Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - Sexual Harassment in STEM! Twitter/X Space

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July 29, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:44:11

Sexual Harassment in STEM! Twitter/X Space

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	Hey everybody, Sam Olani Freeman on this glorious Saturday afternoon.
	Had a nice lengthy hike with my daughter.
	I hope you're out there, or at least get to go out there and enjoy nature, the beauty of this glorious world, fresh air, and all kinds of lovely stuff.
	Hello, hello.
	Just checking on the audio.
	So I have topics.
	I also have not just vocal cords, but one functioning ear, one and a half ears.
	I'm not quite Brian Wilson, but I ain't quite stereo.
	So if there are things that you want to discuss, questions, criticisms, oppositions, suggestions for Haggis-style armpit curling championships, I'm all ears.
	If you want to request a talk, you can pop into my eardrums, but I certainly have a topic to start with.
	And I'll just give a moment here to see if anybody's open to tickling the TCPIP of the BrainTrinet.
	All right.
	Yeah, it's a funny thing.
	So philosophy is about humility, and it is about knowing that you don't know anything until it is rationally consistent and empirically verifiable.
	And it's a funny thing.
	You know, I always hesitate with this kind of stuff because it can be misinterpreted, but Lord knows if you're worried about me being misinterpreted, then you're going to be forever a galley slave of the midwits.
	So we're just going to go ahead.
	So, you know, just for those of you who don't know, maybe you're kind of new to this conversation, I'm going to give you a little bit of my resume.
	So I got into philosophy in my mid-teens, which is, well, it's a long last time ago.
	It's close to 45 years.
	It's close to 45 years.
	I've read thousands of books on philosophy.
	My graduate school thesis, which, you know, I'm a free market, a small government, objective, rational empiricist.
	And that's not welcome in academia.
	Oh, no, Saribob.
	No, Saribob.
	They sure hated me in theater school once they found out about my philosophy and politics.
	And it was pretty tough.
	I graduated long past everyone else because they were wrangling over whether my thesis was too ambitious or not.
	My main thesis was dealing with four major philosophers over 2,000 years.
	And I ended up getting an A and all that kind of good stuff.
	And of course, over the last 20 years, I've interviewed hundreds of subject matter experts, had thousands of philosophical conversations, written 10 books on philosophy.
	Now, so here's the interesting thing, right?
	Here's the interesting thing.
	That doesn't make me right, but it makes me likely right, right?
	I mean, let's say that I was a grandmaster in chess, right?
	Like really, I had 40 plus years experience in chess, had played, you know, tens of thousands of hours of chess.
	Then if you sat down to play me and you were like, you know, an amateur or, you know, you just kind of dipped into a plate once in a while, it's not that you couldn't win.
	It's just that you'd be very unlikely to win.
	Like a friend of mine has a kid.
	He's like, I don't know, 10 or 11 years old who's been studying chess since he was like five, obsessed with chess.
	And I mean obsessed in a good way, right?
	And he cleaned my clock.
	You know, because he was just skilled and he'd been playing on chess.com for, you know, hundreds of hours or, I don't know, a lot, right?
	And he studied all the books.
	So he just knew.
	So the odds of me beating him were very low, right?
	And he's like, let's play again.
	And I'm like, you should really play someone who's going to, you know, who's going to challenge you.
	Right.
	So philosophy is an interesting subject, of course, because if I were a quantum physicist with 45 years of experience and all of that, then people would approach my knowledge with respect.
	Right.
	And it's a funny thing, you know, it's a philosophy even more so than economics is one of those fields where people think they know when they don't know, even though the founding story of philosophy is Socrates, who famously said, at least I know that I know nothing.
	And that humility, right?
	So, and it's a funny thing when you have a lot of expertise, and I have a lot of expertise in philosophy.
	And so when you have a lot of expertise and people come in very confidently, you know, they call you dumb or silly or foolish or retarded, you know, the sort of standard thing, like the sort of fairly primitive listed brain mind startled by a new idea who then lashes out in hostility.
	Like it's all very, it's very childish, which is sort of an insult to children.
	It's very immature.
	It's very immature.
	And people are triggered.
	And like people don't even know why they hate what it is that I say.
	They think they hate me or they think because they hate me, I'm a bad guy.
	Like it's all very primitive and it's all very projection-y and it's all very blind tween savage stuff, right?
	Overreactive.
	And it's because if I was an expert, you know, if I was a constitutional scholar or lawyer with like 40 years of experience, people would approach my knowledge base with respect, right?
	But it's funny, you know, and I don't blame the public out there at large.
	I blame philosophers for not being more assertive with their knowledge, right?
	So as you've heard on these shows, I approach every conversation with friendliness and positivity and enthusiasm.
	And then if people stop being jerks, I won't answer questions or gaslight or avoid or fog.
	Then I, you know, I point this out.
	And if they continue to do that, I'm going to get assertive.
	And then if they continue to do that, I'm going to get aggressive.
	And if they continue to do that, I'm going to cut them off.
	Because I respect philosophy.
	And as a fairly eminent and public philosopher, I expect respect for my knowledge base.
	Again, that doesn't mean that I'm right, but it means I'm not going to be obviously wrong.
	I'm not going to be obviously wrong.
	You know, the Indian guy, I think it was Indian, South Asian guy, who called in a couple of days ago, who was like, well, you can't really tell the difference between a key and an apple.
	And it's like, are you talking to me on a microphone or are you trying to yell at the world through an apple?
	Right?
	Well, the apple won't work.
	The microphone will.
	So he already knows the difference between a microphone and an apple.
	And so many questions in philosophy are just answered by slow down, look what you're doing.
	Look at all the assumptions that are baked and buried into what it is that you're doing.
	And that will answer, I swear, about 80 to 90% of philosophical questions are answered just by looking at all the premises you have to accept in order to communicate.
	In order to communicate and debate with me in these spaces, in any conversation, either online or in person, to debate with me, we have to accept that we both exist.
	We have to accept that the senses are valid and accurate.
	We have to accept that there's an objective medium for reality.
	We have to accept that science and engineering are valid.
	The truth is preferable to falsehood.
	All of these things we have to accept in order to have a debate.
	In order for you to correct me, there are about 10 major philosophical assumptions that you have to accept in order to call me up for us to exchange information through the medium of the senses, through the medium of objective reality,
	through the laws of physics, through the fact that language has meaning, through the fact that we can change our minds, through the fact that communication is better than violence, through the fact that truth is better than falsehood, all of the things that you have to accept in order to try and correct me.
	If you have to accept 10 things as absolutely true in order to try and correct me, then if you contradict any one of those 10 things, I'm just going to call you out on it.
	I'm just going to because you're missing the whole point of philosophy.
	Now, there may be people who think I don't exist, whatever, they have some sort of brain injury or they've been to university.
	So they may think that I don't exist, but then they're never going to contact me.
	Right.
	So I had a vivid dream about talking to the singer from U2 last night.
	Lord knows why.
	I was singing.
	Oh my gosh, I was at karaoke in a dream last night.
	And I was singing, drove downtown in the rain, 9.30 on a Tuesday night.
	Brian Wilson by the song, by the band Bare Naked Ladies.
	And then I chatted with Bono.
	I can't remember about what.
	Oh, I think I know why.
	I was talking with my daughter yesterday when we were out for a walk.
	And I was saying that although in some ways I'd love to have a great singing voice, it's better for philosophy that I have a pleasant speaking voice than a good singing voice, especially the higher voiced singers don't generally have pleasant speaking voices because, you know, it's a little too high, a little too sort of mosquito whiny, like the sort of Michael Jackson sting stuff.
	Even Freddie Mercury didn't have a very pleasant speaking voice because it was so soft.
	So, although Ben Hepner, I'm sure, has a baritone, has a nice, oh, is he a tenor?
	Is he a tenor?
	Lovely, lovely singer, by the way.
	Ben Hepner, a Canadian opera singer.
	So it's better for the world, it's better for philosophy that I have a pleasant speaking voice, and I do, rather than a good singing voice.
	So I was just, and I think that when I hear singers talk, unless they're sort of bassist or baritones, they generally don't sound very good.
	And it's probably better that I have a pleasant speaking voice than a good singing voice, particularly in the sort of modern tenor, counter-tenor kind of stuff.
	So I was talking about that.
	So I had this dream last night.
	Now, so I dreamt that I was singing Brian Wilson by Barenaked Ladies at a karaoke place.
	And then I was talking with Bono from the band U2.
	And Bono, I have a particular loathing for because he will do, he will lift not one freaking finger of his overprivileged hand to save Ireland from what is being inflicted upon it at the moment.
	He just won't, he won't do it.
	He won't do it.
	And it's wild, man.
	It's wild.
	Like, how much money do you need to be able to buy courage?
	I think he's worth quarter of a billion dollars.
	I think he made more money from Facebook than from the band U2, investment in Facebook.
	Guy's worth quarter billion, $300 million.
	Apparently, courage and integrity costs Irish people $301 million.
	It's wild.
	It's wild.
	It's like that old joke about Bill Gates.
	Bill Gates is worth $100 billion.
	Apparently, a good haircut costs $101 billion.
	Can't afford it.
	So anyway, I dreamt about Bono from the band U2 last night, or technically this morning.
	And I'm not calling him.
	I'm not, hey, you know, we talked this morning in my dream.
	Like, I'm not trying to get in touch with him because the bono in my dream doesn't exist, right?
	He's just a representation of the bono out there in the world.
	So I don't try and contact him because the bono in my dream doesn't exist.
	I didn't check around to see footprints from bono coming to my bed and chatting with me.
	So I know that he doesn't exist, the bono in my dream.
	So I don't try to talk to him.
	In order to try and talk to someone and to correct them, you have to believe that they exist and all the other things.
	So I just don't accept, and this is from the very beginning of what I've done as a philosopher, I don't accept any arguments against that which is required to have an argument.
	As I've used this analogy before, it would be like me mailing you a letter, making the case that letters never get delivered to the right person.
	Well, if I genuinely believe that letters never get delivered to the right person, then I wouldn't mail you a letter.
	Like, that would just not happen, right?
	Now, the moment I mail you a letter and the contents of that letter are letters never get delivered to the right person, then the content of the argument contradicts the form of the argument.
	And if the content of the argument contradicts the form of the argument, the content of the argument can be dismissed with no further analysis.
	In other words, the content of the argument is pleading guilty that it's bullshit.
	It's pleading guilty that it's a complete lie.
	It is a confession.
	It is the crime on video.
	All that's left is the plea dealing and the sentencing and all of that, right?
	But the conviction is done, right?
	Conviction is done.
	When the content of the argument contradicts the form of the argument, the contents of the letter, letters never get delivered, contradicts the form, which is I'm mailing it to you, then no further work needs to be done.
