An alternative take to Stefan Molyneux's recent video "Why I Was Wrong About Atheism": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqQdc0mX1_c
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So the other day, Stefan Molyneux posted a video titled, Why I Was Wrong About Atheism, in which he discusses why it is, in his opinion, that so many atheists become very hardcore statists, demanding not just a strong government, but a left-wing, socialist, invasive government.
And it's a great video, and I certainly don't disagree with his conclusions, but there's a comment I left on the video giving a theist's perspective on all of this, and I want to expand upon that in this video.
I won't ruin his conclusions for you.
Link to his video is down below.
But this is my thoughts on the matter.
Why is it that religious people tend to be much better at maintaining a limited government, as opposed to atheists who are supposedly reasonable and smart, and they can figure out something as blindingly obvious as libertarianism?
Well, the issue, it strikes me, it comes from living in a reality where you don't have an ultimate arbiter, where there is a hint of nihilism in things.
You see, on the one hand, all humans, we all have a moral sense.
Okay, we have a basic understanding that lying, cheating, stealing, we know that this stuff is wrong, innately.
And we also have a sense of societal purpose that comes innately to us.
We understand that if we don't have children, there will be no society in the future, that we need to have a direction in society.
Having something like a permanent welfare class is a bad idea.
We innately understand that.
C.S. Lewis likened it to having a fleet of ships.
You know, personal morality would be how we run our own ships, making sure they're seaworthy.
And the societal direction, the societal impetus, would be the direction that the fleet is going.
Because if nobody can agree on where we're going, then we're all going to crash into each other.
This stuff is fairly obvious.
Anybody can figure it out with a moment's reflection.
And yet, with atheists, we find that so often they start demanding these rigid controls on everything and everybody.
And it's because of the nihilism that is so present in most atheists.
And it starts off small.
It's like water seeping into rocks over the years and bit by bit causing them to crumble, freezing and expanding and shattering the rocks.
And, you know, let's take sex as an example.
You know, there's a really pithy little argument I heard in The Last Man on Earth, where the woman says to him, and she looks at the pornographies collection, she says to him, you know all those girls were abused, don't you?
And I think that's a pretty powerful argument as to why you shouldn't be supporting the pornography industry.
You know, if you put your finances into that, then you're supporting an industry that does, to some extent, exploit the misery of other people.
You know, and let's just take that argument forgiven.
Right now, let's take it on face value.
But here's the thing: so, so let's say you don't support pornography, you don't put any money into the system, but what's so wrong with downloading an electronic copy of a free trailer for pornography?
After all, you're not forcing anybody to do anything, you're not putting any money into the system, and that's backing the system.
So, what's so wrong with downloading a little bit of pornography?
You know, so let's go the step further, you know, where you start saying, well, you know, like I understand that sex, like the basic teleology of sex, you know, it's to help, it's to reproduce, it's to make children, it's to bond married couples together.
You know, it's a very intimate act for a married couple to share.
It, you know, the best way to end an argument is probably to have sex with one another.
It's and this is why human women, they are sexually aroused even when they're not a new stress.
It's fairly easy to look at sex and see what its ultimate purpose is.
To maintain families that can raise children with one another.
But, you know, you're young and you met somebody and you like them.
And so, you know, maybe you don't really want to marry them, but yeah, we'll use a condom.
Why not?
Well, and from there, you know, now that you've taken that step, well, why not take the next step down the road?
And the next, and the next.
And each one of these is a very tiny step until you result in this world where there is casual sex happening all over the place.
There are broken hearts happening all over the place.
Because let's remember, you know, sex is a very intimate act.
It's very psychologically impactful.
And yeah, you know what?
You can play around a bit in college, you know, meet a few girls.
Yeah, maybe it doesn't work out.
And, you know, there's some bruised feelings, but no souls are being ripped out from it.
So, you know, it's not so bad.
But what you'll find is that everybody has a different set point.
You know, some people are more tempted than others.
Some can handle drugs while others can't.
And, you know, if you have this free love society, if you are going to make up your own morality about how you maintain your ship, there's going to be people that don't maintain their ships.
And there's going to be people that don't understand that, yeah, the purpose of sex is to raise children in a loving household, ultimately.
And soon you wind up with a rather disastrous situation.
Another example.
Let's think about health.
It's self-evident.
