Oct. 14, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
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| Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio. | |
| Hope you're doing very well. It is October the 16th, 2011. | |
| And these are just a few thoughts about Christianity and Steve Jobs and a few other topics that have been floating around my brain recently. | |
| So first I would like to talk about some of the things that I genuinely and deeply admire about Christianity. | |
| I was raised in the Christian tradition, in the Protestant tradition. | |
| I was in the church choir and went to church, it seemed like every other day, particularly when I was at boarding school. | |
| And so it would be crazy for me to say that my intellectual development has been unaffected by Christianity and these are some of the good things that I have gotten out of the Christian tradition. | |
| Now first and foremost, what I really like about Christianity It's inclusiveness. | |
| So, Christianity has always had a great respect for the Greek philosophers. | |
| Not so much quite the Romans, for reasons that had to do more with the internecine conflicts with the Roman Empire, but it has had a great respect for the Greek philosophers. | |
| In fact, in the Middle Ages, they referred to Aristotle simply as the philosopher, which is an amazing thing to do for a religion, and a very impressive thing to do. | |
| Because, of course, he wasn't a Christian. | |
| He was born long before Christ. | |
| The other thing that I really admire about Christianity is the degree to which, theologically, it wrestles with the problem of virtue versus obedience. | |
| And this is a very fascinating and powerful development in theology. | |
| One of the questions that comes up in Christian theology, at least in the past, is, did Socrates go to hell? | |
| I mean, it's a very interesting question. | |
| Socrates, of course, was not, you know, would have been cursed with original sin, and Socrates was not saved by Jesus because he was born 500 years before Jesus. | |
| So the question of whether Socrates went to hell is a very interesting and important one. | |
| And you can go, I won't bore you with all the details about the way in which this was attempted to be worked out. | |
| But this really is quite fascinating because... | |
| There was enough respect for the Greek tradition and Socrates in particular within the Christian theological world that few could condemn him to the fiery pit of damnation for eternity simply because he was born before Jesus. | |
| And yet at the same time nobody could really claim that he was saved by virtue alone because then one could follow virtue and not need the overhead of religion and could be saved thereby. | |
| So that's a fascinating question. | |
| The extension of Moral respect to somebody who'd never even heard of your religion, that is not too common in the world's religions, this inclusiveness of particularly the Greek tradition of philosophy. | |
| Now, because of that, Christianity has... | |
| Throughout its history wrestled with the problem of reason versus faith and that is a very great challenge and has consumed more beads of mental sweat than has drowned people in all the tsunamis of history in the Christian theological world. | |
| And these questions of logic versus faith are very challenging. | |
| And Martin Luther in the 16th century worked very hard on trying to reconcile contradictory or what would seem as contradictory aspects of the Bible, which I would argue with disastrous results, and we can talk about that perhaps another time. | |
| But the striving to reconcile contradictory or disparate elements within the Bible, within Christian theology. | |
| It's really fascinating, particularly when you have such a divergence from the Old Testament morality, which is very primitive, very violent, very patriarchal, genocidal at times, to the New Testament morality, which has some aspects of that. | |
| And certainly Jesus said that he had not come to contradict anything in the Old Testament, but there are some new Ideals entered. | |
| So God never deals in the Old Testament with the hypocrisy of thou shalt not kill, but I'm going to wipe out everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah, including the innocent children. | |
| He never addresses that. | |
| So moral hypocrisy is not really addressed in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament you get this fascinating story of let he who is without sin cast the first stone. | |
| In other words, moral hypocrisy has come up as A standard. | |
| Fascinating. It's amazing. | |
| And it is quite a leap forward in many ways. | |
| The idea of loving your enemies, well, he didn't quite manage that with the money changers in the temple. | |
| But the idea of loving your enemies is quite fascinating and has had a significant and powerful impact on Western philosophical and moral thinking since then. | |
| I don't really agree with it, which is, you know, not particularly... | |
| I mean, I don't want to say what I agree or don't agree with. | |
| Forget that, because if I'm not going to make any arguments, there's no point talking about my disagreements. | |
| But it's really fascinating that this would be the case, that this would be something that would be even brought into. | |
