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April 4, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
37:01
177 Can we collaborate with Christians? (Part 3)
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All right, brothers and sisters, it's Steph.
It's just before five o'clock on April the 4th, 2006.
I hope you're doing well.
We're going to continue on with the Bible and government because I think it's important for us to understand, when we're speaking with Christians, exactly the kind of stuff that we're up against when it comes to talking about anarchism and so on.
So, the first thing we do, of course, is let's look at some of the biblical commandments around paying taxes.
So, in Matthew 22, 17 to 21, the Pharisees asked Jesus a question, tell us then, what is your opinion?
Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?
But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, you hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?
Show me the coin used for paying the tax.
They bought him a denarius, and he asked them, Whose portrait is this, and whose inscription?
Caesar's, they replied.
Then he said to them, Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.
And Apostle Paul taught, This is why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing.
Give everyone what you owe him.
If you owe taxes, pay taxes.
And, of course, this is exactly what you would expect from a religion that is serving state power, that you would expect them to command their Christians to pay taxes.
You wouldn't get very far as a religion with any kind of government if you said to the people that they shouldn't pay taxes, the government would just wipe you out.
Now, the Christians do believe, some of them do believe, that you're allowed to disobey the government when the government tells a Christian to do something that the Bible forbids, like, say, let an atheist live or not stone to death a woman who's been an adulteress.
Now, as to the objection, well, maybe it's not a moral government, well, the response generally is that, you know, not saying your taxes because the money is being misused or even being used for evil purposes is not a Christian's concern.
When Jesus said, give to Caesar, the Roman government was by no means a good government.
When Paul instructed Christians to pay taxes, Nero, who was about the most evil Roman emperor in history, was the head of the government.
We are to pay taxes, say the Christians, even when the government is not God-honoring.
Now, in relation to the divine roots of biblical power, sorry, the divine roots of government power in the Bible, of course, the laws of Moses.
The law of Moses was theocratic system in nature.
The Ten Commandments was to be implemented both spiritually and within a civil society.
And so in the Old Testament, just the instructions given for the carrying out of capital punishment And in the New Testament, we get higher powers as being sort of separate.
And Paul teaches, for there is no power but of God.
The powers that be are ordained of God.
In other words, you have to obey God because God, the government, because the government is created by God.
Now, the Bible also teaches submission to civil government.
Peter also teaches, submit yourself to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king, as supreme, or unto governors.
And those who resist and disobey civil government are resisting God.
You can find that in Romans.
And, of course, the exception can be when government and God's words conflict.
Not only is obedience to government taught, but also honor is due.
Observe Peter's teaching.
Honor all men, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.
And, of course, this was Nero, again, the rather crazy and evil Roman emperor.
And there's lots of further support.
You can find in Timothy that Christians should pray for government leaders.
And this actually happens.
People do pray for government leaders who are Christians.
We should honor government leaders.
We should not speak evil of the ruler of our people.
And it's okay to serve in a secular government because Joseph, Nehemiah, Daniel, and Obadiah did.
We should submit to the government and only disobey it where it contradicts what God has taught in his word.
Even in disobeying an evil king, one should still honor the king.
That's in Daniel.
Do not be rebellious against the government.
Without proper cause, pay your taxes.
It is proper for a government to collect them.
Do not exalt yourself before a ruler.
Do not be gluttonous or greedy before a ruler.
And there are a few instructions for the rulers.
So rulers should get rid of all the evil they see, remove the wicked from their presence, and punish false witnesses.
I guess that would be you and me.
I think that's where the spotlight is focusing on right now.
Government has a duty to maintain order.
Government has the right to bear the sword against wrongdoers and against external aggressors.
For waging war, it's important that a ruler have many advisors.
There's no problem with war as a whole.
Just, you know, get the right people around you.
The rulers under you should be righteous and people of integrity, have skilled people working for you, not foolish advisers, and do not have lazy messengers and officials.
And in Proverbs we find that the Lord can direct the king's heart as he pleases.
That's also very important.
We'll talk about that in a little while.
So these are some of the basic ideas about government that are in the Bible.
The Old Testament in particular has no particular problem with theocracy or dictatorship.