For yourself, you should maintain your health, right?
That way you'll live longer, you'll be happier, you'll enjoy each day more if you just do a little bit of exercise and you try and eat healthy.
And at the same time, on a societal level, we want a population that is physically fit and like so that they can go fight in war if need be, but also so that they don't cost the healthcare system billions of dollars on obesity treatments and other things.
You know, you can mix body modification into this.
You know, that if when we have people spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars modifying their bodies, whether it's, you know, just because they want bigger breasts or because, you know, it's our, you know, earrings, tattoos, weird piercings, bigger tits, transsexualism, becoming a dragon.
Each of these is a small step along the way.
And there's no reason not to take that next step along that path.
And eventually you wind up with a system that a state of affairs that is very confusing and is very disruptive.
And what do you do about that then?
So right now, we have this generation of women that have been, they've been taught by the system that having sex is empowering.
And it doesn't, you don't have to do much to convince a teenager to have sex, okay?
They're raging with hormones.
Of course they want to have sex.
And if you tell them that it's empowering and the broken heart is worth the five-minute orgasm and, you know, be proud of your STD status and that, you know, homosexuality is perfectly normal and should be encouraged, you get to the point where people are having, they're isolated.
Okay, they're hooking up on Tinder, but they are no longer able to feel intimacy.
There's a lot of damage being done, a lot of confusion.
And, you know, I was reading this one article in a mainstream publication.
And it was generally talked about the whole feminist script and how that is leaving women feeling absolutely miserable.
You know, the casual sex is making them feel used.
And the careers and the corporations, which are all exciting and, you know, glamorous at first, leave them feeling empty and hollow and lonely as they get older.
And of course, the obvious solution to all this is say maybe they shouldn't be doing that.
You know, maybe there's a way that people are meant to live that they're not living up to that ideal.
You know, which isn't to say we're all identical robots that need to be the same, but to say that, you know, we're each unique, but we do fall into patterns.
The article completely sidestepped this absolutely obvious conclusion to conclude that we needed more feminism.
You know, or as the radicals in university like to say, we need more study of this.
You know, I've commented before how evil spreads faster than good.
You know, it's like Yoda says, it's quicker and easier, though it's not stronger.
And so when you have this hookup culture, there's a lot of damage that gets spread around.
A lot of pain happening.
And so somebody needs to come and arbitrate that pain to say who did what to whom, who was in the right, who was wrong.
When you have this casual sex resulting in lots of single mothers, well, who's going to support those single mothers?
Letting them starve to death and letting kids die in the street, that doesn't seem right to us.
So progressively, we need more and more of this state to regulate things.
Take the obesity epidemic.
When we have people, and it's like, okay, well, today I want to have a cigar and some whiskey.
Or I want to eat some Doritos.
Or I want to so on and so forth until you get to the obesity epidemic.
And so now we want the state to do something about it.
We want free health care for everybody because it's not fair that somebody with a glandular disorder should have to pay more for health care.
And we also want them to start limiting the size of beverages.
You know, when we start saying that there's no judgment to be had on any sort of sexual deviancy, the transgender bathroom issue is the natural result of that.
All of a sudden, we need government stepping in and saying whatever.
Either that you have to allow men that claim they are women to use the women's washroom and to change at the pool in front of little girls, or that we aren't going to allow it.
And then you have this complete liberal uproar over what the government's doing.
The problem is that both sides are trying to do something instead of people policing themselves.
Now, a religious people, people that acknowledge a higher truth and strive to live up to that higher truth, will naturally police themselves.
They won't always agree on everything.
And Lord knows, there is constant debate within the church and between different branches of Christianity.
But when religious people disagree with one another, they don't disagree on the existence of God and that we are being watched, we are being measured.
And not in a terrifying way either.
Okay, like the whole skydaddy thing.
Not necessarily in a terrifying way.
You know, and that we're also offered a lot of help and that we help one another out.
Because none of us is living without sin.
Like, maybe we were talking about obesity.
Listen, the father at my church, he is very morally courageous, incredibly compassionate, and you know what?
Kind of a big guy.
I think he likes his pizzas.
But you know what?
He's following the discipline of St. Paul.
So I think he's entitled to indulge a little bit in, you know, having a little bit too much to eat every once in a while.
You know, and like we all have our own burdens to overcome, our own difficulties.