| I mean, you can't really imagine that for many, many other religions. | |
| So the need to reason your way through... | |
| Faith and see how far reason can go into the realm of faith has been a constant strain between Judeo versus Grecian or Greek. | |
| So Judean mysticism versus Greek philosophy has been at the core of the tension and was the foundation for the Reformation. | |
| Which in turn gave way to the Renaissance, which in turn gave way to the Enlightenment, which in turn gave way to the Industrial Revolution and the growing scientific movement of the 19th century, which gave way to the amazing advances of the 20th century in science and medicine and economics. | |
| The Christian world has, in general, I'm not talking about the average Christian in Arkansas, I'm talking about the theological aspects, has attempted to maintain this tension between reason and faith. | |
| So the magical step of, well, it's just faith, has never been particularly satisfying for Christian theology, which has always attempted to push the boundaries of reason further and further, right? | |
| In the Middle Ages you would have these amazingly deep and complex and wild arguments about whether Adam had a belly button. | |
| God doesn't have a belly button. | |
| Because God wasn't born of mother, but we are made in the image of God. | |
| So did Adam have a belly button? | |
| If he did, then he's not in the image of God. | |
| If he did, but we don't, we're not in the image of God. | |
| This is stuff. I mean, it may sound silly, but it's incredibly admirable to me that Christian theologians would work upon this issue, would try and sink their teeth into issue, would consider it very important to have that kind of consistency. | |
| Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, all of these people really, really worked hard to try and make Reason the basis of religion. | |
| And, you know, it's like grabbing a bar of soap, right? | |
| In the shower, the harder you grab it, the more it seems to jet away. | |
| But the attempt was made, and that laid the foundation for a lot of the rationalism that has been, I think, a good part of the Western tradition of thought. | |
| Now, another thing that I really admire about Christianity And this is true of particular Christians as well. | |
| I mean, some of the most upright and noble people I've met in my life have had some Christian elements that I think of, specifically Christians. | |
| Again, that's not an argument for the ideology or for the belief system, but for the individuals. | |
| It's important to differentiate between the two. | |
| When I criticize Superstition or mysticism or Christianity or religion as a whole, I'm not attacking particular individuals, right? | |
| I mean, of course not. I'm attacking the ideas, the concepts. | |
| Each individual, there can be some very noble and wonderful Christians, and there can be some philosophical anarchists who are complete tools. | |
| And of course, when I criticize idiot anarchists for setting fires to Starbucks or burning Rome, as they have been in the recent day or two, Well, I'm incredibly critical of the individuals and their mindset, but it's not to say that there's any problem with anarchism as a whole. | |
| It's simply the way that it's implemented in that particular mindset or the errors that are made in that conceptualization and implementation. | |
| So what I really like about Christianity is its focus on morality. | |
| It's great, you know, you can have really deep conversations with Christians about morality in a way that you really can't with secular, post-modernist, post-existentialist relativists And I've always, I shouldn't say always, almost always found that Christians are a lot deeper than most secularists, in that they do deal with big questions. | |
| What is life? What is the purpose of life? | |
| What is virtue? | |
| What is good? What is bad? How much should you fight evil? | |
| Does evil exist? These are questions that most postmodernists would never even consider, would consider as relevant to philosophy as whether Adam has a belly button or not. | |
| And so the fact that Christians wrestle with the question of good and evil, right and wrong, Attempting to do good in an often compromised moral landscape, these are things that I find extremely admirable in Christianity. | |
| I would much rather in general have a conversation about morality with a Christian than I would with a secular postmodern relativist, because at least the Christian accepts that morality is a valid, deep, and at least to some degree rational I also admire the Christian emphasis on the conscience. | |
| Now, my approach to the conscience is different. | |
| Obviously, I don't consider it a divine spark of Jiminy Cricket retribution planted in by a deity, but I do believe that the mind is constantly attempting, striving to universalize principles. | |
| Always, always, always, right? | |
| I mean, if you want to catch a ball that's thrown at you, you have to universalize the way that gravity works, the way that air resistance works, the way that propulsion works. | |
| Even if you know nothing about math. | |
| I mean a dog can catch a frisbee. | |
