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Aug. 19, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:02:50
2193 Atheism and Anarchy: Stefan Molyneux, Adam Kokesh and Ernest Hancock
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Time Text
I've got all this energy.
I don't know what these old people are...
Well, that's appropriate.
They're making fun of themselves for being old.
They're already getting roped into this, and I don't have to do it myself now.
Alright, let's go ahead and get started.
It's a little after 9.05, and it's an exciting Saturday morning here at Parkfest.
I'm so grateful that so many of you decided to get up and join us at this ungodly hour.
I'm new at this.
I didn't schedule this, and no, my voice has not recovered from the roast last night, so...
Excuse me.
But I'm really excited to have this opportunity that I think is something that is a unique opportunity presented by Porkfest to have a conversation like this.
I think most people here know who the three of us are, so I just want to introduce this panel by way of the roles that we're bringing towards this.
For myself, I'm a military veteran.
I fell over backwards into an independent media career after running for Congress, and it's been an incredible process of discovery, a philosophical journey for me, and of course, as it has for so many of us, led to FreedomAidRadio.com.
And Stefan Molyneux has been an incredible influence on me, on my philosophical outreach on the world, my way of looking at the world, and a way of thinking and analyzing problems.
And I've listened to his book, I don't read books anymore, Against the Gods.
How many of you have read or heard of Stefan's e-book Against the Gods?
Okay.
Okay, everyone else has to leave.
Yeah, everybody else has to go to help you.
Or what I can do is just start reading it.
Well, yeah, they said it was scheduled from 9 to 10.
It's actually 9 to 3 p.m., so that'd be all cool.
Close the doors.
But when I proposed the idea of this panel to Stefan, He was actually a little bit reluctant, dare I say, afraid of the topic even.
No, it was the 9 a.m.
thing.
It was the 9 a.m.
thing.
The topic is fine.
We have a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian represented on stage for this panel this morning.
But Stefan was a little reluctant.
Isn't that stuff that people don't like to talk about?
Isn't that something they can put people off?
And I said, well then, why the fuck did you write a book about it?
Ah!
And he didn't have an answer for that, so I figured I'd put him on stage and put him on the spot.
And Ernie Hancock, in the way that Stefan has been a mentor to me philosophically, Ernie Hancock, in the same sense, has provided an example in activism and the same commitment to the principles that we share, but has only confided in me, in secret, in private, that he is the A-word.
And in PortFest, that's not anarchist, right?
Wait, wait.
A-S-S? Sorry, I can't.
It's too early.
How does it go from there?
So we were looking for something taboo to talk about.
And I figured I'd out him on stage in order to rope him into being a part of this.
And the reason that I think this is such an important issue is that a lot of people understand there's a connection.
It's a pretty obvious one.
Between shedding the dogma of statism, shedding the paradigm, shedding the delusions, the wishful thinking that says, well, yeah, of course we can use force to get society organized and make people happy and provide for all of these wonderful things that we think government can magically produce.
In the same way that people oftentimes, when we see our movement, go through a similar experience, shedding the dogma of organized religion.
And there are a lot of people in the freedom movement who are motivated by religious values, and that's absolutely respectable, that people are able to have that consistency, and that in and of itself is something to be celebrated.
Anybody taking their values and doing something positive with it and how they interact with the rest of the world.
But we also should have the courage to examine those values and how they relate and why we see this comparison.
But even more so than that, even deeper than that, there is something specifically about coming to atheism.
And in a way, Safan's book, I want to say, It cured me of my agnosticism.
And I think a lot of people, as freedom activists, get to that point where they go, okay, organized religion is bullshit, it's a dogmatic way of thinking based on social control, and everybody knows the history, and some people still will stop, you know, half a centimeter short of home plate, and they go, well, I'm going to be an agnostic.
And I'm not going to be controversial.
I'm not going to piss anybody off with that, right?
And then you end up pissing off everybody, because even Stefan Molyneux is the other outspoken A-word on stage.
He writes a whole book saying, really, you're an agnostic?
You moron.
And that was the first title, actually.
Against the Gods has a better name to it.
But the cup was so shiny that I just saw myself.
But that's not good.
So obviously there's a connection here.
I think there's something really important to be explored, and in a way what I want to do with this panel is, like I said, introduce ourselves as characters on this panel.
For me, I'm the young activist looking up to my elders here, going...
It's just a relative term.
By the way, I just turned 30.
You're not supposed to trust anyone over 30.
I'll be telling you I just turned 30 for the next 10 years.
Every Porkfest, I just turned 30.
But these are two men that I have an immense amount of respect for, and I really want to be able to pick their brains on this issue, start the conversation.
We're going to allow some time for questions, but I just want to start by giving each of them Before I really grill them and see if we can get down to answering the questions that I think so many of us younger activists have looking forward.
Why hasn't the movement addressed this religion issue more thoroughly?
And if nothing else, that's what I'd like to achieve with this panel, really advance the conversation.
And like I said, I'm so honored that so many people actually come up at Night Egg on one Saturday at Porkfest for this.
So thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'll hand it over first for each, Stephon Molyneux and then Ernie Hancock for five minutes, just to introduce your thoughts on this issue and why you think this is important or not.
I feel like Adam, can we talk about something else already?
That's good.
Well, for me, I mean, I was raised a Christian in England, and I fell out of the faith relatively young.
I think I was about...
Five or six years old when I couldn't sustain it.
I think John Irving, the American writer, has got a great metaphor for faith.
He's got a priest in one of his stories.
And the priest is talking about a stick insect climbing up a sort of a tiled wall in his shower.
And, you know, the water is running down and he's shouting.
And you can see this thing.
And the water keeps coming down and the stick insect keeps...
And this is what I think it's like for a lot of people when you really start to look at...
Religion, not from within, because from within it's got some great stuff, you know, some great architecture, some great music, some great communities who do great work.
And I would really like the atheist community to emulate some of the good works and the community and the charity that the religious communities do.
But when you start to look at it from the outside, then of course it becomes much, it's a much different view from the outside.
So for me, A lot of people want to get the label, right?
