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Aug. 2, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:59:15

1427 Sunday Show August 2 2009

Religion, anti-Semitism and quicksand relativism.

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Time	Text
	Hello, 24-hour philosophy people.
	This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	I hope that you're doing most excellently this Sunday, early August 2009.
	I've been working on a theme song that goes a little bit like this.
	You can let me know if you like it.
	It's pump up the logic, pump up the logic, dance, think, think, something like that.
	And I'm going to hit a heavy baseline right after that, but it's really going to rock out in a way that only a balding 42-year-old philosopher can manage.
	So I hope that you will enjoy that.
	And we are...
	It says no audio on the video yet.
	We're just getting the technical kinks worked out as we start.
	This is the Sunday Philosophy Show, 4 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time, which we will be doing every Sunday, 4 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time. My name is Stephen Molyneux.
	I am the host of Freedom Aid Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web, entirely dedicated to receiving your brainwaves through the ether.
	So, if you would like to call in, let me just get a hold of my handy-dandy piece of paper.
	The call-in number to bring up any topics that you would like to do with philosophy is 347- 633-9636, blogtalkradio.com, forward slash PFPMovementRadio, is where you can listen to the show and watch me, which is about as gripping as watching paint dry, but we're doing video anyway, just for those who prefer a little bit of squiggle with their babble.
	So, we have the number again, 347-633-9636.
	We can talk philosophy, we can talk self-knowledge, we can talk economics, we can talk politics, we can talk art, we can talk movies, we can talk about whatever is on your mind.
	And I hope that you will give it a call.
	Philosophy is the oldest and noblest and deepest of the thought disciplines, in my opinion.
	It has been around since the time of the pre-Socratics.
	Nigh over 2,500 years ago, and in many ways it is still a young science in that that's not quite solved some of the basic issues.
	I've certainly taken my swing at solving some of the basic issues, such as a proof of ethics without reference to gods and governments, but the science itself, or the discipline itself, still remains fairly youthful, to say the least.
	So I hope that you will contribute to the conversation and call in.
	For a chat about philosophy, 347-633-9636.
	So we will see if there are any callers coming in, and I will start off with a little chittle-chattle just in case we are waiting on callers.
	Do we have any yet?
	We have no callers yet, although there is no audio on video.
	Alright. Okay, well let's start with some of that technical stuff then.
	Let me know if it comes in, what you hear.
	Well, there's no audio, so should we just ditch the video and just go straight to audio?
	Because it was working, right?
	right?
	And now it's not, which is all too exciting for words.
	I'm just turning the audio and video on here to see if I can see anything.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	It worked beautifully in the technical test, which we were performing earlier.
	But of course, the technical test means nothing when it comes to the actual live show stuff.
	Did you change it on your sound card?
	Oh, is that better? Am I back?
	I can see a mic level. Oh, it's gone again.
	No, I just have the mic source as to what you hear, which is what we were doing last week.
	And it worked. It didn't change anything since we did it in the tech test.
	Hmm. I mean, I can go.
	I know that works. That's the microphone.
	But then we won't be able to hear anyone else who calls in, right?
	So let's go back to what you hear and see if that shows up.
	Wow. How's that?
	I'm getting a little bit of an echo, so it might be working.
	Let me check the chat room. Can you hear?
	Can you hear? Can you hear?
	Can you hear me?
	I'm good. All right. It looks like we're back live.
	So, good. Let me continue then with the number for those of you who are watching the video.
	The number is 347-633-9636 and blogtalkradio.com forward slash PFPMovementRadio to watch, which I guess some people are already doing.
	So, this is a philosophy show, Sunday, 4 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time. We take questions about philosophy, self-knowledge, ethics, metaphysics, if you want to get nice and deep.
	We take questions on politics and economics and art and whatever is on your mind.
	We will try and bring a philosophical spin or angle to, and I hope that you will join the conversation.
	This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web.
	And I hope that you will drop by to check out the show, freedomandradio.com.
	And we will see if there are any callers coming in.
	If we've got a slight delay, as people muster up the courage to delve deep into the chasms of deep thought philosophy, we can start off with something a little lighter.
	And I put out a video, which you might want to check out.
	It's on my YouTube channel, which is YouTube.com forward slash S-T-E-F-B-O-T. And it was really around parenting, which is the big philosophical endeavor that I have going on in my life at the moment and have had for the past seven and a half months and before that preparing for about 20 years to become the kind of parent that I wanted to become.
	And so I did a video on some of the philosophical principles of parenting.
	That I have found to be valuable in raising my daughter.
	But I just wanted to point out, I think it's really, really interesting.
	And I'm absolutely positive this isn't going to change, which doesn't mean that it won't.
	I may end up eating my words in a fine souffle of humiliation in the future, but I don't think so.
	One of the things that I'm just enormously proud of as a parent, and this is a pride that extends obviously just beyond myself and towards my wife as well, Which is that our daughter has not been raised with any force, any aggression, any spanking or slapping or hitting or anything like that, which to me is a no-brainer.
	But she also hasn't been raised with any harsh voices.
	We don't have a loud household, shockingly, though it may seem to those of you who listen to some of my podcasts.
	We don't have a loud household and she's never experienced or heard a raised voice or a harsh word or any verbal kind of aggression addressed towards her.
	And one of the things that's really fascinating about that is because there's a theory that children are manipulative And they are.
	I mean, at least my daughter is.
	She's delightfully manipulative because she wants to get her way, and she doesn't have the long-term view that I do of her own best interest.
	So she is manipulative, and I think it's absolutely delightful.
	I can go into more details if we don't have any callers right up front.
	But she is manipulative.
	She will try and get what she wants.
	And, of course, she has almost no ability to get what she wants directly, so she has to kind of rely on those techniques.
	But one of the things that's very interesting It's that people say, well, you have to be sort of very sharp or harsh or firm with children in that way because otherwise they'll go do X, Y, and Z that's not good and so on.
	And again, I know she's not even eight months yet, so these are early days, but we are correcting her in terms of, you know, she can't play with chords, she can't Crawl to certain areas in the house and so on.
	And we try to keep her off because she's crawling well, but she still occasionally does the faceplant, which is one thing on the carpet and quite another on the hardwood floor.
	So we keep her off that. We sort of go with her to keep her supported.
	But when we say no, she actually will turn around.
	Like, I mean, the lightness of touch of the parenting has really translated into, so far, a seemingly compliant and respectful child, or respectful of sort of our preferences and wishes.
	If we turn her around, she doesn't cry, she doesn't fuss.
	So it's very interesting because people say, well, you have to be, you know, if you give children an inch, they'll take a mile.
	And so people will start off sometimes in their parenting being quite harsh and being quite firm, so to speak, with their children in a way that I think may be a tad aggressive, if not way too aggressive.
	But so far, the experiment is working very well.
	I hate to term it in the experiment, but it is definitely not how I was raised or my wife.
	But the experiment of a very light touch resulting in compliance has been working just perfectly in that she doesn't mind if we turn her away from something she wants to play with.
	She doesn't mind if we tell her not to go somewhere.
	She'll generally turn around and come back and so on.
	So if you are a parent or considering the option Of getting one from eBay, then you might want to think about that lighter touch approach.
	It does seem kind of counter-intuitive because we're so used to having these heavy authoritarian things through religion and through public schools, but we've certainly found that a very light touch is by far the best way so far.
	Terrible twos are coming up in a way, so there may be some updates on this.
	But I really do believe that the children reflect the respect that you give them.
	And because we respect her and treat her as if she's a good child, she is, in fact, a very good, positive, and happy child.
	So I just wanted to point that out.
	My philosophical explorations and examinations in the moment tend to send her around And so that really is the number one thing that my principles are being applied to at the moment.
	So you will hear a lot from a proto-daddy parent bore in the coming months because that is where my attention is.
	And as I move forward with this experiment of I don't even know what kind of parenting, laissez-faire, anarchic parenting, I don't know, hands-off, objectivist, no-state parenting, I don't know exactly what to call it yet, but I want to keep everyone posted, because so far it's been working as anticipated, and even better than anticipated, so I'm certainly no expert, but this particular scenario is working very, very well.
	We do have a call.
	We do have a call. Excellent.
	Sprechen. Hello.
	Hello. Hello. Hi.
	Yes, sir. I'm Steve also.
	It's a very technical point.
	I would regard myself as more or less, I don't like religious organizations, but I am not an atheist.
	I'd regard myself as an agnostic leaning towards deism or theism.
	I know that you're a trained philosopher, and I have a very narrow, specific technical point, if that's okay, sir.
	Please, shoot right away.
	We do love the technical stuff.
	Okay. You used a number of different disproves for the existence of God.
	A number of them. I know you didn't use just one, you used a number of them.
	I like to just take issue with one of them and only one of them, and then you can respond any way you like.
	One of them is linguistic. You said that God cannot be concurrently omnipotent, which is all-powerful, and omniscient, which is all-knowing, because if he's omnipotent, he can't be omniscient, and vice versa.
	I would say that's a linguistic disproof for the existence of the possibility of God.
	Is that correct? Yeah, and sorry, just because there are those who haven't immersed themselves, let me just do literally 30 seconds on what that means.
	If God is all-knowing, then God knows what is going to happen in the future.
	If God knows what is going to happen in the future with 100% certainty, then God cannot change what is going to happen in the future because that would invalidate the 100% certainty that he has or she has in what is going to happen in the future.
	Right. And if God can change what is going to happen in the future, then God can be all-powerful, but then God cannot be all-knowing, because he can't know what he himself is going to do in the future.
	So these two, it's a contradictory concept, but sorry, go ahead.
	All right. Okay, now my point is, I think linguistically you can't prove or disprove, because you wind up in a paradox.
	I'm going to give you a paradox on the other side.
	I'm not saying it's persuasive, but I'm just saying that it reduces the paradox.
	One of the definitions of God, and if he's not perfect, he's not God.
	God, by definition, is perfect, and imperfect God is a contradiction.
	But if God doesn't exist, his deprivation, i.e., of not existing, is an imperfection.
	So to say that God does not exist is to say that God is imperfect, which is likewise, by definition, a self-contradictory statement.
	I'm not saying that proves God exists.
	But I'm just saying that all the...
	Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Let me just, sorry.
	I just want to make sure I follow this.
	So God, by definition, has to be perfect.
	Non-existence would detract from that perfection.
	So if you say that God does not exist, then you're saying God is not perfect.
	Is that the argument you're putting forward?
	No, if you're saying God is perfect, and by definition, an imperfect God, an imperfect God is a self-contradictory term.
	The definition of perfection implies existence.
	Absolutely, yeah. I mean, you can't say I have a perfect car that does not exist.
	Right, yes. So I'm just trying, on a very critical, narrow point, I'm saying that you did a very illogical disproof of God using linguistics, and I'm not saying that my assertion about him being perfect means, but I'm just saying that when you start using linguistics as an approach to prove or disprove God, you're going to wind up in, I don't mean in some direct way, in nonsense, you're going to wind up in paradoxes and, you know, in circles.
	A circle doesn't prove or disprove anything, it's just a circle.
	Well, sorry, let me just understand what you mean, because I think you and I might use this word differently, which doesn't mean that I'm right or anything.
	But when you say, like when I point out a logical contradiction between omniscience and omnipotence, And you say that is a linguistic disproof.
	Why would it not be a logical disproof?
	I mean, if it's impossible to be all-knowing and all-powerful, that would be a disproof of the perfection and universal power of God.
	But why would you say linguistic rather than logical?
