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March 16, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
15:56
686 What's Wrong with Believing in God? Part 1

False belief, real problems

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Good morning, everybody.
I hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
It is March the 16th, 2007.
And I had a question this morning, a very interesting one, which I'd like to spend just a few minutes talking about, if you don't mind.
And the question is, Steph, you intolerant bastard...
Why, and I'm paraphrasing a little here, why, oh why, are you such a religious fundie that you have to impose your atheism on everyone around you?
You have to create this Manichian paranoia that forces people to choose between God and, I don't know, a big shiny forehead.
And you have to force everyone into a corner and get them to say yes or no to this thing, which is even worse than what the religious people do.
If you're so committed to atheism as the religious people are to religion, why don't you just have your children and raise them that way and don't worry about trying to run around converting everyone else because it's intolerant and it's close-minded and it's intrusive and you are just looking as crazy as the Christians, if not more so, because you're more activist than they are in terms of having these conversations and forcing people to choose and blah blah blah blah blah.
That's what I got. Which is perhaps my own Manichaean paranoia.
But what was actually said was, so I believe in God, what's the harm?
So, I believe in God.
What the hell is so bad?
What the hell is such the big problem that me believing in God gets all the few atheist people in a tizzy and your feathers are flying all over the coop and you're clucking about and running around like chickens with your head cut off and you're saying that I have to do all of these things and I have to give up my belief and it's wrong and this and that and the other.
What is wrong with you people that I can't just have a little corner of my brain wherein I pop in a sky god?
Wherein a cloud beast liveth, that I can pray to.
What the hell is the big problem?
Why is it getting you people into such a tizzy?
And it's an excellent question, of course.
It's an absolutely excellent and wonderful question to ask, and I certainly appreciate it.
And there are really two reasons that I would say that it's not good to believe in God.
And one is because it harms you, and the other is because it harms others.
But let's start with the second, because that involves me, so it naturally has my interest.
If you say to me, what's the harm if I believe in God?
My question is, well, how do I know that you believe in God?
How do I know? And that's a pretty important question.
If you believe that 2 plus 2 is 5, and you never enter the math field like you're an actor or something, you believe that 2 plus 2 is 5, You never tell anyone that belief.
You never act on that belief.
What's the harm to others?
Well, there's no harm to others because there's no evidence that you hold that belief.
Therefore, to others, that belief and its non-existence are one and the same.
You might as well believe that 2 plus 2 is 4 or 2 plus 5 or 2 plus 2 is a headless chicken.
It doesn't matter because your belief doesn't show up anywhere.
It doesn't manifest in any way.
So when you say, what does it matter if I believe in God?
Then I say, well, it's not important to me because I don't know if you believe in God.
If you then say, well, I do believe in God, then you've crossed over into social life, right?
You've crossed over towards others.
Your belief is now manifest in society.
You've put forward your belief as a proposition and all beliefs that are put forward are propositions.
Two plus two is four is a proposition.
It's just not one that's heavily debated anymore outside of psych wards.
So, once you tell me I believe in God, then you have made a whole series of statements.
Four little words.
I believe in God.
And what is contained therein?
Well... Enormous propositions, fundamentally philosophical propositions regarding the nature of identity, belief, metaphysics, epistemology, reality, credulity, proof, logic. There's no such simple thing as I believe in God.
Everything comes with a highly complex surrounding set of premises regarding all of these aspects of philosophy, like it or not.
So, the first word, I, obviously, is indicating your personality, but it is saying, I believe, means that I have either chosen or accepted a belief.
I have chosen or accepted a belief.
As we talked about the other day, there's a great difference between choosing a belief and accepting a belief, or accepting a truth.
I believe that gravity exists.
I believe that it is true that gravity exists.
I do not choose to believe that gravity exists.
So, when you say, I believe God exists, then you're either saying, I accept the fact that God exists because of evidence and logic, or you're saying, I choose to believe that God exists.
With no evidence and no logic.
No proof whatsoever.
I merely assert. But people love to use the word believe because it has both spiritual and wide-eyed wonder and happy children and candles kind of emotional overtones.
People don't like to say, I assert that God exists.
I propose that God exists.
I theorize that God exists.
No, they say I believe, that they have come to the conclusion, that they have come to a conclusion.
Now, clearly you have not come to the conclusion that God exists because you have logic and proof, because you don't.
There's no evidence, there's no logic.
In fact, God is completely the opposite of logic and evidence.
It is defined as the opposite of logic and evidence.
God is defined as the opposite of truth.
In any rational or scientific context.
In any true context.
So you can't have accepted that God exists because of reason and evidence.
That's impossible. So what are you saying when you say to me, I believe God exists?
You can shorten it to I believe in God if you want.
Lord knows these podcasts can be shorter.
You're saying to me...
That I choose to believe that God exists, against all evidence.
I choose to believe in X, despite the fact that X cannot exist.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, despite logical contradictions that make a Gordian knot look like a straight line, despite all that, I have chosen to say that this is true.
I choose to say that God exists despite the fact that God cannot exist.
Because people who I've argued with over the years, nobody's ever proven to me that God exists, of course.
It's nonsense. It's like a square circle.