	You know, because there are a bunch of, you know, fairly ass clowny midwits out there who, if somebody insults me and I just insult them back, they say, not an argument.
	Not an argument.
	Like, I don't know what an argument is.
	I know what an argument is.
	I've written an entire book called The Art of the Argument.
	You should get it, artoftheargument.com.
	But not an argument, Steph.
	It's not an argument.
	Right.
	It's a rebuttal.
	It's a trading of insult.
	Somebody calls me stupid and I call them an ass time.
	It's Not an argument, it's like they didn't make an argument, so there's nothing to rebut.
	You know, it's like when I posted the other day a picture of a swan, and oh, goslings, I think that's what baby swans are called.
	There was a swan, two swans, and some goslings that my daughter came across and I came across while we were hiking.
	I think it was last week.
	And it would be like, I post that, and then somebody says, not an argument.
	Right, not an argument.
	They're swans.
	All right.
	Well, so I am going to keep hammering people.
	I'll approach them as I always do, as positively and enthusiastic in as friendly a manner as possible.
	You know, like people are like, you keep insulting atheists.
	I'm like, nope, I'm just insulting them back.
	I mean, and this particularly cowardly act that people have, and it's really repulsive.
	Like when you see this and you understand it, when you really get it, you will spend a fair amount of time nauseous in society.
	So when there's a conflict, what people generally do is they pick the least aggressive person or the lesser of the two aggressors and attempt to change his behavior.
	So if someone punches you and then you slap the person back, they'll say, oh, oh, don't slap.
	Be the bigger person.
	Don't slap, right?
	And this is constant in society.
	There's two people.
	One is the aggressor.
	The other is the victim.
	And people will simply pile on the victim to get him to stop fighting back.
	And this is, of course, slave mentality, right?
	Slave morality, a lot of morality, a lot of our instincts.
	You know, the majority of human beings, we're not masters, but slaves, right?
	So we have the slave instincts, the slave DNA, the slave wiring in our brains, which is if you see a slave, if you see a fellow slave fighting back against a master, you will desperately try to stop the fellow slave from fighting back.
	So you will pick the least powerful person or the least aggressive person in any conflict, and you will attack them inside with the master.
	And the reason being, of course, is that slaves were punished collectively.
	So if one slave fights back, they all get beaten.
	And it's just an instinct.
	And I don't think even people know they do it so automatic, right?
	So no, I simply asked a reasonable question of atheists a couple of like five days ago, four days ago, whenever it was.
	I asked a reasonable question, which is, why do you not lie?
	What are your reasons for not lying?
	It's not saying you don't, right?
	When I'm evaluating a business plan, which I used to do quite a bit, when I'm evaluating business plans and I don't get where a number's coming from, I'd say, well, what's the reason behind it?
	What's the reasoning behind this number?
	No, I'm not saying there isn't any.
	I'm just saying, I don't understand it.
	Show your work, right?
	And, you know, ethics is the most important topic in the world.
	And for 99.999% of human history, ethics were justified by an appeal to the divine.
	An atheist said, no, we're not doing that.
	I'm like, okay, well, then if your ethics don't come from the divine, which is all of human history, where do your ethics come from?
	That's a perfectly reasonable, perfectly sensible, and open-ended question, right?
	And you just get this insults on Christianity, this gaslighting.
	How dare you?
	You insinuate, well, I'm just a better, I guess I was just raised right and I just have a better moral.
	It's like just insults, insults.
	And I'll take them for a while.
	You know, people, you know, I do the turn the other cheek thing.
	If somebody's just, you know, Mr. Cranky Pants, you know, they just stub their toe or they just found out their girlfriend is cheating on them with a dew worm or something, then, okay, whatever, right?
	Let the first one slide.
	But then if they keep going, it's like, okay, gloves off, you know, gloves off.
	Then I'm just going to hit back.
	I mean, because I have too much respect for philosophy to let it get steamrolled over by passive-aggressive midwits.
	So you'll see this all the time.
	And then what happens is people jump into the middle of the conversation and they see me attacking or basically self-defending.
	And then they say, oh, Steph, you're so aggressive.
	What are you begging on the atheist for?
	The poor innocent little lambs.
	All right, Roger.
	Thank you for your patience, my friend.
	What is between Shunagin?
	I've startled him.
	I know there's a little bit of a lag here.
	Are you on the...
	Sorry.
	Sorry about the lag.
	Thanks for giving me the microphone.
	So I agree with you that philosophy is very respectable.
	It's a very respectable and noble pursuit in life.
	So I would like to ask you.
	Do you claim that religion has moralizing qualities?
	I'm sorry, you're going to have to define your terms.
	Okay.
	So let's take, for instance, Christianity, which draws from the Ten Commandments and scripture.
	People engaging in regular ritual, going to mass, doing church services.
	Well, hang on.
	Sorry, that's not specific to Christianity, of course, as you know.
	I would very briefly say that, hang on, just very briefly, I'm not going to try and steamroll you here, but I would argue that Christianity is Judaism plus universalism.
	Yeah, yeah, sure.
	I don't disagree.
	So religions in general have these kinds of structures.
	They have scripture in general.
	They have moral rules.
	They have a moral code.
	I think we can find the ontology, which is duty-based ethics or rule-based ethics, pretty much all religions, from Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Judaism, of course, Christianity, etc.
	And with ritual.
	Confucius, for instance, was very big on ritual, especially taken seriously.
	As a means to civilize people.
	As opposed to religion, which clearly states rules and civilizes people.
	Sorry, what is as opposed to religion?
	You mean Confucianism?
	I mean atheism.
	Confucianism.
	Okay, so if you're going to jump from Confucianism and Christianity to atheism, you've got to tell me that you're doing that.
	Okay, so you're saying that compared to atheism, Christianity has moral rules that if you're a Christian are considered objective.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	I'm just trying to get a view of your position from what you've been talking about.
	Of course, I'm inspired by that.
	So please tell me if my question is clear.
	And your question is, do religions have moralizing elements?
	Yeah, do you consider that Religions have moralizing elements?
	So I would say, certainly they have moral rules, right?
	They have moral rules.
	The question is: what is the origin and justification for those moral rules?
	So, for instance, if you have a moral rule, as some religions do, which has to do, say, with washing your hands, right?
	You got to wash your hands.
	Why do you have to wash your hands?
	Well, because God commands it, right?
	So that would make washing your hands an act that you would have to do based upon your faith.
	Now, washing your hands is a good thing to do, right?
	I mean, absent OCD excesses, washing your hands is a good thing to do.
	Like every time I come in from the outdoors, I wash my hands after the washroom, I wash my hands, you know, it's a good thing to do.
	But it's not science to say God tells you to wash your hands.
	So that's the challenge with religion is that are there religious ethics that I agree with?
	Absolutely, right?
	I mean, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal.
	That would be, those are very good moral rules.
	However, it really depends whether you define morality as a commandment or morality as rational proof.
	Now, of course, my whole book on ethics, universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics, which you can get for free at freedomain.com slash books.
	If you don't have the time for the long version, you can get the shorter version, which is the last third of my other book called Essential Philosophy, which deals with simulation theory, free will, and is a shortened version of UPB, including sample Socratic-style, or sorry, Platonic Socrates-style debates.
	So if you have a commandment from God that says thou shalt not kill, that is a moral rule if you assume the essence is thou shalt not kill.
	However, if the essence is proof, then it is not a moral rule.
	It is simply an argument from authority.
	An argument from authority says this source is correct because they have authority.
	So this would be, there was a sort of famous cartoon over COVID, which is some guy talking to his wife and saying, hey, honey, you'll never believe this.
	I found a scientific fact that all the world's experts have somehow overlooked.
	That's a very sort of cynical argument from authority.
	And of course, I got this a whole bunch of times when I was talking about stuff over COVID, which was, well, where's your PhD in X, Y, or Z?
	And it's like, but the scientists are compromised.
	The scientists are bought and paid for.
	I mean, my gosh.
	I mean, the only people who don't understand how corrupt the world is are people who've never tried to publicly live with significant integrity.
	Like, I'm sorry, the moment you do that, you realize just how corrupt the world is.
	And it's not their intelligence or their PhD.
	It is the career path and funding sources and all of that that corrupts them.
	So if you say it's good, it's a good practice to wash your hand and God commands washing your hands, then that is a good practice.
	However, if you say it's important to know why you're washing your hands, then that's even more important, right?
	Because then you get germ theory and reproduction and, you know, hand to mucous membrane and that kind of stuff, right?
	So if you think that moral rules are commanded by authority, then the religious rules count as moral rules.
	However, if you say that moral rules need to be understood and promulgated philosophically or rationally, then they don't.
	Because you've just invented a authority figure called God who has made these commandments and you haven't actually learned or understood morality in its essence.
	In the same way that if God simply commands you to wash your hands, you haven't understood germ theory.
	You're just doing it because you're told, if that makes sense.
	Okay, fair enough.
	It does seem to make sense to me that we don't have one-size-fits-all morality because some people are...
	Sorry.
	I don't know.
	I don't know what that means, one size-fits all morality.
	I was just about to explain.
	More like a moralizing procedure.
	For instance, there are people that are philosophically literate.
	And for those people, if you claim that thou shalt not kill just because God said, maybe they are agnostics or they don't claim any theological knowledge, so they might think that it's not a very strong argument and they might want to approach it from another angle, like for instance, utilitarianism, duty ethics, virtue ethics, etc.
	Though there are in the extreme end of the other end of society, people that know nothing about philosophy, but they are very pious.
	They consider that God is very important and exists.
	And if religious tradition convincingly says they have revelation, which could be argued by some traditions, that it is part of their epistemology.
	Some traditions say that revelation is a means of obtaining knowledge, like it or not, or agree with it or not.
	It's what it is.
	These people that are not so philosophically literate, they might be successfully moralized by commandments as claims coming from divine revelation.
	Does this make sense to you?
	Well, I mean, I think what you're saying is there are people who are good without religion and there are people who aren't good with religion.
	Okay, yeah.
	There are maybe people that are theistically skeptical.
	Some people that are philosophically...
	Those people probably won't be successfully moralized by these arguments from divine authority.
	Divine command ethics might not work with them.
	But if you structure your utilitarian duty ethics and virtue ethics properly, they will agree with you and maybe they will agree with you so strongly that they actually are successfully moralized and they will participate pro-socially.
	No, no, you can't be successfully moralized without universal reason.
	It's like saying that people can be successfully browbeaten by religious commandments into washing their hands and therefore they understand hygiene.
	It's like, no, they're just doing what they're told.
	I mean, to take an extreme example, if Bob holds a gun to Jeff's head during a math test and gives him the answers, and then Jeff writes them down because he doesn't want to get shot, has Jeff learned anything about math?
	Well, no.
