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April 3, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:39
174 Can we collaborate with Christians? (Part 2)
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Good afternoon, everybody.
I hope you're doing well.
It is quarter to five on the fourth of March 2006, and I'm going to shuffle things around just a little bit.
I was hoping to get to dealing with Christian theological views of secular power, but I didn't get a chance to do that at work today, so we're going to have a tripartite analysis, which seems only fair for a tripartite religion.
of Christians and secular power and why I don't particularly feel that it's particularly helpful either logically or even from the argument from effect and certainly not morally to appeal to Christians to come and join us on the barricades as far as dismantling the moral conceptions of the virtues of the state And I remain, of course, entirely open to debates, but if many people are going to write to me and tell me that it should work and could work and so on, that's great.
Please, tell me where I'm logically wrong and also tell me how it has worked, right?
I mean, obviously, we don't want to keep doing more of the same, because, as you well know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
In the realm of securing freedom for the individual, the first thing that we have to do, and I've talked about this before, the first thing that we have to do is we have to dismantle any concept which is larger than any instance.
Any idea which supersedes or is not derived directly from or is more powerful than any instance must be directly dismantled because that's one of the major things that exists in the world to diminish the concept and execution of human freedom.
So, the collective is always a social good.
The collective is always judged to be larger, superior morally, superior to the individual.
And this, of course, relies on the premise or the idea that concepts are bigger than instances.
Concepts are more significant and more important than instances.
This platonic idea that we looked at, I think, in a tripartite analysis of concepts, Which went down in the hood probably two months ago.
So you have to get rid of concepts in order to free the individual.
In order for the individual to be paramount, you have to eliminate any moral superiority for concepts.
And God, of course, along with the state of the two ultimate concepts, and the family would be the third on a personal level, the ultimate concepts that diminish the moral value of the individual.
And so I don't see how... I mean, I don't see how we're going to be able to join with the Christians to get anything done other than shoot ourselves in the foot.
But maybe I'm wrong about that.
I'm certainly open to being corrected.
But I wanted to point out something that was mentioned on the boards recently a few times, if I remember right, which was we had a gentleman on the boards.
I'm not giving anything away, I think, when I said that his tag name was Ron Paul Fan, right?
He's a fan of Ron Paul, who is a Congress guy, who is a libertarian, who you occasionally see making speeches to an empty house about the evils of government power, because they're all out getting bribed, and so it's hard for them to stay and hear his stories.
And he apparently is quite an admirable fellow and a doctor, and he joined with the Republicans, And he votes...
He's called Dr. No, which I think is pretty funny because he votes no for just about everything, which completely passes over his no like a tsunami over a sea urchin and continues onward to sweep away the hopes and dreams of the population in a flurry of bloody legislation.
But he does sort of hold up his hand and say no, and he is a libertarian as far as I understand it, but he's decided to throw his lot in with the Republicans and appears to be above their kind of bribery and corruption.
So, I guess good for him from a personal integrity standpoint.
I think that Libertarians that go into office are tacitly supporting the concept of violence through the state, and so I think that although they may get a decent paycheck, and I'm sure the pensions are very good as far as advancing the movement, I don't believe that they're doing anything.
In fact, I think they're doing quite the opposite.
I'm sure you can hear this rain again.
Isn't March a wonderful time in Canada?
It's so nice to not have the snow anymore and instead to have this pouring jets of rain coming down on you like you're driving through a moving shower.
So, one of the issues that this Ron Paul fan brought up on the boards was the idea that he was a Christian, and he wanted to bring his Christianity to bear on the Libertarian movement, and he had all these ideas and so on.
And I think that was great.
So we began to debate.
I began to debate him on the board, pointing out about the aspects of Christianity which I found genocidal towards myself, murderous towards myself.
And so he said, you know, misinterpreted, put things in context.
So I dug more into the scriptural stuff.
And to his credit, some of the stuff I posted early on from a site called evilbible.com was not as accurate as it could be.
Not all of it was.