They just eject God from reality and say, well, God exists in another dimension, or God exists outside of time, or God is an elf, Keebler elf doing a soft shoe number on your kneecap.
So what people are saying is they're saying, I choose to assert that God exists, although I know that God cannot exist.
That is a statement of insanity.
That is a statement of insanity.
And it is an innately aggressive action.
It is a hostile and aggressive action.
The human mind is designed to interact with reality in the same way that our body is designed to interact with reality, that when you're hungry you don't go to the ghost fridge of imagination and get the pomegranate of pure fantasy.
You go to the real fridge, you get your pomegranate, and you eat it.
Our limbs, as an organ, are designed to interact with reality.
Our mind, as an organ, is designed to interact with reality.
And if way back in Podcast 82, I think it was, some number like that, that we had to talk about the invisible fruit at the table, When you assert to someone else that something exists which cannot exist, that choosing to believe in something which is not real is exactly the same as accepting the reality of something that is real.
That choosing to believe in Keebler elves is exactly the same As accepting that gravity exists.
As accepting that the world is round and we won't live forever.
And the tooth fairy is not real.
And unless Santa Claus is a fireball in the Christmas night sky, he ain't getting around the world that quickly.
Choosing to believe in the impossible is exactly the same as accepting the self-evident.
So you are positing that the human organ, called the mind, has two completely and totally opposing principles.
You are a nutritionist saying that you must eat both fruit and the opposite of fruit simultaneously in order to achieve good health.
That is an innately aggressive action.
Imagine how you feel when you're a child and your mother stands over you and says, Finish your food, damn it!
And then simultaneously, right afterwards, or immediately afterwards, says, Don't you touch your food!
Finish your food! Don't touch your food!
Finish your food! There's starving children in India.
Don't touch your food! I don't want you to eat.
Finish your food! Don't touch your food!
Finish your food! Don't touch your food!
How long is it going to take for the child to have a nervous breakdown?
You hand in a paper at university or wherever, and the professor says, well, you got an A and an F simultaneously.
I'm going to pass and fail you at the same time.
You ask a girl to marry you, you, she says, yes, because I love you, but no, I can't marry you because I hate you.
A and the opposite of A simultaneously.
Okay.
Which is not possible in the stuff that I'm talking about, because we process language at least sequentially, right?
Can't hear everyone talking at once.
So when you say, I believe in God, you're saying that the word belief, which you're going to use...
People say, I believe in God, and then they may try and extend that and recast it as faith and then say, well, you just have faith in gravity.
That's not the same. It's not the same.
Accepting that which is real, sensually evident, logical and proven, accepting those as facts is entirely the opposite of merely asserting something because you want it to be true.
But people don't say, I want God to exist.
They say God does exist, and that's why I believe it.
But they're conflating accepting a fact with choosing a fantasy.
They're saying these two are the same things.
And they're completely opposite.
And there is no way to conflate these in any logical or rational manner.
No way whatsoever to conflate these in any logical or rational manner.
You can say it. Well, sure, you can say that 2 plus 2 is green and 2 plus 2 is a heron and 2 plus 2 is 4 all at the same time.
In this sort of 1984 O'Brien nightmare, soul-destroying, mind-bending, self-destroying phenomenon.
But if you say X is true and the opposite of X is true simultaneously, it's an innately aggressive act.
And it is derived from power.
It is derived from aggression.
The mom who's yelling at her kid to eat and not eat simultaneously is only able to get away with it because she has power.
And, of course, it's one of the things that people in power really like to do.
I'm not talking about the person who posted this, I'm just saying.
People in power love to give you opposite instructions, opposing instructions.
Or they'll tell you to do something and then blame you for the results, right?
They will give you all the responsibility and no authority.
Because that undermines and destroys our capacity for independent thought and self-confidence.
I mean, ideally, and it would be great if the world were like this, and we hope to bring it closer, ideally, we would be able to say, think for ourselves, and come to our own conclusions, and verify them in a positive and logical environment.
What is it that makes us paralyzed?
Well, it's when we ask an organ to do two opposite things at the same time.
If you've ever had a cramp, I never have.
I saw my brother have one once, where two opposing muscles cramp simultaneously.
Your bicep and your tricep or whatever.
Two opposing muscles cramp simultaneously.
It's a nightmare. It's a complete nightmare because you can't stretch any way, right?
When you... If you sort of electrically stimulate your arm muscles, you can actually, I think, fracture or break your arm.
When you try to work an organ two opposite ways at the same time, then you get paralysis and you get damage.
You flex your tricep, it straightens.
You flex your bicep. Flexing your bicep, your arm bends.
You flex your tricep, your arm straightens.
You flex them to two at the same time.
Your arm just trembles and is paralyzed.
And that's what is designed to happen when we're given contradictory instructions.
It's innately aggressive to say to someone, you must believe X and you must believe the opposite of X simultaneously.
It is paralytic.
It is destructive. It is exactly the opposite of what the organ is intended.
To achieve. So, that's why there's a problem if you believe in God to others.
If you believe in God to others.
And you sort of say that to others.
Now, we'll get to this afternoon what it means or what happens if you or when you believe in God just with regards to yourself.
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