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Aug. 9, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:58:05

1432 Sunday Show 9 August 2009

Religion, agnosticism, fighting couples, and Ayn Rand as a Mormon?!?

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	Hello, everybody. This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	I hope you're doing most magnificently.
	This is the Sunday Philosophy Call-In Show at 4 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time. But I bet you already know that because you'll be here or you'll be listening to this afterwards.
	But if you are listening to it afterwards, you can go to fdrurl.com forward slash call in to get the information for the next time that we are live on The Sunday shows.
	So we're just going to do a quick tech check here and make sure that everything is live baby live, as the NXS album goes.
	And the call-in number, most important, is 347-633-9636.
	That's 347-633-9636.
	And for those of you who can see the video, this is going to start off with some mental gymnastics which are very quickly We're going to flow almost seamlessly into physical gymnastics and I promise when it comes to agnosticism I will try to stick the landing.
	So, thank you all for your very interested support and enjoyment of the True News series.
	There's a great series out there that I do on YouTube which is around healthcare which I think you might find of interest.
	And I thought that it might be interesting to share a little metaphor with you around the question of religion.
	I did put a video out, I think it's True News 48, about how George Bush believes that both Gog and Magog, sinister agents of Satan, I believe, are at work in the Middle East, and he started the war in Iraq as part of God's will to have those forces of evil hurled back into the darkness from whence they came.
	Giving people who have these kinds of psychotic fantasies access to nuclear weapons not such a good idea in general.
	And there was a caller last week.
	I thought about him a couple of times this week.
	He was a Jewish gentleman who had some very interesting arguments.
	Basically, he was saying that you need religion in order to understand ethics to be good and so on.
	And yet the strange thing was that when I actually asked him whether he believed that the Holocaust was wrong, he wouldn't answer the question, or he actually answered it saying, well, it was wrong for me, but it was obviously right for the Germans at the time, and so on, though of course Hitler was Austrian.
	That, to me, is a very significant response, and it's something that you will often get when you talk about ethics with religious people, because religion doesn't teach you ethics.
	Religion teaches you superstition and obedience to purely human authorities, which are infinitely fallible, and it does not teach you ethics.
	Ethics, in the way that I approach it, is a rational, philosophical, quasi-scientific discipline.
	Certainly, I've got to get a free book about this if you're interested at freedomainradio.com forward slash free, But ethics is a philosophical, rational, logical discipline of discovering what I call universally preferable behavior.
	And religion, of course, doesn't teach you any of that.
	It simply teaches you superstitious obedience to purely secular authorities, such as priests and bishops and so on.
	And so, the problem of ethics is not solved by adherence to religious dogma any more than the problems of physics or biology are solved by adherence to the primitive superstitions of sun-baked Bedouins from thousands of years ago.
	So I think it's really important to recognize when something is not solving a problem and to make sure that we don't imagine that we've solved a problem.
	And religion does not solve the problem of ethics.
	And religion does not solve the problem of science.
	It does not solve the problem of knowledge.
	It does not solve the problem of raising children.
	All it does is solve the problem, quote, problem of free-thinking, curious, rational, and skeptical children.
	So let me give you a very short metaphor and I think you might find it useful, at least how an atheist, and a strong atheist like myself, views the question of the transmission of religion.
	So, imagine that I was an elder brother to a mentally retarded, developmentally handicapped, mentally handicapped, younger brother.
	Five or ten years younger.
	And because I wanted his lunch money, I showed him torture pictures when he was about six or seven or so.
	I showed him the torture pictures from Abu Ghraib, and I said to him, Bobby, my younger brother's name would be Bobby in this scenario, and I said to him, Bobby, these people were tortured because you were bad.
	Right? These people with the dogs and with the rapes and with the thumbscrews and all of this, they were tortured because you were bad.
	And you were born bad, and you will be bad, and you will stay bad, and invisible ghosts, I say to my retarded younger brother, invisible ghosts will follow you around, peck out dry balls, and steal your brain if you don't obey me and give me your lunch money.
	And when you die, you will be pitchfork roasted in hell for all eternity if you don't give me your lunch money and do everything that I say.
	Well, if you were my parent and you overheard me telling this to my credulous, wide-eyed, terrified and retarded younger brother, would you not consider that to be absolutely heinous and absolutely vicious and ugly way For me to get my lunch money and the obedience of my younger brother to threaten him with invisible demons when he did not have the power because of his retardation.
	He did not have the power to discriminate truth from falsehood, but he had no choice but to trust in me or to believe me or to accept what it is that I was saying.
	And that is How an atheist views the transmission of religion to credulous, helpless, dependent, and pre-rational children.
	I have no choice. I was shown the gory pictures of the crucifixion when I was five or six years old, and I was told, of course, that this was my fault and I had to obey the priest because I was born bad and so on, right?
	It is just...
	It's just a monstrous and hideous way to transmit vile, psychologically destructive, soul-crushing, shaming, guilting, corrosive, hideous information to others.
	The degree to which these crushing and exploitive superstitions are inflicted upon children is the degree to which I have utter contempt for those who teach this to children.
	Certainly, you know, people have asked me, because I'm a relatively new father, people have asked me, well, are you going to teach your daughter, you know, that the government is this or God is not or whatever, right?
	And no, of course not.
	There's no point in me teaching her conclusions, other than, you know, don't go near the fireplace and, you know, no playing with scissors and so on.
	But when she achieves the capacity to begin abstract reasoning, to whatever degree, around six, seven, or eight years of age, there'll be no point in me teaching her my conclusions.
	That would be to rob her of the joy and efficacy of understanding her own thinking and learning how to reason things out from evidence and first principles for herself.
	I will teach her a methodology I will not teach her the conclusions.
	I will certainly guide her as I see fit if she makes errors, and certainly she may make...
	It's no question she's going to be smarter than me.
	That's no doubt whatsoever.
	And I think that's really important to understand, that when you have kids, it's...
	I'm sorry? Oh, it's coming back.
	We have to call the staff.
	There's a caller? All right, let me just finish this up, and I will take the call in just a second.
	So I think that it's really, really important to teach the methodology, not the conclusions.
	And therefore, since religion is a conclusion, there is no methodology behind religion.
	There's no reasoning, there's no evidence behind religion.
	It is a conclusion. And it is wrong to teach conclusions to children.
	You want to teach them how to do math.
	You don't want to have them just mindlessly recite equations and their answers with no understanding of them.
	And so the only sane way for religion to retain any kind of intellectual integrity is for religious people, religious parents in particular, To not teach their children the conclusions of religion that they are evil, that they are the chosen people, that Christ died for their sins, that they'll burn in hell if they don't obey the priests and the parents, and so on.
	You don't teach kids that.
	What you do is you teach them how to think, and then when they become adults, they can choose their religion for themselves.
	But of course everybody knows that if kids are given that opportunity, They will choose no religion almost every single time.
	So I just wanted to sort of point that out.
	If you think of someone telling a retarded younger brother all of these terrible superstitions for the sake of exploitation and obedience, we would understand just how heinous that is.
	It's much worse with parents and children.
	So that's the view from at least this strong atheist viewpoint.
	So we have a couple of callers, shockingly.
	I hope that at least one of them is calling from someplace upstairs with the clouds and the fairies.
	So, if you'd like to cue the first one up, I would be happy to hear you.
	We have a caller from a 717 area code.
	Ah, 717. I remember you well.
	Hello. Hello. Hello.
	Can you hear me? I sure can.
	How are you doing? I am doing very well.
	Let me see. I have a question for you.
	Isn't atheism...
	Doesn't atheism...
	I mean, there's no real proof that there is no God.
	So, doesn't atheism draw a conclusion?
	That's an excellent, excellent question.
	Did you want to add more to that? I don't know if you want to flesh that out.
	I'm certainly happy to hear more, but that's an excellent question.
	Yeah, if you want to flesh that out.
	Oh, okay. Sorry, I thought you might want to flesh it out, but if you don't, that's no problem.
	I can just do my best to answer it, and you can tell me if I'm making any sense.
	Okay. So the question is, isn't atheism a conclusion, i.e.
	that there is no God? Well, the methodology of reason and evidence, what I would call philosophy, of which a subsection would be something like science, another subsection would be mathematics and so on, but philosophy accepts conclusions, right?
	Because the methodology is designed to get to a conclusion, right?
	So the methodology of the scientific method is designed to get to a conclusion You know, E equals MC squared, the objects accelerate towards the Earth at 9.8 meters per second per second, the world is round, and so on, right?
	So, you can get conclusions from a methodology.
	You just don't teach the conclusions in the absence of the methodology.
	And so, atheism, yeah, it is, certainly strong atheism, is the absolute acceptance of the non-existence of God.
	But that's really based on two things.
	And there's an easy one and a hard one.
	And the easy one is that an atheist doesn't have to lift a finger to disprove God because the burden of proof lies on the person who proposes, right?
	So if I propose something, you know, God exists, the square circles exist or whatever, then I'm the one who has to prove that everybody else doesn't have to run around Disproving things, right?
	So if I say the world is doubling, the whole universe is doubling in size every nanosecond, but the problem is everything is doubling in size so we can't measure it, there's no way to disprove or prove that, right?
	Because every measuring device would also be doubling in size and blah blah blah.
	It's not up to the scientific communities, they don't have to drop everything that they're doing and then say, well, gosh, we have to find a way to disprove this non-disprovable thesis, otherwise we have to accept that it's possibly true.
	No. If I say the universe is doubling in size every nanosecond, it's my job to prove as to why that's the case.
	And if I can't prove that that's the case, it's simply not a valid proposition.
	So the easy answer is that atheists don't have to do anything, because the people who propose the existence of a contradictory being, like a consciousness without matter, life without birth, omniscience and omnipotence, which can't coexist in the same entity, Then the atheists don't actually have to do anything.
	If the theists can't prove the existence of such a crazy being, then...
	It simply doesn't exist, right?
	Because we don't have to do it.
	But the second thing is to say, well, you know, this is a contradictory being.
	Contradictions can't exist in reality.
	There is no evidence for any such being.
	There is no such thing as life without birth or evolution.
	And evolution tends to go from the simple to the complex.
	God, as the most complex being in existence, can't have been the starting point of that life form, because the starting point of life form is amino acids, single-celled organisms, which go out of the complexity of the human mind.
	Sorry, go ahead. If I may interject, wouldn't it be more intellectually honest to be an agnostic?
	Because you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God.
	No, I don't think it would be intellectually honest, but I'm certainly willing to hear the case, if you want to make it.
	That's been my position.
	I mean, I am a theist.
	I do have a religious belief, but that's my own personal belief.
	The problem that I have with the atheist viewpoint is that they are unwilling to concede to the possibility, which there is no proof in either direction of whether there is or isn't a God.
	Oh no, there absolutely is proof that there is no God.
	Really? I would love to hear it.
	I would be more than happy to.
	Well, when someone says God, they don't mean X, right?
	What they mean is...
	Oh, sorry, we've just got to note that the callers are very loud.
	James, if you could see if you could adjust that volume.
	So when someone says God, they mean something very specific, right?
	They don't mean X. They mean consciousness without form, and eternal life, and all-powerful, omniscient usually, or something like that.
