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March 16, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
29:48
687 What's Wrong with Believing in God? Part 2
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Hi everybody, it's Steph. If you're doing well, this is part two.
Sorry, I lost my video this morning.
Windows helpfully rebooted while I was driving and recording because I need a security update and that's more important than, say, knowledge and wisdom.
So, so be it.
We shall continue. So, if you'd like to go back and listen to part one of this series, What's Wrong with Believing in God?, you might find this next part a little bit more comprehensible.
But I'm going to fast forward my way through the existing, the last podcast.
Okay, so I started and I was going, I was talking about this thing with the God.
Okay, so now we're caught up and we will continue on.
With the basic proposition, I said there were two problems with believing in God, because some gentleman had posted on the board a very wise and intelligent question, which is, duh, what's the problem if I believe in God?
Why is it bad?
Why are you such a fundy old steffy boy that you feel that it's absolutely essential that you tell everybody that they shouldn't believe in God and it's bad to believe in God and so on?
Isn't that sort of a religious approach?
But I don't think that's the case.
And the reason for that is that I was talking about this morning that there are personal implications to saying, I believe in God, insofar as you say, I believe in God, and it's either because you're just willing to believe in God for no reason whatsoever, but you're using the word, I believe, and believe is associated with accepting a fact of reality, not just making something up.
And if you say, I believe, but you're using language of just making stuff up, then you're using the mind in two opposing ways at the same time.
You're saying belief, which is associated with taking in information, extrapolating the facts of sensual data into principles and then continuing from there.
And you're conflating that with just willingly saying that something is true because you want it to be true or you think that it's true or you'd prefer it or whatever.
So I think that's sort of bad, and I said that it arose from aggression.
So, sorry, that's our recap, and if you'd like to listen to that, this might make a little bit more sense.
Now, I'd like to sort of play out a scenario for you, if you don't mind, and you can see if this makes some sort of sense to you.
The scenario is that I walk up to you and say, I believe in God.
And what is packed into that particular statement?
is not I believe in God and it's purely my opinion.
It has nothing to do with any form of value that is outside my opinion.
I mean if I say I like ice cream I don't believe that that's anything that's incumbent upon you.
It is a mere statement of personal opinion.
And, of course, I'm the only one who has sensual evidence of that.
I guess you could hook, I don't know, an EEG up to the pleasure centers in my brain, and you could...
Oh, I guess you can't see me. Sorry for the glare.
I guess you could hook up an EEG to the...
an EKG or whatever the hell it is to the brain, and you could...
Oh, he's eating... Peanut butter ice cream and the pleasure center lights up and therefore he's experiencing pleasure or whatever.
But if I say, I like ice cream, there's nothing that's incumbent upon you.
I'm merely stating a particular subjective personal experience.
It has no bearing on you whatsoever.
But if I'm a doctor and you're diabetic and I say, don't eat too much sugar, Keep your glucose levels even, keep your blood sugar even or whatever.
If I am a doctor and I say that you should eat different things, adjust your diet because you're diabetic or lose weight or whatever, breathe, then I'm not stating a mere personal opinion.
It's not the same as I like ice cream.
It's a you should. I like ice cream has no consequences on your behavior.
I mean, unless you're the guy trying to sell me some peanut butter and you say, hey, you got the peanut butter, the ice cream, you like the ice cream, blah, blah, blah.
But me saying I like ice cream has no implications for you whatsoever.
It's a purely subjective and personal experience.
Nothing wrong with that. But if I'm a doctor and I say, you should adjust your diet because you're overweight.
You should go on a diet because you're overweight.
Then what I'm doing is I'm creating a statement of knowledge that has objective consequences for you.
If you remain overweight, here are your elevated risks of blood pressure problems and heart problems and cancer problems and risks for diabetes and so on.
So it's the if-then, right?
There's no if-then with ice cream.
I like ice cream. It's pretty.