There's no real mention of democracy.
There is mention of property rights, but also of giving up all of your property to help the poor and so on.
So I'm going to switch to car mode now and we'll talk about this more on the way home.
All right, so we're now in the car.
What does this all mean in terms of Christianity or any of the Old Testament religions, the big three?
What does this mean in terms of this and libertarianism?
The Bible specifically rejects anarchism, or a non-governmental solution to social problems.
This, of course, would seem to me to be entirely consistent with the whole man is born evil thing, which is the basis of the Old Testament.
Well, certainly the basis of the story of Adam and Eve, which is, of course, for those who... It's been a while since we talked about the Genesis myth, but...
The idea, of course, is that human beings are evil, born sinful by nature, because we have inherited the moral choice of Adam to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which has rendered us in a fallen state, away from the grace of God.
This is one of the problems that religions always have to face.
You've got this world, which is fairly crappy, At times.
It has a sort of craptastic written all over it in places.
And yet it's supposed to be the product of an all-perfect, all-wise deity, right?
So, you know, basically if you wanted to design a perfect organism, it seems to me that spina bifida and cancer wouldn't be on your list, you know, necessarily, of things that occur or the love handles that seem to magically pop in on your 38th birthday.
But hey, that could just be me.
But there's lots of ways that you could sort of improve the species, improve the world, and so on.
And, you know, it doesn't seem to be that great in a lot of ways, right?
Certainly, even in the West, things aren't going in the right direction, although they're pretty great relative to history.
You know, I said to Christina the other day just how happy I am to be one of the few generations of males in history that hasn't had to haul their ass off to some godforsaken war.
And so, I got nothing but praise for the present relative to that.
I can live with taxation as long as I keep my limbs.
And so...
The problem which religions always have to face is that this world seems to have been designed by a sort of sadistic ass clown that didn't really have much of a clue about how to organize things in a way that was benevolent and positive, and so how do you answer that God is all good and all powerful and the world has a sort of psychedelic aspect to it?
Well, you sort of have to say that it's, you know, it's your fault.
It's man's fault.
Blame the victim.
That's always the way it goes in religion.
Blame the victim.
And so you have to sort of say that human beings are bad.
Human beings have caused this.
Now, one of the things that you also have a problem... And don't worry, we're getting to the Bible and God in a sec.
Just, okay, maybe two secs.
But the other thing that you're going to have to explain if you say, well, people who are bad, bad people, have bad things happen to them and, you know, that's not God's fault, is that there are two sort of otherish kind of categories of people who spectacularly bad things happen is that there are two sort of otherish kind of categories of people who spectacularly bad things
So this whole theory of, like, blame the victim or blame the problem on evil is sort of a problem.
Because if you get a child born with some horrible ailment or if you get a child who at the age of two, I don't know, reaches, falls over and dies or, you know, falls down the stairs or something, then that's kind of hard to explain in terms of God's ultimate benevolence and virtue, then that's kind of hard to explain in terms of God's ultimate benevolence As we've talked about before, and of course the fact that really great people will have terrible things happen to them which they can't control, I don't know.
I mean, even in the Christian paradigm, some nun gets raped by the hordes of Russians coming over from the Eastern Front or, I guess, Germans going over from the Western Front, whichever way you want to look at it, then it's sort of hard to say, well, that is, you know, she must have been really sinful by nature, right?
Because she was a perfect nun or whatever, which is insane.
But let's say she's been locked up and kept away from children, has done no harm to others.
Because if you ever want to talk about what sexual frustration does to your weapon hand, just talk to people who've been raised in schools run by nuns.
Not so much recently, because there have been some secular laws thrown up against that tidal wave of lashing sexual frustration slash violence.
But it's not really a very good thing.
Nuns only look good when pretty actresses play them in Hollywood movies.
You actually have to deal with them.
They are rather crazy penguins, I guess you can say.
I'm quite enjoying that one.
I hope I'm not alone in that enjoyment.
So, you have this problem that children and good people suffer unspeakable torments and evils and so on.
So then you have to sort of say, well, man is evil and sinful by nature and there's nothing you can do about it.
And then you have the problem of moral responsibility.
