Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - All Certainty is ARROGANCE?!?
Aired: 2026-05-07
Duration: 40:43


=== Measuring Consciousness Energy (14:03) ===

[00:00:00]  Good morning, everybody.
[00:00:00]  Hope you're doing well.
[00:00:02]  This is Sam Molyneux from Free Domain, FreeDomain.com, slash donate to help out the show, please, please.
[00:00:09]  And two interesting arguments floated across my feet this morning.
[00:00:13]  The first was, of course, the genial, grinning Christian fellow who's, it was Mildly Oyo.
[00:00:21]  She was giving a talk to 500 physicists and we had a chat with one.
[00:00:28]  The physicist asked him, a very smart fellow, you know, the physicist asked him, How can it be that God becomes human?
[00:00:37]  And I said, Well, let me give you a quid pro quo.
[00:00:41]  Let me ask you, what is consciousness?
[00:00:45]  And the physicist says, I don't know.
[00:00:48]  And then I asked him, I'll give you a simpler one.
[00:00:53]  What is energy?
[00:00:55]  And he said, I don't know.
[00:00:56]  And I said, Well, these are easier questions.
[00:00:58]  How do I know how God became a man?
[00:01:02]  I don't know.
[00:01:03]  And we had a wonderful chat.
[00:01:04]  And, you know, this sort of.
[00:01:06]  Well, bad Irish accident, also.
[00:01:09]  I don't know what that was.
[00:01:12]  But it's always, oh, we had a great chat and we really began to understand each other and all that.
[00:01:18]  And I can't believe I didn't make it.
[00:01:24]  So these sort of convenient stories are interesting.
[00:01:29]  And unfortunately, the idea that a physicist is stumped by a theologian.
[00:01:36]  Is interesting, but not particularly relevant.
[00:01:40]  If an engineer stumps a theologian with engineering questions, that's kind of understandable and not really a fair fight.
[00:01:48]  He should be talking to a rational philosopher, an empirical materialistic philosopher, right?
[00:01:55]  To get these kinds of answers.
[00:01:57]  Now, the answer, of course, is relatively simple, which is we have direct experience of consciousness and we know what consciousness is.
[00:02:07]  We can measure it empirically directly.
[00:02:09]  When the brain is dead, there is no consciousness.
[00:02:12]  And that's when we know somebody is no longer with us, and so on.
[00:02:15]  Even if they can keep the body alive, like a friend of mine, his mother had a terrible stroke.
[00:02:19]  And in the hospital, they said she's kind of brain dead.
[00:02:22]  And he had to take her off the life support.
[00:02:26]  Not the most.
[00:02:27]  Well, it was a terrible evening, of course.
[00:02:29]  But that's.
[00:02:30]  We can measure consciousness.
[00:02:31]  We know when it's there, we know when it's not.
[00:02:34]  If.
[00:02:35]  I remember seeing a love boat, it was a cheesy show.
[00:02:39]  From back in the day about a cruise line.
[00:02:42]  And there was a guy who liked a girl, and she only spoke French, and he only spoke English.
[00:02:47]  And it was all these complications and messes.
[00:02:50]  And that's interesting.
[00:02:51]  So, even though we can identify consciousness, if we can't communicate with the other consciousness, then there's no real possibility of a relationship, obviously, right?
[00:02:59]  So, we can identify consciousness.
[00:03:02]  We know when we can communicate with consciousness.
[00:03:05]  And we know when we are dealing with an external consciousness versus an internal consciousness, of course.
[00:03:12]  There's the old joke about the woman who's mad at her husband because he cheated on her in her dreams.
[00:03:20]  Like, in her, she had a dream, he cheated on her, and so she's mad at him.
[00:03:23]  And of course, that's funny because he didn't cheat on her.
[00:03:26]  She just, I mean, maybe she's getting an unconscious communication.
[00:03:28]  That's a different matter.
[00:03:29]  But he didn't cheat on her in a confirmed way because she only dreamt it.
[00:03:34]  So, you know, that's considered funny.
[00:03:36]  And it is mildly funny because it is not real.
[00:03:40]  That's not a real consciousness.
[00:03:41]  He did not cheat on her.
[00:03:42]  She had a dream about it, and therefore.
[00:03:46]  It's not proven.
[00:03:47]  But she's acting emotionally as if it's proven, which is a sort of a whole different matter.
[00:03:52]  So, with regards to energy and consciousness, one of the ways we know someone is dead is they are not using energy, right?
[00:04:02]  The heart has stopped.
[00:04:04]  The heart has stopped.
[00:04:06]  And that means that the heart is not using energy.
[00:04:09]  The heart is not beating.
[00:04:11]  The lungs have stopped.
[00:04:11]  The lungs are not using energy.
[00:04:13]  If the eyes are unable to translate light waves into electrical or neural impulses that go to the visual centers of the brain, Someone is blind because the energy is not being transmitted and processed from the outside to the inside.
[00:04:29]  So consciousness is energy.
[00:04:32]  The senses are energy.