	It would seem to me that that's a logical disproof, but maybe I'm missing something.
	Because you're using in the disproof what the words mean and how they contradict one another, while if you say something is perfect, any being, the perfect being doesn't exist, I think that's also a self-contradictory statement.
	But if I'm using the definitions of the word and how they logically contradict each other, which you have to, you have to use the definitions of the word to be consistent, why would that not be a logical disproof?
	I'm not trying to quibble, I just want to run on, why would that be a...
	Because linguistic disproof sounds less rigorous than a logical disproof, if that makes sense.
	Right. I understand what you mean.
	I mean, there are other statements like, this statement is a lie.
	If true, then false.
	If false, then true. And not that you can prove or disprove.
	You didn't put forth one.
	You put forth a number of them.
	I think a lot of them were used by...
	George Smith, whose book I read, I have a lot of respect for Mr.
	Smith. Sorry, for those who don't know, it's a book, and I think, if I remember right, I completely pillaged this argument from George Smith's book, Atheism, The Case Against God.
	Is that the fellow you mean? Yeah, and I think you acknowledge it.
	You didn't do anything. I mean, you acknowledge that you relied to a large degree on many of his arguments.
	I think you even referred people who were interested to look at his book.
	But I just think that when you try to do it using language and definitions, you're going to wind up in circles, on both ends.
	But wait, wait, wait. Why is it...
	Okay, if you say to me, a square circle exists, and I say, well, a square circle is a contradiction, isn't that a logical disproof rather than...
	Yes, it is. Yes. Well, yeah, but the logical contradiction is predicated upon the definition of what the words mean.
	Well, sure, but I mean...
	In order for it to be a logical...
	Go ahead, I'm sorry. But that's true of all conversations.
	But the question is, do you define the terms, or do you use the words in a consistent and objective manner, right?
	So, if we say omniscient, we certainly do mean all-knowing, and when we say omnipotent, we certainly do mean...
	I would say, maybe wrongly, that perfection implies existence in just the same way, because non-existence is a deprivation.
	It's a deprivation. It's an imperfection.
	Yeah, I'm not quite...
	Okay, we can leave the first point.
	I'm not going to concede that it's linguistic.
	I think it's logical. Okay, fair enough.
	I just want to throw it out there and see what you...
	I like your mind. You have a fine mind, sir.
	And I figure I'd throw it out there and see what you do with it.
	And that's obviously for you and me and the audience people to make their own determinations on that.
	But I don't want to tie you up with this.
	I do thank you for your time and I respect you a lot, sir.
	Thank you. Well, thank you. I appreciate it.
	It was a great question and a great comment.
	Do we have another call or shall I talk a little bit more about this gentleman's proposition?
	I'll wait for...
	Go ahead. Okay, yeah, so this is something that I think is really, really important to examine when you're having debates or discussions with people about things.
	People will, and I'm not going to impute the motives of this fellow, but it does happen for me that people will come up and say, well, that's semantics, or that's a language trick, or that's by, you know, by that definition, yes, but, but, but, but.
	And I don't find that to be particularly fair at all times.
	It is fair sometimes, but I don't think it's particularly fair at all times.
	Like, if you say 2 plus 2 is 5...
	You're still using language, right?
	You're using two, two, like, you're not using numeric symbols in speaking it.
	You're saying two plus two is five.
	And if someone comes up to you and says, well, but that's only, you're only defining two and two and five linguistically, and so linguistically you've just, you know, you may be wrong, but logically it doesn't count because it's only about language and so on.
	And I find that when people move a debate from the realm of logic, To the realm of language, it's a way of fogging and saying, well, it's semantics, it's kind of circular, let's agree to disagree, and so on.
	And in this way, it doesn't shock me that the prior caller was a deist, or an agnostic leaning towards deism, because there is that aspect of debating that does move disagreements into the realm of language and out of the realm of logic and evidence.
	When you concede that, say, the argument for omniscient, like if you say, well, God has to be perfect, but God cannot be both omniscient and all-powerful.
	One of those has to go. If there's any, I think as a user used the term, deprecation from perfection, then it can't be God.
	Then, automatically, by saying God can't be both all-knowing and all-powerful, not only is that a contradiction, but if one of those gives way, then it's a deprecation from perfection, and therefore is no longer the term God.
	And that is not a language trick.
	That is not a language game. That is not in the realm of semantics.
	That is in the realm of of logic, right?
	So I would strongly suggest that if you put forward a logical argument, don't let it be moved over into the realm of language or semantics, which is a way of weakening it and saying, well, by your definition, your argument works, but by my definition, my argument works.
	That seems to me not particularly right.
	Like, it's like saying, okay, so 2 plus 2 and 2 make 5.
	It's like, well, if you define 2 as 2, then yes, But if I define the first 2 as 2 and the second 2 as 3, then 2 and 2 do make 5.
	So by my arguments, by my definitions, I'm right, but by your definitions, you're right, and therefore it's all semantics.
	Well, that's not reasonable or valid, right?
	Because 2 has an objective definition, right?
	It is 2.
	It is 2 objects, 2 eyes, 2 fists, so whatever.
	And so... When you are winning a logical argument, which really, for people who are committed to reason and evidence, if somebody's winning a logical argument against me, I'm winning too, because I want my beliefs to be based on reason and evidence.
	So, don't let somebody move a logical debate into the realm of semantics or language.
	Because then it becomes kind of postmodern, Foucaultian, fuzzy, relativistic, and it ends up in this depressing goo of let's agree to disagree.
	So I think that's an important distinction to make.
	All right, so let's see if we have new callers.
	We have... The number is 347-633-9636.
	Sorry, I have to keep reminding myself because I'm not used to doing this with phone numbers.
	Normally I'm used to being the gum-chewing 1940s switchboard operator on my computer while I'm doing this.
	But the 347-633-9636.
	If you would like to talk about philosophy, ask me any question and I will fake any answer you're looking for.
	And we'll see if we can make some sense out of what is coming in.
	Don't forget the chat rooms as well.
	Oh yes, the chat rooms.
	Do you want to give the link to those?
	Or not.
	I'm in this chat room.
	Yes, we have a chat room on Blog Talk Radio.
	All right. And what's the address?
	Is it just Blog Talk Radio? It's blogtalkradio.com forward slash PFP. PFP Movement Radio.
	And there is also a chat room on peacefreedomprosperity.com and just click the link Movement TV. Well, while we're waiting... Hello, I'm still here.
	While we're waiting for our next caller...
	I'm going to read a short article.
	I may do a video on this later this week, but I will give you a little pre-test.
	Since we're on the topic of religion...
	Already. I thought that I would give you an article that somebody posted on the Free Domain Radio board, and I fully understand this is not in the mainstream of religiosity, but I think there's an interesting principle here which does spread over to more of the mainstream of religiosity.
	This is from the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation.
	What?! And this is called Praying Man Let His Daughter Die.
	A U.S. jury has found a man guilty of killing his sick 11-year-old daughter by praying for her recovery rather than seeking medical care.
	The man, Dale Newman, told a court in the state of Wisconsin he believed God could heal his daughter.
	She died of a treatable disease, undiagnosed diabetes, at home in rural Wisconsin in March last year as people surrounded her and prayed.
	Newman's wife, Lelani Newman, was convicted earlier this year.
	The couple, who were both convicted of second-degree reckless homicide, face up to 25 years in prison when they are sentenced in October.
	A lawyer representing Gail Newman said he would appeal.
	During the trial, medical experts told the court that Newman's daughter could have survived if she had received treatment, including insulin and fluids, before she stopped breathing.
	On Thursday, Newman, who is 47 and studied in the past to be a Pentecostal minister, said he thought God would heal his daughter.
	If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God, he said.
	I am not believing what he said he would do, and I think that means it to God.
	He also said he thought his daughter had a flu or a fever and that he had not realized how ill she was, though, of course, logically, that shouldn't make any difference in the realm of faith.
	Newman's lawyer said he had been convinced that his faith healing was working and that he had committed no crime.
	The prosecution argued that Newman had minimized distorted illness and that he had allowed her to die as a selfish act of faith.
	They said the girl should have been taken to hospital because she was unable to walk, talk, eat or drink.
	Instead, an ambulance was only called once the girl had stopped breathing.
	Well, I mean, you can't really say much about that.
	I mean, this is just... Completely evil and corrupt as far as the protection of the poor little girl goes.
	But we would all read this, right?
	We read this to anybody who's got a rational series of neurons to string together, like even a few Christmas lights.
	Look at that and say, there's something terribly awry in the state of someone's mind who does not go to the doctor, but instead prays for his daughter to be healed.
	In other words, faith...
	Results in the death of this poor girl.
	Isn't that just terrible?
	And we look at that and we say, well, this is just awful, this is just ridiculous, this is a perversion of what is meant by faith and so on.
	Yet, while this death is undoubtedly a crippling tragedy and an absolute monstrosity with regards to the young girl, it is only one girl.
	Who died, right?
	What popped into my mind, I think fairly, though you can tell me if you disagree, of course, what popped into my mind was George Bush, by his own reports, decided to invade Iraq after praying to great God above about what he should do.
	So we read this story where A man's faith resulted in the death of his daughter, and we say, my God, how monstrous, how evil, how terrible.
	This man should be thrown in jail for up to a quarter century.
	But, I don't know, probably needs psychiatric care more than he needs a prison cell, but we see a direct and far more ruthless and genocidal parallel in the invasion of Iraq, which was another faith-based initiative.
	And this, of course, George Bush is not facing any jail time for praying to God and God telling him to go and slaughter over 100,000 Iraqis and cause millions of them to be driven from their homes and live in concentration camps on the borders of other countries around Iraq.
	So the shock and horror with which we receive this story of one child dying because a man Claimed faith was his driver.
	Should it not be a hundred thousand times or a million times worse for George Bush to pray to God to invade Iran?
	And should we not prosecute?
	But, of course, morality does not apply in a status system to the rulers.
	It only applies to the slaves.
	It only applies to the tax livestock like you and I. Ethics does not, of course, apply to the rulers.
	I did a recent...
	Which you might want to check out in the True News series on YouTube on healthcare.
	And if I remember rightly, $41 trillion, or the equivalent of about 30 Iraq wars, is the unfunded liability in government medical care, Medicare.
	And Social Security, of course, is a total Ponzi scheme, right?
	People have this fantasy, you know, like you get taxed, the government puts it in a special account, invests it somewhere, it grows, and then they give it back to you.
	When you retire, it's complete nonsense, right?
	The government rips off the money from you at gunpoint, blows it on paying off its friends and punishing its enemies, and then when you retire, it taxes the young to pay for the rich, right?
	It's a complete anti-welfare system, because the rich, the elderly in America, the richest generation who've ever lived, is certainly doing a hell of a lot better than the young people who've been taxed to pay for them.
	And, of course, that is a complete Ponzi scheme, right?
	Taxing the newcomers to pay those who were already there when there's no money in the kitty and nothing invested is a Ponzi scheme by definition.
	And what is it?
	The 50 billion that Bernie Madoff nuked is a tiny pittance relative to the 40-plus trillion that the government has collectively nuked in the Social Security scam.
	And yet, of course, the government Nobody goes to jail for that Ponzi scheme, but when Bertie Madoff, who I'm sure, you know, forgets to pay off someone or doesn't pay off someone enough and then gets turned in because the SEC had been notified for many, many years that his returns were statistically impossible and that he was conning people, but he was obviously paying off the right people and so on.
