1188 Atheist Aggression Towards Christians? (convo)
A listener takes me to task for my 'hostility' towards Christians...
Oct. 27, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:11
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Hi, Johnny? Hey, how's it going? | |
| Not too bad. How you doing? Pretty good. | |
| What do you go by? Steph? | |
| Stephon? Oh, Steph is fine. | |
| Okay. You can call me John. | |
| I'll just go by Johnny on the chat room. | |
| Alright. Alright. | |
| You're doing pretty good? Yeah, yeah, I guess I have a couple of questions or issues which we were talking about last week that I've sort of noticed, and it's not too subtle, that when you're around in the chat room, you seem to be, you have some criticisms or some problems with the psychology that we talk about. | |
| Yes. FDR, so I wanted to give you the chance to let it all hang out and to correct me or others where you feel that we're going wrong. | |
| Okay. Alright. | |
| I think that some people or some ideas are not completely thought out as far as the whole defu process. | |
| I think it is a good idea But only in certain cases. | |
| Not as, like, a general rule. | |
| Like, just because, let's say, your parents are religious, or your family's religious, or, you know, even, you know, say you have somebody that you know in the military or something. | |
| You know, I think it's better to reach out to them You know, on a friendly basis, if they are good people, you know, if you like them and they like you, then to just kind of rule them out on a, like, as a philosophical kind of tool for yourself, like... | |
| Sorry, are you on a cell phone by chance? | |
| Hold on. Hold on. | |
| Let me get closer to my... | |
| Yeah, you're fading out pretty bad. | |
| Okay, can you... | |
| Yeah, that's better. Thanks. | |
| Yeah. Could you hear what I said? | |
| If you could just pick it up from, you know, write them off on a philosophical basis or whatever. | |
| Okay, yeah. Like, just because, say, we're enlightened doesn't mean that they can't be enlightened. | |
| And I've seen... | |
| You know, some parents actually have, you know, read some threads that parents of FDRs have wrote and, you know, they actually spent hours, you know, researching and trying to figure out what had went wrong and talking to their families and they, you know, they said, you know, well, no one else in the family, you know, ever, you know, thought anything was that bad and all that. | |
| You know, and I don't think you can just discount that, you know, just because we're, you know, believe in this philosophy of FDR. You know, they can't, you can't just completely discount their feelings. | |
| I mean, they might have some general, I mean, genuine compliance to, you know, the DFU, and maybe in not all cases, and I, And also, these parents, they said none of them had ever received any kind of conversation, you know, like, well, I believe, you know, this is wrong and I really want to talk about the past. | |
| They had never received any kind of conversation like that. | |
| You know, it was just kind of, you know, they just kind of left and they didn't understand what was wrong for a long time. | |
| You know, except for... | |
| Sorry, can you tell me which... | |
| There's only one parent that I've ever asked to stop posting on the FDR board. | |
| There's only one. Yeah. | |
| Is that the guy you mean? No. | |
| No, these are... | |
| They don't post on the FDR board. | |
| Oh, sorry. Then where are you getting this information from? | |
| There's a sub... | |
| You know, you've heard of the site, Liberating Minds, have you? | |
| I think I have. Okay, there's just like a sub forum that they just created a few days ago, like maybe a week and a half ago, just for parents to kind of post on. | |
| And I thought that was interesting, so I read what the parents said. | |
| And I think there was like maybe four parents posted on there. | |
| So I just read what the parents had said, what they said had happened. | |
| Well, I mean, obviously, I can't comment on what I haven't read. | |
| Yeah, I mean, that's okay. | |
| Sorry, let me finish my thought. | |
| Okay. What I can tell you is there's one fellow who was stalking his daughter on the board, and I asked him to stop posting, and to, you know, that he was welcome to come back, but he needed to get some counseling first, and the reason for that is that this fellow... | |
| Introduced his child to drugs when she was 11 or 12, and then took her to a strip club when she was in her late teens to get her a job. | |
