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Oct. 25, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
34:57
476 The Myth of Nice Christians

Removing one more unicorn from the annals of biology

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Good morning, everybody. I hope you're doing well.
It's 8.36 on the 24th, I do believe, Wednesday for sure, of October 2006.
And I hope that you will join me this morning on a quest for a mythical yet nearly omnipotent beast.
And this is all being prompted by A fine intellectual opponent who has joined us on the boards who is asking some exquisitely penetrating and brilliant questions about my approaches to religion and I think it would be well worthwhile to try and understand the The approach that he's taking, and I'm sorry that I won't be able to read his very well-worded and well-crafted posts.
Thor Finn is the name of the listener.
I assume that's not his real name, unless he is actually a combination of an ancient Norse god and a shark.
And it would be well worth having a look for his posts.
They're very good. I think they're in the What Do We Do Now?
And his general approach, or his general opposition to what it is that I've been saying in my podcast, is one that I've heard Only a couple of thousand times before, but one that he's put very well and very convincingly.
And his general approach is that we don't want to alienate potential converts among Christianity.
And so we shouldn't be talking about the fact that God tells them to kill us and we shouldn't be talking about historical genocides.
We shouldn't be talking about religious genocides that are occurring in the world currently.
We shouldn't talk about the near one billion people who have been killed by religious wars throughout history and we shouldn't talk about the retardation of human progress that has been the hallmark of organized religion and we should not talk about this and we should not talk about that.
But rather we should share with them the sweet beauty of reason and the joys of an empirical and scientific life and rational morality and so on.
But we should not focus in what he perceives and, you know, maybe he's right.
We should not focus on a hysterical manner in a sort of a kind of way that sounds deranged or unhinged, talking about how all the Christians want to kill us and so on and so on and so on.
And, you know, excellent arguments, very, very well put, and a very good writer, and a little bit on the snarky side at times, but then, hey, I'm one to talk.
wait wait coffee break see it's actually no real delay It's either a coffee break or it's yawning because, you know, it's important to be free of the government and caffeine and your family at the same time.
So these are excellent, excellent points.
And one of the things I think that's quite telling that he talks about is he said, my in-laws are very, very nice people.
Ooh, blast doors down.
And... My in-laws are Christians and very nice people, and they certainly don't want to kill you.
They're gentle, they're nice, they're sweet, they're this or that or the other.
And so your perception that they are aggressive or violent or want to kill atheists is lunatic, right?
And I can certainly understand that.
I bet you they cook up a mean set of ribs.
I bet you that they have generous heaping portions of iced tea on hand.
I bet you they have all these wonderful things that are available.
And are more than happy to share and will help you move and will do all of these wonderful things.
I have no doubt whatsoever.
And perhaps the definition of virtue should be redefined from truth, integrity and fidelity to reality and consistency and universality and all those kinds of things to are you helpful and do you have food on hand?
Do you run a good buffet?
In which case, I believe that the restaurant owner and the waiter is near my house, so the paragons of virtue.
But I'm definitely foreguessing what he's talking about.
Maybe there's something more. Maybe they give to charity.
Maybe they offer to watch their neighbor's cats when their neighbors go on vacation.
Maybe there's lots of...
Sweet little aesthetic delicacies that they serve up in the buffet of life called being nice and being helpful and that's what he means by being good.
I certainly don't have a lot of definition for what he means but what I do get from that This is philosophizing with long-distance radar and psychologizing with long-distance radar, but nonetheless, let's shoot our arrows over the house and see if we hit the target.
I think that we have a fair idea where it might be, so let's see how it goes.
One of the questions Which you could reasonably ask somebody whose true self has let slip that this gentleman has married a woman whose parents are religious.
And he's very, very adamant that what I'm doing is sort of hysterical and bad and wrong, and he's put out a very passive-aggressive threat to say something like, you know, Steph, you've made good contributions, which, you know, nice to hear.
You've made good contributions with the argument for morality, but if you're going to continue in these hysterical anti-religious rants, then tell me now, so I'll stop listening.
Well, if you're listening, and I certainly hope that you are, although I guess he's still on Podcast 100, so he hasn't even got to 183, the breakout podcast, but yes, you absolutely should stop listening.