	And so when someone says God, God exists, or even God might exist, they're not saying X might exist, which, you know, we can all accept that X might exist, right, if we define X as, say, intelligent life or life on other planets.
	Yes, it certainly may exist, and I would be shocked if it didn't.
	But that is not a self-contradictory proposition.
	But if somebody says square circles exist, we can be sure that they don't, because that is a logically contradictory proposition.
	Like, if a mathematician says 2 plus 2 equals 4 and 5 at the same time, under the same conditions, Then that mathematician is simply wrong.
	I mean, this is completely wrong.
	So when someone says God exists, they're saying a specific entity with specific characteristics exists or may exist.
	They're not saying X may exist.
	And so if they're saying specific characteristics exist, then they have to start providing evidence.
	Like if I say life without form, without material form, exists, then I have to prove that, because in the universe there is no such thing as life without material form, without any detectable form or energy.
	And so life is the presence of matter and energy.
	Now if life has matter and energy, then it's not God, because God is by definition immaterial.
	But life and immateriality is exactly the same as a square circle, or 2 plus 2 equals 4 and 5 at the same time.
	It's a self-contradictory statement and therefore defeats itself the moment that it's uttered.
	But doesn't this move into other planes of existence where such a thing could be possible?
	Well, if you're going to move into other planes of existence, then what you're saying is, That which does not exist in this realm might exist in some other realm, is that right?
	Yes. But then you can't use the word God, because the moment you use the word God, what you're doing is you're ascribing specific characteristics to that which is completely unknown.
	Right, so it's like if you can either say, this is, like think of a television screen, you can either say, this is static, or You can say there's a face in that static, but you can't say both at the same time.
	So if there's some other plane of existence, then there's one of two possibilities.
	Either we will never know about this other plane of existence, because it has no impact on this realm, it will never be detectable, which is exactly the same as non-existence.
	It's exactly the same as non-existence to say there's another plane of existence out there which will never impact this plane, which we will never detect, which we will never be able to observe, which we will never be able to measure.
	That is exactly the same as saying non-existence.
	So either that realm will never be measurable in our realm, or it will be measurable in our realm, in which case we will be able to explore it scientifically, and then we will be able to sort of understand what's out there.
	But nobody can use the term God to describe anything that's out there because that's a positive knowledge claim about life and omniscience and non-materiality and eternity and so on.
	But you can't say anything about these other realms at all because they are, at the moment, Synonymous with non-existence.
	Wouldn't that be saying the same thing as, say, 50 years ago, that there are planets around other stars?
	No, no, not at all.
	There were planets around other stars, but yet they're there.
	Well, sure, but you see, if we had Jesus walking on water in the real world with a halo, turning water into wine and making loaves and fishes out of I don't know, California raisin boxes or something.
	And so if we had a living, breathing, honest to God, born of a virgin, back from the dead, looks like a hippie, you know, Jewish zombie God, and then we said, well, because we have this God right here, there could be other gods out there, well, any reasonable person would say, well, sure, we have this deity right here, and so there could be other deities.
	Now, of course, we're standing on a planet, right?
	And so we have very empirical evidence of a planet Right below our feet.
	And we can see planets around our Sun.
	So we live on a planet.
	We can see other planets.
	We have a theory of the formation of the solar system.
	We can see the planets that didn't make it in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
	And so we can see planets.
	We understand planets.
	We understand where they came from.
	We can see other planets.
	So saying there could be other planets around other stars is Completely empirically, I mean, it would be shocking if there weren't, right?
	So we're not proposing anything contradictory, because we live on a planet, we say, well, there could be other planets like this.
	But there's no evidence of gods.
	In fact, there's every evidence that gods could not conceivably exist.
	And so to say that they might exist somewhere out there and parallel that with something that we have complete evidence for, i.e.
	the existence of planets right now, I don't think is a fair analogy.
	Ah, okay. Do you mind if I ask you a question?
	Sure, go ahead. I mean, I'm really interested, and I'm genuinely interested, and I understand the intellectual sparring is fun as well, but I'm always genuinely and openly and honestly curious about what it would mean to you, and I'm not saying I've won the argument or anything, right? I know that this is a complex argument, but what would it mean to you if there weren't Or even the possibility of gods or devils or fairies or leprechauns or whatever.
	If there wasn't the concept of God, I mean, the caller I had last week felt that he would go out and strangle puppies and stuff like that because, I don't know, maybe he wasn't afraid of going to hell or something, although I think he's from a religion that doesn't believe in hell.
	But what would it mean to you, emotionally, if you don't mind me asking the personal question, I know it's personal, you can answer if you don't, you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but what would it mean for you emotionally if you gave up the belief that there was some monster consciousness out there?
	I don't think it would mean a significant amount.
	I mean, I tend to be a logical individual, though I, like any other individual, I do act illogically at times.
	I've been there. But yeah, it wouldn't have a major effect on me.
	The biggest reason why I do have a certain belief in that direction, and I lean more towards the agnostic, is because I've seen far too many things happen in life that go a little bit beyond coincidence because of the odds of them happening.
	And I can't think of any specific examples right now.
	So you feel that you have a belief, and I certainly appreciate your candidness, but you're saying that you have a belief that there's more coincidence in the world than you feel that you could explain through statistics?
	Yes, yes. Right.
	Now, you know that coincidence follows a bell curve, right?
	So, for some people, there are almost no coincidences, and for other people, there are a lot of coincidences, right?
	Like, some people, most people never win the lottery.
	A few people will win the lottery three times, right?
	And so, for some people, there are a lot of coincidences, coincidentally, in their life.
	And for other people, there aren't coincidences at all, right?
	So, some people might say, you know, I don't know why, I had a dream that I shouldn't take this flight And then I didn't take the flight and the flight crashed, right?
	And that may happen to them every year or every month, right?
	And it just happens to be a mad coincidence that their dreams happened.
	I'm not saying for you it's dreams, but whatever it is, right?
	That these coincidences occur.
	You know, I missed a flight because of X, Y, and Z, and then on the next flight, I met my future wife, right?
	Or whatever it is, right? And everything sort of...
	For some people, a lot of coincidences will stack up in their life, whereas for other people, there will be almost no coincidences.
	And it might be, if we don't understand that distribution, that people who have a lot of coincidences might be more...
	They might tend more towards religiosity or spiritualism, we could say.
	And the people for whom there are fewer coincidences, or at least those who understand the statistical distribution of coincidences, they may tend more towards rationalism or atheism.
	Indeed. And I also, along the line of self-fulfilling prophecies, I realized to look for these and to actively try to search for them, you can actually create the illusion in your own mind of thinking that they're happening.
	It's not by a simple fact of I'm doing that because I'm aware of that phenomenon.
	Right. I don't know if you saw the movie Religious by Bill Maher?
	No, I did not. I mean, I think it's worth looking at.
	He's like, ha, ha, ha, joke, joke, joke, and at the end it turns all kinds of grim, which I think is a little inappropriate.
	Maybe just get me to the room.
	But he talks to this guy who sells religious paraphernalia in some store, And the guy said, you know, I basically became religious when I said, I need rain, and then it began to rain, right?
	And I think we've all had that, you know, of course we don't remember all the times where we say, I need rain and it doesn't rain, but that one time that it does, we get this, you know, we're pattern-making machines as human beings, we look for those kinds of patterns, and so...
	I never want to take away, not that I ever could, but I never want to take away people's sense of wonder and magic and excitement about the glories and beauties and massively exciting coincidences of nature.
	So I don't want, you know, if I were to win this argument, so to speak, I wouldn't want to take away your thrill and excitement about some of the amazing and exciting coincidences in life.
	And I think some atheists go a little bit too far away from the beauty and wonder of the world.
	But I think that There's more beauty and wonder in looking at coincidences without imagining a divine plan and just marveling at how things do sometimes work out or not.
	So I would just sort of invite you to look at your life, try taking away what I would call the god goo or the glue that holds things together, which doesn't really exist, and just marvel at the amazing coincidences and the wonder that can happen in your life without a divine plan.
	Because I think the divine plan takes away a lot of the wonder in it, which is, I think, much more fun to play with.
	I honestly, I've had periods where I am leaning more towards atheism in my life, and I can honestly still see that wonder either way, from my own personal view.
	And as far as winning an argument, the biggest reason why I wanted to call and talk to you about this is because, well, I've been online, and maybe you recognize a screen name, J-A-D-A-M-914.
	I think I might, but go on.
	I've brought this up a couple of times with you, and I think one of the greatest things, and I love what you're doing, is to bring forth the conversation of it and actually delve into it.
	People may not reach where they're going to reach or reach the right conclusions, but things like this help get them there, and I think it's absolutely wonderful.
	I appreciate that. I really do.
	And if you get a chance and you're on YouTube, I did a video called Agnosticism, the Incomprehensible Halo, which goes into this in more depths and unfortunately is not about shooting people on a foreign planet in a video game.
	We have a new caller, if that's okay.
	I certainly do appreciate your call.
	If we move on to the next one, that would be great.
	I think we have someone from the 666 area code.
	Yes, no.
	Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, James.
	Actually, you're close. It's 716.
	Oh! 716, Michael here.
	Hello? Hello? Hello?
	Hello? Hello? Hey!
	Hey! Alright, I want to talk to you about your concepts, specifically forests.
	Alright, so let's do it.
	Alright, you claim that forests do not exist, it's just trees.
	Oh, forests. I thought you said forests.
	Yeah, yeah, forests and trees. Let's do the forests and the trees and the things between your knees.
	I think that's very important.
	So go ahead. Oh, sorry. Let me just do two seconds on that for those who don't know it.
	I say that concepts do not exist in the real world.
	They're mental tanks which we use to fundamentally group similar kinds of atoms together.
	But concepts don't exist in the real world, so I say a tree exists and is, you know, bounded together by strong and weak atomic forces and the cells and so on.
	But a forest does not exist in the same way that a tree does, because a forest is a concept.
	But go ahead. You have objections with that, and I certainly have heard a number of objections to that, so I appreciate you bringing that up, and let's hear what you've got to say.
	Well, first I'd like to ask, do you believe beaches exist?
	Do I believe that beaches exist?
	I believe that sand and water exist.
	I don't necessarily believe that beaches as a concept would exist.
	Okay. Well, I'm trying to think of what the best way to phrase this is, because from my recollection of your Death of Concepts podcast, my interpretation of it was not that they are just mental constructs, but they are false concepts.
	Not that the concepts don't exist, but the concepts are self-contradictory.
	Sorry, no, I'm very much a big fan of concepts, but I think my argument is that they don't exist in the real world.
	And what that means is since concepts are supposed to describe what happens or what is in the real world, if there's any contradiction between a concept and the real world, the real world wins and the concept has to be adjusted.
	So I believe in the validity of concepts, but I believe that concepts must always be derived from, either empirically or logically, that which occurs in the objective world.
	Well, then I don't think I actually disagree with that.
	Yay! Now, you may have a problem, since you brought up the forest and the trees, and maybe we can talk about this if we don't disagree on the other thing, is...
	That people say, well, a tree is atoms that are sort of vaguely clung together in proximity, but a forest is also atoms.
