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Dec. 13, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
22:32
1531 Talking About Anarchism With Atheists

God down, state to go!

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Talking to an atheist about anarchism.
Well, it's a very interesting topic that somebody brought up.
Let's take a swing and think about some ways in which we can help atheists to understand that anarchism is an application of the same principles to society as atheism is to religion or the universe.
So, the first thing that I would say To an atheist is to clarify that there's no validity to the argument from effect.
So I would say, look, even if people like to believe in religion, this does not make the existence of God valid, right?
Right. Even if people were to gain objective medical benefits from believing in God, this would not mean that the existence of God had been proven.
This is sort of very essential because the first thing you have to address is the argument from effect when talking about anarchism.
And once you have established with the atheist that the truth or falsehood of a proposition doesn't have anything to do with its perceived benefits or drawbacks, But rather with empiricism and rationality and science, then you're away to the races.
Because then, what you've done is you've eliminated the logical basis for the argument that we need a state because it benefits us.
Because it's an argument from effect.
That we need a government, because in order to protect 99% of our rights, we give away 1% of our rights, and it's a beneficial effect, and without the government, things are all bad, and blah, blah, blah.
Right, that's the argument for effect.
And you have to, I mean, no matter what you're doing, you have to eliminate that from the table.
Which is why I started with the Unhealth Belt, talking about principles, rather than whether we think it will be good or bad to have a state.
Because that's like arguing whether God exists based on whether people get a perceived benefit.
From the existence of God.
And that's, of course, got nothing to do with anything.
That's like saying racism is valid because some racist people get comfort from looking down on other races.
Feel better. Right?
I mean, that's not an argument at all.
That's, again, just a kind of corrupted democracy.
So, once we had established that It is not the consequences of a belief that determine the validity of the belief, but rather if a claim is made about the objective existence or validity of something.
2 plus 2 is 4 is valid, though 2 plus 2 is 4 does not have objective existence.
It's not inscribed like in the sky.
It's not part of a constellation.
It's not You know, hewn into the middle of rocks.
It doesn't exist like a rock does, but it's valid because it conforms to rationality.
And, you know, you get two rocks, two rocks, put them together, count them up.
You've got four. It is a principle that conforms, like, to reality.
9.8 meters per second per second acceleration towards the Earth does not exist in reality, but it is a valid description of that which occurs within reality.
So I would also talk about the difference between these two things.
And then I would also ask the atheist, well, how do you know that God doesn't exist?
They say, well, there's no logical evidence, blah, blah, blah.
So people's belief in the value of God, people's belief in the existence of God, doesn't have any validity as to whether God actually exists or not.
Right, so once we've got those principles down, validity, evidence, elimination of the argument from effect, which is endlessly manipulable and will not get you anywhere closer to the truth, The state is better.
The state is not better. The state is good.
The state is bad. The state could be better.
I mean, that's just silly, right?
That's like arguing which classical composer is the best.
I mean, it's just silly, right?
I like Shostakovich.
So I would work on those principles first.
And then I would ask for a definition of the state.
And you'll get something like, you know, it's a It is the social entity that regulates and orders and creates rules that everybody has to follow and so on.
And so, what I would then say is, under atheism, even though you and I... Do not detect or have proof of the existence of God.
Would you accept that there may be a group of people, let's call them priests, who have special abilities to detect and prove the existence of God.
Abilities which they cannot transfer to us, but which they themselves possess.
They have The Pope enabled direct plumb line, the dumbwaiter, to God.
And they know the existence of God in ways that they cannot communicate to us, this special class of people, and which we cannot possibly have ourselves.
And because this special group of people, I mean, who clearly have a vested interest in the state...
Sorry. Oh dear, what a giveaway.
This group of people who have a vested interest in the existence of God, priests, because they get paid for it, tell us that God exists and that they know that God exists in ways that they can't communicate to us, which they can't reproduce within us.
They can't share their knowledge in any way, logical or empirical or experiential, that God exists.
