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March 8, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:15:00

2927 An Atheist Apologizes to Christians - Call In Show - March 4th, 2015

An incredibly powerful and deeply emotional conversation with a Mormon listener who has lost his faith - and is deeply conflicted about the possibly of leaving his community behind. | I am a very smart person, able to accurately analyze many aspects of life critically, but on the issue of religion, I am more often able to be a 99.999% atheist with the exception of my own emotionally powerful religion. I am confused about what is real and fearful of change while surrounded by spouse, family, friends, and colleagues who will reject me should I reject my religion. How can a philosophical approach help me with this schism in my life? | Socrates said he knew nothing except that he knew nothing. What is your attitude on epistemology and how does it inform your philosophy? Is it the foundation of your worldview - and should it be?

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	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom In Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Mike?
	Up first today is Scott.
	Scott wrote in, and his question, it's fairly lengthy, but I'm going to read the whole thing because I think it's really, really important stuff.
	He wrote and said, I am LDS. I've been LDS my whole life.
	Been on a mission, observed dietary and chastity...
	Break it out for our European listeners.
	Latter-day Saints, which means Mormon.
	Mormon.
	Mm-hmm.
	Been on a mission, observed dietary and chastity structures, the whole lifestyle.
	I see the teachings of the Church that only came from my Church at a time that by following I kept myself safe from addictions, behaviors, etc.
	that may have wrecked my life.
	The focus of the Church on Protestant living, a general teaching to be self-sufficient and self-sustaining, has also kept me financially and materially safe from debt and servitude to debtors.
	The nihilism of the atheists, agnostics, and other irreligious people that I grew up with would have stripped me of those beneficial teachings without replacing them, leaving me with no principles or moorings to prevent me from descending into self-medication for a painful childhood.
	Still, I can also identify incorrect teachings from my religion.
	Lack of teachings against child abuse, lack of compassion for the pain I went through as a child, and bigotry taught as doctrine.
	I'm a very smart person, able to accurately analyze many aspects of life critically, but on the issue of religion, I am more often able to see 99.999% atheist, with the exception of my own emotionally powerful religion.
	I am confused about what is real and fearful of change while surrounded by a spouse, family, friends, and colleagues who will reject me should I reject my religion.
	How can a philosophical approach help me with this schism in my life?
	It's a great and powerful question, Scott.
	I really, really appreciate you bringing that up.
	Well, thanks, Steph.
	Thanks for talking to me about it.
	Is there anything you wanted to add to that opening salvo?
	There might have been a few typos in there.
	People can...
	I don't know.
	There are things like Provident Living and stuff like that.
	That was just basically...
	My point was behind that whole entire build-up was that...
	Sorry, let me gather my thoughts.
	It was that I was trying to point out that a lot of things that I was taught growing up proved to be very beneficial And when I was growing up, those atheists that I was exposed to were not...
	They were very much like nihilists.
	They just didn't...
	They didn't replace...
	I mean, I guess all that's in the questions.
	Sorry, I'm trying to gather my thoughts here.
	No, no, listen, you're...
	You're making sense to me.
	I mean, the emptiness and nihilism of certain strands of atheism is not lost on me at all.
	So, yeah, that makes sense to me.
	Atheism is not a diet, right?
	Atheism is I'm not going to eat something.
	That's not the same as having a diet, right?
	And atheism is not any way to sustain a life direction.
	It is not any way to have a life philosophy, because it is fundamentally a negative, a disbelief, a rejection.
	And so, no, it is maybe necessary, but certainly not sufficient, a foundation for a moral and rational life.
	That's kind of how I... I just want to explain that I'm right at the edge of a lifetime as a Mormon.
	I'm sorry, can you just repeat that and just cut out for a sec?
	You're right at the edge of what?
	I'm right at the edge of an entire lifetime of being a Mormon.
	I'm 38 years old.
	I spent years in the apologetics part of Mormonism.
	Just trying to Defend my faith against other religions mostly, but the further that I got into sort of the more scholarly approach to the doctrines of my church and to the history of my church and so on,
	the more I just found it to be so convenient, all the explanations and the The time frames that things happen in, when claims are made, they're usually made right during some sort of...
	Or when a change is made in the church, it's usually made during some sort of external pressure or documents that just happen to be in the presence of a particular church leader at the time and somehow those...
	There's just so much of just kind of convenient progression to the history of the LDS Church.
	Right, right.
	So you are facing, at the moment, I guess it could be called more than a crisis of faith.
	Is that fair to say?
	It's very much a crisis for me.
	And by crisis, I don't mean that It's not huge, and probably, certainly, I think as an adult, the most significant intellectual transition or challenge that you've faced.
	But a crisis of faith is usually resolved by a rededication to the faith, but I'm not getting the sense that that's imminent for you.
	I've already tried that, you know.
	I can't...
	I just can't...
	I mean...
	I've already gone down the path of becoming a more rational person.
	When I understand human psychology and understand...
	One of the biggest things for me, there's a little bit of background to what makes Mormonism a little bit different than other Christian denominations.
	There are a lot of these things that are often brought up against Christianity, like the heaven and hell complex, where you're kind of threatening people into heaven.
	That's not as prominent of a concept in Mormonism.
	There's very little discussion of punishment.
	It's much more discussions of exaltation and continuing beyond this world and eternity and progression and all that.
	That's much more in the mindset of a Mormon than, say, fear of hell.
	And...
	I spent a long time...
	Gosh, there's so much to explain.
	Now, I guess I don't really need to explain it like I'm giving people an excuse.
	It's just...
	I really have tried throughout my entire life to understand and verify my religion.
	I just didn't have the tools.
	And I grew up in kind of like a crazy version of my religion.
	It's one that makes other Mormons blush.
	I've talked to you before about my childhood, and my parents were crazy.
	More so than maybe the mainstream of Mormonism.
	And so for me, rejecting that faith...
	I delved into the, I guess what you could call the official faith of the Church.
	You know, the official doctrines.
	And I really, you know, I'm a very studious person.
	And I, you know, I went deep into LDS doctrine.
	And the problem with it, though, is that the deeper that you go...
	The more that you find all the confirmation bias, the more that you find all the gaps in explanations.
	You know, one thing doesn't connect with another thing.
	And I just can't go back.
	I can't delve back into my faith.
	And Man, it's kind of a word salad here.
	No, no, it's not.
	No, listen, you're making complete sense to me.
	If you speak from the heart, it's almost impossible to be confusing, right?
	No, you're making complete sense to me.
	The part that I was explaining about human psychology was that that's very tied to prayer for me.
	Another thing that's very prominent in LDS faith is praying for an answer.
	Mormons put a lot of focus on that.
	Missionaries is one of the main things that missionaries teach about.
	In the end of the Book of Mormon, we invite people to read a few passages and explain that you can pray about the church and receive an answer for yourself.
	You don't have to believe.
	Take our word for it.
	And...
	And I think that Mormonism appeals to, in that aspect of it, besides the people who grow up with it, the people who convert, and I kind of consider myself a convert almost, because I grew up with such a strange version of Mormonism, that the people who convert are often very similar types of people.
	And I noticed this because I went on a mission to Brazil, and Brazil is a very...
	High conversion place for the Mormon Church.
	And I was...
	I brought into the church many people.
	And I look back on those people and they're all great people.
	Very nice people.
	Some of them were still very near and dear to my heart.
	Thank you.
	Do you want to go on?
	I certainly have some questions, but I'm happy to listen.
	I keep coming back to this point.
	When I went through those prayers and everything myself, I did have some very vivid experiences.
	But I've had much more vivid experiences as I've done in some self-knowledge.
	As I've discovered more about myself, more about my own personal history and the experiences that I went through as a child.
	And connecting with my inner self and my subconscious.
	Understanding a lot more about myself.
	I've had much stronger feelings there than any prayer I ever did.
	And that led me to understand what those promises of answers were, that they are A manipulation of the internal person,
	you know, that you're trying to connect with God, but what you're really doing is you're connecting with your inner self and you're discovering things that your subconscious already understood or at least already figured out on a baser level, more natural level, I think.
	Yeah.
	I mean, these are just my theories, but that's how it feels to me.
	me, I mean, as I, as I've had much more stronger experiences, um, you know, going through this self-knowledge discovery, I've, I found a very, a very cohesive I found a very, a very cohesive tie to those former answers to prayer.
	And then you notice all the Once I realized all this, I stopped making excuses for the church.
	And I stopped making excuses for the doctrine.
	And I just examined them on their own ground.
	On their own merits.
	And I find a lot of positive things, but...
	Certainly the way that they teach you self-mastery to not become involved in things that might damage your ability to make proper judgments and In terms of,
	you know, getting involved with substances.
	And I'm not making a judgment.
	I want to just let people know or listen to this.
	I'm not making a judgment about those who do that.
	But I know for myself, from other behaviors that I have, that if I had been involved in those things, I would have gone as far as I could go.
	Right.
	And I mean, I know that without any doubt.
	But I just, I can't go back anymore.
	or...
	Because it's just too obvious to me that it's, that The claims that are made, the history, the people involved and the claims that they made, the angelic visitations and all that stuff, it's just...
	I can't accept it anymore but everyone that I know my wife, her family those members of my family that I'm still in contact with my children who are half raised in this church
	thank you It's, uh...
	The consequences of the realization are very scary to me.
	Right.
	A couple of years ago, I had a friend who...
	Thank you.
	This is about the time that I was Also, you know, going through this and trying to figure everything out, he told me that he had left the church and took him about four years of study to go through that.
	He and I hit it off really well because we both speak Portuguese.
	He went on his mission to Brazil.
	We both had similar experiences on our mission.
	We both had a lot of cultural, you know, love for Brazil.
	He had actually married a Brazilian woman.
	He had five girls ranging from five years old to 17 years old.
	And he and I were talking about I was just listening to him and having him tell me why he left the church.
	He told me a lot of all the things that convinced him.
	I asked him how he dealt with the change in his family.
	He was a lot more flippant about that.
	It might have just been because he didn't want to talk to me about it.
	He kind of just said, well, if it's not true, then I don't want to waste any more time in it.
	I'm not going to give any more time or dedication to it.
	And...
	Thank you.
	I kind of took that as...
	I think that I misunderstood what he meant, but I kind of took that as being that...
	Well, I mean, I know from his life after the church that he really didn't try to pursue any self-knowledge.
	He didn't try to figure out what to replace the church with in terms of how to live.
	And...
	He was more of an agnostic than an atheist after he left the church.
	And what ended up happening is it's a pretty tough story because I keep referring to him in the past tense.
	He's actually passed away.
	He was only a couple years older than me.
	What I wanted to say though is that the rest of his family didn't come along with him.
	They didn't take the good things of the church with them and leave the bad behind.
	They kind of just went all different directions including his wife and his wife ended up cheating on him and leaving him and I just...
	it scared me to death watching that happen what does your wife think At the moment, not of this necessarily, but where is she in her belief system?
	She's never really been like me when it comes to the church.
	She's never been very interested in going into the doctrines very far.
	She's not She didn't go around seeking answers in prayer and things like that.
	Ever since I've known her, she's been much more in it.
	I think that if she had been in another religion, she would have Just been in that.
	Or if she had, you know, been born without religion, she would have just been in that.
	And there wouldn't have been any search for her.
	I think it's a lot more about her family.
	Because I'm not as close to my family, it's my family of origin.
	And I...
	I didn't find that part of it as much of a draw for me to stay in the church.
	Or for me to seek the...
	For me to...
	What I mean is for me to...
	As I was saying before, for me to kind of convert to the church.
	I didn't feel like I did it for family.
	She's...
	She's...
	For her, I think it will be a lot more difficult...
	In fact, if it wasn't so difficult for her to leave the church, I think that it wouldn't be that difficult for me.
	Is she afraid of ostracism?
	Oh, yeah.
	And that will happen.
	That's the deal, right?
	Like, if you disbelieve in the tenants, then people aren't allowed to have any contact with you, right?
	Yeah.
	With my family, it's...
	With my family, it's just...
	I don't care if they ostracize me.
	With hers, her parents were a lot more decent than mine were.
	And her sisters, she and her sisters are...
	They talk all the time.
	They talk about the church all the time.
	They have callings in the church that they fulfill.
	And they...
	It gives them a real structure in a society and a unifying belief system, right?
	Yeah.
	And atheism, and certainly agnosticism, isn't going to, and atheism isn't really going to offer that.
	Atheism, a lot of times, is a...
	Vainglorious superiority regarding superstition.
	I've been prayed to it myself, so I'm speaking from experience.
	And it is seeing the fantasy without understanding the values and why the values are there.
	I mean, I just did a presentation today on sex, marriage, and...
	It's quite illuminating to see the degree to which religion has shaped human sexuality to very socially productive and happiness-enhancing ends, whereas a lot of the secular, pretty lefty, atheist stuff is irresponsible and carnal and kind of destructive on that stuff
	and yeah when I know that you wanted to talk about this part of me was thinking okay but where would you go?
	Let's say that you could get your whole family out of the group.
	And the question is, well, then what?
	Where do you go?
	Where do you find the sustenance that religion provides, the structure, the depth?
	Religious people, in many ways...
	Well, I shouldn't say religious people like I know something about all religions, but certainly in the religion that I grew up in, in Protestantism, I had more conversations about philosophy in church than I ever did in school.
	I had more conversations about values, principles, and ideas sitting on a pew than I ever did sitting in a coffee shop.
	And Christians go to church every Sunday and talk about things that matter.
	And Christians are willing to stand up for their beliefs in a way that is obviously chilling to the outsider, but bespeaks a great deal of confidence and integrity in the belief system.
	And a great deal of honor in the belief system.
	I've talked to libertarians, you know, like, maybe people who want you thrown in jail for following your conscience aren't the greatest companions.
	And everyone thinks the idea is mental.
	Now, of course, in Mormonism, if you reject the tenets of the faith, I mean, you are out of the circle, right?
	You're outside the biodome.
	And it is hard not to feel a certain admiration for that dedication, that discipline.
	And that makes it all the more challenging for you, right?
	I mean, I'm trying to stay focused on what you're saying, Scott.
	The pauses and the emotional emptiness of your voice feels like a kind of invitation to dissociate.