Without a doubt, you should put the podcast now.
Step away from the free domain radio, sir.
We have you surrounded, but we will let you leave.
But absolutely, you should stop listening to these podcasts because I can tell you that if you wish to live a life of integrity and virtue and truth and honor and decency and so on.
Decency, sorry, that's the wrong phrase.
Decency is owned by the Christians.
Let's just say that you absolutely do not want to go any further down the argument for morality if you wish to keep any kind of cordial relationships with your in-laws, and therefore, I'm sure, since they are your wife's parents, if you wish to retain any shred of stability within your marriage, you absolutely should stop listening to Free Domain Radio right now.
Actually, you should have stopped listening about 370 podcasts ago, but these kinds of people absolutely should stop listening because...
I'm telling you, brother to brother, despite our differences, I am telling you from decades of hard-won knowledge, From my wife's experience, from my experience, from the experience of other people on the boards, from the experience of friends that I've had, from experiences of my own family, from experiences of how many of Christina's patients I can't even tell you.
But I'm telling you, if you continue down the path of philosophy and think that you will be able to retain these relationships, you are sailing into disaster.
You are sailing into disaster and you have a pocket of rationality at the moment, and it may be more than a pocket, but I would say that it's probably a pocket because you married into a religious family without dealing with these issues.
And you remain cordial with people who are irrational culty mystics, right?
Which is Christianity, right? Let's stop pretending that it's some sort of edifice of Western civilization.
It's simply an extraordinarily successful cult.
And we know what makes a cult extraordinarily successful is not an excess of rationality and logic and real kindness, not do-nicery.
And so you married into a cult, and so I can only assume that your love of rationality remains a real pocket of your mind, of your soul.
And that's not to say that you did anything that was wrong or bad.
I mean, I'm sure you love your wife, and I'm sure that there's a lot of good things about her.
But neither of you have crossed over into real philosophy, and there's no reason that you have to.
There's no reason that you have to.
I mean, you can keep rationality as a Sunday afternoon garage hobby, and you don't have to live a life of real integrity.
You don't have to live a life of real rationality.
And I totally get that you're afraid of what this might mean.
So he's very much concerned that podcasts like the one I have pretty early on, entitled Ten Questions to Ask Christian Friends, Right?
Which he considers to be a very bad conversion tool, which I would absolutely agree with, of course.
I mean, I would say that it's not exactly buried.
It's right there in the title.
Ten questions to ask your Christian friends, not ten questions to ask yourself if you're a Christian.
I mean, that would be very different.
So it's not a conversion tool because I don't consider that Christians are capable of being converted.
I don't consider that irrational collectivist majority mystics are capable, as they are older, of making the journey to rationality.
I think that that's, you know...
It's like trying to turn these Chinese women who've had their feet bound into ballet dancers.
Yeah, you might get some lurchy kind of movement at Great Agony, which they'll quickly stop doing the moment you stop talking with them or instructing them, but it's a complete waste of time.
They've already been warped into incomprehensibility.
And again, I say this.
Out of decades of long, long, long experience.
When I was younger, I was attracted to a woman who was a Christian.
She was very funny, very smart.
And we talked openly about her future.
She was very attracted to me, and we had a very pleasant and pleasurable time together.
And we talked openly about her future.
And She said that, of course, she wouldn't mind if I was still an atheist, but she would not give up her faith.
And I said, that's fine. I said, I have no problem with that, because I was younger.
Cut me some slack.
I was younger.
And I said, but the main issue for me would be the children.
So I would have no problem if the children chose religion when they got older, but I would not be able to countenance children getting religious instructions as if it were true when they were young.
I would consider that a form of propaganda.
And she said, well, that's a deal-breaker.
And she genuinely, I think, obviously we were talking openly about a future, and I think she loved me in a way, and I think that she really wanted to have a future, but there was simply no possibility that she was not going to get to put the kids into the brainwashing machines of Christianity,
right? That was... She knew that, of course, she wanted me to be the hunter-gatherer while she stewed in the religious blank juices of Christianity, and that I would be the isolated one, the one that would sleep in, like her own father used to sleep in on Sundays while the mom took the kids to church, which is not an uncommon consolation.