	But I just wanted to sort of point that out, that morality, I believe that it is universal and objective.
	Which is why I'm an anarchist.
	But morality, as it is used and taught in the world today, is something that is designed to have those who are subjugated to the powers that be to attack themselves, to attack themselves, to feel guilt, to feel bad, to feel wretched, to feel down on themselves, so that they're easier to rule.
	Morality is like a weakening agent that's put into the water that makes Slaves physically strong but mentally weak.
	Morality is a virus that is put into us, like one of those metal caterpillars going into Keanu Reeves' abdomen in the Matrix.
	Morality is something that is put into our head to have us castigate ourselves and attack ourselves and flagellate ourselves and wear the hair shirts of low self-regard for being bad.
	But of course, whenever you then try to take those ethics and apply it to the rulers, to the powers that be, to the governments, to the priests, to the politicians, even sometimes to the parents, Well, then it's not allowable, right?
	Then we can't have that at all.
	That is just terrible. That is scandalous, right?
	So, I just wanted to sort of mention that be very, very wary when people start talking about virtue with you, because they will almost always use the term virtue in order to control you, to bully you, to crack you down, to break you down, to bend you in two or three or five or ten or atoms,
	Rather than because they have a true, deep, venerable, and universal love of virtue across the board, up and down the hierarchy of state and institutional and religious power.
	Be very, very careful.
	You know, there's a famous quote from an old Nazi who said, I can't remember his name, he said, when I hear the word culture, I take the safety off on my revolver.
	Right? Which is a primitive and brutal response to a subtle and powerful manipulation called culture.
	Which is lies, right?
	If it's not lies, it's science.
	If it's not lies, it's philosophy.
	If it is lies, we call it culture.
	And we think it's good because it's old.
	You know? This is what sometimes Christians fall back on.
	Just waiting for callers. Interrupt me when we have a call.
	I'll just keep talking until we get a call.
	So if you want to stop me talking, just call in.
	Let me come back to your number once more time.
	The number is 347-633-9636 to talk about philosophy if you are so inclined.
	Because Christians will say that.
	Because to me, religion is indistinguishable from superstition.
	There's no difference to me, fundamentally, in someone who says I believe in leprechauns and someone who believes in undead Jewish zombie water walkers called Jesus or whatever.
	But religion, Christianity and the other religions, particularly Judaism, will say, well, you see, we have depth and we have richness and we're different from your average God and variety superstition because we are old.
	And that's pretty sad.
	You know, that's a pretty sad admission that you've got nothing to offer if all you have to offer is that you're old, right?
	You know what else was old until the 18th century?
	Slavery had a long and noble and benevolent tradition.
	I say, well, but we got Michelangelo out of Christianity.
	Well, we got the pyramids out of slaves.
	We got cheap cotton out of slaves.
	Does that make slavery good?
	You know what else has a long and noble and deep tradition which has produced some real beauty?
	The Mafia is also old, and some great art has come out of Mafia sponsorship all the way back to the Medicis in Florence.
	In the 14th, 16th, 17th centuries.
	Beautiful art came out of organized crime and its patronage.
	So there's many, many things that are old that are stone evil or stone wrong.
	And yet, it's still held up.
	When you disprove everything, you say, well, but it's old.
	But of course, if religion is valuable because it's old, then the older religions should be even more valuable, right?
	So we should go back to worshipping stone-pregnant big-boot goddesses carved out of stone from the Stone Age, or we should go back to worshipping the ancient Egyptian gods, Set and Baal, I think they were, and so on, and the Greek gods of Dionysus and Apollo and so on, because they're older, right?
	So you can say, well, but they haven't lasted as long.
	It's like, well, yes, but that's because they use less violence in their decay, right?
	So, I think that's another thing to remember when, you know, people say, there's this sort of veneration of age that is held up when it comes to religion, and I don't know that an error becomes any more true because it gets dusty, right?
	I don't know that if you think a caterpillar is a tree, it doesn't become a tree if the caterpillar lives long enough, right?
	The fact that an error only becomes more embarrassing, right?
	When it gets older, it doesn't get more true.
	It doesn't get more noble. It doesn't get more honorable.
	It doesn't get more virtuous.
	It simply gets more embarrassed. Sorry to interrupt.
	We do have a caller. All right.
	All right. I am interrupted, and that probably is not a bad thing.
	Please, go ahead. Am I on?
	We have another mine. Hello.
	Hello. I can't hear you.
	All right, growing up in Brooklyn, listening to everybody's different, you know, everybody has different religions.
	You know, more or less, they just wanted nothing to do with any of them because they're just all, you know, they're all against each other.
	If we tried to reword them, do you think that people would get along a lot easier or just go about our everyday lives and just listen to people complain?
	I'm intrigued. Tell me what you mean by reword them, if you could.
	Well, unfortunately, you know, you see an Arabic person and they go, okay, they're Muslim, and they don't, you know, forbidden to do this.
	The words that they use in the pretense of their words of their Bibles, you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do this, which makes everybody look over their shoulder and hate each other because of the wording that I feel that if they try to reword these things, they might all get along with each other and stop Okay, one's better than the other, one's not better than the other, yada, yada, yada.
	Right. Well, certainly if they rewrote more to say yada, yada, yada for 2,000 pages, I would be down with that.
	But all joking aside, can you tell me a little bit more, or give me an example of a rewording that you think would be beneficial?
	Well, no, not real.
	I just popped off. I've just been watching you talk for the last 15, 20 minutes here.
	In the last 20 years of being in Bradenton, Florida, We don't judge people by their religion.
	We just judge people by who they are and what comes out of their mouth.
	You take it up to the Northeast and if you're a different color, you're this, you're that, or the other thing, which is what led me to what I said earlier.
	If we reworded things, maybe people might get along a lot easier and just shut the heck up and go about our daily lives.
	Okay. I mean, I think you sound like you have a solution called rewording, which I can't figure out.
	And I don't mean to dismiss what you're saying, but I just want to...
	Well, maybe not rewording, but...
	First time caller.
	I'm sorry? I lost reception.
	I'm on a cell phone. Oh, sure.
	Okay. I hope that wasn't the whole solution right there, because that would be really disappointing.
	Just tell me what you mean by rewording.
	I'm not sure I understand that.
	Alright, I'm going to turn up the laptop while I'm sitting in the parking lot.
	I can hear you better on that. Alright.
	So tell me what you mean by rewording.
	I'm just not sure I followed that.
	Well, maybe not necessarily rewording, but if we can now look at the words forbidden or, you know, there's tons.
	I can go on and on and on, and I don't think we have enough time for it.
	Once the word religion is brought up in any of the debates that are brought up, you know, that are, you know, thousands of millions of Americans are just wondering what's going on.
	But once we get into the religious aspect of the, all of a sudden the whole conversation has just gone down the hill and, you know, Christians believe this, Jews believe that, Muslims believe this, and it goes absolutely nowhere because of the one word which is religion.
	Right. I mean, if we can do, you know, I'm not saying we can do without it, I mean, yes, if it helps our children grow up a lot easier, Well then why not, you know, if the Ten Commandments were wherever we got them from.
	But I don't know if I'm making myself clear enough, but once we start bringing up the word religion, everything goes sour, and we get nowhere for it quick.
	Right. Well, let me ask you something, if you don't mind, because I really do want to understand what you mean by rewording.
	And this may sound like a volatile comparison, but, you know, just go with me for a minute or two if you can, and then you can tell me if I'm full of crap, and I'll be happy to accept that if it's true.
	So, let's say we're talking about, not religion, but the Ku Klux Klan, the KKK, right?
	So, the KKK... I mean, they're just wrong, right?
	Because they say all these things about minorities that aren't scientifically valid.
	It's just incorrect.
	Not only is it nasty and bigoted, but it's just plain wrong, right?
	And I don't think that the solution to the KKK's racism would be to say they should reword their pamphlets, right?
	It would be, well, it's just not correct, so it needs to be corrected.
	And those who won't be corrected need to be rejected and scorned as fools and bigots, right?
	I mean, there's other ways of going about it, you know, without, yeah, more or less so, yes.
	Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that you go right up to something.
	I mean, this is a process. But if somebody consistently rejects reason and evidence, then they're a fool or a bigot, right?
	And there's really not any other options.
	They certainly can't claim to be right or consistent or valid or whatever, right?
	Scientific. Well, bringing up the Ku Klux Klan, I mean, for shits and giggles, I went up to North Florida, just, I worked with a fellow that was involved with them, and I told them ten years ago, instead of you guys sitting here doing a rally, why don't you go wind up on the border and save us tax dollars and money?
	Why don't you guys go take care of the problem that you see, that you're talking about today?
	Why don't you get off your asses and go do something?
	Or pick up a fishing pole?
	Thousands of other things that I could think of.
	Now, more or less, I just kept my mouth closed during, you know, I spoke to certain people, and when you bring up the KKK, I thought of, you know, immediately of that little scenario that I went through years ago.
	Right. But rewording it would not solve the problem, right?
	How old's the little one? Oh, she's the seven and a half months.
	Beats a washer and dryer.
	Oh, she's great. But rewording would not be the solution to an error, right?
	Like, if someone says 2 plus 2 is 5, then it's not like, well, that needs to be reworted.
	It's like, well, that needs to be corrected, right?
	Correct. When you brought up the 2 plus 2 thing, it's like in New York, we use our hands.
	Florida, no one does.
	If I can drive around and try to see if I can get the finger from somebody, but no one even knows.
	You can tell in New York, they're using their arm motions.
	When you say that in New York you use your hands, I'm just not sure exactly what that means.
	It's too bad you don't have a webcam.
	Well, we talk where our hands are flared up, and you can tell in New York about where they're moving their hands while they're talking, like it's a part of their mouth and their gestures.
	I mean, it's just something that we grew up doing.
	Right, right, okay. When we talk, everything moves when we open our mouth.
	I mean, you can't be still. I mean, it's just like subconsciously.
	Well, I mean, I would say, you know, and as you know, I'm a, like, you may all, as you probably guessed from the show, I mean, I'm an atheist and a rationalist and an empiricist and so on.
	So, for me, it's not a question of rewording.
	For me, it's a question of correcting, right?
	I mean, the wording that is incorrect in religion is, there is a God.
	I mean, because there is no, there's no such ghosts, gremlin, gods...
	Ghouls, goblins, leprechauns, these things don't exist.
	They're fun to think about, but they don't exist.
	So if the leprechaun says, thou shalt eat fish, and the leprechaun doesn't exist, then clearly thou shalt eat fish doesn't make any sense.
	It's certainly not a commandment, because the entity that's supposed to be commanding it doesn't exist, right?
	You know, it's like that old joke where someone goes to a psychiatrist at a party and says, you know, my friend has this problem with Compulsive hand-washing, right?
	And the psychiatrist knows, it's like, there is no such thing as that friend, and it's this person who needs advice, right?
	But that's the way it is with religion, right?
	Priest government says, my friend says you should do this, but of course his friend doesn't exist, and it's just the priest who wants you to do it, and it just becomes his opinion, rather than some kind of universal fact, right?
	So I think we just need to correct the misperception at the core of religion that there is such a thing as a god, so we can reveal these commandments as merely, you know, sociopolitical and religious commandments.
	Control mechanisms that have been invented by a very clever group of compelling storytellers.
	And once we get rid of the ghost in the machine, we can see the machine for what it is.
	And then we no longer are tempted to believe in the commandments of a being who does not exist.
	And I don't think you can get...