Because you can't sort of say, well, God created man and God created something that is evil by nature and is, you know, even among the best people, is evil.
Because then God doesn't look like he's got such a steady hand when it comes to carving out that whole goodness in the human heart.
Good-nish.
It's like goodness.
Hey, that's pretty clever.
So the way to answer that, of course, is to say that it was a human being's choice, but it now spreads to all human beings.
We have been infected with the sin of Adam, and it's not God's fault.
He's there to save us, and so on.
They had to break you down in order to build you back up.
And so, when it comes to secular government, there's quite a deal of problems for Christians to solve.
Which is that there is no power except that of gods is a pretty important thing, right?
I mean, if...
If secular power is evil, then there's no church, right?
You can't have church without secular power.
As soon as we get an anarchistic or stateless society, religion will be sort of akin to druidic rituals now.
There will be a few crazies, but for the most part, people will just say, really?
Those people are still around?
Really?
People still worship Zeus?
Wow!
I mean, who would have thought?
I mean, it'll be like a couple of chat rooms and one lonely little hotel in Tucson where they get together every summer solstice and do a sad little dance, all 12 of them.
Because you simply can't have religion without secular power, for a number of reasons we'll get into later.
But if you do have secular power, then you need a justification for it.
You need an argument for morality, right?
Especially when you're a king.
I mean, democracies are bad enough, but aristocratic-based dictatorships are just hellish.
And so you have to explain to people why there's such a thing.
If everybody's soul is equal and we're all equal before God, then why does this guy have all the guns and swords and muskets and rifles and charging horses and lances and all this sort of stuff?
Well, surely he is no greater than me because we both have a soul and it says thou shalt not kill and so what's this guy doing?
And so the answer that the Christians have to come up with is that God Manifests himself, herself, itself in state power.
I mean, this is how the Christians sort of answer that question of why should I submit myself to another human being when my relationship is with God, right?
I mean, a truly intelligent or logical, I mean, given that the premise is a crazy illogical conclusion, to the idea of religion, a soul, a relationship to God, and so on, would be great!
There's no government.
Human beings are fallen, human beings are corrupt, human beings are evil, and even if you don't believe that, even if you don't believe in original sin, then you can't have a government because that is going to create human rules that interfere with the rules of God.
And you can't have a government that forces people to be good because God has to be chosen and blah blah blah.
I mean, you can't say that choice is important in Adam and Eve and then not say that choice is important for everyone else, right?
So Adam gives us original sin as his little birthright because he chose to eat from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.
So his choice is very important.
He was free to make that choice and he's morally responsible for that choice.
And therefore, you know, choice is kind of important.
God could have just sort of flicked that damn apple out of his mouth and we'd all be continuing in that realm.
Although it's hard to figure out exactly how they broke out of that realm without incest, you know, really.
Because, you know, there's just one woman there.
Eve, and there's no other children, so where did the grand, there's no other women, so where did the grandchildren come from?
Anyway, so we'll not delve into that particular kettle of backwards Louisiana fish fry.
So the answer, of course, is that God has placed the rulers to rule over us, and that God inspires the rulers, and blah, blah, blah.
Now, why God only inspires the rulers is something left just a little bit unanswered, right?
So, if the rulers are put there by God, and God rules you because he's telling the rulers what to do, like he's slithering up in his gaseous form and whispering in their ear exactly which next Muslim country to attack next, then it does seem to be Iran, ladies and gentlemen.
Those of you who have your money on Iran will take some winnings home.
And, of course, the question that then would come up is, OK, so if dear Daddy God comes up and will sort of move the hearts of the rulers however he sees fit, then God is more than happy to inspire people to do good acts and do good works, so why only?
I mean, this stuff's kind of silly, right?
They're not really serious about this stuff, right?
So, if God can do that, then why would He only do that with the king?
Why wouldn't He do that to me?
Why wouldn't He do that to you?
Why wouldn't He do that to everyone?
If God can move the heart of kings to be just, wise, and benevolent, then obviously He should do that for everyone, and then you wouldn't need the whole king thing, right?
So, it's kind of silly, right?