	So how do you get to say that a tree, which is a collection of atoms and cells, exists, but a forest does not, since a forest is just a larger aggregation of atoms and trees?
	And the reason that I would say that is that a tree is a unified set of atoms, right?
	And a forest is not.
	It's just a bunch of things in proximity to each other.
	It's not Like a tree has the same, you know, sap blood vessels, so to speak.
	It has the same water system and so on.
	And it produces the seeds which, you know, grow more of itself.
	But a forest doesn't reproduce as a whole.
	Only the individual things do.
	And the tree is bound together very strongly, as you've ever figured out if you try to build a treehouse.
	Whereas a forest is not, right?
	That's why I call a forest just a conceptual tag for a group of individual things.
	But those individual things themselves are kind of stuck together very solidly and have very particular physical and biological characteristics that are different from the aggregation of them in the abstract.
	Okay, I can't really argue with that, but just because I feel like arguing, I will try.
	Please do. I believe that four speeches and other, even social groups, are an emergent phenomenon of the individual creatures, objects, that come out much like free will is an emergent phenomenon of an incredibly complex set of our neurons.
	Okay, and what you'd like, just for those who haven't done much in the realm of modern physics, can you tell me what emergent phenomenon means when you use that phrase?
	I'm using emergent phenomenon in a philosophical way, an incredibly complex set or interactions which cannot be predicted.
	Hold on a second. Hey, honey, how would you describe the emergent phenomenon?
	Oh, if you're going to ask your wife, it may have been a phrase that you used on your honeymoon as in, hey, I got you emergent phenomenon right here.
	You know, something like that. Could happen.
	I'm sorry, can you say that again?
	No, I won't say that again.
	Please go ahead with your intelligence stuff.
	Oh, I didn't hear what you said.
	My stuff was complete throwaway, so please go ahead.
	Well, I think I don't really have anything else to say on that, so I'll let you go because I actually have to get ready for a barbecue.
	Excellent. Well, I appreciate that, and have a great barbecue, and thank you very much for the call.
	Bye. All right.
	I think we have another caller who is calling from the future.
	Does Rogaine work there?
	We have a call from a 618 area code.
	618? Hello, you are on Free Domain Radio.
	Hello? Hello?
	Hello? Hello?
	Okay, my...
	Oh, yes, he's here.
	He's on the line. Was that your secretary?
	It's very nice when you can get an assistant to work on a Sunday.
	That's unusual. She must not be unionized.
	It's good to know. Okay, sorry about that.
	No problem. Okay, so my boyfriend in here are on the line, and we want some advice, relationship advice.
	I will do what I can.
	I will certainly help if I can.
	What's the issue?
	Okay.
	Okay, how do we find?
	Does it involve an emergent phenomenon?
	I'm just kidding. Because I think there are pills for that.
	It kind of involves blogs.
	I'll get overwhelmed with anger or something like that and I'll get distant and things like that and I'll go in the other room and things like that.
	And we went to therapy together, like couples therapy, and they said it was something like emotional flooding or something like that.
	Sorry, emotional flooding?
	Was it flooding? Okay, go on.
	It's like hormones or something, and your body gets overwhelming or something like that.
	I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what the guy said it might be.
	And I'm guessing that that didn't exactly solve the problem for you?
	No, because when I tried to go in the other room today, I didn't...
	I didn't say I need a break or something like that.
	I just got up and left, kind of, and she got worried, I think.
	Well, in the first second, like the split second, I felt fear and then I became angry and defiant or something and tried to stop him from leaving.
	But then he just went to the other room.
	So I went there and I started asking him, like, what is your goal in doing this?
	Well, I mean, sorry to interrupt.
	I mean, as you know, I'm certainly no psychologist or therapist, but I do think that philosophy has some very useful things to say about relationships.
	So we'll try taking a few ideas for a spin.
	This is all just theory and nonsense, but it might be helpful.
	Do you mind if I call the guy Bob?
	I hope it's not your real name, just so I don't have to keep saying you with the dangly bits.
	Okay, so Bob, can you tell me a little bit about the history that you had growing up, if you did have any history with it, with the kind of aggression that you feel that you display in the present?
	Did you see, when you were a kid, people acting out in this kind of way, or was that around at all when you were growing up?
	Yeah, my mom, she got kind of distant from my father sometimes, and my father would comment on it and things like that.
	She wasn't like she used to be, and she didn't want to get her picture taken, and she was just distant, I guess.
	All right, but that's not the same as the issue that you're having.
	You're having more of a blow-up, is that right?
	But your mother's distance is...
	I'm just trying to sort of understand if there was any precedent that you had for how to behave this way.
	Yeah, my father was also like, he would explode sometimes, I guess.
	I think that...
	Now, when you say that you guess, I'm not sure whether...
	He did. He did?
	Okay, okay. And would you say that there are some similarities between your father's expression, for want of a better word, of his temper and the way that you acted today or other times like today?
	Well, he wasn't exactly quiet.
	He didn't get quiet like I do.
	He would like yell and stuff like that.
	I get more quiet.
	Oh, so I thought you had more blow-ups, but what you're saying is you have more shutdowns than blow-ups, is that right?
	Yeah, but... It's not quite a blow-up, really.
	It's more like a shutdown.
	We just feel awful about it.
	We're not sure how to, like, you know, grow past it.
	Well, Bob, if I can call you Bob, what is it that you think would happen if you didn't Shut down or withdraw emotionally.
	What do you think would happen if you continue to express what you actually thought and felt during these times of conflict?
	Well, the thoughts that go through my mind are like, the thoughts that come up are like, I want to punish her by being silent or something like that.
	Okay, and if you were to say, sorry, if you were to say, because I've got this free book on relationships, which I don't know if you've read or not, but I sort of go for You know, real radical honesty in the moment, right?
	So if you were to say to your significant other, if you were to say, I feel a really strong urge to shut down right now because I'm so angry, I want to punish you by not talking to you, that's an honest statement of what's happening, right, for you in the moment, right?
	Yes. That's why it's called real-time relationships, because it's about talking.
	There's a philosophical virtue called honesty, which is, I think, essential for any intimate relationship.
	It's around being honest in the moment.
	Acting out is when you're not honest in the moment, but you just act on what you're experiencing, but you don't say.
	What you're experiencing, right?
	So some guy who's angry who throws things, he's acting on his anger, but he's not saying, I'm really angry, because if he could say it, he wouldn't throw things, right?
	And if you can say, I feel an incredibly strong desire to withdraw from you because I'm angry and I don't know how to express it and I want to punish you because I'm mad, that's a way of being really honest with your partner in the moment.
	I know that's a really, really quick, I'm not saying that's a full solution, but does that make any sense?
	Yes. And it's that focus, that focus on, you know, continually opening and unpacking your heart in the moment that is so essential in relationships.
	Because if we don't do that, what we do end up doing is we end up doing this weird kind of dance, you know?
	We end up doing this kind of manipulative thing where we're trying to achieve an effect by kicking people under the table or doing puppet master things or trying to achieve whatever it is that we want to achieve through kind of weak and indirect means rather than directly saying, This is my experience.
	And if you have the urge to withdraw, and you say, I have the urge to withdraw, you've successfully resisted the urge to withdraw by speaking it out openly, if that makes any sense.
	Yes, I think so. And the book is free, and it's an audiobook or a PDF, or it's a couple bucks for the print version, but the audiobook, I think, is the best way to I really do think that that commitment to honesty in the moment is so,
	so, so important when it comes to fighting these impulses that we have to be manipulative, to withhold or to act out.
	All of these things around avoiding What is really scary for us, which is saying what we feel in the moment, right?
	I feel like withdrawing.
	I feel like hurting you because I'm so angry.
	If we say it, it doesn't actually happen.
	But if we don't say it, it does happen in ways that are just, you know, really negative for the relationship.
	Right, so if you walk out of the room, and if you don't do it, your partner should do it, right?
	I think, right? Because we are not all perfect in relationships, right?
	But so if you can't summon the whatever, you know, the swinging ball sack to say it in the moment, then your partner can say, I feel...
	You know, I feel really scared.
	I feel this. I feel that.
	And through that really honest communication of what your partner is experiencing, it can really open you up to being honest about what you're experiencing.
	And when we're honest about it, we don't end up manipulating.
	Because manipulating is, you know, it really hacks at the root of the relationship and should be avoided at all costs, in my opinion.
	Yeah, I have a problem.
	Like, if I say that I feel like punishing them in the moment, I try to calm down instead of saying that.
	I don't know.
	You have to reassure people.
	You say, I feel like punishing you, but not because you did anything wrong.
	It's around avoiding conclusions.
	I feel like punishing you, but not because you did anything wrong.
	It's just, this is what my feeling is.
	It doesn't mean that it's true. It just means that was what my feeling is.
	Honestly, unpacking our heart All the time.
	That is intimacy. You can't be intimate with someone if you're not honest about what you're thinking and feeling.
	And I always try to help or suggest to people avoid jumping to conclusions.
	You know, well, I'm mad because you didn't do the dishes or I'm mad because we never have sex anymore or I'm mad because you spend too much money or whatever.
	When you have the because, you have a conclusion that doesn't actually give the other person a voice.
	So if you just say, well, I'm mad and I don't know why.
	I have this impulse to say, it's because you spend too much money or whatever, but I don't think that's true.
	I don't know that that's true.
	And this is when I became mad and this is what happened right before I got mad.
	These are really involved, deep and really enjoyable conversations.
	You know, when you talk about what you're feeling, With respect for the other person, without inflicting a judgment or a conclusion on them, if you talk about what you're feeling, it really can be incredibly illuminating, deep and rich and bonding conversations,
	because through that process, you get to know someone in a really deep and intimate way, because you get to see into their heart Without all the fireworks and storm and stress of defenses and manipulations, that's an incredibly intimate and affectionate and loving thing.
	And that's what I would really urge when you get these kinds of strong feelings.
	Maybe it's hormones, but it's not like that doesn't really solve anything in my opinion, but to just keep talking about what you're feeling without jumping to a conclusion about the why.
	Because when we have the mystery, we can continue to explore until we get to the real root of the problem.
	Because my solution to relationship issues Is not to just white-knuckle it and say, well, I'm really mad, but I'm going to count to 100, I'm going to take a fistful of quaaludes, and I'm going to flush my head in the toilet until I cool off, right?
	That's not the way to solve things.
	You need to get to the root of the issues, which may be deep in your history, may be deep in your heart, and that only comes through patient and curious honesty in this way.
	Hey, Steph, I... Stop talking, because we still have problems.
	Sorry, go on. Okay.
	I... I feel annoyed because my partner wasn't giving a whole lot of information.
	We did read RTR and stuff like that, and we were in total agreement with all of that.
	What happens is like our basic failing is we can talk about our feelings in almost other situations, but occasionally we hit this point or I don't know.
	We can't do that.
	Usually, what occurs is, like Bob said, he'll withdraw.
	Maybe it's Bob. He'll withdraw, and then I'll try to pursue him.
	I really don't like doing that.
	Okay, would you agree, Bob, that on occasion I've told you how I was feeling?
	Yes. I don't think you responded to it.