So I dug further in and came up with the right research and actually gave the direct Bible quotes.
And, of course, then he said, well, the Old Testament is sort of mean, but the New Testament is not so mean.
So then I brought up all the stuff in the New Testament about Christ wanting all of us killed.
And then he just vanished from the boards.
And I'm sorry about that.
I really am.
I am sorry about that.
And I'll sort of explain my general philosophy about all of these things.
The question was floating around on the boards, which is one of the reasons why I'm doing this podcast series, which was, well, you know, what about these Christians?
A lot of them are libertarian, and Lou Rockwell's a Catholic, and this and that, and so shouldn't we join forces with them, and so on?
Now, of course, I talked a bit about it this morning, so I'm not going to repeat any of that, but I will say this.
If you are a religious person, and I'm just going to take something non-controversial here and just say, if you believe in leprechauns, Then that's fine.
Believe in leprechauns.
Keep it to yourself.
Don't talk about it.
It's like that bit in Friends where Chandler doesn't like dogs and Joey's like, don't say it!
Don't say it!
Because nobody appreciates or understands anybody who doesn't like And so, my advice would be, if you believe in leprechauns, you might want to play that card sort of close to your chest, right?
So that you avoid ending up in these difficult situations where you're trying to justify something logically that is not logical.
And so, if somebody comes on the Freedom Radio boards, or writes to me, and doesn't sign themselves, you know, a concerned Christian, or quote me scripture, or tell me that God exists, or that God is good, or that I should be saved, or whatever, along with whatever libertarian stuff they're either agreeing with or disagreeing with, if they just write me libertarian stuff, I have no idea if they're Christian or not.
None.
In fact, I would never even argue them on the point, because I'm not going to assume that people are Christian.
That would be sort of insulting to them.
But if they then say to me that they believe in leprechauns, then I'll say, OK, well, is that just like an opinion, like you like to believe in leprechauns, or you think that leprechauns really exist?
And that's sort of different, right?
Like, I mean, when I was a single man, if I had a fantasy about having sex with some celebrity, then The question would then be, oh, so that was like a fantasy, you just fantasized about it, or did you actually have sex with that celebrity?
Then that would be a pretty important distinction, right?
Certainly if you were dealing with somebody from a mental health standpoint, it would be kind of important to understand their reality processing to figure out whether they were mentally ill or not.
I mean, fantasies is one thing, but believing that they're true is another.
So you say to the person, or I would say to the person, so you believe in leprechauns like it's a fantasy, like you like to believe in them?
Like you go to karaoke and pretend that you're like a rock star or something but you don't actually think you're a rock star or whatever?
And then, of course, the Christian or the leprechaun fantasist can come back and say, oh, no, I don't believe that they actually exist.
I just think they're kind of cool to, you know, think about.
I'm like, great.
We have no problems with that.
Let's just keep going.
But if they bring up God, like, or leprechauns, like, leprechauns really do exist, and also that if you don't believe in leprechauns, you are wrong, A, in error, and B, immoral.
Why, then, I'm not the one throwing down the gauntlet here.
I'm not the one trying to push my craziness on other people.
Let's say that I have some belief that I have a secret life at night as a superhero.
You know, libertarian shiny scalp with a cape or something like that.
I have some belief That I have a alter ego, that I go and fight government corruption in some manner, and that I then come back to sleep and don't notice it because I was hypnotized by an evil wizard.
Like, whatever I can do to come up with, to make this sort of believable within my own mind, that there would be no evidence and so on, and then eventually if people record me sleeping at night and I never get up, oh, it's astral travel and, you know, whatever.
If I have that particular belief and I don't tell anybody about it, I'm not doing anybody any harm.
And if I tell people about that belief, like I said to Christina one morning, oh sweetie, I'm having the weirdest fantasy.
It's like approaching a belief now.
I think I've got this night alter ego that I go out and fight government corruption.
And then she's going to say, holy!
Talk to me about this!
Are you maybe not getting enough excitement in your life or something like that?