And so nobody in the religious community is pretending to be perfect.
All right.
We're trying to become better.
We're trying to mitigate our errors and improve upon them as time goes on.
And there will be debates.
You know, what is appropriate in this scenario?
And it's not always the same answer for everybody.
The point is that we're trying to get better.
And so we not only police ourselves as individuals, but with one another, we try and help lift one another up.
Because we're each trying to understand what the best version of ourselves is.
And we understand that there's a much higher commitment that we all have.
So we, the pornography, the reason that we resist even that first step down that road.
You know, just copying a file.
You know, you wouldn't download a bike, would you?
You're not stealing anything.
You're not encouraging it.
It's just a copied file, right?
But you understand that you're doing something to yourself in the process and that you're taking a step down into the wrong path.
Same thing for drunkenness and drug addiction, but I mean, even Christ drank wine.
It's a question of what we're most tempted, what is most dangerous for us, and trying to resist and be better than that.
So religious people will wind up naturally policing themselves.
And there will occasionally be disagreements, you know, certainly over finances, over property and whatnot.
But it's rather, those are rather simple things to put into a code of law.
That's the sort of the thing, that's the sort of thing government can define because it's objective.
It's out there.
It's outside ourselves.
Even if you don't like the property law, at least you understand what the property law is.
You can lobby to change it, if you really think so, but it's more about having the rules laid out there.
Simple, basic, not too complex.
Whereas the definition of what sort of people we're trying to be, how a man or a woman should live their life, that's something governments aren't very good at defining because it's not objective.
It's spiritual.
And in the church, we work with one another to be the best versions of ourselves.
And again, you just go back to the innate common sense.
Collecting STDs, irresponsibly having children, being incredibly unhealthy, being addicted to drugs or to video games or to movies or anything.
We innately know that these aren't healthy.
And we appeal to the guilt that we feel within one another.
Because we do acknowledge that we're imperfect and there is a higher moral power.
If you reject the concept of absolute truth, the concept of God, of a higher moral law that we all feel in our hearts that can be appealed to, if you reject that, then somebody needs to define the good way of living.
Somebody needs to define what human life is meant to be.
And so currently in our society, the good life is, the good life being promoted is sexual degeneracy.
You know, don't you dare shame me.
The good life in communist countries was the exact opposite.
Homosexuals were put into gulags.
You know, because we didn't try and help them become better people.
We just put them to death.
They're useless.
Oh, Halodomor?
Those people aren't radical enough.
We'll just kill all of them.
And so this is why atheists so often turn to statism.
Because they're nihilistic at the end of the day.
They don't believe in an absolute truth.
They try and have the objective truth without acknowledging the higher truth, the absolute truth.
They're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
And because they reject this higher moral law that they're called to, what they end up doing is rationalizing everything they do.
Right?
So jerking off to pornography, that's okay.
Sleeping with this girl that I like, but I don't want to marry, that's okay.
Or just sleeping with whatever girl I run into, you know, even if it breaks her heart, that's okay.
Leaving her with a kid and then running off on her, that's okay.
And so now you need some organization to implement some mockery of justice and try and try and just keep things medicated and keep things running.
Man is meant for God.
We are all called to sainthood, to live the life of a saint.
We are not made for this world.
Okay, this world is not enough for us.
And when we throw away the idea of becoming better people, when we accept ourselves just as we are, well, you're either getting better or you're getting worse.
And when we try and make moral law on our own, when we try and invent our own moral law, there's always a piece missing.
There's always a way to cheat the system.
And each time somebody cheats the system, we need a new law.
And we wind up with this monstrous, this corporate world of just misery and enemy and isolation.
And so instead of acknowledging that the corporate world is sick, that this society is sick, we medicate people.
Little boys aren't sitting down and learning all the schoolwork in a boring environment.
Riddling.
You know, women are miserable because they don't have children and none of the men they sleep with love them.
Antidepressants.
You know, we induce the problems because we're selfish and we don't want to admit we're wrong.
So we create all these problems.
And instead of saying, oops, we made a mistake, we try and invent a new solution.
Another patch, another patch, another patch.
Until we are nothing but a fleet of ships held together with duct tape and bubblegum and not a prayer in sight.
Deus Volt, folks.
Verrini out.
Oh, and one last thing before any of the wags down the comment section complain.