	Yes, sometimes I don't.
	Yes, here. Yes, sometimes I don't respond to it.
	Right, that's fine. Right, so this then, if I can call you Sally, right, so then what you do, Sally, in my opinion, is is you say, when you don't respond to it, I feel X, and now I'm feeling Y. RTR is not like a tennis game.
	You know, you RTR, and then I RTR, and then you RTR, and then I RTR, because that's surrendering your commitment to honesty to someone else's reactions.
	RTR is just hitting the gas on truthiness.
	It's just hitting the gas on the truth.
	RTR is, I'm going to keep telling you how I feel.
	Now, if you respond, great, then I'll tell you how I feel about you respond.
	And if you don't respond, then I will tell you how I feel when you don't respond, but I'm just going to continue to tell you how I feel about what you're doing in the moment.
	I'm going to just keep doing that, I'm just going to keep doing that, I'm going to just keep doing that.
	And that is, I think, the best way to end up changing these kinds of patterns, right?
	I mean, you have to change patterns in relationships, and we all have patterns that we get stuck into.
	I mean, I do, you do, everybody does.
	But the way that you break that pattern is, you know, so let's say that he gets angry and withdraws, and then you say, well, this is...
	You don't run after him, because that's acting out in the same way that he withdraws.
	You say, this is what I feel that...
	It seems to me like you're withdrawing, or I feel this in the moment, right?
	And he'll either respond honestly or he won't.
	And if he doesn't, then you can say, well, now I feel this...
	And I'm not sure why.
	And you just keep saying what is occurring for you without manipulation, without a desire for effect, without conclusions, but say, this is what my experience is of this situation in the moment.
	And you just keep doing that.
	And you keep doing that until you break through.
	Or break up, which obviously is not what the ideal thing is, right?
	But you have that personal commitment to be honest with the people in your life about what you think and feel, your experiences, your preferences, your likes, your dislikes, your loves, your hates.
	And you just keep being honest and keep being honest.
	It does not require that other people participate at any particular moment.
	Your commitment to honesty is your commitment to honesty.
	If your other partner is not reciprocating in that way, Then they're just not reciprocating and that's going to cause you to feel something else.
	But your commitment to honesty is not dependent, like a tennis game can't work if the other person doesn't hit the ball back, but this is not the same as that.
	This is just a personal commitment to honesty and openness and vulnerability in a relationship.
	And so if the other person doesn't respond, you just keep telling them how you're feeling.
	Because otherwise, you do a little bit of RTR and then you wait for the other person, and then it doesn't work.
	But you just keep doing it, and keep doing it, and keep doing it, because that is your commitment to honesty, if that makes sense.
	Yes, that makes sense. One problem that I have is in that moment, when I'm getting withdrawn and she tells me her feelings, it's like it makes me angrier sometimes.
	It's like, if she tried to do that, I'm worried that I might, like, just keep withdrawing instead of trying.
	Well, but as you know, right, the option is not to...
	I mean, you have the option to withdraw, because we have the option to do anything we want.
	We can put our hands in blenders if we want.
	But... If you have the commitment, because look, if she has the commitment to honesty, and you don't have the commitment to honesty, it seems to me unlikely that things are going to work out in the long run, which is a real shame.
	I mean, relationships should be happy, close, and intimate, and good, right?
	Okay. So, you just say, if you feel the urge to withdraw, what do you say?
	I feel the urge to withdraw.
	It is so easy, isn't it?
	This is what RTR is so easy, and yet it's so really, really, it's like UBB. It's so hard.
	But it's so incredibly difficult at the same time because all you actually have to do is say what you're actually feeling.
	That's all you have to do, right?
	And I know it's really hard because we have these urges to withdraw, to manipulate, because we're afraid so often of that direct intimacy or we're afraid that if we show vulnerability we're going to be put down or rejected or whatever, whatever, whatever, right?
	But if you say, well, I have the urge to withdraw, you have a choice.
	You can either then just withdraw Or you can say, I have this real...
	I mean, an urge to withdraw is not a feeling, right?
	The feeling is fear or the feeling is anger or really fear of what the anger will do.
	And so you just talk about what you feel.
	And if you don't know what you feel, which can certainly happen sometimes, then what you talk about is your physical sensations.
	I feel a tightness in my chest.
	I feel a knot in my belly.
	I feel pounding in my forehead.
	My hands are shaking. Whatever it is that's occurring for you emotionally, if you can't get to the actual feeling, You talk about the physical sensations, which will very often give you a pretty significant insight into what you're actually feeling, but it is just talking about that experience rather than acting the feeling out without communicating it, if that makes sense. Okay, okay.
	It's really important.
	It is an act of slowing things down in relationships.
	Because when we act out, we escalate very quickly and things move at light speed and we can't figure out what's going on very often because things just accelerate so quickly.
	If we kind of slow things down, you know, take that deep breath, you know, just say, okay, hang on, hang on a second.
	I don't know what I'm feeling right now, but I feel really anxious.
	I started to feel anxious when you said this, which is not your fault.
	This is just what I began to feel.
	And then it really escalated when this happened.
	And I feel now like I can't, I don't even want to be honest.
	I want to run away, which is not fair because...
	You know, it's not you. These are my feelings.
	You know, it's just, it's slowing down, concentrating.
	You know, you can close your eyes. You can look inwards.
	You can concentrate on what it is that you're actually feeling and then speak it to the other person, right?
	And they may reject you.
	They may laugh at you, right?
	But if they laugh at you, then you say, well, man, when you laughed at me, my heart sank.
	I felt nauseous.
	I felt my teeth rotate.
	My eyeballs went round and round in my head.
	Whatever it is that you're feeling or experiencing as a sensation, you just continue to talk to the person about How you're feeling while interacting with them.
	Okay. I know that's a lot of, hopefully, somewhat useful information, because, obviously, there's no way anyone else, I think, can...
	I certainly can't solve your problem, obviously, right?
	But what I can say is that, in my opinion, and, you know, I'm not going to say it's proven, it's just an opinion, but in my opinion, this kind of just teeth-gritting honesty is the best way to carve through to the core Of what is going on in relationships.
	I mean, so often people fight about stuff that just doesn't matter.
	You know, like, who did the dishes?
	Who took out the garbage? Blah, blah, blah.
	Who did this? Who did that? Who didn't put up the fence?
	Like, all of that stuff is not what it's really about.
	What it's really about in relationships is fear, abandonment issues, anger issues, you know, family history issues, and so on.
	And I sort of really urge people to not Focus on the conclusions like it's because you didn't do the dishes, but focus on the feelings because that will get you to the real root of the conflict as quickly as possible.
	And when you get to the real root of the conflict as quickly as possible, it's amazing how permanently you can solve it.
	Hey Steph, I have one more question for you.
	Yes, and I just got a reminder because I am not an experienced radio dude.
	We'll take your question in just a sec.
	The call-in number is 347-633-9636.
	So it's 347-633-9636.
	And please, go on with your question.
	Okay, so there are some people in my ecosystem at this point who are not committed to the success of the relationship I'm in with Bob.
	I'm so sorry. I just missed a few words that were really key there.
	Could you just start that sentence again?
	There are a few people in my ecosystem who at this point are not committed to the success of my relationship with Bob.
	They are convincing me that maybe I should just kind of end this and just go into therapy and You know, learn from this.
	And maybe if it works, you know, once I get better, if I want to, and if he wants to, we could try again.
	And I just wanted to know what you thought about that, because they are pretty loud voices.
	There is a part of me that wants to continue, and there's a part of me that isn't so much as afraid to continue.
	I've been where you are on more than one occasion.
	First of all, I sympathize with you both.
	Obviously, you care for each other and you want things to work out, but there's stuff that's...
	You want to sail north, but the wind is heading south, and it's really hard to tack.
	So I really do sympathize.
	And no one, obviously, me least of all, but certainly not your friends or your family, in my opinion, can tell you Whether you should stay or not in your relationship.
	And again, not a psychologist, but I would give you what I have found the most valuable for me, and maybe it will make sense to you.
	I would say that the sooner you can come to a decision, because it's really tortuous, isn't it?
	One foot on the dock, one foot on the boat.
	Do I stay? Do I go?
	Is it working? Is it not? Do I pull out the investment that I've got in this relationship and start with someone new?
	Do I continue down this road and maybe waste more time if it's not going to work out?
	It's really a tortuous and mind-consuming decision.
	My suggestion It has always been the same, and you know, it seems to work, and you can tell me, obviously, if it does or doesn't.
	But my suggestion is always that you're in a relationship.
	If you don't want to leave it right now, then you want to get to whether it's going to work or not as quickly as possible.
	And the only way that I know how to do that is to be honest and open and vulnerable 24-7 with the person, right?
	And have no defenses.
	Okay. Have no agenda, have no manipulation, have no, you know, well, if he does this, then maybe I'll do that.
	Don't hedge, don't give 51% and see if he'll match you or whatever.
	Just be generous, be open, be honest, be vulnerable, be curious.
	Express what you're thinking and feeling in the moment and just see what happens, right?
	Because I think if the relationship's going to work, then...
	That's necessary.
	Honesty is necessary in a relationship.
	I don't think that's a particularly radical statement.
	But it's not a relationship if you're not honest.
	So honesty is really, really important.
	Honesty will either cause this relationship to work or it will cause it to not work.
	But it will get you there very quickly.
	And the worst case scenario is it doesn't work, but you've had Weeks or months of practice being really honest in a relationship, which will only serve you well either in therapy or in your next relationship or both, right? So I really always just strongly advocate honesty, honesty, honesty, openness, openness, openness, curiosity, vulnerability, because that will get you to whether it's going to work out relatively quickly.
	I don't think there's a faster way to get it.
	And either it works out, which is great, Or it doesn't work out, but at least you've got the practice of being really honest and seeing where it leads, and then you can avoid that kind of situation, you know, if it doesn't work out in the future.
	It will be really helpful for your future relationships, and it certainly will accelerate therapy if you've got that habit of talking about what you think and feel in the moment without rushing to judgment.
	Right. Yes, that sounds very good.
	Thank you. You're very welcome, and if you do get a chance to post on the board or let us know, you can say Bob and Sally and let us know how it goes.
	And again, as I always say, a really good therapist is really essential to this kind of process.
	So if you can dig up someone who really works or if you found the person that you talk to is helpful, then I would stick with that.
	But yeah, I would just make that commitment to...
	Life is too short to be manipulative, right?
	We want to...
	To seize as much honesty and openness and vulnerability as we can in this life, because that is where the really electric, deep, and beautiful connections are.
	And that's what we want to gather to our hearts in our short catapult through this life.
	So that's what I would really focus on.
	Thank you so much for the call. It was very interesting.
	And I hope that my opinions were somehow.
	Thanks again, Steph. All right.
	Do we have another call? Yes, we do.
	A caller from, oh, wait a minute, hold on.
	Yes, from 540 Area Code.
	540? Oh.
	Mordor, go ahead.
	540? Hello. Hello.
	Hello. Am I on the air?
	You are, near the air.
	What can I do for you? I've got my computer turned down, so I can't tell.
	Yeah, 540 is in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia.
	But anyway... I just had a question about, you know, I don't want to get into the issue.