There's no if-then. There's no therefore.
It's simply a statement of personal preference.
There's no therefore. There's not even a therefore like, what movie do you want to go and see?
I don't know. I want to go see a Brad Pitt movie.
Therefore, we may go to see the Brad Pitt movie if we both want to do it or we can negotiate something.
I like ice cream. Purely subjective statement of personal preference has no implications for your behavior whatsoever.
And also that's partly because there's no objective verifiability in this situation.
There's no objective verifiability in this situation.
So if I say I like ice cream, there's no way for you to prove or disprove it, really.
I mean, you could look at my purchasing history.
There's no consequences for you.
But if I say, if you don't lose weight, here are the problems you're going to encounter.
There's hopefully some objective information, some facts about all of that.
So, which category does the statement, I believe in God...
Does it fall into I like ice cream?
Or does it fall into gravity exists?
Does it fall into the world is round?
does it fall into E equals mc squared or a rock falls towards the ground at 9.8 meters per second per second in acceleration and one of those has no consequences for you I like ice cream has no consequences for you.
It commands no behavior on your part.
Statement of personal preference means nothing to you.
It means nothing about reality and your relationship to it.
It's just a little bit of inconsequential information about c'est moi.
So, the statement, I believe in God, is not a statement that is like, I like ice cream.
I like ice cream is empirical.
You can't reason whether or not somebody likes ice cream, right?
It's just, you can ask them, you can interview them.
If you see them eating ice cream and going, mmm, yummy, yummy, yummy, then it's highly likely that they're not faking it and that they do like ice cream.
But you can't, in the absence of sensual information, direct sensual observation, And even in the presence of self-reporting, you can't logically reason that somebody likes ice cream.
Or eating seaweed, or whatever strange things that they have going on.
Actually, it's not that strange.
Eating ball bearings.
Maybe they're one of these people who likes to eat glass.
I don't know. But you can't reason that out.
But you can reason out the odds of increased health problems.
You can, through statistics and through evidence and through empirical measurements and so on, you can reason out the risks that somebody is incurring through being overweight or smoking or whatever.
You don't need to interview that person.
If you're X overweight, there's Y risks.
If you're Z overweight, there's X risks and so on.
I'm sorry to be so pedantic about all of this, but it's so important to understand the knowledge statement that is being claimed when somebody says, I believe in God.
I believe in God is not the same as I like God.
Or, to be more precise, I like the idea of God.
God is a cool idea. God is certainly an idea.
His existence certainly extends to that much into reality, insofar as people believe in him and change their behavior accordingly.
God is an interesting concept.
Certainly I think so.
And there would be lots of philosophers and theologians, or more philosophers than theologians throughout history, who would take that approach.
God is interesting. Like mythology is interesting.
Like fairy tales can be psychologically interesting.
So... What does it mean when somebody says, I believe in God?
Are they making a statement of purely subjective reporting of preferences?
I like Gandhi?
Are they saying, I believe in God because of evidence and because of reason and because of testability and reproducibility and all the glimmering jimlets of the scientific diamond?
No. They're not making a statement of subjective preference.
I like the idea of God.
I like that picture of God.
They're not making a statement of subjective preference.
They're making a statement not based on logic and empirical reality and testability because God passes none of those tests.
So what are they saying? What really is somebody saying when he says, I believe in God?
Well, he's contradicting himself.
A belief without a reason is simply bigotry.
Or static, randomness, whatever.
Like somebody's having an epileptic seizure and you call it ballet or something.
It's just random. It's just a random statement.
It's a statement of no particular content.
It can't be passed out in anything.
What they're really saying, which short-circuits the whole thing, is I believe the opposite of belief.
Because if somebody says, I believe that Orientals are good at sailing, then you'd say, oh, interesting, why?
Have you sailed with a lot of Orientals?
Have you done any statistics?
No. No.
And I mean sailing in space, in invisible spaceships, through time, in my imagination, but for real.