I would say women are far more religious than men for a variety of reasons, but Men are more pompously religious, but women are more relentlessly and child-focusedly religious, which is where it really counts.
So this sort of one experience of many, many, many, many experiences in talking with religious people over the years, you simply make no headway, right?
You're not even speaking the same language.
So for me, I've never done a podcast to convert a Christian.
I've never done a podcast to convert a Christian.
What I have done is put out podcasts that point out the violent nature of their holy book.
That's sort of what I'm talking about.
I do that because you can't convert a Christian.
It's like trying to wrestle with fog.
It's like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall.
You simply can't do it because they have the faith and they're embedded socially in an entire environment and particularly you can't do it after they've had kids and have instructed those kids on religion.
If they find out that they're completely false and wrong and got it totally backwards, And that it's a corrupt belief that's full of violence, that they have to live with the fact that they have corrupted their children's minds and try and attempt in horrible ways to undo all the damage they've done.
And they have to examine their own childhood histories of when they were turned into Christians and when they were sort of made into this cult and so on.
It's not going to happen.
It's absolutely not going to happen.
I have not heard, and you can certainly write to me or email me or whatever, post on the boards, if you are somebody who, as an adult, after you've had children and have instructed them in religion, That you suddenly woke up and said, hey, you know, it's all bullshit and I've got to undo the damage I've done.
I've got to deprogram the kids.
I've got to leave my community.
I'll probably have to divorce my spouse who probably won't be along the same road with me.
Lord knows it's hard enough being a libertarian with a non-libertarian spouse, but...
Holy crap! With the religion and rational, it's even more explosive.
The person earns the contempt of his kids for such a fundamental reversal and for lying to them for so many years.
He probably gets a divorce.
His in-laws reject him.
His extended family rejects him.
His community rejects him.
His priest rejects him. He basically ends up completely alone, divorced, and broke because of child support, living in a little apartment without even a high broadband connection to Sir Freedom Radio.
He's completely alone and broke, and all of the comforts of his social and familial life are torn away.
So why would he do it?
Why would he do it?
He's already shot his ball, so to speak.
The arrow's already in the air.
What can he do?
And why would he do it? It would be a deranged thing to do.
And people don't do that for truth.
People don't do that.
They go moment by moment for immediate gratification in the here and now.
They conform with everyone around them because that's comfortable.
That gets them kudos. That gets them love.
That gets them respect, quote respect.
That gets them money and goodies.
And this is why Harvard is full of people and the newspaper is full of bullshit.
And the churches are still full of people.
And where the churches aren't full of people, the Wiccanism is growing.
And where the churches are, then people go round waving flags.
They just conform because they're well paid to do so and they get an enormous amount of social comfort.
And who wants the lonely, isolated, Himalayan, naked climb of philosophy?
Those of us who drank deep from this well early and almost involuntarily are those almost condemned, although it is a joyful march in pleasure for the most part, are condemned to walk this road and to drag the race forward, to drag the world to a higher plane.
But why would the average person do it?
It's deranged. The average person is about as likely to become a genuine philosopher as I am to become a levitating monk.
Despite the hairdo.
So I don't aim to convert Christians.
What I do is I aim to put out information that is going to be accessible for people in their teens so that when you are a teenager, you can have access to information that exposes the hypocrisies of your parents when your hormones and your desire for independence and your desire for truth are at their highest.
You strike when the iron is hot.
You heat up the sword and then you beat it.
Or in this case, you beat it into a plowshare.
But you don't go out to a cold sword and start hitting it with a hammer saying, gee, I've really got to convert this sword into a plowshare because it's just going to break on you.
Shards of fragments are going to go into your eyes, however you want to use the metaphor.
But you don't do that, right?
I mean, this is a basic principle from politics, right?
You don't go into Hillary Clinton's home district and attempt to wrestle it away from her and get her home district to become libertarian.
Because she's popular, because she's bringing home lots of goodies to everyone, because her entire power base is embedded there, because people donate to get government favors there.
There's no point, no possibility.