But we have to trust them that God exists because they're a special group of people with a special pipeline to the deity.
Well, of course, the atheist would have to say, Or even the agnostic would have to say, that is not a valid argument.
People with a strong vested interest in the existence of God who just want to reassure us that God exists in a way that they can't possibly communicate to us in any way, shape or form, approve to us or reproduce for us, clearly that would not be a good argument because then we're into savage relativism with clear self-interest and this is not an empirical argument,
right? So, once we've established that there's no special class of people who have, quote, rights and abilities and knowledge that is specifically unavailable to everyone else, but we just kind of have to trust them, then we are on the way to helping the atheist understand how atheism and anarchism are like biology and physics.
It's just two applications of the same rational and empirical principles, science and philosophy.
So, we would then...
Have established that there is no special class of people with opposite characteristics, rights, or principles.
And therefore we would say, so the government is composed of people, not plants, right?
And not gods.
And these people have the right to impose their will on others.
Now here, of course, you'll get the democratic response, which is that it's not an imposition of will.
It's not the imposition of will.
For instance, something like taxation, for whatever cause, whether it's right or wrong that you believe in it, taxation is the initiation of force in order to To extract money from people in order to spend it on, you know, perhaps useful or good things by some opinion, but that's what it is.
And clearly this is not a right that is shared by everybody.
It's like, well, but they elect representatives to establish their wishes.
And we say, well, sure, but we've already said there's no special group of people that get to do stuff that other people don't get to do, right?
Like priests with the existence of God and say, well, just trust me.
He's there, right? And because of that, whether it's politicians or the majority, whether it's all but one guy, that's still a special group of people who get particular rights.
But everybody has the right to vote.
It's like, well, that's true, but it is only the majority that gets to impose their will, and it is only the politicians who get to execute that.
And that is not a right that is shared in any sphere other than in the state, right?
If we have ten people living on a block, six of them can't vote to make four of them move.
We all accept and understand that.
If there's a family of five people with two daughters, the five people, assuming they're all adults, the five people cannot vote who the two daughters are going to marry.
So the majority rule does not exist in any sphere other than the state.
The majority gets to impose its will through the politicians on the minority, which creates a special class of rights and privileges that is not universal.
Which cannot be proven.
One of the major points of atheism is to say that there is no special class of people that can create these magical abilities that are denied to everybody else.
And the same thing is true in the realm of the state.
Because there are individuals.
Now, the person who is an atheist is most likely to be secular and probably kind of lefty because they're progressive and all.
And so we have to deal with the problem of existence.
Because the state is to reality as religion is to reality.
The state is to reality as religion is to reality.
In other words, people believe in the state, but the state doesn't exist.
People believe in religion, but God does not exist.
And religion does not exist except as a belief in people's minds.
It doesn't exist like a rock.
And the atheist is automatically, because he's an atheist, is immediately saying, That religion exists as a belief in people's minds, but it is false because it is not supported by empirical reality or logic or whatever evidence.
And the same thing is true of statism.
Statism is religion.
Statism has exactly the same epistemological and metaphysical basis as religion.
Statism is a kind of religion.
It's just the church of the gun and the majority rather than the God and the gun and the majority.
The state, the gun, and the majority. And religion, of course, is fundamentally democratic in that if you're only one person who believes crazy, stupid shit, then you're called insane, right?
And if you act on those beliefs, you'll be locked up.
So you have to have enough people that people are scared of you in order to transfer insanity to religion.
And you have to have enough people to transform criminality to statism.
It has to be popular enough.
It has to be propagandized enough.
And, of course, the instruction method of lying to and boring children is exactly the same.
Because statism is just a religion.
It's just a religion.
It has all the characteristics, the magical thinking, the collectivism, the splitting of human beings into distinct and oppositional rights groups.
It is a religion, and it has the same capacity to explain history, statism, that religion has to explain biology, which is actually the opposite of an explanation.
And the next question that you could ask the atheist when talking about a stateless society is the basic question which anarchism attempts to address is this.