They want to get the label libertarian or anarchist or atheist or whatever, and they want that word, and that word gives them a kind of security and go, okay, this is who I am, this is what I believe.
But I think that it really has to be a different process for people to come to a place of, I think, more reason and more evidence when it comes to religion.
So, for me, it's like, you know, you've got a carpet rolled up, and inside the carpet is a jewel.
And everybody wants to sort of reach and grab the jewel, but to me it's a process of unrolling the carpet.
You've got to start from first principles, you've got to learn the history, and you've got to approach it philosophically.
Because some people are like, well, religion sucked for me, or the priest was mean, or my parents bug me with their religiosity, so I'm going to be an atheist.
And that is really not a good way to do it.
You don't want anything you can just will yourself into, you can just be willed out of again.
So I think to have the real depth of integrity that you need.
To advance a more rational way of looking at things, you need to start from those first principles.
And the first principles are, I've been thinking about this because I'm sure my daughter is going to ask me relatively soon about gods and devils and angels and so on.
And I'm not going to answer her because to give her an answer is to rob her of the unrolling of the carpet that is the purpose of it.
So, you know, when we say, does God exist, the question, the most important word in there is not God, but exist.
Right?
Because we have to have a standard of existence and non-existence that is objective, that is not just based on what we were told or what we would prefer or what we think is going to get us a reward or avoid punishment or something like that.
And so I want to talk to her about what exists and what doesn't.
And we actually don't have much difficulty understanding what exists and what doesn't.
We've got four open doors there which people walked through.
We've got two closed doors there that people didn't walk through because they're there.
Right?
So we know the difference between something that is not there and something that is there.
And yet, of course, when we get to these abstract things, it becomes much more difficult.
My concern with religion is...
It's many-fold, but my major concern with religion is the moment that we allow a realm to exist that is anti-empirical, anti-rational, it's not just irrational, it's anti-rational, where our thoughts and our ideas take on some sort of physical manifestation in some outside realm, this has profound implications for the state.
Because we are just a group of individuals here.
There is no other property that we get when we gather together.
We don't get to fly.
Our teeth don't rotate.
Your teeth.
It's okay.
It's one person.
It's always one person.
But we don't gain different properties because we all gather together.
And we don't get to create a God just because we all believe in it.
And we also don't get morally justified when we get together as a collective.
Because this is, you know, the social contract, the will of the people as if a collective has will.
A collective doesn't have will.
A collective is just a bunch of individuals.
You know, we can call a whole bunch of grains of sand by the ocean a beach, but we haven't changed the nature of any of those grains of sand.
And so our descriptions don't change reality.
Aggregations don't create new things, opposing things.
And so I think that if we take this unrolling of the carpet from first principles, we look at what exists and what doesn't.
The state does not exist.
The state does not exist.
The state is a fiction.
It's a social fiction.
And if we're going to accept, I think as a very foundational moral principle, that the state does not exist, we can't just have that in isolation.
We have to apply that to everything.
The universalization is how we're going to win.
I absolutely believe that.
We have to universalize the ethics.
If it is wrong for me to steal, it is wrong for the IRS to steal.
If it is wrong for me to go and invade peaceful foreigners who have never threatened me, it is wrong for the government and the army to do it.
The universalization of our principles, the respect for property rights and the non-aggression principle, If we can universalize that in society as a whole, we've won.
We've absolutely, completely and totally won in a very blood-free way, which is kind of what we're looking for.
But that principle, that principle of what exists and what doesn't, the state doesn't exist, aggregations of people don't create opposing moral qualities or properties, that is universal.
And for it to be universal, we can't go up to here and then stop.
We can't go up to here and then stop.
And so if the state doesn't exist because it's just an aggregation of historical delusion, we have to apply the same principles to religion.
But this is a great challenge within the movement.
There's a lot of religiosity within the movement.
And like everyone, we want to harness the good that people can do.
But what Adam was saying about, well, I can respect what comes out of the beliefs...
I can sort of agree with that, but we really, to win we just have to be, we have to be consistent across the board, we have to go first principles, and we have to go relentlessly.
And that is going to be a problem.
There's no question that religion is a fading force in the West and the East, you know, it's still this nasty tyrannical theocracy, but in the West, The statistics are, within a generation or two, non-religiosity will be by far the dominant.
And, you know, in the Scandinavian countries, 70-80% atheists.
And this is just how it's going.
I think in Ireland, they have 80 priests died and two new priests this year.
And I think no nuns.
I mean, it is a fading force, and largely as a result of its own doing and as a result of...
You know, unbelievable crimes that have been committed in its name.
And I'm not just talking about the obvious ones like the pedophile scandals and so on, but, you know, the plagues that are occurring in Africa through AIDS because of the Catholic Church's opposition to condoms.
This is just unbelievable.
It's unholy.
Because, you know, the Catholic Church, to pick on one particular religion, It claims this mad passion for the sanctity of life for the unborn.
That's great.
But how about the people who've already been out and walking around for a couple of years who have bombs hanging down over their heads?
You know, it would be nice to focus a little bit on those people as well, but they, you know, they're looking at making more Catholics, and so this has nothing to do with ethics, in my opinion.
So, I think that we need to work through these first principles if we allow, I'm really with Ayn Rand on this, you know, like if we allow inconsistency in the way that we approach, like if we cherry pick, if we say, well, I don't want the states, I want to be an anarchist, I want to be a libertarian, I want to be a minarchist, I want to be a libertarian, but then we just don't talk about this religious stuff, then I think we are weakening where it is we're going to go.
And the last thing we want to do, the last thing I'll say, but the last thing we want to do, I would argue, Is to make all of the sacrifices.
And I think we're all aware that those sacrifices can be prodigious at times.
All of the sacrifices that we need to make to speak truth to a frightened, angry and uncaring world.
All of the sacrifices we have to make We want to make what we say as powerful as possible, as consistent as possible, because that's the only way it will be as effective as possible.
And so that would be my argument.
First principles, no more support the existence of a deity than they do the existence of the state.
They no more create a second class of super moral entities like priests than they do of politicians or soldiers or policemen.
and if we stay consistent with that principle, it would be a harder row to hoe, but we would get there a lot sooner.