	You were talking about ethics earlier.
	You know, that's a broad subject.
	I don't want to get into relativism, subjectivism, and so forth.
	But I do, I am interested, with the last caller especially, you talked about opinions and feelings and so forth, and I believe this and I believe that, or I I think this or I think that.
	What I'm trying to understand is...
	And I appreciate what you're saying, too.
	Even though I am a theist, I can appreciate what you're saying.
	I just think...
	And as a theist, I think the duty of Christians, or theists in general, is to...
	I just want to ask your question, what do you think on this?
	I think that our major problem as theists...
	I don't see it as a problem, but I see it as an obstacle as an apologist, is to, and this is going to get very technical maybe for some people, and maybe you can flesh it out and make it easier and understand, is the phenomenal and noumenal world.
	It's to break down Kant's wall, in a sense, or Hume's gap, if you want to say.
	But, you know, what do you think about the concepts of the Of an a priori structure of, you know, human reality that is based on sense perception.
	It cannot only be based on sense perception, but there has to be an aspect of sense perception, and there has to be, you know, even...
	I want to throw this in before you answer that.
	Even... Excuse me.
	I'm thinking of Hume all of a sudden, but I'm trying to think of content.
	Because Kant's critique of pure reason, as you know, was revolutionary 300 years ago.
	I mean, it was a shot heard from the philosophical world, in a sense.
	But anyway, that's my feeling.
	And I majored in philosophy also at the University of Virginia.
	But anyway, what do you think about that concept that Kant said that His argument left—Kant was an agnostic, he said, because he felt that his argument actually helped the Christian faith or helped the faith in general because it left room for God.
	Even Stephen Hawking says his concepts of physics leave the concept for a room for a God.
	I've thrown a lot at you, but anyway.
	Go ahead. Sure.
	To break down the technical aspect, to some degree, is that Kant said there was a sort of more immediate sense perception, but then there was this higher neomenal reality, which can be roughly analogous to, you could say, the world spirit of Hobbes.
	Certainly it would be analogous to Plato's forms, right?
	So the question that philosophers have wrestled with for quite some time is, how do we develop concepts?
	And there's two main answers in philosophy.
	The first is, I see a whole bunch of chairs when I'm a kid, and I eventually figure out what they're for, and my sense perception gives me the, you know, like, four legs, a seat, a back, or whatever.
	And that's how I know what a chair is.
	And the problem is, the reason that that is so strongly resisted by theists, and philosophical theists in particular, is because if concepts are derived from sense perception, then God is an error.
	Because God is not derived from sense perception.
	There is no sense perception that will ever give you evidence of a deity.
	And so the Lockean view, or the Aristotelian view, is that we derive concepts from a blank slate mind, so to speak, by observing things in the world, and then we figure out what they have in common, and we develop these concepts.
	But that nukes things like governments, it nukes things like gods, and a whole bunch of other What I would consider to be nonsensical or anti-rational things.
	And so when this empirical view was really gaining traction in the 16th and 17th and 18th centuries, Kant was a reactionary.
	You say it was revolutionary. I would say it was retrograde because it's throwing people back to a more primitive and superstitious time where they believe in an overmind because really that's what the higher reality is.
	And so he had to express intention of saving Religion from scientific rationalism, from objective principles, from reason and evidence, right?
	Because if you go with reason and evidence and sense perception, there's no such thing as a god or a forest or whatever, right?
	Doesn't mean the concepts are invalid.
	But Kant specifically made it his mission to save the world of Platonic forms through this new aminal realm and so on.
	And You studied it perhaps more recently than I did, but is that a fair characterization of the two?
	If sense perception is only one aspect of human knowledge, and there's another higher realm of human knowledge, as Plato would argue, he'd say, well, why do we know what a chair is?
	Well, before we were born, we were floating in a perfect world of forms, and we saw the perfect ideal chair, and then when we look around in the world that we live in, we then see a chair, and we have this vague memory of this higher form, and that's where A gods, or a god, could live in this realm of higher form.
	So they say, well, sense perception is only valid for the material world, but there's this other world, this higher world of ideals and pure thought and platonic forms and new ominal realms and so on, and that's another aspect of knowing, and that's how we come to know god, which obviously everybody accepts there's no sense perception for.
	But we know God because of this high realm, and it's not just God, but there's other things as well.
	The nation-state, as Hobbes would say, a divine will manifesting itself through a race or a religion or something like that.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	No, I mean, with all due respect, unless you're creating a new philosophy of your own, and yes, I agree that I personally, as my own opinion, You will hear philosophers say that Kant bridged the rationalists and the empiricists, okay? I don't think that.
	I think that Kant was an empiricist on the rationalists.
	And you say you're a pure rationalist.
	No? Well, I mean, it depends how you use the term, right?
	So rationalists, I used to mean reason and evidence, but some people use rationalists in the Cartesian sense.
	That, you know, there's a world of thought that exists somewhere outside of our heads, like this Plato's world of forms, and that it is through pure reason that we can create an understanding of things and we don't need evidence.
	So, I am very much into science and empiricism and arguments, rational arguments from first principles.
	I completely, totally, utterly, specifically, and almost contemptuously reject This higher world of platonic forms and the new aminal realm and so on, I consider it a vestigial superstition from the infancy of our species.
	I do not consider it to be valid in any way, shape, or form scientifically, logically, empirically, or in any way, shape, or form philosophically.
	I would not say that it is valid at all.
	In fact, I spent a good deal of my philosophical energies battling against this concept that there's an alternate realm of knowledge, a higher realm of thought, Or anything like that.
	To me, if it can't be rationally deduced, if there's no physical or sense-based evidence for it, it no existee in any way, shape, or form.
	I'm not willing to create an added, alternative universe where that which doesn't exist in the real world can be claimed to exist in some other realm.
	I just reject that hook, line, and sinker, top to bottom, back to front.
	So whatever you want to call that, it's tough to create a movement after me because my last letter of my name is silent, so nobody knows, right?
	Somebody called it Stethics, which I thought was pretty funny.
	But yeah, that's my approach, that I would specifically reject these high-relevant forms.
	Can I make one last comment?
	There is one thing that Kant finally did say that he could never, and I want your view on this, he did say he could never...
	He could never reconcile this with his own views of agnosticism or atheism, whatever you want to say, was the teleological argument, the argument from design, that this universe runs too perfectly.
	Everything runs on time.
	Everything is too perfect in this universe.
	Everything is too... It works too great.
	I mean, 365 days a year, 24 hours, nothing changes.
	The orbits don't change. The way that we revolve and go around the sun, it's not going to change.
	Everything is perfect, in a sense.
	As an atheist, how would you defend against this heliological argument?
	Right. And so, for those who don't know the argument, it is that, you know, if the Earth were a million miles further away or a million miles closer to the Sun, we couldn't have the right temperature.
	If the Earth was a little bit larger or a little bit smaller, we'd have too much oxygen or too little oxygen in the air to support carbon-based life forms.
	And, you know, if the specific gravity of water was slightly different, right?
	So it's almost like everything has been designed to create a human being.
	And so, We can't accept that as pure coincidence because there are way too many coincidences that result in human life for us to say this is simply blind accident.
	Is that a fair, again, I know it's a complex argument, but is that a fair summary of it?
	Oh, he must turn his computer back on.
	So let's assume that it is a fair summary and you can tell me if it's not.
	But I think that it's not, I don't think it's even a bad argument.
	Because a bad argument, That's something that Dawkins says about a really bad theory.
	It's not even wrong.
	It just doesn't make any sense.
	So, let's just say there's some, you know, water molecule or whatever, right, and it's in the depths of the ocean, and then it is sucked up through evaporation into the clouds.
	It bonds and has some sort of nasty weather sex with a dust particle.
	Turns into a drop of rain, and it falls down, and it goes splurp, right?
	On the not-so-small target of my large forehead.
	Well, that raindrop is going to sit there if it were conscious.
	And let's say that it really wanted to land on my forehead.
	It would say, my god, think of the odds against me landing on Steph's speckly forehead.
	I mean, it's a tiny target and blah, blah, blah.
	And so that one raindrop that does fall on my forehead is going to be that much more likely to say, my god, someone guided me to that forehead because I really wanted to go there and boy, the odds of me actually hitting it were just so tiny and blah blah blah.
	But the reality is that some drops of rain are going to hit my forehead and those drops of rain aren't designed to hit my forehead, they just do.
	And there are billions and billions and billions of other raindrops that don't come anywhere near my forehead.
	And in the same way, we can look at the universe and we can say, well, yeah, this planet has been so coincidentally there that it produces life.
	But what about Mercury?
	What about Venus, which is coated in a heavy haze of acid?
	What about Jupiter, you know, a gas planet three-quarters on its way to becoming a second sun?
	What about the moon? What about, you know, the 10 billion asteroids out there in the asteroid belt?
	The maybe planet Pluto, all these kinds of things, right?
	If God wanted to create a universe that, or a God wanted to create a universe that was supposed to support human life, then why on Earth is there so much of the universe that doesn't, right?
	Like the infinite spaces between the planets, the even more infinite spaces, if you'll pardon the mathematical error, the even more infinite spaces between the stars, right?
	Stars themselves! Obviously, they can't support life because they're so wicked hot.
	I don't think we want to mistake the raindrop falling on the forehead as some sort of plan, because if that was the plan, if all the raindrops fell on my forehead, I would be impressed.
	But it is certainly not the case that the world was designed for us to live on it.
	It's just that the world happened to be in such a situation that life could and did develop.
	And there wasn't an asteroid that blew up the world or anything like that.
	And the sun didn't go supernova and so on.
	And so because we happen to be on this incredible coincidental planet, it seems like the drop of rain that falls on my forehead, it seems like a plan.
	But when you look at the universe objectively, I mean, it's just plain not.
	I really don't.
	I mean, with respect, I really don't know how that answered the teleological argument with great insight, necessarily.
	I don't know what...
	I mean, you only know these things because astronomy tells you that these things are true.
	You know, we've never been up there.
	We've never been to Venus.
	We've never been to these planets. However, Having said that, and what I'm saying is also going on...
	I'm going on the basis of science as well as you are.
	And I'm using what we know to be as a basis.
	But, you know, to say that other planets don't have life, as far as we know, I mean, is not necessarily an adequate argument, I don't think, against the I mean, that's your own opinion, that if God wanted to create a world, then why does he inhabit all the places?
	I mean, that's kind of a...with respect, that's kind of a silly argument against the teleological argument.
	I mean, we're talking about guys, you know, you're a philosopher, I'm a philosopher.
	These guys debated these things for centuries.
	And to say that, you know, those are your reasons against it Even Kant couldn't do that.
	So, anyway, but...
	Well, but you understand, you haven't actually advanced an argument against anything that I've said.
	All you've said is that it's wrong, which is not philosophical, right?
	And remember, these guys were writing before there was any coherent theory of the origins of the universe, when the majority of the human population believed that the Earth was 6,000 years old, and before, you know, the great breakthrough of secular humanism, which was evolution, right?
	So, they lacked An argument as to, or an understanding as to how life could arise in the absence of a divine creator.