[00:04:33]  And we know this as well because if somebody does not take in energy in the form of food, then they will sooner or later die because the body uses energy and energy is used everywhere in the body at all times.
[00:04:48]  And we know that somebody is dead when their body is no longer using energy, when they are inert.
[00:04:53]  We know when consciousness is gone, when we cannot record any brain activity, and so on, right?
[00:05:00]  So, all of these things are clear and understood.
[00:05:04]  And it's true of all the animals with senses that all the animals with senses use energy and they use their energy, that energy of the senses, to gain energy from other creatures by hunting them and eating them or from plants and so on.
[00:05:19]  So, energy is life.
[00:05:23]  And we are alive, and we know what consciousness is in terms of interacting with it.
[00:05:31]  I mean, this theologian didn't interact with the podium or a light switch or a chair.
[00:05:37]  He interacted only with a human consciousness.
[00:05:39]  He did not speak to the guy's knee or elbow.
[00:05:42]  And if the mouth replied, said, No, no, no, I'm waiting to hear from the elbow, right?
[00:05:45]  So he knew enough to send energy to the man's consciousness.
[00:05:52]  So we have direct empirical.
[00:05:56]  Proof of both consciousness and energy.
[00:06:02]  And therefore, energy and consciousness exist.
[00:06:08]  They are valid concepts that we all experience every single moment of waking consciousness plus REM sleep.
[00:06:19]  I mean, there are sort of dead spots in the night where we are not really processing consciousness.
[00:06:27]  If you've ever been awake the whole night, it's like, wow, okay.
[00:06:32]  So, this is what being awake the whole night is like.
[00:06:35]  There's a lot of the night where we're not awake.
[00:06:38]  And that's one of the reasons why nights when you're not awake pass quickly and nights when you are awake pass slowly.
[00:06:46]  We realize just how much time is erased by being unconscious or not thinking or processing or receiving anything during that time.
[00:06:56]  So, the entire conversation between the Heurish priest.
[00:07:00]  And the physicist?
[00:07:02]  Well, that is predicated on energy and consciousness.
[00:07:07]  And so there is an entire category switch here.
[00:07:11]  Because the priest is saying, you cannot tell me exactly what consciousness is.
[00:07:18]  Well, that's an interesting question, right?
[00:07:21]  In that we know what consciousness is because we don't talk to trucks or trees or road signs or anything like that, right?
[00:07:28]  We talk only to people.
[00:07:30]  Who have consciousness and are able to reply and speak our language, or at least we can only continue conversations with those people.
[00:07:37]  So, do we know what consciousness is?
[00:07:39]  Absolutely.
[00:07:40]  And the priest knows exactly what consciousness is because he talks to the physicist rather than the carpet.
[00:07:47]  And he talks to the physicist's brain and looks him in the eyes and expects the responses to come from his mouth, which represent the actions of a consciousness.
[00:07:53]  And he's trying to change his mind.
[00:07:55]  So, the priest, the theologian, knows exactly what consciousness is and how to identify it.
[00:08:01]  And he knows exactly what energy is and how to utilize it.
[00:08:05]  He wouldn't speak to a dead person, he needs a live person.
[00:08:07]  Therefore, he's able to recognize the energy that is embedded in being alive.
[00:08:11]  And he generates energy in the form of his voice and speaking and transmitting sound waves, which then impact upon the auditory canals and so on.
[00:08:20]  All that kind of stuff.
[00:08:21]  So he knows exactly what consciousness is.
[00:08:24]  He knows exactly what energy is, and he is requiring both in order to communicate.
[00:08:29]  And so the direct empirical evidence and understanding and processing and utilization and all of that, that is all provable.
[00:08:39]  And we can prove, of course, consciousness, brain activity and conversation.
[00:08:43]  And we can prove consciousness.
[00:08:44]  We can prove energy, how we utilize energy in order to be able to prove energy, all that sort of stuff.
[00:08:50]  So we are constantly interacting with consciousness and energy.
[00:08:54]  In a rational, empirical, objective fashion, in that we use the objective medium of the senses in order to communicate with other consciousnesses.
[00:09:02]  We cannot do it through some Vulcan mind melt.
[00:09:05]  So we do know exactly what energy and consciousness is.
[00:09:10]  Now, can we explain every characteristic of the aforementioned energy and consciousness?
[00:09:16]  Nope.
[00:09:17]  Nope.
[00:09:18]  So when the physicist says, How is it possible for God?
[00:09:24]  To be a man, the theologian replies, well, you must then be able to explain everything about energy and consciousness.
[00:09:34]  And that is a category switch.
[00:09:37]  And what I mean by a category error is this idea that the human enters the divine, which is the sort of three in one Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and so on.
[00:09:51]  So the idea that.
[00:09:54]  The human enters the divine is something which has never been observed.
[00:10:00]  It's talked about, its tales are told of it, but it's never been observed.
[00:10:06]  Nobody has ever seen the human enter the human merge with the divine, the divine merge with the human, and so on, right?
[00:10:13]  Or how there is something eternal, like the soul, which enters the body upon birth.
[00:10:22]  Well, it's not really eternal because it doesn't seem to exist before the body, so it is created and enters the body upon birth and then lives on it.