Ernie's almost awake.
No, I'm actually going to hit the five minute button.
I'm sorry, I'm like, Toby, you only have three thoughts here.
Because I lost you a long time ago.
This is, okay, let me give you a little background.
I'm born at 61.
I graduated high school in 1979, so it's about the peak of the Cold War.
We're not going to the Moscow Olympics.
Afghanistan had Vader number before us.
They had all of this stuff going on.
And at that time, it used to be considered, you know, Christians don't deal with politics.
You know, go sell yourself for that crap.
You know, it's about, you know, saving somebody's soul, the other stuff will follow.
Well, then they got, you know, a kind of taste of power.
They wanted to get in there, and, you know, the moral majority, and going to Reagan, I remember when him running for office, and you go, are you not born again, Christian?
Are you born again?
And he was like, you know, dumbfounded by you.
You know, man, I don't know.
I don't know.
Do I look messy or something?
You know, it's just me.
So it was just a time that I could see.
I never really got locked into this Christian's religion thing.
You know, I never really took.
But that doesn't mean there's not a spiritual aspect.
And the problem that, in these discussions, we do a thing called the Freedom Summit, usually every year.
We do it this year.
So we've had like, I don't know, a dozen since, you know, 10 or something since 2001.
And one of the regular guests of that is George Smith, you know, Atheism's List Against God.
And my Freedom Summit partner is a Jewish attorney, you know, Mark J. Victor.
Marine, you know, just, you know, bulldog.
He likes going to trial, okay?
Likes to have a trial.
Let's have a discussion.
And he's like, he's not a closet atheist, but he doesn't want any of his clients to know.
Hey, man, Christians give me a lot of money.
Get them off of drug deals, okay?
So, I'm going, you're such a punk, man.
No, not on the air.
Privately, he'll evangelize me some day.
Libertarian atheist meetups.
It's like it's their own religion.
And they're so evangelical about it.
They.
That it's their own freaking religion.
They don't know about the Bible than Christians do.
I mean, they'll tell you everything.
And let me tell you, my children went to...
Yeah, I'm doing pretty well.
My children went to Christian...
Junior, senior, high school, Phoenix Christian.
From 7th grade to 12th grade.
Four kids, six years each, 24 kid years of private school, me driving into a parking lot and seeing George Bush W bumper stickers for years.
I'm running for office as a libertarian.
I'm out there giving a preach of what for that.
Questions are going, shouldn't on this survey, shouldn't there be at least elimination of porn on computers at libraries for children?
Why didn't you answer that question, Ernie?
I was a trick question for libertarians.
I don't think there should be libraries.
Yeah, but don't you think there should be, you know, the people that are going to these adult consensual sects, going in this, behind this chain link, and they're going into that room over there, and they're handed six new relations.
Unnatural!
Fill in the blank.
Okay?
And I'm going, well, shouldn't you be out front, you know, passing out tracts?
That's what Jesus would do.
It's a target-rich environment, man.
Okay?
Why don't you have the brothel?
So there was never a consistency, alright?
So, from a true libertarian, I actually took the time, and you know, it was back and forth, this fog up here, you know, there was something going on.
So, I moved out, got with the college, you know, moved out for a year, saved money, went to college for a semester, didn't, like, was, got thrown on the road, helping people, whatever, going on, getting a job, getting in the restaurant industry, later have a bunch of businesses, I own my own restaurant, I sell the restaurant, I get on the radio, try and, you know, libertarianize people with free minds and, okay, do we have to go to another fucking war?
I'm like, seriously?
You know, because I've got a towel under him?
Is that your rationale?
You know?
You know the new ball that God sort him out?
And I'm on his side so I don't get sorted.
I had a dream.
Okay, you know, how irrational is all of that?
Okay?
The reason I chose...
To not indoctrinate my children, you know, at the Church of the State mandatory youth indoctrination and education camps, okay?
And go to this particular private school because I knew the people, the board of directors, the friends, the parents.
You go in there and we...
We were their backstop.
Every parent knocked on every kid.
Okay?
Hell, every kid knocked on every kid.
So everybody was kind of, you know, taken care of.
It was a big family.
But I remember on the marquee up front, they said, you know, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom or something like that.
It's a scripture.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Fear.
Fear.
Every time I drop my kids off, we go there and pick them up or something, and I go, were you afeard today?
Were you afeard?
Oh, I don't know.
I don't think you were afeard enough.
They've been keeping that up on that marquee for at least a month.
You're obviously not afraid enough.
Somebody's not afraid in school.
Who the hell?
It wouldn't be you, wouldn't it?
You Hancock.
So...
Everybody went along fine.
We got along well.
But what I learned was from having really hardcore atheist evangelical religion friends and hardcore Christian, you know, prayer meetings on Friday mornings, men get together and talk and kind of whatever, chill.
Father's going out to dinner like, "You can never be Christian enough.
You can never be atheist enough." Molyneux thinks he is.
So let's go ahead and take Molyneux's scientific method, okay?
Copyright.
Point, point.
It almost becomes yours.
I mean, you kind of twist it into, you know, whatever.
So my thing is that I'm not sitting here arguing for or against the God.
We did that in 2000, whatever it was, with George Smith.
He debated at the Freedom Summit.
A preacher that's there, you know, preaching, you know, God.
So what is the debate going to be?
I don't care.
I want to go watch my son's football game.
I'll be at the Freedom Summit in the morning.
I watch it on video later.
I just like, because the preacher got to pick the subject.
it was, is it reasonable to believe in God?
Look at the truth.
It's reasonable.
So I'm like, what a stupid question.
You know?
Is it reasonable?
Based on who?
What?
What objective?
You know, how are we?
Is it reasonable?
Is that kind of fudgy?
Well, maybe, you know, I mean, who cares?
You know?
The real question is, are you allowed to believe in God?
Are you allowed and be a libertarian to believe in God?
So reading the Bible straight through, it was like, I'm 19, 20, I didn't have a TV for three years, I mean, a lot of historical fiction, a lot of novels, you know, I do a lot of geography stuff, you know, like Clavel or Michener, you're learning about how Hong Kong came about, the relationship with Japan, and South Africa, and the Civil War, and the South Pacific culture, you know, founding of Hawaii, you know, you know, People who got there first.