	And the watchmaker argument that the eye is so complex, it could only have, you can't have a watch Without a watchmaker and so on.
	But we're on the other side of that now.
	We've had the secular, rational, philosophical, scientific breakthroughs of quantum physics, of evolution, of some of the origins of the universe theories, which people are still working very hard on.
	So the teleological argument arises again from the infancy of our species when we simply had no concept about how these things could come about.
	But science has fantastic explanations about how all these things came about.
	The necessity of having any kind of divine hand in the equation simply doesn't exist.
	There's simply no need for it.
	I can certainly understand why in the 18th century, or even the first half of the 19th century, people would have a big problem with understanding this stuff and would be tempted to put a god in the machine, so to speak.
	But, I mean, it's not necessary anymore.
	We have more than enough understanding to accept How all this stuff came about and the complete unnecessary input from any kind of ghost or divine being.
	Well, thanks for taking my call.
	I appreciate it. I appreciate it as well.
	You brought some very, very interesting points.
	Thank you. All right.
	I think we have another caller from 540.
	I believe that's Hawaii.
	Actually, no, it's 415.
	415! So close to me and yet so far.
	Go ahead. Hey guys, this is Bean in San Francisco.
	Oh, hello from San Francisco.
	How are you doing? I'm doing fabulously, thanks.
	So, Stefan, I had a question for you regarding your thoughts on objectivism.
	I imagine you're pretty familiar with the writings of Ayn Rand and especially Um, Atlas Shrugged since it's become like the biggest hit ever now.
	I am a huge, huge, huge fan of objectivism.
	I am a monster. You know, I worshipped at the feet of the Rand for many years and still hold her in extraordinarily high esteem as both an artist and a philosopher.
	So, you know, I think she was just a living goddess of rational thought.
	I mean, yeah, she made mistakes in my humble opinion, yes.
	Lord knows, I'm sure I have as well, but just so you know, I'm very familiar with objectivism and have massive, massive respect for it.
	And abstract, I think, is just a work of stone genius.
	So that's just to tell you where I'm coming from, but please go ahead.
	Well, it sounds like so you kind of sort of like her.
	Oh, more than like her.
	I mean, I think she's fantastic.
	I think she had some weaknesses in ethics and politics, but You know, compared to the sum total of her achievements, that's like saying the sun has some sunspots and therefore it's dark.
	So, no, I am a huge fan of the Rand and, you know, massive props and respect for what she did.
	And if I can do, you know, a hundredth of it, I'll consider myself.
	It's a well-lived life.
	Yeah, no, I concur. And I actually got your passion because you dived right into that conversation.
	So I obviously knew right away that you are a huge fan of Ryan Rand.
	And where I was going with that is, you know, Atlas Sharks has become very popular as of late, which, you know, I read that back in 10th grade, which, you know, without giving away, well, I might as well.
	That was like maybe, when was 10th grade?
	17. So about...
	Yeah, 20 years ago.
	And since then, you know, you met very few people in that day that had heard of Ayn Rand, forget read Atlas Shrugged, which is a humongous book, as big as Gone with the Wind.
	But unfortunately, you met more people that had read Gone with the Wind versus Atlas Shrugged.
	So now, that being said, it's like now it's made this huge comeback, and it feels like there are a lot of people waking up, and Glenn Beck says that constantly.
	I don't know how you feel about Glenn Beck, but I'm thinking perhaps you feel about him the same way.
	That you feel about Ayn Rand.
	But, you know, he's been saying a lot about the fact that there are people waking up.
	There's a lot of doubt, fear, uncertainty, and doubt regarding the new healthcare plan.
	And I'm kind of going off on a tangent here.
	But what I really wanted to ask you was, Alice Shrugged was a serious, and I think this is the reason why a lot of people are buying this book off the shelf right now, is it was a serious preview into what's going on right now in our quote-unquote free market.
	The free market was taking a nosedive into socialism, in my opinion, and I think a lot of people's opinions, and I'd love to hear yours.
	And so, you know, what are your thoughts?
	I'd love to hear what you've got to say regarding The so-called dive into socialism, as well as the departure from free market into a very, very big government.
	Well, I mean, I think it is the immediate and essential issue of the times.
	And, you know, in my personal opinion, you know in Atta Shrugged is that amazing machine That John Galt invents, which draws electricity out of the sack in the atmosphere.
	I never quite understood it, but it was like a magic machine that was invented that he left in the ruins of the 20th century motor company.
	Very subtle metaphor, Miss Rand.
	He abandoned it because he didn't want the looters, right?
	He was gone with the wind, was like, frankly, my looters, I don't give a damn.
	But he left that behind and just abandoned it because he didn't want to give More wealth and energy and power to the looters.
	That's how it worked in the book, if I remember rightly.
	And to me, that's computers. Computers are what this static electricity-generating machine was in that district.
	They just allowed the looters to last another generation.
	They simply wouldn't have been able to do it without computers, because computers have made people incredibly more efficient.
	This is how we're, of course, talking.
	And computers, of course, unfortunately, everything that the free market creates is raped by the government and used and turned down on the people, right?
	So computers are invented by the free market, and the Internet is certainly commercialized by the free market.
	And what does the government do?
	Well, it then ends up with deductions at source and incredibly complicated tax programs and ID trackers for people and so on.
	So everything that is invented by the free market is handed over to our masters and used to further enslave us, which is why you simply can't have a government, you can't have a small government, because they'll just take over whatever the free market produces and use it to enslave people.
	So I think that why has it been, what, 50 years or 60 years since Atlas Shrug came out?
	The reason that society lasted as long as it has, the reason that the looting thugs have ruled as long as they have, is because, I think, fundamentally because of the creation.
	Of computers and a few other things, but I would say computers in particular.
	And so I think that that's why it's lasted so long.
	I think it's important to recognize that it's important to be precise about the terms that we're using.
	And these are very broad ways of looking at it, but socialism is private profit and private industry.
	Sorry, sorry. Socialism is public profit and public investment.
	Labor, right? So if the government owns the doctors, right?
	If the doctors all work directly for the government and the government sets all of their wages and they, you know, like the post office or whatever, then that's more on the lines of socialism.
	But where there's public money and private profit, that is really in the realm of fascism and where sort of private corporatism sucks the money out of the government teats and the blood out of the citizens' veins.
	So I think it's really important to focus on the technical terms and being correct.
	What is being proposed in the United States, which is government funding with private industry and collecting a good deal of the profits, is really along the model of fascism.
	It's completely unstoppable, you know, in my opinion, because people have just become so broken, so much despair, so much disillusioned, So shattered that they can't stand up for themselves, and they're just looking like pitiful puppies to grab whatever crumbs spilled from the master's table, and they wouldn't dream of rising up philosophically and intellectually and fighting this stuff at its source.
	And so I think that it's going to happen for sure, but the way that I see statism at the moment, if you've ever seen, I think it's Terminator 2, where the Terminator goes into that vat It's just trying to come up with whatever crap it can fling at people in order to get more power because the ship is going down.
	Making up whatever lies they can make out because everybody gets deep down that there's no way the system is going to last.
	There's no way. What is the deficit in the U.S. at the moment?
	It went from four or five hundred billion to 1.3 trillion under Obama.
	I mean, come on. Government is taking over banks and government is taking over car companies.
	I mean, this is the end of the road for statism.
	This is the end of the road for statism.
	This is why we have to continue to, I think, shout as loud as we can.
	That the problem is violence.
	The problem is force.
	The problem is brutality. The problem is the gun in the room that nobody talks about.
	So, I think Ayn Rand was prescient.
	I think she was, you know, I virulently and vehemently disagree with the solution at the end of Attle Shrugged, which is to rewrite the Constitution like it's a magic spell that can stop bullets.
	I think that she could not get to a state of society, which is where she needs to get to, right?
	The non-initiation of force is No government.
	That is the fundamental corollary to that axiom.
	She couldn't get there for a variety of reasons, and I've got a whole podcast series on this in the premium section about why I think she couldn't get there, which is, again, just my opinion, with all due respect to her genius, but I think that Ayn Rand is dangerous because she so accurately identifies the problems of violence, and then as her solution, she says, we need a better government, and I think that's a tragedy, and it's, you know, an error that I'm doing my own Best in my own small way to try and counter.
	But I think that she was just magnificent.
	I think that the expansion of the government has nothing to do with providing health care.
	It has everything to do with just trying to grab as much money before the whole system collapses, which is what, in many ways, the war is why the war has lasted so long.
	So those are my thoughts on it.
	What do you think? Oh, I'm sure I lulled her to sleep.
	Is she back? Is she going?
	Wait, wait, sorry.
	Are you guys looking for me?
	Yeah, I was just wondering if you had any additional thoughts that you wanted to add.
	I sort of was spewing out my random bits of brain candy.
	So it's really unclear on the phone.
	I think James, you'd asked for feedback previously regarding the quality of the sound.
	On the phone, so I'm on my cell phone right now, but it's nothing to do with my cell phone provider.
	On the phone, the quality of voice really sucks, but I could barely tell what you were saying, Stefan, and then I went on to Blog Talk Radio, just online, which has a bit of a delay, so I was still listening to what you were saying, but I had my phone to my other ear in order to make sure I didn't miss a question or something like that, so it's a little confusing.
	Well, I'll tell you what...
	I'll put this out as a podcast, and you can listen to that.
	It should be out tomorrow or the day after, and the sound will be fine, because I'm recording sort of the mic from home.
	So then you can give me some feedback if you want, either on the board or by email, which I could read out in another podcast, if you had any additional thoughts about it.
	I mean, I think everybody should read Ayn Rand, but I think everybody should read Ayn Rand and focus not on the conclusions that she had, but rather on the methodology that she had, reason and evidence and the non-aggression principle.
	Yeah, I think I could tell a part of what you said, because now I'm on my cell phone.
	But she definitely had some really intelligent thoughts.
	I mean, forget that. The woman was a genius, in my opinion, way ahead of her time.
	And, you know, when I read that back in 10th grade, I read the first 50 pages about twice.
	I couldn't get through.
	Like, my brother gave me the book because he thought I would really love it.
	And I went through, you know, the first few pages the first time, the second time I went through 50.
	The third time, I actually got through the whole book, because once I got past the first 50, I was hooked.
	That being said, you know, there are places where I thought it was kind of rigid and very, so much idealistic that I don't know it could come to terms in a real society, because unfortunately, everybody's not an idealistic So you've got to find a balance of some sort.
	But that being said, you know, you get that question all the time, which is, if you could have dinner with one dead person, who would it be?
	- Yeah, and I think a lot of, I prefer the Fountainhead to Atta Shrugged, 'cause I think Atta Shrugged is, I think she bit off a little more than she could chew, which is again, just a personal opinion.
	But I think that's a good question.
	I think that's a good question.
	I think the stuff that I found the most interesting in Atlas Shrugged were the family relationships between Hank Reardon and Lillian and Hank's brother and his family and so on, where the ethics of the family was really explored.
	The degree to which someone's personal freedom was tied into their relationships with those around them, that's where I got an enormous amount of value out of Atlas Shrugged, and even more so than The Fountainhead.
