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Nov. 19, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:15:45

518 Call In Show Nov 19 2006

The history of religion, and a confirmed deconversion!

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	Thank you so much everyone for joining us on this highly sparsely populated Thanksgiving afternoon.
	It is the 19th?
	18th? 19th of November 2006.
	We are trying to do the video and the audio.
	We're having some exciting times with Skype because I guess that the other three people who are using the Skype network on such a family-centric day are hugging all the bandwidth and the resources.
	So thank you so much for joining.
	We were originally going to do the history of religion Today, but I have decided to maybe do it, maybe not do it.
	I did two podcasts on it earlier this week, but I wanted to maybe not do it because it's such a Thanksgiving kind of weekend that there's fewer listeners, and I did want to get more of a live feedback from the people who do have religious beliefs.
	I did have an interesting interview on a radio show yesterday where A woman called in and said that it was supposed to be on an article that I wrote recently that was published on LewRockwell.com, which was called The Gun in the Room, which was really around focusing less on the abstract esoterics of anarchistic philosophy and focusing more on really getting down to the core of the matter,
	which is that people who want to use the state to get their way are basically telling you that you can't disagree with them without suffering which is that people who want to use the state to get their way are basically telling you And so they're keeping pointing out the gun in the room is very essential when it comes to discussing freedom and discussing anarchistic philosophies.
	And so we were on that topic and cooking away, and we had some very interesting and erudite callers, And then a woman called in who was equally erudite but not quite so pleasant, who was basically telling me or asking, demanding to know what I had done to her husband.
	And so I asked in what manner, and then she said, well, ever since he started listening to your show, he is no longer coming to temple.
	And by that I assume that's synagogue or Jewish.
	And I don't know if he's not coming to temple because he has given up on the idea of God or because he's given up on the idea of Judaism, both of which would be equally irrational.
	It's sort of places to start from trying to forge a personal identity based on an intimate relationship with reality or even a passing relationship with reality.
	Unfortunately, I would have loved to dig into the topic with her, but it wasn't my show, so I had to defer to the show's host, who ran screaming, I think would be the technical term, away from the question of talking about religion and its relationship to the state and its relationship to the freedom movement and so on.
	And so I didn't really get a chance, though I did invite her to come in this Sunday afternoon show to chat further about it.
	Because I certainly don't relish the idea that atheist philosophies drive people further away from each other, cause conflicts within families, you know, sunder husband and wife that of course only God can put together or sunder apart.
	And so I wanted to have a chat with her to see if I could maybe understand a little bit more about what was going on in her life.
	My guess, of course, is that she may be a little bit more on the compromise side than he is, or maybe he's just rebellious, we don't know, but the real issue, of course, in the marriage that, as it would be the case with just about every personal relationship where philosophy is separating people, the issue is not philosophy, the issue is the relationship, the fact that people can't talk about and respect each other's viewpoints in a positive and productive and rational manner.
	And have a standard of arbitration that is external to either party, right?
	I mean, we know that when marriages break down, often a third party prior to the breakdown in form of counseling or after the breakdown in terms of legal intervention, that you need somebody outside the couple to mediate their disputes.
	Well, in philosophy, this, of course, is rationality and empiricism and so on.
	And the issue there is not that one person is listening to a show on The issue is that the couple has struggled through Lord knows how long.
	So to speak. And they've not developed an external methodology for resolving their disputes.
	And what's happening is that now somebody is thinking, you know, the guy's thinking for himself, and there's no way for them to come together in this area.
	So I was hoping she would call in, and I could unleash Christina on them, because, you know, it's a difficult conversation, and I really only do the easy ones.
	So if she comes in, great.
	We haven't seen her yet, have we?
	Well, we'll find out.
	Now, the way it works, and I'm sorry for rambling for those of you who are just joining, this is Freedom Aid Radio, a Sunday afternoon chat, a talk show.
	We're closer than your family because we'll listen to reason.
	So if you're bypassing the turkey to be here, good idea.
	Turkey will just put you to sleep.
	We will wake you up.
	Welcome to those who are new listeners.
	Thank you so much for joining us. The topic nominally today, and we're getting a juicy enough group of people in here that I think I may just continue with it, is the history of religion.
	This follows from a chat about agnosticism that occurred last weekend.
	So just at the end of that chat, a gentleman asked me whether I would not share my thoughts with As if that wasn't going to happen.
	As if I, would I share my short thoughts about the history of religion?
	And of course, I did a fair amount of studying of this stuff in grad school.
	I have a degree in history, really focusing on the history of philosophy, a master's degree from the University of Toronto.
	So I've spent some time and energy, and it was one, a fairly central part of my master's thesis, to talk about the etymology or the growth of ideas, particularly in the realm of religion.
	I do have some ideas about it, and I'm certainly happy to talk about that and then to get people's responses.
	But failing that, or at least since we haven't quite started that yet, the way that we're going to work this, and I finally have figured out Skype, and my lovely wife is banning.
	Sorry, person-ing. The controls, there is a little, little, little icon just on the top of your Skype thing wherein you can say, ask for a microphone.
	And it really should be try and pry the microphone from the host's cold, dead hands in this show, but because Christine is now manning the technical side of things, we will go with that.
	So just in the top of the Skype window, there's ask for a microphone.
	If you have a question or an issue about what it is that we're saying here, I'm certainly happy to entertain questions, criticism, comments, complaints about the glare.
	Oh, wait, no, I'm recording the video, but you can't see it yet.
	So if you have a question about the topics that were up or have a comment or a criticism, please, please feel free.
	I get enough talking just on my own during the week, so if you have something that you want to add, please feel free to do it.
	I'm more than happy to entertain as many questions and criticisms as you can come up with.
	So, is there anyone? No?
	No? Okay, well, then you've now had your chance and not taken it, so I get to go off monologuing, and you can let me know what you think.
	Now, I did two podcasts a little bit earlier this week.
	Oh, but is he pinged?
	No, he pinged earlier.
	He's unmuted. Okay, is he unmuted now?
	He's muted? Okay, well, let's unmute our good friend Greg, and he can then let us know what his question is.
	Yeah, we're just waiting for Skype to catch up.
	Okay, well, while we're waiting for Skype to catch up, I'll talk a little bit about the framework that we need to sort of take into account when we're talking about the history of religion.
	There's no objective history of religion, of course, just as there's very little objective things in history at all.
	But we will talk about the history of religion based on some logical inferences based on human nature that we know, historical choices that have been made.
	So we won't get a chance to prove this in an airtight manner, but we'll work with probability and rationality in order to try and make the case for one way of looking at the history of religion.
	Is he back? Do you want to try?
	He's muted? No, he's unmuted as it's supposed to be.
	No, it now says mute.
	Okay, well, I can't wait.
	I'm just going to have to plunge on.
	Sorry, if you'd like to type your question into the question.
	But we still can't hear anything.
	So we're going to start with the history of religion, and we're going to...
	I'm sort of going to put forward this idea, and I'll just sort of start straight with it, and then you can let me know what you think.
	Give me a few minutes to work the idea out in the conversation, and then you can tell me if you think that I'm wrong.
	I'm certainly more than happy to...
	This is very, very theoretical, so please don't feel that there's any...
	I have sort of some emotional ego stake in this set of questions or answers.
	It has certainly been my observation in sort of thinking about the world, looking at my own consciousness and examining the consciousness of others, that human beings have this incredible power.
	And I really think it's the root of the strength that we have as conscious individuals.
	We do have this incredible power.
	To deny the direct evidence of our senses.
	And I think that's a wonderful thing.
	It really is the root of the scientific method.
	We can't learn everything that we need to learn about the world just by examining our senses any more than we can eat in a perfectly healthy manner by just consuming that which tastes the best, right?
	Otherwise, we'd live on caramels and stogies, right?
	So we do get a lot of information in through the senses, and that information is all true and valid, as those of you who've seen anything about the conversations that we've had about the history of philosophy, that the sense evidence is perfectly valid.
	There is an external reality that gives us information through our senses.
	But it only gives us direct impressions.
	It doesn't give us conceptual understanding, right?
	Because any kind of animal is going to have direct perception, right?
	You take a, I don't know, a beaver and you shine a light into its eyes and its pupils are going to dilate.
	So since evidence occurs, even at the amoeba level, there's feedback in the single cell level from surrounding environments.
	They pursue food, they move away from that which causes negative stimuli to them.
	So the direct...
	The stimulation of our nervous system through the senses occurs and gives us accurate impressions of reality, but it does not give us conceptual understanding of the causes behind reality.
	And the simple example, of course, is that when we look at the world, it looks really, really flat, right?
	Especially if you're from the Midwest.
	And so the world looks really flat, but the world is not flat, right?
	The world is round.
	And we have the ability as a species, as conscious entities, to reject the evidence of our senses and say, sure, it looks flat, but it's actually round.
	And that is an amazing power, and I don't know of any other species that has that, at least nearly to the degree that human beings have.
	So human beings have every right, because we have a limited five-sense kind of perspective on the world, we have every right, and it's part of the core Power of science and philosophy to say, sure, it looks that way, but it's not that way, right?
	So if you're in the desert and you see a mirage and you run towards it and it vanishes, you kind of get the hang that it's not really a lake there.
	It's just the light waves bouncing between different heated layers of air.
	So the fact that we have this capacity to reject the evidence of our senses and to try and reach into the conceptual understanding behind our senses is a very powerful part of the human brain.
	I would say, you know, alongside with language, and I would hesitate to say which one was more important.
	Along with language, it is the most powerful aspect of the human mind.
	And it's a good thing.
	It's good that we can do that.
	But it also has a grave danger to it.
	Because we have the capacity to reject the evidence of our senses and to sort of reach in through our minds, through our rationality, into the meaning behind the evidence of the senses, so we can figure out the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second or whatever it is, we can figure out the speed of light, though we can't actually see the speed of light moving.
	I remember when I was a kid, when I first heard about the speed of light, I would sit in my room and probably burn through at least half a dozen light bulbs because I would turn off my light And I would close my eyes because I really wanted to get the impression of a room half in light and half in darkness.
	I wanted to catch that moment where the light was halfway across the room.
	Unfortunately, I didn't quite recognize that the eye processes, what, 30 images a second, which is a much wider gap than the speed of light will ever give you in a room.
	So, we can learn the truth of the nature of things only to some degree by rejecting the direct sensual evidence of the sun and the moon look the same size but they're actually not and so on.
	So, but given that we have this habit and this desire to reach for the meaning behind things and we have the capacity and sometimes it's a rational and valuable thing to do to reject the evidence of the senses, That's sort of where we get tempted into this religious context, right?
	Into believing that even though there's no evidence, there's no direct sensual evidence for God, and even though it doesn't seem rational that there's a God, that there is a God, right?
	Because we believe that the senses are not the be-all and end-all of the meaning of existence, as we know that, because the things that we look at aren't actually the way that things are.
	We have a limited local perspective from where we are with five senses.
	Now, the question sort of then arises, because the very abilities that give rise to science, the rejection of senses, also gives rise to the possibilities of religion, or the possibilities of believing in a god, how does it sort of end up that way?
	And I sort of put together two ideas in the podcast this week, which I'll go over very briefly here, and then we'll open it up to criticisms, questions, and perhaps thunderbolts, that There are sort of two ways of trying to gain knowledge in the world, right? There's two ways of trying to gain knowledge in the world, one of which will actually give you an answer and one of which won't, but will make you feel better, right?
	So when you go to a scientist, a scientist will say, yes, there's matter and there's energy and you're biological and you descended from apes or ascended from apes, I guess you could say.
	And we don't have any proof of free will.
	We certainly can't see a soul.
	There's no evidence of any kind of sort of super consciousness.
	There's just matter.
	There's energy. There's you.
	You're biological. You're not special.
	Fundamentally, science is not going to say, yes, you're smarter than your average rhododendron, but you're not special in any sort of fundamental way.
	Your life doesn't have any meaning that comes into you from outside.
	Your life doesn't have any meaning.
	There's no God out there pouring meaning into your life like a water color, like a colored food coloring into a glass of water and infusing your life with meaning.
	Your life has no meaning, external to yourself.
	And you're matter and energy. You're not special.
	You don't have a soul. At least there's no evidence for it.
	No evidence of life after death or life before birth or gods or devils or great cosmic dramas or going to heaven and reuniting with your loved ones after death.
	There's no evidence for any of this, right?
	So if you have a desire to believe in these kinds of things, the scientist is like the ultimate Grinch, right?
	Taking away all the Christmas presents of fantasy that you have in the world.
	And for people who are kind of vain, I would say, they kind of want to feel that they're special, but they don't necessarily want to earn that specialness, right?
	So they want to feel that they're special, but they don't necessarily really want to have to earn that specialness in a kind of objective way, by providing some skill or talent or conversation or something that's unique and special to them that sort of makes them special to other people and so on.
	And so what happens then is that people want to believe that they're special, they have this capacity to reject the senses, and there are people out there who are more than happy to tell them that they're special, right?
	So there are people out there who, instead of looking at scientific knowledge and facts and evidence and logic and all these kinds of good things, will just make up a story, right?
	They'll make up a story. So I call the scientist and the storyteller.
	So the scientist will tell you you're not special, you're matter and energy, and you're descended from apes, and you're biological, and when you die, all of the energy that goes into making up your consciousness, all the electricity and biochemical processes simply cease, and your body, your soul doesn't leave your body any more than when you switch off a radio, all of the voices and commercials float off into some other realm.
	The electricity to generate them is no longer there.
	So the storyteller, though, will come at people and say, the science thing, yeah, okay, maybe it has its place and it's good in some ways, but what I'm going to offer you is so much better, that you are a glowing beacon of light in the universe.