Nobody's going to go any further and say, well, have you done empirical observations of them with invisible spaceships through time in your mind, but real?
Can you prove that? No, obviously it's a statement that means nothing.
It's a statement that dissolves into pure incoherence.
I believe in God must come if it has any statement, if it is a statement of belief.
In an external reality.
I believe in God because God exists.
Not I believe in God because I like to believe in God.
And it has no reference to any external existence.
No reference to any possible kind of external existence.
But that's exactly the same as saying, I assert that something exists while knowing that it does not exist.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I believe in God and God is unbelievable.
I am making up the existence of something and simultaneously believing that it exists external to my consciousness.
As I said this morning, this is a deep, deep, deep form of mental illness.
Now, it happens to be very common, but that doesn't make it any less mad.
It really, really doesn't make it any less mad.
To say, I believe in God...
Is to say, I am making up existence and believing that it is not made up, but external and real.
Saying, I believe in God, is exactly the same as saying, I believe that my imaginary friend exists in reality.
Just take that...
And turn it around in your brain for a moment.
And it takes a while because we're so acclimatized to this madness that it's very hard to see.
It's very hard to see.
But it really is essential to see it.
I mean, if we're really going to survive and flourish as a species, we must chew our way out of this madhouse.
We must chew our way out of this fantasy camp.
We must try and reach through the fog of these predatory illusions and just grasp reality with both hands and not let it go.
I believe that my imaginary friend exists in the real world.
That is the most fundamental statement of theological faith.
Now, people would say, of course, well, that's not what they say at all.
Steph, haven't you been listening?
They say God exists because God exists.
God exists. I believe in God because God is real.
But that's not the case at all.
Nobody says, I believe in God because there is evidence of God.
That's the whole point of faith, right?
You must believe not only without evidence but contrary to evidence.
People say, well, there's no evidence for God.
But that's deranged.
I mean, I understand it.
Why people would say that?
Because they want to live in the foggy, wet, mildewy death cave of agnosticism.
But it really means nothing.
It means nothing to say it.
There's no evidence for God.
God is an innately self-contradictory concept.
Consciousness without matter.
Being without form.
Energy without detectability.
Consciousness without energy.
Let alone the moral qualities that would lead you to worship.
Anyway, we've been through all that before.
It's madness. So you can't say that you ever believe in God because there's any evidence for God.
You can't even say that God as a theory is logically consistent.
Or even anywhere close to logical consistency.
Even in the same universe as logical consistency.
Therefore not only is there no evidence, but it's a completely self-contradictory circle.
Sorry, it's a completely self-contradictory idea.
So, if I say, I believe in square circles, and you say, well, I don't believe in square circles, and I say, well, you look around the universe, and the moment you come back and tell me that you've never found any square circles, maybe we can talk.
But I don't have to lift a finger.
The concept of square circle is self-contradictory.
It's either square, or it's a circle, or it's something else.
It's not a square circle simultaneously.
A rock doesn't fall down and up at the same time.
So a completely self-contradictory concept for which there is no evidence is exactly the same as it doesn't exist in the real world.
It's a direct contradiction of the existence of anything in the real world.
And so when somebody says, I believe in God, they're saying, I believe in the opposite of that which can be believed in.
God is just a big, silly, empty word.
The O in the middle is a hole with no bottom.
Wherein we put a completely contradictory, nonsensical concept.
We wrap it up in God so that we can talk about it.
Nobody says, I believe in contradiction.
I find that my belief must be consistent, or I believe because the proposition is consistent with complete inconsistency.
I mean, we like to believe in things because they're consistent with logical reality.
That's how we test things. But the concept of God is completely self-contradictory, completely nonsensical.
And so you can say, do you believe in God?
You might as well be saying... What's your answer?
It doesn't mean anything.
And that's what I mean when I say, saying I believe in God is exactly the same as saying my imaginary friend.