	Because in The Fountainhead, you know, Howard Rourke is just born, like John Galt, he's just born this perfectly pure human being, and there's no struggle, and there's no self-knowledge, and it's just perfect, right?
	And she, of course, would say, my characters are not prescriptions for action, she was a romantic, so she put out these ideals.
	But, you know, when you think about Abbott Shrugged, at least when I think about it, I couldn't, I mean, this, you know, I don't run railroads, I don't have anything to do with politics, I don't, you know, I can't change the world that way, and I don't think anyone can except for the worst.
	But what I do have is, or what I guess I had, was relationships with people in my life who, according to the values that I held, were not honest, didn't have integrity, and in many ways were corrupt.
	And what I got out of Atlas Shrugged, which I think is, you know, everybody looks at the big political stuff and the economic stuff, and that stuff is fantastic.
	But what I really got out of Atlas Shrugged in terms of my own journey towards freedom was the constant emphasis to look at your personal relationships, to look at your personal relationships, to look at your personal relationships.
	And that's where I began to really put a lot of my efforts in as a philosopher and as a thinker and as an actor in my own personal relationships.
	You know, Hank Reardon tries for the whole book to reconcile things with his wife and his family and continually is rejected and exploited and humiliated and put down and so on.
	And then he finally gets that his freedom is freedom from corruption from those around him, not freedom from the state, which we can't achieve.
	But we can achieve freedom from the corruption of those around us if they can live more honestly and so on.
	And so I think that people focus a lot on the big brain-spanning Economics and politics and monstrous stuff of the whole world in that book.
	But what I got out of it was what I could do in my own life, in my own personal relationships, to either make them better or to view them as optional.
	And I think that's a very underappreciated aspect of Ayn Rand.
	Everybody loves to focus on the big intellectual, philosophical, economic, political stuff, which we can't really do anything about.
	And everybody just kind of likes to go past or step around.
	Her continual focus in all of her novels, from We the Living to Anthem to some degree, to The Fountainhead in particular, and to Atlas Shrug almost exclusively, her focus on liberty within your personal relationships as a foundation or a condition for liberty within your life.
	And I just thought that's what I really focused on and really got out of, which I could actually act on, if that makes any sense.
	You just hit the nail on the head there when you said look at your personal relationships because personal relationships could be friends, people you work with, anything really.
	The relationships and the people that you keep around yourself are so very vital to your own mindset during a daily routine or just during your life.
	I concur. I think that, you know, maybe you actually hit the nail on the head because I never thought of it that way, but she does put a lot of emphasis on the people and in the lives of people in her, you know, the characters in her book, like Dagny and Hank, and they only socialized with people that were on their...
	On their level of, you know, the way they thought, they were on the same level of thinking and the mental frequencies were matching.
	So, yeah, I think you just pretty much hit the nail on the head and we take it a lot into the business world, but it's very personal and, you know, when you're passionate about your business and you're passionate about what you do, well, it's personal.
	Right, right, right.
	And that's the stuff that we can actually have some effect on and that's where our values can really gain some traction.
	And she was constantly saying that if you live out of integrity in your personal relationship, it doesn't matter where you live with integrity elsewhere, you're still going to be unhappy.
	So Dagny and Hank and the other people who lived with incredible integrity in their business relationships and lived without integrity in their personal relationships were miserable.
	The professional successes did not make up for the lack of integrity in their personal relationships.
	And that, I think, was something that Rand was continually focusing on.
	And again, I think it's unremarked because people want to avoid that stuff in many ways because it's the most challenging aspect of philosophy is one's own personal relationships.
	The relationship between values, integrity, and those people that we have in our lives is really, really tough and complex.
	And people like to focus on the abstract stuff we can't do anything about rather than the really personal stuff that we can have an effect on.
	But that's what I really got out about The Shrug was not to run for office and, you know, Hear, hear! I concur!
	Amen! Amen!
	Testify, Assistant! Well, is there anything else you wanted to add?
	I certainly do appreciate that.
	It's a great call and I'm always happy to talk about the great Rand because she was a huge, huge foundational inspiration to me as a thinker.
	Well, no. That conversation could go on forever.
	I have a lot I could say about her philosophy, but I think you really nailed it.
	I don't have anything to add.
	I just say, I mean, thanks for being out there.
	You sound like a really strong and good voice out there.
	Well, I appreciate that, and thank you very much for those kind words, and I guess it's nice to hear from another 27-year-old.
	Just kidding. All right. Well, thank you very much.
	Do we have another caller, or is it time for Ramble Tangent Spittlefest?
	It is time for ramblings.
	Ramble Tangent Spittlefest.
	We've got 23 minutes to fill with verbiage.
	Of course, we have 36 people in the FDR chat room.
	Let me read out the number once more in case anybody wants to call in.
	And put on the BCF Hakalorama hat.
	The number, the call-in number, we have time for more questions, comments, criticisms, whatever you like.
	The number is 347-633-9636.
	That's 347-633-9636.
	Okay, no ramblings. We do have a caller from an 818 area code.
	Call, you're on the air. 818, you wear a palindrome.
	Please, go ahead. Sorry, I couldn't quite hear it.
	Did you ask what I'm wearing? Just kidding.
	I'm wearing a t-shirt and sweat.
	There is a caller. 818.
	There is a caller. Can you hear me?
	Echo. Steph, you so sexy.
	Yes. Oh, wait. No, sorry.
	This is on video. People can hear me.
	See me sitting there. All right.
	Well, I will continue and we'll see if this person will drop it.
	And it's sort of based on what this last intelligent young lady was bringing up around Dunrand and what we were talking about there.
	You know, I mean, people, you know, get a little surprised when I talk about, you know, personal relationships and so on.
	And I think it's interesting. I mean, philosophy has had a lot to say about personal relationships and love and intimacy and so on ever since the symposium, which was a book that Plato had Socrates speak for him, which was written, I don't know, what was that, 2400 years ago?
	So I think that is something that it's important to remember.
	Philosophy has a long history of trying to bring virtue to bear in this sphere where we have the most effect, which is in our personal relationships.
	Voluntarism within the family is something that people are surprised to hear me talk about.
	It is not a new thought.
	It is quite a common thought, particularly in libertarian circles.
	I was thinking of reading a part of Murray Rothbard, who is in many ways the patron saint of anarcho-capitalism, wrote an essay called Kids Live, where he basically said that kids have the right to leave whatever families they find displeasing, which I certainly wouldn't.
	But that was a very strong position within libertarianism.
	And that is surprising.
	But it's still surprising to me when I talk about that.
	I don't go that far, as he goes.
	I think that displeasure is not a significant reason for ditching long-term relationships, like familial ones, or discontent, or whatever.
	I think it's much more serious than that.
	Hayek, when I say the state is an effective family, Which, you know, you can go into podcasts if you want to find out more about that statement.
	This is something that Hayek, F.A. Hayek, Friedrich Hayek, Nobel Prize winning economist, was continually talking about.
	He said the central problem that people have is they look at the state as if it is like a family.
	They look at social organization that is as abstract And as compulsory as the state and they mistake it for the family, right?
	So he would say, families are all communist, right?
	It's, you know, from each according to their ability, like I do podcasts, get donations and feed my baby, and to each according to their needs, right?
	She can't make money, she consumes, right?
	So the sort of communist aspect of things is what happens when people think that the government should be like the family.
	And so when I say that state is an effect of the family, that is something that is pretty well accepted in many, many circles, and some very, very intelligent people have said exactly the same thing, it's just that for some reason, you know, and I guess not for some reason, because this medium allows me to say to people sort of live or whatever,
	I talk about volunteerism, so people get more upset about it, but there is a very, very strong tradition, both in philosophy and particularly in libertarianism, We're focusing on volunteerism and virtue in relationships, and it is a central core, and I would say the most important aspect of Ayn Rand's writing is the focus on the relationship between philosophy, virtue, values, and one's personal relationships.
	Sorry to interrupt, there was a caller?
	There is a caller, and let me just finish this sentence, which will take me about 12 minutes.
	To focus on Where we can bring our values to life the greatest, which is not in battling abstract monsters like the state, but in attempting to gain intimacy and attraction and virtue in our personal relationships.
	So it is something that a lot of people have written about and talked about, but I guess the technology has allowed it to become a little bit more immediate through this show, but it certainly is not.
	I don't claim originality for all this stuff at all.
	All right, we have a Koli Koli Collarbell.
	Hello. You are on Wyoming.
	Oh, hi. From Wyoming.
	Go ahead. I have a kind of a scenario question, and I know that this is an old topic for you and it's been beaten up, but I'm just kind of interested.
	I run through scenarios with a stateless society, and I come up with my own conclusions most of the time.
	But just a little scenario for the bad guy that gets kicked off into Never Never Land because he won't cooperate with any of the DROs.
	Can't buy food. He's been living in the forest.
	He gets tired of that.
	And he walks onto Stefan's roadway.
	And what do you do at that point?
	Do you use force to remove him?
	Or do you push him onto me, Shepard's grocery store?
	How do we get rid of that person that is imposing on us without using force or violence?
	Well, so, I mean, the real question is not so much around this DRO-less vagrant, but around trespassing, right?
	Breaking up a little bit, what was that?
	Sorry, the question really is around trespassing, right?
	Yes. If there isn't an easy solution of, you know, move ten feet over and everything is okay.
	Right, well... Because I'm a believer in property rights, and if some guy was standing on my lawn, I'd go down and talk to him.
	Like the other day, I was playing with Isabella, and some guy just showed up standing outside the French doors that lead to my backyard.
	He's just standing there.
	And I was like, okay, who the hell is this?
	So I opened the door.
	I didn't shoot him, and I didn't call the cops.
	I opened the door and said, Can I help you?
	And he's like, oh yeah, I've come to reseed your lawn.
	We have a contract, because it's a pretty big lawn, and we have a contract for people who come and sort of seed our lawn.
	And they do fertilizer and all this kind of crap.
	I don't know what the hell. I tried to do it once and ended up balding my lawn worse than my forehead.
	So I would just ask the guy, and it turns out he was there, or if he said, I'm lost, or I'm crazy, or Jesus led me here, or whatever, then I would obviously be a little bit more cautious, and I might call My representatives, right?
	So if I live in a house, I'm going to have a DRO company and there's going to be some contract which says, look, if someone comes onto your property, don't shoot them, right?
	Because that's really expensive for DROs to deal with, right?
	That's a whole lot of mess.
	Yeah, they don't want you to shoot him, right?
	What they want to do is to resolve the matter as peacefully and as humanely as possible.
	So they would say something like, you know, if someone comes into your property, look, if he breaks into your house and he's wielding a machete, you can shoot him and, you know, we'll stand by you, right?
	Obviously, right? Because they don't want to restrict people from basic self-defense because the whole point of the PRL is to not restrict that.
	So they would say, look, give us a call, right?
	And just about everyone would, right?
	I don't want to, you know, some crazy guy is, I don't know, whacking himself in the nads with nanchucks on my front lawn.
	I'm just going to call someone because I'm not...
	A big one for those kinds of confrontations.
	I'll go to the wall for ideas, but when it comes to fisticuffs, I'm sort of like an anime Japanese schoolgirl character.