	Because as soon as you say, well, let's reword it, the question then becomes, well, who decides what that word is, right?
	I mean, the whole Protestant Reformation was an attempt to, quote, reword it.
	Catholicism, and it's splinted into, you know, what is there, 400 Christian sects or something these days now?
	So I think that when you talk about rewording, you then end up with the problem is that you're trying to reword something that has no existence or validity to begin with.
	And so I think that we just need to keep reminding people that these ghosts and goblins don't exist, and then we can start basically reworking religion into philosophy, which is where the belief system should lie in logic and empiricism.
	Well, I was fortunate enough to go to the church that was around the corner from my house, and after speaking to one of the pastors at the Christian church, he allowed me to deal with the children on the Sundays while the parents are in there and the rest of the service.
	And I went overboard one day, and I told them that the television is the modern-day Bible.
	Now, a lot of parents did not care for me to tell their children that, but I also told them that Because that's the way some people are.
	My mouth goes before I think, and that's just the way it is.
	You shut the TV off and stop looking over your shoulders, and you stop worrying about things, but then again you get overwhelmed with, you know, Jesus did this, and Moses did this, and Allah did this, and it's like, okay, whatever, here we go again.
	Sorry, are you trying to suggest to me that somebody from New York speaks without thinking of the long-term consequences?
	I don't think I've ever heard of that before.
	That's unprecedented. Let me make a note of this, because I've never heard of that before.
	You might want to write that down.
	Well, thank you. That was an excellent point.
	That's right.
	You don't mind me asking. You're Action, and you are from where?
	I live in Canada.
	All right, Canada. All right.
	Good old Windsor, Canada.
	I've been there many times. I like the casinos.
	All right. Well, thank you.
	Give it a shot. I appreciate the sentiment that, you know, if we could get religious people to be more reasonable, perhaps there would be less fighting, but I think that you've just got to take the building down and start again with philosophy and reason and evidence.
	I just don't think there's any way to fix an error without turning it into a truth.
	So do you think I should stop trying to say that?
	When I meet new people and they want information, and I'll tell them to look on this and look on that, And then I'll go into subjects about rewording the religion.
	I don't think I should try to stop because that's the easiest way for me to get the people on a level where I can talk to them without them thinking that I'm some lunatic or whatever.
	But again, like I said earlier, once religion gets brought up in anything, the entire argument has gone nowhere quickly, all because of one word.
	And what people believe, and it's kind of depressing.
	Well, I'll tell you, look, everybody's got their own way of approaching this, and I'm not going to say that mine is the only way to do it, but this is sort of the way that I approach it.
	If I get into a conversation with a religious person, I view it very similar as if I get into a conversation with someone who says, I'm afraid of ghosts.
	And there's not much point immediately starting off by saying, There's no such thing as ghosts.
	Because the person's not going to say, oh, I hadn't thought of that.
	Okay, no, I'm no longer afraid of ghosts, right?
	Because obviously it goes a lot deeper than that, right?
	I mean, religion is embedded very much into people's culture, into their ethnic background.
	It's built into their family structure and their extended family structure.
	It's often built into their education and so on.
	And so it's not like an old tooth.
	You can just pull out and then the person says, ow, now I feel better, right?
	It's really deeply embedded in into the personality and into the brain stem, right?
	It's like it goes deep, deep, deep, right?
	It may look to an atheist like you're trying to pull out a sapling, but that sapling has oak tree roots that seem to go to the very center of the earth.
	So, I think when you start to talk about religious people, I think what I've found to be helpful, I'm not saying I can always pull it off, but what I have found to be helpful is just keep asking questions, you know?
	Well, You know, where did you first hear about religion?
	I think it's okay to start framing about where did you get your religious beliefs or where did you learn about your God rather than God, right?
	Because as soon as you take any of the modifying words off, because, you know, the Christian God is their God.
	There are many other gods in the world.
	There are all of the, you know, Hindu gods and And so on, right?
	So it's there. You're God, not God, because that implies that there's just one.
	And of course, human beings have invented, I think, approximately 10,000 gods, right?
	So, you know, when someone has some money, you don't say, you have money.
	You have all the money, right?
	You say, you have some of the money, you know, your money, not all money, right?
	And so when someone has to believe in a god, we say, you're God, or the god that you're Your group believes in or whatever, because that's the reality, that there are millions or 10,000 other gods that people have believed in.
	So just start to personalize it so it's not God, but your God, right?
	It's not, you know, Jesus.
	It's, you know, the guy that your religion believes is the son of the God that your religion believes in, right?
	So it becomes a little bit more localized, right?
	So I would just, you know, I think, while I know that there are no such thing as gods, I don't sit there and just immediately tell people, well, there's no god, and so just stop believing it, because that's silly, because it's a very, very deep thing that goes very far down into the very bedrock of the personality, and that person's not just individual history, but collective history, in terms of culture and family, so...
	It is a big and deep and delicate operation, right?
	It's not like pulling out a hair, it's like taking a tumor out from the base of the brain, you know?
	It takes a lot of research and care to pull that out.
	Now, here we're about to hear his horn, because I probably put him to sleep and I think he just parked his car.
	So, we may have lost him, but I hope that you'll get a chance to listen to this later.
	That has also helped me to become less interested in attempting to de-religiosity people, so to speak, to take them away from religion or to take religion away from them.
	It is just such a deep and Wrenching perspective change for someone, particularly when they're not young, that I just, you know, it's almost like a superstition or a prejudice that has to die off rather than have people's minds changed.
	This is true even in science, right?
	The new paradigm generally only takes root when the believers in the old paradigm retire or die.
	And I think the same thing is true when it comes to rationalism versus religion.
	It has to almost be a generational switch, because it is just so deeply embedded in the personality, as you'd expect, because it's lasted so long.
	The religions that have lasted have become absolute experts at getting their cause so deep into the personality that it almost can't be extracted, if that makes any sense.
	All right.
	Do we have another caller?
	Did we lose this one?
	He's gone. You know what?
	He's probably just talking with his hands.
	And I think I can see what he might be gesturing.
	Is he? Alright, we could do a show about religion.
	Do we have any other callers who are waiting on the line?
	No, we lost him.
	We lost him. Alright.
	Well, the number again, 347-633-9636.
	I am perfectly happy to take calls, to be corrected, to be criticized, to be chastised even.
	A little light spanking is not a mess, and I am more than happy to hear whatever it is that you have to say on the topics of philosophy.
	From the Greek love of wisdom, is that right?
	From the Greek love of wisdom.
	Although it can take quite a while for us to make an honest woman out of philosophy, we do love her from the very beginning.
	Alright, she's going to go. Alright, so let's gather up another topic while we wait for another caller.
	Thank you so much to those who have called in.
	Something I've talked about, and this is since we're talking to a whole group of new philosophy lovers in pretty much a wisdom orgy.
	That's really why philosophy is at FDR. One of the things that's interesting about religion is, and we'll just talk about most of the big three here, I did a podcast very, very early on in the series.
	I guess it was late 2005, I think it was, called Power...
	Yes? I hear a snake.
	Yes, I have a...
	Yes. There's a question from the chat room.
	Yes, go ahead. Okay.
	Why is it so important for him to destroy religion?
	Why does someone else's belief in God offend his belief?
	That is an excellent question.
	The question is, how can I be so bold?
	And yet, so yeah.
	Well, the question is, why is it that I feel it necessary to destroy religion?
	And why is it somebody else's belief has negative effects upon me?
	Well, that's a complex question, and it's a fantastic question.
	I have, let's just say on more than one occasion, been accused of having some...
	Strange and twisted psychological motive for hating religion or wishing to destroy religion because I didn't get the lead in the passion play or something like that.
	I think that's an excellent question.
	I would always generally avoid cheap and easy psychologizing.
	It generally is not very productive, but let's have a look at why I find religion to be a topic worthy of attack, let's say.
	I mean, there are a couple of things.
	First of all, and I'll speak a little bit about the United States here, religious people don't leave other people alone, right?
	I mean, if every single religious person in the world left other people alone, then that would be fine.
	But they don't, right?
	So, of course, ever since the rise of the moral majority, which was in the 70s, when religion formally...
	Even conservative Christianity in the United States issued or stayed away from political power.
	But in the 70s, they began to really, in the late 60s and 70s, as a response to the counterculture movement of the 60s, you know, the hippies and the bongs and the cheap slutty sex and all that.
	Let's just take a moment to remember and honor that time and wish we were there at times.
	But they responded to what they perceived to be this left-wing assault upon American values, and the socialist and left-wing demagogues and ideologues and professors, who largely had come into the American mainstream as a result of being driven out of Europe during the Second World War, Organized politically because they felt that their opposition, which was secular humanism, was organizing itself politically.
	So in response, they organized themselves politically and got really into influencing government policies.
	And this really sort of started to come to fruition through the Reagan era and so on.
	And here you have religious people who are very strong in government.
	And they don't tend to leave other people alone at all, right?
	So the persecution of homosexuals and lesbians, I guess gays and lesbians, has been a hallmark of Christianity all since its beginning, probably as a result of the fact that Jesus was a 30-year-old virgin who never married and who hung around with lots of other men Down by the docks,
	right? So that may be one of the reasons why Christianity has had a problem with homosexuality, because otherwise Jesus, with his dewy eyes and long locks and robes, might have been a suspect.
	So there's a lot of aggression against that.
	There is endless aggression against science that comes out of religiosity.
	In that they want creationism, of all things, taught alongside empirical evolution, which to me is just ridiculous.
	And, I mean, that's like going into health class and saying, well, you know, there's one theory that says you make the beast with two bags and you end up with a baby, and there's another theory which says if you pray to the Easter bunny, the stalk will bring you a child, and we're going to teach these side by side, because, you know, in the interests of balance and blah, blah, blah.
	Well, it's complete nonsense, right?
	So the assault upon science, the assault upon homosexuality, the assault upon many other things that are considered to be bad by Christians goes on continually.
	So I think there's a good reason to poke back at that sort of stuff.
	But most importantly, look, I mean, I won't say that I don't have any personal experience or motive in this.
	Of course I do, right? I mean, it's important to be honest about religion interfered with me hugely because I was a child brought up in the 70s in England, and I was in a boarding school where we went to church like three or four times a week, and I was in the choir, and there was endless talks about God and Jesus and religion and all this kind of stuff.
	And it was all told to us as if it were all just absolutely true.
	And that to me is particularly cowardly on the part of anyone who wants to proselytize.
	For God's sake, don't pick on the children who don't have the intellectual strength and perspective and, back then, access to information that can help them make it more rational and balanced I mean, there was no internet back then.
	Couldn't get your hands on any atheist books to save your life.
	There certainly weren't any philosophy podcasts, of course.
	Look at that philosophy. Don't make me sweat.
	So, religion interfered hugely with me in my intellectual development as a child, right?
	I mean, adults lied to me about everything to do with society, right?
	I mean, they lied to me about the Second World War, which, of course, back in England in the 70s was still being fought in everyone's mind as the great moment of glory.
	They lied to me about government.
	They lied to me about gods.
	They lied to me about priests. They lied to me about taxes.
	They lied to me about just about everything you could imagine.
	And I'm not saying that everybody was like, ooh, aha, I'm an evil guy, I'm going to lie to the children.
	It's just the way that the culture worked out.
	But, of course, one of the most important lies that was told to me was about the certainty of the existence of God.
	And, of course, all of the adults knew that there were 10,000 other gods, but never told me about them.
	Everybody knew that there were significant doubts about the existence of Jesus as a historical fact.