I mean, there's no logic in any of this other than It's very important to get the blessing of a king if you want to be the state religion, so you better tell everyone to obey the king, and in return, the king will kill off all of your competitors, right?
I mean, this is really a blood pact of evil that is between the church and the state throughout most of history, and it's creeping back, ladies and germs, as we know it.
So...
How do you logically answer that?
Well, of course, a libertarian or an anarchist Christian will say, as I mentioned before, that, you know, we can't have a religion, we can't have a church... Oh, sorry!
Bleh!
Reset!
Reset!
Rebooting!
Rebooting!
Ah, there we go!
That we can't have a government because human beings have fallen, and our direct relationship with God, and so on.
And that's fine, that's great.
He does have a slight problem, then, of explaining Why you're commanded 20 times a page on the Bible to obey the government.
That does seem to be a little tricky.
I could be wrong, but it does seem a little odd to me that that would be all over the Bible.
So, you know, but hey, the cherry-picking continues.
There is now just hordes and hordes of people cherry-picking through the Bible to pick up whatever the heck they want.
I mean, there's There's the other question of, you can, you must obey the secular authorities unless they tell you to do something that is against the scripture.
I love that one.
That's just... I mean, if that's not a Gordian knot of crazy brain tube eating itself, I don't know what the hell is.
I mean, let's have a look at that.
Oh, this is going to be fun.
Alright.
So, if The Bible says, and I believe it does, in sort of my research it does, the Bible says that you must obey the secular authorities until they tell you to do something that is ungodly.
Then that seems to me that it would be an obvious question to say, well, if a ruler can do something to tell you to do something ungodly, then rulers can be evil.
I mean, then that would sort of be hard to say why a ruler would be obeyed independently of just obeying the Bible.
Right?
So you have to obey the ruler.
Unless he tells you to do something against the Bible.
In which case, the Bible trumps the crown, right?
The cross trumps the sword.
In which case, just obey the Bible.
I mean, why do you have to obey the ruler?
I mean, if the only time you obey the ruler is when he tells you to do what's in the Bible, just obey the Bible.
You don't need a ruler.
And we're back to anarchism again.
But of course, that's not allowed.
Because you've got to have the allegiance of the king to kill off your enemies, if you're a theologian of your religion.
So, that would sort of seem to be rather illogical an approach.
Now, if God can move...
the ruler's heart to do good and does, and that's why you should obey him because he's put there by God, then obviously God isn't going to tell him or make him force you to do things that are ungodly.
I mean, that would just be silly, right?
The moment he does, then you can recognize that the ruler is not put there by God, or God is no longer favoring him, so you should depose him or whatever, right?
But, of course, you're not allowed to do that.
You're allowed to do what they say now, you know.
You can get mad at George Bush, but don't get mad at the idea of government.
Just work within the system, man.
I guess they know, you know.
Can't do anything, right?
And so, it doesn't seem at all logical to say that obey the secular ruler until he tells you to do something ungodly.
Now, the reason, of course, that the priests would have this communicated to the secular rulers is it's basically a shot across their bows.
It's a warning.
Which says, look, we've got the hearts, minds, and testicles, and non-testicle things of the believers in your country, and so you'd better make sure that we're the dominant religion, and you better get our tithe, and you better collect taxes on our behalf, and you better give us this, and you better give us that.
Otherwise, we're going to tell all our faithful that you're doing ungodly things, and they don't have to obey you.
I mean, in this sort of shell game of the will of the majority, they have to have that threat, right?
Because otherwise, some other sect is going to displace them.
Some other sect that doesn't have anything to threaten the king with.
So, the reason that the churches say that is obvious.
And, of course, how do you know whether the king is doing something ungodly?
Well, the priest tells you, right?
So, basically, the priest holds the power of non-obedience to the ruler in his hand.
And that's how they threaten the ruler, and that's how they both sort of work with each other, right?
The ruler says, you give me moral justification and I will kill off your enemies.
And they say, sure, you give us land, money and power and we will Tell the people to obey you, and we will also tell them that you're doing everything godly, and so on.
Because in this wonderful, fabulous, infinite farm of cherry-picking, no matter what the ruler's doing, you can find a justification for it in the Bible.