	Because what I feel on the sort of helium gaps of your language, Scott, is that your heart Is on the verge of being broken, if not already broken.
	broken, doesn't mean permanently, but that there's heartbreak sort of gushing out between these syllables.
	My heart is broken.
	Yeah.
	Tell me about that.
	And look, you can share your feelings, right?
	I mean, we're just talking, you know, man to man.
	Thinker to thinker.
	Soul to soul, I should say.
	And you will need your passions for whatever comes next, right?
	So when you say your heart's broken, what do you mean?
	I have a lot of experiences around where hope in my religion got me through some very tough times.
	Extremely tough times for me.
	And you feel some gratitude for that?
	A lot of gratitude.
	But it's also a feeling of loss, really.
	If you can imagine, I'll use a metaphor, imagine that you are listening to Imagine that you have a call every weekend with a person and over the years you develop a relationship with that person.
	You've never met them, you've never seen them or anything, but you have this kind of long-distance relationship with that person.
	Conversations like that, the conversations that you have over the years, they help you get through various problems and various issues in your life.
	And then you find out...
	I'm sorry to interrupt, Scott, but if you give me an analogy, I think I'm going to not get your feelings.
	Okay.
	That's a way of sort of describing yourself to me rather than sharing yourself with me.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Okay.
	So let's go back to when you said your heart was broken.
	What does that mean for you, sort of feeling-wise?
	It's like losing somebody.
	It's like...
	It's losing people.
	Mm-hmm.
	It's the people, isn't it?
	I mean, the wisdom that you got from prayer, you can get from self-knowledge, right?
	I mean, I don't want to pimp the book, but people who want to know more about that, I've got a book called Against the Gods, which talks about the subconscious as a deity.
	So the wisdom you don't have to lose, right?
	The I'm in trouble, I need support, I need sustenance, I need wisdom, that you don't have to lose.
	And in fact, the relationship can be more vivid because it is something that's more real.
	But isn't it the people?
	Yeah.
	That matter, right?
	It's the people that are surrounding me, but it's people also that I was told I would see again that aren't around anymore.
	Right.
	And you find out that that's not true.
	No hands are gonna come up from the graves at the end of days, right?
	Yeah.
	You know when I was when I was growing up I was very lonely and
	there were a handful of people that I knew who who helped me significantly when I left on my mission I I went
	and saw my grandmother who I had lived next door to when she was when I was younger.
	And she...
	You're back to describing yourself to me and giving stories and analogies.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I want to get back to that open channel that we had to your real feelings.
	Yeah.
	Because you want to go off in stories, right?
	Yeah.
	Which is a way of not...
	connecting, right?
	I get an image in my head, Scott, of almost like...
	Thank you.
	And this is in no way negative, but it's like you're...
	I feel like...
	It feels to me like your identity is like you have...
	Like Siamese twins.
	You have people growing out of you.
	And it's like they're going to be pulled off and leave these holes.
	And you'll bleed.
	That it's not, you know, people over there, it's people within you, people growing out of you, people merged with you.
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	You've probably seen those trees that grow together and they merge trunks.
	You can't pull them apart without damage.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I've seen those.
	Is that anywhere close to how you feel about your social...
	your society, your tribe?
	Yeah.
	I... Recognizing that I'll be rejected.
	I am also recognizing that I'm not that close to them.
	Well, that's, of course, the great challenge is when you doubt, you must be distant from those the great challenge is when you doubt, you must be distant from those If the expression of doubts is considered negative, right?
	Absolutely.
	It's...
	It's fear of I'm just very fearful of that rejection.
	Yeah.
	And I'm also fearful of my own, not just my family of origin, but my current family and how to convince them and when to do that.
	This has been hard for me to do and I have I have a wife who will probably not come along with me, and I have a daughter who identifies very strongly with the Church.
	And to some degree, if not largely, because of you, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And as you say, they're half-grown, right?
	Yeah.
	I have a pretty large gap between them.
	Right.
	Right.
	Despair for me has often arisen when I have accepted a false dichotomy.
	It may be possible, Scott, within your situation, for there still to be a win-win.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Because if for you, personal integrity means the end of your family as it stands, well, that's an impossible choice, right?
	It's a terrifying choice.
	Thank you.
	Either way, your heart goes into a blender, right?
	Do I face 20 years of trying to live two lives?
	Or do I leave and have my family fall apart?
	Right.
	Maybe those aren't the only two options.
	Maybe.
	I think it's worth exploring if there is a third way.
	I don't know what that third way is.
	Other than converting back to the church again, which I can't...
	No, that's not a third way.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	That's like saying I can go perpendicular if I'm backtracking.
	I mean we can explore that if you like Because I'll be upfront with you.
	I mean, your responsibility, as you know, is to your kids.
	And they can't get out.
	No.
	So you got them in.
	Yeah.
	You can't leave if they can't leave, right?
	Absolutely.
	And I don't mean this, I mean, with the very best of intentions and with the very greatest of social supports, but you got them in, right?
	Absolutely.
	And, you know, I loathe The very idea of telling anyone what to do.
	So I'm not.
	Obviously, I can't tell you what to do.
	But that perspective, I think, is not insignificant.
	You got him in.
	Yeah.
	And if you're like, I'm out of here, good luck, right?
	I mean, if it's hard for you, it's infinitely harder for them.
	Yeah.
	So I don't think you have an exit strategy that can survive your conscience.
	conscience?
	No.
	I just don't...
	I don't see one.
	Well, let me see if I can blow a few holes in the ceiling, let some options in.
	What do you think?
	Let's hear it.
	Alright.
	Are you comfortable?
	Yeah.
	Have I listened well?
	I think so.
	Absolutely.
	I will try and give you not a third rail, but a third way.
	Alright?
	So, number one.
	Religion is superior to statism.
	At least in the West, where there's a separation of church and state.
	I'm not talking about some countries where apostasy gets you the death sentence or a thousand lashes or whatever.
	I'm talking about in the West, separation of church and state.
	Religion remains pressured but voluntary.
	Right?
	You're not in a prison, and if you're willing to take the slings and arrows of outrageous social rejection, then...
	Right?
	And the fact that it is so powerful is how we know a free society works, because ostracism is incredibly powerful.
	But you, through religion, there is a pushback against the state, right?
	Right.
	I don't know much about Mormon political thought.
	I know a little bit about the theology, but I don't know much about Mormon political thought.
	But my understanding, because Mitt Romney is, I believe, the reflection of all Mormon essence, but they seem to be more conservative.
	Yeah.
	Is that fair to say?
	Yeah, it's probably a 70-30 period.
	Like conservative, liberal kind of thing?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And then like maybe 1% something else.
	Okay.
	So, because there's a separation of church and state, religions as a whole push back against the power of the state.
	Because it encroaches upon religious values and And because a more powerful state carries within it the potentiality of, you know, what happened under the National Socialists in Germany, that they're going to push out Christianity and replace it with the Reich Church or whatever they were going to do with it, right?
	So there is a pushback in Christianity against Christianity.
	The power of the state.
	There's no divine right of kings anymore.
	There's none of that sort of stuff.
	There's no, you know, you have to obey the secular ruler as you would obey God himself.
	That stuff is largely gone.
	Oh, Mike is pinging me.
	Okay, let's see here.
	The 49% of Mormons who self-identify as both conservative and Republican is the highest of any major religious group, significantly larger than the 31% of Protestants and Or other non-Catholic Christians who can be so categorized.
	49% conservative, 31% moderate, 8% liberal.
	Okay.
	So, we have more to fear from the state than the pulpit.
	We have more to fear from Congress than the church, right?
	Okay.
	Because religion, Christianity, spreads itself by the word, not by the sword, at least in modern times.
	If you are within the church, you are in an entity that is bulwarked and fortressed against the power of the secular state. you are in an entity that is bulwarked and fortressed That's sort of number one.
	Which means that there is more to regard as an ally than as an enemy between the state and the church.
	I will choose the church.
	So, from that standpoint, the church has value in the struggle for freedom.
	I've been doing a lot of reading lately on what happened in the West when religion fell away or when religion was strictly opposed.
	And the two examples that I won't go into a lot of detail because I really want to stay focused on your heart, Scott, but the two that pop into mind are the French Revolution and The Russian Revolution, which were both socialist anti-clerical revolutions that replaced one form of relatively mild tyranny, at least compared to what came afterwards with unbelievable savagery.
	Unbelievable savagery was unleashed through the anti-clerical left in the Russian Revolution and the French Revolution.
	And Almost all of the founding fathers died peacefully in their old age, with the exception of a few who got involved in duels.
	Almost all of the French leaders succumbed to the guillotine, as did so many.
	Tens of thousands of other French citizens.
	And they went around murdering priests and gutting nuns.
	It's just unbelievably horrendous stuff.
	Awful stuff.
	I'm sorry?
	It's awful stuff.
	It's awful stuff.
	So, you know, I... You know, what I can tell you, this is not any kind of fundamental philosophical arguments, Scott, but what I can tell you is, at least from my perspective, in my evolution of understanding what religion is and how it transmits very beneficial social mores,
	social values, social restraints, The fact that religion recognizes and accepts the unbelievable power and responsibility of human sexuality, whereas the secular left in general treats human beings like disposable,
	flesh-like, masturbatory devices, and then piles the consequence of sexual irresponsibility on the backs, wallets, and necks of other more responsible people.
	So, let me ask you this.
	I'm sure you know something about the degree to which Christianity is very valuable in its channeling of sexuality romance into monogamous, pair-bonded, traditional marriage structures, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Yeah.
	I mean, would you like your daughter to be raised by secular leftists or if you had the choice, right?
	Would you rather her be raised by the state or would you rather her be raised in the bosom of the church?
	What do you think would be more beneficial for her if you had to choose between those two extremes?
	I would absolutely choose the church.
	I would too.
	I was reading this study, one of the widest divergencies I've ever read about Scott in the social sciences.
	There was a study which said, if you're a 16 year old girl and you don't go to church and your friends are having sex, it's 97% likely that you're having sex.
	Whereas if you go to church and your friends aren't having sex, it's 97% likely you're not having sex.
	That's astounding.
	I can't think of more extreme opposites in that situation.
	You know, the unbelievable statist cratering of the family that has been occurring since the 1950s and 1960s in the West has been a direct assault on the fundamental pillars that have held Western civilization aloft for centuries.
	And My family was just another one of these nuclear shadows up against the wall of secular experimentation with the stability of the family, most of the suffering of which is borne by the children, right?
	And the church, the Christian church, is a very strong and staunch defender of Two-parent families and staying together and focusing on your children, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	The Mormon Church is...
	If there's one thing that they talk about more than anything, it's family cohesion.
	And I used to think that religion...
	Focus on the family because it wished to create a clear channel for indoctrination of the children.
	And that's certainly part of it.
	But I also really think, without proof, it's just a thought, but I really think that religion is how social stability replicates itself.
	Religion is how The wild sexuality of short-term reproductive strategies is restrained and reined in and turned towards that which benefits the children.
	The safest place for women is in a stable long-term marriage.
	The safest place for children is in a stable long-term marriage.
	And the way to shrink the power of the state is to promote stability in long-term marriages.
	And to my knowledge, nothing does that better than the church.
	If you look at the statistics, I mean, I live in Utah.
	And as, you know, I've been very aware for many years about how cohesive families are in Utah.
	the divorce rate is much lower among active church-going members in the church.
	Now, I mean, what's active?
	I mean, sometimes these statistics get fudged and it's hard to quote any of them, but, I mean, it's definitely a significantly lower divorce rate among church members than the population at large.
	They are a staunch tribe.
	I watched some of Netanyahu's speech to Congress about Israel.
	There's another man standing up for the Jews, for a strong, staunch tribe.
	And we in the West, we Europeans, we founders of the Freedom Club.
	I mean, the 20th century was Just a complete meat grinder for our entire culture and civilization.
	And it just got ripped up, smashed up, blown up, irradiated, undermined, destroyed, and eviscerated.
	And I miss that Storn's tribe.
	And you're part of one.
	And the values which are promoted through Christianity, I support those values, a lot of them.
	A lot of them.
	There's a lot of focus on kids, a lot of focus on sacrifice.
	Religious people are twice as likely to give to charity, significantly more likely to volunteer.
	You know, Christians are willing to give 10% or more of their income to their church.
	I'm out here on the internet begging for scraps.
	There is nobility and power and reason.
	Because of the Greek tradition, the Roman tradition, St.
	Augustine tradition, there is reason and philosophy in the heart of the Church.
	This changes nothing of the metaphysics and nothing of the arguments I've made in the past.
	But as I've gotten older, which is usually...
	What people say before they spout the most inane bullshit.
	As I've gotten older, I really understand.
	And that's not an argument, and I'm fully aware that I'm not making an argument when I say that.
	But I'm going to say it anyway, because sometimes it's appropriate.
	As I've gotten older, I've realized that to...
	To loose the hearts of men and women from religion prior to a renaissance in philosophy does create a power vacuum that is filled by the worst devils of human possibility.
	History is so obvious to that that I'm embarrassed to have missed it for so long, but You can't get rid of that heroin without some strong methadone, to use a strange way of putting it, but philosophy is still decades away from any kind of significant renaissance in the mind and hearts of mankind.
	So my question to you is, and my third way to you, Scott, my third way to you is, let's say, You wake up tomorrow and you're going to say, that's it, I'm done with this belief system, I'm out, I'm gone, whatever, right?
	My question is Scott where would you go?
	Where would I take my family?
	Oh, where would you take your family?
	Who would be your new community?
	It would be devastating to my daughter, it would be devastating to my wife, it would be And my children and my, you know, my two younger ones who are two and a half years old, they will be left an entire lifetime to deal with the mess.
	Right.
	Right.
	Now, if there was a big rational community of philosophy that was growing, that was willing to stand for its values, that was willing to support its brightest lights, that was willing to take on the world, that was, that had A tenth of a percent of the courage and generosity of Christians.
	If there was that community, I'm not saying it would be easy, but there would be a place to go, right?
	Yeah.
	But to my knowledge, there isn't.
	So, before you leave a place, you know, if you're going to take off from an island in a storm, you need to have some idea where you're going to land, right?
	Thank you.
	Where are you going to go?