Because what is an imaginary friend?
friend.
How is it defined?
It's defined as a friend that does not exist in reality, but only within your own mind.
And if you say...
That I can form, or my belief in God is consistent with God's existence, but God's existence is just a big bag of inconsistency and contradiction.
Then you're saying that consistency is a virtue, i.e.
being consistent. To the truth, being consistent to evidence, being consistent to the proposition that God exists.
But at the same time, you're saying that consistency is the complete opposite of a value because I'm going to accept the existence of a God whose nature and description is completely self-contradictory and completely inconsistent.
Either consistency is a virtue or it's not.
If inconsistency is a virtue, then by the time you've said you believe in God, you may not believe in God, you'd be perfectly valid in changing your mind every single moment.
You would also be perfectly valid in believing in God and not believing in God simultaneously and absolutely.
Because this would be a complete madhouse.
To say God exists is to say contradictions exist, which is to say inconsistency exists.
It's the highest value.
Illogic, inconsistency, no evidence is the highest value.
And yet you say that you wish to conform your belief in God to the existence of a God.
So either consistency is a value or it's not.
Or it's the opposite of a value.
If consistency is a value, then you can't be A theist, you can't believe in God because you believe that God exists.
That would be being consistent. But the very concept of God is inconsistent.
It's the opposite of consistency.
So you can't have it both ways.
You can't say, I believe in God because it makes sense to believe in God.
Because God makes no sense.
The whole concept is nonsense.
And we're just touching on the multifarious, bottomless, n-dimensional, brain-poking, head-exploding nonsense that goes on in the realm of theism.
What I sort of want to get out of you, let me extract things from you, what I want to get out of you is an understanding of the amount of Dissociation, of splitting, of psychological screwing up yourself that you do if you believe in God.
Consistency is a value.
The highest value is the opposite of consistency.
Logic is a value because I'm using logic to say, I believe in God.
That's a logical statement.
It's got no logical content, but it's grammatically correct in a logical statement.
So you say, I value logic to the point where I'm going to use a logical statement to assert my belief.
But the content of that belief is the exact opposite of logic.
I believe in consistency, but my highest value is the opposite of consistency.
Consistency is a value and it is the opposite of a value, simultaneously.
Logic is a value and the opposite of a value, simultaneously.
Existence, the external existence of things, is a value.
And I believe in God because God exists.
And what is God? God is the opposite of existence.
So existence is a value and the opposite of existence is a simultaneous and completely opposite value.
We could get into the ethics, but you get the idea.
When you say, I believe in God, you are creating such an absolutely opposing mess of central, fundamental, and torn apart, flying in your face, chewing your eyeballs out, burrowing into your brain inconsistencies.
And that's not healthy.
That's not healthy. God is a virus that attacks integrity, that attacks common sense, that attacks consistency.
God is a sickness.
God is a bacteria of the mind.
It's a meme that slaughters, not just physically, but mentally.
God is the scar tissue of irrational obedience, and I have never met anybody who believes in God, who did not go through an extraordinarily difficult period, sometimes very early in their lives, of Having to be obedient to conflicting principles, to irrational principles.
Either they were taught religion, or they had an inconsistent and varied parent, or they had a self-hating parent, or they had a parent who said one thing and did another, but they were exposed to extraordinary inconsistency when they were children.
And that splits, atomizes, twists up knots, turns the brain upon itself like a bird against a feather.
Pecking until the beak breaks and the head...
Bleeds. And a kind of spiritual death results.
Freedom, as Winston Smith says, freedom is the freedom to say 2 plus 2 is 4 if that is granted all else follows.
Slavery is not being forced to say that 2 plus 2 is 5.
Slavery is what O'Brien talks about in 1984.
Slavery is that it is 4 and 6 and 5 all at the same time, whatever the party wants.