	There's only one mentioned scrap historically that someone named Jesus existed.
	There's certainly no confirmation of any of the miracles, not that there ever would be, because it's all nonsense.
	So they presented all of these myths to me as if these myths were completely true, without, of course, mentioning that every other religion has its own myths, some of which are very common to the Christian myths and so on.
	So the reason that I am very hostile towards religion, other than the fact that it is a fundamental and highly dangerous error, is that religion preys upon children.
	Religion cannot survive If it does not get its hooks into the defenseless minds of children, it is a virus that attacks the young, particularly and specifically.
	And can you imagine if, you know, in many places in the United States, you're not even allowed to take a drink until you're 21.
	And of course, you can drive a car and you can be stolen into the slave camps of the army, but you can't have a beer or a glass of wine at dinner.
	Can you imagine if you were not allowed to receive any information about religion until the age of 21?
	Because you're not allowed to drink, because drinking, you see, is bad for your cognition and your decision-making capacity.
	Religion, of course, is the same way, but let's just say that you were not allowed to receive information about religion Until the age of 21, when you had some brain maturity, your brain wasn't completely mature, that only occurs in the mid-20s, but your brain had some maturity, you had some discretion, some exposure to reason, evidence, science, right?
	And someone comes up to you and says, I want to tell you about this guy who died for your sins.
	And you'd say, what's a sin?
	You'd say, well, it's bad stuff that's been done since the beginning of time by this guy named Adam and this woman named Eve, who lived in a magical garden, unfortunately listened to a talking snake, disobeyed a god, and were cursed, and that's your fault, and so give me money.
	I mean, you'd look at that person like, okay, that's a great story.
	I'm just going to slowly step back, not make any particularly sudden moves, And hang on to my pants and my wallet.
	Because nobody would take religion seriously if they achieved some sort of intellectual and physical maturity before having the crazy nontensical fairy tales attempted to be plunged into their brain, like Stalin's ice pick into Trotsky's head.
	And so, when you have a predatory and brain-dissolving set of Frankly, murderous fairy tales that are told to children as if they are true, when children do not have the capacity to evaluate these myths and these stories and this exploitation, then to me that is entirely preying upon the minds of children.
	Do you know the way it works as an adult?
	If you want to take Viagra, if you want to take Viagra, You get a pamphlet with your pills, like, I don't know, this sounds bad, I saw a pamphlet, I've never taken a bag, but you see this pamphlet, I would imagine, that's four or five or six pages long, fine print and all this sort of stuff, all of the disclaimers, all of the disclaimers that have to be out there, because, you know, one in a million people gets a boner of the last three days or something, right?
	The disclaimers that should be there in the realm of religion, right?
	Note, this myth may mimic other myths that are equally nonsensical, that are believed all over the world, right?
	Jesus inherits 90% of his characteristics from earlier deities such as Mithras and Horus.
	Right? So, none of these disclaimers or perspectives are put into the lies which are told to children, which have profound and negative psychological effects for the rest of their lives.
	The lack of privacy because you believe that some god is always watching you.
	Commandments against innocent things like masturbation and so on, which produces sexual dysfunction and perversion, which can be truly staggering.
	Subjugation of children's minds to the corrosive fantasies and controls of other people is just horrendous.
	It is absolutely horrendous.
	I don't feel that religion has left me with any particular scars.
	I stopped believing in God.
	I'm trying to remember.
	I certainly absolutely remember when I was three, or I was about three, and God seemed like a very real thing.
	I remember I was in an attic at my aunt and uncle's place, and I was playing.
	I can't even remember playing with what, and some song came on the radio.
	It was a Cliff Richard song called Power, Power to All My Friends, to the Music That Never Ends, or something like some poppy hit.
	And I remember thinking, well, God really wouldn't like this song because it's so secular and it's not about God.
	I wasn't using those words, but I remember thinking that God wouldn't like it.
	And that's the last time that I really, really believed in the existence of a God, I know that certainly by the time I had left boarding school, which was, I think I was seven or eight years old, I certainly no longer believed in a god.
	And so I didn't believe, and then it took until I was 15 or 16 that I began to read atheist literature and so on, and really began to sort of understand why I didn't believe.
	So, I mean, I left The concept of God so early in my life, I don't think it left any particular lasting harm.
	I certainly was never beaten up by a priest.
	I mean, I was caned by the headmaster at this boarding school, but I was not beaten up by a priest.
	I was never seduced by a priest.
	So I don't remember any violence or Anything like that.
	It wasn't even a particularly shaming religion because I was brought up Anglican, so it wasn't a particularly shaming religion.
	We have a caller. Yeah, so I just dislike it because it is telling very psychologically destructive lies to children, and so I think that it's very predatory upon the most innocent and helpless, and I think that's why I dislike it so much.
	All right. We have a caller, and I am more than happy to be corrected.
	Hello. Hello. Hi, this is David Allen.
	I do shows during the week under the name Independent Politic, and as I was saying in the chat room, I didn't really want to call in, but I don't know, kind of...
	But I provoked you in the call with me, and I decided to there.
	I think you see a lot of the negative parts of religion, and you see it kind of being forced on the children by society, but it's really more of the parents that force it on them individually.
	As I was saying in the chatroom, I'm Jewish, I grew up in United States of America and every year you have Christmas and everyone I went to school with believed in Jesus and all of these things and when I was growing up I did have certain resentments towards Christmas and you know Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and all that But I got over it.
	And it seems like you're a little bit fixated on those things.
	I can't change anyone else's religion.
	They're not going to change my religion.
	We've just got to live with it and deal with it.
	And sure, it bugs me when certain people are like, oh yeah, I know the truth.
	And hey, I just want to be friends.
	And I'm just telling you the truth because I want you to be saved.
	And I'm really looking out for you.
	That bugs me when people try to push theirs on me.
	But I don't have to try to go out and eliminate it, and I think you're missing a lot of the good points of religion.
	Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I just have a couple of questions before we go on to the good of religion, which I really do want to hear about, but I just have a couple of questions, if that's alright.
	So, when you say that you're Jewish, there are, you know, to my way of thinking, there are sort of three general categories of Judaism, and some Jews are in more than one.
	So, there's like religious, right, orthodox religious Judaism, there's cultural Judaism, and then there's racial Judaism.
	And that doesn't, it just means, you know, the Jewish race as opposed to the Jewish belief system or the Jewish religion.
	Would you say that you are a religious, like do you fall primarily into the religious camp of Jewish or do you fall more into the cultural or more into the racial or is it all three for you?
	I would say I am in all three.
	As far as the major branches of Judaism, there's the Orthodox, there's the conservative, and in America there's a lot of Reformed.
	I am of the conservative branch.
	But there's also Hasidic and Ultra-Orthodox and all kinds of others, just like a million kinds of different churches all over Europe.
	Thank you. I am culturally and ethnically as well.
	I am of the European Ashkenazi descent, meaning the ones that left Israel a thousand or so years ago and made their way through Italy and up into Europe, and then eventually those that survived Germany came here to America and went to Israel and back to Israel and such.
	Now, you say that you don't like it when people push their religious beliefs upon you, which I can certainly understand, but isn't it true that your parents did that to you?
	Yes, but then again, I was a child, and I don't have all the rights of an adult, because if my parents were to just leave me be out there in the cold, I'd be dead.
	No, no, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
	No, come on, come on. What I want to say is my parents did their best to see that I grew up in a way that I was able to fend for myself, that I got educated in the right way, so that I would grow up and be able to take care of myself in the best way they could.
	Parents don't always do the right things, and certainly sometimes they get lazy or whatever, but, you know, in general, and that's part of it.
	The religion is, I think, part of that, and I'll let you go on, but that's what I wanted to finish with.
	Yeah, I mean, I think you're proposing a bit of a dichotomy.
	And, you know, I think that you're, I mean, you sound like a very intelligent person, and I'm sure that that's the case, right?
	So when I say, like, when you say, I don't like people who impose their religion upon me, and of course, as a child, when you were born, you had no idea of Judaism or anything like that, right?
	Because you were a child, or you were born innocent of all that kind of stuff.
	And your parents, of course, did push their religion upon you, naturally.
	I mean, this starts with the bricks, right?
	Which is, I think, pretty barbaric, but we can perhaps talk about that another time.
	But so there was a...
	You say, well, I don't like when people push their religion upon me, but your parents did that to you, and you say, well, I was a child...
	But, of course, it's worse to push things upon a child than an adult, because a child is that much more helpless.
	No, you're wrong. You're wrong.
	Parents have an obligation to push what they believe is best onto their children.
	They have an obligation. What are they going to do?
	Just leave them out there in the world and let them get run over by cars?
	No, they've got to tell them. You've got to wait at the stop sign.
	You've got to look both ways.
	Wait, sorry. Are you saying that, statistically, atheist parents Leave their children out in the street to be hit by cars?
	Is that what you're saying? Well, I'm saying it's not cruel for any parent to teach what they believe is best to get their children, and this is my mother calling about dinner.
	I'm going to have to put it on mute and come back to you in about two minutes, okay?
	All right. I'll try not to make any jokes about Jewish mothers calling adults for dinner.
	But, of course, the issue then becomes, if it is wrong for parents To not teach their children what they believe, then it would seem not to be wrong to teach your children to be racist if you yourself are a racist.
	And I don't quite understand how if you avoid teaching your children about superstitions and religions, That is somehow equivalent to not caring for them in any way, shape, or form, and leaving them to die out in the road.
	I mean, that seems to me like a real false dichotomy.
	Like, if I can't teach my child about religion, the only other choice that I have is to let the child die in the road or something like that.
	And that, of course, is not at all true.
	It's not even close to true.
	It's the complete opposite of truth.
	Anyway, we'll wait for this guy to deal with his mom and come back.
	And this gentleman certainly is right in saying that children do not have the same rights as an adult, but it's because of children's helplessness.
	I'm back now, sorry.
	Sorry, was I muted?
	Did you hear anything that I was saying, or should I touch on it again briefly?
	Oh no, I had to take my headset on and answer my cell phone and I put the mute on here.
	Oh, okay. The two points that I wanted to make.
	The first is that you go from if you can't teach your children about The religious superstitions that you hold, then the only other choice you have is to let them die by the side of the road.
	And of course, that's not true at all.
	There are many, many... No, I wasn't making that distinction.
	Yes, you were. I wasn't making that distinction.
	You made that distinction twice.
	You made that distinction twice, because I said, your parents imposed on you and you shouldn't.
	I'm saying that parents have to do their best in all forms, and parents who are religious are going to teach their children religious stuff, or whatever their religion is.
	And I'm saying that parents have to...
	Parents are doing what they're doing.
	Parents are being parents. I don't understand what you don't get.
	I'm not saying atheist parents or religious parents.
	I'm saying that all parents do what they...
	And the atheist parents do what...
	Raise their children the way that they want to.
	But what we're suggesting is that the parents leave out...
	What they think is right.
	And some people think that teaching their children religious is right.
	Some people think that you let your kid get burned on the stove one time so your kid learns not to touch the stove.
	Other parents will tell them 15 times, don't touch the stove, don't touch the stove, don't touch the stove.
	Yeah, see, you keep going from ideology to physical protection.
	Those two are not analogous at all.
	But let me ask you something. Let's say that I'm some vicious anti-Semite, and I genuinely believe that, I don't know, Jews are bad or whatever, right?
	And that is my honest conviction.
	Would you say then that it would be wrong, or would it be right or wrong for me to teach my children to hate Jews?
