So James Talarico goes onto the Joe Rogan show, and then the next guys shits on Talarico

A, the number of people that sent this to me was insane. B, it confused a lot of people. And it went like super mega viral. All right, let's see it. So it's just I get suspicious when anybody, whether it's a uh a televangelist or a politician tells me that something is central to my faith when Jesus never talks

about it. To me, that should, I think, ring alarm bells as to what is the agenda here. Um what is someone trying to get across. And I think if we're looking at the last 40, 50 years, the religious right has made a concerted effort to make homosexuality and abortion the two biggest issues for Christians.

One thing I'll say is Jesus never said anything about nuclear warheads, bestiality, or paper straws, but they're all awful too. Yeah. So that's number one, it's argument from silence. It's the weakest form of argument. There's tons of stuff Jesus never explicitly talked about that everyone knows are evil.

So this is a flagrant straw man fallacy. Josh is not responding to what Representative Tallerico said in that clip. Josh is responding to an entirely different claim that Representative Tallerico not only never made, but explicitly distinguished from the argument he was actually making. Because Josh is acting as if what Representative Tallerico said was, Jesus never said it, therefore you can't say it's

wrong. Or therefore it's not wrong, or something like that. And Representative Tallerico said absolutely no such thing whatsoever. And in fact, later on in this interview said, I recognize that Christians have scriptures that they will appeal to in defense of their positions on homosexuality and abortion, and that's a debate that we can have, but that's not what I'm arguing.

I'm arguing this other thing. Because what Representative Talarico is arguing is that Jesus never said it, therefore he gets suspicious when people try to insist that it is central to Christian identity. And he doesn't like that Christians are trying to make these things the two biggest issues for Christians. And he doesn't like that people automatically assume that because you're a Christian, you must be anti-gay and anti-abortion, because

there are many Christians who are not. So his position is about the salience of these positions. to Christian identity and the fact that Jesus never said it So how can we turn this into central Christian identity markers? That's Representative Talarico's argument. And let's watch him distinguish that position from the claim

that Josh is addressing here. Again, I'm very open for my fellow Christians to disagree with that, and they may have um scriptural passages they point to to be anti-abortion. And I think that's a debate that that we should feel comfortable having. All I'm saying is that it shouldn't be assumed that just because you're a Christian, you are anti- gay or anti-abortion,

because there are so many Christians out there who who don't uh subscribe to either of those policy positions. So as you can see, Josh is not addressing what Representative Talerico said. Josh is addressing a flagrant straw man fallacy, a claim that Representative Talarico never made and in fact explicitly distinguished from the argument he was actually making.