What the Bible Says About Taking Your Own Life

Dan McClellan Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher It's a lovely day. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You were talking about going golfing, but I have stopped you from doing so.

Dan McClellan Ah. Yeah, this stupid job.

Dan Beecher Got to pay some bills sometimes, every now and then.

Dan McClellan Yeah. They come around every few weeks.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan How are you? I am doing well. I didn't get as much sleep as I would've liked to last night, but that's becoming kind of my thing. So, I've decided to just lean into it.

Dan Beecher Just roll with it.

Dan McClellan Embrace it, yeah.

Dan Beecher Who needs sleep? Sleep is for the weak.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and it makes it easier for me to get my daughters up in the morning for school, which, as every parent knows, is the highlight of their day.

Dan Beecher It's funny. It sounds torturous when you call it insomnia, but if you just call it wake maxing, then maybe we got something going on.

Dan McClellan Oh, gosh.

Dan Beecher I'm going to provide a quick trigger warning because this week we're diving into a chapter and verse. I don't know why I couldn't think of that, but we're going to go to the death of Saul, and it was by his own hand, and we will be discussing that idea, the idea of suicide. So, just wanted to get that out in the open right off the shoot so that if that's not something you're able to hear about right now, cool. Go find one of our other videos and have some fun with that. But for now, let's dive into chapter and verse. All right, so the chapter, the verse. We're in 1 Samuel chapter 31.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher It is the last chapter of 1 Sam.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And maybe give us some background leading into this chapter. There's a battle. We are in media res in a battle.

Dan McClellan Well, there's always a battle of one kind or another. There's always a battle.

Dan Beecher Yeah. What are these guys doing? Because as long as you've got Philistines, you've got a battle somewhere.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And right now, Saul and David are at odds with each other.

Dan Beecher They're on the outs, yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And Saul has been trying to kill David for a while now, and- Which will harm a friendship, I've got to say.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It is hard to come back from that. And this is important, David has refused to kill Saul. He has had the opportunity, and he has turned it down, and he has even made it clear why, and that's because Saul is the Lord's anointed, and David is not going to harm the Lloyd's anointed? No, the Lord's anointed. That's a different guy.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And this is some hagiography. This is later authors who are responsible for curating the David tradition, who are trying to make it seem like, "No, David would never have killed his rival.

Dan Beecher No."

Dan McClellan No, no. "He had the chance."

Dan Beecher There's no evidence of that anywhere else in the book.

Dan McClellan Yeah, he had the chance, but he turned it down, and that made Saul upset. So, we have Philistines doing their thing, and that's how chapter 31 starts off. "The Philistines fought against Israel. The men of Israel fled, and many fell on Mount Gilboa." And then the Philistines overtake Saul and his sons. They kill Jonathan, so that's David's boy.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Abinadab and Malchishua, the sons of Saul.

Dan McClellan And then Saul's not dead. He's been hit by some archers. He's got kind of a Boromir vibe going here. They have wounded him badly. And then in verse four, Saul said to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and thrust me through with it so that these uncircumcised may not come and thrust me through and make sport of me." The idea seems to be that, "They're going to abuse my body. This is going to be a big problem." Which, that's going to happen anyway.

Dan Beecher Yeah. But he didn't want them to have the satisfaction of- Yeah ... killing him.

Dan McClellan Yes. But his armor-bearer was unwilling, for he was terrified.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And the narrative kind of makes it sound like the armor-bearer himself is scared to kill the Lord's anointed. He doesn't want to have that on his hands. So, Saul took his own sword and fell on it. When his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his sword and died with him.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, we have what is represented tacitly. There is no commentary on the morality of any of this, but it is tacitly represented as an honorable death.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Like you say, nobody mentions whether this was a good thing or an evil thing to do. It feels like it's represented as being good, as being noble.

Dan McClellan Yeah. He is avoiding capture. He's avoiding humiliation. He is avoiding giving the enemy the pleasure, the opportunity to do bad things. And so this is a society, an honor and shame society, and this would've been an honorable move. So, I don't think we have any reason to think that anyone would have looked negatively upon this action. It would've probably been fairly unilaterally understood to have been an honorable death that Saul did. And he initially says, "You do it."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the armor-bearer is unwilling, so he has to take it into his own hands. And this is how a warrior- would honorably die in a situation where the tides have turned against him, and he has no opportunity for escape or for victory, and so you just fall on your own sword.