| I mean, this guy was a real monster. | |
| And I'm just not having that on my board. | |
| Like, I'm just not going to have that occur. | |
| I can't, in all good conscience. | |
| Now, I'm not saying all parents. | |
| Of course not all parents. This guy is a real extreme case. | |
| Sorry, let me finish my thought. | |
| That's the only parent that I've ever asked to stop posting until he got some counseling. | |
| Because I just can't have that, right? | |
| Yeah, well, I don't blame you at all. | |
| That does sound pretty extreme. | |
| And it is extreme, of course. | |
| That's very rare in terms of parenting, but that's pretty monstrous. | |
| Yeah. But, you know... | |
| Like I was telling you about the, what do you call that? | |
| The guided meditation. | |
| Is that what it was? Yes. | |
| Things like that I feel should have some kind of caveat. | |
| If you're listening to that and you just close your eyes and you go word by word, You know, you might get the wrong impression, and you might think differently, because, I mean, it's for children who have been abused, | |
| but if you were children that hadn't, you know, had an extreme parent, like the parent you were just talking about, you know, you might say to your self-child in the God of Meditation, oh, I know, it's horrible, but, you know, maybe it wasn't really that horrible, and you might get the wrong impression. So, sorry, do you mean to say that, like, an eight-minute meditation might convince someone that he'd been abused when he hadn't been? | |
| Yeah, yes, I am. | |
| But not just that. | |
| I mean, you have to add that to the whole combination of defoing principles. | |
| And, I mean, I think parenting... | |
| You know, I think parenting does have its problems, you know, in today's world, but it's better than it was 50 years ago, and I think it'll get better with time, but we can't just write people off for, you know, small philosophical differences. | |
| And I think that might be happening to some, I don't know what degree, but I think that might be happening. | |
| Okay, so let's take your criticisms one by one. | |
| First of all, the meditation is on the board. | |
| It's not in the podcast stream, right, because I didn't want to just put it out there. | |
| It was something I recorded for someone else, and people just asked to hear it, so I put it in there, and I said it was adapted from John Bradshaw, who, of course, is a psychologist who deals with childhood issues. | |
| And it's not in the general stream. | |
| It's on the board. And of course, people who come to the board, I assume, have some familiarity with what we talk about. | |
| And it's an eight-minute meditation where it talks about childhood hurt. | |
| Now, of course, it doesn't condemn parents. | |
| It doesn't say, you were abused. | |
| And everybody has had childhood hurt. | |
| I mean, that's just part of being a kid, right? | |
| I mean, the things that are disappointing, things that are hurtful. | |
| And that doesn't If I listen to an eight-minute podcast or an eight-minute meditation on marital problems, I wouldn't come out of it saying, oh my god, I don't love my wife. | |
| The mind doesn't work that way. | |
| So I'm going to just put that one to the side, but I think the more important one is the one where you talk about the DFU principles, because they have different perspectives on that. | |
| You feel that I'm saying that for minor differences in philosophy, you should separate from everyone. | |
| Is that sort of what you feel I'm saying? | |
| Well, I think it's going on. | |
| I see people that are separating themselves from everyone. | |
| And I don't think it makes them happy. | |
| I really don't. I think it makes them sad, you know? | |
| Sorry, hang on. | |
| You're kind of jumping all over the place. | |
| I just want to make sure we stay on a topic. | |
| We're talking about the DFU principles, right? | |
| Alright. We can get to the people you think are unhappy who are separating from everyone, but I just want to understand what you mean about the DFU principles. | |
| So perhaps you could just go over what you believe is being put forward as what you say a deep principle so that I can understand where you're coming from? | |
| Okay. Like if... | |
| If... | |
| I don't know. | |
| It seems... | |
| Well, the deep principle is confusing to me. | |
| Sorry, let me interrupt. And I'm sorry to interrupt. | |
| Not it seems, because you said some very specific things about the DPOO principles, and I just want to understand what they are for you and where they've come from. | |