	You're the entire reason the universe was created.
	The ultimate creator of the universe is entirely focused on you.
	You are incredibly special.
	You are part of a grand cosmic drama.
	That there's devils and there's saints and there's angels and demons and all these sorts of entities that are floating around you and they're tempting you with bad things and there are angels trying to get you to do good things and your soul is going to live forever.
	I mean, it's all, you know, it's kind of cool, right?
	I mean, no question. If it were true, I for one would think that it would be, you know, pretty neato.
	So... You do have all of these people who will come and tell you, here's the answer, right?
	The question, you know, why are we here?
	What is the purpose of life? And so on.
	The scientist isn't going to give you any answer that has any comfort.
	A rational philosopher is going to say that meaning is a subjective experience that doesn't mean that it's any less My choice or preference in music is a subjective thing.
	It's not rationally provable that my taste in music is better than yours.
	Well, maybe yours, but not yours.
	That doesn't mean that it's any less meaningful or beautiful to me.
	My favorite color is my favorite color.
	It doesn't mean because it's not everyone's favorite color that I find it less beautiful.
	So the fact that meaning is subjective and personal doesn't mean that it is less powerful or important.
	It just means it's not handed to you on a platter through somebody else's story through a religious context.
	So the scientist is going to basically say, and the philosopher is going to say, there's no meaning outside yourself.
	You're not part of any cosmic drama.
	Everything that you create, everything that you want, you have to earn through exchange.
	You're not special, and so on, right?
	It's kind of a blow to a certain kind of vanity.
	But the religious storyteller is going to say that, you know, you're a special, you're a glowing gem of light of the universe, and God is obsessed about you, and you have to do this, and you have to do that, and so on.
	And so they provide this instant sort of meaning, right?
	This instant sort of cosmic surrounding kind of meaning, which is very tempting to a lot of people, because in the existential sense, coming up with the own meaning for your own life is not the easiest thing in the world, right?
	It's like asking everyone to be an entrepreneur and start a company.
	It's not what everyone wants to do, right?
	And the storyteller, of course, will give you conclusions.
	Absolute total conclusions, right?
	The scientist is going to say, oh, you want to know where the universe came from?
	No idea. No idea.
	We can get to like three billionths of a second after the Big Bang.
	No idea. Where's the universe going?
	No idea. Why is life here?
	There is no such thing as why is life here.
	It just is, right? Based on the laws of the universe and the organic nature and the desire of DNA to replicate, this is where we ended up.
	There's no why. Why does a rock bounce down a hill a certain way?
	Just because of the laws of physics.
	We're not going to get into the free world thing, but I think you know where I'm coming from.
	And... So there's lots of questions that science has that it can't answer, which people are very interested in, the sort of why we're here and what is the meaning thing.
	And the methodology for answering those things is very complicated and messy, right?
	So science lurches.
	I mean, we all think of science as climbing a set of stairs.
	Science really lurches around a lot and backtracks and goes forward and then trips over and goes sideways.
	It's like the free market, right?
	It's a mess that gloriously moves forward continually.
	I will in just one second.
	And so religion will give you an answer and will cut off questions.
	Right? So in the Hindu philosophy, or in Hindu theology, and this is some time back, I don't know if they still believe this, right?
	The world sits atop an elephant, the elephant sits atop, I don't know, an emu, and then the emu sits atop a turtle.
	And the natural question, of course, is, well, what does the turtle sit on?
	And the priests would say, well, no, no, it's turtles all the way down.
	All the way to the bottom. There's nothing but turtles.
	There's pure infinity all the way down.
	And so religion will say, here but no further.
	Here's where we cut off the questions, right?
	We don't go any further.
	Where did the universe come from?
	God made the universe. Why are we here?
	To fulfill God's will or God's plan or his ineffable purpose or whatever.
	So religion will give you answers that are certain, totally false.
	Completely irrational, totally made up, and frankly, exploitive in a financial sense, because religion doesn't survive on the goodwill and prayers.
	God is supposed to live on prayers, but priests need money.
	But it's very exploitive and totally false, but it really does give an answer to people, whereas science is a continual series of questions, right?
	And it's sort of like in the realm of economics, we have questions like, how do we take care of the poor?
	And the answer that's given by a free market environment is complicated.
	Well, jobs will be created, there'll be a certain amount of charity, there'll be this, there'll be that, the poor will have more opportunities, they'll be better educated if they don't get forced into government schools.
	There's lots of complicated answers around how the poor get helped In a free market situation, but in a statist environment, how do the poor get helped?
	Bang! The government taxes people and gives them money.
	That's it. That's the answer.
	There's nowhere else to go.
	That's the answer. And once that answer's in place, nobody explores any more questions.
	So some people prefer staying inside that little box.
	So as far as the history of religion goes...
	I would say that people get very tempted by these very pleasant stories about their role in the universe and the longevity of their soul and so on.
	And they prefer moving towards that.
	The only problem is that they fail to continue to learn in any meaningful way.
	And also the problem is that It's false.
	And whenever you believe in something that's false, particularly around the realm of ethics, you will be exploited, right?
	The people who were telling you these false things will exploit you from here to kingdom come, so to speak.
	So there's more in the podcast, which I did.
	I did about an hour and a half of these.
	So I've done... 18 minutes here, so consider yourselves lucky if the topic isn't hugely gripping for you.
	But that's sort of my take on some of the genesis of the gods, so to speak.
	Did you want to try clicking on the...
	Now, I wonder, see, now it says, click and you click it again.
	Because it says, we want to unmute, right?
	Everybody's muted, so it's unmuted now.
	No, it's to unmute.
	Click the button. Yeah, no, it's very strange.
	I don't know why we're not getting any audio.
	Well, anyway, can you... Ah, there you go.
	Mr. G. I'm on!
	How's it going? Skype, it sucks, but it's free.
	That would be my slogan. Now they'll pull me from Skype now for saying that.
	Nobody's going to go into 25 minutes of the history of religion in order to find that comment, so go ahead.
	Not quite as bad as two-wire telephone, but not quite as good as telepathy.
	Next week, smoke signals and carrier pigeons.
	So, I was wondering if you could just clarify your thesis a little bit on this notion that science was possible because Humans have this capacity to reject the senses.
	If rejection of the evidence of the senses is the foundation of science, and then the methodology is based on validating the evidence of the senses, isn't that fundamentally a kind of contradiction?
	Oh, did we actually click the unmute?
	I'm so sorry, sweetie, we actually meant to click the mute.
	That's a tough question. I'm going to let Christina answer that one.
	She's left the room. Okay. No, that's an excellent question.
	The purpose of science really is to translate the evidence of the senses.
	So... We talked about this a little bit last week, that something has to be, in order for it to be valid, it has to be translatable into some sort of sensual evidence, right?
	So a deaf person can feel the vibrations of sound, particularly at a rap club on the speaker, and can also see it, I think, as an oscilloscope, right, that translates sound waves into visual lines on a...
	Rapidly moving graph, I'm sorry.
	I don't know the technical terms very well.
	A spectrograph can do the same thing with color translated into other things.
	And, of course, x-rays can...
	There's evidence for x-rays in that if you put your hand on the photographic plate and you shoot the x-ray through, you can see through your hand, which you can't do any other way.
	And, of course, radiation is not visible to any of the senses, but with a Geiger counter, you get that clicky-clicky thing.
	So, science is really about translating things which are not evident to the senses to the evidence of the senses.
	So, they figured out, as I mentioned in the podcast, they figured out that the world was round by sticking the stakes in, I think one was in Athens and one was, I don't know, somewhere else.
	And they were able to figure out that the world was round by, they took the shadows at the same time and noticed that the shadows had different, like a sundial at different times, they had different casted shadows.
	So they were able to translate the evidence of the senses that was not present, i.e.
	the world looks flat, But it's actually round.
	And then they were able to look at the shadows and measure those using the evidence of the senses.
	So the whole point about science is to try and find some way to reproduce sensual evidence that is not obvious into other, to translate it into some other kind of sensual evidence, right?
	So if I said there's some, you know, Z-ray out there that can't be detectable in any way, shape, or form, that can't be translated into any sensually empirical evidence, I mean,
	is that rejection or is it just a form of reinterpretation of essential evidence?
	Well, it certainly is a reinterpretation, but in order to pursue the line of questioning, you have to reject some of the evidence of the census to begin with.
	So somebody had to say, gee, I wonder if the world is really round or not.
	Somebody had to reject the direct evidence that the world seems flat and say, well, gee, I wonder if it's some other shape.
	The moon is round.
	The planets are round.
	I guess they couldn't really tell that before the telescope.
	But the moon is round.
	The sun is round.
	And then maybe when there was some lunar eclipse, they had that brain fart where they said, oh, my God, the edge of the Earth seems to be round.
	Or maybe they sailed or they watched a sailing ship go away and they saw the hull disappear and then the mast disappear.
	So somebody had to...
	Come up with some freaky idea that the world was round, which involved a rejection of the immediate evidence of the senses.
	And it was probably some other piece of sensual evidence that gave them that idea.
	But then they really had to translate the shape of the world into something that was measurable, right?
	So, I mean, obviously, if Apollo, what was it, 11 that went to the moon?
	If they'd shot out into the space and the world turned out to be, I don't know, shaped like a dodecahedron, then certain theories would have had, like, we would have then seen...
	Another piece of sensual evidence, the world is round from space, and so we sort of verify it that way.
	But I think it does initially have to be some kind of rejection of the senses to begin with, if that makes any sense.
	The example of the ship disappearing along the horizon, I mean, they knew that the ship wasn't sinking into the ocean because the sailors would come back after a while.
	Right, and they didn't say, we went to Poseidon's house and had a nice cup of tea or something.
	Right, so...
	And so, like when you stick a pencil into a glass of water, we can see when we pull it back out that the pencil's not bent.
	It's just a visual...
	Oh, we can run our fingers down it and feel that it's not bent.
	Right. So what we're seeing isn't wrong, it's just our conceptualization of it is incorrect.
	Absolutely, yeah, for sure.
	I mean, there's nothing in the world that sort of whispers in our ear, it's flat, it's flat, right?
	I mean, that's not really what, we know that, I'm sort of pointing out the obvious, right?
	It's our subjective interpretation of the evidence of the senses that makes us think that the world is flat.
	There's no flatness out there.
	There's just atoms and energy out there in the world.
	So there's no such thing as flatness.
	That's a concept within our own minds that we impose upon the evidence of our senses.
	But it seems kind of reasonable because flat being defined as, I don't know, doesn't have a curve or something like that.
	I think that we definitely do impose that and we do need to reinterpret it.
	And then we need to say, well, what if the world is so huge that it just looks flat?
	To me, because I'm so close, like, you know, I guess a tiny single-celled organism on an orange would say, wow, this is one big flat orange, right?
	So I agree with you that that's something that we impose internally on the evidence of our senses, and you're right.
	I think your phrase is probably better, that it's a reinterpretation of the evidence of the senses, but it is to do with denying what the obvious evidence of the senses is, if that helps.
	Well, again though, I wouldn't call it a denial.
	I would say that it's more of a...
	I'm having a hard time...
	Do you think I'm in denial about science?
	Do you think we should go on that tangent?
	No, to me it's more...
	You know, you make assumptions based on what evidence you do have.
	And then when new evidence comes in, you find out that those assumptions maybe are wrong.
	And then you have to interpret those assumptions, right?
	So, the first person to see a sailing ship goes so far beyond the horizon that it disappeared into the ocean.
	You know, maybe he thought, oh my god, it sank.
	Right, very slowly.
	While getting smaller.
	And then a couple days later, the sailors came back and, you know, his first impression is going to be, oh, you were raised from the dead by Poseidon, right?
	Right, right. We went to the other side, we got what we wanted, we came back.
	Oh, I thought you meant Noah was Neptune.
	Okay, I know, I understand. Yeah, and for sure.
	And of course, once he's got the telescope, and certainly the refinement of the evidence of the senses is very important.
	Once he's got the telescope, then he's going to be able to see in much more detail that the ship is going down a slope, so to speak, right?
	But of course, then he's going to go home and he's going to put a glass of water and tilt it to one side and say, well, the water spills out, so how could there be a slope?
	It all gets kind of trippy for him, right?
	Yeah. But for sure, yeah, there is going to be that contradiction, right?
	If the ship both shrank and sank, which is what it appears to do when it goes over the horizon, and then comes back and everyone said, no, we never went underwater, then for sure there's a slope.
	But it's pretty mind-bending when you think about it because, you know, you just think it would all pour off the edge of the world.
	How could this be, right? Right, so it's a continuous re-evaluation, a continuous reinterpretation of what our senses are telling us, not a rejection of the senses.
	I think, yeah, I think that's right.
	I think that's right.
	Because you can't reject the senses.
	I mean, that's impossible. And even if you did, you could never communicate about it, as we've talked about before, because you'd have to tell someone you were rejecting the senses.
	No, I think that what you're saying is a much better way.
	We definitely have to reinterpret and get the non-obvious explanation for the senses, right?
	I mean, one of the great problems that occurred in the Renaissance was people trying to understand that there's no such thing as down.
	I mean, that seems like a pretty non-intuitive thing, because we use it all the time, you know?
	Pass me up that wrench, or, you know, I'm going down to the basement.
	I mean, this is something we use all the time.
	But getting people to understand that there really is no such thing as down was a really trippy thing to get across to people.
	But, of course, it's true, right?
	It just looks down to us, although, of course, all that is happening is that the center of mass happens to be below us.
	But that's the case wherever we are on the Earth, and that's why gravity is pretty constant, I guess, except for the Mariana Trench in the Himalayas.