And, you know, on and on and on and on.
You learn about the world, different cultures, different religions, different things.
And you see a common thread.
There's something, you know, that deserves attention.
Alright, alright, alright.
I'm paying attention.
So, as I read and I go through, I say, well, I've got to read this Bible thing, too.
Every time you turn around, some Jehovah Witness or Mormon pounding on your door or something, right?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Well, should I be saying it?
I don't know.
Let's read the Bible.
So I read to King James straight through.
Holy shit.
I don't want to miss anything.
I don't want to be sacrilegious.
So I'm going, alright, well what about this good news version?
You know, maybe I can get somebody to understand it.
Compare the two.
Okay, okay, well this one doesn't totally suck.
Then you get into the Old Testament about, you know, the whole Jewish population is like a recreation of an incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughter or something, you know?
You keep going and you're going, man, teach me this in Bible school, okay?
I sure as shit don't remember that one.
And God blessed as he slept.
Well, his daughter's got him drunk first.
Okay, so I guess it's okay.
And he goes on and on and on and on.
Sodom and Gomorrah, his wife with passion, turned to salt, destroyed everything, go up into the mountains.
And it's just the two daughters, his wife turned to salt, and Lot, which is Abraham's brother, and to populate him doing well, they had to lay with him.
Okay?
I want to go show in your family that, you know?
So I'm like, what do you do?
You train little kids in this stuff?
You give them the whole thing?
New Testament.
New.
Different.
Past that.
That didn't work out.
We didn't have a large enough demographic.
So then you get to the idea of Christianity, which I define as libertarianism.
It was witness, parable, testimony, voluntary persuasion.
You go up to Caesar and say, make him be your brother's keeper.
You know, where's your spirit?
Point over there.
That guy did it.
Okay?
It was a lot like that.
You read different letters to different things in there, and you're talking about being out of the system, being separate from it, being in your own culture.
Don't use force.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That is what attracted me.
Hey, hey, hey.
Cool.
You know, this is a good fly.
I'm over here.
You know, let's go do this.
Christianity meant to be Christ-like to me.
But in the process of going through it, you've got to open up your heart and pledge at least, and I accept.
I went through that at, I don't know, 20, 21, 22, something like that.
So I'm going, alright.
And I started to realize what it was that people get so much as a Christian or having that surrender and what people miss.
And this is what I came to share with you.
And especially as a young, I don't want you to miss out on something.
Okay?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I don't want you to miss out on something.
I understood.
When do you make that?
Yes, I accept.
There was, for me, you know, a...
Condition of surrender.
That was the key.
And libertarians, when I talk to Mark and my atheist friends and everything, they haven't taken that path wherever we are.
I'm going, that is what I learned.
You will not, you cannot surrender yourself to something.
To unknowing.
It's not about surrender.
It's never surrender!
Okay, I'm hip to that.
I probably never would have taken That would not have happened.
As a younger person, I understood the openness and the comfort and, you know, it's somebody else's deal.
I just surrender.
It's all this AA stuff, you know, AA stuff.
You know, I just surrender.
The things that I can't change.
I'm giving up.
And that opens up something.
And they need that.
They feed on that.
They go back to church every day.
They sing hymns for it.
I just want to be...
I'm not charred.
I'm not worried about...
A higher power is going to fix it for me.
And that's what religion does to you.
It takes what may ever be hardwired in the homo sapiens, in us, in that pain, we get a little twinge of inspiration, a little twinge of clairvoyance, a little help, a little connection, a little avatar plug-in or something.
A little something, and then they take that, and they turn it into whatever dog, whatever truth or reality that might be there, that's throughout all cultures, throughout all human history, and they take it, and they bastardize the shit out of it, and they use it to collectivize you into hurting your neighbor.
To not follow the golden rule.
To not be just left alone.
Advocated to be left alone.
To see the truth.
To look for something else.
To be allowed to sit on your ass, up somewhere, you know, spend days meditating, fasting, doing whatever the hell, getting in touch with.
But on the other side, if you have somebody that would take a culture that would normally use a scientific method and everything available to them to see the truth, and before you even get to ask a question, they say, there is no connection.
There is nothing inside of you that gives you a wider antenna to something else.
It doesn't exist.
Quit looking.
Stop.
It's not libertarianism to me.
And I see that happening.
I see it being beaten down.
What Adam inspired me so much when he says, you know, humanity marches on.
You can be fought, you know, or you can fight it.
Is part of humanity everything?
Is the way you are?
Are we naturally wired?
Are we a radio antenna?
Are we tuned in?
Is there something else?
I don't know.
You know, I have every evidence that there is.
You know, the best I can do is good karma, man.
You know, pay it forward.
You know, they call it a lot of things.
But to deny the search, to say you're not allowed, you're crazy, you didn't experience that.
I mean, you know, it's...
The most confidence you have in a certain person, a friend, a loved one, a child comes to you and says, hey man, I had this.
No, you didn't.
I hate that.
No, you didn't.
You didn't.
You just believed.
You just imagined.
Do we want to suppress that for generations?
Do we want to just not even look?
You know, not even opened up to it.
It's a little bit of, you know, just exploring.
I mean, I don't call it surrender, it's just explore a little bit.
So that's why I can tell, let's finish up here, from my personal experience, you can never be atheist enough, you can never be waterfilling the religion enough, you can never be enough, because it's always by somebody else's opinion what you're allowed to be.
I just need to just be.
Be libertarian.
Use non-aggression principle.
But that doesn't exclude that there's an answer out there to the question of, is there more?
I look forward to retirement age, never, you know, when I can just sit and just open it.
Sometimes you might get a little psyched pork vest, you might be doing a little god-locking here, you know.
But the thing is that, you know, you have the commitment enough to just calm your mind and just let it go.
Or is there a barrier?
I'll tell you what it's like.
Are there any children?
Or I'll be nice.
In your dreams, you know, there's something there.
You know, you have it.
Oh, that was a good dream.
Okay?
You know, a dry drink, alright?
Why don't we, you know, especially young men, why don't they have that, like, every other night?
