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May 5, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
19:22
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Good morning everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
It's Stephen from Freedomain Radio and we're gonna be talking about a little philosophy this morning and reason and thoughts and whatnot and then we're gonna go gigging some frogs whatever that is so Let's see here.
I recorded the Cult of Atheism the other day, that would be Sunday, and I got some comments, and the comments are very interesting and very good, and I appreciate them.
And one person writes, the dichotomy between atheism and religiosity doesn't always align neatly with the scientific versus non-scientific worldview.
People and cultures can reject theistic explanations for a variety of reasons, not all of which are grounded in scientific reasoning.
Right, so you are the general exception guy.
Ah yes, the gag.
The general exception guy, the gag.
You are a gag-inator.
You are gagging all over the place.
And just be aware of that, right?
So when I say atheism, that dichotomy between atheism and religiosity doesn't always align neatly with the scientific versus non-scientific worldview.
And yes, that Yes.
You don't add anything to the world by saying that there are tall pygmies.
You don't.
Because I don't know, like if you've just been dealing with people who aren't smart throughout your life.
I mean, you are the guy who says, I know a tall woman.
When you say that women, someone says women are an average shorter than men.
And you say, I know a tall woman or this sort of famous example of Women tend to oppose generalizations with their own personal experience.
And underneath it, the first post was a woman who said, well, I'm a woman and I don't do that.
So, you need to work a little harder.
So, doesn't always align neatly.
Well, yeah.
So what you're doing, and you really should read my book, Art of the Argument, artoftheargument.com.
So what you're doing is, you know, the sort of two forms of reasoning, deductive and inductive, right?
So deductive reasoning is all men are mortal.
Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
Yes.
Inductive reasoning is, you have a neighbor who has 21 cats.
You have seen 20 of her cats, and they're all black cats with white paws.
You have good reason to believe.
In fact, you'd probably put pretty good money on the fact that the 21st cat is black with white paws, because she obviously likes that kind of cat, and that's what she is collecting.
Now, what you do is you take the certainty of deductive reasoning and you think it's absolutely brilliant to, and I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound harsh, but I kind of need to shock you out of this nonsense because it's a waste of everyone's time and interferes with people being able to think and reason and communicate.
So, what you do is you take the certainty of deductive reasoning, and you then bring it to inductive reasoning, and you say, hey, they're not the same.
And it's like, well, yes.
See, that's why there are two words for it.
One word is deductive reasoning, gives you 100% certainty, and one is inductive reasoning, which is where you weigh probabilities and come to conclusions.
Right, so, if you and I are hunters, right, and we are hunting, and I see a deer, and I say, there's a deer, you're not going to say, if it's a deer, no, that's a pile of helium balloons, or something, right?
That's a deer, so we have certainty, right?
However, if I say, let's go hunting, and then I say, let's go to the watering hole, because that's where the animals congregate, would you say, you can't be 100% certain that the animal we want is going to be at the watering hole?
Right?
Do you understand?
Would you say, it doesn't matter where we go, We just should wander around aimlessly.
Maybe we should go out into the desert and look for thirsty animals, or maybe we should just start digging a hole and see if we come across an underground lair of deer.
You wouldn't do that, right?
So if I say we should go hunting at the waterhole because that's where the animals congregate, Would you say, but you can't be 100% certain that the animal will be there, or whatever animal we're looking for, or some animal we can eat, right?
Could be some animal there we can't eat or don't want to eat, but whatever, right?
You wouldn't, right?
I mean, because that would be kind of dumb.
It would be very dumb, and it would not contribute everything, right?
It's also known as a straw man, right?
I say the dichotomy between atheism and religiosity doesn't always line neatly with a scientific versus non-scientific worldview.
People and cultures, you say, can reject theistic explanations for a variety of reasons, not all of which are grounded in scientific reasoning.
Well, yeah, again, completely obvious, right?
Some people who are raped by priests, some children, or I guess in particular boys, could be girls, I guess, who are raped by priests reject religion because they are raped by priests.
Now, it is not syllogistically logical to reject the existence of religion if you are assaulted by a priest, or if you have a priest who turns out to be a hypocrite, that would not be a valid reason to reject religion.
So, I don't know, I mean, you just need to, you need to, and the reason I say this is you're a smart fellow and you just need to up your game, and you need to stop stating the blindingly obvious as if you're adding some particular huge value.
Because if I say, let's go to the watering hole to hunt, because that's where the animals congregate, and you say, well you can't guarantee, that's like I didn't guarantee it, I'm just saying it's our best odds.
It's our best odds, right?
So I'm making a general statement.
I'm making a general statement.
I'm not making a statement of absolute certainty.
And when I'm not making a statement of absolute certainty about every single situation, then I'm... because I'm dealing with human beings, not science, right?