	It would be wrong from my perspective.
	It would be right from your perspective.
	Well, there's no such thing as right or wrong.
	It's not a right or wrong thing. My morals say it's wrong, and as far as those people coming after me again, you know, I certainly don't want that, you know, those haters in the world.
	But it's not objectively wrong.
	I'm saying, yeah, if we can stop them from doing it, yeah, that'd be nice for me, but I'm not at the point where I'm going to give up the control to some central authority to decide...
	No, no, no, no, I'm not talking about...
	I'm not talking about a central authority.
	You keep jumping off into these other things.
	This is a simple question. Is it objectively wrong to teach your children to be anti-Semitic and racist?
	From my point of view, I would say yes.
	No, no. You're missing the point.
	I said, is it objectively wrong, not by your opinion, your perspective?
	I can't be objective about that.
	Sorry? I can't be objective about that.
	I cannot be objective about that.
	Oh, so everything that you're saying is just an opinion, right?
	There's no truth in anything that you're saying.
	Is there any truth in anything you're saying?
	Absolutely. Or is it just your opinion?
	No, no, it's absolutely true.
	What you say is truth, but what I say is just opinion.
	How do you draw yourself into the objective and out of the subjective when most of the people on the planet can't seem to do that in their daily life?
	How do you be so objective?
	Well, you're tempered by your own history and you've said it yourself.
	You're growing up in a society and they throw all their religious stuff on you and at a certain point you just say, hey, I don't even believe in this stuff.
	Okay? How do you draw yourself away from your own personal, you know, history?
	You can't. You're being very subjective about everything that you say as well.
	And don't say that you're just somehow above it all.
	We're all tempered by our histories.
	Well, yeah, of course we are, but that doesn't mean that everything is subjective, right?
	I mean, so for instance, right, I mean, back in the day, everybody was told by their parents that the world was flat, because that's all that was known, right, in the world.
	And then people, and there's arguments as to when it happened, some say ancient Greece, some even say ancient Egypt, but certainly by sort of the middle of the, you know, 15th century in Europe, people knew that the world was...
	Oh, and the Mayans had it for years before that.
	Yeah, yeah, so...
	Let me finish my metaphor, if you...
	There are certain truths, but we're not talking about those things.
	We're not talking about 2 plus 2.
	Excuse me. We know 2 plus 2.
	Okay. Okay, let me finish my metaphor.
	Right, so... So everybody was conditioned by their upbringing to believe that the world was flat.
	But then they figured out through reason and through evidence and empiricism that the world was round.
	And so they overcame the ignorance, and you know, it was not irrational ignorance.
	It was the best that people could come up with that the world was flat.
	They overcame their ignorance, and it was then no longer true.
	That the world was flat.
	Now the world was understood to be round.
	And of course, in the same way, people believed way back in history, and of course some still do to this day, that, you know, gods and ghosts and gremlins and saints and dryads and dyads and Wiccans in the woods and all that make things go or have some sort of impact on human society.
	And then we look at science, we look at evidence, we look at reason, we look at empiricism, and we find that this is not the case, right?
	That ghosts don't exist and gremlins don't exist and gods don't exist.
	And so when I say that I know that God doesn't exist, it's not a personal opinion.
	It is a rational series of arguments, which I've got a whole 13-part introduction to philosophy, if you're interested in going through all of this stuff.
	Would you call it a scientific fact or a scientific theory that God does not exist?
	Do you think you really have proven your theory of non-existence of God?
	I do. Any more than I can prove it, I don't think you can.
	Well, but you haven't asked me for my argument, so you've just...
	You can't prove there is not a God.
	There's no empirical scientific test.
	There's no empirical scientific test that proves the non-existence of God or the existence.
	No, but there doesn't have to be... That they're all matters of debate.
	No, they're not matters of debate.
	There does not have to be a scientific test for the disproof of God, because who proposes is...
	the burden of proof lies on the one who proposes the theory.
	So if I say, I have an invisible spider on my head, and you say, oh, well, I'll just touch it.
	And I say, well, but it can't be touched.
	And you say, well, I'll take an infrared picture of it.
	And I say, well, it doesn't respond to infrared.
	And you come up with all of these tests, and I say that my invisible spider does not conform to any of your tests, then there's absolutely zero difference between me saying that there's an invisible spider and there not being an invisible spider.
	There's no difference. Right?
	So, if I propose that there's an invisible spider and reject every conceivable test, there's no difference between that and their not being.
	I'm the one who, if I claim there's an invisible spider, I have to prove that spider's existence.
	People don't have to run around disproving it.
	And if I say, well, there's no proof possible, it automatically is exactly the same as not existing.
	No, no. The difference is not whether there is an invisible spider above your head or whether there is not.
	The difference is whether you believe it or someone else believes it.
	Okay? If you believe it, the other person does not.
	Just like with religion. I believe my religion.
	The other person believes their religion.
	No, no, no. Remove their religion to you.
	You cannot prove the spider on top of the head to me.
	But if you actually believe it...
	There's nothing that I can do to, you know, to dissuade your belief in this invisible spider.
	And yes, it is the same thing as religion.
	Your belief in the invisible spider and my belief in God is all the same thing.
	You actually did believe it.
	And I understand what you're saying with the tests of it, but you're trying to throw in their scientific reasoning with religion, which is all about faith and non-scientific.
	It cannot be disproven or proven.
	It can be disproven for sure, because if no proof is provided for a knowledge claim...
	See, people confuse, and maybe you do or maybe you don't, people confuse religion, which is the truth statement claim about something in reality, which is that God exists, right?
	If God does not exist, religion has no validity, right?
	So, religion is a knowledge statement So, religion is a truth claim statement about something that exists in reality.
	But people will confuse that with religion is also a belief in people's heads, right?
	But that belief in people's heads is that something exists out there in the real world, or in the real universe called a god.
	That it is a knowledge claim about Existence, it is not a belief in people's heads.
	I mean, of course it is, but it's only a belief in people's heads because they believe that there is this God that's out there.
	So if there is no God out there, if people have not proven the argument that there is a God out there, then the knowledge claim statement about reality is simply false.
	It's like me saying the world is banana-shaped.
	Or it's actually like me saying the world is a square circle that both burns and is fiery and icy at the same time.
	Right, so if the knowledge...
	No, people can point to things that prove the existence of their religion.
	Now, these are, just like you can point to tests of your theory, people can point to things and they can say, well, I didn't actually speak to God, but way back when in my forefathers, grandfathers, grandfathers, grandfathers, someone else spoke to God and they wrote it down, God performed this miracle in someone else spoke to God and they wrote it down, God performed this miracle in front of them, and everyone thought it was great, so they wrote the book down
	Now, you can say that that is evidence and you can challenge that evidence, as you would say that it was just made up or people, you know, bedtime stories or whatever that is, but it is evidence.
	No, it's not.
	It's hearsay.
	Hearsay is not evidence. Depends on what court.
	There is admissible hearsay in the courts in the United States.
	Yes, but not from people hundreds of years ago.
	Because of the way that the hearsay was obtained is reliable, based on...
	And look, none of the religious texts are reliable.
	But even if we accept your premise that...
	According to you, how do you know that?
	Were you there when it was written down?
	Come on, none of it is reliable.
	And even if we say that it is reliable, Then all religious texts are reliable and all gods exist, right?
	No. No, just the one that I believe in.
	How can you say that your religious texts are the only one that anyone else believes in?
	I'm saying that scientific – hold on a second.
	I'm saying in the realm of scientific proof, no religion has been proved.
	There is evidence in all kinds of different people's minds, and all kinds of different people take different ways to different things and claim, this is my religion, this is why it's true, because it says this, or this means that.
	Okay? It's all in that person's mind.
	Based on what they were taught from their, you know, priests or parents and, you know, religious instructors and passed down through the ages.
	And, you know, you cannot disprove it.
	I know you've disproved it in your own head, but you cannot disprove it for other people.
	And I don't understand. This is the reason I originally called, is why does it mean so much that I believe in a God?
	Because you don't. It doesn't...
	I don't care if you believe.
	Why does it matter to you if I believe?
	Well, look, you can believe whatever you want.
	I mean, obviously, you're an adult.
	The problem that I have is when your belief system will cause you to tell things to your children that aren't true, objectively and scientifically, and also, perhaps, if you have a son, cut off his foreskin.
	You see, your beliefs have specific consequences in the realm Of children's lives.
	And your parents, I'm sure, told you that, you know, the Jewish God was valid and true, and there was a covenant with Abraham, and that's why the SNP, right?
	So they told you all of this stuff as if it was true.
	They did not present religion to you in the way that it should be presented to children, which is that these are some fairy tales.
	There's some other fairy tales over here.
	There's no scientific evidence for any of it.
	No truth claim about God has ever been God is a logically self-contradictory statement, which makes no sense in any kind of reality.
	But of course, if parents did tell the children the truth about God, as Christian parents eventually tell the truth about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, then no child would ever make it to adulthood paying money to a synagogue, right?
	If you tell your children that there's this faith system which makes no sense, then they don't believe.
	I'm sorry, the reason I was paused for a second, because I was reading something in the chat room by DJ Cleave out there.
	He says, Atheism is a belief that has taken on the form of merely another religion.
	And I think he is very...
	That's not an argument.
	That doesn't mean anything.
	...because atheists seem to be like, I don't believe in God, and neither can you, and I'm going to prove it to you.
	And as I was saying before, you're missing all of the good points of religion.
	And I think we're seeing that in our society today that has become a lot less religious.
	It's because... Kids will do what they want to do.
	They will search for boundaries until their parents snap them back into saying, you can do that, you can't do that.
	Children will steal if they're not told it's wrong.
	Children will kill if they're not told it's wrong, as we see in our schools today.
	I think what you will see in one good part of religion is that it teaches morals.
	Now, I'm not saying that atheists Can't teach their children the same morals without putting a God-fear behind it.
	But then again, you know, we as adults have used the fear, irrational fears, to be more powerful than we ourselves can be.
	Because we can't be everywhere our children can be.
	So we can't say, well, while you're in school, you better pay attention or I'm going to know about it.
	No, they can say, you better pay attention in school or God is going to know about it.
	Don't sneak out of the house because there's a boogeyman.
	That's more scary than don't sneak out of the house because I'm going to be sleeping in the bedroom and I won't hear a damn thing and you can get lost in the woods.
	You say there's a boogeyman out there.
	Parents have been doing this for years.
	The good parts of religion, is what I'm saying, are the morals that say don't steal, don't kill.
	The parts that keep society in line.
	And as far as upon children's minds, it's a lot stronger to have a god there than a shaking-finger parent.
	Sorry, are you saying to me, and I appreciate your explanation, I really, really do, and I respect where you're coming from, because I think you and I want the same thing, which is a peaceful and happy world, for sure.
	But are you saying to me that if you weren't Jewish, you'd be out there stealing and raping and killing?
	Or if you weren't religious?
	I might be more apt to.
	Right now, my personality is formed at the age of 35, I would say.
	It's mostly formed. So the things that I would do as far as thinking of right and wrong and how I treat my friends and my family and telling the truth, that's already...
	A built-in reaction of just my general demeanor.
	This is how I act, and it's not a thinking of, am I going to do the right thing, or am I going to do the wrong thing in this situation?
	I'm going to do what my instincts and what I normally do at this point.