You look for those that are undecided, where there's low voter turnout, where there's disenchantment, disillusionment, disenfranchisement, and you go to those communities.
You don't go into the complete opposite territories and try and make your gains.
It's ridiculous. Never going to work.
And you then begin to get frustrated, right?
So I aim at younger people.
I mean, that's why I try not to use too many technical words and try to use humor and positivity and friendliness.
Not that those things are bad.
They're not a strategy in that sense.
That's more fun for me to do friendly and happy podcasts.
But, you know, it's to the young that I speak, right?
I mean, the... The young are the furnaces in which we will forge the future.
I mean, you don't talk to somebody on his deathbed and say, you really should deconvert from Christianity.
What are the odds of him doing that?
What's it going to gain him? Nothing.
What's it going to cost him?
Well, in his mind, heaven or hell.
And so let's have a look for...
This mythical, nice and moral and good and virtuous Christian.
This is the mythical beast that I would like to sort of blow out of the fable books, or blow into the fable books and out of people's minds as a real creature.
So, the woman that I went out with when I was younger, she gave up a man she loved and respected and treasured, Because he would not allow the children to be taught things that he knew and was able to prove were false, right? We had discussions about religion, and she wasn't able, of course, to overturn.
And it's not because I was such a brilliant debater, it's just because it's so easy to turn God into fiction.
That's exactly why she wanted them when they were young.
Because she knew for a fact that if they weren't programmed in Christianity when they were young, if the cult doesn't get its fangs into the brains of the kids, then it dies.
I mean, it's perfectly aware of that, right?
The scar tissue of the children's minds.
The scar tissue that forms around the children's minds are the eggs through which religion grows.
That's what they have to sit on and hatch.
She knew that if they didn't get this when they were young.
She was a very nice woman.
She would make me lunch.
She was thoughtful.
She was kind. She gave up a man she loved in order to She retained the right to tell her children things she knew were false.
She was a very intelligent woman, very well educated, and of course this is partly what caused all of these problems for her.
This is a massive contradiction.
So, was this a moral woman?
No, of course not. Of course not.
Far from moral. Complete opposite of moral.
The niceness was a camouflage, people.
The niceness is a camouflage.
And that's just a very important thing to understand.
If you really want to get life by the horns and get into the truth of things, as somebody has their tagline on the boards, the first step of wisdom is to call things by their proper names.
People who are nice and who wish to mold the minds of innocent children with destructive lies are not really very nice.
People who instruct children on how to drink the blood of a fictitious god or go to hell No matter how sweetly, and how nicely, and how many coloring books are involved, and how many pleasant Christian camp sing-alongs are involved, are stone corrupt.
Our broken souls seeking only to eat the integrity and innocence of the young.
They're not nice people.
When you look at the children of God as a cult that many people feel goes too far in the religious paradigm, because a balance of crazy irrationality is apparently what people are looking for, let's find a balance between cancer and vitality.
You can see video footage of these children of God cult where the children are singing and laughing and clapping and playing and so on.
And they all look like they're having a nice time.
The Amish will all help each other put up each other's bonds.
And they all bring round pies when you get sick.
And they're all very nice people.
And they're all deeply and corruptly and morally insane.
They're not nice people.
They're not nice people.
They're passive-aggressive people.
And that's where the niceness comes from.
The niceness is a form of conformity and camouflage.
Christina's parents absolutely wanted to help us move.
We're generous at our wedding.
Help, help, help. That's what they want to do.
But they're not nice people.
It's all for them. It's all for the fantasy of virtue, not the reality of virtue.
And really, my friends, my friends, my brothers and sisters, how on earth could it ever be otherwise?
Are we so indifferent to the essence of philosophy that we can, with a straight face, say that virtue can be achieved either through rationality and integrity to what is, or equally as valid a path to virtue and integrity is mad conformist fantasy to bloodthirsty doctrines.
Do philosophers really say, philosophers who are interested in the moral instruction of mankind in a positive and pleasant way, we hope, do they really say, well, you have one of two choices.
You can either pursue rationality and check your thoughts and values and opinions against reality and work for, and only sort of enact and believe in moral principles that are universal and reversible and all these kinds of things.