Why is that not, like, a regular thing?
You know, why, you know, all of a sudden it's like, you know, it's like, you know, and right when you got the cleavage female, you know, thong-wearing plumber at your house doing whatever it is, and all of a sudden, boom, what do you got?
Who the fuck does that?
Seriously!
What program is that?
What makes that happen?
You know, am I hardwired not to get in my dreams?
Seriously?
You turn every single dream into a nightmare?
No!
Why?
It's because I think there's some program in there.
We're getting hardwired.
It's a societal thing.
It's something.
And right when we get to the...
We can find, oh, I'm reaching.
I've gotten...
I'm going to have total enlightenment!
We've got that going for them.
You know?
You get that coming.
You get that right there.
You're starting to get it snatched away from you because you had that radar smashed.
You had that antenna smashed.
You had the connections cut.
You had every opportunity for humanity to march forward because the libertarian movement knows it.
You're not allowed to look!
That's why I am.
I think your time is broken.
We really are going to need until 3pm.
Can we have the building until the end of this conversation?
Alright.
So I got a couple questions.
If we can go through these kind of rapid fire and allow some time for questions from the audience.
Why is it that some people in discovering the Velocity of Liberty Also shed all of their notions of religion along with the state and some never cross that barrier and their philosophical exploration of the world stops at issues of government and society and not into the realm of spirituality at all.
Well, I would assume that it's a social problem.
I mean, most people that I've talked to have difficulty, right, because atheism is the new game, frankly.
It's kind of unpopular.
You can hide it, you know, by pretending, weirdly enough, to marry another guy.
But you can convert.
Yeah, but, and so, you know, we obviously just need to meet in bot houses more.
I feel that...
That's the way to go.
So a lot of people feel that there's concern, right?
I mean, I think Ernie's discussion about, you know, seeking more, I certainly think that philosophy is always about seeking.
You go out onto the ocean with philosophy and you seek for new lands, but you don't drop your compass into the ocean.
Right?
So seek, yes, but with principles, with evidence, with research, with science, with philosophy.
Go look, go explore, absolutely, but not blindfolded, not spun around.
Don't get lost.
That's the challenge, right?
So yes, we need to go and seek.
But I think the people who begin to doubt...
Most people will face a challenge with their parents if their parents are religious or in their community they may not want to talk about it.
And so I think that's where people say, okay, well, I'll go to here and, you know, I think libertarianism is more accepted.
I know that libertarianism is much more acceptable in the United States than atheism is.
How do we know that?
Because of Ron Paul.
Because Ron Paul is an outspoken M slash A innerkist.
And he's out there in public.
And yet, I believe it's like a vast majority of Americans would never even conceive of voting an atheist into office.
Because, you know, godless, immoral, and so on.
And because governments own morality, and religion owns morality, and it's the same template, there's some vast authority that's way bigger than you, that raises you, that educates you, that trains you, and tells you what to do.
And if you don't do it, do they reason with you?
No.
If you don't obey the rules of God and you don't obey the rules of the state, do they sit down?
Do they get to the root of the issue?
Do they try and understand how you ended up where you are?
No.
We've got two things.
We've got jail.
We've got hell.
And both of those mean there's no argument.
There's no response.
Whenever you threaten someone, it means you have no response to their position.
You have no argument.
Governments and gods are trolls.
It's a flame war.
Literally.
So you're saying that it's a social pressure.
I mean, what you're accusing religious people in the movement of is that they're only allowing their thought process to go into subjects that society says are more or less okay.
That it's okay to question politics.
No, I'm sorry.
Just to be clear, I don't want to sound accusatory, and I actually don't I place the blame for this on religious people.
I place the blame for this on philosophers.
Because philosophers have not done the right thing and worked as hard as humanly possible to come up with a system of ethics that relies neither on the state nor on religion.
We have not solved that.
I mean, I obviously think I've tried to solve the problem in a way.
There's a free book on my website, Universally Preferable Behavior, Irrational Group of Secular Ethics.
We need to find a way to get people to understand and be good without jail, without hell, without angels, without heaven, without here you get a license and you get to be free or you go to jail and get to be exceedingly not free.
We need to find a way to convince people about virtue without a God and without a government.
And we need to be virtuous.
Society can't run if people don't tell the truth and don't respect property rights and don't respect the NAP. If we can't convince people, then that is not the job of religious people because they believe they have an answer.
It is not the job of status because they believe they have an answer.
It is the job for clear, rational, philosophically minded people to make the case for a secular and humanistic, rational system of ethics and then people can let go.
But you don't let go of the log you're floating on the ocean with, even if you know it's going to sink, unless some boat comes along.
And we've got to be that boat.
We've got to bring the case for reason, ethics, and virtue to people, and then they can let go of gods and governments.
But I think it's not their fault, but ours.
Ernie, you mentored a lot of young activists.
Look at the Jackie.
She's freaking out over there.
We'll get to you.
So why some and not others?
Why do some what?
Why do some people in their process of discovery, of being turned on to the message of getting into libertarian philosophy, why do some stop short at applying that to religion?
Autricism, peer pressure, societal norm, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I always got all the teenager, I want to be in your club reasons.
I mean, it doesn't matter.
We just got to be adults.
You know, we're not going to have America voting for an atheist president kind of thing.
Like, we're not going to have a Muslim black.
So, I'm Mormon.
All those lists are off.
My thing is that it was interesting to see at the Rally for the Republic where Dr.
Paul was talking about religion and his speech there.
And he was saying, you know, my atheist friends, my this friends, we're all in.
It's not difficult for me.
Being old enough to see the transition.
It's like a lot of revolution.
It just keeps going around.
And you see it in Goldwater and Reagan and Moreau and Dr.
Paul.
It just keeps coming around.
And what I see as building that they have to keep addressing is the freedom message.
And there's going to come a time, you know, maybe soon, that someone's going to go, you know, talk pretty much the way I imagine that I am, you know, go do whatever you want.
The pursuit of happiness includes thinking, you know, sitting on a hill somewhere and coming up with your own damn religion, you know, who cares?
And when that person gets up there, they're going to be not talking about how crazy people are for having taken on some faith.