With the possible exception of a communist ruler, but the communists knew pretty much what to do with the priests anyway, and sort of fairly swiftly went about doing it.
So, not that I'm suggesting violence.
Don't get that idea.
A stringent debate, I think, is what they had.
So that just doesn't make any sense at all, to obey until the ruler tells you.
If government power is put there by God, then the ruler is not going to tell you to do something ungodly.
And if he does, then it's not put there by God.
So all of this stuff is just kind of the silliest nonsense that can be imagined, which has clear benefits to Christians, to theologians, and to priests who want power, who want the protection of secular power.
So it's all pretty clear and it's kind of like a joke to test people's credulity to see if they'll believe it.
Now, the question, of course, is why is there this adherence to the state in Christianity?
Now, of course, this started out when Christianity was a struggling religion and, of course, Christians were considered atheists by Romans who believed that Caesar, or the Emperor, was God.
And since they didn't believe that the Emperor was God, but rather just a manifestation of God's will, and it's an important difference, you know, Then they were considered to be heretics, and this is one of the main reasons why they were killed.
Of course, the Christians were also killed, because they were rabid, rabid monotheists, right?
I mean, you had this, in ancient Rome, you had this whole avenue of temples, and you'd sort of shuffle down, like a mall, right?
You'd shuffle down and say, Zeus, the gap, the gap, Jenny, yeah?
And then you would go into the church that you wanted, and You would then worship and you'd go out, you'd go past all these other churches and barely give them a second glance.
Now the Christians were a little different, right?
The Christians were a little more crazily monotheistic, so they began to curse and defile and cast down the other temples and say, this is the only true God, you people are worshipping devils, you're evil, blah blah blah.
So instead of it being a mall where you can shop at the Gap or you can shop at Old Navy and you don't care where other people shop at, suddenly there's only one store and every other store is evil.
And so you're defacing them and spray-painting them and smashing the windows and this caused a whole lot of problems and the Romans at this point weren't that keen on problems in the domestic empire because the edges of the empire were causing enough problems as it stood so they just started killing off the Christians.
Not something you'll hear a lot about in Bible school but feel free to look it up.
So, early on in the church, the Christian leaders needed the state desperately, so they began to shore up the whole church-state thing and praise the state and so on, and then they converted, I think it was Constantine, and they were away to the races after that.
So, the fear of secular authorities and the need to rein in the crazy monotheistic Christians to begin with, who were getting themselves killed, which wasn't so good because it's kind of hard to spread a religion, when you're a Sunday afternoon lunch line meat fare entertainment.
And so, if you end up getting involved in the state that way, then you're going to maintain it.
And then the question becomes, why would they fear anarchistic societies in particular?
Why would there be fear and hatred and horror in the Christian world of life without a government?
Well, of course, throughout most of his history, Christianity was a monopoly, not because people felt that Christianity was so great, but because if you didn't join the old cult, you kind of got killed, or tortured, or whatever.
And so, when Luther brought the Word to the masses by secularizing and putting into the vernacular the Bible in the 15th century, then You begin at the fragmenting and all.
It's all still Christian, but it's all completely fragmented.
And so, Christianity only survives because of state power.
And so, up until very recently, you got religious instruction in school.
And as I mentioned, I got the Lord's Prayer all the time in government-run schools until, oh, I think it ended maybe a year or two after I graduated from high school.
So you get a lot of legitimacy out of that.
Of course, churches exist in a tax-free status and in a charitable status, which gives them an advantage relative to personal consumption and relative to other things.
And so there's all of that as well.
So churches get a lot of support and protection from the state in terms of education, in terms of tax breaks, charitable deductions, and so on.
But even more than that, there is a horror In the Christian mindset, in the church, in theology, there is a horror of a non-hierarchical relationship, which is obviously kind of contradictory to the whole idea of a perfect God that you can have a relationship with.
Because if there is a perfect God, you can sort of sit down and chat with that person, with that God, and if that God were real and actually talking to you, why would you need somebody else in on the conversation?
I mean, it doesn't really make any sense, right?
If I'm calling you on the phone and I can talk to you directly, why would I need to patch somebody else in to listen in on the conversation and tell me what it meant?