	I mean, especially where I live, it's No, but anywhere.
	This is what I'm trying to say.
	Let's say you go to Las Vegas.
	Let's say you go to Philadelphia.
	Let's say you go.
	Where are you going to go?
	There's nowhere.
	Well, I don't know.
	Like, I mean, if there was a place that I could go, I'd go.
	But right now, we're so far apart that uniting us seems like we need to invent a warp drive with the lithium crystals because the distance between us is also great.
	We're stars.
	We're not a solar system.
	We're not a continent.
	We're not a city.
	We're not even a tent city.
	We're interstellar.
	Joined only by the flickering light of TCP IP packets, right?
	Yeah.
	And that's what I was thinking.
	I was thinking about your question all today.
	And I mean, yes, I could make a car, your personal integrity, your relationship to truth and virtue and so on.
	And were you a single man?
	That wouldn't even be a problem.
	That would be an easier case to make, but it's one thing to take your family out of a situation, but where to?
	You know, it is only in an extremity of desperation that people grab whatever they can from their houses and just start running down the street, right?
	That's not where you are, right?
	No, I mean, like I say, I came from a pretty crazy household, but my wife didn't.
	I mean, they have varying levels of craziness, but...
	And the values, you, I assume the values, you haven't said, I don't believe in God, so all is permitted.
	There's no virtue, no truth.
	Right?
	No.
	The values...
	The values of self-discipline, the values of honesty, the values of a commitment to virtue and a cause larger than yourself.
	These, as far as I understand it, please not let me put words in your mouth, Scott, but these are things, these are principles that you support.
	And if these are principles that you support, I'm open to the ideas and, you know, let me know, but I don't know a place that focuses on On virtue, truth, honor, dignity, restraint, self-discipline, community, integrity, more than a Christian church.
	And I don't agree with the methodology.
	I don't.
	But the question is, would I rather agree more with the methodology of religion and get the disastrous...
	Of statism or would I more disagree with the methodology and align myself with values I share?
	I am one old-fashioned son of a bitch.
	Because that's what the data says.
	The data says Don't have sex before marriage, or if you do, get married to the person you have sex with.
	That's your best way to stay married and to be happy.
	Want to avoid depression?
	Don't have sex early.
	Want to avoid anxiety?
	Want to avoid problems?
	Want to have healthy, happy children that are safe?
	Do what the church says.
	Now, don't do it because of the way the church says it, but that's the facts.
	What the church advocates is good for families.
	What the state advocates is terrible for families.
	And everything that I do is to one degree or another related to improving the quality of the family.
	And if what the church says matches up with what is good for the family, and if what the state says destroys the family, I know which one I have to choose.
	I don't agree that we get them.
	This is why I was happy to hear what you said about Mormonism.
	I don't agree that we get children to accept values based on hellfire and brimstone and you'll burn in hell.
	I'm never going to change my opinion on that just because that's so obviously a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	But you're not going to send your kids to a school where they're going to go to some hell house and have the living crap scared out of them.
	By burning in hell for the afterlife or questioning any dogma, right?
	No, and, you know, churches can defocus on previously held base doctrines at whim.
	I mean, they do it all the time.
	You know, things that they used to talk about when I was a kid, they don't talk about anymore because they don't Yeah, I mean, Mormonism and homosexuality were not bosom buddies, so to speak, in the past, and there were some issues with racism in the 70s, and that has to a large degree been addressed, right?
	Well, the homosexuality is still a large cause of...
	There's still a lot of bigotry in that, and I hate it.
	I hate the bigotry.
	But people don't...
	Say, crimes against nature and, you know, sayings like that.
	I mean, they don't use phrases like that anymore.
	You don't call them degenerates anymore.
	No.
	It's much more, you know, now it's at this stage where, well, they're just people that need our help.
	Yeah, it's unnatural, but not satanic, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And it's steadily changing.
	I still talk to older generations of Mormons who are total racists.
	I mean, just out and out.
	And they don't even recognize that they are.
	You know, but I mean, that's largely gone from the church.
	And also, I'm seeing among the younger generations of church members a greater acceptance of peaceful parenting, more rejection of spanking.
	I mean, there are still some holdouts.
	I still...
	Run into them, but...
	I mean, I have...
	I've had...
	I mean, since I discovered your channel and just really listened to the Peaceful Parenting message and...
	I mean, I've become every bit the evangelist missionary I was on my mission.
	I talk to people...
	I talk to everyone about it.
	And...
	I mean, I was in line the other day and someone said...
	Well, good thing your daughter's old enough to take care of your younger ones.
	And I said, my daughter is not a built-in babysitter.
	She gets her own choices.
	I corrected her right there.
	I said, I actually kind of hate it when people say that because she has her own choices and her own life.
	And I'm not going to force parenting on her.
	At age 11.
	She's a smurf, not a serif.
	She's got her own life to grow into.
	I had a member of the church the other day tell me that she caught herself about ready to Not about ready to, you know, mildly tap or hit or something, one of her kids, and she thought of me.
	And she said, you know, I've never heard people say the kind of things that you say.
	And she said, I asked myself, why was that even my reaction?
	Why did I even think of that?
	And she, like, corrected herself before she did it.
	And she told me.
	Good for you.
	And I've had, you know, several people tell me that.
	And, you know, parents, I have, you know, a couple of friends who have stopped spanking their kids.
	And, I mean, that's a very powerful thing to me because nobody did that for me.
	My daughter was asking me about boarding school.
	I went online and looked at the website for the school I went to.
	It's like night and day.
	It's like it's not even the same place anymore.
	They don't lift a finger against the kids anymore.
	I mean, I was getting caned at the age of six.
	And they just use mild negotiation techniques.
	I mean, I'm happy it happened.
	A little late for me.
	Yeah.
	It'd be nice if it happened a little earlier.
	But...
	Somebody would have noticed that I was being chased around the house with a wooden spoon and smacked out of bed with a belt.
	And...
	But, you know, those friends of mine, they're never going to do things like that.
	Right.
	Something else from my research today that just blew my mind.
	In 2010, according to the Russian polling firm, 75% of Russians identified as Orthodox, while only 8% identified as non-believers.
	Okay, so that's...
	93 years after the atheists took over.
	Atheism, savage, brutal, atheist communism.
	It's not atheism that ran it.
	Communism was the problem.
	Atheism, I mean, I don't believe in Zeus.
	That doesn't tell you anything about my politics, right?
	Yeah.
	Other than I wouldn't vote for Zeus.
	But 8% identified as non-believers, and that was after a couple of generations of...
	Heavily, heavily well-armed atheism.
	So that's 2010.
	Compare that to 2009 Gallup, Paul found that 78% of Americans identified as some sort of Christian, while 13% identified as non-believers.
	Do you see?
	8% of Russians are non-believers.
	13% of Americans are non-believers.
	After generations of having atheists in charge, About the same number of Russians are Orthodox as Americans are Christian.
	And almost twice as many in America are non-believers compared to Russia.
	I think it's a similar statistic for Cambodia.
	I read a lot about Cambodia because of a book I read about it.
	It's the same thing.
	It's after the Cambodian Holocaust, everyone just embraced religion, embraced the Buddhism of their parents that they tried to stamp out.
	So, I mean, I have my own particular answers when it comes to what do we replace religiosity with.
	Thank you.
	I mean, I think that the failure of philosophy to produce a system of rational and secular ethics has been the major...
	It's not just a stumbling block to the end of religion.
	It makes the end of religion unbelievably dangerous.
	Unbelievably dangerous.
	Because if our belief systems are so foundationally shaped by a relationship to authority figures...
	As children, which seems to be the case.
	And taking away God creates a subjugation vacuum that is filled by the endless swords of state power.
	You know, could I snap my fingers if I could?
	Would I snap my fingers if I could and eliminate religion from the world tomorrow?
	I would not.
	Any more than I would eliminate the state.
	Because all of these things are states of mind and the external manifestations of power are merely the shadows cast by our traumatized illusions.
	Getting rid of the shadows does not change the structures that cast them, which are in the mind.
	a church falls down, people don't lose their belief.
	So, when it comes to what is beneficial to your children, my question is, where are you going to go that's better than where you are?
	And I'm happy to hear arguments.
	You know, people can let me know in the comments of the video.
	People are like, where are you going to go?
	That is better than where you are, where your children are going to have a sense of the importance of their lives, of the depth and grandeur of their lives.
	And if there is a place to go, I'm happy to hear.
	I don't know of that place.
	We're trying to make it.
	We're trying to make a place, at least a mind space.
	But as far as practical places where you can go, I don't know.
	So my concern is that you're going to look at your existing community and you're going to say the methodology is false so I want to leave.
	But what if you go to places where with regards to religion the methodology is valid, but they're crazy lefty socialist feminist nutjobs?
	It seems like a lot of trauma to go from a place whose methodology you don't agree with, but whose conclusions you do, or at least whose values you do in a lot of ways, to go to another place whose methodology you do agree with more, but whose values and principles you may find repulsive.
	Yeah, I think that's a pretty good point.
	I mean, the...
	Who's nicer, atheists or Christians?
	Sorry to interrupt, but this is an important question.
	I literally wrote this down today.
	Because I prepare for these calls.
	It's not all off the cuff.
	I wrote this down, lying down in the middle of the page.
	People I know who are religious.
	People I know who are atheists.
	Who's nicer?
	Who are the people you trust more?
	Who are the people you feel more secure with?
	Who are the people you've seen really stand up for their values?
	Who are the people who are really committed to their virtues?
	Who are the nicest people you know?
	Atheists or Christians?
	I think that if I were to do the same chart, I think I would have it a lot more balanced on the religious side.
	An old friend of mine's father got brain cancer.
	And he'd been a scientist, a biologist, a teacher, professor, an atheist.
	By God, the Christians in his community, they really stepped up.
	They helped, they brought food, they drove them to hospital, they supported the family.
	Now that's the love your enemy stuff that is fundamentally disarming.
	Thank you.
	I didn't find that story out until more recently.
	But it wasn't all of these secularists involved in Gamergate who were bringing the goddamn lasagna to the household.
	I have, and I've received correction and I think it's valid and I will get it and I've received correction and I think it's valid and I will get it About the degree to which Christianity drove anti-slavery, the abolitionist movement.
	Thank you.
	The foundation of the Freedom Club was inextricably linked with Christianity.
	And I have...
	I have realized...
	That my capacity to make a break with the past is not shared by the species.
	It is not, you know, the great challenge is to not mistake the world for yourself.
	And this is what empiricism is required for.
	I mean, if I say to religious people, don't project yourself onto the world, don't project your unconscious into the heavens, it doesn't do much good if I mistake the world for my personality.
	I have...
	The ability to leave the past in the past and to endure the space between the oases, the desert between the oases.
	I'm willing to head out into the desert confident I can sniff my way to water and I do.
	And this is not the way that most people are.
	And my goal of Charge!
	Follow me!
	We'll get there!
	Which was in everyday anarchy.
	Across the desert, there's a village.
	There's a few of us.
	We're building houses.
	Come on over.
	Well, I must forever and ever and ever to have integrity return to empiricism.
	And of course there were challenges and problems and immoralities within the church.
	Yeah, there was homophobia, which is wrong.
	There was racism, which is wrong.
	But there was also anti-slavery, which was right.
	So, my question is, what if God becomes invisible?
	to you, as he sounds like he is.
	God becomes invisible to you and as God becomes invisible you see the values which his image transmits as beneficial to the family and to the children.
	Now, I'm not saying this about all religion.
	Again, I said this at the beginning.
	I'm talking about particular Subsets of more gentle Christianity, which I believe is more in line with the New Testament episode of The Point, right?
	And this is the third way that I wanted to get across to you, Scott.
	You will not agree with the methodology of the belief, but You will agree with a lot of the conclusions and you may in fact agree with more of the conclusions on the Christian side than you would on the secular side.
	I don't know where I am in that perspective.
	In skepticism of state power, I am with the Christians.
	In monogamy, in pair bonding, in delaying of sexual gratification until you can unify and pair bond, I am with the Christians.
	I am not with the secularists.
	In the value of spiritual struggle, Jacob wrestling, in the value of the conscience.
	The conscience is the all-powerful ghost of universally preferable behavior within the mind.
	In what is good for children, I have almost infinitely more in common.
	With the Christians than I do with the secular left.
	I am with the data.
	So...
	I mean, you're not part of some group that wants to cut their balls off and join the comet going through the sky, right?
	You are with a group that focuses on the outcomes that I think you and I Would appreciate.
	You're with a group that does talk daily, if not weekly, about deeper and meaningful issues.
	Struggling to do good in a challenging world?
	Well...
	You know, the thing that bothers me so much about the secular left is...
	They just...
	You know, they kick over...
	Chickens and think they're Mike Tyson.
	We're against rape.
	Oh, really?
	Wow!
	What moral courage.
	I'm anti-racist.
	Well, great!
	That's a very noble stand to be taking, right?
	But Christians are willing to take the unpopular stands.
	Whereas those on the left, you know, they seem to me to be shooting fish in a barrel and think they're Roy Scheider at the end of Jaws.
	So, as far as the struggle, the challenge, the standing for your values, the commitment of your resources, the larger-than-yourself aspect of Christianity, I find, frankly, admirable.
	Would you rather talk morality with an atheist or a Christian?
	I already have that answer.
	I mean, the people that I talk to about the non-aggression principle, every time that I feel like I'm identifying with atheists around me, those that are pretty obviously atheists, every time I try to identify with them, it's just It's determinism and...
	I'm sorry, you believe in free will.
	I didn't realize that you still believe in free will, so I guess we can't have this discussion anymore.
	And I'm just like, oh my gosh.
	But I don't have those problems with...
	They don't have this belief that individuals can just be marshaled around One person can substitute another person just as easily.
	I get that so much with the secular left that I deal with.
	I'm a former conservative.
	That conservative side of me, the one that knows all the arguments, knows all the statistics, Wants to come out all the time, but I'm just like...
	I try to talk the non-aggression principle with them.
	Even the ones who aren't into war.
	The ones that totally agree with me about getting the warfare state out.
	They still love the police.
	They still love the drug war.
	They still love...
	They love all the rest of the violence of the state.
	They just don't like that particular violence.