And they're not going to say, you've got to let go and jump off of your boat, you know, that's sinking or whatever, and swim over in faith on ours.
They're not going to, you know, it's going to be teaching them how to have their own boat, you know, build it up in their head, coming up with a safe philosophy that they can feel comfortable with, that they can integrate and so on, allowing them to be free also in their spiritual life and not in ostracism that, you know, depending on which way you voted.
Because preaching and evangelizing Christians It may not even be true.
I mean, that's not even the freaking point.
You know, it's evangelizing against the search is what I'm really concerned about.
Many different philosophies.
They have nothing to do with a supernatural being.
And that's where they say, here you are an atheist.
Okay?
And this is what Adam's talking about.
You know, Mark, I mean, he'll argue for years with me.
And he'll go, and I will bring up a lot of different stuff, science and everything, you know, and he'll go, well, is God supernatural?
Supernatural!
There's outside natural, you know, it's magic or something.
Well, no, why would God need to be supernatural?
I mean, you know, if there is, I don't believe in any matter.
But I'm going, why would you have to have, you know, superhuman nature?
I mean, whatever it is, if I'm pinging on it, and it's not of nature, and it's not real, so when atheists...
No, it's got to be supernatural for you to believe and be, you know, create whatever.
If you don't believe it's supernatural, then you're an atheist welcome to club.
Really?
Am I given the freedom to make that search?
Am I given that freedom to explore?
Am I given that freedom?
You know, am I allowed to expand and grow and develop and evolve and have it?
Do I have to commit?
Am I in for a penny, in for a pound on searching for whatever?
But I know how to apply it.
I remember in Phoenix during the late 90s.
Give me one minute and I'll be done.
We can take quite a bit.
I run a restaurant in Phoenix.
The Phoenix Lights was a big deal.
I mean, there's thousands of people, man.
I was just right freaking there.
I don't give a crap.
Yada, yada, yada.
Well, I'm not a restaurant.
I'm not looking at it.
Okay?
So libertarians all over the country call me Phoenix Lights.
Phoenix Lights.
They're Dr.
Marion and all this is the UFO stuff.
And they go, Bernie, are they a real intelligence?
You know, you're a libertarian.
What's up?
And I go, they're one of two things, alright?
It's real simple.
They're Klingons or Vulcans, one or the other.
I go, if they're the Klingons, you're like, yeah, we woo you, and do what we say, and conquer, and I get in line with the other guys.
You know, you're on that side.
You and the government, you got a flag.
I mean, okay, so you got a flag.
They're going to plop it on Earth.
The Vulcans are like, they're free and prosper, man, paste, all good.
You know, can we volunteer exchange?
That's all I want to know.
Whatever I'm searching, whatever I find, whatever I go, does it comply with the non-aggression principle?
Is somebody forcing me?
Is somebody saying I can't?
Is somebody guiding me through?
They're just, you know, kind of, make sure you check here, there, look for the good, the bad.
And all I get from atheists is you're not allowed to look!
Seriously!
That is not the right side you should be on.
We should be a search, go, man, peace, you know, whatever.
You know, worship a crystal.
I don't care.
You know?
Let me know how it works out.
And take the armor.
Take the information.
Take what Stefan offers.
Take what people reasoned mine.
Take it.
Use it.
You need it.
Because, man, they'll try to sell you a bag of whatever.
Okay?
But to shut my...
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Everything else.
But am I allowed to look?
That's all I want to know.
You know, and when I go and I explore and everything, I've got to be ostracized and making fun of on every aspect of the search of what you find out.
Do not let that happen.
Humanity is way the fuck out there.
I'm looking in the future.
How much of our mind are we going to be able to use and tune into and do?
I don't know.
I want to find out.
I am not going to say not look.
Alright, if you want to line up here, we're going to take some questions from the audience, but I'd like to ask one more here, then, while people are lining up, if anybody has questions, we're going to pass it off to Ernie.
And the Lord provided!
And the Lord provided for Ernie's breakfast.
So, if there are a lot of people who are coming to atheism, as you said, Stephon, the natural trend, we see that religion is a waning power.
As libertarians who actually want to increase liberty in our lifetime, not just convert people, not just weigh people up.
We want to actually bring people in and change behaviors.
Why not reach out to atheists and say, why don't you apply that same thing into the state?
And why not combine The message of liberty with the message of atheism, not just for the purpose of reaching out to that particular demographic, but also earning for making sure that people who are brought into this movement get the message that's your conveying, which is don't stop searching, don't let anything stop you from the search taking you all the way to the bottom of the rabbit hole.
I don't know, I guess what he's eating, Stefan.
Oh yeah, I mean, I think talking to the atheist community is a great idea.
I do.
I mean, I'm not sure that atheists want another A word to hang around their necks.
Well, it was great fun being an atheist.
Let's try anarchy as well.
Just to make my social life even more exciting.
But no, I do.
I've got a debate coming up this week with atheists.
But we're not talking about spirituality, which is sort of another...
We're talking about religion.
And religion, of course, is a very specific thing.
Well, you need to make that very specific.
That was on its high level.
It was religion, wasn't it?
Atheism and liberty.
Atheism and liberty, okay.
Well, actually, that's an important distinction, if I may, because...
I really believe that atheism is the wrong word for atheism.
In the sense that...
I'm not against...
I don't wake up every day saying, I'm passionately against leprechauns.
Exactly.
And there's no...
As you pointed out in your book, atheism is a term from theism.
It's created by theists, not by rational people.
And we don't have another term for that.
Yeah, let's go hunt that lucky charms dude.
You know, because it doesn't exist.
Let's go find dragons and strangle them.
I mean, well, that would be an insane course of action.
I mean, it's just a simple acceptance that that which does not exist does not exist.
But we're talking about the reason.
Are you allowed to search?
Of course I am.
Of course you're allowed to search.
My issue, fundamentally, is that it is a violation of the non-aggression principle to teach Christianity to children.
It is a violation of the non-aggression principle to teach For two reasons.
First of all, Jesus invented hell.
Before, in the Old Testament, when you died, you were just dead.