I mean, unless we're divorcing or something and we need a mediator, that would be an odd thing to do.
So, if you could sit down and talk with God, then you wouldn't need a priest at all.
I mean, God would talk to you.
Now, if nobody can talk to God, then A priest isn't going to know anything more about God's wishes or will than you are.
So, either everybody can talk to God, or nobody can talk to God.
And if everybody can talk to God, you don't need a church.
And if nobody can talk to God, then the church is ridiculous, right?
It's a farce.
Well, I mean, that's actually true.
But, I mean, even within the context of Christianity, Christian theology.
The church needs a hierarchy, needs a sort of extra-special authority.
Yes, they will say, you have a relationship with God, but you need to come and talk to me because I know more about God's wishes than you do.
And I can come up with all these pithy sensei quotes to sound a one-hand clapping nonsense that will keep you baffled and weirded out and coming back for more.
And so the other thing that is going to occur in this sort of paradigm is that the church as a structure of power and dominance is going to absolutely and completely resist Any kind of flattening of the hierarchy.
Of course, because as soon as you flatten the hierarchy out, you've got no church.
Because as soon as you don't have priests bullying you and nagging you and complaining and whining and screaming at you and grabbing your bits, grabbing your packet, Then, everyone's going to sort of go, you know, I just feel kind of stupid, right?
I mean, that's why Christians have to gather together.
That's why all the Muslims have to pray in the same way.
If you're just at home, sort of, praying, I mean, and not talking to anyone, or there's nothing out there.
I mean, there's no God, right?
It's all just nonsense.
So, you know, any sane, decent human being is going to go like, my knee's getting sore, my back's got a crick, and I'd really like to go and watch some sports and You know, I keep doing this thing and there's nothing out there.
I'm getting anything back.
And if there are voices in his head, then he probably needs to take some medication.
But it's that kind of stuff that Christians desperately have to avoid.
So you can't flatten out the hierarchy.
I mean, I think that it's in Judaism.
You can't even worship on your own.
You have to have a couple of people present.
And so that kind of stuff to me is pretty innate to any kind of theological construct, that you have to have a hierarchy.
And again, I'm going to get stuff from Buddhists, in which case explain it to me.
I'll be more than happy to put out corrections or, you know, understand where I'm going wrong or whatever.
But you don't see a lot of solitariness in Religious people.
And it's partly, of course, because they are, you know, broken people who desperately need shoring up through the mad, deranged certainties of other people.
So, that is pretty innate to religion, this hierarchy, this need for somebody to have dominance over you, this need for someone to have an ultimate authority over you, because otherwise you're going to stop believing in God in about, I don't know, a couple of weeks maybe?
A month or two?
You put a Christian on a desert island, maybe a desert island, because they'd start to go mental anyway, probably would hear voices and feel validated.
But, you know, when social pressure is taken away, then you don't get so many religious people.
Which is why in the modern, secular, godless West, there are far fewer religious people than there used to be.
Which is one of the reasons why they're starting to cleave to the sword.
One of the reasons they're starting to cleave towards government power is because they know that their actual fan base is dying off.
Certainly here in Canada.
I mean, you go to any church, it's like the mausoleum.
It's three steps back.
I mean, there aren't any young people there at all.
And so, innate to the idea of religion is this idea of hierarchy.
And I've talked about this before with God relative to the individual, but more particularly in this context, it is an individual relative to you, relative to God, right?
So there's God, priest, dude, right?
The same way that there is the country, the politician, and dude.
So this sort of three-layer thing is where the hierarchy of state and religion sort of fit together beautifully.
In a sort of... in the way that an Iron Maiden fits together beautifully with... not so beautiful for somebody inside it, of course.
But that is one of the reasons why you really can't get together with Christians or religious people as a whole because they just are absolute about this hierarchy.
They can't escape this hierarchical mindset and this idea, of course, that without the hierarchy Everything goes to hell, like literally.
Everything is violent and evil and so on.
Because man is sinful by nature and without strong bullying from priests and concerned people and parents and Sunday school teachers and so on, without all of that, why then bad things are going to happen?