Dan Beecher Help me out. When was this written? Do we have a sense of the timing of the authorship?

Dan McClellan So there are a few different layers in here, but this is probably written somewhere around the eighth or seventh centuries BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So I think it is probably pre-exilic. There may be some post-exilic layers in here, but I think the story here is pre-exilic.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I guess I just flashed on a line from Shakespeare where, I believe it is Macbeth who says, "Why should I play the Roman fool to die upon my own sword?"

Dan McClellan Hmm.

Dan Beecher And I know, when I was in that play many moons ago, I did some research and just sort of figured out that that was, at very least to an Elizabethan author, it was attributed to Romans. It was a Roman idea, this idea of falling on one's own sword- Uh-huh ... as a noble thing, rather than be captured.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, by the time of Shakespeare, I think that would've taken on a pretty negative stigma. But yeah, certainly within Rome as well, that would've been seen as an honorable death. You have that with, they're a very military people. The military is kind of in charge of so much.

Dan Beecher So yeah- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan that doesn't surprise me.

Dan Beecher I was just wondering if that was influential on this, but it seems like the timing would be wrong on that.

Dan McClellan Way off.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Well, at least in terms of Rome's influence.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Is that...

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan No. I think Rome felt that way. Rome didn't invent that, basically- Right.

Dan Beecher Yeah ...

Dan McClellan is what I'm trying to say.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We do have some other prominent self-inflicted deaths- Hmm ... in the Hebrew Bible. Probably the most prominent would be Judges 16 verses 28 through 30, which is Samson.

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan "I want to talk to Samson."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan "Fly me to the moon, and have a temple fall on you."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That's where he is between the two pillars that are- Right ... load-bearing pillars in this temple, and he knocks them down, bringing down the whole temple upon himself. And so this is a way for him to take out as many Philistines as he can, along with himself.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which is treated as... The Judges are sometimes represented as kind of anti-heroes.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan They are kind of amoral. They do some odd stuff. And we've talked, for instance, about Jephthah, and how they were probably looking a little sideways at Jephthah. But Samson, yeah, did a lot of stupid stuff, did some heroic stuff, and then brings down a temple on top of himself to take out as many Philistines as he can.

Dan Beecher So- Which seems to be approved of in the story of Samson.

Dan McClellan It seems to be- Again, it's not really- ... it's his final heroic act.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan He is kind of represented as a bit of a tragic figure, so it's not really clear that... There's no moral point being made, I think, by the author. Certainly, they don't comment on the morality of it. But yeah, there's certainly no condemnation.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan If you're looking for somebody saying suicide is bad in the Bible, you're not going to find it.

Dan Beecher I think that's fascinating because obviously, now I jump to another Shakespearean quotation, which- ... when Hamlet says, "Or that the everlasting had not fixed his canon against self-slaughter."

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher For many, many centuries, suicide has been completely verboten. The church has counted that as a sin- Mm-hmm ... and as a grievous sin at that.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher So I think it's fascinating to learn that that is a later addition to the idea of, or to the pantheon of sins.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We begin to get a kind of moralizing of this, I think, in the Greco-Roman period. I think Josephus talks about Saul, and talks about it as understandable yet regrettable.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan It was a bad thing, and Augustine is one of the ones who comes out hard against suicide as explicitly sinful.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So it's not until we get deep into the period when Jewish folks, and then followers of Jesus, are incorporating philosophical, ethical philosophy, incorporating all these frameworks that they begin to wonder about the ethics of these kinds of things. And so it's within Greco-Roman period Judaism, late Greco-Roman period Judaism, almost into rabbinic, and then early Christianity, that we see the idea pop up, "Oh, this is a bad thing," where philosophy overtakes the honor and shame impulse.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So I think that's probably where it originates. But yeah, it's certainly not in the Bible. I have people reach out to me every now and then and ask about this, that they've had a parent, a brother, a child, or something like that, and their pastor or whatever, or they're worried about whether or not someone has told them that this is sinful and they're in hell. And that- Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's such a cruel thing- Yeah ... to say to a grieving person who's lost a loved one.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I think it's people feel like they need to toe the line. People feel like they need to advocate for the socially costly position that, "Yeah, they're in hell." And you get that in all kinds of different- You know, there will be some brands of Calvinism where somebody will be like, "Oh, so and so was part of a community that hadn't really been churched, hadn't really been witnessed to, and so so and so never heard of Jesus and never had an opportunity." And they're like, "Yep, hell." And some people seem to relish in being able to do that precisely because of how offensive it is to the people on the other side.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But I think there are also people who feel awful about it, but still feel like it's their responsibility to tow that line. Even though, again, it's not biblical.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's not something they're getting from the Bible.