	So simply being commanded does not give one understanding.
	It gives obedience.
	It gives obedience, but it doesn't give understanding.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	So you don't agree that divine command ethics is the way to go?
	What do you mean by the way to go?
	To universally moralize people.
	As you stated, you would.
	You can't be asking a philosopher if I approve the argument from authority.
	I mean, it's literally a fallacy.
	Okay, sure.
	You understand, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Okay.
	So there's a number of reasons, and I'll just give you one on basic point.
	So let me ask you this.
	Have you ever had dreams that you could fly?
	Yep, sure.
	Are they fun dreams?
	Yes, fun and engaging.
	Oh, I love the dreams where I can fly.
	I used to have these dreams where I was trying to escape a monster, but the gravity was too light.
	And so every time I'd take a step, I'd go in the air and then the monster would get closer.
	But the dreams where I'm flying are just so much fun.
	Right now, how much would it be worth to you to be able to fly like Superman?
	Probably worth a lot.
	I mean, it would be almost incalculable, right?
	Just how much good you could do, how much fun you could have.
	I mean, it would be absolutely wonderful.
	Now, what if I told you, hey man, I got a secret formula.
	If you reject that two and two make five, and you really, like, you really reject that two and two make five, you gain the ability to fly.
	Would that be tempting?
	No, not at all.
	Because as a person, as I stated earlier, I really love philosophy.
	So I am in love with the truth and wisdom.
	So yeah, no, it's a no-go from, I won't abdicate from reason and consistency with my thinking.
	Okay, sorry.
	Sorry, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Why are you taking that?
	What if I proved to you that it was the case?
	What if I showed you?
	I fly, I fly, I repeat, two and two is not five, two and two is not five, two and two is not five, and then I can fly.
	And I do it to you, a friend of yours, and he does it, and he can fly.
	Would you be tempted?
	Sure, it would be tempting, but I still think that's philosophical reasons.
	Very, very important.
	I'm sorry, I'm flying on, bro.
	Bro, stop being so concrete.
	This is a thought exercise.
	For God's sake, what's your problem?
	Would you fly?
	Well, you said it would be so much fun to fly.
	I'm not harming anyone.
	You don't have to drink the blood of a virgin to fly.
	You just have to reject something that's illogical and you can fly.
	Give me the thought experiment.
	I don't know why you're being so pedantic about this.
	Okay, for argument's sake, let's...
	Would you like to learn how to fly if all you had to do was reject irrational concepts?
	Okay.
	This is not a trap.
	This is not a trap.
	I'm not trying to steal your soul here, bro.
	What's the hesitation?
	Wouldn't that be cool?
	Okay, yeah, sure.
	So I agree that two plus two is five.
	No, no, no, two plus two is not five.
	I'm not asking you to say something that's false.
	I'm asking you to reject something that's false.
	Oh, oh, oh, okay.
	Okay.
	Remember, I said two and two is not five.
	Two and two is not five.
	Two and two is not five.
	Or two and two is four.
	Two and two is four, whatever, right?
	So you reject something that's irrational and you gain the ability to fly.
	Would that be tempting?
	Yes.
	Yes, it would be tempting.
	So that's the atheist case.
	The atheists choose.
	Hang on, let me make the case here.
	Bring this up.
	Sure, sure.
	Please.
	Give me a little room to make the case.
	So the problem, of course, with religious ethics is you can deny them by disbelieving in God.
	You can erase them from your mind by disbelieving in God in the same way.
	And there are self-contradictory properties about gods, which I've gone into before, and we don't have to drink from that will again.
	So there are self-contradictory properties to God or gods.
	And if the atheist simply identifies those self-contradictory properties and says that which is self-contradictory cannot exist, then he is suddenly released, released from all religious, moral commandments and absolutes.
	In the same way that if you reject the two and two make five and you say it enough times, you gain the ability to fly.
	If you reject the irrational, you are released from morals.
	And if you reject the irrational, you are free of gravity.
	And that's the temptation.
	If we found all of our morals on religion, on God and his commandments, there's a giant loophole.
	Stop believing in God, and you are released from moral constraints.
	And that's the devilish or demonic offer.
	And there's no answer to that.
	Other than you, you know, well, you've got to believe in God, you go to hell, but if I, but there's no answer to that.
	If you found all of your morals on the place of worship, somebody can just stop going to the place of worship.
	And now they are released in their mind from all moral constraints.
	And I know that about atheists, which is why I said, what are your moral rules?
	And why?
	They couldn't answer.
	Because they are free of gravity.
	They can fly.
	Now, I'm not saying it's healthy, right?
	But you understand that that's the temptation.
	This problem is very, very ancient, actually.
	We have it represented in the choice of Hercules, for instance, where Hercules either chooses something that's morally correct to follow excellence or to reject excellence and instead follow vice, which is basically hedonism.
	So this is not a new problem, a new issue.
	I'm sorry, can you explain the, was it Hercules?
	Yeah, yeah, it was Hercules.
	so Hercules, hang on.
	Hercules was offered, or Hercules decided to stop believing in all mystical entities and therefore became a hedonist?
	Well, the thought experiment in which I'm just asking a direct question.
	You're bringing up Hercules.
	Yeah, well.
	Because you're saying that.
	Sorry, you're saying my particular argument is not original, which is fine.
	And then you quote or cite an antecedent, right?
	Like an old story.
	And I just want to make sure I understand the story.
	So Hercules decides to reject all supernatural, mystical, non-corporeal gods, ghosts, goblins, devils, whatever, right?
	And so he becomes an atheist?
	I don't remember that part of the story, but please educate me.
	Okay, I'll try to explain.
	So in this story, he is not tempted to either reject divinity or embrace divinity with the morality by embracing divinity.
	So how does this fit what I'm talking about then?
	I'm talking about if you base your morals on God, then somebody who rejects God can escape morals.
	how is this related to Hercules?
	It's the appeal of hedonism, which is...
	I'm talking about a specific argument.
	If you base all your morals in God, then an atheist can disbelieve in God and therefore escape moral requirements.
	And you said, oh, this is an old argument because Hercules was tempted with hedonism, but it's not what I'm saying.
	Yeah, sure.
	I agree with you.
	That's correct.
	The story is a bad example because this choice of Hercules really doesn't involve rejecting divinity.
	Right.
	So why would you bring it up and diminish what it is that I'm saying?
	You know, because you understand it's kind of a diminishment to what I'm saying.
	Like I'm putting forward what I think is a fairly novel argument.
	And you're saying, no, no, no, this has been done to death before.
	And then you cite an example which doesn't apply.
	Okay.
	So another example that might apply better is what's called the replacement hypothesis, which is suggested by a philosopher that I saw having a conversation with Richard Dawkins.
	He explains to Richard Dawkins this hypothesis, this replacement hypothesis, which is: if people reject any religious tradition, including their deities, etc., and consider themselves atheists and start to believe that there is no God, they also...
	Yeah, exactly.
	What does that have to do with my argument?
	That's not my argument.
	Because, okay, your argument is that a moralizing system of rules is inexorably attached to a divinity, to a deity.
	No, no, that's not my argument.
	No, no, that's not my argument.
	What's my argument?
	I've literally stated it like 10 times.
	You've got to, Okay, I'm not sure I understood your argument.
	Sorry.
	Well, why the hell don't you ask me then rather than going off on the example?
	Like, it's kind of rude, isn't it?
	Sure, sorry.
	No, but I'm just curious why.
	If you don't understand the argument, and you know, when I point out that the example that you bring up of Hercules doesn't apply, wouldn't you say, oh, well, I must have misunderstood the argument instead of going to another thing that doesn't apply?
	I mean, is it vanity?
	Do you just like not to admit that you don't understand something?
	Or like, I'm trying to figure it out.
	No, I agree with you.
	I probably didn't understand your argument.
	No, I understand that you didn't understand it.
	My question is, why wouldn't you say, I don't follow the argument, but instead go off on all of these, you know, kind of diminishing tangents that don't apply?
	Sure.
	Probably because I wasn't aware of my non-understanding of your argument.
	Well, that's why I gave you the whole analogy of flying.
	If you reject the irrational, you get to fly, which means if you reject God, no longer bound by moral restraints in the same way that if you reject irrationality in the thought experiment, you're no longer bound by gravity.
	Okay, but you did include an element, which is you asked if flying feels good.
	So that's why I...
	And for a lot of people, being released of all moral constraints feels fantastic.
	Right?
	Now, I mean, if we wanted to extend the analogy to negative consequences, we would say something like this.
	Okay, so you reject the irrational, you get the ability to fly, but you spend so much time flying around that your bones are no longer strengthened by constant contact with the earth and gravity, and they become like astronauts do.
	Your bones become brittle and weak, and then at some point you land and break your femur in two, right?
	So we can say that there are negative consequences because we're not like birds, right?
	Birds have hollow skeletons to keep them light and their entire musculature, ligature, and skeletal system is designed for flight.
	We are designed to be stomping around on the Earth.
	So if a human being gains the ability to fly, it's a lot of fun, but it completely destroys their musculoskeletal structure in the long run or something like that.
	So we could say that there are negative consequences, but I mean, it's the same thing that people have with, I like spending time on social media, but I don't want to fry my eyeballs or something like that, right?
	So we can come up with a negative consequence, but we can certainly understand that if people were to gain the ability to fly by rejecting the irrational, I mean, I would do it.
	I would love to have the ability to fly.
	I would absolutely do it.
	Now, of course, you know, maybe at some point I'd say, hey, are there any negative consequences to me flying around all the time?
	And, you know, maybe they'd give me a bone scan and say, ooh, your bones are getting more brittle because they're not resisting gravity.
	They're not strengthening, whatever you got to do.
	Like what the astronauts do when they come back and can't even walk, right?
	So, yeah, so that's what I'm saying is that atheists get an escape clause from morality based Upon religion, by saying, Well, I don't believe in religion, so I'm now free of all moral constraints.
	And they like being free of all moral constraints.
	Now, when I come along with UPB and say your rejection of the irrational is exactly why you're bound by UPB, because UPB says that rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior because it produces unresolvable contradictions.
	In the same way that for atheists, the concept of God produces unresolvable contradictions.
	Therefore, they have to reject it.
	And UPB comes along and says, well, exactly the same methodology that you used to reject God, which is it's a contradictory entity, you now have to accept UPB.
	And that bothers them because now I'm turning gravity back on.
	In fact, I'm making gravity stronger.
	Now they'll never be able to fly again.
	They can't fly again.
	Now, of course, this is better for their bones and better for their health in the long run.
	But if you've ever had an absolutely beautiful, wonderful dream, right?
	Just an amazing dream where everything's perfect and glorious and golden and beautiful.
	And then you wake up to your, you know, everyday life and it's like, oh, you know, it's like, oh, come on.