	No, you're absolutely right.
	I think a reinterpretation of the evidence of the census or a rejection of the simplistic or obvious evidence of the census I think is a much better way of putting it.
	Or a rejection of old interpretations of that evidence.
	Old, yeah, old I think would be for sure.
	And it also is a rejection, like if somebody said, it's a rejection of stories that you make up.
	I mean, if they go down, as you say, it's a great way of putting it.
	If they go down into the ocean and then come back up.
	Then, of course, you know, the fact that they were drugged by Poseidon and, you know, the mermaids had their way with them or something.
	You could just make up anything you wanted, but I think the focus is really on refusing to make up things which contradict everything else.
	Science, of course, is a big system where all the pieces have to fit together, and you can't just sort of make up exceptions like, you know, gods and governments and all that kind of stuff.
	So I think you're right.
	I think that's a much better way of putting it.
	But certainly the sort of The obvious thing is that the world is flat and there's such a thing as down.
	Just living on the surface of the earth, that's the most obvious thing.
	So I think it's constantly refining things to say, well, it may be obvious, but it's incorrect.
	Or it may seem self-evident, but it's not true.
	And you have to do that by finding other ways of corroborating theories with the evidence of the senses.
	Right, and I think that makes a lot more sense in your overall thesis then too, because then what the theist is really saying is that because we can't get an all-in-one,
	simultaneous, accurate interpretation of all of reality all at once, Then this process of continuously refining our concepts based on sensual evidence as it comes in little by little is a waste of time and we should just assume what's out there.
	That would be a true rejection of the evidence of the senses.
	In fact, it would be a rejection of, fundamentally, the desire to even bother conceptualizing the evidence of the senses.
	Right, right, right.
	And then it would fall into the general problem that if you reject the census, you can't tell anyone and you can't write it down, right?
	So, I mean, then that would go back to that whole problem.
	And this really is the Kantian thing, right?
	That there's a standard of consciousness out there which can absorb the entirety of the universe, right?
	You and I can only see the outside of a bowling ball, right?
	But there's a consciousness that can feel in its brain every single atom in that bowling ball and so on.
	And this would be true for all of the universe.
	And because we are so limited, we can't see, as Kant would put it, things in themselves.
	We can't see things in themselves.
	And therefore, our knowledge is limited.
	But I don't think that's true at all.
	I mean, it's only limited next...
	A seven-foot guy is only short if there's a 30-foot guy out there, right?
	But if there's no 30... So human knowledge is about as great as you can get if you don't have the standard of omniscience next to it, but can rather just say that this is the only path to knowledge, is to constantly reinterpret and reexamine the evidence of the senses using the scientific method.
	That's the best that you can do in terms of knowledge, and there is no omniscience which you can compare that knowledge gathering to, and therefore the human mind is not deficient relative to anything else, but it's the greatest instrument in the universe.
	Right, because I'm only allowed to experience this tiny sliver of reality that I'm just going to ignore it all.
	Right, right. But of course, I would, yeah, and again, that's relative to a divine consciousness that sees everything.
	Reality has never had it so good as human beings figuring it out, right?
	It's not like rocks and moss are going to come up with the theory of relativity, right?
	Reality has never been so ogled as it is by the human mind, right?
	So the progress that we're making, which is really mind-blowing when you think about millions of years or hundreds of thousands of years of human history, and then in the span of like 200 years, there's this incredible geyser of knowledge that comes out of the generally strict application of the scientific method, just there's this incredible geyser of knowledge that comes out of the generally strict application of the scientific method, just as there is a geyser of wealth and opportunity that comes out That's incredible relative to the history of the planet.
	And so when people say, but you only see a tiny slice of reality, it's like, well, maybe you only see a tiny slice of reality.
	But I feel pretty amazed at the amount of reality that we're really able to absorb and to process and to understand relative to even people in the past, let alone other species.
	Right, inferentially.
	Right, right, right.
	Did you have another question?
	No, that was basically it.
	That makes a lot more sense to me than to argue that they both come from the same sort of rejection because then if you go on that, then that would make science fundamentally a contradictory methodology.
	It was certainly contradictory with the epistemology that we've talked about here.
	No, you're right. Thank you for that clarification.
	I think that's a much, much better way of putting it.
	And I'm now going to go back and re-record the podcast and claim that that's what I always said and cut this part out, right?
	Because the evidence of the census must always be maintained.
	Oh, absolutely. Now, if we have any other questions for the people who've joined us more recently, welcome.
	This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
	We are doing a chat on the genesis of the gods, on the history of religion.
	And if you have any questions or comments about what we've been talking about so far, we've already had our one correction of the show.
	In fact, I think of the year, isn't it?
	2010? Six.
	We just had the one correction, so we can't really have any more.
	So I can't really sort of take any more corrections, but if you have any other...
	Blatant praise for my accent, feel free to raise your hand.
	And the way that you do that is in Skype, there's a little icon somewhere on the Skype window which says, ask for a mic, ask for a microphone or something like that.
	So if you click on that, my lovely wife will see it and then we will accidentally cut you off.
	Although it's vaguely possible that we might actually get you to chat with us.
	So if you have any questions or comments, feel free to bring those up.
	Was there any questions that came in through the chat window?
	Well, I certainly don't mind talking about topics unrelated to the direct question of the day because it's a free-flowing kind of whitewater I certainly don't mind talking about topics unrelated to the direct question So I'm certainly happy to do that.
	But if anybody had any other questions or comments about the history of religion or the relationship between religion and science, feel free to click on the Ask for the Mic icon, or there's a chat window, which if anybody's running it, they could add.
	The listeners, too. We can put it in through there as well.
	Anything? We're just waiting.
	I can wait as long as you can, class.
	I'm just going to put on my bitchy schoolteacher personality, which actually almost never goes away.
	I'd like to think that I put it on, but it's probably more than it puts me on.
	What?
	Oh, yeah, because he's unmuted?
	Yeah, no, no, this is the thing with Skype, you know.
	Skype sucks everybody into the ether and then spits them back.
	You know, this is probably what gets people so disoriented and dizzy, is this whole process.
	Well, let's put him on.
	Hey, if I convince someone about atheism, let's put him on.
	Hey, old brother, come over to the Church of the Converted.
	Yes, let's unmute him, and we're actually going to sing a hymn together, I think.
	All praise science, we love reason.
	Go! I think he's unmuted.
	It might take a second to kick in.
	If you can just sort of count to a thousand in a thousandth.
	Well, let's just hang on one sec.
	Rod, are you with us?
	Are you live? You know, I invite people to sing and suddenly the microphones don't work.
	Ah, there we go. Mr.
	Rod. How's it going?
	Great. You can hear me?
	I sure can. Excellent.
	Okay. It just looks like my mic was still muted on the window, but I guess I'm cool.
	All right. Now, this is just before you start.
	This is, in fact, a kind of trust exercise for me, which isn't always the easiest thing emotionally, because you've said that you've converted to a scientific way of thinking, and that could actually be just your way of getting into the conversation and trying to convert me back to...
	Was it Satanism or Wiccanism that you were trying last week?
	I can't quite remember exactly.
	I was going to instruct you on the finer points of pentagram building.
	Oh, excellent. Excellent.
	Okay. Well, we've got to... Actually, I'm recording this on video as well.
	We've got a big wall behind us.
	So, Christina, we'll go and get some nail polish and we'll get to work and see what we can summon.
	Of course, if there is a big gout of flame and I sprout horns from the scalp, then we'll know that some of our earlier theories may not be entirely correct.
	So, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Okay.
	So, I just want to let you know that I gave the last week's call-in show another listen last night.
	And... After thinking about it for a while, and it's always cool to listen to the Colin shows that I've actually participated in because it seems like, I don't know if it's a bit of stage fright or whatever it is, but it seems like half my mind kind of shuts off while I'm actually speaking on these things.
	So to be able to listen to my conversation that I had with you last week, again, was really kind of enlightening.
	Anyway, to get to the point, I guess it finally sunk in to me That what I was doing regarding atheism and agnosticism, I was just focusing too much on connotative definitions in my own mind, maybe semantics, I could say.
	Do you understand what I'm trying to say with that?
	No. Okay, the words atheism and agnosticism, I think, were bending my perceptions a bit, so to speak.
	And I think what convinced me was when you finally...
	Got it through to me that atheism is rejection of the theism that we have in our world.
	And I think that that's what you're sort of trying to point out.
	Am I correct on that? It could be.
	Please, I'm not going to say, because your sentence could be interpreted a number of different ways.
	So just keep going, and I'll let you know whether or not that's what I was trying to get across.
	Which doesn't mean, of course, that that's right or not.
	It's just what I was trying to get across.
	Sure. Okay, so...
	Yeah, I guess before I was focusing so much on, because I did think, and I still have some sympathy for my earlier perception, but I did think before that agnosticism was more consistent with the scientific method as far as how I was interpreting other things in my life.
	I try to use the scientific method.
	I put forward a thesis, test it, If the test passes and then it causes the thesis to fail, then the thesis just gets, you know, tossed.
	And with agnosticism, I thought that I was, you know, continuing this noble, you know, scientific, you know...
	Indemperable process. Sure, yeah.
	And these tests that were constantly being tossed at me by the theists.
	But I think what I finally...
	The little hill that I finally...
	What I climbed was that I don't have to keep going after and testing these crazy hypotheses because these hypotheses require, as a first step, to let go of reality.
	You know what I'm trying to say?
	Right. I mean, the idea that there's something outside of reality that you can put every contradictory notion and say that it might exist somewhere out there.
	Is that what you mean? Right.
	And I think one of the lines that finally got me was when you said that if someday we find that Vishnu really is the stuff and he's up there making the world go around and stuff, That doesn't mean that the people who came up with the idea of Vishnu were correct.
	They were wrong in the first place because they weren't actually observing reality to create their hypothesis.
	They were just one of the monkeys in the room, the million monkeys in the room, typing endlessly.
	Yeah, great. Fantastic.
	They somehow happened on to just the right combination of keystrokes to describe the great and powerful Vishnu that we now have to worship or whatever.
	But, you know, until we can actually see Vishnu and talk to him and whatever else we have to do to verify his existence, smell his heavenly aroma or whatever that is, well then, up until that point, we just have to assume that these people are just another one of these monkeys that are kind of going nuts on a keyboard.
	So, I think that finally...
	For some reason, knocks loose the last vestiges of my mental chastity belt, you can say, I guess, on this subject.
	Okay, we have to get that on video, for sure.
	Yeah, great. I just have to thank you for that, because I think you actually helped me over what was a pretty close obstacle, but it was still a very big one for me, so that's great.
	Well, I mean, the honor is all yours, right?
	Because it's you who've spent the time and energy to continue to pursue these questions.
	And, you know, I hugely respect your conservatism, if I can put it that way, around the question of the existence of God.
	The last thing that a scientific or rational thinker ever wants to do, and we get criticized for this a lot, and maybe it's true for some philosophers out there.
	I think that we're a little bit beyond that, but...
	We don't want to say dogmatically there is no God if there's a possibility that there is a God, right?
	Because that is then taking the same approach that the theists say.
	They say there is a God when there's lots of evidence that there isn't, but they refuse to even admit the possibility that there isn't.
	We don't want to be perceived or to go through the process of saying that there is no God Even though we can't prove a negative, we can't just prove a contradiction, and there may be this other realm outside the universe, there may be this thing before, and lots of people who put the stake of certainty in the ground get mowed over, usually less than a generation, right?
	And so we don't want to...
	I hugely respect the conservative approach that you take to validating these kinds of propositions, because we don't want to be these kinds of people who say, You know, we just, there's no God.
	End of story. I don't entertain the question.
	I don't explore it because that is just equally as dogmatic.
	And even if, I mean, since there is no God, we're right.
	But if we believe it because we've just stopped questioning, then we're only accidentally right.
	It's like if the leaves blow off the tree and land and say equals MC squared, you don't give the tree the Nobel Prize, right?
	Because it doesn't make the tree a physicist.
	So we don't want to take the same approach to truth validation that the communists do or that the socialists do or that the religious people do or the racists or the nationalists or whoever, right?
	We really do want to be conservative and so I hugely respect that approach that you're taking.
	It seems to be entirely the right approach.
	Right. And like you say, with the tree being the best physicist in the world, we don't want to reward people for not even playing the game.
	It's like, why give credence to someone who has...
	I just made something up out of whole cloth or just inherited it from their ancestors.
	Why should we say, I'm going to give you every bit as much respect for the way that you're going about this as a scientist who tries very hard to observe his world before making his guess.
	Everyone does deserve the respect of being heard, but how much You know, how much can we give them when they just say, look, I'm closing my eyes, plugging my ears, going la, la, la, la, la, and then I'm spouting something out.
	And I want you to respect that just as much as you do, you know, Einstein when he writes down E equals MC squared and then explains it very thoroughly, you know?
	Right. And of course, Einstein, one of the reasons that he was so popular was because he was very conservative in his own approach.
	And he put forward the criteria by which his own theory could be disproven, right?
	And so when they went and measured whether the light bent around the edge of the sun during a solar eclipse, they sailed out to some island in the Pacific to do that.
	And he said, if this doesn't happen, if light is not affected by gravity, my theory is totally false.
	So he put the whole theory down and all of the criteria for disproof, which was very different from the religious and dogmatist approaches of the 20th century and, of course, the ones that continue now.
	So, no, that's exactly right.
	I mean, we respect a doctor who comes up with a cure, who's gone through a rigorous process, you know, tested on the amoeba, tested on the rats, you know, go through that whole process, come up with a theory as to how it cures and so on, whereas some other doctor who just randomly shoves things in various orifices of his patients, whereas some other doctor who just randomly shoves things in various orifices of his patients, you know, killing good numbers of them, and then one guy gets better and he says, look, That's not really something we'd want to encourage, I think.