Dan Beecher It's such an interesting thing. The innovations in terms of philosophical thought are just basically that, A, it's killing and thou shalt not kill, and B, that something to do with the idea that it takes away God's prerogative of life, like somehow the natural law, God has authority over what is and isn't.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Your life is not your own.

Dan Beecher Yeah. These are things that, like you said, Augustine and Aquinas and stuff came up with these a fair bit after the Bible came out. And I think about how this is a particularly sticky thing. As you say, people love to condemn other people to hell.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher They do it all the time. They love to say, "Oh, you're going to hell," to me because I'm an atheist, or, "Oh, you're going to..." They do relish it. But there's something especially difficult or problematic about doing it about suicide because it is a final act.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher If you say to me as an atheist, "You're going to hell," there's a redemptive path. You're at least saying, "You're going to hell if you don't..." dot, dot, dot.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But yeah, it is a particularly intractable problem with this because there's no redemptive path. There's nothing to follow where the person can redeem themselves.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And these days, it is less often a question of someone in battle having no way out- Yeah ... and falling on their sword. There's not really much honorable taking of one's own life these days, at least in our culture. Certainly there are cultures where this kind of stuff does happen. But these days, usually when someone takes their own life, it's because they are so despondent because there is such an acute episode of despair and depression. It outweighs their ability to endure it, and they have access to means. So there's a particularly heinous aspect of taking that approach when so much of suicide these days is an outcome of depression and mental health issues, and circumstances that frequently are not within the conscious control of the individual. So, I think that's a big flaw in this notion, which again, is something that is a post-biblical moral development rather than something that is commanded anywhere in the Bible.

Dan Beecher Well, and there are other examples in the Bible of people taking their own lives.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Judas comes jumping to mind.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And this is the one where it's an example of a villain who does it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then there's a guy named Ahithophel who offers some counsel, and the people don't take it. And so, this is 2 Samuel 17. "He saddled his donkey and went off home to his own city. He set his house in order and hanged himself. He died and was buried in the tomb of his father." So even in that context, he hanged himself, but he was still given a standard burial.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah, I was going to say- In the tomb of his father ...

Dan Beecher what that sounds like is because someone who was shameful would probably not have been given that same burial. Is that right?

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, in this time period, I don't know that there are a lot of things that someone could have done to have earned non-burial. I mean, certain kinds of- And ignominious.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Certain kinds of criminals and things like that, I imagine there would've been mass burials. But to be buried in the tomb of your father is unquestionably an honorable burial.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the fact that Ahithophel is doing this after failing to win the voice of the people on this matter could be perceived as another honorable way to go. "This is so important to me that my voice be heard, that when the people rejected my voice, I said, 'I will honor your rejection of my life and my counsel and everything, and I will go and take my own life.'" So I can see how this could be understood as a tragic but an honorable death.

Dan Beecher Or even just, my mind flashes on, I remember at various points hearing about Buddhist monks in Asia who would self-immolate as a way of raising- awareness awareness of the suffering of a people or that sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. That Incubus song is about, what's it called? I don't want to sing it, but it talks about, "Took a look in a book, saw a guy fried up above his knees." This is about the monk. I think this was a Vietnam War protest, wasn't it?

Dan Beecher Yeah. That was- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan definitely one of- That's happened within the last- A few things ... couple of years.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. There have been, I think, was it a veteran or an active duty? Somebody recently self-immolated- Yeah ... to raise awareness of ongoing problems with, I think that it was war efforts on the part of the US, but yeah. I think it maybe speaks...

Dan Beecher Maybe this isn't a very effective technique, you guys, if we don't know what this if we remember the instance but not the- Well, we got one of them ...

Dan McClellan cause.

Dan Beecher Yeah. We got at least one of them.