	Right.
	It's the wrong color purple.
	Yeah.
	Different purple.
	They want to pick the gun off the table and point it at the enemies they want it to be pointed at.
	And the other thing that I think is ennobling about the Christian perspective is you matter Your choices are real, and your choices are essential.
	Because, of course, a lot on the left, you're subjugated to these class warfare forces, to these deterministic forces, to these materialistic forces, to these economic forces, to these...
	You're like a dust moat in a whirlwind.
	And this is why people want to cling to power!
	Because they have no power in their individual choices.
	They are atoms that make up nothing solid unless they combine with enough political force to create a gravity well and change something.
	But with Christianity, of course, it's your soul that counts.
	And you have choice.
	You are not...
	There's no excuse when standing in front of St.
	Peter that says, well, I was a member of the proletariat and I did not own the means of production.
	So, what could I do?
	I was a mere cog in a giant economic machine, not of my own making.
	He's going to say, did God give you a will, a choice, a soul, a conscience?
	Then don't give me this lefty malarkey.
	Left leads down, he will say.
	So...
	Oh, well, the other thing, too, since I am...
	Talking about some evolution.
	The Christians have history.
	People on the left don't need to study history, they believe, because it's all about political, social, economic, gender forces in the moment.
	They don't need to study history.
	People on the left in the 60s were putting all this free love up, right?
	And the Christians were all, nope, it's going to be a disaster.
	It's going to be a disaster.
	Daniel Patrick Moynihan, report on the Negro family from the 60s.
	He said that the welfare state is going to destroy the black family.
	And a lot of people...
	On the Christian right, we're talking about the disasters of the welfare state.
	Is it because they are omniscient?
	No.
	Did God tell them?
	No.
	They have history.
	Seeing Netanyahu give a speech talking about the parallels in Jewish history.
	I think it was Esther who alerted an indifferent king to the dangers of a Persian warlord.
	And now he's like, and now it's the same thing again!
	He's trying to wake up Barack Obama to the dangers of an Iranian warlord and all that.
	Even though the Mossad says they're not doing nuclear...
	Anyways.
	But they have...
	We've been here before.
	We've learned from history.
	What do they say?
	Never again.
	Never again.
	But for you to say never again, there has to have been something in the past that parallels something in the present so you don't have to keep reinventing the wheel all the time and wait for all the disasters to hit that history is screaming at you are on their way.
	I mean, Christians know quite a bit about Rome.
	Bread and circuses, welfare, easy divorce, sexual license, kaboom.
	End of the civilization.
	And all the little villages climbing out of that just dark age, misery, warlords, new kings every 20 years.
	You know, there's a tie-in to anarchy.
	you I don't want anarchy tomorrow.
	Because...
	Because...
	We only get one shot at being free and we don't want to do it prematurely.
	Yeah.
	I mean...
	I mean, it's like...
	I went skydiving when I was younger.
	And I remember them saying...
	You know, you can save $10 if you pack your own parachute.
	I can't think of a worse way to spend $10 than to pack my own parachute.
	I don't care if it's my last $10 in the whole world.
	Please take it and pack my parachute.
	I am not doing that myself.
	I want to get it tangled.
	I want to screw something up.
	Preparation!
	Then the jump.
	That's what counts.
	I just grab something and find out that it's, you know, three apples and a banana for you to eat on your way down to a very short splat.
	Save $10.
	No thank you.
	I don't think I will, in fact.
	I'll spend the extra $10.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Call me crazy.
	Call me a spendthrift, but I do not want to make a slightly better saver Protestant splat on the ground.
	You know what would happen?
	You'd splat on the ground, you'd basically become Flatland two-dimensional guy, and then down would come floating the ten dollars that fell out of your pocket and land in your skull remains.
	Bury me with the ten, because I saved my money!
	That's the same thing, we prepare, we get ready.
	Yeah, you know, there's so many parallels, it's I see anarchy as being a mindset that has to...
	People just have to stop trusting, stop seeking leaders to...
	Stop being archists, I guess.
	And...
	You know, it's kind of this...
	I'm seeing the same sort of progression happening in Mormonism.
	You know, you had the...
	You know, very...
	Bigot of past.
	You have what you have now today where people are waking up from that.
	The church will have to change.
	It's not going to dogmatically hold on to that stuff to the bitter end.
	It's going to change because it's going to see people start leaving.
	And the church can change in a way that politics can't.
	Because politics requires so much money that you have to be bought off before you ever get into the arena, right?
	Yeah.
	But the church, you know, Martin Luther didn't need a billion dollars to affect his change.
	For better or for worse, I'm just saying that the church can alter in a way that politics just really can't.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, the Mormon church is founded by six people.
	Right.
	Now, and, like, I want to not fudge anything of what I'm saying, because I know that what I'm saying is somewhat surprising to a lot of people, and I didn't think about it all day, but I've always pledged to be as honest as I can about the things that matter.
	And I have focused on negative aspects of religious doctrines and irrational aspects of religious doctrines, and I don't regret that.
	I mean, that's important.
	But I do apologize very sincerely for not having the knowledge of Or doing the research that was necessary to temper those criticisms with praise for the empirically positive results that a lot of religious doctrines have created in the world.
	And I didn't know.
	Not knowing is not much of an excuse because it wasn't like it was impossible to find out.
	It's not like it's buried in some Atlantis that I had to swim down 300 feet to get.
	But I am sorry for not pursuing the data with enough of an open mind to see the positive aspects that have occurred within a religion.
	And, you know, I'm not going to put any defenses out there because I don't want to give bullshit non-apology.
	There's no but to that.
	No, there's no but to that.
	There's no but to that.
	I grew up...
	And I, you know, because a lot of people think that with religion, I had some bad trauma or anything.
	I didn't.
	I didn't.
	I mean, I remember when I was in boarding school, when we went to church a lot, I loved singing in the choir, still love to sing.
	I didn't have any hellfire, damnation, molestation, hitting with cricket bats or anything.
	In fact, there was, I mean, there was one old priest who was really dull.
	I just remember him reading us begats until I began to see through space and time.
	But there was another guy, it was a younger guy, I remember very distinctly, he said, and God threw the devil into a giant pond and put up a big sign that said, no fishing!
	And I thought, pretty good.
	Pretty good little speech going on there, you know, it was enjoyable.
	And it worked, you know, it really connected.
	I didn't have any sinister experiences with religion, and I didn't have any massive epiphany with I think that the people who were, particularly in boarding school, the people who were in charge of the school just seemed to me kind of cold, cruel, and mean.
	And that wasn't, they were all Christians and all that, but that wasn't, I mean, it's not like everyone who's an atheist is a really nice person, so it's not enough for any of that stuff.
	I really felt that this obsidian biodome of immorality and aggression and abuse that was above and around me as a child, I really felt that there was no way to penetrate that with prayer.
	I really felt that it would block everything.
	There was no way to get through the power that had me in its grip.
	And it's not like I didn't try, but I tried the empirical approach of asking for help in my extremity and received none.
	And it wasn't that I didn't...
	I didn't sort of get angry.
	I just thought, okay, well, that doesn't work.
	And I really did ask for help.
	And it was not forthcoming.
	So that to me was, and it was just okay, well, that's not the way it works.
	I can't send my hopes and wishes like fishing upwards through the biodome of evil that has me in its grip as a child.
	So I'm going to have to break it myself.
	I'm going to have to penetrate, crack, weaken, and break it myself.
	Which gave me, I think, some hardiness and some muscularity.
	But everyone around me pretty much was religious and I sailed through all of these religious communities and these churches and my extended family had a lot of religion in it and nobody noticed or helped the abuse that I was suffering and I I thought well if I can reach through The black shell of evil that has me to a deity,
	and if all the people who worship that deity don't lift a finger to help me, and none of the teachers and none of the preachers, then this can't be the solution.
	This cannot be the solution to evil because it's not working.
	There's only so many times you can take a medicine before you realize it's not affecting the illness.
	So it wasn't any big trauma.
	The trauma came from within the family, but the lack of Sakura came from outside the family, from a very, not hyper-religious, but a religious community, let's say.
	But, so, I am sorry for pointing out the negatives without also pointing out the positives, and that's what research has been doing for me lately, and this is why, for me, I'm not trying to hijack this call, but this is why, for me, Your conversation today was helpful for that.
	And I thought about all of this with regards to your question, and this is why I wanted to see if I could tunnel a third way.
	Maybe philosophy has put you where you are to engentle the hands of the religious.
	To remind them, as I did to...
	I saw one woman yelling at her kid, and she had a cross, and I said...
	But didn't Jesus say that what you do to the least among you, so do you also do for me?
	You would never yell at Jesus, would you?
	And she blushed and she said, You're right, you're right.
	I know you're right.
	And we talked a little bit and I pointed her at some resources.
	Maybe that is what your third way is.
	To bring better parenting To the bosom of the church.
	And maybe that will do more to promote freedom than leaving.
	Well, it's already happening within my community, within my family.
	Yeah.
	My life is as dedicated to peaceful parenting as I am.
	And if you can promote that, and kudos to you both, and massive kudos is not a strong enough word.
	Kudos to you both for promoting this within your community.
	And...
	There's a saying, I think it's in the Quran, it says, there shall be no compulsion in the realm of religion.
	And I think that all who impose beliefs by force are denying themselves the necessary challenges of convincing people.
	A child asked me the other day, do you believe in God?
	And I said, that is a great, great question.
	We were just in the midst of going.
	And I said, that's a great, great question.
	And one day you and I will sit down and have a long conversation about it.
	Because I'm not going to say yes or no, because those are just conclusions without the process.
	So...
	If you deny or oppose or...
	Those all sound very...
	If you spank block the hands...
	No, but if you...
	If you encourage people to not use force in their parenting...
	It awakens in them the capacity for making their case...
	Without aggression.
	And I think that philosophy always benefits...
	When people make the case without the use of force, when people, in a sense, forced to not use force, when they are restrained from aggression, they must then fire up their philosophy centers to make their case.
	And where people have to make their case, I believe philosophy benefits.
	So if you can If there's not a strong doctrine of hell to oppose, but if you can, within your community, promote the peaceful parenting idea, philosophy benefits whenever the fists go down to their sides.
	Not on someone's head.
	Yeah, I...
	You have a built-in audience, I guess, is what I'm saying.
	Thank you.
	I think that you're right.
	I actually once tried to explain the doctrine of going to hell to my daughter, and she was appalled by it.
	You know, she didn't, she had never heard anything like it, you know.
	And every time I teach her anything, I try to, I try to convince her.
	I try to get her to internalize moral principles rather than just do as I say.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, my daughter's never asked me what should I do.
	She knows I'm not going to tell her.
	And that's my third way.
	is to be an agent of change within your environment, rather than accept it and have it roll over you like a steamroller over an ant, or flee it and lose all your influence.
	If the goal of the religious community is subjugation and exploitation, I'm not saying that's the case with yours.
	But if the goal of the religious community is subjugation and exploitation, then there's not anything really to be done to influence it, because anything you try to influence to the positive will be perceived as a threat and you'll be expelled.
	But I don't believe that.
	Of your community, and I say that not knowing your community, I'm just telling you what I think, but I think that in your community, as is the case for a lot of Christian communities, the goal is virtue.
	The goal is good works.
	The goal is moral courage.
	And if that is the case, Then getting people to the same destination, which shows around the non-aggression principle within the family.
	Well, that's significant leverage.
	And that sounds cheap and cheesy.
	Oh, you've got leverage, you know.
	You had some sort of inside scoop.
	And it's different from politics.
	Politics is essentially collectivist.
	In politics, you can only get political power by selling your soul.
	Politics is not a one-on-one relationship between yourself and your values, yourself and your virtues, yourself and your actions.
	It requires a subjugation of will to corruption in order to gain violent power over others.
	So it is not, at least, and I don't know, maybe I'll cry and apologize to the state next week.
	I don't think I will.
	But, yeah, my research, your question and the presentation that's coming out on sex and marriage in the next day or two, hopefully that will make it clearer for people.
	I still don't believe that the state is the way to go.
	And I don't know how through the state you can make the case for peaceful parenting, but I can see how you can do that in church and among religious people.
	And the most positive feedback I've got from the peaceful parenting message has been from religious luminaries like Jeffrey Tucker.
	I didn't know that Jeffrey Tucker was religious.
	He is.
	He's a fantastic person.
	I love him.
	Yes.
	Yes, I wholeheartedly agree.
	I'm going to give you a hint as to where he sat on my naughty or nice list.
	Well, he's both naughty and nice.
	Yeah, I mean, I think because, and I think that you would not believe, Scott, you would not believe how many religious fans of this show there are.
	And their focus on, and this is another thing that had me thinking about this third way, is that the religious fans of this show seem to specifically appreciate the actionable ethics of the religion.
	And especially around the parenting.
	Here's something you can do that will make the world a better place that is not incompatible with your religious values.
	Which allow you to have deeper conversations about what...
	about what's really meaningful to you with people, with your children in particular.
	And that, I don't...
	I can't think of a lot of people on the left who've said, you know, the peaceful parenting is...
	I put up with the other shit so that I can listen to the peaceful parenting stuff.
	But, Mike, is that fair?
	I mean, to say that a lot of the religious people, I mean, yourself included, Scott, I mean, have said, I really appreciate the peaceful parenting stuff.
	Because it's actionable and it's in accordance with actual significant values, I hope.
	That's definitely my experience in emails and all types of messages that I've gotten, for sure.
	Absolutely.
	And I don't think we've got this.
	I mean, we certainly have some people who are leftists or ex-leftists who like the show, but I don't get, and this is not scientific, so please take it for whatever that's worth, but I don't get the sense that I can't recall many, if any, communications from people on the left saying, you know, this peaceful parenting stuff is the way to go.
	I think there have been a few, but I think that there's more on the religious side, much more.
	For me, it was a tremendous answer.
	Thank you.
	It brought out all the positive parts of my religion.
	and my religion talks very heavily about free agency and your choices creating the person that you are.
	And, you know, when I was given this answer from you of how to not repeat the traumas of my past on my family, Isn't that amazing?
	It was the first year of discovering that answer.
	It was just so relieving.
	To know that my children will never grow up with the mother that I had or the father that I had or their fathers' fathers' fathers.