Is force allowed against differences of opinion?
Is force allowed against differences of opinion?
Can you initiate force against somebody who disagrees with you?
And I guess a corollary of that is, can you initiate force against somebody who you disagree with?
Even if that person is acting in a self-destructive manner.
So you say, well, we should impose a state on everyone because everybody's lives will be extended and better and so on.
Than if there were no state.
But of course the same is true of smoking, right?
If somebody's smoking then they're taking years off their lifespan and gonna be sick and so on and it's kind of slow toxic suicide.
And so the question then becomes If we can initiate violence against people who are acting in a way that is not conducive to their own best interests, i.e.
we can impose a state on people because a state is actually for their best interests, then I'm not sure exactly why we can't initiate violence against people who are acting against their own best interests by smoking.
And then people say, well, but people aren't imposing costs on me through smoking.
Well, of course, under socialized medicine, which is the entire world, they are imposing costs on you by smoking.
So if there's... And even if...
So if somebody's in favor of government subsidies for medicine, then they must also be in favor of locking people up who smoke because they're imposing general social costs and acting against their own best self-interest, which, of course, is the argument for the state as a whole.
The same thing could be true.
Of course, if you become a parent, you're no longer allowed to do things which might cause harm.
So you're no longer allowed to ski or to snowboard or to skydive or any of these kinds of things.
Why? Because, well, there's a risk of harm.
And other people are dependent upon you, and your life will be better off if you don't hurt yourself.
Overeating, again, you know, with this list, we get promiscuity.
You could go on and on. The argument that your life will be better off if a system is imposed upon you against your will, i.e.
statism, is the argument that if you're not acting in ways that other people perceive to be in your best interest, and if you're imposing collective costs, and if you're a parent you are, even in a free society, imposing additional costs upon your wife and children if you should get injured or killed, then you must be restrained.
From performing these actions.
And, of course, most people would say, well, that's not reasonable.
And they're not sure why, but they still would believe that's not reasonable.
And, of course, the negative effects of smoking are easily and well-established.
The negative effects of a stateless society are entirely theoretical in general.
So I think that's an important thing to point out.
Are you allowed to initiate force against people who disagree with you?
And you can talk about this in the realm of the state, but if you're speaking with an atheist, you disagree with religious people, would you be in favor of a law preventing them from going to church?
No. I mean, most reasonable people would say no.
Would you be in favor, and if they say yes, they say, well, would you be in favor of allowing the religious majority to impose its will upon the non-religious minority and force them to go to church?
Or, if the majority are Christians and the minority are Jews, can we shut down the synagogue and force all the Jews to go to church?
Of course not, right? So you can't use force, you can't initiate force on those who disagree with you.
And we all clearly understand this.
In the realm of religion, I think it's a bit more of a gray area when parents impose religious terror, superstition, and fear on children who are helpless and dependent.
That is, to me, a misuse of power that's very close to the initiation of force, certainly a fraud.
But that's perhaps a topic for another time.
But every atheist would accept that religious people, even if they're in the majority, should not force atheists to go to church.
Atheists should not force religious people to not go to church.
And so differences of opinion about things even as important as the meaning of life and the salvation of your eternal soul should not be subject to the use of force.
And, of course, when we look at something like the state...
The question of dispute resolution, the question of the education of children, the salvation of the old and the sick and so on.
People have lots of different opinions, right?
So to give an example, when it comes to recidivism, when it comes to the effective positive and proactive treatment of criminals, Is incarceration with other criminals in a brutal and sensory-deprived environment the best way?
Well, of course not. Of course it's not the best way.
And we know that because it's enforced, right?
What's enforced is never the best way.
That's how we know that rape is not lovemaking, because it's enforced.
And that's how we know theft is not charity, because it's enforced.
It's like saying, is theft charity?
It's the same thing as saying our state prison is the best solution to the problem of rehabilitation.
Because clearly we want two things out of prisoners.
We want the two R's. Restitution and rehabilitation.
And the two go hand in hand.