	Right, right.
	So I guess I probably don't need to, you know, monopolize on too much of the time here for everyone, but I just wanted to, you know, give you some feedback and sincerely thank you for finally helping me up over my last little hump on the religion issue.
	So I'm erasing the agnostic after my name and replacing it with atheist, so thanks a lot.
	Well, I'm very pleased and thank you so much for the feedback.
	That's nice. I certainly have been quite...
	I've been girding my loins over the last week or two because there is a battle, I think, for the soul of rationality in people around this question of agnosticism because agnosticism really is associated with a kind of scientific method with a refusal to provide answers where no answers appear to be possible or where no answers are at the moment available.
	And so people really do feel concerned about saying there is no God, because it seems to be drawing a line in the sand, and the truck of science is driven through so many lines of certainty in history that people feel very concerned about it.
	But I think the problem, of course, with agnosticism that I've talked about before and I posted on the board this morning is that I would actually have much more respect for agnostics, and I'm not saying that you would be one of them, Who would then apply this theory to every proposition.
	You can't just have a proposition that you float out to the end of the universe and say, well, there may be a God somewhere in some other universe, therefore we can't say no.
	They don't do this with any other proposition except for this one.
	And that's where my suspicion goes up.
	So that's something that I have a great deal of concern about.
	Like, I've never had somebody who say, you know, I don't know, let's say that some woman they know gets raped, God forbid, right?
	And then this woman's crying and they say, no, don't worry about it because, you know, we can't decide whether this is good or bad because in some other universe, rape might be really good.
	I mean, can you imagine saying something like that to someone?
	It would be inhuman, right?
	It would be an awful thing to say.
	And so I always have a great deal of...
	I was going to say something mature, but I'll be perfectly honest.
	I have a great deal of hostility towards beliefs that can't be practiced in a universal manner because that always leads to hypocrisy and that always leads to enormous, not just intellectual, but emotional problems, right?
	Because then people have these values that they can't live consistently and it fragments their personality and makes life really, really difficult.
	And so whenever people put forward a proposition that I just know that they cannot conceivably live their whole life in, right, in the application of, that's something that really I think strongly needs to be examined, right?
	Again, maybe there is this fragmented universe and we have to split ourselves up six ways from Sunday, but I really haven't seen any evidence of that yet after, you know, nearly a quarter century of looking, so.
	Yeah, testify. So, hey, oh, there's one more thing that I wanted to let you know, or just let everyone know, is that I think just before my second listen to the last week's Colin show, I happened to watch Richard Dawkins' The Root of All Evil.
	Oh yeah, but I haven't seen that yet.
	What did you think? It was fantastic.
	And it was a slightly different...
	I was actually pretty amazed slash impressed at how conservative he was being, actually, because he...
	You know, he comes across as being the champion of atheism and all that stuff, you know, in the popular culture and everything.
	And he was very reserved in this, where he was going to...
	He was going to figures around, you know, the Middle East and in England and things like that.
	And he really, I think he just...
	Oh, also there was that evangelical guy in Denver who just fell from grace, so to speak.
	But anyway, he... He really just interviewed these people with curiosity, and he let them hang themselves.
	And it was a very interesting video to watch.
	And anyway, so I think that one of the, he actually mentioned very briefly, I almost missed it, but it was, he said something about agnosticism and atheism.
	And I think he was kind of having this same discussion with one of, I think, I don't know if there's a rabbi or something like that, but he said, you know, Sure, if you would have to say that, you know, we can't disprove anything that we have no evidence of, well then, of course, then we're all agnostics regarding this point.
	But the real reality is that we are atheists because we know that these, I don't know, maybe I'm getting, I might be paraphrasing incorrectly here, but I kind of got the impression that we were saying is that, you know, the methodology is wrong.
	So we have to be, you know, we have to be atheists on this.
	So I think that It was a bit of a tag team between his video and then listening again to your Sunday call-in show last week that I think it finally just got me going on it.
	So it was great. Good times.
	That's good. Well, while we can't win through reason, we certainly try to win through repetition.
	And given that this is podcast 519, I think that we're winning the battle.
	Well, I appreciate that. That's a very elevated company to be put into, and I certainly appreciate that.
	Dawkins is... I love the guy in many ways.
	I read The Selfish Gene, I don't know, about 15 years ago.
	It had quite an effect on my thinking.
	Of course, the problem with somebody like Richard Dawkins, as is the case with Sam Harris, who wrote The End of Faith, which is an interesting book to read, is that, you know, it is, you know, like these, I feel a little bit like a priest.
	I know it sounds odd, but I feel a little bit like a priest insofar as human beings...
	For me, fantasy is a kind of devil, right?
	I mean, just metaphorically, I'll sort of eschatize the world that way.
	But fantasy is a kind of devil.
	You know they have these movies where they drive the devil out of one member of the family and then it sort of floats through the air and then it sort of goes into someone else and they just can't get rid of the devil as a whole.
	They just can drive it from one body to another.
	And I sort of feel that way a little bit when it comes to To philosophy because, you know, you'll talk to Sam Harris or read his book and see him being interviewed and he's like, you know, yes, we're all atheists about every other god, right?
	So you sit there and talk to a Christian guy and you say, do you believe in Zeus?
	He's like, no. Well, you're an atheist to do with Zeus, right?
	Do you believe in... Dionysus, no.
	Do you believe in Vishnu or do you believe in Osiris or anything?
	And they say, no. It's like, well, so you're a 99.9% atheist because there are like 10,000 gods.
	I know the math is wrong, but bear with me.
	There are like 10,000 gods out there that you don't believe in.
	You just believe in this one. Well, all we do is go from 99.9999% to 100%.
	It's not a big leap.
	We're not in opposites, right?
	Any theist... And any atheist are, you know, 0.01% the same thing.
	It's just that, you know, we go one God further, as Sam Harris says.
	I think it's a very good argument.
	But then, you know, so, you know, you see Sam Harris has wrestled with the devil called God, right?
	With the demon called the fantasy of religion.
	And it's like, whoa, praise be, I've expelled that one out into the ether.
	And then he says, well, of course, the way that we solve the problems of the religion is with the world government, right?
	So then it's like the boomerang of fantasy.
	It's like, get thee behind me, Satan!
	Oh, the UN is now my new God!
	And it's just like, oh, man, can we not drive this thing out?
	Like, in a general sense, it's...
	It can be really frustrating, but I certainly understand why this occurs, and I certainly have mentioned it in a podcast or 12, but it can be a little bit frustrating, and I guess I think my wife has the same experience as well when you're dealing with your patients, right? And it's like, you know, I've gotten rid of this particular bad habit or this particular level of dysfunction, and then...
	You know, income Hoover's another one, and it's just kind of natural, right?
	Like, I can keep the study clean, but then the bedroom goes to hell.
	Anyway, we don't have to talk about my habits, but I think you sort of get the general idea.
	It can be really, really frustrating.
	Absolutely. And, you know, not to pull this too far away from the topic at hand, but I have noticed that same thing in popular, you know, I'd say anti-state resistance movements, too, where we have For example, Aaron Russo's film, Freedom to Fascism, about the Federal Reserve and taxes and stuff like that.
	He points out all these horrible, horrible things that the government is doing with the Federal Reserve, with taxation and the income tax and stuff.
	At the very end, he says, so the solution is to go back To the original Constitution.
	Right. I was like, my God, dude, you're so close, you know?
	Just stick your sword in it finally, but he doesn't, you know?
	See, if we could just go back to when the cancer was smaller, that would be great.
	You know, that would heal everything.
	Except for the whole slavery, no rights for women and children thing.
	Yeah, if we just had little baby alligators, they're so cute, you know?
	They always grow up to be these humongous sewer monsters, though.
	So, you know, just... Let's not have alligators as pets anymore.
	Oh, I agree.
	I found that movie...
	I thought it was quite fascinating because it's really good to peel back the layers of the statist representatives and just get to see the squalid and evil personalities that lie beneath.
	But, oh, man, you know, people are like...
	It's like...
	Just show me the law and I'll obey.
	And it's like, that's not the point.
	The point isn't if you can ram the law through, then we'll obey.
	That's German, right?
	That's like, oh, it's legal to kill the Jews?
	Suit up, let's roll, right?
	Because now there's a law, right?
	Oh, man, you know, but of course it's tough to get funding unless you're in one of these fantasy camps, right?
	Like if you're in the fantasy camp of religion is good and it's godless communism, then you can get funding that way.
	And if you're the funding, if you're on the sort of left-wing side, which is that, you know, religion is bad and big government is good, then, you know, it's like, you know, what form of slavery is best you can get lots of funding for?
	No such thing as slavery should exist.
	You get a Skype show, so, which is where I'd much rather be.
	It's this maddening, unending game of whack-a-mole, you know, where you just beat down a little bit while traders another one pops up.
	Right, right. That's enough with my crazy metaphors here.
	Crazy metaphors and tangents.
	You know, I really feel like you've embedded yourself in the whole show's philosophy.
	This is really good. I'm hook, line, and sinker.
	Although I think you did accidentally get to a point.
	So you've still got something to learn when it comes to how to talk in the true Freidomanian radio fashion.
	But, you know, you're certainly coming along, and I appreciate that.
	Actually, you just have to try less hard to come to the point.
	Thank you so much, everyone.
	I guess we're getting a nice crowd coming in.
	I hope that I'm not startling you awake if you're eating this after a nice juicy red wine and turkey dinner.
	So, if you have any questions or comments, the topic generally is religion and the history of religion in particular.
	Although, if you have any questions about religion, theology, science, and so on, I'm more than happy to entertain them.
	Questions, corrections, issues with podcasts, and so on.
	My name is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	You can find it at www.freedomainradio.com.
	My lovely wife is Manny the Console.
	And if you have a question or comment, you can just click on the Ask for the Mic.
	I've tried to change that to Beg for the Mic, but so far, no luck.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely. Sure. We will get you unmuted in just a moment.
	Oh, NRDO. I don't know where he is.
	There's no way to sort this.
	Yeah, they're tough to find. Sorry, there's no way to sort these names in Skype.
	We've had a question from somebody who would like to talk, but we can't see them on the Skype window.
	Maybe you can reply to the gentleman and just ask him to type it into the window.
	So, yeah, no, I would certainly recommend the Freedom to Fascism show.
	It can be, for me, it's very frustrating to, it's like, if you don't mind, I'm going to go on a minor tangent here.
	It's a minor rant. It's very, it's the last guy's fault, though, because he came up with this topic.
	I've been thinking of doing a podcast called Milton Goddamn Friedman.
	And it really is disrespectful to the recently deceased.
	He died this last week at the age of 94.
	But this is sort of based on some of the stuff of his that I've read and also an interview that I read with him in Reason Magazine where he's slagging the anarchists and he's slagging Murray Rothbard and so on and talking about how he's a card-carrying Republican, although he's much more on the libertarian side of things because he felt that by being a Republican he could get a whole lot more done.
	And it's this constant compromise with power That is one reason why we keep wallowing further and further into a pit of statism and fantasy and collectivism.
	But Milton goddamn Friedman, you know, like, oh, man.
	I mean, obviously a brilliant economist, smart guy, tenured professor.
	He had nothing to fear about.
	He's more secure than anyone, you know, in the freedom movement is usually ever.
	I guess we're all, you know, sort of out there.
	So this guy had, you know, professional respect.
	He had the Nobel Prize. He had tenureship.
	He had every single conceivable amount of protection that you could have.
	And then what did he do with it?
	Well, he ended up advising Reagan.
	Well, of course, he was the guy who got income tax deduction at Sorsco again, though you can't really blame him for that.
	Somebody was going to come up with that at some point.
	But he goes and advises Reagan.
	And he says, Reagan, you know, he should do these tax cuts to simulate the economy.
	He should follow the Laffer curve and do all that kind of stuff.
	Which, you know, hey, we all make mistakes, right?
	No problem. I'm not perfect, right?
	It's not that. The issue isn't whether you make mistakes.
	The issue is whether you're man enough to own up to and admit and correct those mistakes.
	So he gets deeply embedded as a policy wonk.
	He comes up with Free to Choose in the early 80s.
	There's a great special on the basics of economics and so on.
	A big fan of Hayek and embedded in the Mont Pelerin Society.
	And so he gets really involved in government, gives lots of advice to government, and what happens?
	It totally screws up, right?
	I mean, Reagan, the federal government grew by two-thirds under Reagan.
	It was the beginning of catastrophic deficits that, you know, 20, 30 years later, are about to wipe out the financial health of the United States.
	And he lived long enough to see this, right?
	He was in the 80s. He died.
	I guess he was, what, hard to think.
	He was 70 in the 80s, and he lived to be 94.
	And so he did all of this policy stuff and he got all of this stuff to Reagan and the whole thing screwed up.
	The whole thing totally screwed up.
	It went the complete opposite of everything that he was trying to do.
	Now you'd think that a mature and wise and benevolent human being would say...
	Holy shit, did I ever screw up.
	What a horrible mistake I made.
	I've been slagging Murray Rothbard my whole life, saying, oh, he's too radical, he's an anarchist, he's this, he's like way out there, it's bad.
	And so I decided to go in with the whole government thing.
	I decided to sell my soul to the state in the attempt to bring freedom around through economic advice to a president.
	And it went totally the opposite way.
	Everything that I tried to achieve ended up going exactly the opposite.
	I tried to increase economic freedom.
	I increased economic slavery.
	I tried to get the government smaller.
	The government grew even faster.
