All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 15, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
16:13
Can Philosophy Save the West?
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
All right, good morning everybody.
Steven Molyneux from Freedomaine, fifteenth of October 2025, and I have uh a comment from a fellow, I call him Bob.
He emails me on a fairly regular basis with great feedback, and Bob writes Hi Stefan.
Why UPB, my theory of ethics, universally preferable behavior, why UPB will fail the West.
I might spend time, he says elaborating on why UPB will fail the West, to which you reply would be, thank you for explaining.
You have used clear definitions at this point to the fact that you don't understand UPB.
Um it's always interesting when people tell me my side of the conversation, but all right.
Likewise, thank you for your talk, which clearly shows and clarifies you don't understand evangelical reformed Christianity.
I am not an avid devotee to it either, but what I can tell you is that Christ came into the world, died and resurrected so mankind would have life and have life more abundantly.
He didn't j die for Charlie Kirk's sin, so Charlie Kirk could become a politician.
He died for Kirk's sins and for the sins of the individuals that trust and believe in him and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
If others want to capitalize on politician Kirk being a Christian, that's up to them, and if Kirk made the choice to debate Trump haters, then that was his choice.
Being Christian doesn't mean you have a death wish.
For me to live is Christ and to die, my sinful ego is gained.
Christ came so that we can and do have life more abundantly, regardless of our material circumstances which non Christians judge people by.
Kind regards and thanks for your philosophy in that talk.
So uh I appreciate that, and I think that's good and wonderful and nice and great.
And I will tell you my uh thoughts.
So I in no way, shape or form can tell you that UPB will save the West, because UPB is not some sort of terminator transformer intergalactic superhero that takes up the cause of freedom and acts on behalf of all the myriad inhabitants of the West.
I can in no way, shape or form tell you that UPB will save the West, because UPB is an inert set of pixels and bits and burps and typing and printing in my basement and thoughts in my head and arguments on the web.
It does absolutely nothing on its own.
Right.
Equals MC squared, or the theory of relativity or the theory of uh evolution, uh do nothing.
They don't change anyone's minds, they just are put out there, they're inert.
Uh it is people's choice to listen.
It is people's choice to debate, to argue, and to push ideas uh on others.
That is people's choice.
I can't make that happen.
I can't force that to happen, and even if I could, I wouldn't.
It is a matter of choice.
UPB sorry, UPB will not save the West in and of itself.
Uh somebody who comes up with uh let's say the first person to come up with iron or steel uh did not uh the iron of steel, the idea or the formula for the metallurgy of iron and steel, or bronze.
Uh somebody who came up with that, the idea did not win any battles, right?
The idea did not change anyone's mind foundationally, and it did not organize troops or conquer geographical regions or anything like that, didn't do any of that.
It's simply a design, a metallurgical formula for the creation of iron, bronze, and uh steel.
Doesn't do any of that.
In the same way that your car doesn't drive you anywhere, uh you have to you have to drive your car.
Maybe you can drive your car.
So UPB isn't gonna do anything foundationally to solve people's uh lack of freedoms or to advance moral theories.
UPB won't save the West.
Now, UPB is valid and true.
That I can tell you for sure.
I mean, it's been almost twenty years, and professionals and skeptics and religious and fanatics and and socialists, they've all run at UPB, and they've all failed.
Because UPB is valid.
UPB is true, UPB is the answer to uh secular ethics.
That's just a fact.
Uh There's no escaping it, there's no getting a way around it, even people most hostile have to accept that rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behaviors.
That's it.
Now, what does that mean?
It means that we have the answer to secular ethics, a rational proof of secular ethics.
In other words, we have ethics that you cannot escape simply by disbelieving, right?
You can't escape this, you cannot escape UBB simply by disbelieving.
UPB is not a matter of faith.
UPB is valid and true.
Now, what you can do is you can say UPB is valid and true, but I reject reason.
So when I say, can stealing ever be universally preferable behavior, right?
So the guy yesterday, and you know, everybody does the same thing, right?
I said, Is it possible to want to be stolen from?
No.
If you want your property taken, it's not theft.