	That was a great dream.
	I wish I could kept going.
	Well, that's what it's like when you bring rational secular ethics to people who have managed to escape ethics by disbelieving in God.
	And I'm basically dialing gravity up and saying, you don't get to fly anymore, bro.
	It's bad for you.
	Sorry, man.
	You'll never leave the earth again except in a plane.
	So they're mad at that.
	And this is the anger that the atheists had with me over the last couple of days.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	One question relating to this.
	Sorry for cutting you off.
	Would you say that self-knowledge or lack of self-knowledge is an important factor here?
	No, I would not.
	I mean, obviously, self-knowledge is a good thing as a whole.
	You need to know why you have certain feelings and all of that.
	But, I mean, I told my daughter, you know, my daughter was not a glow with Jungian depths of self-knowledge when she was two, two and a half.
	When I explained UPB to her and she got it right away and it made perfect sense to her.
	So it's self-knowledge is not necessary for two and two make four.
	And the arguments for UPB, ridiculously simple.
	Like, again, if a two and a half year old can understand them, I mean, of course, my daughter might be smarter than your average bear, but let's say three, four and a half or whatever, right?
	If the toddlers can understand it, it ain't quantum physics, right?
	So I don't think self-knowledge is necessary to understand the argument.
	Self-knowledge, if you feel anger against UPB, which people do, like I've rarely seen any moral, any theory of any philosopher that produces as much anger, if not downright rage, as UPB has.
	Well, you would kind of need to know why.
	And of course, if you've escaped morals by denying God, and then somebody says, you were wrong, you can't escape morals because it's logic.
	And if you rejected God because of logic, and then you can't reject UPB because of logic, then gravity's dialed back up and you crash to the ground and you kind of fly again, which is, again, better for you in the long run, but sucks in the short run, maybe.
	Okay.
	So it's kind of wise to involve self-discipline in this context.
	You require self-discipline for people to make a sacrifice, sacrificing this extreme liberty to return to a moderate level of liberty instead of flying, they walk or run, which is moralizing, as I understand, through reason.
	As I understand it.
	Of course, you have to, I mean, you have to, yeah, once you define things as immoral, you have to take them off the list of things you can do.
	And I think one of the things that I really got over the last couple of days, which I mentioned last night, is atheists don't do self-criticism.
	I mean, they'll do attacks on religion, but they don't do self-criticism.
	And maybe the atheists are more of these people who don't have an inner dialogue and so on, and they reject religion in part because religion is about maintaining an inner dialogue, right?
	If you're not religious and people are praying to God, they're actually praying to parts of themselves and giving voice to their conscience and giving voice to their sense of fairness and justice and virtue and so on.
	So I think.
	But here's the thing.
	So the other thing is that the reason why the atheists hate UPB, I call them statheists, right?
	They're atheists who've replaced God with the state, right?
	And this is back to your point about the guy who was debating with Dawkins, right?
	This replacement theory.
	So the problem is that UPB says rape, theft, assault, and murder are immoral, which is another way of saying that rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior because it results in immediate and impossible to reconcile contradictions, right?
	It's like a square circle can never exist because it's a contradictory entity.
	And if you put that at the basis of your understanding of the moral universe, the entire world changes.
	Like it really is getting out of Plato's cave, getting out of the matrix.
	The entire moral universe changes.
	And you simply see not concepts and structures like state and religion and God and the law.
	You simply see people.
	There are some people with guns.
	There are some people who can arrest other people, but they're just people, right?
	The uniform doesn't change the moral nature of the human being, right?
	If I put on a Superman suit, I don't get to fly.
	It doesn't change your moral nature.
	And so if you put UPB at the center of your moral understanding, the entire world changes and a lot of horrible injustices in the world are revealed.
	And atheists love the government.
	They absolutely are wormtongue court toadies for the expansion of state power.
	We saw that under COVID.
	We see that in their addiction to socialism and communism.
	You know, 85% of American atheists support the Democrat Party, which is a hard left party and very much, and they oppose free speech and property rights and so on, right?
	So.
	I don't disagree with you.
	And my life history involved a phase in which I was an atheist.
	And during that time, I espoused left-leaning beliefs.
	And then I got shocked by what happened during COVID and started to read classical philosophy by myself.
	Okay, which basically ended the atheistic phase.
	And now probably I'm more like an igtheist.
	I don't believe we can ever solve the God discussion, but we need to solve other things that are way more pressing, especially as you mentioned.
	Thank you, Roger.
	We got eight or nine people who still want to chat, so I appreciate your comments.
	And Jeffy Jeff, Jazzy Jeff, if you want to unmute, have questions, comments, criticisms, I'd love to hear them.
	Jeff Jones, JJ.
	Now, I can barely hear you.
	You're going to have to, I'm not turning my volume up because then you put your microphone and my ears get blasted, so you need to get closer to your mic.
	Yeah, I'm a little closer.
	Can you hear me now?
	No, you're going to have to get closer to your mic or be louder or something like that.
	Yeah, I am closer to my mic.
	Let me try.
	All right.
	Let's move on.
	Digital spaces.
	What be rattling around in the old noggin for you?
	Bring me the drumroll of your distant thoughts.
	Ghost Cypher.
	Going once, going twice.
	Appreciate me, man.
	There you go.
	What's in your mind?
	Sorry about that.
	But you know what?
	It takes a second.
	We know when you bring somebody up, it takes a second for them to be able to hear you.
	And so.
	I know.
	Go ahead.
	So, yeah, very interesting to meet you.
	I appreciate you hosting a space.
	Yeah, definitely, especially for the, you know, obviously the stuff you did with the race and IQ stuff.
	I thought that was really cool and honest.
	Sorry, just to be clear, that wasn't stuff that I did.
	Like I interviewed 17 world-renowned intelligence experts and got them to make out the case.
	It wasn't something that I just sort of pulled out of my armpit, just so you know.
	But go ahead.
	I'm not saying that.
	I'm just, I respect you and that's how I know you because of all that stuff that was excellent work.
	So I'm just giving you credit.
	Thank you.
	And again, the credit goes to the researchers.
	I was just pulling the curtains and then people got mad at me because of the view.
	But anyway, go ahead.
	Okay, so have you heard much about presuppositional apologetics and Christianity in that way?
	I would say break the term out.
	I wouldn't be able to probably earn a thin dime by freeballing a speech on these kinds of topics.
	So break it out for me.
	Okay, so basically what presuppositional apologetics says, it's Greg Bonson, excellent Christian apologist, and he breaks down exactly why it's necessary to believe in the Christian God.
	Okay.
	So if you deny the Christian God, then what his philosophy is, and Van Til and many other people, so I tend Brudenkate used to run a similar type script.
	It says that anybody who doesn't argue from a Christian position is going to be completely irrational.
	What do you think about that?
	Well, I mean, that's a statement, not an argument.
	Make the argument.
	Well, it would depend on the worldview of the person that you were talking to.
	No, no, no, rational arguments don't depend on worldview, right?
	If I'm trying to debunk a worldview, it would depend on the worldview.
	Well, you said that anybody who doesn't accept the Christian God except Jesus is irrational.
	And obviously, I don't want to be irrational.
	So make the case.
	I'm happy to hear it.
	Okay, so the reason is, is because any other belief doesn't have the unity and diversity to account for the continuity of the law of identity through time and also account for the diversity required to account for things like relationality, intelligibility, love, understanding prior to creation in a non-contingent way.
	So all contingent things are going to be dependent on something necessary.
	The necessary thing has to have all the attributes to account for everything in and of itself as a seity.
	And basically, that's the Christian God.
	Only the Christian God has the attributes to account for the world in the way that it is.
	And so because the world exists, because you exist, that means that he must exist, you know?
	I mean, do you feel like you made a compelling argument there?
	I had to run through it really quickly, but if we...
	Hang on.
	Sorry, sorry.
	Sorry.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	I apologize.
	We teach religion to children, right?
	Some people do, yeah.
	Well, I mean, in general, that is how religion is transmitted, right?
	Is parent to child, right?
	A lot of people teach their children about religion from what they believe, yeah.
	Okay, I'm not sure why we're hedging on this.
	I mean, people teach them.
	There's like some people that let the kids grow up, and then there's other people that don't teach their kids about religion.
	And I don't want to generalize in a way where I'm going to be saying agreeing to something that isn't 100%.
	Okay, so you say that because I exist, the Christian God is true, but you have trouble with that religion has continuity because parents teach their children about religion.
	I think that is true.
	It does have continuity.
	Okay, so parents, parents, I'm not saying all parents, I get that.
	Like, we're smart enough that when I say women are shorter than men, saying, well, not all women, right?
	I mean, we're smart enough.
	Like, we don't need to put all of these asterisks and all of this stuff in, right?
	Like, just for the sake of our sanity, let's just assume that we have an IQ, which we obviously do north of 90, and we don't need to put caveats in when we're making generalizations, right?
	Okay, well, in that case, I don't think it's handed down solely through that, though.
	I think it's handed down.
	No, no, no.
	We just, you just did it.
	You literally, you lay it on.
	You literally just did it again.
	You literally just did it again.
	Laying on of hands is how the religion is.
	No, no, hang on.
	Hang on.
	Hang on.
	So I said religion in general passes down from parent to child.
	Right.
	And then you said, well, it's not the only inflation.
	I don't think that's wrong.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Okay.
	So if we're going to both talk at the same time, it's going to be a problem, right?
	But I don't agree with you that it is handed down like that.
	It's handed down from teacher to student with the laying on of hands, right?
	When people are taught properly about how to accept the necessity of God, then they accept it.
	But that's somebody being indoctrinated.
	Hang on.
	Hang on.
	Are you saying that in general, religion is decided upon by adults and children are not taken to church, put in Sunday school, or exposed to religious teachings by their parents or priests?
	I don't think that going to church makes you religious, basically.
	Oh, for God's sakes, man, please just answer the question.
	It's really to just go off on a tangent.
	Are you saying that the significant majority of religious people have no exposure to the beliefs of their parents until they're adults?
	They're not put in Sunday school.
	They're not taken to church.
	They're not taught Bible stories or anything like that?
	That's not what I'm saying, no.
	Okay, good.
	So then we can say that parents, either directly through teaching their children or by bringing their children to church, teach their children about religion, right?
	Most of the time, I don't think it's the parents, honestly.
	Don't think it.
	No, I can't.
	I can't.
	I don't know why it is so hard for people to just say basic facts.
	So I'll tell you what I was going to tell him just because I'm mortal and I'm pushing 60 and I just don't have time to waste in this kind of nonsense.
	So what I'm going to say is that, of course, children are taught about religion from their parents.
	Their parents teach them about religion or, you know, certainly bring them to church.
	And of course, they have questions.