| Okay. Alright, give me a second to organize my thoughts. | |
| Do you want me to remind you what you said earlier? | |
| We can start from that? Alright, sure. | |
| That'll work. So, you said that... | |
| That we should not separate from family members based on small philosophical differences, right? | |
| Right. And you also said that we should reach out to family members that we have disagreements with. | |
| Uh-huh. All right, well, okay, the small philosophical differences thing. | |
| Okay, there was an instance, Tyler, somebody named Tyler, He made a thread about his religious background. | |
| He was homeschooled. | |
| He didn't believe in religion, but his parents did. | |
| And he said, I don't feel like I should separate from my parents based upon their religion or that I should view them as any different based on their religion because even though they are highly I think they were Catholics. | |
| They believed in basically the same thing. | |
| They just believed in the certain parts of religion that were good. | |
| I guess they were New Testament, you know what I mean? | |
| And I remember you saying, well, they're Christians, so you can't be a part of the... | |
| Be a Christian and then just ignore all those horrible parts of the Bible, right? | |
| But, you know, not all Christians believe that. | |
| And it did seem to me on that thread that, you know, you kind of discounted the genuine good nature to some degree of these parents just because they were Christians. | |
| And I know a lot Of them that are, you know, really good people, you know? | |
| Like my grandparents, they're really good people. | |
| And, you know, one's a deacon in the church. | |
| And I wouldn't say, oh, he's a deacon. | |
| That must mean he's really bad, you know? | |
| And you can't just discount these people based upon, you know, somewhat faulty beliefs. | |
| I mean, these beliefs have been going around for a while. | |
| I think the best way is just to Be really friendly to them. | |
| I mean, I'm not just being friendly to them for no reason. | |
| I really like them, you know. | |
| And, you know, I try to bring up topics of discussion which they aren't used to sometimes. | |
| And, I mean, they don't seem to not like it. | |
| Like, the banker bailout bill, you know, they know I'm really mad about that. | |
| They watch Fox News a lot, and I'll bring in Opposing viewpoints. | |
| I'll even point them out things about Fox News that they may not have known. | |
| And, you know, actually talk about issues a little bit. | |
| And, you know, I think it would be better for, in general, to just help people, you know, push them along the pathway towards liberty. | |
| Except in those extreme cases where it's a toxic relationship. | |
| I don't know exactly what the defu principles are. | |
| I don't know. It's a little confusing to me, but I see people that have separated from their friends and stuff, and I don't think it's a good... | |
| I mean, I don't know their personal situations either, so I don't know. | |
| Okay. Sorry, just before, because you're building up a lot of issues here, let's just... | |
| Yeah, yeah. So this Tyler fellow, yeah, I remember the thread for sure. | |
| So your argument is that reaching out in a friendly way is the best way to build bridges between groups, right? | |
| Yeah, and it's been like you were attacking his parents a little bit. | |
| Let me try and build an argument here, right? | |
| Because otherwise we just keep going off, right? | |
| All right. So... | |
| You've got two groups here. | |
| You've got the atheists and the Christians, right? | |
| Now, one of those groups believes in a holy book, part of which commands them to kill gays and atheists and so on. | |
| And again, I'm just talking about the book. | |
| I'm not talking about the Christians. | |
| I'm talking about the Bible, right? | |
| Right. Okay, so you've got these two groups... | |
| One worships a book that says, kill the other group, right? | |
| Yeah. And the group that you're criticizing for being unfriendly is the group that points this out. | |
| Now, see, if I was to say, well, your book, you know, your book, believes in killing me and... | |
| Other atheists and gays, they would say, you know, if they were being completely honest, they would have to say, uh, well, yeah, I guess you're right. | |
| But they don't believe this anymore. | |
| You see, like, when the, I kind of, the way I view modern Christianity is, you know, when the Protestants broke away from the Catholic Church, it kind of was like a free marketization, if that's a word, Of that religion, which is why it's so much more diverse, and which is why it's so much more less harmful than it used to be. | |