And we would try and figure out what deficiency in understanding or rationality this fantasy was making up for.
What sad little corner of the tent of fantasy is this fantasy propping up?
That would be something I would discuss internally.
Now, if I come onto the boards and I start to say, I am the superhero and I do fight government corruption at night in my cape and my trusty steed of whatever, right?
A big microphone, who knows?
Then that becomes a different matter, quite a different matter altogether, because then I'm claiming the objective existence.
And if I then furthermore say that anybody who doesn't believe that I have this knight alter ego of libertarian caped crusader fighting archmagic of government corruption opposing, You know, they're just random words sometimes strung together.
I try to reign them in, much like you see those guys on the rodeo with the horses.
And so, if I then say that it is true and that anybody who doesn't believe it is morally wrong, and then if I further say that anybody who doesn't believe that I'm a Caped Crusader at midnight is a candidate for murder, like should be killed,
Then, of course, the question would be, should we invite that person onto a board or into a discussion around rational ethics and libertarian morality, around scientific ethics and scientific methodologies for determining truth and falsehood?
Do we invite the leprechaun believer who says that everybody who doesn't believe in leprechauns should be killed?
And do we invite me, who believes that I'm a midnight caped crusader fighting injustice, Do we invite me onto the boards and I say that, yes, it's true objectively, and no, I can't prove it, but anybody who doesn't believe me should be killed?
Well, I mean, take away all of this Christian propaganda and, you know, are we really talking about anything different?
Of course not.
Of course not.
The Leprechaun Handbook might not include the kind of flourishes of phraseology that you find in the King James Bible, which, in a lot of ways, is a very beautifully written book.
But the quality of the language doesn't matter at all.
So, I don't really sort of understand what it means to say, we should invite these people, we should reach out to them, and so on.
I mean, and absolutely, let's reach out to them.
I mean, for sure.
I mean, but in the same way that you try and battle a mental illness.
And that doesn't mean that you yell at the person and call them an idiot.
Because they have taken refuge in that mental illness, in that schizophrenic structure of fantasy, because of an extraordinary level of personal trauma.
An extraordinarily underdeveloped sense of self, and integrity, and reality processing, right?
So they've been raised as Christians, they've been abused as children through this massive and gassy injection of God into their veins, and they have experienced extraordinary social pressures, and they've been bullied, and they've been threatened with hell, and they might have been molested by priests, and they've just gone through the absolute wringer.
And Christianity, anybody who talks about Christianity with somebody who's not neck-deep in the same cult and have their eyes a goggle with the same fantasies, anybody who talks about Christianity with an atheist, I mean, people, am I the only one who hears the desperate cry for help?
The desperate cry which says, help pry this phantasmagorical demon off my throat?
Help me pry off this vampire from my jugular?
Help me and save me from these crippling fantasies that I cannot fight alone?
Am I the only one who hears that?
Is that just me?
Could be just me.
But I think it's there nonetheless.
I think that it's real.
It has been my experience.
that people who openly talk about religion to an atheist, they're not trying to convert you.
They're trying to deconvert themselves.
Way down through the foggy and bloody sedimentary layers of their own religious fantasies is an honest and open and rational true self that is struggling and clawing in its conceptual prison to try and break free and reach the world and reach other people.
My God!
You don't understand what a desperately lonely place it is to be religious.
To be trapped in a people-less universe with this God who isn't even there, just makes me itchy to think about it.
These people, all they do is drone on and on about abstracts and lies and falsehoods and imagination as if it's real, and they just can't connect.
Like, if you've ever seen people who are really into Dungeons and Dragons, or Lord of the Rings, or Star Trek The Next Generation, or the original one, or whatever, if you see these kinds of people, and they're at conventions, all they're doing is talking about these shows, or talking about this game.
And there is, of course, a desperate loneliness at the bottom of this, as you can only relate to people by talking about things which aren't real, like game rules or TV shows or whatever.
I'm not saying these people think they are real, but this is the level at which people can connect, which is just to mesh together their particular obsessions.
And this could be just in just about anything.