	But as a child, if I were growing up, maybe with a little bit of that less of the religion and nothing out there is going to stop you no matter what you do, as long as you can get away with it, as long as your parents don't catch you, then, yeah, I think back in the day, When I was doing some of those things, even with, you know, that fear of God in you, as they say, when I was doing some bad things as a kid, I thought about that.
	And some things I wouldn't go further because I think a little bit of that.
	Not only will my parents catch me if the police show up or something like that, but also, is this wrong in a moral sense?
	You know, worldly sense.
	Is this wrong on a level, even if no one will catch me, that I shouldn't do it?
	Right, okay. So you're saying that as a child, you had the impulses to kill or to steal, but you didn't because of your religious upbringing?
	To the lesser effect, I'm saying that if I were to grow up without a religion, maybe I would have stolen more and maybe I would have, you know, gone more down the path that, you know, minor crime leads to major crime and then at the point where I'm 20 years old holding up a liquor store and shooting people because, hey, if the cops don't catch me, whatever I can grab out of the cash register is all mine.
	Okay, but you can test this theory, right?
	Because atheists and agnostics, which, you know, as far as moral instruction from a god, they don't accept moral instruction from a god, are about 16% of the population in North America.
	And so if you're right, then these are people who don't believe in moral instructions from a god.
	And so if you're right, they should be very much over-represented in the prison population, right?
	So instead of there only being 16% of atheists and agnostics in the prison population, there should be many, many more of those group in the prison population.
	Is that a fair way, at least a possible way of testing your hypothesis?
	No, I wouldn't call it a quantifiable, measurable thing, because as there are always going to be maybe environmental or genetic reasons why a person would do a bad thing, that's going to happen in all ways.
	You just made the case for religion.
	But I'm saying there will be a certain percentage, yes, I think that will be more kept in line If I would say, you know, use that term.
	We're kept in line with society by the thought of a god out there.
	And I think that would have some statistical, yes, effect on it.
	But would it be a clear thing that you can test?
	No, because there are going to be people brought up in all kinds of different religions that for whatever genetic or environmental reason, the religion just got thrown out the door and they went nuts.
	Or they were like you.
	They went home from church one day and said, you know what, I don't buy any of this crap.
	But they went along with it for the rest of their life.
	At some point, religion does lose a lot of people as far as the believability of it.
	Right, but the statistics are that atheists and agnostics make up about 16% of the general population and less than 2% of the prison population.
	Less than 2% of the prison population.
	In other words, to be an atheist or an agnostic results...
	I would think that more of the atheists are actually more educated and less likely to be in a situation to violate the law, because the atheists are more out of the university system, let's say, than out of the church system.
	Right, so it's education, not religion, that makes people good.
	So it's education. So you're arguing my point.
	Education has taken the place of religion.
	Sorry, let me just interrupt for a second.
	Let me just interrupt for a second.
	It's the belief that it's taken on the form of another religion.
	It's the religion based on non-religion.
	It's the religion based on everything is quantifiable and everything is in a book or can be reasoned by science.
	Okay, so you realize you're just making stuff up now, right?
	And I hate to point it out, but you say, well, religion makes people better, and then I get you an argument that atheism makes people better, and you say, well, no, it's education that makes people better.
	It's like, well, that's education. I didn't say it in such a good term.
	I didn't say it in such clear terms.
	I said that there's probably a statistical chance that more religious people who actually believe in it will not be a crime.
	But that's the thing. You can never test somebody's beliefs.
	So whether they were raised whatever religion and end up in prison, they can say, yeah, I'm a Baptist.
	And that can't really test their belief because if they were out killing somebody or whatever, maybe they aren't really a Baptist and just go for the show of, hey, my family was Baptist.
	If they don't believe in it, how can you really tell?
	Well, you asked someone what their beliefs are.
	I mean, this is how everybody reports, right?
	I mean, how do I know you're really Jewish?
	I just accept that you, I mean, of course, right?
	I mean, anyway, look, I mean, I think we've mined this one about as much as we can.
	I certainly do appreciate the call, and I, you know, it's very stimulating to have the debate.
	I just wanted to sort of close off by sort of pointing out that this idea that Atheism is another kind of religion.
	It's just semantic wank doodlery to the nth degree.
	If I say, well, I don't believe in leprechauns because leprechauns don't exist, do people say, well, you're just inventing another form of leprechaun worship.
	It's like, no, I'm saying that leprechauns don't exist because leprechauns don't exist, therefore I don't believe in them.
	Right? And I may have arguments as to why leprechauns don't exist.
	But I can make the same argument.
	I can make the same argument.
	I can say God exists, and that's because you don't believe in God doesn't mean that God doesn't exist.
	And it's the same thing. You keep on referring back to your strong belief in the atheism.
	Of the non-existence, which I don't have a problem with, but you seem to have a problem with other people who don't share that view.
	And I think that's a problem that generally comes with religious type of beliefs.
	Right. Well, the problem is you keep referring to atheism as if it were a view or a perspective or an opinion, but it's not the case.
	Atheism is a fact because the requirement for proof lands upon those who propose a positive.
	And it's exactly the same thing that the Christian fundamentalists tell me.
	Jesus is a fact because the Bible tells me so.
	Yeah, that's not at all what I'm saying.
	But okay, I mean, obviously we're not going to get anywhere with this.
	And I really do appreciate the call.
	It was a good workout, and I certainly do appreciate you calling it.
	Do we have any other callers on the line?
	Oh, Jamie.
	Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, are we there?
	Alright, well, just while we wait for our tech guy to recover from his...
	His newly converted Pentecostal mania.
	I just wanted to point out, and I do thank the caller, it was an enjoyable debate, though I don't think we got particularly far.
	But I just wanted to sort of point out that I think it's sort of embarrassing and silly for people to say atheism is just another kind of religion.
	That is... It's just manipulating language in a very silly and embarrassing way.
	And just to sort of repeat the point, if I say I don't believe in fairies, then people say, well, you're just worshipping fairies under another guise, then that to me is just silly.
	Then you're in a no-win situation, right?
	Because if you support religion, then you're religious.
	And if you deny religious Well then, you're religious again.
	It's just silly. We have to have some rigor and strictness and objectivity when it comes to the use of language.
	Atheism means Against theism means the opposite of the proposition that gods exist, right?
	Because religion is different from deism, right?
	I mean, religion in many ways is very, very different from deism.
	There's a whole causal chain that has to occur for a religion to have any kind of validity.
	So obviously, some sort of god has to exist.
	And that god has to have some sort of, obviously, intelligence and some sort of power, and usually it's infinite intelligence, infinite power, and so on.
	And that God also has to have the ability and the desire to reach in, you know, I'm going to do this on the video, reach in and do things in the material world, right, in some way, shape, or form, right? Because if a God exists and has some sort of moral nature and some sort of power, but never reaches in to touch anything in the material world to inspire people with burning bushes and ascending Virgin Marys and coming back to life Jewish guys...
	Then, clearly, nobody would know anything about God, right?
	And so there would be no such thing as religion.
	There also, almost inevitably, has to be some sort of special group that has special access to this magical invisible being.
	And finally, and there's many other chains as well, but finally, this all has to be told, all this nonsense has to be told to children as if it's true.
	Because this is what I really don't respect about theists.
	And this, you know, I'm sorry to say, but I don't respect about the last quarter of Eden.
	which is that I guarantee you that when that man was a boy, his parents did not tell him, well, this is our particular opinion that there is a God, but there's lots of other people who have different opinions that there are different gods, and some people have opinions that there are no gods, and we don't have any proof, and it's all and some people have opinions that there are no gods, and we don't have any proof, and it's all hearsay from people hundreds of years ago or thousands of years ago with mistranslations, and the age of miracles seems to have mysteriously vanished the moment that science
	This is not how religion is presented to children, which to me is the fundamental lie about it.
	Parents tell children about religion as if religion is just completely obvious and true, but then when those parents become, like, they come into contact with an intelligent atheist, suddenly it's all, well, probability, and you can't prove or you can't disprove, it all becomes a kind of weird, dancey opinion. And it's like, well, which is it?
	Is it absolutely true?
	In which case, make the goddamn case for it.
	Or is it just a matter of opinion and here and there and maybe some circumstantial evidence and this and that?
	Well, then teach it to children that way.
	But don't teach it to children as if it's absolutely true and then, when questioned by an intelligent atheist, suddenly get all kind of relativistic on my ass.
	That, to me, is embarrassing.
	And it's really contradictory.
	It's like the counterfeiter guy who, you know, confidently hands out his money to people without a counterfeit detection machine and then gets all kinds of shy...
	When somebody who has a counterfeit detection machine comes along, I would be really happy if religion was portrayed to me as if it were absolutely true so that we could have a real debate about it and people could make the case, and it were portrayed to children as if it was all kind of relativistic and this and that.
	And they said, well, there isn't any God, but you'll probably steal less if you believe that there is, because, of course, no child would accept those.
	So, unfortunately, it's always reversed, and the absolutes are handed out to the defense's children, and then all the caveats in the world are handed out to the skeptical atheists, and I think it's just cowardly to the nth degree, but anyway, we can talk about that perhaps another time.
	Mr. Jimmy Jims, are you back?
	I hear a hissing coming in and out.
	If we have time for one more short call, feel free, if you are not religiously inclined, or if you are, to call in 347-633-9636.
	We have another 20 minutes to this here's show.
	And you can also listen at blogtalkradio.com forward slash PFPMovementRadio.
	Do we have any new callers?
	Are you back in? There is...
	Can you hear me? I sure can.
	Okay, there is nobody on the board right now.
	There is nobody on the board right now.
	Do we have any questions from the chat room?
	Let me see. And just while we're waiting for all of this, and people say, well, you know, why do you get so mad about religion?
	It must be something personal and so on.
	Well, I guess it is a little personal for me, right?
	And not because of my own history.
	I feel I'm pretty, you know, I've taken my rational laxatives to purge me of the God residue.
	I pretty much dumped all of that stuff out many, many years ago.
	The reason that I have this hostility towards religion is the same reason that I would have hostility towards parents Who told their children to never eat vegetables and only eat cheesecake, right? Because that would make the child obese and sick and unwell and so on.
	And I just, I really don't like it when people lie to children about fundamental things, especially things about the nature of existence, the nature of truth, the nature of virtue, the nature of reality, the nature of logic.
	Those are fundamental things that children need to be clear about in order to be happy and effective human beings.
	And when people say, for the sake of their own prejudices and their own culture and the exploitation of the priests among them, That reality is not what it seems, that there are invisible gods out there who judge your every move, and you might go and burn in hell forever if you disobey me, and God doesn't like this, and God doesn't like that, and your people this and all that.
	To me, that's just lying to children about the fundamental nature of reality, truth, logic, reason, and science.
	And children should not be lied to about fundamental things.
	We would be incredibly upset, any rational, moral human being would be incredibly upset about a parent who lied to a child.
	About something like nutrition and exercise.
	And said, exercise makes you fat and potato chips keep you thin.
	Because they would be doing damage to that child's body.
	But in the same way, when you lie to a child about the nature of reality, and about the existence of superstitious beings like gods, you're doing damage to that child's brain.
	You know, I mean, for those who are rationally inclined, we could sort of hear that in the last quarter, you know, with all due sympathy, right?
	You can hear the story changing all the time, right?
	I start by saying, well, you don't like people who impose their religion on you, but your parents impose their religion on you.
	But then that's not the case, right?
	Oh, you say, well, religion makes people good, but there are a few atheists in jail.
	Well, that's different, et cetera. You see, things are just made up, right?
	That's what the child was taught.
	This is what the young man was taught.