| It doesn't know anything about math. It still does it instinctively. | |
| And so I really like and admire the degree to which morality is accepted and free will is accepted by Christians. | |
| Again, I don't matter about the course in particular because we're just talking about things that I actually admire. | |
| So the fact that you can talk about conscience and morality and choice and that for me at least conscience is It's when we fail to act on principles we accept as universal, it creates a sort of cyst or scab within the mind, within the mental construct, which nags us and bugs us and it's a Socratic gadfly on our shoulder. | |
| But the focus on the conscience, the idea that if we do wrong, we will suffer for it even before death, is very, very powerful and interesting to me and has had some influence, I would imagine. | |
| I can't get down to every specific detail because it's like trying to look at your own eyeballs without a mirror to look at yourself sometimes, but... | |
| I do admire the focus on morality, the focus on choice, on free will, on the conscience, on virtue, and all these kinds of things. | |
| So there's a lot that is, to me, admirable about Christianity in its conclusions. | |
| The methodology I differ with, but the conclusions I think are powerful and important. | |
| And it's hard for me to imagine If I'd grown up in an Islamic culture, whether I would have the same approach to philosophy. | |
| Now, another thing that I've criticized, I was just thinking about this this morning while I was doing the dishes. | |
| Great, great philosophical activity. | |
| I was thinking about this this morning that I have criticized Religion as being a tool for those in power, as being an excuse maker for those in power. | |
| So one example is when Martin Luther, the original, version 1.0, was attempting to reconcile in the Bible the commandment, an eye for an eye, in terms of vengeance and retribution, versus turn the other cheek. | |
| His formulation was that The eye for an eye is for the divinely implanted or the divinely justified or installed monarch when the monarch is pursuing justice against the subject. | |
| So if a subject kills another subject, then the monarch has to kill the murderer. | |
| And so the eye for an eye was from the ruler down, whereas turn the other cheek was if you are wronged by the ruler because the ruler is placed there by God, you must turn the other cheek and not pursue any kind of vengeance against the ruler. | |
| That obviously is very, very much in the service of power, of secular, violent, statist power, the monarchy in particular. | |
| But then I was thinking, okay, so let's do a 360. | |
| I've also been very critical of the degree to which philosophy in history has been a tool for those in power and useful to those in power, and used by those in power, and philosophers have rarely seen fit to diverge from the interests of those in power. | |
| So if I'm going to criticize religion for being a tool and in the service of those in power, I think that I might be hitting two birds with one stone, because philosophy historically has been that way for the most part as well. | |
| So I just really wanted to sort of be clear about that. | |
| Anyway, I could go on, and if you're interested in this, I'd certainly be happy to continue, but I do want to move on to something that a number of people have asked me to talk about, which is Steve Jobs. | |
| Yeah, I mean, I'm sad that he's dead. | |
| I mean, he was obviously a very innovative guy, very creative guy, brilliant guy, abrasive guy. | |
| I mean, a complete dick in so many ways. | |
| But I think the important thing to understand about Steve Jobs is that... | |
| There's something extremely instructive about his origins in that he got his start as a criminal. | |
| People don't really know this, I think, that he got his first $6,000 back when $6,000 really meant something. | |
| He got his first $6,000 by phone hacking, by creating machines that would put a particular tone into a phone receiver that would allow you to make free long-distance calls. | |
| And this was theft at the time. | |
| You could go to jail, it was theft, and so on. | |
| And it was theft in a different way Then Julian Assange is hacking, right? | |
| It was just infiltrating systems and so on, but this was a direct theft, right? | |
| So you would make these three long-distance calls and that's how he got his first money and that's what he used to seed capital to start in the business world. | |
| And so That's criminal. | |
| That's illegal. What's interesting is that when this is reported, people are like, oh, that's interesting. | |
| Oh, that's cool. And they have no sympathy for the phone companies because back in the day, and this I think was in the 70s, back in the day, phone companies were universally considered mercantilist assholes of the first order. | |
| Because they were a monopoly from the government. | |
| They were incredibly expensive. | |
| I mean, the rent-seeking that went on by these bastards was just astounding. | |
| And I say this as a guy who had some long-distance relationships when I was younger, and the amount you had to fork over for a 20-minute phone call across the country was just astounding. | |