You can simply read a book that's a couple of thousand years old, you know, with rape, incest, murder, torture, pedophilia, all of that advocated in it, and simply conform to whatever other people tell you, and never check any of your premises against reality, but be a blind conformist to irrational and brutal texts.
Would that be a sane proposition to make in any way, shape, or form?
Does the doctor say, well, you can eat well and you can exercise, or you can throw yourself off a cliff?
Either one is going to lead you to health.
And I know lots of very healthy people who've thrown themselves off cliffs.
Wouldn't we look at a doctor like that and say, dude, I think it's kind of an either-or proposition here.
It's sort of one or the other.
It's not like both, man.
Because it can't be. It can't be faith and reason.
There can't be two alternate paths to virtue, to integrity, to truth.
There can't be. Because they're complete opposite methodologies.
It's like saying you can fix a car either by turning this flange and twisting this bolt and installing this spark plug and going through these sequence of steps, or you can drop a neutron bomb in it and drive it away.
I mean, mechanic, which one do you want me to go with, sir?
Neutron bomb or twisting the flange and putting the spark plug back in?
Wouldn't you say, you know, I might just find me another mechanic because I think you're mental.
I think you're quite insane.
And this is, you know, if you say, well, Christians are nice, Christians are good people, Christians are virtuous, then that's fine.
Then we're evil.
I'm afraid that there are times in life where you have to deal with an either-or proposition.
You don't have to deal with it, but if you don't, you're completely irresponsible psychologically and philosophically and morally.
There is a time where you have to deal with an either-or proposition.
And either reason and empiricism and science are the path to truth and virtue, or Faith and conformity, mysticism and irrationality are the paths to virtue.
They're totally opposite methodologies.
They are totally opposite.
You do not get a scientific theory that says clouds are both composed of vapor and fire simultaneously.
A rock falls up and down at the same time.
That is not a scientific theory.
That is a weird bunch of dissociated defensive opinions.
And it is exactly the same case with mysticism versus rationality.
You don't get both as valid paths to a moral life.
And if one is a valid path to the moral life, the other one is a valid path only to its opposite.
Opposite principles lead to opposite conclusions, naturally.
So when somebody says to me, there are nice Christians out there, I'm like, no there aren't!
There really, really are not nice Christians out there.
And this gentleman knows this perfectly well, which is why he's attacking us.
Again, eloquently and well-spoken and well-argued and so on.
But fundamentally, he knows this.
This is not brain surgery.
You don't go to a scientist and say, do you work through the scientific method or do you just sort of kill a chicken, spill its entrails out and read tea leaves?
Because those are opposite approaches to truth.
In other words, one of them is an approach to truth, and the other one is simply a distracting foundation for utter bullshit.
So there are no nice Christians to There are no nice religious people.
There are people who look nice because they do nice things and they conform with people and they fit nicely and they dress well and they drive cars and they give to charity and so on.
These are not nice people.
First and foremost, they have never examined their premises because they're afraid to and they know that they're false.
That's the hostility you get from Christians when you begin to question the premises is because they know that what they're talking about is completely false.
So intellectual cowards of the first order.
Slavishly conformist people.
Slavishly conformist people.
Christians cannot think for themselves in any fundamental philosophical sense, in any way, shape, or form.
Completely and totally conformist.
And if you believe that that's a virtue, then great.
Then I'm evil. Or then you should stop listening to my podcast for sure.
How can this guy say that it's a great contribution?
And I'm not hostile towards him.
I totally understand where he's coming from.
This is just the questions that arise from my side of things.
How can a man say that the argument for morality, which is universal and consistent, and logical and reason from first principles, is a great contribution?
And that Christians are nice.
These are two totally opposing approaches to truth.
One is, it's true because it's reasoned and it's true because it conforms with reality, which is the fundamental premise of truth, is a fundamental justifier of truth.
It conforms with the principles of logic derived from the properties of matter and the actions of things in reality.
The other is, it's true because it's convenient and I was told it all the time and I'm frightened to think about anything different.
You can't say that the argument for morality is a helpful addition or an essential addition to an intellectual approach and then say that Christians are nice.