But Jesus is like, oh, dig that guy up, we're going to burn him.
Right?
So once you start to tell a child that he's going to burn in hell forever...
For questioning or disobeying that which his mind cannot conceivably process rationally, that is abusive.
That is abusive.
And we all know that.
I mean, this is nothing any sane person needs to discuss.
So, I'm happy if people want to search spiritually and so on.
I've got no problem with that.
But you cannot morally tell your child two things.
One, you will go to hell and burn forever if you disobey me or question my edicts.
That is a threat of...
Beyond murder.
We all understand that threatening someone with murder is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
Threatening them with eternal torture is a far more egregious violation against a far more vulnerable human mind.
That is wrong.
That is wrong.
Number two.
Jesus died for your sins.
Telling that to a child?
Are you kidding me?
The best and most noble and most perfect human being in the world was murdered because you were bad?
Imagine if I disciplined my daughter by taking a pet of hers and strangling her because she disobeyed me.
And strangling the pet.
And said, that pet died because you were bad.
Can you imagine how insanely abusive that would be?
But that's how we teach.
Religion to children.
It is inflicted, it is abusive, it is monstrous.
And if it was in any other context than religion, it would be very clearly, unbelievably immoral.
So yes, let children search, but do not inflict this kind of abuse on their helpless, dependent, and tender minds and scar them for life.
That is my idea.
He is right.
I see this all the time.
Are you a fear?
First thing, if they have to use fear, threat, put a 45-year soul in their hand, okay?
If they're doing that, look somewhere else.
I just want to say that I think there is an opportunity here for libertarianism to provide something for atheism, for all of these people that are coming away from the dogma of religion for a variety of reasons where it's failing in its promised services.
And one of the ones that you failed to mention, which I was surprised when you were talking about the benefits of religion, is the therapeutic benefits.
That a lot of individuals get the psychological crutch out of it.
But atheism is truly a religion because you have to believe in reason.
You have to believe in logic.
You have to believe in human faculties.
Atheism is a religion.
Like bald is a hair color.
It's not...
No, it's not.
In order to come to the conclusion of atheism, you have to have a certain faith in your own faculties, if nothing else.
No, no, no.
The whole point of science is we do not have faith in our own faculties.
We know that we can be fooled, which is why we need an experiment.
That's your ability to apply the scientific process.
Well, no, because it's not a single science.
It's a collective process, right?
It's peer review.
It's other people replicating your experiments.
It's not just me saying, ah, it's science.
It's mine.
It's right.
It is a collective process.
It is a general endeavor that slowly progresses over time.
- If you're a foreigner here, it's still critical to us, and that's involve some other people in the conversation. - So if you don't sin, Jesus dies for nothing.
Anyway, right, we could use that for sin.
Anyway, so you've been addressing coming to an atheistic viewpoint from a liberty viewpoint.
I went in reverse.
I came from my lack of religious faith viewpoint to recognizing the state as a separate faith and then going through that process, which I thought was emotionally troubling, the whole process.
I just wanted you to kind of address that.
It can go in reverse, too.
You can lose religious faith and then lose the other faith.
Yeah, atheists really need us because they're switching from religion to statism.
An atheist who's a statist is just another theist.
So we need to help them to not switch one delusion for another.
And that is really hard.
I mean, look at the Scandinavian countries.
They're more atheists and they've got a state that's just huge.
And so you tend to see this, right?
So if you've got communism, which is atheism, they're a huge state.
And then you have, sort of, Republican Libertarians, they want a smaller state, but they're more religious.
I mean, we've just got to find some way.
We're not pushing one end of the balloon, and then pushing the other end up.
But we really try, and there's only first principles that can do that.
Only first principles can say, that which exists, that which doesn't exist, that which is virtuous, that which is true, that which is false.
And so we need to reach out, I think, more to atheists and say, listen, you're sliding from one god to another, and this new god is even more dangerous.
Stefan, do you have faith in philosophy?
I do not have faith in philosophy.
Because faith is a confession that something is true, though it cannot be comprehended, it cannot be examined, there's no evidence, it's against reason.
No, it is not a matter of faith.
Philosophy is first principles.
Like, you don't say, I have faith that two and two make four.
That's not a matter of faith.
And so you simply, I don't have faith that a rock falls at 9.8 meters per second per second.
That is something that is verifiable, that is something measurable, that is something that is reproducible.
So if it's faith, then it is a place to begin to shine more of a light of reason and evidence on, and if you can't find anything to withdraw, you'll support from it until such time as that changes.
Do you have faith in evidence and reason?
Alright, we can keep going, go ahead.
So I kind of wanted to continue the same thread of thought about talking about the atheist community and kind of being an atheist.
You kind of brought up how atheism was sort of the new gay, and I thought that was actually really accurate in a sense I don't think you meant, is that when I see kind of the mainstream gay community doing It is reacting almost to the victimization of their community by really pushing statism, by saying that they need these laws and regulations to protect them from those evil Christian masses or whatever it is.
And I see that even within the atheist community, the mainstream atheists, Um, on like Reddit or other, um, communities where people meet up, um, really do the same thing.
They have that kind of almost victimization of we're atheist people hate us because of it.
And so my question is, you know, how do we, I guess, broach that with, with atheists trying to get them to be more, Like, less statist, but at the same time kind of, like, lose the victimization thing...
But, no, the victimization thing is very real.
I mean, you can't say, pretend you're not being persecuted when you're being persecuted, when society is hostile.
I mean, you have to accept the reality of people's experience.
Like, you can't say to gay people in 1950, just drop the whole victim thing.
You know, it's like saying to slaves in the 17th century, just drop the whole act of a work ethic.
You know, it is a real victimization, and I think we need to accept that, and then we can begin to find ways to work beyond it.
But, you know, we need our will and grace.
We need an atheist sitcom.
You know, we need that kind of stuff in the world.
We really do.
I mean, because that is what advances and discharges some of the fears that people have.
But there's a huge amount of stereotypes about atheists, you know, that come from the Christian community.
I mean, remember, the Bible explicitly commands Christians to kill us.
I mean, you know, you can't write anything about even beating up days, which is, I think, right.
You shouldn't.