	I mean, what a way to break the cycle.
	You know, and I said this to the woman from last week, just what a good man you are.
	And I don't think that good men and good women I don't know that we're supposed to suffer that much.
	I don't believe it.
	I don't.
	I'm still trying to overcome the weaknesses created by the suffering of my childhood.
	I'm still trying to overcome the weaknesses.
	I'm still trying to overcome the weaknesses.
	Yeah, it's the idea that that stuff made me stronger.
	I'm still trying to overcome that weakness.
	Right.
	I mean, in some ways it made me stronger.
	But in other ways I feel horribly crippled sometimes.
	And for me to accept that idea that you have to suffer to To have a happy life.
	What are you even teaching me this stuff for then?
	Because there's a whole lot of ways to suffer.
	And if that's supposed to make you better, it's just absurd.
	The whole entire doctrine, I mean the whole entire Push of my church is keeping families together and preventing that suffering.
	Well, and this is the other thing that's hugely different.
	I mean, if you were a Republican or a Democrat and you were having doubts about your party's motives, you wouldn't be ostracized by everyone, right?
	For not showing up to some political meeting, right?
	How they just assess how much power you have and then change like on a dime.
	Oh, whatever, right?
	And you wouldn't have gotten your kids into a political party that they'd lose all their friends if you didn't keep chanting, right?
	I mean, this is very different from politics.
	Oh, absolutely.
	There's just something that popped into my head.
	A writer, Shelby Steele, has written a book called White Guilt.
	I've talked about it before.
	But I was really struck by when he began to...
	A question.
	He was, I guess, like Thomas Sowell when he was younger.
	He was on the left.
	He was Marxist, I think.
	And he began to have doubts about all of this and began to sort of thinking about...
	He calls this the politics of dissociation.
	You can go into the book for that.
	it's fantastic and he said this is from the book someone would make a dissociational comment as if uttering a self-evident truth What does merit mean anyway?
	We must improve the climate here for women and minorities.
	The minority voices in my classes are so important.
	And then I would erupt!
	Such banality spoke of an entire Orwellian culture composed of glassy-eyed true believers and cunning power mongers like Betty.
	Betty is this woman who wanted to create a class An English class only on minority writers.
	And Shelby was saying, no.
	No, that's saying that minority writers can't compete with white writers.
	Don't segregate the minority writers.
	Let's just let the best writers be taught.
	He said, the schizophrenia I carried to survive in that culture made me more and more alienated and angry.
	Every relationship I had...
	Began to suffer, and by the late 80s, every single one of them had ended.
	I would run into people who had been closer than family, people who had known my children in infancy, and there would be a deep awkwardness, a chilling smile.
	And certainly my heart, too, had gone cold.
	The culture war had made me fight too hard for my individuality, and I became a little merciless, happy to reject before I was rejected.
	He was pushing back against, he believes that sort of a black power, black entitlement and white guilt are two sides of the same coin.
	That white guilt almost pulls this entitlement and resentment out of the black community.
	It's very powerful.
	What a writer.
	God, chillingly good.
	It's a great book.
	I read it.
	And so he went against the tropes of his time and multi-decade friendships.
	Pfft.
	Gone.
	And I don't see how you're in that position.
	And that's why I really wanted to talk about A Third Way.
	It's been an incredible conversation.
	It gives me a lot to think about and a lot to A lot to observe and examine.
	Don't bust up your family, man.
	Oh, no.
	Don't.
	Don't do it.
	The nightmares that I've had over this issue.
	I mean, I can't sleep.
	I can't eat.
	No, I get it.
	No, I get it.
	It's all-consuming.
	I mean, I don't view the family as sacrosanct.
	I think that to view the family as in...
	As undissolvable is to turn the family into a cult.
	You can't leave!
	It's always wrong.
	And that was as wrong when it was as applied to marriage as it would be to apply to anything else.
	But the conditions under which one could reasonably dissolve a family, in my humble opinion, what do I know?
	But in my humble opinion, I'm not present.
	There's no abuse.
	There's no substance abuse.
	There's no infidelity.
	There is a methodology towards virtues that you agree with, which methodology you don't agree with.
	But that's like saying, well, the doctor is prescribing the right medication, but he's diagnosing the wrong way.
	Whereas your option is to say, if you want to flee, is you're going to find a community which is going to diagnose the wrong medication, but he's going to prescribe the wrong medication, but diagnose the right way.
	You stubbed your toe.
	Here, have an aspirin.
	I think that it's not enough.
	I think that you can do an enormous amount of good where you are.
	And I think that the values, many of the values that your kids are going to get out of the church are going to be a lot better than the values they would get elsewhere in society.
	I can help them figure out the ones to really take to heart.
	Right.
	And as far as honesty goes, I mean, you have your doubts.
	I mean, there's nothing to be ashamed about.
	I have my doubts.
	I mean, I've been wrestling for six months on challenges to my belief system.
	And doubts are...
	God, you give up on doubts.
	You've given up on thought.
	And you don't need to hide like you have some third arm growing out your back that you've got to wear a bell around your shoulder blades to hide.
	I mean, you are going through a challenge.
	And if there's ways that you can accept and absorb the values, while again, rejecting the methodology, That's not bad.
	Again, I'd rather have the wrong diagnosis and the right medicine than vice versa.
	I'm with you on that. - Oh my God.
	And there's a lot that you agree with your wife in terms of the stuff that actually is actionable in this world, right?
	Yeah.
	You know, we've been married for 16 years.
	And, you know...
	We haven't always seen eye to eye.
	We're two different people.
	We have to convince each other of things.
	She is excellent to my kids.
	And we're excellent together.
	Right.
	Then I would not...
	You know, there's an old saying that is quite true, which says, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
	You want perfect integrity in, dare I say it, a fallen world?
	Yeah.
	You know, I mean, the best Christian political theoreticians also resist political power because man has fallen.
	And no man or woman can seize and hold power without becoming corrupted.
	There's a great line from a Sting song from many years ago.
	It says, The search for perfection is all very well, but to look for heaven is to live here in hell.
	It's an old Shakespearean line.
	And...
	I would not want you to aim for perfection, miss the good and land in hell.
	That's powerful.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	You got it pretty good brother.
	You got a wife you love, you got kids you love, you've got a community that listens to wisdom.
	His values you share significantly.
	You got it pretty good.
	You know, it's going to be confusing to people that I'm saying this, but I think I made a fairly good case.
	Oh, you did to me.
	So do we have a little...
	A little rocket fire opened up the skylight a bit there.
	We got light coming in.
	To this dungeon of no exits.
	Are we pulled out of the Sartre play?
	I might try to break 500 calories this week.
	Are you not eating from stress?
	I've had no appetite.
	Seriously, 500 calories a day is all I could do.
	I've lost 15 pounds in the past few months.
	I'm an ectomorph.
	I'm a manorexic.
	I don't have 15 pounds to lose.
	Are you carving off bits of your kidney to feed your bone marrow now?
	Right now, I'm all beard.
	Go face-blind into pasta, man.
	It's important.
	Keep your strength up.
	Go break out the protein shakes now.
	Thanks, Steph.
	How are you feeling, man?
	I feel tremendous.
	I feel like a weight has been lifted.
	I mean, I don't want to turn this into, you know, one of these breakthroughs and don't work sort of things, you know, like in the movies or something.
	I've still got a bunch of work to do in figuring all this out, but you have given me a tremendous insight into my situation.
	And that's, you know, whenever you feel despair...
	It's because you're only looking left and right, not up or down.
	You've just got to n-dimensional your options.
	I forget this too, so I'll probably call you next week and ask for advice on that.
	In a world of free will and principles and imperfection, our options are virtually limitless.
	Oh.
	All right.
	Do you mind if I move on?
	And you'll keep us posted, of course, I hope.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	You know, like I say, I can't thank you guys enough for your show.
	And I thank you especially for the two calls that we've had.
	Both just tremendous insight.
	I listened to the last call probably 20, 30 times.
	It's, you know, fantastic show.
	You've got to hear your voice at the beginning and at the end here.
	You'll be amazed.
	Yeah.
	I can already feel it.
	I just feel so much happier just to know that there are solutions, and I really thank you guys for what you do.
	I continue to support you, and I will continue to do that because I just find it very valuable.
	Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	Feel free to take a week off and buy yourself a nice meal.
	Go grab a sandwich!
	Hey, thank you, Steph.
	Thank you, man.
	Keep us posted and congratulations on your commitment to truth and virtue.
	It's honoring and admiring to see.
	All right, well, let's do one more call and lead on, Mike.
	Alright, thanks again, Scott, for calling in.
	Up next is Jordan.
	Jordan wrote in, and his question is, Socrates says he knew nothing except that he knew nothing.
	What is your attitude on epistemology, and how does it inform your philosophy?
	Is it the foundation of your worldview, and should it be?
	Interesting.
	Interesting, interesting. - Thank you.
	Is there anything you wanted to add to that before we dive in?
	Yeah, there is actually.
	The last caller, Scott.
	I really felt very...
	I understood what he was going through, for the most part.
	And I think this idea of...
	Basing your worldview in philosophy that I have came out of me leaving the LDS Church, actually.
	Are you kidding me?
	I'm not.
	I'm serious.
	Oh, my God.
	Yeah.
	Oh, my Godless.
	Do you mind if we ditch the Socrates stuff for a few minutes?
	Go on, tell me why.
	Yeah.
	Well, when he was talking about that feeling of loss that he has, I had totally forgotten that feeling.
	But when he was describing it and talking about it, it all came back to me.
	This feeling of real, you're losing something.
	And even if you logically know that you're not...
	Like, as if somebody died, that's what you feel.
	I don't know if that's explaining it.
	But it's even crueler.
	Ostracism is in some ways crueler than death, right?
	Because it's optional, it's chosen, and it's perpetually enforced.
	Well, when I was feeling it, I kind of tried to evaluate it.
	And when Scott mentioned this too, you kind of realize that the relationships you thought you had, since you don't feel like you can talk to anybody about this, maybe they're either not as strong as they should be, or you don't feel like they're as strong as they should be.
	So, I don't know.
	I found it a lot easier once I started talking to a lot of people about it.
	I don't know.
	That was my experience.
	It is a chilling thing to think.
	And I'm not saying this is the case with Scott or with you, of course.
	But it is a chilling thing to imagine that your relationships are based upon a mutual subjugation to an illusion.
	And should you choose not to be subjugated to that illusion, you have no value to people.
	Exactly.
	Because that, to me, would be like the opposite of intimacy and honesty.
	Right.
	Yeah, exactly.
	You know, if we both pretend there's an elephant in the mall, then we're close.
	It's like, I don't think that's the case.
	That's what closeness is supposed to mean, right?
	And you don't get it.
	You don't feel it.
	You don't see it until you leave it.
	And then you're like, oh, now I get it.
	Now I see what other people have been talking about.
	So...
	Right.
	Well, I appreciate you sharing that.
	I mean, is there more you want to talk about with that?
	Um...
	Not that I can think of right now.
	I'm sure stuff will come back, but...
	Okay, well, I appreciate the Jungian synchronicity of that sequence.
	So, I mean, so the Socrates thing.
	I don't want to bag on Buddy S., but...
	It's always bothered me, the false modesty of, oh, the only thing I know for certain is that I know nothing for certain.
	I mean, that's always bothered me as a kind of...
	It's like a fortune cookie thing.
	Oh, all the deepest truths are paradoxical and so on.
	And I mean, I certainly appreciate that that's the beginning of wisdom.
	The beginning of wisdom is to accept that you may not know much of anything.
	I thought I knew what ethics was.
	It always troubled me, like a bee in the brain.
	It always troubled me, the objective issue of ethics.
	And I finally recognized that I don't accept it.
	I can't countenance.
	I can't explain it in ways that don't make me feel devious.
	So I have to...
	Sorry, I spat out a piece of apple.
	I have to accept that I don't know something and then work to try and know it.
	I thought I knew what the role of politics in the state was.
	I thought I knew what living my values was.
	So I think it's great.
	That he was able to say that he was only...
	At the beginning, he was only certain that he wasn't certain.
	That's a great...
	I don't think you want to get to like 78 or however old he was when he was murdered.
	I don't think you want to get to 78 and say, well, I still don't know anything.
	It's like, what's the point of that then?
	But the other thing too is that we don't know what the hell Socrates said.
	Right.
	Right.
	I mean...
	He's a historical character.
	Like, I have a novel which has Churchill in it, Winston Churchill, because, you know, I'm just that modest.
	Oh, yes, let me put words into one of the greatest orators the world has ever known.
	But, yeah, he's a historical character, but he's fiction.
	Right.
	In my novel.
	And for Socrates, he was a historical character who was recreated through other writers.
	Aristophanes wrote about him in the Frogs, and Socrates, of course, was portrayed in the Platonic dialogues and so on.
	So we don't know exactly what he said, but we do know, at least for Plato, that Plato saw a giant smoking crater where his mentor was.
	That may have influenced a little bit the words he was willing to put into Socrates' mouth.
	Because if he had developed certainties in opposition, To the dominant ideologies of the city.
	If he was accused of disrespecting the gods and corrupting the young.
	At least he was the last philosopher ever to be accused of that.
	But if he was accused of those things, and this resulted in his death, his murder, this...
	This would have an effect on what Socrates was willing to write about.
	So they were living and writing under a state of murderous censorship in ancient Athens.
	And so I don't know whether he knew it for sure.
	Okay.
	There's only three people who ever wrote anything about Socrates who knew of him.
	And one of whom was...
	Aristophanes, I think, who mocked him in a play.
	And this actually had quite a bit to do with, you know, slander the philosopher is a dangerous game for people to engage in.
	And the way that he was portrayed in the comedies written by Aristophanes was, well, quite harmful.
	And I think, you know, obviously turned quite a lot of people against him.
	So we don't know actually what he said.
	I would certainly say that that's a fine place to start from.
	But he would be pretty nihilistic if he was certain of nothing and his only goal was to pull down other people's certainties.
	That, again, to me, going back to the first conversation, is the danger of the nihilistic atheist pulling down the certainties of other people's beliefs without giving them any structure to organize their thoughts after the fact.
	Then it's not how you plant charges to bring down a building so you can build a new one.