| And people who've got Skype can't even imagine how expensive it used to be. | |
| And then, of course, when a lot of these monopolies were ended in the 80s and 90s, the prices dropped, innovation soared. | |
| I mean, it was just amazing. | |
| I mean, if we'd still had these monopolies, we'd still have rotary dial at five bucks a minute. | |
| So the fact that he stole from these monopolistic phone companies, and that's just considered kind of cool and outlaw and, you know, good pirate kind of thing, fascinating. | |
| Tells you a lot about people's instinctive understanding of morality and the state, because... | |
| If he got his start, say, I don't know, stealing from, like, rolling old people with a truncheon or a baseball bat, threatening them with a baseball bat and taking money, then that would be considered just, I mean, that would just be a stunt. | |
| And people would hear that and go, my God, this guy's a criminal. | |
| But the fact that he created or worked on machines to help people get free phone calls from a government-controlled monopoly, people don't feel that that's wrong. | |
| And that's fascinating when you think about it. | |
| Now, the second thing that he was a criminal about was he spent months and months experimenting with LSD. And he said that it was incredibly helpful for his creativity. | |
| Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. | |
| Who knows? I mean, what do I know? | |
| I don't know the guy. But lots of people who experiment with LSD do not end up very particularly creative and impressive in the business world. | |
| But that's illegal, right? | |
| Completely illegal. And that again, people are like, wow, LSD, that's interesting. | |
| As opposed to, right, if he'd said, you know, I strangled children, which is also illegal, people would feel very differently about it. | |
| So people instinctively sort of understand the hypocrisy of these ridiculous laws. | |
| And when disobeying the rules is not immoral, right? | |
| Nobody says, well, he was evil for the phone company thing. | |
| He was evil for taking LSD. No, it's like... | |
| Maybe a little out there, maybe a little off the pale, but people don't think it's evil, right? | |
| Whereas if you're strangling kids or something, everybody would get that that's evil. | |
| It's very important to recognize how much people do see the ridiculousness of most state laws. | |
| So that's important too. And the thing that concerns me, if it's of all of interest to you, I mean, he also fathered a child and then claimed for years that he was infertile and wouldn't acknowledge the kid, and it took him years to acknowledge the kid. | |
| For a guy who was adopted, that's a pretty brutal thing to do. | |
| That's not good. | |
| But, you know, my concern is people say, well, how's Apple going to do from now? | |
| And my prediction is that Apple is not going to do very well. | |
| And the reason that Apple is not going to do very well is that if you have a particular talent or ability in an area, I obviously count myself as one of those people, whether you agree or not, it's up to you, but I count myself that way. | |
| The very important thing is to figure out succession. | |
| Nobody's going to live forever. | |
| And certainly when Steve Jobs got ill, he knew that his time was at least at risk or was not going to be statistically average to the likelihood. | |
| And he was, you know, extremely verbally abusive and crushed people and random. | |
| You know, he'd say the same thing. | |
| This is a complete piece of shit. | |
| This is the greatest thing I've ever seen. | |
| So it was kind of random and abusive. | |
| And so my concern is that if he's created a culture within Apple where people have not been built up to be confident about their creativity, then that creativity is going to take a hit. | |
| I use the term cult loosely here, but the cult of personalities is called where you worship the guy who has all the answers and he then dispenses the good and bad judgments on people without any particular instruction to them as to why these judgments are coming out. | |
| Then you end up with a company that has incredible success while that person is at the helm and then falters significantly because he's not built up. | |
| That same culture where he has empowered other people and transferred his energy and creativity and his reasoning to others, built them up to make them more confident. | |
| It certainly is my goal as a thinker to attempt to give other people the tools and to encourage you to think for yourself and to be critical and so on and to give you the tools hopefully that will help you to do that and the encouragement to do that because I want people... | |
| I'm not going to live forever. | |
| I could be hit by a bus tomorrow. | |
| And I certainly wouldn't want anyone coming to me for answers. | |
| I only want people coming to me for methodology. | |
| I don't think that methodology was created within Apple. | |
| So I don't think there's anyone who can replace them. | |
| And so I think that it's a short-term fuse that's going to burn out. | |
| Anyway, I just want to keep this under 20 minutes. | |
| Thank you so much for listening. | |
| You can donate at freedomainradio.com forward slash donate. |
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