| And these people generally do believe in the same views we do, and they don't ever even use those portions of the Bible that are bad anymore. | |
| So they've broken away from a lot of those views on their own. | |
| And the religion has changed, you see. | |
| But yeah, the Bible, yeah, I mean, if you said all this stuff to them, they are going to get angry. | |
| Wait, wait, wait. Let's just go back for a second, though, right? | |
| So let's reframe it. | |
| And again, this is an extreme example, but I'm just trying to get the principle down. | |
| So we have Nazis who no longer actually want to kill Jews, but still think that Adolf Hitler was the most moral human being ever. | |
| And so you have a bunch of Nazis and a very small number of Jews. | |
| The number of strong atheists is very small in the world, and of course there are two billion Christians, right? | |
| And you can say, well, the Nazis don't want to kill the Jews anymore, but there's a long history of the Nazis doing just that, and they're still worshipping the texts which say kill Jews. | |
| And you're saying, well, we should reach out in friendliness to the other group, but the group that you're criticizing is the group That is on the receiving end of commandments to be killed, right? | |
| If reaching out in friendliness is the key, then surely the Christians should oppose the Bible wherein it commands very immoral things, right? | |
| If they say, well, the Bible is the holy word of God, the Bible, and of course fundamentalists, there's a lot of fundamentalists, particularly in the U.S., who say the Bible is the unerrant word of God, right? | |
| We don't pick and choose. | |
| We don't interpret. It is morally perfect, right? | |
| Yeah, the fundamentalists believe that. | |
| I'm sorry? Yes, the fundamentalists do believe that, yeah. | |
| And fundamentalists represent, what, 80 million Americans? | |
| 60 million? It's a lot of people, right? | |
| Yeah. So there's a lot of people who say that it is perfectly moral To kill atheists. | |
| And I'm not saying that they themselves want it, but they say that the most moral statement includes the commandment to kill atheists, right? | |
| No, no, no. | |
| That's what biblical inerrancy means. | |
| everything in the Bible is right. | |
| You may disagree with it, but that's what it means, objectively, right? | |
| No, I disagree that these fundamentalists actually believe that because they don't do that. | |
| If they believed it, they would do it. | |
| Just so you understand, I'm not saying that 80 million Americans or 60 million Americans want to kill atheists. | |
| I mean, I've always said that and I say that very much in the thread, right? | |
| In the thread to Tyler, I say, I'm not saying that your parents want to kill me, of course, but that's the club of the belief that they support, right? | |
| So, of course, they don't want to kill me. | |
| They don't want to wake up and say, ooh, let's get that Steph. | |
| Of course, I've always said that. | |
| It would be crazy to believe otherwise. | |
| However, the philosophy that they pursue inevitably leads to the conclusion that it is the highest moral value to kill atheists. | |
| Now, if they don't do it, of course, that's great. | |
| No, no, that's wrong. | |
| They do not believe that it's the highest moral value. | |
| And I don't... Sorry, sorry. | |
| It's completely changed. | |
| You can't just say it's not true. | |
| It is true. I mean, and I just... | |
| I've got to pull logic on you. | |
| If you believe that the Bible is the perfect word of God, and the Bible says to kill atheists, then clearly, and God is the most moral... | |
| This is just logic. I mean, there's no way out of this. | |
| Yeah, uh... | |
| Do you hear that beeping? | |
| I did hear a little beep, yeah. | |
| Okay, I don't know. Anyway... | |
| Maybe my phone's low on battery. | |
| Anyway... Okay, the beeping distracted me. | |
| I'll repeat what I just said. | |
| This is just a matter of logic. | |
| If I say, God is the most perfect moral being, and the Bible is the perfect word of God, then everything that is in the Bible must be the highest moral ideal. | |
| It has to be. That's just logic, right? | |
| It's faulty logic, in my opinion, and I'll tell you why. | |
| They don't believe that anymore. | |
| And they don't even use those parts of the Bible anymore. | |
| Okay, I have to keep telling you. | |