	So I would call my DRL. My DRL would come along and they would say, what are you doing?
	And whatever. And if the guy refused to leave, then yeah, they would be justified, in my opinion, in using force to move him Off of my property.
	There's not much point having property if everybody can wander onto it, right?
	So I don't believe that you shoot someone leaning on your fence, right?
	That to me would be completely immoral.
	But if somebody is acting in an invasive or dangerous way on your property, then absolutely, people have the right to get that person off your property.
	I would generally prefer it if my DRO would use a tranquilizer dot or something, some way of disabling the guy without pain.
	And the reason for that is that Human fallibility is fundamental to life.
	Everybody makes mistakes and people can misinterpret, people can fly off the handle, people can do things which seem sensible in the moment and turn out to regret.
	Like if I shot this guy in my backyard and it turns out that he had a right to be there because I had a contract with him to receive my lawn, then I would be guilty of murder, right?
	And so the DROs would very much be around recognizing mistakes can be made And so doing the least invasive, least problematic, least violent thing that they could do to solve the problem.
	If it turns out some guy is mentally ill, then you don't want to shoot the guy, right?
	You want to get him back to a hospital or to some sort of facility where he can be taken care of.
	Sorry, go ahead. In this scenario, in my crazy scenario that I've come up with, this is a person that Where does the DRO move them to?
	They take them to Mr. Johnson's property, and Mr.
	Johnson says, I don't want them either.
	This is a person that's been cast out of society.
	Do we go and look for the commons forest?
	I believe in our perfect society there wouldn't be a commons forest.
	Every square inch of land would be owned by some private forest.
	Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
	No, sorry. There's no way that every square inch of land would be owned.
	I mean, do you realize that in the United States, The human-populated areas represent about 2% of the whole country.
	Right. Right, so there's no way, like, for instance, up here in...
	Like, for instance, there's no way that in Alaska everybody would own everything, because most of it, who cares, right?
	It's just ice and wildflowers, right, and caribou drawings, right?
	So there's no way that everyone would own everything.
	There would be some land that would just be not worth having, not worth being, right?
	And so this guy would have to have some kind of home.
	He would have to have some kind of base, right?
	I mean, he's not likely to just be wandering around in the woods, right?
	Or if he was, they'd say, well, where do you wander around?
	He'd say, oh, wander around in these woods.
	And they'd say, well, nobody owns those, so we'll put you back in those woods.
	Or if he has a little home in the middle of nowhere, they'd say, listen, don't come back, and we're going to drop you off at your home, right?
	But there's no way that everything would be owned.
	Maybe... I don't know, maybe in Monaco or something where, you know, it's just, I don't know, Luxembourg where it's really small.
	But there's no way that every bit of land is going to be owned just because, I mean, so much of land is just not worth that much to anyone.
	It's too remote. There's no roads.
	There's no farming or whatever.
	Okay. Okay.
	Well, thank you for your time and insight.
	And as always, thank you for providing such wonderful brain food.
	I really love it. Thank you.
	That's very, very kind. I do appreciate that.
	And, you know, just as a general principle, unless...
	James, do we have another call?
	Pardon me?...on 818.
	Do we have any other callers to be done?
	Let's see if we can bring in this 818 area code, see if they're alive.
	All right. Palindrome me, baby.
	818, are you there?
	Are you miming? Is it Morse code?
	I hear a breathing. I really do.
	No, that's me. Have you fallen and you can't get out?
	All right, so if you want, we can squeeze in one more caller.
	347-633-9636.
	We have time for Bruno, more caller.
	She is using flags, that's right.
	She may be attempting to land a plane.
	Oh, here we go. Maybe she thinks this video is two-way.
	Eric Code 208.
	208. All right.
	Hello, it's Stefan Molyneux.
	You are live, baby, live.
	Hello. Am I on the air?
	You sure are. Hi there.
	My name's Cindy. I'm from Idaho.
	James Cox is pushing me to call in because I have a few viewpoints that might be interesting to you guys.
	Please do. I totally agree with Ayn Rand.
	I've read a few of her different works and her philosophy on capitalism.
	However, I think she's 1000% off on her take of God and religion.
	And the reason why I say that is because I think that At the time that she wrote her books, not much was known about my particular brand of faith.
	And if she would have been introduced to my particular brand of faith, then she would have actually joined my church.
	And what is your particular brand of faith?
	What was that? And what is your particular brand of faith?
	I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
	Right. Okay. Go on.
	And why do you think that Ayn Rand would have been a fan of the Mormon approach?
	And also, one, her philosophy about original sin, I believe, is 1,000% correct.
	She was completely right on with original sin being a load of crap.
	To tell man that he is born in the whole and that he has to make up for all of the wrongs of mankind throughout his life is completely ludicrous.
	In fact, Mormonism is exactly opposite that.
	When you are born, you are pure, and you are literally a child of God.
	And so you have within you the seeds of Godhood.
	And that part of it makes me think that It's in line with Ayn Rand's philosophy, because we can become great, and what we do makes us great, and it sets us apart from all the other species on the planet.
	And to have that inside of us, that power to become God, and this is just basically a proving ground for us that we can go on to greater things apart from this life, I think would totally fit in line with her philosophy if she were still alive and had a chance to learn about it.
	Well, I'm going to play, if you don't mind me using the phrase, devil's advocate position.
	And I'm not going to do the voice of Ayn Rand, because that's really tough on the throat, both Russian and a heavy smoker.
	But I think that because she rejected original sin, and Mormonism rejects original sin, I don't think that means that she would be in favor of Mormonism.
	And again, I'm not going to obviously speak for her, but this is sort of the way that I would view it.
	So, for instance, you and I would...
	Reject human sacrifice, right, in the name of religion.
	I'm sure that we would both consider that to be not a good way to show your love for the Almighty, right?
	But just because we would both reject human sacrifice doesn't mean that we would be a fan of every religion that does not perform human sacrifice, right?
	Right, so just because you both reject original sin doesn't mean that she would be a fan of Mormonism, because...
	Well, there's other reasons.
	There's a whole lot more about Mormonism that...
	Well, for one, you know, I had this conversation with James yesterday about atheism and anarchy, and how I think that, in his mind, if one religion or if many religions are bad, then all are bad, and if one government or many governments are bad, then all governments are bad.
	I don't believe those conclusions can be made.
	I think that there is one good religion on this earth, and I think that there is one, or at least there used to be, one good government on this earth.
	However, our leaders of our country have corrupted it, and it has gone vastly astray.
	But I think that there are good things other than, you know, the fact that there's no original sin.
	Like, for example, just the fact that we can progress.
	This life is not just all about the here and now.
	It's a step, and what we can become has a lot to do with what we do here, yes, but there is more to the story than just this part of it.
	And Christianity, unfortunately, has a lot of mistruths in it, and so do all other religions of the world.
	They might have some truths, like, for example, you know, Muslims don't believe in drinking alcohol, which I actually think is a good thing, and Mormons believe that same thing.
	However, other religions have a tendency to, you know, put their own truths into them, which aren't really true.
	Like, for example, How Muslims practice polygamy and they downgrade women.
	I don't agree with that. But there are churches out there that have more truth than others, and there is one church that has more truth than any other church on this earth, and that's mine.
	And I'm just saying... Okay, and, sorry to interrupt, because, I mean, you raise a very interesting question, and I'm sure you're aware that everybody who's in a church believes that their church has the most truth than other religions have.
	Well, actually, you're wrong.
	Most people don't. They treat religion like it's a fraternity.
	They treat, oh, you're just supposed to come and agree with me on this.
	Well, there's actually a way to know the truth, and that's by asking God himself, what a novel idea.
	You know, if there is a God, and if He does care about you, then He should actually desire to answer a prayer and let you know about His existence.
	A lot of people, that thought doesn't even occur to them.
	I'm not asking you... So, sorry, sorry, if I understand it correctly, what you're saying is that the Mormons ask God what the truth is, and God tells the Mormons, and either Christians don't ask God what the truth is, or they get some wrong answer.
	A lot of the times they don't.
	They pick the church based on whether it is located to their house and if they like the pastor or not.
	They don't pick the church based on, are these doctrines true?
	They don't even think on those doctrines.
	How do they know whether the doctrines are true?
	You can study and you can pray.
	But don't you think that all religious people study and pray?
	I mean, certainly, I know that Muslims study like crazy, and they pray five times a day.
	I've had many conversations with Catholics, and their answer is, that is not something we're supposed to understand in this life.
	And that's baloney.
	I personally think that reason and logic are gifts from God, and that most Christians ignore those things, and they act as if they can't work in conjunction with faith.
	But actually, they're wrong.
	Reason and logic are gifts from God, and they are meant to get you closer to God.
	But it is through the misapplication of those tools that lead men astray.
	Okay, so can you tell me a Mormon argument based on reason and evidence that is not followed by some other religion?
	Baptism for the dead, for example.
	In the New Testament, there's references to baptism for the dead.
	And the reason I picked that one is because Jesus was baptized and he said that, you know, all men should follow him.
	And some churches, you know, say, oh yeah, baptism is necessary, but they don't account for what if you died without baptism.
	Well, there are references in the New Testament to baptism for the dead, and in the Mormon Church there's baptisms for the dead, that that ordinance has been restored, and that there is a way to give that particular commandment to be baptized to people that have lived this life and not had that chance.
	But you understand that, again, I understand where you're coming from, and I certainly don't doubt your sincerity, but Do you understand that from a philosophical standpoint, the writings in a religious book have nothing to do with reason and evidence?
	Maybe for most books, they have nothing to do with reason.
	Here's the thing. Either Jesus Christ really is the Son of God, or He's not.
	I'm making the contention that there's one way for people to know that truth and it's not through searching, you know, the areas of your own mind because that truth is not within your brain and you're not born with it.
	It's something you have to learn and something you have to come to.
	And I'm saying that to know that truth, you have to petition the Creator for that knowledge.
	Right, so you can't use reason and evidence for that, right?
	I mean, that's a matter of fact.
	You can use reason, but you have to combine it with faith.
	Reason alone will lead you...
	No, because if you could use reason and evidence, you wouldn't need to talk to God, right?
	Well... I don't need God to tell me that the world is round, because there's reason and evidence that it is, right?
	There's plenty of reason and evidence that there is a God, and there's plenty of ways to deny it.
	And I'm sure you're all, you know, adequately prepared to give me all of those reasons.
	I would love to have the conversation, but unfortunately we are now about 30 seconds away from ending the show, so perhaps you could call in again and we could go through some of those answers.
	Alright, I'll do that. I'll do that. Okay, I'll do that.
	Thank you for your time. Thank you.
	I appreciate that, and it will also give me a chance to look a bit more up on Mormonism and figure out why I keep turning away these people who come to my door.
	Thank you, everybody, so much.
	I appreciate it. It is wonderful to hear from all the new voices.
	This is the Free Domain Radio Sunday call-in show.
	Please drop past freedomainradio.com for tons of tons of free podcasts, free books, free websites, free chat room, and I hope that reason, evidence, truth, wisdom, and virtue will make you as happy as they've made me, and I hope If there's anything I can do to accelerate that process, please let me know at host at freedomainradio.com.
	All the best, my beauties.

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