I'm just sort of picking on these things.
And it's a desperately lonely place to be, but that is a thousand million times less lonely than Christianity.
Christianity, oh my God, you are so trapped in these absolute prisons of fantasies, and these fantasies that God is watching you, and that everything you do makes a difference, and that you have to save people, and you have to mouth all these platitudes And you have to go to church, and you have to pray, and you have to do these rituals, and you have to do these beliefs, and you have to nod your head when all this nonsense gets talked.
I mean, there's no true self in any of that.
There's no honesty, or love, or integrity, or connection, or intimacy, or empathy in any of that.
Any more so than there is in the middle of Nuremberg in 1936 when you're all screaming about Hitler.
There's no connection with other human beings in that you're lost in this absolute interstellar void of fantasy and fiction and conformity.
Ugh!
It's terrifying!
The unbelievable solitude that is out there among these 2,000-year-old ghosts, these empty hallways of Fantasms and this empty universe that you think you're relating to, to the point where it eclipses every single human being in your life in any direct way.
You reach out to connect with God and fall off a cliff and fall forever and don't even know that you're falling.
It's a nightmare!
These people experience nothing but nightmares as part of their waking life.
And when they talk to you about their fantasies as if they are true, they are Begging!
They are begging for you to free them.
And yes, they will kick and scream at you.
Of course, because the false self and the devils that have surrounded them with these ghostly, bloody, encircled arms is crushing them like a vice.
They are going to kick and bite and scream and get mad at you as you try to free them.
I don't know, your level of, you know, how you can stomach this or the degree to which you can stomach it is entirely up to you.
I can stomach it to a certain amount and then I just lose patience because you have to get a sense that people are interested in healing themselves.
But this mass schizophrenia, this mass delusion of Christianity, or religion, or any religion, culture, patriotism, classism, sexism, all of this nonsense, racism, this stuff is... People are just desperate to be free.
I mean, it's lonely, it's horrible, you have nothing but self-hatred and self-contempt for your conformity, for your lack of individual thought, for your... The absolute fragility of these fantasy substitutes for any kind of real ego You can't be critiqued, you can't think about anything, you just live in this tiny little box that's getting smaller and smaller all the time.
Dostoevsky has a terrifying description of this, like that you're in the Brothers Karamazov, that you're hanging in a square of space over a perfect void, and that space is getting smaller, and this is, you know, the religious life, the religious mindset.
He also, by the way, has a completely terrifying description of the afterlife in Crime and Punishment, where he talked about the afterlife something like, we always think of the afterlife, I think this is Raskolnikov, says, we always think of the afterlife like some fantastically beautiful or terrible or terrifying place, but what if the afterlife is just kind of like an old bathhouse at the bottom of a disused garden full of spiders and that's where you sit for eternity?
Oh, it's horrible!
In fact, he wrote a good chunk of crime and punishment while he was locked up in a bathhouse at the foot of a disused garden for being unable to pay his hotel bill.
He got married to a woman and became a compulsive gambler.
Oh, a wretched, wretched life.
I tell you, there's no joy in that kind of talent when you have to live with that kind of life.
But these people are begging to have you free them.
And yes, they'll kick and scream against you because there's a lot of conformity, and they're going to get angry at you rather than angry at the people who lied to them.
This is something that is so common it's barely even worth mentioning.
I mean, as any libertarian who opens his mouth knows, or her mouth knows, That people get mad at people who point out the truth.
They don't get mad at people who are lying to them.
I mean, that's just so much a part of the corruption of the modern mind, and I guess the mind throughout most of history.
It's not part of human nature, but it is absolutely part of the modern mind for sure.
That if you sort of say, hey, you know, religion is just a bunch of lies, then you can prove it to people.
They're not going to get mad at the people who lied to them.
They're going to get mad at you.
I mean, that's just so predictable.
You don't even bother.
I don't even bother.
I haven't mentioned it before.
I mean, that's just so obvious and so inevitable.
But that's how they're programmed, right?