	After I had given my advice.
	So Milton goddamn Friedman, it would have been a pretty juicy thing for him to say, I really, really screwed up.
	And what a manful thing. Like what an honest and manful and mature thing to have done to say, what a screw up that was.
	You know, I spent all my life slag of these people who are anti-state.
	I get totally involved in the establishment.
	And it's like a doctor who says, hey, take this pill and you'll get better.
	And the person takes the pill.
	And dies. And the doctor never says, well, that was a bad idea.
	The whole theory was supposed to go this way.
	It totally went that way.
	I mean, what power it would have been for a Nobel Prize winner to give up on the state.
	What power it would have been. And it's not like he didn't have the evidence.
	It's not like he didn't have the evidence.
	So Milton goddamn Friedman, three days before he died.
	He knew he was 94. He's not going to live much longer.
	Would it have killed him to say...
	I totally screwed up. You know, that whole government thing, slagging all the anarchists, boy, oh boy.
	You know, I'm supposed to be the scientist, I'm supposed to be this rational guy, well, an economist, right?
	I'm supposed to at least understand cause and effect.
	Could I, could he not at least have thrown a few crumbs to those of us who are really on the front lines here and said, yep, I went through this whole state route, ended up completely ass backwards from where I wanted to be.
	I sold people down the river.
	Everything got worse. Government got bigger.
	He was around to see it. And he's 94.
	What the hell are they going to do to him?
	Throw him in jail? Man!
	Oh man, oh man, would that have been a sweet thing?
	But he won't do it, right?
	And this is the compromise. And, oh, last thing, the guy has the nerve to, and I was reading this, I think in 1995, he gave an interview with Reason Magazine.
	So this is, you know, 10 years after the fact, after he knew all of what the ugliness and mess that had been caused by the sort of regular revolution of smaller government.
	Not only does he continue in 1995 to slag the anarchists and the minarchists and then the Murray Rothbards, but, oh, he also, It talks about how it's so important to make sure that you don't get corrupted by power if you start giving statist advice.
	If you start giving policy advice to the government, it's so important, he said, oh, it's so important to not get corrupted by power.
	Well, goddammit, what a jerk.
	I mean, to talk in this sort of wise elder statement way about how to avoid getting corrupted by power without noticing that his advice, which was supposed to achieve freedom, achieved a growing and almost inescapable enslavement of the general population.
	And his credibility, his reputation gave a strong aura Of authenticity and legitimacy to the whole Reagan revolution.
	And the whole thing went totally the wrong way.
	He tried to make people free.
	They ended up getting more enslaved.
	Never changed his mind. Never reversed position in anything that I've read about.
	And I apologize for this whole rant if it turned out to be the case.
	But man, Milton goddamn Friedman.
	Like, what a scientist. What a humanitarian.
	Boy, what an honest and mature man to admit his mistakes and turn things around.
	He did, actually.
	Ah, excellent. I certainly don't want to disrespect the man.
	The last thing that I read about was in 1995.
	Maybe he changed things around towards the very end.
	But please, go ahead.
	How do you run? Oh, he's got no mic?
	Oh, no, Mike. Okay, well, we have a gentleman here who says that, and it may have been between, this is now 2006, for those watching this, and 2006.
	This is 2006.
	He died this last week.
	The last interview that I read with him was 1995, so...
	Maybe he changed his mind since then.
	I certainly never heard about it.
	And that, of course, may not be his fault.
	Like if he published it and tried to spend his fortune getting the word out there and totally changed his mind and understood that what he did was very corrupt and understood that he had slagged people who were trying to do a more honest thing like Murray Rothbard and had put them down.
	But again, the last thing that I heard, which was relatively recent, certainly after the peak of his fame had come and gone, But I certainly don't want to be unjust.
	So, Adi, if you'd like to put something in to the chat window, I'd be more than happy to read it.
	If he did have a recantation about his role in the escalation of state power and corruption that occurred during the 80s, I would certainly be happy to read it to be honorable to his memory.
	He wanted to replace the central bank with a very simple money-printing robot?
	Please, Adi, don't tell me that that's your idea of him turning things around morally, to say that we should replace the Fed with a money printing robot that would not be controlled by government, that would not be controlled by politics.
	I mean, that's his big turnaround situation.
	He regretted supporting the income tax.
	Oh, yeah, no, I understand that.
	He regretted supporting the income tax for sure.
	What he did was he regretted getting income tax deductions at source.
	Now, in 1995, the interview that I read with him in Reason magazine, he said that he regretted the income tax lasting beyond the war, but he felt that it was a necessary thing within the wartime environment to have the deduction from source income tax because they had to pay for the war with the Axis powers and so on.
	So, yeah, I'm not saying the man never changed his mind about everything, but he certainly did not process in any way thing that I've ever read.
	He did not process anything fundamental about his role and relationship with the state.
	And he'd say, well, we should have tweaked this or we should have changed that or the Fed should be replaced with a money printing robot or something.
	But that's just completely deranged.
	That's exactly like saying, well, I think that slave owners should be nicer to their slaves.
	What the hell points does that get you, right?
	It's a complete bullshit when it comes to that, right?
	I mean, the whole point of getting slave owners to be nice to their slaves is to get rid of slavery, not to just sort of sit in the sidelines and say, well, I think that the government should be more responsible with deficits, and I think that the government should not print too much money, and I think the government should have a nicer foreign policy, and I think that the army should all shoot tulips and sing songs when they go out into the field, and I think, you know, this just, this is, you know, Ridiculous kind of utopianism that has nothing to do with reality, right?
	It's like giving people enormous amounts of power, the power of life and death over millions, and then saying, but they should really use it well.
	And that's my moral contribution to this.
	Well, he handed over enormous amounts of power and legitimacy to the government and then said that they should have used it better and then complains about other people being corrupted by power.
	I've got to tell you, that's what you're saying there, and there may be more.
	It doesn't change my mind particularly about it.
	Was there any Okay, can we click on that?
	Sorry, I'll be back just for the video side.
	Okay, it's in the chat window.
	And so perhaps I'm being unjust.
	I don't feel that I am, but of course that's just my feeling and we do aim to be scientific here.
	So maybe he did completely reverse himself and it was never picked up by the media because the media is statist in general.
	Who knows, right? Oh, I have to listen to a podcast.
	Sorry, I can't really do that just now.
	But anyway, it is...
	Let me just read off the...
	It's econtalk.org forward slash archives forward slash 2006 forward slash 08 forward slash Milton Underbar Friedman dot html if you want to listen to that.
	I will certainly give it a listen and will retract what I'm saying if it turns out that I'm incorrect.
	Maybe he said something after 1995, but I don't want to go on a whole tangent...
	It really was Rod's fault that this occurred.
	Because he brought in Richard Dawkins and I brought in Sam Harris, which led me to Milton Friedman, or as I like to say, Milton goddamn Friedman.
	So perhaps I'm wrong, and it certainly could be the case.
	So I'll do some more reading into that.
	And I was actually going to do a bit more research before I actually got around to ranting on this.
	But hey, sometimes you just got to go with the moment.
	You know what I'm saying? I think you do.
	All right. So now we have a nice juicy chunk of people in welcome.
	Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio, www.freedomainradio.com or YouTube.
	YouTube.com forward slash free domain radio one word.
	If you are in the Skype chat, welcome.
	Thank you so much for joining us on this Thanksgiving afternoon where we give thanks for the generosity of the natives for giving up their land to the nice Westerners.
	And if you have questions or comments about anything, you know, I'm just going to open the topic wide open, babies.
	It's wide open. Whatever you want to talk about, I'm rather than happy to chat about.
	I think I've had my fair share of ranting today, as I do pretty much continually during the week.
	So if anyone has any questions or issues or topics about theology, philosophy, art, economics, psychology, relationships...
	I think we've had someone to join.
	No, I just don't want to go to that, sorry, that model of unmuting everyone because it just gets too loud.
	If you have questions, you can either type them or comments.
	I'm more than happy to unmute you.
	If you want to do that, just go to the Skype window and there's an Ask for Mike button.
	And if you do that, we'll find Mike and we'll put him on.
	Oh, oh, I can't believe I made that joke.
	You know, I was once fairly amusing.
	Unfortunately, my instincts have gone a little haywire this week.
	I'm not sure why. It must be because I'm cutting down on my sugar.
	Believe it or not, this is me uncaffeinated.
	Anyway. All right.
	Let's throw on Gamothi.
	There he is.
	He's usually in there at the top.
	So, Greg, more rank praise?
	You sure do love it when I kick arguments with you, don't you?
	I absolutely do.
	It's certainly much better than being an era.
	Absolutely. Is this about Milton goddamn Friedman or something else?
	Actually, this goes back to the Gun in the Room article and the follow-up to it.
	Oh, the follow-up! Okay, yes, I remember that one.
	The post I made on it, I'm questioning whether asking that question is the right one or whether what we should be asking people is, you know, what exactly is, you know, what does it mean to be good, right?
	Because, you know, if it really doesn't bother me that I should use guns to get what I want, and so should everybody else.
	How do we expect to win that argument?
	Right, and this is related to your brother's question, which is, why is violence irrational?
	Right. Right.
	I mean, because you're saying, well, you've got these axioms, right?
	Well, XXXXYYYZZZZ based on the fact that violence is wrong.
	And then someone says, well, why is violence wrong?
	Well, because it's irrational.
	Well, so what if it's irrational?
	Why is that bad, right? And you pretty much can play that game to the end of time, right?
	Right. So if I understand it right, if I remember your post correctly, it was something like that if we keep pointing out the gun in the room, it may be frustrating or alienating or whatever to people, or even if it's not, we may gain more success about asking them what is their perfect society rather than saying, you know, you're a red-handed bloody user of violence and blah, blah, blah.
	Is that sort of the right? Right, right, exactly.
	And then launching ourselves across the table at them and right, right.
	Because what they're doing when they dispute that is they're presuming that a society based on the use of violence is a good thing.
	So asking them the return question, what exactly is a good society then?
	Because I'm arguing that a non-violent society is better and you're arguing that a violent society is better.
	Where do you come up with the criteria for the good there?
	Right. But I know what you're saying, and I've certainly tried that approach, not for a while, because what often comes back is people say stuff like, well, a society where everybody respects each other, a society where the poor have opportunity...
	Where the rich have obligations, where the people who want to start businesses can start businesses, and the people who fall on hard times get help.
	They just start making up all of these wonderfully nice fantasy criteria about the society that they want, which is sort of like you say to a doctor, a doctor, there's a plague on what should we do?
	And it's like, well, I think we should have a world where people don't get sick.
	And it's like, well, that's nice.
	But so what?
	I mean, people are sick, right?
	And my concern is that my history of sort of asking that question has been that people say, well, you know, we should have all of these nice things in society, but with no real idea about any methodology by which they can be achieved, and they're looking for really effects rather than causes, if that makes sense.
	To an extent, because fundamentally what they're saying is that I say, well, they're sick, and they say, well, no they're not.
	Right, right. So you're kind of running around in circles.
	Well, you know, the only thing I can say with regards to this question of your brothers is that, I mean, violence is irrational because it's not universal and reciprocal.
	I mean, that's the very definition of rationality is that it's universal and reciprocal, right?
	Two plus two is four is the same in Aberdeen, Scotland, as it is in Vladivostok, Russia, right?
	Well, what do you mean by reciprocal?
	Because surely if I punch somebody, they're going to punch me back, right?
	Well, no, not necessarily.
	You punch a guy in a coma, he's not going to punch you back.
	You punch some old guy in a wheelchair, he's not going to punch you back.
	You hire someone to go whack someone on the other side of the world.
	You know, say if you're the president, you're probably not going to face any personal repercussions.
	So the reciprocity of violence with regards to the person who's initiating it is almost never the case.
	Particularly, of course, if there's a government where you can wage war and you can run taxes and you can run brutal foreign policy, overthrow foreign dictatorships, and the negatives never accrue to you.
	In fact, it's quite the opposite.
	The positives accrue to you financially.
	So the reciprocity that I mean is that surely the definition of virtue should be achievable by two people at the same time, right?
	And two people can't simultaneously keep punching each other until the end of time.
	Right? One of them is going to pass out, right?
	And then the other one, like then he's no longer virtuous, right?
	So virtue has to be something which can be achieved and sustained, right?
	Virtue can't be like an orgasm, right?
	It's like, I'm virtuous, virtuous, and then, you know, you have a nap, right?
	Sorry, I apologize for that.
	You should wait until the video comes out to see what that really looked like.
	But hang on, let me just put my pants back on.
	Oh, and smoke. But I was going to reproduce that scene from, what is it?
	But yeah, virtue has to be something that can be achieved and sustained, right?
	Just the same way that health has to be something that can be achieved and sustained, right?
	Which is why we know, although heroin is supposed to be really nice, that it's not quite the same as happiness, because it can't be maintained, right?
	And in fact, the negatives that come along with the use of heroin...
	Are pretty negative, right?
	And the health problems and so on.
	So violence is irrational because it can't be reciprocal and sustainable, right?
	I mean, so one person can punch another and then that other person can punch them back.
	So you're sort of trading back virtue like a hot potato.
	That doesn't really make any sense.
	And of course, it doesn't pass the coma test, right?
	You can't say that somebody who's in a coma is doing evil, right?
	Any more than you can say that somebody who's asleep is doing evil.
	Assuming that they're not, you know, sleep punching or something like that, sleep screaming.
	But, so you have to, whatever you propose as virtuous has to pass the test of the coma victim.
	And if you say that violence is a moral good, then obviously it's not a moral good, it's not universal, it's not reciprocal, so we know that from the argument for morality.