	Right? That you can just make up stuff and it becomes true because that's what religion is.
	And you could hear this in the last call.
	You just make things up and then believe that they become true.
	You see the effects that it has on children's thinking.
	They get defensive. They get...
	They manipulate.
	They change their story. They change their argument.
	Right? They substitute volume for a reason.
	Right? Because that's what is taught to children when you teach them That gods and gremlins and ghosts and devils exist when they don't.
	Question from the chat room.
	Yes. David Allen, who was the person on the phone just last, says, Who should decide what truth is to be told to children?
	I think that's an excellent question, but it's not a decision.
	That's like saying, who should decide what medicines are given for a particular ailment?
	Well, it's not a decision.
	It's not arbitrary. You don't just make these things up.
	It's like, who should decide that two and two make four?
	It's not something you make up.
	Reason, empiricism, skepticism, logic, all of these things, the scientific method, philosophy as a whole.
	A devotion to truth at all costs, to that which can be validated through rigid logical empiricism, through rationality.
	This is how children are born.
	This is how children start.
	And I've often made the example, right, that if you give a child an empty box and you say, no, there's a present in it, you just can't see it or touch it, the child will cry.
	Because the child will not believe in something that he can't touch.
	And rightly so, because children are empirical.
	And so you don't tell them things exist unless you have proof.
	And you give them the standards of reasoning and skepticism and science so that they can prove things and know things and understand things.
	So it's not a matter of opinion about what you teach children.
	You fundamentally teach children the methodology of thinking and of reasoning and working from evidence.
	With skepticism. And they can then think for themselves, and you don't have to fill them up with the content of thought, because they have the form of thought.
	When you first learn your times table, at least when I was a kid, you memorized them all, right?
	7 and 7 and 49.
	7 times 7 is 49. 8 times 8 is 64.
	You'd memorize them all. And then the next stage you do is you learn the principles.
	So you don't have to memorize the answer to every conceivable math problem because you learn the principles of mathematics.
	And it's the same thing when you teach children.
	You teach them the principles of thinking.
	After me, you teach them some basics, right?
	Like, it's so hard and you take care of them to keep their environment safe and so on.
	But you teach them...
	The principles of thinking and of reason and of evidence, which they're born with.
	This is not something... I mean, you have to pound religion into children's heads like pushing a helium balloon 2,000 feet underwater.
	That's a freaky thing for children to accept, and that's why it takes so much propaganda to repeat this over and over and over again with children.
	That's why they've got to go to church or synagogue every week or more than once a week.
	That's why they've got to go to Bible camp.
	That's why they've got to have this constantly reinforced with all these dumbass rituals.
	Because it makes no sense to children any more than pretending to play with an invisible toy makes any sense to children.
	They're born empirical, they're born scientific, they're born skeptical.
	You don't give children conclusions, other than the initial first ones, that they should not reason out for themselves like the stove is hot.
	You teach them, right?
	You don't give the man fish, you teach him how to fish.
	Give him fish so he can get the strength to learn how to fish.
	But it's not a decision that somebody makes, like an arbitrary decision.
	It is a recognition that the purpose of the human mind is to work with empirical rationality and reality, and anything else is destructive to the human mind.
	To be lost in fantasy and believe that it's true is the mark of a psychotic, it's the mark of mental ill health.
	It is not the mark of a healthy and strong soul.
	Science, reason, evidence, philosophy, these are The tools that we use.
	It's not arbitrary and it's no one's decision.
	In the same way that when we say, well, how do we treat an infection?
	Well, you go to medicine and you go to the empirical tests of medicine and this and that and the other in order to determine the best course of action for that.
	And if you replace it with a better course of action, it's because of more scientific testing and so on.
	That's where I would start. I think we had one more caller.
	We might get someone in in the last few minutes.
	We have a caller. All right.
	I am all like artists with the dumbbell.
	Hi, um, I just, you know, I was thinking about this last night, and I was talking to a couple people about this, and, you know, it's kind of interesting when you look at it, and you see how common religion is in the world, but then when you think about it, you say, well, obviously there was a point in time when there was no religion, and then somebody came up with an idea, and somehow it got popular.
	And it kind of thinks, well, the first guy who come up with a religion is like, hey, look, I just come up with an idea.
	I saw this God come to me in a vision, or whatever.
	Naturally, the first thing people would hear is, like, hey, you're full of shit.
	So, like, how do you think it could have happened that this one, probably a schizophrenic or something, came up with this idea and everybody, you know, got so popular, because obviously one guy comes up with this idea.
	He's not going to have any kind of power, you know, to convince an entire, you know, group or tribe of people.
	So how do you think that something like that gets so popular?
	And pretty much anywhere in the world, you know, obviously there's religion throughout all the world, throughout all of human history.
	Right, right. Well, I'm no anthropologist, right?
	But let me give you a few thoughts on that, and you can tell me if it makes any sense.
	Because this is all in the realm of, you know, theories.
	I don't think there's any proof one way or the other.
	I would not believe that we started with no religion.
	I think that mythology, the mythology which operates...
	In the unconscious, or what Jung would call the collective unconscious, is very powerful.
	And I believe that the base of the brain stuff, the medulla, the hypothalamus, and all of the places where our deepest instincts and so on cook around, I think that we started from there, a very mythological and primitive place, and we slowly developed the frontal lobes, the higher reasoning functions of the brain.
	And I think that it is a constant process of overmastering the fundamentally psychotic and bizarre parts of our brain, which, of course, every night we dream, we experience these things, right?
	And so I think that we started from a place of mythology and paranoia and psychosis and what would, in modern times, be called insanity, right?
	I mean, if you were able to, I don't know, beam up some early Homo sapiens, he would, if you could communicate with him, he would, by modern standards, be considered completely insane because he would just believe in these things that would make no sense whatsoever.
	I mean, he would have no frame of reference relative to the rationality of the modern world.
	So I think that we started from intense religiosity, and it is a very primitive state of mind that we are attempting to overcome.
	So in the past, people believed that dreams were visiting some alternate dimension, or getting prophecies, or that they had some real world or otherworldly source.
	Now we know that it's not true, right?
	That they're, you know, useful learning activities within the mind, and I believe that dreams have great value in terms of self-knowledge, but we don't imagine that they come in from some other place.
	But of course, way back in the day, people would believe that these dreams were, you know, real visions or visions of another world, or they did astral travel or whatever, right?
	And so, humans don't all evolve at the same time and the same place.
	So we have people who have developed their rational mind and so on, and they're empirical and scientific, and And then we have people who are kind of stuck back in a more primitive way of thinking.
	So I don't think that religion was invented from a rational place.
	I think that we came in our evolution from a very superstitious and primitive place.
	And religion does have some martial value, right?
	So, for instance, if you have two tribes who are at war, and one tribe believes that glorious death in battle gets you eternal life and, you know, 72 virgins or whatever, then people will be more likely to fight to the death, and that may give you some sort of martial advantage.
	So, in a situation of competition for scarce resources through violence, then I can see religion having some martial adaptiveness, Of course, we don't want to live in that kind of world, and so we don't want to have that kind of adaptivity, but I think that's one of the reasons why religions spread, is they usually do spread extraordinarily violently.
	So I think that's sort of one aspect of things.
	I think that there's some evolutionary aspects that make religion support a more violent society.
	We can see that the most religious areas in the world, such as the Middle East, tend to be the ones with the highest incidence of totalitarianism and violence and so on.
	And those countries which are the least religious, like Sweden and like Hong Kong and so on, they have some domestic aggression in the form of taxation and redistribution, but at least foreign policy aggression is not at all strong.
	I hope that gives you some answer.
	I don't think we came from a rational place and someone invented religion.
	I think religion had some sort of martial adaptivity, but this is where we all started from.
	And I think we're really struggling to overcome that and evolve to a more rational and empirical state of mind.
	Alright. Was that useful?
	Did that help at all? Or was that just, you know, me talking to myself?
	Yeah, I don't think it makes sense.
	I mean, like, you know, when I was listening, I was, like, thinking of a metaphor.
	I was like, well, you know, you have a bunch of, like, cavemen or whatever, and they see, like, a thunderbolt hit a tree, and they could easily think, oh, look, there was somebody, you know, they would personify the sky and say, look, somebody threw a lightning bolt on the tree, and they gave us the fire, and look, this fire is going to be useful for us, so there's somebody out there watching out for us.
	And I can see how, you know, if nobody's thinking rationally, they can make sense.
	Because even if you look at psychology, especially with I think that's a brilliant observation.
	I think one of the things that is really a struggle for the species as a whole, which is why I do talk about some aspects of self-knowledge in this show, one thing that is really Fundamental to the evolution of the species is to not project, to not anthropomorphize the universe, right?
	So you and I, we have plans, and we use things, and we have intent, and we have consciousness, and we have purpose, and we succeed, we fail, and so on.
	And so we have an anthropomorphic view of the world around us, right?
	Because we're human beings, right?
	But the growth of science and objectivity and reason is stepping back from that.
	And saying, the world is not me.
	The universe is not me.
	So, I have a purpose, but that doesn't mean that the universe has a purpose.
	I have consciousness that directs matter, but that does not mean that there's consciousness outside the universe that directs the universe.
	It is not narcissistically projecting your personality and your experience upon the universe as a whole.
	That's part of the growing up that atheism is so fundamentally about, when it's rational atheism and not just an irrational hatred of religion.
	When it's rational atheism, it's separating yourself from the universe and saying, well, I am a being with rational consciousness that is specific and unique, as far as we know it, to the universe as a whole, so I'm not going to retranslate a dead and inert, non-living, non-conscious, non-rational universe into who I am, because that's not rational.
	That's like having an argument with a hammer, right?
	The hammer is not you. The hammer is inert.
	The hammer is not conscious. The hammer has no purpose.
	And so it's very easy for human beings, it's terrifyingly easy for human beings to mistake the universe for the few pounds of gray matter we have in our skulls, right?
	And we don't want to make that mistake because it's fundamentally irrational and incorrect.
	The universe is not us and we are not the universe.
	We're part of the universe, of course.
	But the powder or two of gray matter that we have in our skulls is so fundamentally different from everything else in the universe that we know of.
	And it's so easy to look at the universe and mistake it for a human being.
	Well, I have children, right?
	I make children and I care about their well-being and I will reward and punish them, right, according to my values.
	And so we somehow think that the universe is like a parent that gave birth to children and will reward and punishment and punish them based upon the universe's values and we call that God.
	But that is mistaking The universe, for us, it's a fundamental logical error, and it's so fundamental, it's right down at the base of the brain.
	And the people who look into the universe and who see a god are only seeing an anthropomorphic projection of what it's like to have consciousness and then projecting it onto a dead, non-living, non-conscious, non-rational, non-purpose-driven, and inert universe.
	And it's a fundamental error.
	That comes from psychological immaturity.
	It's an inability to look at the universe and to separate who you are from what the universe is.
	Who we are, yeah, rational purpose-driven, there are values and punishment and reward, right?
	But that's not the universe. The universe is just this dead, inert bunch of matter and energy.
	And so I think it's a fundamental maturity that we need to have.
	And science is the first steps towards that maturity, right?
	Which is to say it doesn't matter what our opinions are, it matters what the facts are, right?
	That we're not... We're not going to look at the universe and think that it's us.
	We're going to look at the universe as it is.
	It's the same way that we should look at each other as we are and not as we want each other to be.
	So I think we're just ending up here.
	Thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate the callers.
	It was a fascinating set of conversations.
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