And if you were never allowed to exercise your natural integrity, the integrity which all children are born with, the object constancy, the fidelity to reality, fidelity to logic, children are amazingly logical, but you were smashed in the forehead with sometimes smiling, damned villain smiling contradictions, then you will be susceptible to this virus, this insanity.
Of belief in the opposite of belief.
Of a love of consistency based on the opposite of consistency.
Evidence! I believe in God because there is evidence that God exists.
What's the evidence? I feel that God exists.
See, the moment that you start to make a logical statement about why you believe in God...
Which is to say, the moment that you say, I believe in God, not, I like to believe in God, not, I know that God doesn't exist, but it gives me comfort the way that you suspend judgment when you watch Lord of the Rings.
The moment that you say, I believe in God, you're making a positive statement of knowledge with reference to something outside of your consciousness.
Otherwise, it's a purely subjective state.
And God is defined as that invisible friend beyond your consciousness.
But the moment you start to break into the definition of what God is, God is exactly that which does not exist.
I believe in the existence of that which by definition does not exist.
The cause and effect is absolutely smashed, but cause and effect is always claimed by religious people.
Why it's so bad to believe in God?
Why it's so bad for your mind?
Why it's so bad for your soul?
Why it's so harmful to your psyche and to your mind?
Your mind is designed to inherit the principles of reality and work with them.
Man's mind is at its highest and most glorious in the realm of art, science, and commerce.
And All of these require a fairly strong devotion to reality, absent government funding, which we don't even need to get into right now.
But if you want to write a book, you've got to follow grammar.
You've got to follow at least some logic in the creation of that book.
You've got to find a publisher.
You've got to get it printed on paper.
You've got to get it out. You've got to go on book tours.
You've got to do all of these things.
If you want to be a scientist, you have to follow the scientific method.
You have to experiment. I believe in this scientific principle because of X, Y, and Z. And religious people will always talk about cause and effect.
I believe in God because.
Because X. There's cause and effect.
But God has no cause.
And the only effect is the infection of fantasy.
The raging cancer of incomprehensibility.
People can't say, I believe in God because I believe in God.
They can't say, I hold the idea of God in my head as if it's true, while at the same time knowing that it's not true.
That's too close to the truth.
They can't go there. That's why religious people who know this deep down always get so angry when you start poking in around this insanity, this madhouse, this madhouse with a steeple.
That's why they get so angry.
These fantasies, and religion is just one of them, with many, many others.
People don't like to have it pointed out that they're in an asylum.
That what they claim when broken down is sheer madness.
Irrational madness posing as logical consistency.
Oh, and the superiority and the don't be arrogant and so on.
But that's why nobody likes to talk about God.
So I hope that this makes some sense about at least why I believe that it's so unhealthy.
As I mentioned this morning, you cannot work two opposite ideas within your mind.
This double-think is just horrendous.
This double-think is so destructive to the mind.
It's like having a cramp on your bicep and your tricep simultaneously.
All that happens is your arm gets paralyzed.
And it's the same thing that happens with your mind.
This is why it's so important to be rigorous about your beliefs.
And by rigorous, I mean examine them in all the good-natured spirit of fun and aiming for truth.
But it is desperately unhealthy to believe in that which is the opposite of belief.
We would say to a man who did not have a girlfriend but instead bought an inflatable toy that he may not be as healthy as he should be.
that there is a loneliness and a low self-esteem and almost a self-hatred in that.
What do we say to people who think that they are married to an invisible woman and say that she's invisible and does not exist, but they love being married to her?
Thank you.
That is not healthy.
That is unbelievably unhealthy.
This is why I've always talked about how horrendous it is to inflict these fantasies, these sick, brain-twisting, soul-destroying fantasies on children.
who are helpless in their enslavement to the whims of their parents and who are taken down the tide of this fantasy to the bloody pool at the bottom wherein they bubble and expire like most people do and this resurrection that we are all engaged in here is brutal and essential.
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