	It's basically just a nuclear bomb.
	Hey, look, the buildings are all down, and nobody can live there for two generations.
	Right.
	So, you know, when I was younger, because I'd been quite influenced by Nietzsche, I was a And his undoing, his unraveling, I mean, Nietzsche just basically pulled at all the threads of human thought until they just dissolved.
	And that had a good deal of influence on me, because for me, when my certainties were dissolved, I felt freedom and creativity and opportunity and Look, I'm out of the cage of illusion.
	I can go anywhere I want.
	I can explore.
	But for a lot of people, it's like, new cage!
	Get me a new cage!
	I don't care!
	I don't care if it's got guns.
	I don't care if it's got flags.
	I don't care if it comes with a uniform.
	I need a new cage!
	My cage is down!
	Cage is down!
	New cage!
	Come on!
	And, again, mistaking the world a little bit for myself, I thought, I'm going to pull down all of these certainties.
	Hey!
	You know, we got freedom!
	Right?
	All right.
	But this is not the case.
	This is not the case.
	And I thought of all of this, of course, to some degree before I became a parent and certainly before I became the moral instructor of a new human being.
	And, you know, when I was a young single guy or just having a series of flings and affairs, when I was a young guy and like, hey, I'm in the college room.
	I live on $400 a month and I can have my cage go down.
	It's no problem for me.
	But, of course, if you're running a household and you're embedded in a community with a certain kind of ethic and you've got to teach your kids right from wrong and so on, not a lot of fun in the cages coming down.
	Right.
	So, that is not...
	You know, it's one thing to play with lowering your shields when you're cruising the backwaters of the Andromeda Galaxy.
	It's quite another thing when you've got, you know, 19 hostile Romulans and Klingons around you.
	It's a sort of different situation.
	So...
	I think that the—and Socrates, you know, Socrates, an underappreciated nihilist in many ways.
	And like a lot of nihilists, was thankful for his own demise, or at least to be consistent, you would be.
	So with Socrates and Nietzsche in particular, and that's because all of the people I saw building positive systems— Were, I thought, significantly dangerous, particularly out of the Germanic tradition, the 19th century, 18th century Germanic tradition, was really terrifying stuff.
	You know, where they say, well, you see, the way it works is, God himself chooses a country to act as his manifest destiny to take over the world.
	You know you're talking to Germans, right?
	They want to do this kind of stuff.
	Please, don't put any jet fuel on this child abuse.
	And...
	So the people who are putting forward positive systems, I found to be quite alarming.
	And so for me, it was like irrational positives or nihilistic negatives.
	That was sort of the twin poles within philosophy.
	Ayn Rand is another category, but we'll talk about that now.
	So for me, I was very keen on the sort of pulling down aspect of things.
	And the building up...
	So it came later.
	Although, to my credit, it was, I think, in 2005, it's almost 10 years ago, that I put out the first explication of universally preferable behavior.
	So it wasn't like, nah, all down.
	So I think that Socrates' nihilism and his pulling down, you know, the emperor's new clothes approach of his philosophy, that king is naked, I think was useful, annoying as hell to people.
	And I think that under his very caustic and patient and kind of trollish, he was a concerned troll, you know, I'm concerned that you think you know what justice is, but you don't really know what justice is.
	Perhaps you can explain it to me.
	He's just a concerned troll of near infinite power.
	And I think people felt not just their society, but their very personalities beginning to crumble and fall under this persistent questioning With no solution, with no answer.
	Now, whether he was capable of producing an answer in the, we'll kill you for saying something wrong environment of his time, I mean, that's like blaming Soviet economists for not being capitalists, and it would have just landed them in a gulag, which was still better than what Socrates got.
	So, as far as my epistemology goes, which hopefully is not my epistemology, but good epistemology, you know, the metaphysics of External, tangible, objective reality exists independent of our thoughts, although our thoughts are part of reality.
	And the sense evidence is valid when in corroboration with reason and other sensors, you know, like wavelengths for light and so on, that we can gain objective truths about the universe.
	And reason must always bow to evidence.
	Empiricism trumps everything.
	When it comes to, certainly in the physical world, anything related to the physical world, not just mere concepts.
	And everything must, like, for something to be valid, potentially valid, it must be rationally consistent.
	If it is rationally consistent and is also backed up, not always perfectly, particularly in areas like ethics and the economy, but if your theories are rationally consistent and Accord with the evidence, both present and past, and are able to make reasonable predictions into the future.
	That's as close to the truth, I think, as you're ever going to get.
	And that's where my methodology is.
	And I am certain of that.
	Because there's absolutely no possibility that it can be falsified.
	And there's nobody who can argue against that without using it.
	So there's nobody who can argue against the validity of the senses without using the validity of the senses.
	You were talking to me using my hearing, using language.
	And there's no way that someone can make...
	They either make an assertion, two and two make five.
	You just have to believe it, which is just an assertion and therefore is not part of philosophy.
	Anything which is just a, dare I say, bald assertion or a mere assertion has no part, has nothing to do with philosophy.
	And I mean, it's got the same relationship to philosophy that, you know, farting through a kazoo has to a symphony.
	I mean, I guess you're making noise, it just ain't music.
	And so You can't argue against it.
	You can't argue against empirical, sensual reality without using empirical, sensual reality.
	You can't argue against reason without using reason.
	I mean, you can merely assert against reason, but that's nothing to do with philosophy, and that which is asserted without evidence can be discarded without evidence.
	So that is the realm of philosophy, and it can't be counteracted.
	Okay.
	I think I might have a poor connection.
	I heard you, but I might be losing you now.
	Are you still there?
	I am.
	Okay, good.
	Sorry.
	Well, when I was starting to wonder, what can I believe then if I can't believe my church?
	I kind of latched on to this idea that all I can believe is that I'm experiencing something, and that's absolutely certain, and anything in the realm of logic, I can believe in that for sure.
	But anything else, I just have to go with what makes the most sense.
	Would you say that's an accurate depiction of what epistemology is?
	Makes the most sense, but kind of a circular argument.
	Because it makes the most sense, if you're going through a psychotic episode, the fact that the fire hydrant is Napoleon might make the most sense, right?
	It's not a very objective way.
	So the first thing, of course, that you're talking about, and I'm not trying to strip you of the originality of your experience of it, but this is Descartes.
	I think it's Meditations.
	And Descartes, of course, made the argument that Nothing may be real.
	I could basically be a brain in a tank being manipulated, all of my sense organs being manipulated by some malevolent demon.
	And the only thing I know for sure is that I am being manipulated.
	I heard about that.
	I think therefore I am is that sort of famous thing that everyone comes into through Monty Python.
	And I don't think that's anywhere close to being a starting place for philosophy.
	Why is that?
	I think it's, you know, again, all due respect to René, but again, he was, you know, all these guys are writing in very religious and dangerous times.
	Yeah.
	So, the argument, if it can't be falsified, it's not part of philosophy.
	And if somebody says, well, everything about you, everything you experience could be the manipulation of an immoral demon that is, you know, Playing your senses and your spinal cord like Rick Wakeman on the keyboards.
	And, of course, the question then is, well, how could that possibly be falsified?
	You know, even in the movie The Matrix, there's a glitch where you see the same cat twice.
	There's a way that you can jump in and out.
	The question of reality is perfectly faked is non-falsifiable.
	But, of course, people would also then have to explain...
	How it is possible if reality is entirely falsified, how it is possible if it's all within your own mind, how it's possible for there to be knowledge that you come across that you didn't have before.
	That's important.
	Like, I don't know Japanese.
	I know that it exists as a language and as a fairly asexual culture these days.
	But, you know, it's like we're either doing kamikaze or not having sex.
	But if I went to go and learn Japanese, I would learn the whole history, structure, language, and all that.
	And I know a couple of listeners probably still plowing away at it, doing that project.
	But how, you know, if it's just all coming from my mind, then how is this, there is this whole language and history, which I knew nothing, or virtually nothing.
	And of course, then if you say, ah, yes, but the demon knows it, and it's the demon who's manipulating you, it's like, okay, well, If the demon is manipulating me, why would the demon send someone to say that the demon is manipulating me?
	That's not very good manipulation.
	I'm going to defraud you, but first I'm going to send someone to tell you that I'm trying to defraud you.
	It's like, that's not a very good way to fool people.
	There's no falsifiability to it, so it's got nothing to do with philosophy then.
	If it's not falsifiable, it's not philosophy.
	If it's not falsifiable, it's not science.
	Speaking of science, though, doesn't science say that when they have a theory, like the theory of gravity, it never graduates to become absolute truth?
	No, I... It's a hypothesis that is conditional.
	The theory of gravity, and this is not your fault, it's just a lot of people miss...
	They think that theory means hypothesis, but a theory of gravity doesn't mean, well, you know...
	Still could be falsified.
	I don't think that there's any scientist out there who expects gravity to cease to exist tomorrow or to not be present in some cave on Mars or something like that.
	I mean, you know, there's this flyby of Ceres, this giant asteroid.
	Was it 300 kilometers across or something like that?
	and they found these two bright lights in a crater in Ceres.
	And the whole reason that it's able to fly that close after being gone for years is because of the way that gravity works and its constants and all that kind of stuff, that's the only, right?
	So I don't think that gravity is a hypothesis at the moment.
	I think the theory of gravity is a way of explaining the absolutes of gravity, but it's not a hypothesis that there is such a thing as gravity.
	Does that make sense?
	Right.
	Let's use evolution.
	Because they don't really know where gravity comes from or why it exists fundamentally.
	But we pretty much understand the basics of evolution, I think.
	So, would you say...
	I mean, evolution is a theory.
	It is not practically going to be falsified anytime soon.
	But in...
	In theory, it could be falsified, right?
	Gravity could be falsified?
	Or a theory of gravity could be falsified?
	Oh, well, I was going with evolution, but yeah.
	Yeah, evolution absolutely has falsifiable standards to it.
	So if you could find, through carbon dating or through the layers within the ground, if you can find a more complicated structure with no prior, less complicated structures before it, Then evolution would fundamentally be...
	Well, it would take a serious body blow.
	Right, right.
	But the critiques of evolution, which, again, I don't entirely dismiss because they're not blind...
	There's a critique of evolution which says that, you know, where does the eye come from?
	And the eye is just one of these baffling, like, crazy, complicated things.
	And, you know, Dawkins' answer, to paraphrase, it's been years since I read it, but Dawkins' answer is, you know, well, you know...
	and then they further develop and so on and it's more complicated as they end so on for the development but and then you i right now the problem of course is that eyes don't have any bones in them so they don't you know soft tissue decays and vanishes and so there's no fossil record of this particular progression yeah and this is what drives people a little bit batty about evolution if they're skeptical of it to begin with um which is you know show me it happening in Of course, it's the god of the gaps, right?
	But, you know, they have shown, and Richard Dawkins' book, The Greatest Show on Earth, you know, had a lot more proof of evolution than I imagined was available.
	But, yeah, it is very falsifiable, and given that the What is it, like 160 years old or something like that, the theory?
	And think of how much science has advanced since then.
	And there has been no specific disproof, to my knowledge, there have been no specific disproof of evolution with regards to its falsifiable standards, of which there are many.
	Right, right.
	And, you know, for a theory, for a hypothesis to last that long with all of the advances in science and DNA, I mean, obviously...
	Darwin knew nothing about DNA. It was Watson and Crick, I think, who figured out the double helix structure of DNA. And was it James Watson?
	He just had to sell his Nobel Prize recently.
	It's a tragic story.
	You can look it up.
	He just had to sell his Nobel Prize, lost his job of 40 years as a cancer researcher.
	Awful, awful stuff.
	Anyway, but...
	The amount of advancement in science, the amount of, I mean, there was no carbon dating in Darwin's time and so on.
	And of course, much less of the world had been excavated and so on.
	So the fact that with all of this expansion of knowledge and information, it seems to have only further reinforced it.
	I think it's a bit more than a hypothesis at the moment.
	Oh, for sure.
	But I guess the whole point I'm trying to make here is that the fact that it has falsifiable standards that could technically falsify it someday is the fact that means that we can't take it as absolute truth no matter what unquestionably, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, yeah, absolutely.
	And this could be true for...
	Because remember, there's no theory of gravity itself, right, fundamentally.
	There are hypotheses which claim to accurately describe the mechanics of gravity or the behavior of gravity or the effects of gravity.
	And the old example which we've used before is Newtonian versus Einsteinian physics, right?
	Newtonian physics is perfectly fine if you want to sail from...
	And so, has Newtonian physics being falsified?
	No.
	The limitations of its accuracy have been shown.
	It's still perfectly valid for most everything that you want to do as a navigator.
	But it's not absolutely true, right, in terms of it's perfect and could never be improved.
	Maybe there'll be something that's beyond Einsteinian physics that gives us even further accuracy in the physical realm.
	So can we say Newtonian physics is absolutely true?
	No, we can't.
	Can we say Einsteinian physics is absolutely true forever no matter what?
	No, we can't.
	Can we say that the scientific method is the only way to validly determine true from false theories?
	Yeah, I think we can.
	And again, I've always really focused on the methodology rather than the conclusions.
	The conclusions can be overturned, but the methodology can't be unless you're willing to replace it with mere mysticism and assertion.
	Not that you are, I'm just saying if one is.
	Okay.
	No, yeah.
	I think when I left my religion, and I was searching for that, maybe subconsciously searching for that thing that I could know for certain, because in the Mormon faith, you get up there every...
	Fourth Sunday or whatever.
	And you say, I know this is true.
	Jesus was the Christ and Joseph Smith.
	And so you're always in the business of and watching other people make these assertions of absolute truth that they can trust without having to question it.
	Just they know it.
	Yeah, like, Jesus saves!
	He's not a spender.
	Jesus saves!
	He's a great goalie.
	Sorry, let me insult you, Pastor.
	So, I think afterwards, I was just wondering, you know, I think I went through a little Descartes experience where I was wondering, what can I know for sure without having to question it?
	And only two things came up to my mind, which was one, logic, like A equals A, or math.
	Math is based on logic.
	And the logic of, I'm experiencing something, therefore I exist, or just the fact that I'm experiencing something, right?
	I may not know what it means to exist.