	But also, the person in a coma It can't be perceived or can't be a moral agent.
	It's an immoral agent because if you say that X is virtuous, then the opposite of X must be non-virtuous.
	So if you say that the initiation of the use of force is evil, then the opposite, the non-initiation, must be good or vice versa.
	That's the reciprocity side as well.
	And if you say that, you know, violence is good, then not using violence is bad, right?
	And therefore the coma test fails because, you know, the baby, the coma, the guy in the wheelchair, the guy who's currently in a straitjacket or whatever can't conceivably use violence.
	So, whereas clearly somebody in a coma is not evil, but the idea that violence should be used is, you know, and there's lots of different ways you can take a swing at that, but violence is irrational from that standpoint.
	point.
	It can't be universal and reciprocal and fail some basic common sense tests.
	Yeah.
	Did you drop off there?
	No, I actually, believe it or not, I just finished.
	I know, it's shocking.
	We always think that packets are lost or that I fainted, but I actually did finish.
	So where did the requirement come from that virtue had to be sustainable in order to be called virtue?
	Um...
	That virtue had to be sustainable?
	Yeah. Well, because then it's specific to time, right?
	I mean, you can't have virtue specific to place, right?
	And say that in Baltimore you can't kill people and in New Orleans you can, right?
	Because that would be specific to place, right?
	And that would be like saying there's a scientific method here that's different from a scientific method over there.
	And similarly, you can't have virtue specific to time.
	So you can't say from 9 to 10 o'clock in the morning, it's okay to punch a hamster, but then punching a hamster after 10 o'clock in the morning is evil.
	So that's why it has to be universal both to place and to time, which means it has to be sustainable over time.
	So then let me put it in another way.
	Well, why consistency?
	Why the insistence on consistency?
	Why can it only be called moral in action if it can be applied consistently?
	Well, because otherwise it's just an opinion, right?
	I mean, if somebody comes up to you and says that, you know, punching a hamster is a good thing, and you say, well, why?
	And you say, well, it's just my opinion.
	It doesn't mean anything.
	Like, I don't mean it's actually, like, real and honest and out there and truly good.
	I just, you know, it's my thing.
	It's like saying I like jazz.
	It's just my particular preference, right?
	And you can't argue with someone like that, right?
	Because they're obviously not putting forward an argument that has any truth value To agree with, right?
	It's just like if I say, I like blue, right?
	That's not a statement of universal preference.
	That's just a statement of something that I happen to like.
	But if I say, liking blue is virtuous, then I'm putting out something by which other people are obligated.
	I'm describing something outside of my own preferences, which means I've moved it into the realm of logic, reality, and science.
	And I'm saying that I'm now describing properties or obligations that everyone has.
	And I can say, well, only red-haired people should, it's only virtuous if red-haired people like blue, and that's fine.
	Then all I have to do is prove the ways in which, in reality, red-haired people are fundamentally different from, you know, non-haired people or blue-haired people or blonde people or whatever.
	And so, you know, we have different moral standards for hamsters than we do for human beings because they have objectively different characteristics.
	But if you're going to put forward any kind of moral rule, then it either is just a pure personal opinion, in which case it's not part of anything that anybody's going to discuss with you, and nobody tries to talk you out of blue being your favorite color because there's no obligation for them to like blue if it's just your preference.
	But if you put it out as a moral theory that's tied into humanity, that describes reality, that prescribes behavior for everyone, then it has to be for everyone.
	Otherwise, it's just your opinion again.
	Otherwise, it's just like, I don't like Orientals, right?
	I mean, it's like, well, why? No reason.
	It's like, okay, well, go back to your bigotry and leave me alone, right?
	But if you say, you know, Orientals are bad, objectively, then it becomes testable and measurable, the subject of the scientific method.
	It's exactly the same thing that we were talking about with agnosticism, right?
	If somebody says there's a God outside the universe, which is exactly the same as it non-existing, who cares, right?
	It's a stupid opinion, and it's exactly the same as atheism.
	The moment they say God reaches into the universe, Then it's like saying my moral rules now apply to you, then it's objective and it's testable, it's a description of reality, and then it's universally preferred behavior.
	So if I say Orientals are bad, and then you prove conclusively through the scientific method that they're not, there's still no obligation for me to accept that conclusion In which case, my assertion now becomes a question of a test of wills.
	I'm sorry, I'm not sure.
	Let's say I'm the bigot.
	I say Orientals are bad.
	And I say Orientals are bad because they're constantly pushing over donkeys.
	That's all that orientals do.
	If they're not sleeping, they're pushing over donkeys, and that makes them evil.
	And then you show me some videos of orientals pushing over a mule, or something else, or not pushing over anything.
	Then, of course, my thesis is orientals are bad because they push over donkeys.
	Here's an example of orientals not pushing over donkeys.
	Then, of course, generally, as a bigot, I'm just going to reframe my thing.
	Well, I didn't mean donkeys.
	I meant, you know, whatever, whatever, right?
	But if I put forward a testable hypothesis, then I'm saying that I believe this not because it's just my irrational prejudice, but I believe it because there's evidence coming in from outside that is causing me to believe it, in the same way that I don't believe in gravity because I just prefer to stay on the ground, but because I observe it coming in as sensual evidence from outside that I have weight and that I stay on the ground and so on.
	So if you say that your beliefs come in from somewhere outside, then they're subject to the scientific method of verification, and if you disprove, what this person says is the cause of their beliefs, right?
	I believe that because they push over the donkeys, well, here's five oriental guys not pushing over a donkey, what do you say about them?
	Well, then you have to say, well, I guess they're not evil because they're not pushing over donkeys.
	And then you say, okay, well, is it just Orientals pushing over donkeys or is it everyone pushing over donkeys that makes them evil?
	And then what you really dislike is pushing over donkeys, right?
	There's ways to examine that.
	If you claim that your perception, that your belief comes from outside yourself, then it's testable.
	Right. These are all ways that you can rationally disprove the assertion.
	But if I continue to, since I'm an irrational person, and I continue to cling to the irrational belief, despite your rational disproof of it, then I'm left with imposing my view of the world upon you.
	What do you mean by imposing?
	Well, obviously violence.
	You're going to be made to behave in the way that I want you to behave or say the things I want you to say.
	Right.
	Because I'm going to put a gun to your head.
	Right.
	And so, you know, there's no way to talk somebody like that out of his point of view.
	They're just not. No, they're psychotic.
	For sure, absolutely. You can't force anyone to use a scientific method, right?
	You can't force anyone to respect gravity.
	If they feel that they can fly and they jump off the edge of the Grand Canyon, you can't stop them.
	No question about that.
	But there's no danger in that to just about everyone.
	The danger In life is false moral propositions that result in a universal state, right?
	That's the danger that we face, right?
	The danger of some psychotic guy who just wants to go and gun everyone down, yes, it does happen and it hits the front page of the news because it's so rare, right?
	So some kids in Columbine at some public school go and gun down, you know, a dozen or two dozen kids, absolutely horrible, evil, and wretched.
	But, you know, 260 million people get murdered by governments outside of wars, right?
	The risk that we face is the government.
	It's the false moral arguments that make people obey the government, put on a uniform, pick up guns, be cops, be soldiers, and go shoot people because some asshole tells them to.
	That's the danger that human beings face.
	And we have to prioritize the dangers that occur in life.
	We have some real power and control over that evil because we can continue to expose the false moral arguments that shore up state power and church power and even to some degree the power of the family.
	So we have some power over that.
	But we can't change someone's mind who's just an idiot who won't listen, right?
	Right. But in the process of doing that, we're presuming that the irrational will be willing to listen to rational argument, will be swayed by rational argument.
	Well, sure. Absolutely.
	Absolutely. Yes.
	And we do that because they're debating with us.
	If somebody just shoots us without debating with us, there's no need for philosophy.
	You just need an undertaker.
	But if somebody's debating with us, and this is the basic argument around the argumentation ethics, if somebody's debating with you, they can't then go and say, well, the solution is violence, because they're already debating with you.
	So they've already conceded that human beings should resolve their disputes Through conversation and through rationality and through debate.
	They can't then say, well, yeah, but we should have a government and force people to do it.
	I mean, they can, but it's totally contradictory with how they're living, right?
	And hypocrisy is the greatest weapon that we have, in my humble opinion, pointing out the hypocrisy of other people.
	And this isn't how you live.
	You're just talking a load of crap and not you, right?
	But I meant right.
	No, I'm kidding. You say that we should use violence to resolve disputes, but you didn't, you know, you didn't rape your wife in order to get her to marry you.
	You don't beat up your children every time they look at you funny.
	If you want government subsidies for education, you don't go door to door with a gun and shoot people if they don't give you money.
	That's not how you live, right?
	So you've got all this crap out there that you say is moral and the state and the social good and this and that, but it's all just guns pointing at people making them do stuff.
	But that's not how you live, right?
	Pointing out the disparity between what people advocate and how they actually live is the only weapon that we've got, at least the only weapon I've ever been able to figure out that we have.
	Because people don't like to be hypocrites, right?
	And so if you say, yeah, it's great that you've got these ideals out there, but how do you actually live your life?
	And shouldn't your ideals have something to do, just something even vaguely to do with how you live your life?
	This is the argument with the agnostics, with the statists, with the religious people, and so on, right?
	And that's kind of where I'm coming from with the whole gun in the room argument, is that if you put it in these terms, like you just did, it's different than just saying, well, you know, the state's going to whip out a gun and shoot you if you don't do this.
	Well, but that's not the essence of the...
	Yeah, I agree with you, but that's why I say towards the end of the article that, and maybe I should have put this at the beginning, but I sort of say at the end of the article that We say to people that libertarianism or anarcho-capitalism is not a way out there theory.
	It's simply an empirical description of how they already live their lives, right?
	Assuming that you're not stealing to a car thief, you're talking to a car thief or something or a politician.
	You're simply pointing out that this is how you already live your life.
	You may have all these ideals that are totally different, but how you actually live your life Is in a purely libertarian fashion, right?
	You don't go and get your job by pointing a gun at someone's head.
	You don't go and get a date by, you know, putting drinks in someone's head and shagging them on their unconscious.
	You don't do any of those things.
	And so you don't live the way that you talk.
	And so, but if people don't understand that the way they talk results in people getting shot, if they don't get that, then they won't get that there's a difference between how they live and what they advocate.
	People already resolve disputes presuming rationality.
	They don't resolve disputes presuming violence.
	And so to advocate a violent institution as a means of resolving disputes is inconsistent.
	It just seems to me that going that one step further down, it just makes more sense to me than going a step up and saying, well, the state is a violent institution.
	Sorry to interrupt, but if you don't say that, if they don't get that they're advocating the use of violence to solve problems, how are you going to get that it's different from how they live their life?
	So you're saying...
	Stepping backward through it.
	Like if I say, Greg, you need to go...
	You need to go south, right?
	In order to get to your destination.
	And you say, well, I am going south.
	Then we don't have any...
	There's nothing we can talk about. I have to first...
	I have to first get you to understand that you're heading north before me saying you should change direction and go south means anything.
	Right, and that's what I'm saying here, is that by...
	By pointing out that you want to travel south, but you're traveling north, you're saying essentially that You accept rationality as a premise for solving disputes,
	for resolving disputes, but you simultaneously support a violent institution.
	Right, and the violent institution that you support is nothing to do with how you actually live your life.
	Right. So maybe actually I'm just saying the same thing in a different way.
	Yeah, I mean, and whether you sort of take it, you can take it from either side, right?
	You can eat the sandwich from either end, so to speak.
	You can either say to people...
	You don't use violence to resolve disputes in your own life, right?
	Like if you have an argument with your neighbor about who trims the hedge, you don't shoot his dog, right?
	And people say, no, of course I don't do that.
	I shoot his cat, because cats are louder.
	But you can sort of say, you don't do this in your life, and they'll say no, right?
	And say, you know, in the conversation that you and I are having right now, You're not pulling out a gun and saying, you better accept what I'm saying or I'm going to shoot you.
	And they'll laugh and say, no, although if this goes on for another few minutes, I'll be tempted.
	That's more me, but with me.
	But so you can sort of establish that they don't use violence, and then you can point out that the moral premises that they put forward about the value of state power results in behavior that is the exact opposite of what they would consider moral in their own life.
	And it's the same argument with religious people.
	Religious people say, God is all good.
	And they say, well, if you met someone who does what God does in the Bible, would you think that person is a good person?
	And if they're honest, they'll say, good Lord, I think he's a psychopath.
	So it's getting people to understand that there is a huge opposition between the values that they live their life with And the values that they claim to worship at an abstract level that's in some other planet, like outside the universe for agnostics, like God and religion for theists, like the state and the army and the laws for people who are statists, just to get that it's not that complicated.
	How do you live your life?
	How are we interacting right now in terms of being peaceful and rational and willing to concede points and appealing to the third party of reason and empiricism?
	Well, that's how you live, so what the hell are you doing with all of these completely evil constructs in your head that if they were so virtuous, you wouldn't be talking to me, you'd be shooting me.
	Right? But given that you're not, one of them's wrong.
	Like, either you're evil for not shooting me, or you're evil for advocating the government shooting me, or the government shooting me is evil.
	Right? They can't both be right, because they're totally opposite.
	And it's just, you can start it either way, but you have to bring the gun into the room at some point, or they won't get the opposition.
	I see. I see.
	It's certainly less contentious to do it the way that I think would be more preferable to you.
	No points for being contentious, right?
	That's just my thing. Did Rod want in?
	I'm sorry, we had Rod's in.
	Rod, did you have a question or a comment about that?
	Yeah, can you hear me? Wait, let me hear what your question is before I tell you whether I can hear you or not.