I mean, when you have been hugely lied to and betrayed, and you have been betrayed, as I talked about with the invisible apple, I guess, about two and a half months ago, when you have been betrayed at a fundamental level using a false argument for morality, the degree of violation is unspeakable.
I mean, I can barely wrap any kind of words around it.
It is such a moral horror.
To be perpetrated upon a child and how much it violates and destroys the trust of the child and the integrity of the child and the joy of the child all for the sake of brute subjugation.
I think that To face that kind of pain is very, very, very hard.
And, you know, as I've always sort of encouraged people to do, to sort of face up to the pain of being lied to, whether it's by my teachers that you kind of liked, or whoever, I mean, everybody lied to you pretty much as you were growing up, unless you happened to be born into a libertarian family, which, you know, more power to you.
Fantastic.
Post on the boards and let us know what it was like.
But even if you did and, you know, assuming you weren't homeschooled, even if you weren't homeschooled, you sort of read the newspaper, turned on the TV, I mean, the amount of falsehood, I mean, is this... We can barely breathe.
We're so much in this sort of... these... the bloody lies.
I mean, there's a... fills our sort of social bathtub so full, we can barely get out.
We can barely breathe.
It's like right up to our nose hairs.
And to look at that kind of corruption is very, very hard.
And most people just get mad at you for pointing it out.
Like, as I say, when there's a gun in the room, people just get mad at you.
They don't get mad at people who've actually got the gun out and pointing it at them.
They get mad at you for saying, hey, there's a gun in the room, right?
Because it's easier.
Because people are much more... They're much braver when they know that people aren't going to fight back.
So they'll get angry at a pacifist over a warmonger because they know the pacifists won't fight back.
It's the same reason that people get angry at corporations rather than the state.
It's much more dangerous getting angry at the state.
And also it's much more popular, and for this very reason, that corporations won't fight back.
Corporations won't come to your house and take you away.
And you also won't alienate yourself from a lot of people by complaining about corporations.
But if you start complaining about the state, especially in a time of war, then you're going to face a lot more social opposition.
So people like to vent their spleen against the sort of helpless and relatively nice corporations, as opposed to the military and the state and so on.
I mean, that's again also very much part of human nature in the modern world, right?
This sort of corrupt human nature that People seek out the least defended person or the least offended group and attack those people and displace all the rage from those who actually have power over them onto that undefended group and feel that they are actually achieving something when all they're doing is participating in the same betrayal and the same violation and emotional or physical destruction that destroyed them as well.
I mean, this is... When people get mad at Walmart, I mean, of all places, when they get mad at Walmart, Then they're simply joining the side of the state and continuing to bully because they're pointing their outrage at the undefended members of society and brutalizing them in print or in opinion or however.
So the challenge is that if you are a logician or a philosopher or somebody who's interested in an objective and scientific methodology for separating truth from falsehood, when somebody comes into your life and says, leprechauns exist, and you're evil if you don't believe me, and I think you should be killed if you don't believe me, and then you say, you really think I should be killed?
And they say, well, don't take it out of context.
It's like, Frick your goddamn context!
Oh, if I hear that one more time from Christians.
Well, you have to take it in context.
Context?
Context?
So you want us dead, but we're supposed to take it in context?
For Christ's sake, at least have the courage of your convictions and look me in the eye and say, yeah, you should be drowned or killed.
Go and talk about how women who have affairs should be stoned to death and how The fathers have the right to sell their daughters into sexual slavery.
Absolutely!
Talk about how God should kill entire villages because one person doesn't believe in God.
And talk about how children should be killed if they raise their voices against God or turn any kind of talk back against their parents.
At least have the courage of your convictions but to sort of come out in this weaselly way.
come on all strong about God and virtue, and then when somebody points out that there's some significantly evil passages in the Bible, to then say, well, you've got to take those in context, it's like, God, how weaselly.
At least give us a fair fight.
At least have the courage of your convictions.
Don't give us all this weaselly nonsense about how it's all in context.
Context?
How about the context of there's no such thing as God?