Because if you can't be rehabilitated, then you can't provide restitution because you won't be a productive member of society.
So we want restitution and we want rehabilitation.
And we want to hold those responsible.
And that means sharing the cost between the prisoner and his parents.
So, in a status society, neither restitution nor rehabilitation occur.
The victim does not receive any restitution, and the recidivism rate is horrendous.
This is close to 100% of repeat offense.
So, clearly, the status solution is not working.
So, just provide that example and say a just system is restitution and rehabilitation, and no one's going to disagree with that fundamentally, unless they're crazy.
And clearly the state system does not provide that.
I have different ideas about how prisoners should be treated in society.
Am I allowed, and even if you're really pro the punitive, like Old Testament, virtually prehistory, chain them up and beat them, school of this is how we deal with the victims of child abuse, and they're acting out against others, is we beat them up and we chain them.
If you agree with that, then the question is, am I allowed to disagree with you?
Without having force initiated against me.
Now, if they say, well, no, you're not allowed to disagree with me without having force initiated against you, then they say, well, how is that different from religion?
You have a strong belief in this.
Other people have a strong belief in God.
You have less proof for your belief than people have for the existence of God in terms of its efficacy in providing restitution and rehabilitation.
So why is it that religious people don't get to impose their beliefs whereas you do?
They say, well, but the religious beliefs are irrational.
Well, If you are willing to use force to impose your beliefs, then you are either saying that people are irrational or you're saying that your beliefs are irrational.
Because if your beliefs are rational and people are rational, then you do not need force to impose them.
For instance, people like a $100 bill.
And so, rational self-interest and so on.
And if you have a $100 bill, you have some pretty objective value, even in the standards of fiat currency.
And so when you stand out in a mall handing out $100 bills, you have a value.
People are rational in terms of their self-interest.
And so people will rationally accept, usually with some significant gratitude, the $100 bill.
You have something of real value.
People are rational. They act in their self-interest.
Bingo, bango, mongo. Transfer $100.
And that is how things work if you have something of value.
If you have an idea of value and you do not trust people to accept it, then either it's because your idea is irrational and people are rational, or your idea is irrational and people are irrational, or your idea is irrational and people are irrational.
Sorry, whichever one it was, the last one.
Sorry, just had to drop the headset for the cop car.
Now, if your idea is rational but people are irrational, then you have to be against democracy because the majority vote is the majority irrational, blah, blah, blah.
So you have to be against democracy. If your idea is irrational and people are irrational, then it's just a war of all against all and there's no rationality in the idea and it's just the imposition of will for the sake of power and no one's going to really defend that.
If your idea is irrational and people are rational, then of course it's completely unjust.
It's like saying that religious people have the right to shut down scientific conferences using force.
No sane human being would accept that as a moral stance.
So, no matter what, the initiation of force for disagreement does not result in the productive spread of wise, credible, and rational ideas at all.
In fact, the use of force is an acceptance.
In fact, a sort of flare sent up from the idea saying, this doesn't work.
It doesn't work. It doesn't work.
This is a bad idea, or it's a good idea among very bad people, in which case we should not have a democracy.
And so, I think it's useful when talking to an atheist about...
Anarchism. To talk in a context that the atheist already understands.
The existence of things, rational proof, the non-existence of concepts, because God is a concept, yet an atheist accepts that a concept doesn't exist even if people believe in it, and the non-initiation of force, for differences of opinion and the non-existence of a magical class of human beings whose rights and properties magically reverse those of the majority including the majority and I think if you take those approaches you should have some significant degree of success annoying and alienating atheists because of course and hopefully getting rid of the enormous amount of detritus sand junk mud and goop and finding the nuggets of gold pearls and oysters That are in there.
Who are the people we're really, really trying to get to?
So the people who are atheists out of resentment or confusion or resistance or pretension or whatever, you will quickly figure those out because you'll take the same principles that they accept atheism in, apply it to another standpoint, and they will immediately cave on those principles, and you can move on.
Thank you so much for listening and donating.
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