you look like a fool, so that you have moral failures or contradict yourself. And your double standards are what people look at instead of what you're actually saying, and so they can discredit you.

And so I try to be very vigilant with making sure that I'm not falling victim to things that would draw me off course and undermine the message. Yeah. And my question was almost right in that vein, what's it like? You start a comedy site and a satire site, and you fast forward it, and now you've got some of the most powerful people and institutions in our country that try to shut you down or quite, or silence you, at least. What's that like from personal level to kind of be along for that ride and to have.

Luke Rodgers

Have that sort of going on in the peripheral? Right. Well, it's, on the one hand, you know, you. It's kind of like discouraging that you're being attacked on all sides. But I do find it motivational, actually, that, you know, like, I remember when the New York Times accused us of being a misinformation site, that traffic's a misinformation under the guise of satire.

Seth Dillon

I remember thinking to myself, I'd much rather have the New York Times smearing me because they hate me than praising me. Yeah. Yeah. I think the attacks, in some ways are a good thing because it does signal that you're doing something right, or why else would they be attacking you? And so it can be encouraging.

When there's. When there's flak, you're over the target. So 100%, that is one thing. The other thing that I draw encouragement from is the fact that the attacks often result in, especially when it comes to censorship and suppression, those things tend to backfire, and it depends on your circumstances. But in our circumstances, we had enough of a following in a platform.

We even had Elon Musk in our followings, so that when there was an effort to suppress our voice, our voice was actually amplified. And it's this Streisand effect thing, if you're familiar with that term, where trying to stamp something out draws more attention to it and makes it more popular. And it should have just been left alone if you didn't want it to become so popular. So we've benefited greatly from the Streisand effect, too. I'm not mad about it.

I do think that it's a bad thing that you have the government, the media, and all the most powerful institutions ideologically in lockstep with each other and working with each other to stamp out dissent and doing it in some really underhanded ways. In our case, with the Twitter situation, we were suspended for hateful conduct underneath the misgendering policy of their terms of service. And so you had a speech platform. Twitter was a speech platform that described itself in its mission statement as a platform for free expression without barriers. A platform for free expression without barriers.

And then they take radical gender ideology. Am I blurry right now? I look blurry. It's right on its. Right on brand.

Nate Henry

It's on brand. Yeah, it is on brand, isn't it? I'm out of focus. Apologies. You're very blurry.

Seth Dillon

I don't have an intro fix my focus. But you're a blurry creature right now. I have a blurry creature. It's perfect. Yeah, you should do that on everybody.

Put a filter on them. This doesn't work. It's the Mitch Hedberg joke, man. That's where our name comes from. Maybe you guys are doing that.

But anyway, what I was saying is the ideology, they've baked their radical ideology into their terms of service so that it breaking ranks with them and defying and having different ideology, different views and values becomes an enforceable policy violation on a platform for free expression. So they abuse the power that they have to try to control you and keep you within. You know, you got to play by our rules. You know, you've got to admit that you engaged in hateful conduct and never do that again. And so it is problematic that we have all of those institutions working together, and everything that we can do to chip away at that and take that power back I think is vitally important.

And, man, Elon Musk being willing to spend $44 billion to play a role on that whole thing was pretty awesome. Yeah, I think a lot of people love to give him. A lot of christians don't know what to think about Elon. And I think that it's interesting to kind of watch his mindset as he rolls. And I think that what you're saying is important to us because we just did a deal with the Duck dynasty guys because they have a similar view.

Nate Henry

We were waiting for a long time to figure out how are we going to take this podcast, who we want to take it with? And those guys are all about free speech and creating community. And I think christians more than ever need to kind of circle the wagons and try to protect what we do have. I think we have to get a little bit more on the offense, you know? So one of my last questions is, like, what do you see in the future?

What do you. Where do you think this is going? Do you think things are going to get better? Going to get? Do I think we're going to find Bigfoot out there and, well, that would be better.

Luke Rodgers

That's on the better side there. Seth yeah, I know you got to. Go, but I do in a second. But let me answer that question. Am I, am I, am I hopeful about where things are going or where do I expect things to be going?

Seth Dillon

I am so I've become more cynical as I've gotten older. I've lost a lot of faith in people, but I've but I remain hopeful just in the sense that I know because of, because of my Christianity, because of my christian worldview and the way that I believe that God has a plan and that we are actually human beings made in God's image, and that we have baked into us an understanding of what is true and good and beautiful. I think that humanity will always, having been made in God's image, hunger for that. And the hunger will only increase for that the more we're deprived of it. There's a beautiful illustration of that in the end of that hideous strength by Lewis, and I can't recap the whole thing, but the main character in that book is basically being brainwashed to try to get him to accept the grotesque and the distorted and the disgusting as being normal and fine and good.