	I just want to know if it's easy, so go ahead.
	It was in reference to Greg's original question a while back with the On the gun in the room, instead of focusing on what you shouldn't do, why don't we focus on the good or what is good?
	And I think that this kind of alludes to a lot of the discussions that we've had before on the thou shalt versus thou shalt nots.
	And the gun in the room is a thou shalt not argument, whereas, you know, you should do good is a thou shalt.
	So like you said with the If you're going to be good, you should punch a hamster.
	Well, what if I don't have a hamster?
	Does that mean I can't be good?
	You know what I'm saying?
	Because everyone can choose not to take an action, but not everyone can always choose to take an action.
	There's only a certain number of hamsters in the world.
	Sure, and you know, once the price of hamsters goes through the roof, then the poor will never...
	Virtue has its price, man.
	Because only rich people will be flattening hamsters, you know?
	Well, and this is, of course, the basic argument that we're having on the board at the moment with the utilitarians, right, who say that the purpose of philosophy is to create happiness, which I think is just nonsense.
	I mean, there's certain aspects of philosophy, but more to do with psychology around self-actualization and personal honor and integrity and so on, but The fundamentals of philosophy, at least what we need to deal with at the moment, given that we're in a plague of violence as a society and as a planet, we're in a plague of violence at the moment.
	We really have to just get to the basics of philosophy, which is to stop people from shooting each other.
	As surgeons in the realm of the mind, as doctors in the soul, the first thing we need to do is to get people to stop shooting each other.
	That, to me, would be the basics of philosophy.
	If the plague is caused by people drinking water, the cholera is coming from people drinking water, and then for us to say, as I think that the utilitarians do, well, you know, you see, what we really need to do is get people to drink eight glasses of water a day because that's good for your health, and then we need to get them to eat, you know, a third fat, a third carbs, a third protein, and we need to get them to balance this and do that and go to the gym.
	It's like, that's great.
	Can we get them to stop drinking the plague-ridden water first?
	So for me, the philosophy that we need to focus on is not that which creates happiness, but that which gets people to stop dying by the millions every year as the result of state inculcated and religious inculcated violence.
	That's where we need to spend our time.
	And everybody wants to, not everyone, most people want to scatter into other esoteric realms.
	And talk about these lifeboat scenarios, like I did a podcast yesterday on a gentleman who wrote to me and said, well, you know, if a guy cuts you in the chest, that's bad, but if you fall unconscious and he's your surgeon and then he cuts you and then that's not bad, so there's no moral absolutes and this and that.
	And, you know, that's fine.
	Let's, you know, maybe let's reduce the violence in the world by 50%.
	I'm not even saying let's eliminate it completely.
	Let's get a couple of million less people murdered a year as responsible surgeons of the moral good, and then we can start talking about the lifeboat scenarios because maybe, you know, we can have considered ourselves to do a lot of good.
	But when the violence in the world is escalating and we're going entirely in the wrong direction, The fact that people want to jump off into defending the existence of God in other realms and these lifeboat scenarios, none of you guys, right?
	But it just seems to me that it's criminally irresponsible, right?
	Then, then don't be in the public realm in any way, shape, or form with your sort of, quote, philosophy, right?
	If you're going to be in the public realm, talk about the important issues, right?
	If you're going to go out into a crowd of sick people and say, I'm a doctor, right?
	Then heal people, right?
	Don't then say, well, you know, I can't really help you with the leg that fell off, but I can talk to you about nutrition.
	I mean, that's kind of annoying to me.
	So if you're going to go out there and proclaim yourself a healer in this realm, then I think it's important to focus on the important stuff rather than this agnostic stuff and this, like, philosophy is there to maximize happiness and this and that.
	It's like, yeah, as soon as we wade out of this river of blood that humanity is drowning in, then we can talk about self-actualization in a universal standpoint, but let's at least deal with the critically injured before we start talking about how we can...
	You know, optimize people's protein intake down the road.
	Right, yeah. It kind of reminds me of the, well, I'm not a philosopher, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
	Right. And it's something that, oh, what's his name?
	19th century British philosopher starts with Spencer.
	Spencer would say this. He would say, you know, that to study philosophy, to study the social sciences, as they would call back then, philosophy and the social sciences, It takes decades of work to become really good at, and certainly that's been my experience.
	And he said, but, you know, everybody and their dog believes themselves to be an expert in this.
	You can't find someone who claims to be an amateur surgeon, but amateur philosophers and everybody who's got an opinion about every goddamn thing in the world, you just can't turn around without knocking over somebody who thinks they know something about truth and morality and And politics and economics and, man, oh man, do they ever not, right?
	And, you know, with all due respect, I think the people on the board are very good.
	And we're certainly, the thing I most respect about the people on the Freedom Aid Radio board is their willingness both to correct me, which is obviously essential, but also to accept correction themselves so that we can stay in a continually growing Conversation towards truth, that's magnificent.
	But I think that we do have a little bit of an Elysium field, a little bit of a paradise of the gulch of rationality, because certainly when I go outside of the realm of Freedom Main Radio and the people that we talk to there, it's not easy.
	It's a bit of a slog, right?
	So we kind of need this as a holiday from others.
	There was another thing that was just brought up on the chat window a few minutes back, and I think it was Adi who asked the question that isn't the argument from effect essentially also an argument from morality?
	But I respond that I think that, yes, it is, but the problem is that when you start arguing effects, you're making the assumption that the morality has already been established and that it's agreed upon.
	And so the The effects must be judged with respect to a morality.
	So what we first have to deal with, it's kind of the triage situation, is before we can start dealing with the argument from effect, we have to first, you know, cure our morality because it's all over the place.
	And, you know, do you have anything to say about that?
	Yeah, I mean, the argument from effect, for those who have not listened to all All of the podcasts is simply that you don't go around saying, well, we should give the poor a meal every day, and that's how we should help the poor, and whether that's achieved through private charity or through taxation or social programs or governments or whatever, right, doesn't matter.
	The effect is that we need to get food into the mouths of the hungry, and that's the goal, and however we get there doesn't matter, right?
	That's the argument from effect.
	And this is used to oppose a free society by saying, well, if you have a free society, the poor won't get educated.
	Or if you have a free society, i.e.
	the stateless society, then those who are sick who don't have any money will die in the streets and blah, blah, blah.
	This is the argument from effect.
	And for sure, you can't have an effect without a cause, right?
	So you definitely don't want to make that mistake of arguing effects with people.
	And as someone who spent decades beating his head against this argument from an effect with people and getting precisely nowhere other than, you know, shortening my lifespan and three aneurysms a week.
	We have to really avoid the argument from effect.
	That's my sort of strong suggestion.
	Because every effect has a cause, right?
	Now, you want to get to the heart of the matter.
	You want to get to the cause, to the real cause, so that you can deal with the effect, right?
	So to take the plague metaphor, if everybody and their family is dropping dead because they're dying of cholera, and you say, well, we want people to stop dying of cholera.
	Well, it's like, yeah, of course we want people to stop dying of cholera.
	No kidding. But what we need to do is to figure out what the source of it is, right?
	So The source of it, of course, is the well that was poisoned with cholera that everyone's drinking from.
	If we get them to stop doing that, then they'll stop dying of cholera, right?
	But saying that you want the poor to have food and you want the sick to have medical care and you want the old to have sustenance and you want babies to be healthy, I mean, this, of course, I mean...
	Of course, who would ever be in a moral argument who didn't want all of these things?
	No question. But saying that you want them is quite a bit different from knowing how to achieve them, right?
	Like saying, I don't want to die of cancer is what everyone who's got cancer feels, but figuring out how to avoid dying from cancer once you've already got it is, you know...
	Not the easiest thing.
	Even if we get the free market involved rather than the government, the cancer survival rates are still only about 2% higher than they were on average about 30 or 40 years ago.
	So saying stuff, you know, saying shit's real easy, right?
	Talk is cheap. This is the argument that Socrates had about the sophists.
	Saying stuff is real easy.
	Now, if we say something like war is bad and we shouldn't have war, right?
	No more war. War.
	What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
	One more time? No, never mind.
	Say it again, but wider.
	I'm sorry, I can't do any wider.
	I tried, but I actually just turned into a small incandescent sun.
	So if you say war is bad, that's great.
	Well, of course, we all want to stop war.
	The question is, what is it that makes war possible?
	My argument, of course, is that what makes war possible is the externalization of costs that occur when you have a state and you can stiff the taxpayers for the bill of the war and retain the war profits for yourself.
	And when you have all these government-run historians and government-owned teachers who say that whoever the most violent president is is the best president, and whoever increases the power of the state the most is the best president, then you get profits and fame from war, which you would never have in a free market situation, right? If you can get other people to go and do the violence for you, and you can reap the proceeds while sitting in a suit in the White House or in the Pentagon or in lobbyist's office or in the Halliburton or whatever, then you're going to do it.
	Because human beings respond to incentives.
	And if it costs you almost nothing and you get billions of dollars in profits, guess what?
	It's inevitable as gravity.
	Human beings try to maximize resources.
	So then you say, okay, well, if we want to get rid of war, then we have to get rid of the government.
	You can work backwards from the argument from effect, but you have to get to the real cause.
	But what people always do is they say, well, we want the poor to have food, and therefore we need a government, and therefore violence is sometimes good, right?
	And that's just completely ridiculous reasoning.
	You need to start from first principles to figure out what's going on.
	Right, and again, I think that there may even be some danger from trying to argue backward from effect because people will always come up with their own special pet effects that they want.
	So, I mean, I think the thing to focus on is that, you know, if we...
	If we say that all of our effects must be judged against immorality, but right now we're stuck with everyone pretty much has their own designer morality because they just don't get the simple sublimity of universal morality.
	So I think once we can unify people's moralities by requiring that they are consistent and universally accepted, Then the effects will just naturally take care of themselves because people are always motivated by their moralities, not by, you know...
	I mean, I'm never going to be motivated by your favorite color, but I'll be motivated by...
	If you have convinced me that your favorite color is, you know, moral, it's morally correct to believe in blue, well then, yeah, that'll actually motivate me, not the...
	Not your desire to see it, even if it's your very sincere desire to see blue everywhere, you know?
	Right, and then all we can do is pity the poor, colorblind people who have no choice but to be evil, except accidentally when they're good.
	They should all be executed. No, I think that's quite right, and the great danger of the argument from the fact is that you just want a particular goal, and then you just make up some way of getting there, right?
	And this is, again, this is all the way back to religion, right?
	Well, where did the world come from?
	Well, the goal is to understand that, but what you do is you just make up some cause.
	Right? Which is God. The same thing.
	Well, let's get the poor and make them not poor.
	And the solution, the answer is government.
	We just make that stuff up and we don't track whether it works or not because once the power gets entrenched, it doesn't go anywhere.
	And most fundamentally, of course, and this is why the government loves to get people dependent on it, The idea of the argument for morality is great for some people, right?
	Especially the young who've got their whole lives ahead of them.
	But if you've got, you know, to take a stereotypical example, if you've got some welfare mom with six kids and no husband and no job skills, and that's the decisions that she's made based on the existence of the welfare state or whatever, and then you say, well, I'm sorry, but the welfare state is immoral.
	She's like, well, that's great. What the hell am I going to feed my kids tomorrow?
	And you say, well, you're going to have to rely on charity.
	Well, she doesn't like that. She wants the check coming in every month.
	Again, that's her maximization of resources because she doesn't have to pay for the violence.
	Everyone else pays for the violence and pays for her income as well.
	So you have that whole problem that I don't think there's any easy way out of.
	You start saying to a woman with six kids, your welfare check's cut off tomorrow, there's going to be some complaints.
	Alright, so now let's put it all together.
	You've made the argument before that when, you know, people talk about global warming, the answer is found in government.
	Or when people talk about, you know, global cooling or the nuclear, this, that, whatever, you know, the answer is always government.
	Well, I kind of think that the reason that people always reach for government as their desired means to their desired effects is because they need that government there To bandage the gaping hole in their mind that was created by their government-like families.
	They're reaching for the answer that they want no matter what the question is.
	Whether it's charity, whether it's war, whether it's global warming, it doesn't matter.
	Reach for the thing that soothes their own fractured psyches, I guess.
	Does that make sense? It certainly excuses the violence that they experience at the hands of their teachers, and not usually physical anymore, but more emotional.
	It excuses the violence that they experience at the hands of their teachers and at the hands of their parents, again, emotional or physical, where the parents just said, do it, because it's right, but when you probe it, they actually have no idea what is right.
	They're just forcing you to do stuff.
	So, for sure, when people invoke the power of the state, they're absolutely normalizing their own parents' behavior, and they're both...
	They're submerging the pain that they felt of being forced to do stuff when they were kids.
	And they're also assuming the role of their parents by approving of the use of violence against those who have less power, which is always the relationship between the state and its victims.
	So I think you're absolutely right.
	And this, of course, is Christina's enormous contribution to this conversation.
	It always comes back to the family.
	But there's another thing too, which is that the state and the church are the solutions of fools.
	It doesn't take a lot to say, let's just shoot people.
	How do we help the poor?
	Well, we'll just take from people who have more money and we'll give to the poor.
	And lo and behold, there'll be no more poor.
	I mean, it's a retarded solution, and people who have any brains, like there's an example, which I'll just mention very briefly, which is around, well, let's have Social Security for the old people, because there are some poor old people out there, and let's give them some money, right?
	So we'll tax people, and so we'll make sure that they are taken care of when they're old, right?
	Well, so how intelligent is that, right?
	I mean, well, we have old people who don't have much money, so let's have the government steal money from them and give them to the old people.
	I mean, it's a retarded solution, right?