You can do it if you're terrified about being a person who is not as moral as you think you are and of losing everything in your personal life, which I totally understand and sympathize with, and I told them that on the boards.
I totally get what it's going to cost you to begin to question your In-laws, right?
This is the fundamental thing.
Don't make up stuff.
Don't make up stuff.
That is the fundamental opposite of a rational philosophy.
Quit making up stuff.
Quit living in the world of words.
Quit living in the world of metaphor.
Quit living in the world of propaganda.
I'm not asking you to believe me about Christians.
This is my experience.
It's logical and it's been experienced with me for 25 frickin' years.
And I know why Christians aren't nice.
Because they're irrational and conformist.
And that does not breed virtue.
Otherwise, what I talk about would breed evil and corruption.
You can't have the same result from totally opposite methodologies.
In philosophy, not even accidental results can be the same.
You can't read chicken ale or entrails and accidentally get E equals mc squared.
Even if they spell out E equals mc squared, you won't even know what it means.
And you won't have any way of validating it.
The value of Einstein is not E equals mc squared, which a child can accidentally write down, but the knowledge behind it that produced it and the validation that accompanied it, which proved it.
So this gentleman lives in a world of mythology.
Mythology.
My in-laws are nice.
Well, surely, one of the definitions of nice would be to reject...
A group that bases its beliefs on a book that demands the murder of unbelievers.
You know, I'm not going to let that go.
That's really fundamental.
And don't blame me.
I didn't write the goddamn bullshit.
Don't get mad at me for the fact that there's this sick book out there that people worship and sentimentalize into fluffy lambs and nice people.
Rather than saying to me, My in-laws are nice.
You can do the following.
Sit down with your in-laws and say, Hey, you know one of the things I've noticed about the Bible is that it kind of suggests that people should be killed.
It more than suggests.
It demands. It commands that people should be killed.
It also says that Christians should not associate with non-Christians.
They should not even break bread with them.
They should not say anything to them whatsoever.
And if that's true, is that something I should do?
And if they say, no, it's not true, then they say, okay, well, how do you know what is valid and what is not valid within the Bible?
Like, is it just a matter of opinion?
Do you just cherry pick?
Or, you know, how do we know, right?
Because in the past, they believed that this was true, and they did kill lots of people.
And, you know, currently, the Muslims do kill lots of people based on this sort of text within the Old Testament and in the Koran.
So... How do we know?
And if they're genuinely nice, they'll say, well, that's a fascinating question.
Here's what we've worked out. Here's how we know what is right and what is wrong and what is true and what is false in the Bible.
Here's the methodology by which we've been able to determine what is metaphorical and what is valid.
And I guarantee you they have not worked out such a methodology.
Of course they haven't, because it's impossible.
But they have talked about what is true to their children, even though they have no clue what is true.
They have no idea what is true, but they have talked about it as if they do.
And they're not going to say, well, that's very interesting.
I don't know. What do you think?
They're going to make up some bullshit, and then they're going to get hostile.
They're going to make up some bullshit.
And then they're going to get hostile.
I mean, I totally guarantee you, I would bet $10 million on it.
Make up some bullshit, and then they're going to get hostile.
And if you think that that's virtue, if you have genuine curiosity about what it is that they think and feel, these sort of Christians, if you really are curious about it, And you want to ask them questions and they claim to have absolute knowledge.
They claim to have faith. They claim that it's true.
They don't claim that God is an opinion.
They claim that God is true and they know.
And so they're claiming knowledge.
This is not a proposition that I'm forcing into their mouth.
This is what they say is the case.
I know what is true. What is absolutely true.
Great! Then it's worth asking some questions.
How did you come by this knowledge and how do you reconcile the contradictions?
And, you know, nobody's forcing them to say that God is real and Jesus is love and the Easter Bunny lives or anything like that and dancing leprechauns fill my brain.
Nobody's asking them to say any of that stuff.
They just sort of say that of their own accord.
And so they have this powerful knowledge.
You ask some questions.
And if you believe that spouting some bullshit and then getting angry or shutting down a conversation, if you believe that that's what nice and good and virtuous people do, then you don't have a clue about what is nice and good and virtuous.
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