And he rejects that he's being deprived of. Hes even being shown imagery. Its a brainwashing thing thats being done to him. Hes being shown all this grotesque imagery and these bizarre ideas, and theyre trying to get him to accept this as normal. And the more they did that, actually, the more they drew him back to, he kept coming back to the fact that goodness and beauty are real things.

And it was like a man in the desert craves water. He craved normalcy and what was good and what was beautiful. He didn't allow them to destroy his mind, and he fled. And so maybe the more we are deprived of the truth and maybe the more depraved our culture becomes, people will start to wake up. I do know.

And it's been described a couple ways. Elon said, it's waking up from woke. We're seeing a lot of people waking up from woke. I think there are kind of pivotal moments where people start to snap out of it and they see, wait a minute. This is actually really, really disgusting and depraved.

I think October 7 was one of those moments where people realized that after October 7 happened, and you had all these innocent people who were being slaughtered by literal terrorists. And there were so many people on the left praising the terrorists for doing something good because they were oppressed. The terrorists were oppressed, and they were attacking the oppressor. And that was a good thing. And so it was okay that they were slaughtering children and raping women and.

And leaving all these dead bodies in the streets, and they were cheering that on. And I think. And that was, that was what I referred to earlier as woke moral reasoning. It's the idea that for the oppressed, all things are permitted. Hamas is oppressed.

Therefore, for Hamas, all things are permitted. It puts you on the side of terrorists, literal terrorists, to adopt that moral framework. And I think there were a lot of people who. Who saw that happening. They saw that playing out, and it awakened them from wokeness.

They saw that this is actually a really twisted and depraved system that doesn't work, and it values, it inverts morality. It values the wrong things. And so I don't know. I am hopeful that people being deprived of what they will see, these egregious examples, they will see this depravity and the goodness that's still in them, that God planted in them when he made them in his image, will reawaken in their spirit of desire for. For the good, the true, and the beautiful.

And we can only hope that that's the case. I think that's a good word, because I think a lot of times people get really paranoid on our channels, and they just want to, like, you know, just get off the grid, live in the middle of nowhere, and do nothing. Yeah, we've all. The story is that, you know, God has always had people in Babylon doing what he needed to get done is that God is not afraid of the system. He's not afraid of the, you know, the governments.

Nate Henry

It's like, oh, he raises up who he needs in the middle of that babylonian system, and we're supposed to almost endure, and he provides ways, and he, for some reason, we need a little bit of struggle to do anything. As humans, everything's easy all the time. We don't do anything. And it's cool that you guys are out there. You guys are definitely bigger than the onion now.

Did you ever think that was going to happen? No. Who did? Who did? Everything has its lifespan.

Seth Dillon

Eventually, something will come up that's more popular than us, but. But it is wild. They let a christian satire site become the predominant satire site in the world. Doing the Lord's work, man. Just kid.

Luke Rodgers

Seth, thanks so much, man. Thanks to Mike Donahy. Yeah, Mike. Mike for setting this up. And, man, I love that you're well read, too.

I love the Lewis stuff. Like, a big fan of Lewis, and there's so much wisdom in that. I think you, in some ways you talk about Chesterton as well. I think that some of those, those brilliant men would be. Yeah, I tap into those guys for insights.

Seth Dillon

They're smarter than I am. Metaphysical geniuses. I think they knew things that also that we. They knew some blurry stuff. You know, they're, their novels, the way they wrote, their.

Nate Henry

Their creativity. They were tapped into some ancient stuff that I think that we try to get into it on our show, that maybe some of those creatures they were writing about, as you know, in their books were true. Roam the earth at one point. Well, I'm glad I could stay on brand for you guys and be as glory as possible. Amazing, actually.

Seth Dillon

Yeah, that was really apt. Appreciate it. Where. Thanks. Where can your listeners get involved?

Nate Henry

Like, besides just following you guys on social media? What's some things you guys are doing that you could. Well, social media is great. We do have a subscription plan for people who want to be supporters of us. You know, fighting big tech is you never know when you're going to be completely booted.

Seth Dillon

So our subscribers keep us going and allow us to. To market and do new things like work on video content and publish books and all of that stuff. So, yeah, there's a lot of ways to subscribe. Support us, follow us. Babylonb.com, a great place to start.

And anywhere on social media. Let's go. Thanks for your time, Seth. Yeah. Thank you, guys.

Nate Henry

Yeah. Appreciate it. Great to meet you. All right. Thank you.

Luke Rodgers

Thank you.

Seth Dillon

Thank you.

EP: 235 The Possessed Press with Seth Dillon of The Babylon Bee

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1: Satirical Insight

2: Challenges of Satire

3: Supernatural Elements

4: Upholding Free Speech

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