So you're taking the syllogistic worldview, which is, in general, the world of physics, and you are then taking it to the biological world, which is a world of probabilities, and you are saying that physics, the certainty of physics, cannot be applied to matters of biology, and it's like, well, yes, of course not, right?
I mean, if you were to go to some biological conference and you were to have an hour-long lecture on the fact that, although in general it is true that evolution works on reproduction, Not all animals are able to reproduce.
If you were to say that, well, yes, it's true that if you say horses give birth to baby horses or foals, but not all foals would be immediately classified as horses if you found them on an alien planet, right?
You have some horse that's born, I don't know, with five legs or two heads, like some weird genetic mutation, and you were to say that All rocks are affected by gravity in an absolute fashion, but not all horses give birth to healthy and viable horses.
Some, because there are genetic mutations or whatever transcription errors from the DNA, then you would not, and you were to say, you guys as biologists, you can't say things which are as certain as physicists.
And the biologists would say, we don't claim to, and we already know that.
Everybody knows that.
Like, everybody knows that physics and biology are not the same thing.
For instance, I mean, this is back to the Queen song, All Dead, which Brian May wrote about his cat who died, apparently.
I wish I didn't know that, because it's a deeper song without it.
When you are a child and you have a pet, that pet might die.
And will die, right?
But it might die while you're still a kid, right?
But you get a hamster.
Hamsters live a couple of years, right?
And I had hamsters and mice and all that when I was a kid.
So when you have a hamster and you're a little kid, that hamster's gonna die.
I remember a friend of mine who also was raised with hamsters, and his kids, when they were six or seven, really wanted guinea pigs.
So he got guinea pigs, and they were very loud.
And then he found out later that guinea pigs live for like 20 years.
And I just remember him saying, oh yeah, I'm absolutely sure my kids are going to come over and play with their guinea pigs when they're 25.
When the kids are 25, right?
Because they're still going to be 19 years old.
So, the guinea pigs.
So, yeah, I mean, so your pet might die, right?
When you were a kid, did you ever worry that your house would die?
Well, no.
If you had a particular rock that you liked.
When I was in boarding school, I had a little piece of rock that had a quartz crystal in it that I was convinced or was convincing myself was a diamond and I was super wealthy or whatever.
Of course, I have no idea what that rock is now, but I had a rock.
Now, I knew that pets would die.
I never, ever thought that my rock would die.
In fact, that was kind of a joke in the 70s, which is a pet rock, right?
It's not a rock, it's a pet.
So a five-year-old understands that animals die and like understands that all animals die and or even if it's less a ten-year-old if you want to delay it a little right right at ten it's marginal what was that great line from Trump about just do seven still believe in Santa because it's seven it's marginal right?
And so, we all, as kids, right?
We all, as kids, understand that a pet will die, and a house will not.
A rock will not.
And we feel sad when a pet dies, and we will never feel sad.
We might feel sad if we drop a rock and it breaks, but the rock is not dead.
We know, of course, if you have a rock collection or a seashell collection, which most kids do, you know that you need to take care of your pets, right?
I had to change the shavings in the hamster cage.
I had to give them water and food and take them out and play with them and give them exercise, give them little wheels and so on.
So you have to maintain Life.
You do not have to maintain a rock.
It doesn't need water.
It doesn't need light.
It doesn't need exercise.
It's inert.
So, you know, the fact that there's a difference between physics and biology and when you make
a statement that is general about patterns in human life saying, well, it doesn't align
neatly with these categories.
And you may not be talking to me, you may be talking to everyone as a whole.
But when you say that the laws of physics don't apply to creatures that have free will,
you are loftily telling a 10-year-old that a rock is in a different category from a cat,
which the 10-year-old already knows.
They may not be able to explain it in sort of any detailed manner, but in general, taking
the laws of deduction and moving them to the probabilities of induction is a waste of time
because everybody knows.
And people who don't know, I don't know what to say.
I genuinely don't know what to say to people who seem to not know this.
All right.
So then the same person also says this is a criticism of me.
So he quotes me when I say the percentage of atheists who are not statists is so small that you can just ignore it completely.
If this was a valid argument, you'll have a problem with anything.
Close to 98% of book readers are statists.
Close to 98% of gym members believe that taxes is a price we pay for living in the society.
The percentage of libertarians who are not in it for the drugs, more money, are so small you can just use the term libertarian and hippie interchangeably.
This is either a mistake or sophisticated manipulation.
Not good either way.
So this is a mistake and sophistic manipulation.
Okay.
So.
This is, I mean, this, I hate to say there's so much wrong with it.
I don't even know where to start because that's usually a pretty ridiculous thing to say, but it is kind of self.
If this was a valid argument, you'd have a problem with anything.