	And right, if you've never, I mean, if you don't understand that parents teach their children about religion, then you just don't understand the world to the point where I would even want to figure out how to get to a Renaissance fair with you.
	So my point is here, is that the giant steaming mass of word salad that he put forward about his proof for God is incomprehensible.
	It didn't, there were no syllogisms, there were no arguments, it was just a whole bunch of stuff.
	Well, because there's love and because you exist, therefore the Christian God, like that, that's not an argument, that's just a whole series of assertions.
	And putting the word therefore doesn't make anything an argument in particular, right?
	I mean, just if I say Bob is wealthy, that doesn't make Bob wealthy, right?
	You actually have to have proof.
	So my point is this, that if the proof for God is so crazy complicated, then it's fraudulent to teach anything else to children.
	So if the proof of God is similar to the proof for the theory of relativity, the mathematical proof, or if the proof for God is similar to quantum physics or being able to freely translate ancient Greek into ancient Aramaic, into Latin, then we can't teach these things to children.
	Like, one of the things that is important about UPP is UPB can be taught to children, right?
	You know, if I want you to lie to me, is that a lie?
	Well, no.
	If I want you to take my property, are you stealing?
	Well, no, kids can understand that, right?
	So kids can totally understand UPB, and therefore it is just right and fair to teach UPB to children.
	But if your proof of God, you know, requires half a university course, then you can't justly and fairly teach it to children.
	And then you are just asking them to suspend judgment or suspend belief, just to suspend understanding and to simply say, to believe that something is true because you say so.
	And that's not fair and reasonable.
	And I think that's probably why he was resisting that.
	But yeah, I mean, I didn't understand the argument and it didn't make any sense.
	And there weren't any syllogisms.
	And then, you know, if he's saying, well, I have absolute proof that God exists, then he's claiming a truly stupendous degree of knowledge.
	That really is amazing, right?
	But then if he won't say parents tend to transmit their religious values to their children, if he won't admit to that, why would I listen to him about anything else?
	All right.
	Dead wife.
	Interesting name.
	Are you a nihilist?
	What's going on there, Mr., or I guess, Mrs. Six Feet Under Dirt Nap Lady?
	Are you speaking to me, dead wife?
	I believe there's only one dead wife in the chat room.
	I heard six feet under, so I was like, that must be me.
	I actually, what intrigued me was your analogy with the if like, I'm sorry, I've been drinking a little bit, but the well, it's important to stay hydrated.
	Yeah, it definitely is.
	But you said something about flying and like if we were to like take away so many things or whatever and like we made it available to fly, would you fly?
	I liked your analogy there.
	It was kind of a few conversations ago.
	I kind of wish I was able to chime in around that time because I had a little like a bit to say about that.
	Go for it.
	I don't mind bookending convos, so hit me.
	And I'm not familiar with UPB.
	Oh, so UPB is my theory of the proof of secular ethics.
	So UPB is morality is universally preferable behavior.
	So for instance, if I were to say to you, I think stealing is universally preferable behavior.
	Everybody should steal and be stolen from.
	Everybody should want to steal and be stolen from at the same time.
	Well, that's contradictory.
	It can't work logically.
	Because if I want you to take my property, it's not theft.
	Like, you know, the argument is like, I'm sure you've done this at some point in your life.
	You have some old ratty couch in the basement.
	You put it out on the sidewalk with a sign that says, take me, right?
	And then somebody comes with a truck and loads up your old dusty, gross, billy idol futon stained, you know, couch.
	You don't, you don't get to call the cops and say, hey, man, that guy stole my, he stole my couch.
	Because the cop would say, well, what, what was it?
	They said, oh, it was on the sidewalk with a sign that said, take me.
	What would the cops say?
	There's permission there, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, there's permission.
	So if you, so you can't, theft can't be universally preferable behavior because that means everybody wants to steal and be stolen from.
	But if you want someone to take your property, it's not theft.
	So the only way that we can have a rule is respecting property rights as universally preferable behavior because that can be achieved by everyone at all times.
	And it's the same with rape and assault and murder.
	So that's just a very sort of brief overview of a theory of ethics that doesn't require gods or governments.
	And so that's what I'm talking about.
	So you can't dispute that.
	Like the only way you can dispute that is by abandoning logic completely.
	Like if you say, I don't care that it's completely contradictory, I don't care that it's impossible to achieve.
	I don't care that it's absolutely the opposite of logical.
	I want it anyway.
	Well, that would be a crazy person, right?
	And so you'd be ejected from that debate.
	So, and it's particularly tough for atheists because atheists reject God because they say that God is self-contradictory.
	And I say, okay, well, you have a universal standard called the respect for property rights.
	It's the only way that things can be logically consistent, but that erases a whole bunch of political power, which atheists really like.
	They love that political power.
	It's the cocaine, right?
	So they're all leftists and all of that, right?
	There's a 0.9 correlation with this totalitarian leftists and atheists 0.85.9, which is like crazy in the social sciences.
	So yeah, so that's what I was talking about.
	So you can't get rid of that.
	You can't deny that except by denying logic, but atheists pride themselves on logic and sort of empiricism and all of that.
	And so, yeah, you can get rid of God by saying, oh, God is a square circle.
	Square circles don't exist.
	And It's like, okay, fine.
	But if you base all of your virtues and values and morals on the existence of God, then if you stop believing in God, you get to escape all these morals.
	These morals vanish along with God.
	And it's a huge evil.
	That's where it like convolutes each other because the law, I would say, like the general population, they don't throw away morals like that.
	Like they, we innately, I think, besides like, you know, outliers, we know right from wrong.
	There's like, there's always that deep innate feeling of like of doing something wrong.
	We know that it's wrong, but why?
	Even if somebody- Okay, hang on, hang on.
	Sorry.
	So you mean, you make a very interesting case, and I just want to unpack it a little bit, make sure I understand what you're, what you're talking about.
	Okay.
	So you have a belief that human beings have an innate sense of right and wrong.
	I'm, I like, I fight myself with it.
	I, I don't know.
	I'm not trying to counter your case.
	I just trying to understand it because you said we have this innate sense.
	And I just, when I repeat things back to you, it's not to savage them or tear them down, right?
	I just want to make sure I understand.
	So you're saying that human beings have an innate sense of right and wrong that is guided by emotionally or instinctually?
	Right.
	I'd like to think so.
	I like to think that people like.
	No, no, no.
	No.
	Do you think so?
	Hang on.
	Hang on.
	It's like, there are dragons over that hill.
	I'm like, there are dragons over the hill?
	Well, I'd like to think so.
	And it's like, those are two kind of different states.
	Okay, okay, okay.
	Okay.
	You're being fair.
	Yeah, I think on us now, like in this time and age, I think people are raising their children with like those sorts of rights or wrongs for other, regardless if like a god or no god is present in their lives.
	Well, if human beings have an innate sense of right and wrong and good and evil, then why do standards of right and wrong and good and evil differ so much across the world?
	Like, okay, expand on that.
	Well, I mean, some cultures are fine with only honor killings, right?
	Some cultures are not.
	Some cultures are fine with gun ownership.
	Some cultures are not.
	Some cultures, you can marry a 10-year-old.
	Some cultures, you can't.
	Some cultures have arranged marriages.
	Some cultures do not have arranged marriage.
	I mean, we can sort of go on and on, right?
	Some cultures have separation of church and state.
	Some cultures, you know, like in Arabic, there's not even a word for secular.
	Like it doesn't even really exist, right?
	So there is a wide variety of moral standards across the world.
	I mean, there are still tribes that practice slavery.
	there are still tribes that practice cannibalism and view it as moral and good.
	But that still doesn't exactly, like, disintegrate the idea that, like, a...
	I'm sorry, go ahead.
	I don't think that exactly gets the idea that like, I don't think that diminishes the idea that there's like a God that could or could not exist if that's what we're talking about.
	No, no, no.
	We're not talking about God.
	No, hang on.
	We're talking about whether human beings have an innate sense of right and wrong.
	Also, have you been a mom?
	Am I a mom?
	Or yeah, I mean, are you a mom or have you been a mom?
	I don't know how old you are.
	I am 28, and yes, I am a mom.
	Okay, how old is your kid or kids?
	She is three years old.
	Three years old.
	Okay.
	Has she ever told a lie to you?
	Yeah, she's told her a little, yeah.
	Are they blindingly obvious chocolate smeared all over the face?
	I didn't touch the chocolate kind of lies?
	Yeah, she's pretty good at telling the truth, but yeah, she likes it.
	But she lies, right?
	She's had her moments.
	Of course.
	Listen, this is, and when I say lie, I don't mean that.
	I mean, it's like saying the kid who can't walk yet is lazy because they never stand up.
	It's not.
	It's a developmental stage where children experiment with falsehoods to see if they work, to see if they can get away with it, to see what the response is.
	So human beings start with a default position that lying is fine.
	And you kind of have to teach them.
	Like children also, a lot of times, will have a default position that if you want something, you just take it, right?
	You just grab it, right?
	Right.
	So grabbing, sometimes thumping, sometimes pushing, you're in my way, get out of my way, and lying.
	So if human beings have an innate or instinctual sense of right and wrong, why do they start as such little monsters in a way?
	And again, I know that that's, I mean, I've been the dad too, right?
	No, that's really fair.
	Right.
	So if it's, if it's sort of built in and instinctual, then why do children start off, you know, kind of savage and you've got to, you know, civilize them a smidge?
	That's a good question.
	Yeah, I guess it's a good, just the survival instinct in people.
	I don't think survival instinct really likes necessarily like, I think survival instinct is separate from a moralist or moralistic instinct.
	Oh, I agree.
	Yeah.
	Because the survival instinct is shared by just about every creature, but only humans have morals, right?
	That is a good question.
	Yeah, I think so.
	Humans and maybe whatever beings are more.
	Well, but to have morals, you need language.
	You need abstract standards of morality.
	You need the capacity to choose between proposed actions and ideal standards.
	And I don't think that's shared by any other creatures that we know of.
	Well, that we know of.
	That's the thing.
	Well, okay, then we're the dragon over the hill.
	We're back to the dragon over the hill.
	I guess I am a little more hypothetical in my like philosophical views.
	Listen, I got no issue with hypotheticality.
	I mean, I was just talking about, hey, man, would it be cool if we could fly?
	So like, I've got no problem with the hypotheticals and all that.
	Yeah, that intrigued me because I was like, okay, that's an interesting question.
	Like, what I like, I was putting myself in that position.
	Like, would I fly if like, what exactly was the question?
	It was like, if you were to put, like, say, like, if reality wasn't.
	Yeah, so if you were to reject something that was irrational, and if I said, you have to just say there's no such thing as a square circle three times and then you gain the ability to fly, if you reject something that's irrational, you get to fly.