| I have to keep telling you. I don't know why this is so hard to get across. | |
| I'm not talking about individual Christians and what they believe. | |
| I'm talking about the logic of the belief system. | |
| Yeah, okay. | |
| Do you understand? I could be in the KKK and say, I really like black people, or I'm not against black people, but then the question is, why am I in the KKK, right? | |
| Okay. Well... | |
| Their... | |
| Their belief system, I think, has kind of fallen apart on the bad parts, and... | |
| Even though they say, yes, it's infallible, the entire document is good, you know, it is what the individuals believe that is important. | |
| The belief system is very old. | |
| It is not like Nazis or the KKK. It's constantly changing, and it is changing for the better. | |
| And even though they're, you know, they say that they believe the entire thing, that isn't important because individually what they really do is different and you won't see any of them killing like they used to. | |
| Well, it's rocky, right? | |
| You know what? Well, unless you're an Iraqi, right? | |
| I mean, that the president... | |
| The Muslims, they are a little different. | |
| They're pretty bad. | |
| Let me just sort of explain, and I agree with you, I mean, obviously I agree with you that there are almost no Christians who want to put atheists to death. | |
| I mean, of course they're, right? | |
| But, when a Christian says, I am a good person, then, and I don't agree with certain aspects of the Bible, Then when an atheist says, the Bible commands Christians to kill atheists, | |
| the Christian should, if he is reasonable, I think, he should say, that is completely wrong, that is totally immoral, that has caused a huge amount of harm to non-believers throughout history. | |
| And that is a stain on the church. | |
| I mean, that should be a reasonable repudiation of an evil doctrine is the least that you could expect, I think, right? | |
| Now, okay, so when you say this is the least that you could expect, so getting back to the defu... | |
| No, no, no, sorry. If they are not willing to say this... | |
| Before we get to the defu, we just want to finish this point, right? | |
| If a Christian comes and says, I'm really a good person... | |
| Then we should assume that they have already rejected those parts of the Bible that tell them to kill others, right? | |
| Because you can't be a good person and want to kill atheists, right? | |
| I mean, that we can accept, right? | |
| Right. So if a Christian comes and says, I'm a good person, they should already have rejected the part of the Bible that tells them to kill atheists, right? | |
| And I'm saying they already have rejected that part of the Bible. | |
| They have rejected it. | |
| So when I say to a Christian, so you reject the parts of the Bible that command you to kill atheists, they should... | |
| And they say, no. Right, they say, no, I don't reject that, right? | |
| They get mad. That's right. | |
| Because they've rejected it. | |
| But, I mean, they don't want to, I guess they just don't want to lose the argument, and they also don't want to admit that a lot of the Old Testament and part of the Bibles are horrible. | |
| You know, I mean, they want to admit it, but they've already, you know, in act, they have repudiated it. | |
| Okay, so they are fudging, they are evading, they are continuing to, at least publicly, not repudiate a murderous belief. | |
| And you think that I'm being unfriendly? | |
| Yes. But that's crazy, to be honest. | |
| I'm not the one saying Christians should be killed, and I'm not going to repudiate that belief. | |
| That would be unfriendly, don't you think? | |
| Well, I've never, you know, I've never actually sat down and asked anyone, do you believe that this exact line is horrible? | |
| But I think if I, I think if I, my parents, I know if I sat them down and said, do you believe this? | |
| They would say, no, we don't believe that. | |
| I mean, my parents are fundamentalists. | |
| Listen, before judging atheists, I think you should try and walk a mile in our shoes and say, well, the Bible says that killing atheists, killing gays, killing unbelievers, killing children who disobey their parents, killing women who are unfaithful, killing men who are unfaithful, slavery, rape, genocide, that it morally approves of all of these things. | |
| You should sit down with Christians before you judge the atheist. | |
| You should try walking a mile in our shoes and sit down with Christians and talk about these issues and see what happens. | |