So theft can never be universally preferable behavior.
It's very simple.
And a three, four, five-year-old can understand it, it's very simple.
Now, what somebody could say is, it is true that theft can never be universally preferable behavior, but I reject it anyway.
You can say it is impossible to want people to steal from you, but I think it's valid anyway.
Except people don't do that.
That would be like saying, it is true that Christ is divine, but I reject Christ's divinity.
People don't say that.
Now people can say they reject Christ's divinity, but they can't also say that he's divine.
People don't do that.
When faced with an absolutely stark contradiction, people accept it.
And again, religious people have accepted it, professors of philosophy have accepted it, people who are hostile to me like rationality rules have accepted it, socialists have accepted it, Marxists have accepted it.
It's just a fact.
Now, if the fact that everyone has accepted it is just because it is it is proven, it is factual, it is real, it is valid, it is true.
Can't be denied.
Again, you can say something completely contradictory, of course, anyone can say that, but that tends to be crazy people.
So if someone were to say it is true that stealing can never be universally preferable behavior, that is valid, but I reject the proposition anyway, then they lose all credibility in the intellectual sphere.
Right?
I mean, they then become like a kid with chocolate all over his face saying, I didn't touch any chocolate, and even when you show them chocolate all over the face, they say that's not me, right?
That's just I mean, that would be like a uh sort of a crazy little kid who was really heavily addicted to uh not being caught eating chocolate, right?
So everyone accepts it, because the price of rejecting UPB is having zero, absolutely zero credibility in the realm of discussion and debate.
That is the price of rejecting UPB.
Because if you say this is absolutely and irrevocably and universally true, which is what I went over with the guy yesterday, right?
And again, he, you know, he said that uh that math is universal and true and valid.
And I told him is logic universal true and valid, and here's a logical proposition about ethics that is universally true and he was very honorable and and very honest.
Because of course, if he had said, if he had said in a debate, you have absolutely proven your point, but I reject it anyway.
Your point is absolutely valid and true, but I reject it anyway, then no one will debate with you, right?
No one will debate with you.
It won't I mean you'll just be ejected from the realm of rational debate.
I mean, which is debate, right?
So that's this really important to understand that the price of rejecting something you accept is valid is that nobody will debate with you.
And and nobody has ever said that to me in my entire life.
And I have done thousands of debates, even include sort of things in in X, right?
So nobody has ever said to me over the course of my entire life, I agree that two and two make four, and I reject it.
Right?
I agree that all men are mortal.
Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is immortal.
I accept that, but it's not true.
I cannot disprove it, but it is not true.
I accept that it is true, but I reject that it is true.
Nobody does that.
Like I'm telling you, man, even crazy people don't do that.
They'll fight, they'll twist, like if somebody says, Where's the proof of this?
And you provide them a source, and then they say, I reject the source, but they don't say I reject the source.
Sorry, they don't say I accept that the source is valid, and I disagree with the conclusion.
I re I I accept that the source is valid, I accept the validity of the conclusion, and I reject the validity of the conclusion.
People don't do that.
And the fact that I mean, this is something that I mean, it's wild to me.
I mean, just maybe because I see things, I guess I see things that other people don't.
But, you know, when I have proven to someone, and this is this was true of the uh John, the philosophy professor or logic professor who called in, right?
So I said, you know, we've now proven that rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior.
And he just kind of blew past that as the guy did yesterday, and I'm like, well, whoa, whoa, hang on, we've just done a very big and important thing.
We've just done a very big and important thing.
We haven't done like the mafia acts in many ways on Kantian principles.
Uh act as if the proposition of your action is universally true for everyone, or the morality of your action is universally true for everyone.
And the mafia is really good at violence, and they love violence.
And so their argument is resources should be transferred by one's willingness to use violence, and given that the average shopkeeper is not willing to use violence, but the average mafioso is.
Well, we understand, right?
They uh but but UPB, it cannot be denied, cannot be overturned, cannot be disproven.
And can be explained to children, which is the key thing, right?