	And that is, if all of our morals are based upon the existence of God, but there are irrational aspects to the existence of God, then you can just reject the existence of God and suddenly are free of all moral constraints and restraints.
	And this is...
	Yeah, for sure.
	And that's exactly how it birds is like, well, okay, let's say we had something that where, you know, you don't have to believe in A, B, and C and like you're completely free as a person.
	And I don't know.
	But I think a lot of times, yeah, I think a lot of times atheism comes out of father absence because generally fathers are better at giving moral rules to sons.
	And daughters.
	mothers are not, yeah, and daughters, but mothers are absolutely fantastic and essential at keeping the death magnets called babies and toddlers alive and keeping everything organized and safe and clean.
	And we're all alive because of the devotion and wonderful attachments and love of mothers and all of that.
	But it generally takes fathers, the sort of the father glare versus the mother yell.
	It generally takes fathers to bring these kinds of rules.
	And so I think a lot of times, if, you know, if a kid grows up, a son grows up in particular with a single mother because atheism skews more male.
	I think if a son grows up with a single mother or no particular respectful authority figure who's male, then he doesn't really have any respect for the rules because they tend to be kind of tense, kind of a little bit shrieky, a little bit, you know, like negative for the boy.
	And so he's like, these rules suck.
	And then, of course, if he goes to school, which is, you know, overwhelmingly female teachers, at least up until high school or at least middle of junior high.
	So he's got, you know, maybe a mom at home that he doesn't hugely respect because she couldn't even keep her dad around.
	And then he goes to school and he's bored with these teachers who just kind of nag and prefer the girls.
	And so he just doesn't have any respect for social rules.
	He doesn't have any respect for, quote, morals because they're all kind of Karen-y and you share with everything and be nice.
	And like, it's all just kind of goopy for men, in particular, or boys.
	And so he just, he's like, you know, to heck with all of this.
	Like, I don't believe in any of these rules.
	And this is all just nonsense and manipulation and control.
	And then, you know, I really want to fly if I'm in a forest fire.
	Like, I really want to fly if staying on the ground is going to really get me killed.
	And so I think that they fly to atheism because they don't have any respect for the rules around them.
	That's interesting.
	I try to be on occasion interesting.
	Listen, we got, sorry to interrupt, we got a zillion people who want to chat, but a really great conversation.
	And I really appreciate your thoughts.
	And, you know, keep chucking on the philosophy stuff.
	It's gorgeous.
	Absolutely.
	Thank you.
	I'm intrigued.
	Sorry, I'm just going to go to people I haven't talked to before.
	Choose violence.
	Choose violence.
	Are you a boxer?
	What's your story, man?
	What's your scan?
	Isa what?
	Yes, go ahead.
	Oh, you know, when you bring someone up as a speaker, they don't hear the beginning part of what you said.
	So I didn't hear it.
	Okay, it doesn't matter.
	I'm just vamping.
	So what are your comments, questions, or criticisms?
	Oh, yeah.
	No.
	So essentially, have you been a teacher before?
	Like per the last comments you said, like you said, oh, like they're mostly female teachers in this type of age range.
	Like I was wondering what was your background?
	Because it could be that we're in a different region, right?
	And so I just wanted to understand more about the ways that in which you're creating these narratives.
	Sorry, creating these narratives.
	What do you mean?
	Meaning teachers.
	I mean, do you know the proportion?
	Do you know the proportion of female teachers at young ages?
	I do.
	I mean, just sort of my background since, sorry, my background since you asked is I worked in a daycare for many years.
	Okay.
	And I was the only...
	Hang on.
	You asked me a question.
	So I worked in a daycare for many years.
	And daycare is early childhood, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, it was after school.
	So it was ages five to we had about 25 to 30 kids aged five to ten from sort of after school until six, six, thirty.
	And then I did it full-time in the summers and other times where there was like March break.
	Right.
	So we understood that.
	So I was the only male in the whole place.
	Exactly.
	And so what I'm saying is that's early childhood.
	When you get to the older age ranges, there's actually less female teachers, especially when it comes to STEM.
	Yeah, but hang on, hang on.
	That's exactly what I said.
	No, but you're correcting me.
	No, it's exactly what I said.
	It's exactly what I said.
	So what I said, first of all, let me just clarify.
	Yeah, so first of all, I was talking about ages five to ten, which is not early childhood.
	And secondly, I said up until at least sort of elementary.
	Hang on.
	But it's not early childhood because most daycares are like two to five.
	But it's elementary.
	You were an elementary school teacher.
	Right.
	Well, no, no, I wasn't a teacher.
	I just worked in a daycare.
	So you weren't even a teacher.
	You weren't certified or anything like that.
	Essentially.
	That's why when I say I wasn't a teacher, that's great.
	So when we're in the school, hang on.
	I'm still talking about it.
	So what I said was it's overwhelmingly female teachers until at least sort of the middle of junior high school in general.
	And then there certainly is a change.
	I said that at the beginning.
	Maybe you didn't hear it, which is fine.
	Yeah.
	But that's sort of what I was saying.
	Yeah, that's fine.
	So as we get older in our education, there are more and more male educated teachers.
	So that's not necessarily, there's not a difference, right?
	Because there are people who are in middle to high school education.
	You have to actually pass a test to teach algebra, to teach geometry, to teach trigonometry, to teach calculus.
	And some of us actually pass those tests.
	And when we pass those tests, we don't get regulated to the early childhood.
	And maybe what early childhood is to you, right?
	It's like pre-K to one.
	But to me, early childhood is elementary beforehand.
	Right.
	So certain of us who have certain skills, we teach past high school and certain people pass before that.
	And what that means is the discrimination or I guess the dichotomy between female to male teachers happens before middle school.
	It doesn't go.
	So I already made, hang on, hang on.
	So I already made that point.
	So I'm happy to hear Eddie additional money.
	You're basically just repeating something I already said.
	So is there a more pointed criticism or question or issue that we could talk about?
	Let's stamp that.
	Yeah.
	So let's stamp the fact that the ways in which people perceive STEM education, it's not woman dominated.
	The fact of the matter is STEM education past middle school is male dominated.
	As a woman, especially as a woman of color in these institutions, you're the minority when you teach middle school, past high school education with STEM.
	That's not the majority.
	So we can't.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	I'm still trying to understand what your point is.
	My point is this.
	Past the point of elementary school education, we are never as women or women of color surpassing the demographic of men in STEM education.
	And why do you think that is?
	Why do I think that that is?
	Yeah, why do you think that there are more men in STEM than women?
	There's not a clear, concrete answer because I would have to actually speak to causation, which there's never been a study that has been clear to causation, unless you can point me to one.
	Well, no, there's lots of indications, though.
	There's indications, but causation is different than indication, right?
	So the general causation, just for those of you, I'm sure you know this stuff, but just for the general audience.
	So the general causation goes something like this.
	When women gain more independence and freedom in a society, they tend to choose more traditionally female occupations.
	Men like working with things, women like working with people.
	And this is, you know, mostly, most likely it's biological or whatever it is, right?
	We can sort of think for evolutionary reasons.
	Sorry, sorry.
	No, no.
	Hang on.
	But it is social.
	No, no, but you got, I mean, it's kind of rude to interrupt.
	It's not rude.
	I'm just adding to you.
	No, no, it is kind of rough.
	We're two thinkers generating ideas.
	No, but I'm trying to make a point.
	And if you interrupt me, I can make the point.
	Yeah.
	So in general, if you look at sort of the major occupations that women are drawn to, they tend to be helping professions and they tend to be people-centric professions and so on.
	Well, women are free to choose whatever they want.
	And more choice than that.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	We're not though.
	That's fine.
	So hang on, hang on.
	So you asked me a question.
	There's no point letting me have, hang on.
	I'm finished.
	There's no point asking me a question and then interrupting me when I start to finish.
	Okay.
	So just I'm just have to mute her for a second.
	You can unmute afterwards just because it's sort of annoying to try and get points across with the voice in my ear.
	Okay.
	So when women have more choices, they tend to choose more traditionally female occupations.
	Now, the why, as to why, it doesn't particularly matter.
	Whether it's social or whether it's biological, obviously it's probably a combination of the two.
	Love that.
	And so I don't view it as a problem when people exercise their free choice.
	Women exercise their free choice, say, to become psychologists rather than physicists, right?
	To become teachers rather than engineers, to whatever it is, the traditional sort of female, quote, female occupations.
	I don't have any issue with that insofar as if you look at things like roofing or heavy construction work or oil rig stuff or, you know, the cutting down trees stuff, being a lumberjack.
	These are like 97, 98% male.
	And women choose not to go into those occupations, either for reasons of danger or physical strength or who knows, whatever it is, right?
	And so the fact is that I have no problem with what women choose.
	I think it's fine.
	I obviously want everything to be equal in terms of opportunity.
	But the more freedom that women get, like if you look at places where women have less freedom, they tend to be more in STEM.
	When women gain more and more freedoms, they tend to segregate into more traditional roles.
	And I obviously respect the choices of women and I'm obviously comfortable with that.
	So sorry, go ahead now.
	Yeah, I love that.
	I appreciate you for naming that's your experience, right?
	But as a woman in the West, right, you're saying that women in other contexts choose different occupations based on those circumstances.
	But in the Ivy League or in Western academia, let's be very clear.
	As a woman, you're not encouraged to go into STEM.
	There are many different ways in which you are discouraged from entering that field.
	And maybe you don't know about that.
	And I'm okay with you not knowing about that.
	I would love to be the person to say, listen, this is what happens, right?
	As a woman in these fields, not only is there the sexual harassment that happens in those fields, but also the dis you're not encouraged to be clear, to go into those fields.
	And that could be funny, right?
	But a lot of you who are laughing, you've never been in that room, right?
	And I have.
	And so I know what it looks like to be in a woman in STEM who is very, very much not just discouraged, but actively sabotaged against your own field.
	And if you don't believe that that's true, that's totally fine.
	Right.
	But there's some of us who've actually been, I believe, institutions who've had these things happen to us.
	Hey, listen, I fully believe you.
	I absolutely believe you.
	And I believe you not just because I've talked to women in these areas, but I believe you because as a male in female dominated fields, I was also sexually harassed.
	And so let's talk about it.
	I mean, let's talk about it in the sense of in education, right?
	There's not a lot of men in education.
	And the ways in which men are treated in education is not okay.
	A lot of men who want to teach little kids are called pedophiles, right?
	Literally fenced off.
	And it's considered to be creepy for men to want to teach a totally different way, right?
	In a way that my students will come and they will come hug me, right?
	They're high schoolers.
	They will come hug me.
	But if it's a man teacher, it's totally viewed differently, which is real.
	Yeah, it's wrong.
	It's wrong.
	And so let's be very clear.
	Yeah.