	It might be the fact that I'm a jar in a vat, but from all my experiential evidence, that theory is probably not true.
	It's...
	Everything that I experience, I have to put in a realm of saying, well, how do I interpret this data?
	No, no, hang on, hang on.
	Probably not true.
	See, if you're going to say that something is true, it has to be falsifiable.
	And anything which can't be falsified is no longer in the realm of truth or falsity.
	So you say, well, it could be a brain in the tank.
	It's probably true.
	And I would sort of push back on that and say, no, no, no.
	Because if there's no way to disprove the brain in the tank...
	Then you can't say that it's anywhere in the realm of truth or falsehood.
	Well, I'm not so sure about that.
	Maybe you could explain more about that particular...
	How could you say that's not in the realm of truth or falsehood?
	Okay, well, let's sort of give you an example.
	It's an old example that comes from a book called Atheism, The Case Against God.
	So if I say I have an invisible spider on my head, right?
	Right.
	And you say, okay, well, I'll just touch it.
	And I say, well, no, it's invisible and you can't touch it.
	It's incorporeal.
	Yeah.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, can I feed it and watch the food disappear?
	No, it doesn't eat.
	Right?
	Can I shoot some...
	Can a brother shoot some infrared at it and see the heat signal?
	No.
	Infrared passes right through it, you know, and all that.
	Like at some point...
	What does it even mean to say, do I have this spider on my head?
	Right.
	It's not in the realm of truth or falsehood.
	It's actually in the realm of, you need medication.
	Actually, I think I understand what you're saying now.
	I thought of it in a different way back when I was trying to figure all this out, but effectively to the same end.
	Yeah.
	And that's why, so when people say this This kind of stuff around, well, what about this hypothesis, you know?
	What if the solar system is just an atom, in a larger atom?
	It's like, okay, how would we know that?
	I don't know.
	Right.
	Okay.
	If I'm not smoking what you're smoking, it's not philosophy.
	No, I think...
	And that, I think...
	I think I understand.
	I took all these things like religion or the fact that I could be a jar and a vat, but anything that I couldn't falsifiable, wasn't falsifiable, I thought to myself...
	Well, then it just doesn't matter.
	You know, I still put it in the realm of it could be true, but it doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter, you know.
	So, anyway, I guess my real question...
	Sorry, there's one other thing, because you brought up empirical hypotheses or theories, right?
	Yes.
	And so, yeah, so if we're talking about Newtonian physics versus Einsteinian physics...
	I think that the correct term is not truth, but accuracy.
	Because accuracy is compared to empirical results or empirical phenomenon, right?
	Yeah, I agree with that.
	Right?
	So truth is a difficult thing to get to in science.
	Right?
	Because there's Valid or invalid, I think, would have to do with the internal logic of the hypothesis or the theory.
	But it's accuracy.
	Now, Einsteinian physics is more accurate than Newtonian physics.
	Newtonian physics is more accurate for flying a plane or sailing a ship or whatever, right?
	Right.
	But I don't think it's reasonable to say that truth is...
	Is the standard by which we're going to measure?
	A hypothesis that aims to accurately predict the behavior of matter.
	Because I think what we're talking about is accuracy.
	Like, if I'm shooting a bow, you and I are out in an archery range, and I shoot a bow, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	We wouldn't say, well, that bow shot is true.
	Right?
	Like, if I'm aiming at a...
	A bullseye, right?
	Or playing darts or something.
	Is it true?
	It wouldn't really make any sense.
	We could say, did you hit the target?
	Were you accurate, right?
	Right.
	But truth and falsehood, that was...
	I mean, and this is a bit complicated by the fact that there is...
	It was a true...
	Like, there is this weird word of the word...
	More medieval use of the word true to mean accurate.
	But...
	It wouldn't make much sense...
	Like...
	It wouldn't make much sense to say, is the shot true or false?
	We'd say, is it accurate?
	Was it an accurate shot or not?
	Yes.
	You know, if I'm doing basketball like nothing but net, is it true or false?
	Eh?
	Did it go in or not, right?
	Was it accurate?
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, that makes total sense.
	I like that accuracy terminology better than truth in the realm of science and what you can see.
	Right.
	And it's always important to remember the difference between physics and engineering, right?
	The applied sciences and the theoretical sciences, right?
	Uh-huh.
	Now, in the realm of mathematics, which is a theoretical discipline...
	Well, numbers are perfect, right?
	Two and two make four.
	Yes.
	Just is.
	Now, two and two coconuts don't make four coconuts in a way, other than numerically, because the coconuts aren't all identical and this, that, and the other, right?
	They're not perfectly equivalent and, right, so...
	But the numbers themselves, like the platonic ideal forms of the numbers, two and two make four.
	It's perfect for all of those afraid of pimples and the flesh and farts and people.
	So...
	So in the realm of philosophy, in terms of like UPB, I think is great.
	Great.
	What a wonderful philosophical term you've just come up with there.
	It's super keen.
	But UPB is true.
	Now, in the application of UPB, like if someone shoots someone else, well, UPB shows that people have the valid right of self-defense, right?
	Right.
	However...
	In the trial of someone who's accused of murder, and you're trying to figure out if it was self-defense or not, it may be kind of ambiguous.
	There may be contradictory evidence, there may be contradictory eyewitness statements, or people who say that they were there but may not have been, like all the stuff that goes on whenever this stuff goes down, right?
	Right.
	And so, in the one, you have the theory of UPB, which allows you to have justifiable self-defense, and And that's true or false, right?
	It's either true that the theory works the way it says it's going to, like, either people can simultaneously, like, stealing can be universally preferable behavior, or it can't be, right?
	And that's the theory.
	True, false.
	However, the implementation of theories in the real world is always subject to evidence, eyewitness, lying, truth, you know, all of this stuff, right?
	Right.
	And this is where people want the theoretical certainty, the theoretical physics, with the engineering certainty of building the bridge.
	And those two things are not the same.
	There's no such thing as a perfect bridge, right?
	But there is...
	And is there a true or false bridge?
	I don't think that there is, right?
	I mean...
	I guess you could say there's good or bad bridges, and a bad bridge might be one that's over-engineered, like you made it out of solid diamonds or something, and it's a bit over-engineered and too expensive.
	Or it could be you made it out of balsa wood and it falls down or something.
	It's a bad bridge.
	But is there a true or false bridge?
	I don't think there is, because now you're subject to The constraints, uncertainties, and competing interests of the material realm.
	How much do you want to spend?
	How strong do you want it to be?
	You can make any bridge strong enough to have a space shuttle land on it, but that means every bridge would cost a billion dollars and you'd run out of money for food.
	So once you go from the theory to the practice, people want the same perfection in practice that they get in their theories.
	And that is, I think, where Things don't fall down, right?
	And that's an attempt to create a soul in the body because there's a soul in the sky.
	It's this idea that you can take the perfection, the crystalline, perfect platonic perfection of a deity and somehow infuse that into the material.
	And I don't think that that is true or could work.
	Right.
	No, that's a good point.
	So here's a question for you.
	When I realized this, that all I can trust to be true is logic and derived from that is the fact that I'm experiencing something, it led me to two conclusions pretty directly.
	The first is that what I called super realities or just stuff that is unproven, unprovable, I should say, just doesn't matter.
	You can just ignore it.
	And the other conclusion I came to is what you've just been talking about.
	It's all about, if I want to understand the world, it's all about modeling it, the methodology I have for assessing it, my ideas as accurate.
	And this seemed very, very simple to me, and I was wondering if you had a thought on Why nobody else seems to put this concept of what they can know for sure at the very heart of their philosophy?
	It just doesn't seem like it is at the very heart of anybody's philosophy.
	It seems like it's just kind of ancillary.
	Oh yeah, that's kind of true, I guess.
	Well, yeah, but Jordan, and sorry to sound annoyingly condescending, as usual, but I know it's a great question, but We don't have a random sampling of philosophers throughout history.
	I don't know for sure that all the philosophers that we know about were the best philosophers.
	Now, I do know that the philosophers we know about were allowed to publish and usually weren't killed.
	And so there may have been people who came up with incredible anarchistic, atheistic philosophies.
	In the past, it's just that, you know, they probably met untimely and under a bridge, right?
	Yeah.
	And so, who was taught in schools?
	The schools have, for the last couple of hundred years at least, before that they were heavily influenced, if not controlled by the church, and the prejudices of the parents, the irrationalities and superstitions of the parents, and after that have been controlled by the state.
	So, does the state encourage the teaching of Anarchist philosophers?
	No.
	I took courses on philosophy in school, never came across an anarchist.
	Does religion want to teach you a lot about atheism?
	Not really, right?
	And it's not a negative, it's just reality, right?
	And so don't, you know, fall in...
	And this was an insight for me from a couple of years ago, and it was mind-blowing to me, but everything...
	Everyone that we hear from is already approved of.
	Everyone we read has been allowed.
	And we do not have a random scattershot of the great minds throughout history.
	We have all the great minds that the people in power had no fundamental objection to.
	That's the standard.
	So when you say, well, why don't people put, you know, epistemology logic right at the core of their systems?
	They might have, but I bet you we never heard of them.
	I bet you they and their relatives were burned pretty early on in that process, right?
	Okay.
	This goes more to the engineering part.
	Yeah.
	Everyone who has been approved of by power is suspect.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	And I claim no, not a shred of greater courage than anyone in the past.
	But I don't have to be approved of by anyone in power to have these conversations, right?
	Everybody who teaches in a university has been approved of by the people who run the university.
	Everyone who preaches from the pulpit has been approved of by the people in charge of the church.
	Everyone who writes books, who publishes papers, who is a journalist, they've all been approved of.
	Now, Through the internet, we can have direct conversations, and the only people who really need to approve of me is you!
	In terms of getting some money for it, otherwise I'd still keep doing it.
	But nobody sits there and says, you know, your data packets for this show, well they're not, right?
	Well, net neutrality.
	I don't need a big studio to fund me, I don't need, you know, who gets in front of a TV company?
	Right.
	To do the news.
	Well, people who have access to information.
	Who has the most information?
	The government.
	Yeah.
	And so, basically, in order for the government to give you information to forward to the people, and the only reason we care so much about what the government does is because the government controls so much.
	This is why everything in the paper is about the government.
	The government controls so much.
	And...
	I mean, wondering why the government is in the newspapers, wondering why there's God in the Bible.
	It's kind of the center of it, right?
	Right.
	And so, if you want to get information from the government, you have to serve the interests of the government, right?
	Whoever pays the piper calls the tune.
	And so the only people you'll see in the mainstream media are people who are approved of by the government in one form or another.
	And that's natural, that's inevitable, that's just another reason why we know anarchy works.
	Everyone gets in line.
	And so there's this, like, weird new thing that's just popped up called the Internet, which allows for no middleman, no censorship, no approved conversations.
	I can say naughty words on this show that you could never say on television.
	And I also, through wide dissemination, don't have to make a case that there'll be a big audience for what it is that I'm going to do.
	I mean, I just...
	I can imagine sitting down with investors.
	So you want to do a show?
	Yes.
	What's it about?
	Anarchism.
	Atheism.
	Self-knowledge.
	Relationship.
	Really?
	Why would people want to do that?
	I don't know.
	There are times I don't want to do it.
	I don't know.
	Will it make them prettier?
	No.
	Will it make them more screwable?
	Hell no.
	Will it give them abs?
	No.
	It will exercise their tear ducts and their cortisol producers.
	Will it help them get along with people?
	Yeah, kind of maybe in the long run.
	Not so much in the short run.
	No, definitely.
	Why would people watch your show again?
	Masochism?
	I hope to be entertaining enough to overcome all that.
	Is that possible?
	So, yeah, I mean, the idea of making this as a pitch...
	You wouldn't be very lucky.
	I mean, the Dragon's Den would just be a trapdoor that would lead to a fiery pit.
	And they'd shoot you with a Trank gun full of Prozac before they dumped you.
	So, now I think people can trust a tiny little bit more that through the internet, there is a way of...
	Speaking the truth without having to go through the hoops.
	I'm sorry, Jordan, you were going to say?
	Well, yeah, so there's the ability to do that now, and I'm wondering if you think that that will lead back to what you were talking about at the beginning, with this kind of epistemology, logic-based philosophy leading to nihilism.
	Do you think that'll happen now that we kind of have...
	The scientific method and other ways of thinking logically?
	There is the danger which I'm aware of.
	I mean, in all seriousness, there is the danger that I'm aware of that if existing belief structures turn out to be a broken toy, that the childish and spiteful side of human nature We'll smash everything out of frustration, out of alienation, out of a sense of betrayal.
	That the hurt that lies at the bottom of all enforced conformity erupts and it's not a controlled demolition.
	It's a nuclear blast.
	That is a great danger.
	Of course, the alternative is to let momentum and history take over, which is not good.
	Right.
	You know, I mean, the plane is almost out of fuel.
	We better learn how to fucking glide and quick.
	Because if we don't do anything, it's just a no-dive to a splat.
	So you are very correct that there is an enormous danger when you run to the end of an old paradigm.
	Which is, I think, where we are.
	I think it's pretty inescapable.
	Then the grave challenge is people say, what I was told is not true, therefore there is no such thing as truth.
	But I think that the nihilism is most, it gains the most traction when the ethics can't be acted on.
	So in the 19th century, when people lost belief in...
	A lot of people lost belief in religion.
	Religion gives you ethics you can act upon.
	That was the praise that I was giving to Christianity in the first call.
	That this is what I did learn.
	Things you can do something about.
	And what replaced the voluntarism and the willpower of Christianity.
	Because...
	Science, of course, a lot of people feel that science is opposed to free will.
	And therefore, everything becomes mechanistic, everything becomes soulless, everything becomes a pattern of larger forces.
	We are nothing but water droplets in the cloud called society, ruled by forces that we can't comprehend in mechanistic ways that we cannot oppose to a destination that is inevitable, though we cannot see it.
	And that is a pretty horrible place to be as a moralist because not only is there no right and wrong, there's no capacity of effecting change fundamentally, which is why scientific communism was all about these are the impartial forces of economic reality that people can't change and oppose, even though they created them to change and oppose the existing capitalist structure and ownership of the means of production, blah, blah, blah.