Okay?
So, an argument is not valid or invalid if it applies to more than the thing, right?
So, let's say the percentage of atheists that are not statists is so small you can just ignore it completely.
If this was a valid argument, you'd have a problem with anything.
So you're saying it's less of a valid argument because it applies to other things, which I don't... If I say this mouse is a mammal, you say, well, I mean, how do you define a mammal?
Warm-blooded, hair, gives birth to live young or whatever, right?
Well, if that mouse is a mammal, then that applies to a wide variety of other things that would be classified as mammals.
It's like, yes, it would.
So, does that mean the mouse is not a mammal?
Well, if you have a problem, With people who are statists, then that's going to apply to a lot of other things.
It's like, and?
Like, how does that make the argument invalid?
It doesn't, right?
That's number one.
Number two, close to 98% of book readers are statists.
So, a book reader is not a category that says, we don't believe in concepts that other people believe in just because other people believe in them.
Right?
Being a book reader is not fundamentally skeptical and empirical in nature.
Right?
Being a book reader is not fundamentally saying that if you have a theory about something, you have to find rational and empirical... the theory has to be rationally consistent and you have to find physical evidence to support your theory.
So just being a book reader is neutral, right?
I mean, I would say book readers probably tend to be more intelligent than non-book readers, but you can be a book reader who is pursuing the most mystical things known to humanity and not be rational.
So saying that book readers are in the same category as atheists or scientists is not valid.
So atheists say, we don't believe in self-contradictory entities for which there is no evidence in reality, and they apply that to God.
Right?
And they will not apply it to the state.
So they're in the category of using a methodology to become atheists that they absolutely will avoid using on something like political power.
So that's not the same.
It's like saying a scientist is hypocritical if he avoids using the scientific method.
And so is a primitive witch doctor.
It's like, well no, because a scientist is someone who's dedicated his life to the scientific method, so he's hypocritical.
A witch doctor would be wrong, but not hypocritical.
Close to 98% of gym members believe that tax is the price you pay for living in the society.
Right.
But being a gym member is not having a metaphysical and epistemological methodology for determining truth from falsehood.
It's just going to the gym.
So, libertarians, blah, blah, blah.
I just wanted to mention that.
It was interesting feedback and instructive, I think.
But you need to be, you know, like 99% of the ideas I have I discard as not being worthy of the audience.
I need to give you something that's scintillating.
I need to give you something that's new, that's original, that explains more, that's better expressed or what I can read to give you something new.
And when you are in a very intelligent, I mean, I view this community as a super Mensa community, top 1% or 1.1% or whatever of ability.
And so when you're in this community, You need to up your game, right?
You're playing in the big leagues.
I mean, I consider myself as playing in the big leagues, so I need to challenge myself to give you something new, something you haven't heard before, something that is not just a retread of the same old, same old.
And so that's what I do, and I would challenge you to Reach deep to dig deep and to raise your standards for yourself and say what can I provide that's going to be just jaw-dropping and scintillating and fascinating and like just dig deep it's in you it's in all of us certainly if we're part of this conversation it's in all of us to dig deep and come up with some fantastic new stuff and do that right don't don't say obvious things like well you know
A general statement about intellectual trends doesn't align neatly with a particular dichotomy.
It's like, well, yeah, yeah, I get it.
Human beings are not boulders.
Big, big whoop, right?
Like, I mean, it's just it's eye rolling.
It's eye rolling.
And and you don't have the excuse.
I mean, this conversation's been around for a long time.
You're not new.
You just don't have the excuse to say obvious things.
Well, you know, atheists have a specific methodology that's intellectual, and they're exactly the same as people who go to the gym.
Or, well, most people believe in the moral legitimacy of unjust political power, and therefore you can't say that there's unjust political power.
That doesn't make any sense at all.
I mean, we're here for truth, not democracy, and truth is not democratic.
I mean, certainly when governments run the educational system, truth is almost always the opposite of democracy.
So, yeah, just, you know, challenge yourself, up your game.
Because, and the reason I say this is not just because it's a waste of time and you discredit yourself in the community, right?
Because if you post things that are obvious and wrong, then people would just stop reading you.
And that's sad, because, you know, everybody has a lot to offer, and I don't want to see you discredit yourself, that's number one.
And number two, the joy of coming up with something new is just so fantastic and so powerful.
The joy of, like, you know, I had a braingasm that lasted two and a half hours on Sunday just talking about atheism and the cult and so on.
And I've talked about bits and pieces of it before, but drawing it all together in one passionate exposition was fantastic.
And the joy that you have when you dig deep and come up with something new and really enlighten people, that joy is one of the greatest joys in the known universe.
And I don't want you to not have that joy.
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Thank you everybody so much.
I'll talk to you soon.
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