| Because it's easy to judge atheists when you haven't tried doing it, right? | |
| But, see, it doesn't matter. | |
| They don't believe that. | |
| And they don't do these things. | |
| The religion has changed. | |
| Then they shouldn't mind when I bring it up, right? | |
| If they've already rejected those beliefs. | |
| Like, if I don't believe in Santa Claus, so when somebody says to me, there is no Santa Claus, I don't get offended, right? | |
| I don't consider that to be unfriendly. | |
| Well, they believe in their God. | |
| You know, they worship this guy. | |
| They worship this God. | |
| They don't want to say, oh, he's evil. | |
| I'm going to tell you he's evil. | |
| Well, that means that they haven't rejected the beliefs then, right? | |
| That's the problem. They have rejected them. | |
| They have rejected them. | |
| Then they shouldn't mind admitting that they have rejected those beliefs, right? | |
| Well, they shouldn't, but I mean, they will. | |
| But, alright, let's say... | |
| Alright, in Tyler's thread... | |
| You said all these things, and I think he got the impression that you did kind of believe that he should defoo his parents or talk to them like this and have this kind of conversation. | |
| But I mean, if they're morally good people, doing good things all the time, then You know, why should you have to basically try to tell them that they aren't? | |
| Well, I mean, I have no idea how to answer that, right? | |
| I mean, if he says his parents are perfectly virtuous, then they should obviously completely reject the idea that atheists should be killed. | |
| And that slavery is moral, and that stoning children is moral, obviously, right? | |
| If they're good people, they shouldn't want to kill atheists, obviously, right? | |
| And I don't think they do. | |
| I'm sure that they don't. | |
| In which case, they should have no problem openly rejecting that idea. | |
| See, but it's not a rational philosophy. | |
| It's a worship of a god. | |
| And, you know, while they'll be completely willing to talk about How bad it is to do these things once you say, well, if you agree that it's bad to do these things and you also agree that your God is evil, then they're going to clam up. | |
| Okay, but here's the thing, though, Johnny, which is that you're saying that atheists are unfriendly, but it is the Christians who won't openly repudiate these horrible beliefs. | |
| That is much more unfriendly. | |
| No, no, I'm not saying atheists. | |
| They're not openly repudiating. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| I didn't say atheists where I'm friendly. | |
| Well, sorry, let me be more... | |
| You said that I should be more friendly or that FDR should be more friendly towards religious people. | |
| Yeah, I mean, I don't think... | |
| I don't know about involving them into the conversation, but I mean, as far as, you know, the defu, I don't think... | |
| You know, it is their... | |
| it is kind of the actions and their attitude, not just part of their belief system which no one uses anymore that you should view, that you should kind of put onto them. | |
| You know, just because people used to believe these horrible things, you can't interpose that onto the present situation. | |
| Well, then, but you see we can... | |
| And use it as a reason to defoo. | |
| Well, first of all, I've never said to people, "You should defoo because of what the Bible That's not part of anything that I've ever talked about. | |
| We're kind of going round in circles here. | |
| Hey! Can you call me back later? | |
| No, I'm pretty booked for the rest of the day. | |
| We can stop here. What about tomorrow? | |
| I've got so many user calls this week, it's ridiculous. | |
| How about we just set another time? | |
| Because I don't feel like we've finished this. | |
| To be honest, I don't feel that we've finished, but I also don't feel that we're making any progress. | |
| I think we are, and I'd rather... | |
| I think we've been stuck on this one part. | |
| I think I would like to go over, you know, the actual part that I wanted to talk about, which is the psychology. | |
| Okay, well, let me have a listen to this. | |
| And if you don't mind, I mean, I think that we've definitely put out two important positions here. | |
| So if you don't mind, I'll put this out as a podcast. | |
| Let me mull it over and see if I think that we can make any progress and then we can get back in touch later. | |
| Okay, okay. Alright. | |
| Take it over. Thanks, man. |
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