Because man is evil by nature and if it has to be restrained by a morally perfect external entity, and that of course, or morally perfectible or morally better entity, which is the priest or God, Of course, religious people, theologians, know deep down that there's no such thing as God at all.
In which case, this is sort of why they don't want to follow the logical tenets of the belief and say, well, everyone can have a relationship with God.
And I know that there are some religions that do this.
I know that Judaism does this.
I believe Calvinism does this.
But, like they say, you have a personal relationship with God.
But there still is the fact that the priests exist and that they're wiser and so on.
But you really can't get an absence of hierarchy, of social dominance, while you have religion.
Now, if you have sort of Mi'ism, which is like, you make up your own religion, right?
A little bit of Zen, a little bit of Karma, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
Like, if you're like a higher power kind of...
Thinker, for want of a better word, then you can sort of live without a hierarchy, or rather the hierarchy that you have is, you know, higher power slash me, right?
There's no sort of no one else.
And that is not really religion, right?
That's just... I guess you could call it spiritualism, or you could call it superstition, or you could just kind of call it vaguely crazy, rather than specifically and structurally crazy.
But those kinds of thinkings... Those kinds of think... This wonderful English that I'm working with today.
I just can't seem to work the levers of my mouth flap.
I'm having problems!
So, I'm sorry if this is a little bit jumpy, but... Me no focus!
Me no have no afternoon coffee!
And the cocaine just didn't help at all in the way that I was hoping it would.
My nose is all runny, but where was I now?
Maybe I should just... Thank you so much for listening.
We're done.
But, so yeah, if you want to get rid of hierarchy, you have to get rid of organized religion for sure, you have to get rid of theology, you have to get rid of God as any kind of anthropomorphic concept.
I mean, if you just have this vague, there's a sea of fog out there that vaguely thinks, but doesn't it, this sort of deist idea, this deific abstraction that does nothing whatsoever, then, you know, God, just go the final two inches and become an atheist.
Like, why stop messing around, you know?
It's like having an affair with someone and saying, I don't want to have an orgasm.
I mean, you know, just... If you're gonna go that far, go the extra two inches, right?
So I guess the summation of this all is that I don't really think that we're going to have any luck collaborating with people who are into organized religion.
I mean, for a variety of reasons, but I hope that that sort of makes sense.
I would love nothing more than to co-join with people with whom we could move the movement along more better with... My God!
What has happened to my brain?
More better, more good, things with the better movement for freedom.
Thank you.
But I'd love nothing better than to co-join with as many people as humanly possible, but there's really no point getting involved in this kind of stuff.
At least in my humble opinion, there's no point getting involved in this kind of stuff.
Which is, you know, the hardest battle in the known universe is to create a free society.
I mean, it's been tried and failed many times, and I don't want to try and fail again.
That would sort of seem to be pointless, right?
So I think that we've got to go all the way and really make this thing work, which means that we've got to stay consistent and not go for expediency, right?
Not go for, well, we'll have more effect.
If we join with the Christians, we'll have more effect.
And yes, we will.
We absolutely will have more effect.
But it will be directly against what it is that we're trying to do, right?
It's like, I could go in and operate on the cancer, but if I just shoot them, I'll have more effect.
It's like, yes, but you're really supposed to be a healer, right?
So, I think that effect is not important.
I think that we need to be able to look at the cynicism of the people who say, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're never going to get anywhere.
And we need to look at those people directly in the face and say, what do you mean, never get anywhere?
I'm perfectly happy.
in this place.
I mean, happiness is the goal, not political power changing society or anything like that.
I mean, those would be nice effects, and that'll be great, and I won't say no.
But, you know, we need to be able to look at those people who say, what's the point of having these ideas?
You're never going to get anywhere.
It's like, man, I have got to exactly where I want to be just by having these ideas.
A great career, a great marriage, great new friends on the board.
Just wonderful!
I mean, get somewhere!
Have an effect!
The greatest effect is a happy heart!
And we've got that, I think, just from having these ideas to begin with!
So, thanks so much for listening.
I will try and lube up the old jaw flap a little bit tomorrow so that I'm not quite so blblblblbl.
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