I'm willing not to put that in any kind of context.
But anyway, I can rant about context another time, but it is really a filthy, filthy mental mechanism and very, very corrupt to say that people should be killed, and then when they get offended by it, say that they're also wrong in being offended, but they should be killed.
I mean, talk about a slap in the face or a spit in the face.
Oh, you want me dead?
Oh, and I'm actually wrong to be offended that you want me dead?
Holy crap!
I mean, how pathetic do you think I am?
I mean, that question, I guess, sort of answers itself.
I mean, how pathetic do religious people think that atheists are, that we're not only not going to be offended at wanting to be killed, but even if we are offended, that we're going to go, oh, okay, it's supposed to be taken in context.
It's supposed to be like, I am dead in my heart rather than I should be killed, which is sort of what the Bible actually says.
So not only should I not be offended at the fact that people want me and millions and millions of other people dead, but I should also doubt my own mind and my value of my own life enough that I'm going to feel embarrassed for bringing this up because it obviously is completely uneducated.
And, obviously, I can't speak ancient Aramaic or ancient Hebrew and, therefore, I don't understand all the translation problems.
So, I not only should not be offended about wanting to be killed, but I should feel guilty or bad or stupid for being offended.
But, of course, this is the argument that has worked with the Christian, which is why the Christian attempts to use the argument on other people.
It's part of the whole desperate desire to be free, which Christians kick and rail at and run out of the room and panic about.
And they're obsessed with atheists, right?
I mean, they'll generally run away, but sometimes they'll sort of stay and fight.
And occasionally you will get someone who will change their mind, which is worth all the gold in the world, I think.
I mean, to save a soul in that manner is... I know, I know, it's the word soul.
And saving a soul by getting people to give up on religion sounds like a paradox, but...
I think I've explained before how I like to use the word, and, you know, if you don't like it, just sort of substitute integrity or whatever it is that you like in that.
But I think that is something that you have to recognize.
People are pushing their craziness onto us.
I don't sort of go onto Christian chat rooms or websites and say, you all are crazy, there's no God.
But when people come onto my turf, when people come onto the turf of scientific rationality, Then they can keep quiet about their craziness, or if they bring their craziness up, then they're going to have to understand that we can't sort of sit there and say, well, that's just your opinion.
I mean, why on earth would I bother with these podcasts if everything was just an opinion?
Why would you bother listening to them?
If it was all just like, I like blue, and you like red, I mean, that would just be nonsense.
The podcast called My Favorite Album Cover is probably way over.
I mean, even that, people would feel a thrill of sort of like, hey, I like that song too, or I like that album cover too.
If it was all just a bad opinion, then I wouldn't bother with all of this.
I mean, what nonsense, what unholy vanity would that be, to think that anybody's interested in my opinions?
Well, I hope that nobody's interested in my opinions at all.
I hope that people are interested in the facts, and I hope that I'm always appealing to logic and evidence, but...
There is no value in my opinions, or your opinions, or a Christian's opinions whatsoever.
But when people say that my self-contradictory fantasy opinion is not only true, I mean, somebody says leprechauns are real, then that's one thing.
I mean, and even then we would, I mean, even with that we're sort of gonna say, hey, you know, I gotta tell you, I think you might be a little off the mark on this one.
Just a little.
And that's just saying that crazy things exist.
But Christians don't stop there.
Religious people don't stop there.
Patriots don't stop there.
They don't say, America exists or Canada exists.
They say, Canada exists and is moral and anybody who disagrees should be shot.
I mean, it's all exactly the same sequence is true of just about any collective concept that reigns supreme over an individual.
The concept exists.
The concept is moral.
And anybody who disagrees should be shot or murdered.
I mean, the Bible doesn't say shot because fortunately for us, the technology had not been invented yet.
Otherwise, there would be far fewer atheists around today.
But those three things, I mean, we don't bring those to the table.
We're not sitting there putting those out there.
You have to be an atheist.
Only atheism is moral, and if you don't agree with atheism, then you are going to be shot.