	And obviously, I think that the sexual harassment stuff, people should lose their jobs, lose their funding.
	I do know that there's a lot of institutional support to try and bring women into STEM.
	No, no, there is.
	There's preferential hiring policies for women in STEM.
	No, no, no.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, no, no, no.
	I've got to be clear on this one because they've done Studies where they are trying to apply for, say, engineering or some sort of mathematician thing.
	Hang on, hang on.
	What years?
	Let me just talk about the studies.
	Again, this interruption stuff, we can't have a conversation if you keep interrupting.
	Really, it's not going to work.
	You can ask for clarification.
	No, but I need to be able to talk about the study and then we can look up the year.
	What year was the study in?
	I'm just asking for clarification.
	You have to cite your sources.
	Okay, but this is not an academic discussion.
	This is a colloquial discussion.
	We're not speaking about real facts.
	We're talking about whatever you want to talk about.
	That's not, you know what I'm saying?
	Yeah, that's just rude.
	Sorry, that's just rude.
	So the studies are, and these are recent.
	So these were in the last couple of years.
	The studies are that they try to apply as a male and as a female to various academic positions or other kinds of positions.
	And they find that the female gets more interviews and more positive responses than the male.
	And of course, we all know the studies that I've cited before, wherein you have teachers who give better marks to papers that they identify as coming from little girls than they do from little boys.
	The identical papers, you put a girl's name on it, they get marked better than if you put a boy's name on it.
	And so.
	All right.
	I think we could do one more.
	Josh, what is on your mind, my friend?
	Hello?
	Yes, sir.
	Go ahead.
	No, sorry there.
	I cut out for a second.
	The last person, I don't know.
	I'm not going there.
	I hope you're okay if I start sort of a different topic.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, go for it.
	We don't have to daisy chain.
	All right, great.
	So I'm one of these less than 100 follower allusions on X, so I'm not a philosopher and couldn't define the word syllogism, but I just had a couple of quick questions.
	So when you say UPB, how is that different from Sam Harris's ideas of, I don't exactly remember what his idea of secular moralism was.
	Oh, like his book, The Moral Landscape, right?
	The moral landscape, right.
	The do the least amount of harm, that kind of thing.
	Do you have like a bullet point?
	Well, harm is a harm as a harmonious.
	Yeah, so harm is a subjective term.
	And I think Sam Harris was talking about he, I guess he was so anti-Trump that he didn't particularly care if Hunter Biden had dead children in his basement.
	And that to me is like kind of a disqualifying thing for a moralist to say.
	But yeah, the sort of do least harm, that's just a nice thought, a nice idea.
	But who is to decide what is harmful?
	Who is to decide what is beneficial?
	You need a centralized authority that's going to get corrupted and so on.
	So my approach to ethics is that moral propositions, if moral propositions are self-contradictory, in other words, if they contradict their own premises, completely bizarre.
	They give us in some kind of machinery.
	If you can.
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	You can't call into a show with a massive amount of background noise.
	If you can't get to a quiet place.
	I feel I shouldn't need to say this stuff, but I guess everyone's gotten kind of casual these days.
	So, yeah, I'll just sort of answer it.
	So the idea of do least harm, it's just, it's a nice thing.
	You know, it's like unicorns and puppy dogs and ponies for all girls when they reach the age of 14.
	It's just a nice thought and a nice idea.
	It's not rigorous.
	It's not rational and it's not objective.
	And it doesn't get to say who determines what harm is, right?
	So if you say, well, we just want to do that which does the least harm, then you're just going to get a whole bunch of people who claim that they're harmed by what you're doing and therefore you better stop.
	I mean, we can see this all the time on social media, where there are these sort of coordinated efforts where people say, you know, I'm really frightened and upset and literally shaking because this person posted this, that, and the other.
	And they pretend to have all this kind of harm.
	Like they're called cry bullies, right?
	And they pretend to be on the receiving end of just this objective and terrible and horrifying harm and offense.
	And right.
	And they just control things that way.
	So it's not a good basis for moral absolutes.
	And so I invite you to read my book.
	It's free, freedomain.com slash books.
	It's called UPB Universally Preferable Behavior.
	All right.
	Zinzai Love.
	Take us home, brother.
	What's on your mind?
	How you doing, brother?
	Thank you for bringing me up.
	What a great speaker you are and an amazing stage.
	I got two postulations and considerations for you.
	Let's say consideration number one is more of a political consideration.
	And what do you think is behind the kind of Epstein blockage?
	And we've had a couple decades now of not getting this.
	And it seems like both sides of the aisle are unwilling to release it.
	Does it go as far as the cosmic proportion?
	And what are we looking at?
	And the second one is more of an apolitical statement on where we're going in the future of dating.
	And so the Western world has kind of become fixated on more of a transactional love.
	Do you think AI is going to deplete?
	How do you think that's going to affect the only fans market for, for example, the oldest job in human history, prostitution?
	How do you think these AI bots are going to play in terms of the attention economy, the Instagram?
	And a lot of these ladies are at a position where it's kind of like the hottest commodity.
	Is that going to invert?
	You have the lonely male epidemic turning to robotic women.
	And then I wanted your take on that.
	Yeah, I mean, so with the Epstein thing, you know, the person to follow this is Mike Cernovich, C-E-R-N-O-V-I-C-H.
	He's the OG.
	He's the absolute moral hero of the Epstein world.
	He and the Miami Herald, he funded this with himself, got the Epstein documents unsealed.
	And I talked about all of this with him, I don't know, seven or eight years ago on this show.
	So you can look up those interviews.
	And, you know, at Cernovich, please follow him on X. He is an absolute, you know, OG moral hero when it comes to this kind of stuff.
	So I just want to put that particular pitch in because it's really important.
	So obviously, I don't know.
	And I know that you know that I don't know.
	I just want to remind people.
	I do think, though, that if the truth, if the genuine truth were to come out about Epstein, I think people would lose their minds.
	And I'm not kidding about that.
	Like, I think people would be so absolutely, completely, and totally shocked by the real power structures of the world that I think a lot of them wouldn't be able to get out of bed.
	I mean, we know that there were endless amounts of CDs and tapes and recording devices and so on at Epstein's island and his New York townhouse and that they all vanished into thin air.
	And, you know, we can all speculate and imagine what might be on those recording devices.
	I mean, they're all gone, right?
	Obviously long gone.
	So, you know, I don't think we're ever going to see anything.
	I don't think we're ever going to understand anything.
	And, you know, it's bringing the truth to people is a very delicate operation.
	It's a very delicate operation because, you know, there's a reason why that sort of famous Jack Nicholson line from a few good men is so famous.
	You can't handle the truth, right?
	You can't handle the truth.
	It's really tough.
	You know, I think the world is enormously corrupt at the highest levels.
	And, you know, there's almost no immorality that wouldn't be practiced, I think, at the highest levels.
	And I think that the amount of leverage that people have on each other is enormous.
	And so, yeah, I think it's all long gone.
	And I think it's actually kind of cruel for people to continue to expect to get facts and information about this kind of stuff.
	I mean, I think that the Bondi and Bongino, and I think they went in with good intentions, but I think that either they don't know or what they've seen is like they just have to back away from it because I think it would be too destabilizing for people.
	So as far as the AI stuff goes, I mean, I think it would be delightful and perhaps even civilization saving for women to not have the giant and sometimes deadly temptation of sex work because sex work, of course, degrades the possibility of a family and is full of, you know, copious and virtually bottomless amounts of regret.
	You know, the average OnlyFans creator makes, you know, 50, 100, 150 bucks a month, and it's a can't put the toothpaste back in the tube kind of thing.
	So I think that AI will help some people who are lonely and it maybe hopefully can displace sex workers so that the women who are sex workers can get kind of the therapeutic help and the psychological help that they need.
	Because obviously I would assume that they come from pretty wretched backgrounds and all of that.
	So hopefully AI can help displace that in the same way that video games might have prevented people from doing school shooting.
	And there's some evidence that access to pornography diminishes certain kinds of sexual crimes.
	But it would be a good thing to not have this option as available to women.
	So we'll see how that plays out.
	But I can't see that as anything but a positive.
	100%, brother.
	I just wanted to add in, you know, I believe it was Lawrence Frost who took Stephen Hawking and I think 20 other physicists and their focus was on zero-point gravity.
	I mean, you have high-level thinkers like Stephen Hawking, some of the best minds ever being blackmailable.
	You know, you wonder how some of these reverse engineer programs rumored and actually had congressional testimony to the effect of being done with our government, reverse engineer, meaning UFO technology being reverse engineered.
	You wonder, how are they so tight-lipped?
	How did this not get out?
	How are there no leaks?
	And then you see Epstein-level blackmail could be a possibility.
	Of course, we don't know, but it's a consideration as a way of not only procuring that technology, but keeping it secret for, let's say, a breakaway civilization level of experience for certain humans of the planet.
	And the secondary response to what you said, I would say, you know, good on you.
	I think you do see the value in that.
	And I think it would be a really big culture shock.
	I mean, women are already starting because of dating apps to say, why aren't the guy, the men approaching anymore?
	It was just five years ago, they were saying, don't come up to me at the gym.
	They're making TikToks about it.
	And now I think they're starting to realize, wait, wait, wait.
	Even if it means we reject you, we kind of miss that type of attention.
	And so you see them kind of going back and imagine the level of attention that they'll be missing if men could just, you know, have a full-sized robot that will speak to them and all look up.
	You know, and I think that it would benefit men who are looking for more of a transactional experience than women who are looking for more of a provocative experience en masse.
	Yeah, I mean, thank you for the comments.
	I mean, I think it's desperately sad, of course, to imagine that a man can only find any kind of connection with a robot.
	I think that's really, really tragic.
	And again, maybe there are people who have some cognitive impairment or autism and so on that could benefit from that.
	But I think it's really sad that people would look to that.
	And again, I'm not saying you're recommending it, but I just think it's a sad place to be.
	There is, of course, a whole question of second order thinking that people need to get more familiar with, which is, you know, addicts prioritize the present over the future and sacrifice the future for the sake of the present.
	And it's the same thing with men do this in some ways.
	The way that women often do it is they chase clout with the humble brag, you know, I can't go out with like so many men just hitting on me all the time.
	It's so gross.
	Right.
	And it's the humble brag, right?
	Like I'm so attractive that men just can't help themselves.
	It's so annoying.
	Can't go anywhere.
	You know, that kind of stuff, right?
	And it's, I guess it feels, feeds the vanity or feeds the status in the moment.
	And then other women are like, oh, wow, that's what high status women do.
	Oh, yeah, me too.
	I can't go anywhere.
	Men just, right?
	And so men get the message, right?
	And if men are unwanted, they stop wanting.
	And so, but also men are looking for the excuse to avoid rejection.