I mean, you if you say to the biggest kid, so canteen imperative, act as if the principle of your action becomes a general rule for everyone, the biggest and most aggressive kid on the playground is going to say, Well, lunch money should be distributed according to one's willingness to bully, because he knows he's the biggest kid and the most violent kid, so he's gonna he's gonna get his stuff.
Say, oh, well, that doesn't benefit you in the long run.
It's like, nope, it doesn't matter, right?
I mean a compulsive liar who's really good at lying and has honed his capacity to lie to a fine art is gonna love a political system where lying convincingly is the way to power, because he's really good at it.
It'd be like a chess grandmaster saying that we should distribute resources according to one's ability to play chess.
So or the tallest guy saying the tallest guy should get the most resources.
I'm willing for that to be a universal for everyone, right?
So UPB isn't going to do anything.
It's going to be dependent upon people's willingness to accept, debate, argue for, and act upon UPV.
It's all it's about.
So I need, and the world, frankly, needs, desperately needs an ethical system you cannot wave away.
It's an ethical system, you cannot just wave away.
Right?
So you've got an ethical system that relies upon accepting the existence of the old Testament God, then you can wave away that moral system just by disbelieving in God.
All morals come from God.
God is not rational, God is not proven, God is not empirical.
So if you're rational and empirical, then this has been the battle, right?
So science has been so incredibly productive in human life that people can't just say, Well, what's the big deal with reason and evidence?
And universality, right?
Human reason and science have produced almost infinitely more goods to humanity, and and not just goods like the good, uh things that are helpful and positive, and things like air conditioning, which keeps people alive.
When it's too hot, things like uh antibiotics, uh things like uh uh electricity, I mean we'll go on and on, we sort of understand it, right?
So human reason has proven to be so amazingly powerful and competent and good that people can't just you can't just dismiss reason anymore.
Right?
You can't just be like you know, Martin Luther and say, well, you've got to tear reason out by the roots and destroy it, and like, no, No, reason has proven its value.
It's proven its value.
You can't I mean, everyone who's around, pretty much everyone who's around is alive now because of science engineering, free markets, and medicine.
I mean, that's it, right?
That's why we're here.
That's why that's why we're having this conversation.
I can't sit there and say, well, uh reason is inferior to faith.
It's like 'cause everything that I used to communicate that is based on reason.
I can't be the guy like if there's some guy who spends a lot of money and then says money has no value, it's like that's just a performative contradiction, right?
Self-detonating argument.
If I think that faith is superior to reason, then I would not do a podcast.
I would pray to God to enlighten people, and God would do the job for me.
But the moment I say, well, I'm not going to pray to God to enlighten people, I'm going to make recent arguments and communicate them using the reason derived technology, then I can't say that faith is superior to reason.
And so reason and evidence has proven itself as vastly superior to faith.
And this is one of the reasons why people are falling away from the church.
Is that in the competition for human benefit between faith and reason, reason has decisively proven its superiority.
And you can say, ah, yes, but it hollows people out of meaning and then then values and virtues.
I mean, I get all of that, which is why I worked very hard to create a rational system of ethics, which will do the same thing to human society and even more benefits than reason did to the dark ages that the free market did to human flourishing.
So yeah, reason reason isn't going to save the West, UPB isn't going to save the West, but people's dedication to havoc and spreading reason, that has a pretty good chance.
Well, I mean it's really our only chance.
An ethical system that you cannot deny.
You can't.
You cannot deny it.
Again, without saying, I agree that two and two make four, but two and two don't make four.
I both accept it and reject it.
I reject it as valid and proven, and then I reject it.
Well, nobody has any credibility in that.
Nobody will believe anybody about that.
So that's uh the fact of the matter, that's the reason of the matter.
That's the reality of the matter.
It's absolutely true that UPB will not save the West in and of itself, it's inert.
But we cannot turn back the clock and undo the benefits that reason, science, empiricism, and the free market have shown to humanity, we cannot simply turn the clock back and undo that.
We've got to go forward with reason there is no way back to faith alone.
I hope this helps Freedom.com slash donate.
Lots of stuff.
▲
Export Selection