	Forget all that stuff because there's power grab.
	But enough people went along with it.
	And, you know, I had, like, when I was growing up, not so much in England.
	I did have some cynical friends in England.
	But, oh, my God!
	The friends I had in junior high and high school, not all of them, but some of them were so unbelievably cynical and caustic.
	Like, they had this wild...
	Piss on the 1950s, leave it to beaver from a great condescending height approach.
	There was no goodness, no virtue, and even to discuss it would be ridiculous.
	You know, the idea of resurrecting virtue was like trying to bring the worship of set back to life.
	And there was wild emotional attempts at self-regulation, you know, like a I had a friend whose idea was, you know, well, if you're feeling down or you're feeling anxious, you know, just grab some beer bottles and throw them against a brick wall.
	You'll feel better.
	Really?
	That's where we are.
	That's where we are.
	And, of course, when I got into objectivism and found sort of the positive philosophy, I mean, this was just incomprehensible and embarrassing.
	Like, for them, playing with virtue was like being sort of 16 years old and wanting to play Lego.
	It's just vaguely embarrassing, inappropriate.
	Like, why would you, haven't you outgrown that nonsense yet?
	Come on!
	Or like, when I was, I went to a whole bunch of summer camps when I was in my early teens.
	I grabbed a broom handle and tossed a broom handle to a friend and say, hey, let's play lightsabers.
	And he's like, aren't you a bit old for that?
	To which I lamely replied, you're never too old to have fun, man, and slunk back inside and never picked him up again.
	But now, of course, I'm back to doing it with my daughter.
	It's a whole different thing.
	But yeah, a huge, huge amount of cynicism.
	And of course, that came out of the 70s.
	You know, the mass hedonistic...
	Sense-tickling orgy of the 60s, like the inevitable empty-hearted, empty-headed hangover, led to unbelievable nihilism in the 70s.
	And you can see this in a movie called The Ice Storm, which explores it, not philosophically, but quite accurately.
	It was an incredibly nihilistic period, which then, of course, decayed into the materialism of Of the 80s and the money hunger of the 90s, which then led to...
	Anyway, we'll sort of go on, but not like human experiences needs to nicely tidied up by decades.
	What's that great?
	It's a great song that George Michael wrote with the Rolling Stones.
	Waiting for that day.
	It's a lovely song.
	Man, I wish that guy had written more songs.
	I don't think he's done a huge amount lately other than not die of pneumonia.
	But he says, everybody's talking about this new decade like you...
	Say goodbye to the stupid mistakes you made.
	Like, ah, it's a new decade.
	Turn over a new leaf.
	It's not like history works that way.
	Exactly.
	But a huge amount of nihilism.
	We didn't believe in religion.
	We didn't believe in school.
	We didn't believe in society.
	We didn't believe in the virtue of our government.
	As I've said before on this show, when they were talking, when we were 13 or 14 years old, and they were talking about how we'd have retirement through Canada pension plan, when we retired, we all laughed.
	No way.
	I mean, come on.
	You've taught us math.
	You don't give us mathematical impossibilities and ask us to keep a straight face.
	At 13 years old.
	Incredible cynicism.
	Oh, yeah.
	We were, I guess, a fairly precocious bunch back in the day.
	Wow.
	And rampant nihilism.
	And like all nihilism, there was an incredible hostility towards any enthusiasm or any virtue.
	Right.
	And there was incredibly dysfunctional relationships because nihilism has a sex drive that always turns it to destruction.
	Because, I mean, sex is fundamentally life-affirming and nihilism is the acid that undermines the verticality of the penis.
	But anyway, that's perhaps a topic for another time.
	But there is a grave danger that at the end of things...
	Everything is torched.
	And I've always recognized that challenge, which is why I've tried to provide actionable solutions to the collapses of delusions.
	Look at that.
	Hey, there's our rap song.
	It's actionable solutions to the collapse of delusions.
	No, I got that from your...
	I don't know why my rap is vaguely Southern, but anyway, sorry, you were gonna say?
	I got that from your book, God of Atheists.
	I had no idea what you were talking about, like what the point of the title was until the end.
	And I got it.
	But it was very good.
	I really enjoyed it.
	Oh, you like the book?
	That's one of my favorites and one of my most favorite things I've ever done.
	And I don't get to hear about it quite as much as I'd like.
	Oh yeah, that's quite good.
	And that was, you know, quite amazing in a way, too, because I was basically talking about podcasting many, many years before there was any such thing.
	So, anyway.
	So, but you don't think that the scientific method and kind of this, I feel like we're having like a revival in science right now, would kind of take the nihilism away, kind of have something that people can use to understand the world instead of just being nihilistic?
	Oh, no, I don't think science will help with that.
	Science will make us more comfortable and will give us structure around the material world, but you can't get ethics out of science.
	Oh, why is that?
	Because science describes what is, not what ought to be.
	Who describes what ought to be, then?
	The ethicist.
	Universally preferable behavior, right?
	The ethicist is how...
	How people ought to behave and the theoretical structures which validate that it can be universalized and thus be in the realm of ethics.
	But there's no, you know, if you say objects fall to earth at 9.8 meters per second per second, you don't say, but they shouldn't.
	Or it ought to be 10.2 meters per second per second, right?
	It's raining today.
	It should be sunny, right?
	Well, it's just...
	So, what ought to be is an expression of will, right?
	Like, it's my will that this ought to be?
	Oh, I don't know.
	I think will is a bit too dilute.
	You've always got to say to yourself, can an ocelot do it?
	What's an ocelot?
	I don't know, some kind of mammal.
	I think it's one of God's, like, freaky, stitched-together Franken-creations, like the platypus.
	It's a kind of wild cat, I think.
	Now, the ocelot wills things, right?
	I mean, it tries to catch the mice, the mouse tries to escape, and so you've got to be careful with things that can go to non-humans.
	Because ethics only applies to people, right?
	And so will is not...
	Will is foundational to just about all living creatures, I believe.
	They all want things, you know, have sex and reproduce and don't get eaten.
	Right.
	And so it's, yeah, it's not, to me, a science, you know, if you ever watch the show Bones, right, she can say, well, this is how someone died and we found the cause of death and so on, right?
	Right.
	And I bet you a lot of race realists watch that show because...
	They can sort of spot the gender and race of a species of a person from like a tiny bone on a little finger and stuff like that.
	But, you know, they say this is the cause of death, right?
	Now, science will tell you what killed someone, but I don't believe...
	Like, philosophy will tell you the virtue, the ethics, whatever you should strive for as a species, but I don't think science can provide that.
	Science can tell you How to send a probe to Ceres, as we were talking about earlier, right?
	So, wait a second.
	Are you telling me that...
	Interesting.
	So, the natural world was a natural philosophy at one point, and then it got subsumed into science with the scientific method, and now we understand the world through that method, which we call science.
	Would you agree with that?
	Yeah, and the reason that ethics didn't get subsumed into science was, A, I don't think very compatible, and B, because religion had already answered, at least to most people's satisfaction, the question of ethics hitherto.
	But are you saying that ethics cannot be subsumed into science?
	No, I don't believe it can.
	Science is hypotheses that accurately depict the behavior of matter and energy.
	But anything which is strictly empirical is a one-way street.
	Ethics is a two-way street.
	Here's how people should behave.
	Science is, here's how matter behaves, right?
	I'm not so sure I follow.
	Okay, so hang on.
	So let's say that I drop...
	So there's an old theory...
	I was just talking about this with my daughter.
	So there's an old theory from, I think it was Galileo, went to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropped an orange and a cannonball down.
	Uh-huh, yeah.
	Because everyone assumed that the cannonball would fall faster, right?
	But you know what actually happened, right?
	Right.
	They both fell at the same rate, which would be the case for everything not overly burdened by air resistance, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And there's no ought in that.
	It was simply an attempt to describe what is, right?
	It's just what is, yeah.
	Yeah, there's no ethics in it, right?
	No virtue, no right or wrong, no universally preferable behavior.
	You could say, I guess, that if you want to know the truth about physical matter, you need to do the scientific method and so on, but that's not an ethical thing.
	thing.
	We don't say that somebody who doesn't use the scientific method is evil and needs to be put in jail, right?
	That's sort of like saying, well, if you're in Montreal and you want to go to St.
	John's, you head east.
	If somebody heads west and says they want to go there, it's not smart, but it's not evil, right?
	So if you want to understand the world, you have to use the scientific method.
	Couldn't you say...
	But that's not a moral statement.
	No, it's not.
	That's like if you want to cross a river without getting wet, you should use a boat.
	But if you want to swim, it's not evil, right?
	Right.
	It's a statement of practical consequences.
	It's really utilitarian in a way, right?
	Yes.
	If you want to build a bridge that stands, you know, be a competent engineer or whatever, right?
	So does that mean ethics is not derived from what causes conscious entities pain?
	Oh no, good heavens.
	Or is this against their will or something?
	No, there's lots of things that cause conscious entities pain that we would consider beneficial, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Surgery, rehab, quitting smoking, ending a drug addiction or whatever.
	Yeah.
	But that's causing pain in order to have more life afterwards, more pleasure, more happiness.
	So...
	Well, but now we...
	And we probably don't have time for this tonight, but we're getting into a whole other question, which is what is ethics, right?
	And I've got a whole book on that, which is called Universally Preferable Behavior.
	People can get it at freedomainradio.com slash free.
	But no, I don't believe that.
	I know...
	Sam Harris makes a different argument, so you certainly should review his arguments.
	He's quite a clever fella.
	But I don't believe that science can describe ethics.
	Right, so Sam Harris has an argument that says, well, look, if we want to prevent the spread of cholera, which is harmful to people, we should, you Sewage and plumbing, water treatment facilities, and so on, right?
	Yeah, that's all very true.
	Yeah.
	It's all very true.
	So he can make consequentialist arguments about that which is more beneficial to human health.
	But you're saying that's not...
	I mean, there are people who oppose GMOs, even though those genetically modified organisms can very easily prevent blindness in millions of children across the third world.
	And he would probably say that's bad, because the benefits outweigh the costs and blah-de-blah-de-blah, right?
	Right.
	But these are all consequentialist arguments, which are fine, I guess, but not particularly in the realm of ethics.
	The realm of ethics is universally preferable behavior, at least the way that I formulate it, which obviously I think is the right way to formulate it.
	Universally preferable behavior.
	It's theories that describe what human beings can be capable of in the pursuit of universally preferable behavior.
	And science is descriptive.
	It's not prescriptive, right?
	Science describes what is.
	Look, the bowling ball and the orange both fall at the same speed.
	I guess that corrects us.
	Replacing Ptolemaic Earth-based system of astronomy with the heliocentric Copernican model of the solar system was more accurate, right?
	But it was not an...
	Ethical.
	It was more true.
	It was valid.
	But it wasn't like, well, Copernicus is just more ethical than Ptolemy, right?
	Right.
	So, just to make sure that I understand, let me give you one last hypothetical.
	Hypothetically, in the future, if neuroscience took off and we understood exactly how consciousness arises from the brain, if it does indeed arise from the brain, then at that point, you're saying ethics would not be subsumed into science as a science.
	It would still be a philosophy.
	Because it's fundamentally different than science.
	It is.
	It is fundamentally different than science.
	Okay.
	Because if...
	I mean, this really comes back to the question of free will.
	Because if neuroscience disproves free will, should that ever occur, then ethics as a discipline would be dead.
	There would be no conceivable thing as ethics if free will is disproven.
	I mean, that would be like saying that a rock bouncing down a hill is morally responsible for the destruction it causes.
	No, it's just operating on physical principles.
	It has no choice over its destination itself.
	Right.
	Or, you know, it's like suing the cloud for the lightning strike that kills a cat for animal abuse, right?
	It just wouldn't make any sense.
	It's just the operation of natural forces with no conscious direction.
	Right.
	And so if free will is disproven, and I don't believe that it ever will be, I think that as neuroscience goes forward and there's steps in this direction that are very positive, dare I say, even encouraging to those of us who wish to retain the nobility of the human consciousness.
	But I think free will is only going to be further shown and proven rather than dismissed.
	And disproven, but if science advances to the point where every operation of human consciousness is known and predicted in advance, then ethics will be revealed as a superstition very much akin to a religion that relied upon a lack of knowledge and a projection of a desired state on that very ignorance, which it would then probably resist quite strenuously as religion does the advancement of science.
	So that's certainly possible.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Even UPB would be in that category of having to be dismissed?
	Oh, yeah, of course.
	Because if determinism were true, there would be no such thing as preferable behavior.
	Because there would be no choice, no option.
	Is preferable behavior relative to a person that prefers it?
	Preferable behavior is relative to a theory which can be universalized.
	And I'm sorry, I can't go into the whole methodology behind UPB because the book is free and I just can't do it again.
	But it's freedomainradio.com slash free, audiobook, PDF, and so on.
	But it's not what everyone prefers, it's what is universal.
	I can't repeat the same phrase as if I'm proving something.
	I'll look it up and read it.
	Yeah, have a read.
	I'm sort of working on some clarifications of it, sort of UPB 2.0, but it certainly still, I think, stands pretty strong and is well worth having a go over.
	Okay, well, thank you very much for the talk.
	I think it answered all my questions.
	Well, I doubt it did, but hopefully it gave you a sort of rough framework for exploring them.
	I think answering questions is not particularly helpful.
	Right.
	In philosophy, it's like giving the answer in a math class doesn't teach anyone about math.
	Right.
	Yeah, write this symbol after these symbols.
	Look, you're a mathematician.
	But hopefully it gave you a framework for working with the problems, but I hope I avoided answers as much as possible.
	Well, I appreciate it.
	All right.
	Well, thanks, Jordan.
	I appreciate it as well, and feel free to call back in anytime.
	It's a real pleasure.
	And I'm sorry that it was late for the UPB. And I'm also sorry for the other callers.
	But, of course, we did spend a lot of time on the first call.
	And I'm very, very glad that we did.
	I hope that you managed to struggle through some of the beginning, which, of course, was very different from the ending.
	But that's the process.
	So thank you, everybody, so much.
	Have yourselves a wonderful night.
	Freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out.
	We really, really cannot do it without you.
	And it's up to you to make it happen.
	And you know the right thing to do.
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