Well, let me sort of mildly correct that.
Yes, you should be an atheist, because it's going to be better for you, and you should... I mean, there's one of the many things that you should be, but you definitely should not believe in religion, because it's a form of mental illness.
It's very unhealthy.
And yes, rational morality does exist and is absolutely provable, as I've talked about in my blog and in previous podcasts, and so you should believe in that in the same way that you should believe in the scientific method, because it's logical, it's empirical, and it's provable.
But you should not be shot for not, right?
The thing that we draw back on, at least I certainly draw back on, is that you never kill people for ideas.
You can kill in self-defense and all that kind of stuff, but you never kill people for ideas.
And you argue better ideas, right?
That's the Areopagitica argument that comes out of Milton, which is a great essay to read, just in case you've never read it.
But...
We don't bring that to the table, that contradictory crazy things exist, that you have to believe in them against all evidence and reason, and if you don't, you should be shot.
Actually, that's the three things we don't say.
We don't say contradictory things exist.
We say logical and empirical things exist, and that you should believe in them, but based on your own judgment and your own experience, your logic, the logic that you test against empirical reality and testing and observation, and so on.
Reproducibility.
So we say all of that stuff, and then we say, yes, this is morality.
And if you don't do this, you're not moral.
And if you don't do it on your own, then you're just out of integrity.
But if you don't do it and you impose on other people by force, then yeah, you're evil and you should be sort of resisted.
So, believing in crazy things, believing that crazy things are moral, and believing that if you question crazy things you should be shot, well, that's the government, right?
The government exists.
Well, no, the government doesn't exist.
No evidence, no logic.
People in the government have no different moral rules than anybody else, even though we're supposed to believe that they do.
So, crazy things exist.
The crazy things are moral.
The government is good.
The government is our protector.
The government is trying to save us without the government, blah, blah, blah.
And then, if you don't agree with these crazy concepts, then you should be shot.
Obviously, with the government, if I don't want to pay my taxes, they're going to shoot me.
And with the church, if they follow the teachings of our good Lord Jesus Christ, then if I don't believe in our aforementioned good Lord, then I should be killed.
I mean, this is all the same thing.
We don't bring this to the table.
We do not bring this to the table.
This is what other people bring to the table.
And rubber faces in.
It's not something that we initiate.
I mean, in terms of self-defense, I'm not going on to Christian boards and saying you're all sick and evil.
But when Christians come and talk to me through email, through the boards, through whatever, then, yeah, they're coming on sort of my turf, right?
And they're initiating this sort of crazy, you-gotta-believe-things-that-are-illogical stuff.
And so, does the board welcome everybody?
Absolutely!
The board welcomes everybody.
And there's no possibility of violence on the board, because it's an electronic medium.
And so, The board welcomes everybody.
But if you start putting crazy opinions out there, then you're going to have to defend them.
And if you can't defend them, then you have to withdraw.
It doesn't mean you can't come and post or whatever.
It doesn't mean you can't come and read stuff.
But, you know, you can't say that these opinions are true if you're just bringing these crazy opinions.
So, yeah, Ron Paul fan, people like that, perfectly welcome.
Perfectly welcome.
Come on board.
Come on down.
And have a great time.
Come and talk with us.
We'd love to hear from you.
But don't be surprised, of course, if you do start bringing the whole God thing up, and the whole religion is moral, and then we're going to point out that, you know, you guys want us dead.
If you're going to bring this whole leprechaun thing up, let's talk about it.
But I will never, ever withdraw from that conversation.
I will never, ever say to people who start initiating things with me on that level that I'm going to let it go for the sake of keeping you on board.
What a horrible level of self-esteem would I have to have, or self-hatred would I have to have, to collude or collaborate or ignore the fact that somebody wants me killed for my beliefs, my beliefs which are the most precious things in my life.
That would not be an honorable position to take at all, and it would be a disrespect to myself, but most importantly it would be a disrespect to the truth, which I hope never ever in my life to end up doing.
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