I mean, I shouldn't have a law against it, but you shouldn't write that stuff.
But I mean if people accurately prosecuted hate speech the Bible would be taken out of every hotel room and every classroom and every church in the world Um These are a lot of questions that I've actually been struggling with for a long time, so this question comes from a really earnest place for me.
Hypothetically, let's say tomorrow, Porkfest is ending, and we're all going home, and then out of the sky, God comes down.
He says, by the way, let's say for, you know, to save arguments, the Christian God.
He comes down and says, by the way, all that biblical stuff is right.
There is a hell, there is a heaven, there is all the stuff of Jesus, all that really happened.
I guess my question is, what does that change philosophically for you?
Does that change anything?
Is that still an authoritarian system that, as libertarians, you would say, well, that may be true, but we're still going to oppose that because it's an authoritarian system, or does it change, well, hey, there is a God, there is all this, maybe...
My outlook on how I approach this should change.
I understand.
Hold on a second.
I just want an administrative note.
Aside from the fact that that would probably mean there's something in the water here rather than...
I just want to point out that we are over time and if you need to kick us off at any point, I can wrap up in a few seconds, but I don't want to be monopolizing the stage.
Okay, we'll take a couple minutes and see if we can race for a few more questions.
If it changed the way you saw the world, then you probably weren't seeing it right.
Because to me, I don't know, are you Vulcan or Klingon?
That's all I want to know.
Do I have free will?
That was the promise.
I'm going to take the free will to use that, which is the most valuable thing, because forced compliance is not virtue.
You make a decision.
It's a voluntary thing.
That's why they need you to vote, man.
We don't care who you vote for.
We've got that control over the floppy disk.
But, you know, we need you to vote, alright?
We need you to vote in compliance.
We need you to participate.
They need our support.
They don't exist without our support.
So, you know, when God comes up and Jesus says, Hello, what's up?
What's up?
You know, I'm good.
There's no fear.
You know, are you here to aggress?
Are you here to give me more information?
Are you going to enlighten me?
Are you going to share some of me?
Are you going to give me the gift of knowledge?
Are you going to do perfect knowledge?
Are you going to join me with your crystal?
Are you going to do something for me?
Are we voluntarily exchanging?
Are you here to oppress me?
Are you my worshiper?
Get on your knees.
No, that's not, you know, what I'm looking for.
I want to know the truth.
And if God turns out to be an oppressive sub bitch, that'd be bad.
But I don't think it works that way.
I think it's an individual thing.
And for us to try and have, you know...
I mean, it's not like you try to avoid the word collective at every use, but, I mean, where would I, you know, look collectively for the truth?
I mean, it always comes from an individual.
It's always a neo.
There's always that one person that, you know, blazes the trail.
It's kind of over here.
If you just turn your frequency of the FM dial to the heater, get enough static with the iPod in one ear and everything, you can't talk to God.
Yeah, and he's not coming.
And if you did, that might be basically, well, why didn't you start making the bombs?
You know, if you're going to come here and come to me and talk to us, there's a whole bunch of Iraqis who could use a human shield.
go do something useful.
Thank you very much for being here, for doing your talk and everything.
So, Ernie, the first thing I want to say is that, yes, I've seen that attitude that this you cannot see, this does not exist, you cannot even consider this as part of any hypothesis or whatever it is.
And that's a bad attitude, and I agree with you.
So, someone you might appreciate to be Victor Stenger.
Victor Stenger wrote this book called God, The Failed Hypothesis, where you take seriously this idea of God being a possible hypothesis or explanation.
And so, one of the things that they do is they have this thing...
That prayer study, where it's a real thing.
If God actually exists, no matter what it is, whatever religion is, anything, is there any actual effect of this?
And no, there's no effect.
So that's one particular experiment where they took it seriously.
Scientists looked at it, and they held it in Zion.
I never see it as a group setting.
You had an individual experience, and you didn't.
And that's one thing I hate about the atheist community, however they want to define me.
But they go in, they get inside your head.
No, you didn't.
How the fuck do you know?
Seriously, how the fuck do you know what happened inside my head?
I mean, just that right there.
Seriously, that's where you're starting?
That's where you're starting, is what I personally experience.
You know, I can be right with shit with you personally experience, but anything to do with what I experience, go get my head and tell me what I experience.
The cancer patient still died.
But, uh...
If someone says, "I went to bed last night, I fell asleep, and then I really rode a dragon through lava," then I'm actually, I don't think it's too much to get in their head to say you had a dream.
You had a real experience, but it was a dream.
So, I have a separate question for us to find out.
There's an actual, the new atheist community, but they all seem to be very, very sadist and very, very pro-war.
So, how exactly do you respond to these particular new atheists, like the Christopher Hitchens types of folks?
How do you respond to them?
How do you interact with them?
If we're going to interact with the atheist community to make them more libertarian, how do we bring the limelight away from these warbongers who seem to be people of this?
Well, I mean, to make people good is the great challenge.
And if you don't have a good reason for people to gird you, you have to threaten them.
And so if people let go of God, they need some other metaphysical club or physical club to make people good.
And so they've drawn towards the state.
Because Lord knows people can't be good if they're just raised right and healthy.
Although that's exactly what psychology tells us.
You raise children peacefully, they will be virtuous.
They will not be addicted.
They will not be violent.
They will not be aggressive.
They will find the cheaters.
But people don't want to deal with that, so it's like, okay, you just say, what were the steps by which you determined that there was no deity?
Okay, let's start over here in the realm of politics and go through exactly the same steps.
I mean, it's not even a parallel train track.
It's the same train track, it's just a different train.
Well that's all the time we officially have for this panel this morning.
I'm really sorry we're going to take more questions here.
We are getting to go both.
I just want to say thank you all so much for showing up this morning hour.
And I want to thank Stephon and Ernie Hancock for being a part of this.
The takeaway here, don't let anybody tell you where not to think and apply these principles and let's be courageous in reaching out and be able to make sure that we can reach out to another demographic that we can bring into the liberty movement, we can bring into this by saying that they are welcome here.
So thank you very much.
I hope this was a great way to just start this conversation because we really could have gone until 3pm.
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