Dan McClellan One of them was more widely publicized and was actually a catalyst for- For some change ... a lot of discourse and some change. But yeah, the other one, unfortunately, because that's like what an extreme measure to take- Yeah ... to raise awareness. But yeah, that's the kind of thing that I think you have to take seriously, the notion that as a conscious decision to sacrifice one's own life for something like that. Why is that any worse than saying you're willing to sacrifice your life for your country- Right ... by going off to fight in a war that might be waged for money or for oil- Right ... or something like that. I think there are certainly mitigating and extenuating circumstances that need to be taken into account. I think the blanket rejection of all of this as unilaterally sinful, constituting murder thus. And that's where most people are going to say, "Well, the Bible does condemn it. It talks about you shall not kill."

Dan Beecher Well- Right ...

Dan McClellan ratzach is really illegal killing, and so it depends on the laws of the country. And in the Bible, at least, when that text was written, taking your own life probably would not have been considered ratzach. So it probably wouldn't even qualify according to the Ten Commandments. And there are countries where as long as you have gone through appropriate steps and everything like that, you can legally end your life on your own terms.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan I want to say there was a woman recently who did that, didn't she? Within the last few weeks.

Dan Beecher Who did what specifically?

Dan McClellan It was a victim of sexual assault- Oh ... who had been advocating for years, who I think, I can't remember if she was hospitalized or not, but she had been engaged in a legal battle between her and her father because she wanted to end her own life, and her father didn't want to let her.

Dan Beecher And she- And she wanted a physician-assisted suicide.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Exactly.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I think she ultimately won that. And the way it's represented, there are an awful lot of Christians who have come out and said the state killed a woman over and against the objections of her father. Like misrepresenting it wildly- Yeah ... that she didn't know what she was doing.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And her father was trying to save her, and the state stepped in and was like, "We'll kill your daughter against your wishes."

Dan Beecher Well, I don't remember if I've mentioned it on the show, but just a few months ago, my mother who was terminally ill opted to have medical assistance in dying in Canada. And it was a mercy. It was a beautiful mercy- Yeah ... for her to have that option, and my sister and I were able to be present for it, and she was surrounded by people that she loved. And then I went and spoke to the people at the funeral home that was handling the disposition of her remains.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And this woman talked about how so many people who are religious get into huge battles, huge family fights about this. Especially if the family is Catholic or whatever, suddenly it becomes this roaring battle, and nowhere in that conversation is the person's pain.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Nowhere in that conversation is the mercy of that moment.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And I think that people don't choose to take their lives- Lightly ...

Dan McClellan lightly.

Dan Beecher That is not something that you enter into sort of in a flippant manner. So, I definitely was grateful that Canada has lots of different hoops you've got to jump through, and you have to be able to affirm that you are of sound mind and you- Mm-hmm ... that you're not being coerced into it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You have to have multiple meetings with multiple people and all this sort of thing. But yeah, it's nice, and I think that maybe the takeaway here should be that if people are trying to make biblical arguments against this sort of thing you can tell them to go pee up a tree.

Dan McClellan Yeah. There's an awful lot that goes into that. And that's where I think we're trying to put the data over the dogma and allow the people's own feelings and own thoughts about these things and their own suffering. I don't think that any kind of attempt to critically engage with the Bible's position on this thing will come away with the perspective that someone who is being tormented by chronic suffering because of any one of a number of different states or conditions or pathologies or whatever, that they're supposed to suffer indefinitely because you're not supposed to take a life even if it's your own, which is something that's nowhere said in the Bible. The gentleman was Aaron Bushnell, 25-year-old serviceman- Okay ... in the Air Force, who self-immolated in front of the Washington, D.C. Embassy of Israel- Okay ... protesting against the genocide in Palestine.

Dan Beecher So.

Dan McClellan Wow.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, heavy thoughts today, but we got to get to the deep stuff sometimes, so.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then, just to finish up with the story of Saul's death.

Dan Beecher Oh, sure.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Saul. Back to Saul. We'll go back to Saul.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Absolutely.

Dan McClellan Saul and his sons have all passed away. The Philistines came through, they occupied the towns, they stripped the dead. They found Saul and his three sons. They cut off his head, stripped off his armor, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to carry the good news to the houses of their idols and to the people. They put his armor in the temple of Astarte, and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth Shan. So when he was hoping- I have been there, to Beth Shan ...

Dan Beecher when Saul was hoping that they would not make sport of him, sport was made.