	And so they kind of grab at that kind of stuff and they say, oh, well, oh, what a huge relief.
	I don't have to go and talk to women because women don't want me to talk to them.
	And then they postpone and defer that kind of stuff.
	So men, and I think because testosterone levels are falling across the West catastrophically, I think that men are becoming too anxious to, you know, the reason we have a high testosterone is so we can survive rejection.
	In this one of the major reasons, I think that we have like 17 times the testosterone levels that women have because we have to be able to survive rejection.
	And because testosterone levels are falling, men are less likely to approach women, number one.
	And number two, of course, they are looking for excuses to avoid what is very stressful and anxiety-provoking.
	I think we got...
	I think we got one more time.
	Sup, bro.
	I think you'll, obviously, I'll vamp for a syllable or two while you get your thoughts or you get your mic ready.
	If you want to unmute, I'm all here.
	Yes, hello, Stephan.
	Greetings.
	Dostoevsky's famous line famously said, if there is no God, everything is permitted.
	But on the umbrellas, you can also say, When there is a God, everything is permissible, right?
	I mean, people justify atrocities in the name of God, right?
	We wouldn't have 9-11, for example.
	War, oppression, intolerance, genocide, right?
	So I think belief in God becomes a blank moral check, right?
	If morality is rooted solely in divine command, let's say, right?
	Then whatever God says, or whatever someone claims God says, is automatically right.
	So I think, you know, if we're going by this argument that atheists, you know, have lack morality in a sense, which maybe when I came in earlier, maybe you alluded to that, if I'm not mistaken, or maybe that's not what you meant correctly.
	Let's just go with that.
	So atheists lack morality.
	And so if I understand what you're saying correctly, then it's too much power for any human being to claim to have access to omniscience.
	Yeah, you can say that.
	My main point is that the justification for morality, like everything becomes permissible if there is a God, right?
	You know, 9-11 is a great example of that.
	Well, I mean, I wouldn't view 9-11 as fundamentally religious.
	I think fundamentally it was imperialistic, which is that America had funded the Mujahideen to fight against the Soviets in the 80s in Afghanistan.
	And then, you know, Osama bin Laden, you know, accepting the general narrative, which, you know, where a lot of people start.
	I mean, he's very clear.
	He said, like, it's your interventions in the Middle East.
	It is the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia.
	This is what we It was not fundamentally about religion.
	But of course, the divides tend to be religious in those regions.
	Yeah, you can say there's a political background, right?
	Or even American support or prior support to these groups.
	But fundamentally, the justification for the act was justified by a moral code, right?
	The will of God, right?
	The human responsibility dissolved, right?
	Nothing is wrong.
	Nothing is right.
	It is just because God permitted.
	Yeah, I mean, so from, sorry to interrupt, from a philosophical standpoint, if I claim that I have access to perfect knowledge to omniscience, that's a very dangerous thing because no human being innately has any capacity to connect with omniscience, with all knowing.
	That would be, I mean, it would be a deranged for an individual to say that like mentally, I know everything at all times, under all circumstances.
	I have perfect knowledge of all events and choices, past, present, and future.
	That would be psychotic, right?
	That would be bad.
	And so if you are somebody in a religious context and you pray and you believe that God has given you instructions or commandments or even bans or things you're not allowed to do, then that is a big problem because you then don't have to prove things.
	You don't have to make reasoned arguments from first principles.
	You don't have to provide logic and evidence.
	You have revelation and revelation is not valid philosophically.
	I understand that in theology, it may be acceptable.
	But in the realm of philosophy, revelation is not the case.
	You can't answer a math question in, say, junior high school by saying, God gave me this answer, and then write some incomprehensible symbol and say that it's correct because God told you, that wouldn't be acceptable.
	And so anybody who would then kind of make the case that they're right because they have access to divine, all-perfect knowledge, that is not valid.
	Everybody has to show their work.
	Everybody has to work to prove things, even the most godly.
	Yeah, I mean, that's what I would say.
	I mean, I think belief in God, or more precisely, belief in the word of God, right, or a symbolic authority that guarantees meaning and morality, right, actually allows people to do far worse things than maybe a godless.
	No, I wouldn't argue so because if we look at the acts, the meaning behind the acts or why these people justify their morality or the ethical responsibility through this divine law, right?
	I think that's the external forces that you allude to in the past.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Sorry, sorry to interrupt.
	Obviously, terrible things have been done in the name of religion, but terrible things have been done in the name of atheism too, right?
	I mean, communist societies, communist governments are explicitly atheistic and attack religion as a whole and attempt to destroy religion and tear it out from the people's hearts by the roots.
	And of course, communism killed 100 million people in the 20th century alone, like murdered, slaughtered.
	That doesn't even include the people they incarcerated or tortured or maimed.
	And, you know, governments, even outside of war, killed a quarter of a billion people in the 20th century, which is obviously horrendous beyond words.
	So the problem is power.
	Human beings are dehumanized by power.
	Power is an addiction.
	People get the same response to power as they do to cocaine.
	It is a literal addiction and a murderous addiction because power is the power to escape the consequences of evil.
	That's what power is.
	So whether the power comes from, well, I am directly connected to God and therefore I'm always right, that's too much power.
	Whether the power is, you know, I have a massive government that I can snap my fingers and have people arrested and detained and thrown into gulags, that's way too much power.
	So power corrupts.
	So we have to work as assiduously as possible to try as hard as we can to reduce the amount of unjust power in the world because no one can handle it.
	Not you, not me, not anyone.
	So it's not to just focus on religion.
	It can be important, of course, but atheists also have to look at the consequences of their own addiction to power.
	Atheists' addiction to power showed up strongly under COVID.
	Atheists were, as a whole, terrible, terrible bootlickers of tyranny under COVID, and they support totalitarian policies left, right, and center.
	So, you know, it's fine for atheists to talk about religion, but atheists don't ever seem to focus on their own terrible behavior when push comes to shove under communist regimes, under socialist regimes, their hostility towards free speech.
	Christians are more than twice as likely to be pro-free speech as atheists and Christians in general, in America in particular, support smaller government and atheists support larger government.
	And there's no particular upward limit to the government size that atheists want, which means that they're full-on totalitarians, communists, and so on.
	So I always get suspicious when atheists are continually criticizing religion and not the effects of atheism, which is more tyrannical in many ways.
	If a Christian wants to become a Christian, they don't pass laws that force me to do anything, usually.
	But when atheists want their next extra special pet project for the government, they pass laws and compel everyone else to do stuff.
	So that's where I want atheists to focus on is their own tyrannical impulses.
	Of course, we cannot deny the atheism or even the shallow forces within atheism that claim to reject God.
	But they also believe in some kind of big others, like science, reason, Marxism, whatever it is, right?
	Well, sorry, no, atheists don't believe in science.
	I mean, they claim to, but it's not real.
	Certainly under COVID.
	I mean, atheists were absolute slaves to propaganda under COVID.
	They don't really accept science at all.
	I mean, they claim to, but they've simply, I made this case in the past, I won't do it much here, but science has become a new mystery religion.
	A mystery religion is when you don't have direct contact with God.
	You have to go through some intermediary who then tells you what God wants.
	So science or scientism has just become a new mystery religion where you just have to accept what scientists say, even if they don't share their source data, you just have to accept what they say because they're smarter and have pocket protectors and lab coats.
	And it's just the new popery.
	It's the new sophist class.
	We can say they're not anti-science, but maybe the big other would be, you know, some form of authoritarian rule or some other system of governance that they want to keep order, let's say, right?
	I mean, you know, there's an anti-science.
	So 90%, sorry, 90% of, yeah, 90% of atheists, 90% of atheists fully accept anthropogenic catastrophic global warming, even though it has 50 plus years of completely failed predictions.
	So that's not interesting in science.
	They're interested in power, and they know that people respect science, and therefore they're willing to use the term science in order to gain power.
	But atheists think that data modeling is the same as science, which I guess means that demons exist because there's a game called Doom.
	It's calculated.
	It's right there on the screen, right?
	So, yeah, I wouldn't say that atheists are particularly dedicated towards science at all, but they know that science has prestige, so they use it to club other people into submission a lot.
	I don't know if I agree with that totally.
	I'm not sure.
	That's fine.
	That's fine.
	I'm just saying that there's an example where atheists should be skeptical of over 50 years of failed predictions.
	They should be, right?
	And they should also understand that data modeling is not science any more than if I create a business plan in a spreadsheet, that's not the same as having an income, right?
	And so, and of course, they should demand that all of the algorithms and all the source data is released and revealed so everyone can poke into it and look as they want.
	And they don't generally.
	So it's whatever they want.
	It's not, in particular, science.
	The other point that you made, you said there isn't a word for secularism in Arabic.
	There is, actually.
	I don't know if there is in Gaelic, your language.
	Well, listen, I appreciate the correction.
	Obviously, I'm not an Arabic speaker.
	It's something that I'd heard, and if I heard incorrectly or I heard from a bad source, I really appreciate the...
	Al-Mani.
	Sometimes I'll use Siddhi.
	I massively appreciate the correction.
	And thank you.
	I will stop saying that.
	And I appreciate it.
	There was a time, actually, I mean, if you go back to Cordoba when the Arabs ruled Spain, it was the most advanced city in Europe.
	And, you know, they built hospitals and medicine while the Christian Europeans were treating their ill in healing monasteries using prayer.
	So there is a secular trend in the Arab world.
	Oh, yeah.
	And of course, the Arabs, the Islamic.
	The Arabs and the Muslims were entirely noble in rescuing the ancient Greeks through the Christian Dark Ages and releasing the beauties of Aristotle in particular back upon the Middle Ages and Europe and Christianity.
	Of course, the Muslims were vastly advanced in astronomy and algebra.
	Of course, Muslims or the Arabics, I know it's not quite the same, discovered the number zero.
	A huge and honorable history in that region.
	Not so much lately for a variety of reasons, but definitely some wonderful stuff in the past.
	Yes, I think they abandoned the Greek way.
	I mean, the Europeans were living in the dark ages.
	And I think when you pick up the Greek way, just like the Europeans, they were barbarians to the Greeks, to the Romans.
	That's when they became civilized.
	And also, you know, Christianity sedated the savages, Nietzsche famously said.
	But yeah.
	I just wanted to correct you on that one.
	No, I appreciate that.
	I, of course, don't want to spread anything that's incorrect.
	And so I appreciate that correction.
	All right.
	Well, thanks, everyone, for a beautiful, beautiful afternoon of philosophy.
	Love the questions.
	Love the comments.
	Love the criticisms.
	Don't even mind the interruptions because they get us closer to teaching more politeness.
	And I appreciate, of course, everybody who supports the show, freedomain.com slash donate.
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	Take care, everyone.
	Thanks, Amel.

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