	Because, of course, what actually happens is that when you put Social Security in, people just stop saving for their old age.
	Whereas you haven't solved anything.
	In fact, you've made it worse because you've encouraged consumption and no saving, which means that the cost of capital is going to go up because there's less capital in the banks, which means that fewer jobs are going to get created.
	And all this kind of nonsense, which requires further government intervention in the form of keeping interest rates artificially low, which fuels a real estate boom, which causes more capital to get diverted away from really profitable industries into mere speculation, right?
	So you screw up the whole thing, right?
	So stupid solutions screw up everything.
	Right? And the government is a retarded solution, right?
	It's like saying, well, you know, I need some money, so rather than get a skill and get a job and go for something sustainable, I'm just going to go knock over a gas station, right?
	I mean, it's a stupid solution.
	And the same thing is true with religion, right?
	Well, where did we come from? What's the purpose of life?
	What's this? What's that? Oh, you know, elves made us, right?
	I mean, it's retarded, right?
	And, of course, there is a bell curve of intelligence across the race, right?
	And a lot of people aren't as intelligent as, I certainly say, most of the people on this chat.
	And, you know, they want some easy answers, right?
	And they prefer, you know, easy answers, like the stupid parents who say, why?
	Because I told you. You know, do as I say, not as I do, right?
	I mean, these are just retarded people who are out there hurting.
	Right. It's not only, though, that these people are just not smart, it's that they're reflexively reaching for an answer that can soothe them.
	They don't make these non-sequiturs by accident.
	They're actually reaching for what, to us, if you approach these things logically and with a reason, yeah, it looks like a completely retarded non-sequitur, but it does have its root in something that's repeatable in a lot of people, which is the stuff that we have Worked so hard to strip out of our minds and to free ourselves from these people just haven't done that yet.
	So I think, yeah, it's really, I want to call it retarded too, but at the same time, I have to empathize with these people because they're going through the same thing that I did today.
	Yes. I mean, I think that's true.
	But there is that fork in the road, right?
	And you yourself could have taken a very different path last week, right?
	There is that fork in the road.
	And, you know, there's that poem, The Road Less Traveled, right, where he says, but knowing how way goes on to way, I doubted that I should ever return to this fork in the road, right?
	He's talking about that road less traveled.
	When people make the choice, and I assume, are you pre-kids?
	Yeah, okay. So, I mean, that's, you know, the people who make the progress, the most progress are those who are pre-kids, right?
	Because they haven't corrupted the next generation with false arguments for morality and bullying and this and that, right?
	So it's very hard to turn around.
	And this is where Milton goddamn Friedman might have some sympathy for me.
	It's very hard to turn around near the end of your life when you've raised your kids, although Milton Friedman's son is an anarchist, right?
	Which is very interesting psychologically.
	But it's very hard to turn around.
	The real question comes down when something is proven to someone, like it's false, right?
	So you believe in God and then somebody proves you that it's not true and you try agnosticism and they prove that that's not valid, right?
	Then they face that choice.
	They can either take the leap to integrity and intellectual honesty or they can make the leap back into propaganda and bullshit.
	And, I mean, there's no way to predict exactly who's going to be able to make that choice.
	There are certain factors, right?
	Intelligence, a history of intellectual curiosity and integrity, not having been a politician or corrupted your children with all this nonsense, right?
	Those certain predictors, but it really then, for me, this is where it's either so complex that it's equivalent to free will as far as our knowledge can go, or it is actually free will.
	But who makes that choice?
	Once you make the choice to continue down that road of, now that you have knowledge and you're actively rejecting knowledge, right?
	Before you have the knowledge, right, we're just working to try and create choice with people.
	Once you have the knowledge and you reject the knowledge, then you're done, right?
	Then you're beyond hope. You can't come back from that.
	Right, and every time that you cross, when you pass one of these forks in the road and you've made a choice, the stakes get higher every time.
	Like you say, when you have kids and you start treating them a certain way, To then later on go back and say, oops, kids, I'm sorry, I messed you up.
	You've raised the stakes so much higher by actually taking these actions, and so it's good to have a good roadmap when these forks come up so that you don't have to raise the stakes in the wrong direction.
	Right, and that's also why it's so important not to be attached to answers, right?
	We're only attached to the process.
	We're only attached to the methodology, right?
	That's why when people say to me, if God comes down tomorrow and shows up on every radar, it's like, hell yeah, I'm religious, although I'm not.
	I'm actually just scientific again, but I'm not wed to there's no God.
	I'm wed to the scientific method, right?
	I'm not wed to anarcho-capitalism.
	I'm wed to objective and universal morality, right?
	I'm wed to the methodology.
	That way, if somebody proves me wrong, fantastic.
	What have I lost? I've gained everything because I'm not wed to a conclusion.
	I'm wed to a process. Sure.
	And you'll never be religious because religion takes blind faith.
	Right, right, right.
	Right. But I mean, that's why I'm not against God.
	I'm just against irrationality.
	I'm against irrationality because it gets people killed.
	Right. Oh, yeah.
	Here's another thing that... Your discussion with Greg here earlier brought up something in my mind is when you say that you point out to people who you're debating with that they live a very libertarian life, you know, or they say, you know,
	you don't bring a gun to a job interview to make sure that you get the job, and you don't, you know, you don't do this, you don't do that, but, and then you turn around and you say, but government is good because you can bring guns to job interviews and stuff like that with government, and I thought that What's really interesting to me is that the last couple of election cycles here in the United States,
	I've kind of had my feelers, you know, my sensitivity turned up a little bit during these times just to kind of try to gauge how these political battles kind of affect people in their day-to-day lives.
	And this year was really interesting to me.
	When I was going to work the day after the elections, I live in Orange County, California, which tends to be a very GOP conservative area, especially in the southern part of the county.
	That's where I live. I guess I wasn't really paying so much attention to it, but I was driving to work.
	I have only a 10-minute drive to work.
	I noticed on the way, I saw six near-miss accidents.
	People were driving like maniacs.
	They weren't watching where they were going.
	They were changing lanes without signaling or even looking over their shoulder.
	And I saw people just, I mean, it looked like, you know, chaos out there, this utter just craziness.
	And when I got to work, I was thinking, man, that was the most dangerous morning drive I've had, you know, ever since I've lived here.
	And all of a sudden, it dawned on me that these people are crazy because of the election last night.
	And so I think that...
	They've been up late, they've been arguing with people, they're upset.
	Well, not only that, but I think what the whole political process does is it takes these people who do normally live libertarian lives, the ones they do normally live every day, they buy gas with money voluntarily, not by holding up the gas station attendant, but by actually paying them and stuff like that.
	But then every couple of years, They actually go out and they turn into the most violent barbarians on the planet by supporting this whole crazy charade.
	And so it's interesting to see what happens to people in their other interactions just as a result of that, you know?
	Right, and we always think that power corrupts refers to politicians, but power corrupting refers as much to the population as it does to the leaders, right?
	We always think it's someone else that power corrupts, but, you know, if you look at America number one, well, why are you number one?
	Well, basically, it all comes down to the fact that you've got the biggest goddamn military in the world.
	It's like, well, you're taking pride in your capacity to kill people.
	That's very corrupting.
	I mean, it really messes people up.
	The temptation to get involved in politics, the temptation to get things to go your way by using the force of the state, which is abstracted from you when you don't ever get any blood on your hands and you just sign papers and it's all very civilized and other people go out into the dark of night and collect the taxes for you.
	That really corrupts the population.
	How much pride do Americans take in being the most sort of, quote, powerful nation in the world?
	Powerful It's the government.
	And it's at your expense.
	So people take pride in being slaves.
	And the more that they're enslaved, the bigger and more powerful and more aggressive their government gets, the more they're enslaved and the more danger they're in, and the more pride they feel.
	So their humiliation becomes their pride.
	And that is kind of the whole problem with the corruption that power brings to a culture, to a society.
	It's not the leaders who get corrupted by power.
	It's everybody who gets corrupted by power.
	Right. Actually, this reminds me of an article that Butler Schaefer just had on LewRockwell.com where he was talking about, you know, we need to look at ourselves in the face and say, I think he said something like, why is it that we insist upon what should be some horrible thing, but we insist upon it as a virtue or something like that?
	We hold it up as being a good thing, you know?
	Right, right. I think that certainly comes back to the family.
	Right, and so the, yeah, and like we say that, you know, the United States should be able to have nuclear weapons because, hey, look, the United States doesn't abuse those nuclear weapons.
	We don't abuse them against people.
	But, you know, we do.
	Just by virtue of having them, we're using them constantly.
	We use them every single day in the fact that, you know, we run roughshod over people who don't have them.
	So, I mean, when I say we, I just say the government.
	But, you know, it's the United States...
	No, that's absolutely right.
	I was also thinking, just as you were talking about this Milton Friedman thing, too, that if I'm right about this sort of aspect, and I'll certainly look into it more, he must have taken a great deal of pride in his role as an advisor to the state, and that very pride that he took in this relationship Probably has something to do with why he was unable to repudiate it or to learn from it, right? Because as soon as you invest your ego in something like that, you lose the ability to criticize it effectively.
	As soon as I invest my ego into being right about this, that, or the other, I become rigid.
	I lose the ability to learn because I already know, right?
	So if you're a Christian and you invest your virtue into being a good Christian, well, you can't.
	You can't. And if you're a fan of the empire and you don't view it as an empire but rather the world's policemen or all the bullshit that they make up about how virtuous America is, the one idealistic country left in the world and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	If you take pride in being part of the American empire or you sort of walk a little taller, then you have lost the ability to question and criticize the society that you live in because you have now taken that heroin, so to speak, and you can't then be anti-drug.
	And not only that, but as a 90-year-old Milton Friedman looks back at his life and realizes that 30-some-odd years of that life were lived in a corrupted fashion, he has to make the choice, do I actually go back now and lose those 30 years of my life?
	And he doesn't want to do that.
	So it's like you lose time that you can't take back to take a different fork in the road.
	Well, I think you're right, but I'd go one step further.
	It's not his own personal life that...
	And I just know this from my own experience because I got involved in some business dealings with people that I thought were honest that turned out to be corrupt and went down a bit of a sinkhole myself.
	I was able to recover from that because it was myself that had been harmed.
	And I think that the grave danger with somebody like Milton Friedman, that he can't see, and this is why he's compelled to lecture other people on the dangers of public corruption, is that his direct participation in the power of the state caused Billions upon billions of dollars to be hoovered up through force from the general citizenry.
	I mean, I'm not saying it's directly causal or anything, but this is the causality that occurred.
	He lent his highly prestigious name, in a Dr.
	Stadler kind of way, from Atlas Shrugged, he lent his very prestigious name to a criminal organization that used him to further steal billions upon billions of dollars, to expand the military, to go into foreign countries, to, you know, all of this.
	He... By saying that the state can do good, you completely undermine anybody who's working to really bring peace to the world.
	Anybody who says that if we tweak this or we adjust this nut or this bolt, if we can just make torture good, if we can just make theft and rape good, because it can be good, it just completely destroys ethics.
	And so I think the reason he couldn't change his mind was that what he did can't be undone.
	He can't publish a retraction.
	He can't give people back the votes that they gave to Reagan based on his say-so of how things were going to get better.
	He can't take the money back from the military and give it back to the taxpayers.
	And once you can't undo it, I think it's very hard to reverse your position, if that makes sense.
	That's what it is with children.
	You can't go back and reteach them when they're young, right?
	They are who you've made them, and if you've made them in the image of an irrational absolute that you kind of knew was nonsense but ignored it, you can't go back and fix it, if that makes sense.
	Right, and you can't unsquash that hamster that you smashed because you thought that was virtue.
	Right. Buying another one doesn't quite cut it, right?
	Exactly. Even if you name him Hamster 2 or something like that.
	There was an old WKRP about that where Herb Tollick sprayed the hamster with...
	I mean, never mind.
	Sorry, sprayed the frog.
	All right, well, listen, if there are any other questions, I'd certainly happen to entertain anyone else who has anything that they'd like to mention.
	What is to be the form of government in the future?
	Here are some of my young replies.
	How can you ask such a question?
	Well, I don't know. If you're an anti-slavery person and then somebody says, what is to be the form of slavery in the future, it is a rather difficult question to answer because really the answer is none.
	There will be no form of slavery in the future and there will be no form of government in the future or there really won't be much of a future.
	Sorry to give you a holy pat answer to that, but that's sort of my response to that.
	So if you have any other...
	Questions, issues, or comments, if you'd like to raise your hand now, I want to continue grinding on through the conversation topics if people are satisfied with the conversation so far.
	Of course, I absolutely, hugely appreciate both the listeners and the people who have given me feedback and corrections and so on.
	Absolutely, massively important.
	I hugely, hugely appreciate it.
	I have learned much more.
	I have received much more than I have given in the Free Domain radio community, and my thinking has been enormously clarified and accelerated and rationalized by the conversation, so I hugely appreciate that.
	If anyone else has any questions, Christine has gone to order pizza, so...
	I'll have to check myself if you want to use that raise thing or speak in the bar.
	That would be fantastic.
	I would really appreciate it.
	And so if there's nothing else coming up, but you don't think there is, I'm going to sign off now.
	Thank you so much for listening.
	I'm actually going to post a video of this on YouTube.
	It's two gigs, so it'll be a 120th site.
	It has to go down to 100 megabytes, so I don't know how it's going to look.
	Actually, I kind of do have an idea, but if you'd like to check it out on YouTube, you can see the show live, which is, you know, me talking and listening and standing.
	So thank you so much, everyone, for listening.
	I really appreciate it. And we will be on next Sunday, same time, same channel, 4 p.m.

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