Dan McClellan Yeah, but at least he got to end it on his own terms.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Now, here's the interesting part. When the habitants of Jabesh Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, all the valiant men set out, traveled all night long, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth Shan. They came to Jabesh and burned them there. Then they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh and fasted seven days. Now this is relevant because the first thing that Saul did when he became king, after he was set apart and anointed as, and installed as king, was go help the people of Jabesh Gilead from- Hmm ... they were being oppressed by a dude named Snake. His name's Nahash. But, which means snake.

Dan Beecher I love it.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Probably his last name was Poliskin, but who's to say? And then after the death of Saul, David had returned from defeating the Amalekites. He was in Ziklag. On the third day, a man from Saul's camp, with his clothes torn and dirt on his head. When he came to David, he fell to the ground, did obeisance. David said, "Where have you come from?" He said, "I have escaped from the camp of Israel." David says, "How did things go?" He says, "The army fled from the battle, but also many of the army fell, and Saul and his son Jonathan also died." And then somebody who's standing by said, "How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan died?" The man said, "I happened to be on Mount Gilboa, and there was Saul leaning on his spear while the chariots and horsemen drew close to him. When he looked behind him, he saw me and called to me. I answered, 'Here, sir,' and he said to me, 'Who are you?' I answered him, 'I am an Amalekite.' He said to me, 'Come stand over me and kill me, for convulsions have seized me, yet my life still lingers.' So I stood over him and killed him, for I knew that he could not live after he had fallen. I took the crown that was on his head and the armlet that was on his arm, and I have brought them here to my lord." Then David took hold of his clothes, tore them. All the men who were with him did the same. They mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and his son Jonathan. And then David said to the young man who had reported to him, "Where do you come from?" He answered, "I am the son of a resident alien, an Amalekite." David said, "Were you not afraid to lift your hand to destroy the Lord's anointed?" And David called one of the young men and said, "Come here and strike him down." So he struck him down and he died.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And David said to him, "Your blood be on your head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, 'I have killed the Lord's anointed.'" Couple things to note here. That's not the story from the previous chapter.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So it directly contradicts that story, but this raises a question. Is this two different accounts of Saul's death, or is this Amalekite who came upon the scene and was like, "Ooh, I'm going to grab that, I'm going to grab that," and came to David and lied to him in order to... because he thought, "Well, David's Saul's enemy. I will be richly rewarded for reporting this and also being like, 'I was the one who took him out.'" And I am intrigued by the possibility that it is just an alternative account of Saul's death. I think most scholars would probably say the easier explanation is just that the Amalekite was lying.

Dan Beecher But- Yeah. I also wonder, when I read it, and I don't have any background in this, but when I read it, I read it as this was the second half of the story. Like Saul had already done his thing to himself- Hmm ... and then was seizing and convulsing and was asking for the mercy of death. And this Amalekite was there, and he asked him to please just finish the job, and he did. So that's how I read it. That's not what I was meant to have taken from that?

Dan McClellan I think that's certainly a possible interpretation. The text isn't going to stop you from reading it that way. But the fact that Saul was leaning on his spear, he's upright. He's ah, leaning on his spear- Yeah ... I think is- is not Saul falling on his sword.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And also the armor bearer is- Nowhere to be found ... not in the story.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And he says, "Convulsions have seized me, yet my life still lingers." It makes it sound like injuries other than getting run through with a sword, but- By his own sword.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, yeah, I think most scholars would say the Amalekite's just making stuff up, but we don't really have enough background details, and I'm intrigued by the possibility that it's just a contradictory account of the death of Saul. But this is another way to have David be like, "Oh, look what they done to my boy." David is mourning and is so upset about the death of his enemy that he even- Yeah ... killed the guy who claimed to kill him, which is a way to be like, "There's no way on earth David could've been the one who killed Saul," so.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Absolutely not.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher There's no chance of it. So it's- This Amalekite was there. He saw- Yeah ... he saw the whole thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. David was in tears, man. He was in tears.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So it's more hagiography about David, just how exemplary he was, at least when it comes to things other than sleeping with somebody else's...

Dan Beecher Well- ...

Dan McClellan sexually assaulting someone else's wife and then having him sent off to die.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which is coming up.

Dan Beecher Yeah. There you go. All right, friends. Well, thank you for joining us. That's it for today. If you would like to become one of our patrons, we encourage it. We beg of you, head on over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and join up there. You can get access to our after party. That's bonus content that you're not gonna get anywhere else, and then also early and ad-free versions of every episode of the show. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing. Thanks to JJ for being our producer. And we'll talk to you again next time.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.