[00:10:29]  Lives within the body and lives beyond the end of the body that has never been observed.
[00:10:35]  It's never been measured, and it's not something that we directly experience every day.
[00:10:40]  So the equivalent would be something like this, if you want the equivalent to energy and consciousness.
[00:10:47]  It would be that we ourselves regularly experience some aspect of the divine and the eternal.
[00:10:56]  In other words, we have a question.
[00:11:00]  And the answer we cannot possibly know, but the answer comes to us through divine revelation on a fairly continual basis.
[00:11:08]  You know, ultimate, infinite chat GPT in our brains, available on a whim, and sometimes imposes itself upon us even when we don't ask a question.
[00:11:19]  That would be the equivalent that we ourselves directly experience the divine and see the divine and can measure the divine and can see the energy of the divine and can see the empirical footprint.
[00:11:31]  Of the divine on both our minds and in the world on a continual basis, that would be the equivalent of energy and consciousness.
[00:11:40]  Energy and consciousness.
[00:11:42]  We experience it imprints itself upon the universe.
[00:11:46]  It's measurable, it's empirical, it's predictable, it's stable.
[00:11:49]  I mean, energy for sure, consciousness, a little less so.
[00:11:53]  So we're continually experiencing it and measuring it.
[00:11:56]  And of course, the equivalent for a God would be that we are continually experiencing, measuring, and predicting God, right?
[00:12:07]  Because energy, we can, we experience it, energy is consciousness.
[00:12:11]  Energy out there in the world, you know, sunlight, strong and weak atomic forces, gravity, heat, light, all of these sorts of things, electricity, and so on, the nuclear power, weapons, bombs.
[00:12:22]  We are continually experiencing and measuring the objective empirical aspects of energy in the world.
[00:12:29]  We ourselves are composed of energy, and consciousness is a form of energy.
[00:12:32]  We experience consciousness and can identify it and tell when it's gone, right?
[00:12:37]  We don't measure every tree before we cut it down to see if it is conscious, but we can measure when consciousness.
[00:12:43]  Ends in the human brain because you get a flatline EKG.
[00:12:48]  So the equivalent with the divine would be we are constantly experiencing the divine.
[00:12:54]  We are constantly measuring the objective properties of the divine.
[00:12:59]  And we ourselves are composed of the divine and can understand the divine.
[00:13:04]  We can also measure when the divine leaves the body and enters the body, right?
[00:13:10]  So for instance, when you watch a medical drama, what happens?
[00:13:14]  Well, there's this constant.
[00:13:16]  People are flatlining, coat blue, right?
[00:13:18]  They're flatlining, their heart has stopped, and so on.
[00:13:22]  And we can see death entering the body through the absence of energy within the body.
[00:13:28]  We can measure the end of consciousness if somebody's hooked up to a brain monitoring device.
[00:13:34]  I think it's an EKG or something like that.
[00:13:36]  When someone's hooked up to a brain monitoring device and they're not getting oxygen to the brain, then they can see the brain go dark.
[00:13:44]  They can see the energy of consciousness.
[00:13:47]  Ceasing within the brain.
[00:13:49]  So it's all measurable, empirical.
[00:13:52]  There's no contradictory information that is possible.
[00:13:56]  In other words, there's nobody with no brain activity who is able to sit up, chat, think, reason, write, and talk.

=== The Heartbeat of Death (05:29) ===

[00:14:03]  Never happens.
[00:14:04]  In the same way that there is no human being or mammal who can live unaided without a heartbeat.
[00:14:13]  I mean, can you imagine going to the doctor and the doctor, you know what they do?
[00:14:16]  They listen to your heart.
[00:14:17]  I don't know why.
[00:14:18]  They listen to your lungs, breathe in, breathe out.
[00:14:20]  I mean, the heart, yes, the lungs, I don't quite get what they get out of the stethoscope, but I assume it's important.
[00:14:24]  So you go to the doctor and you're fine.
[00:14:29]  You're, you know, you're moving around, you exercise and so on.
[00:14:32]  You go to the doctor and what happens?
[00:14:35]  Well, what happens is the doctor does not find a heartbeat.
[00:14:39]  You have no heartbeat.
[00:14:41]  Yet, you know, blood is flowing to your fingers, to your brain, but there's no heartbeat.
[00:14:45]  Well, that's not possible.
[00:14:48]  It is impossible to live without a heartbeat.
[00:14:49]  So we know when the heartbeat ends, Life is threatened if the heartbeat ends long enough.
[00:14:54]  Death is unrecoverable and you can't recover from the death.
[00:14:57]  So, again, it is not the same at all.
[00:15:02]  One is measuring energy and consciousness, which we experience on a regular basis, continuously, with almost no interruptions except for a few dark spots when we're dreamlessly sleeping.
[00:15:14]  So, we experience all of that all the time, every day, no matter what, until we die.
[00:15:21]  We also, in a sense, understand what it is like to not be conscious, both from the dark spots when we're sleeping and if we are unconscious for an operation or something like that, but also we understand what it is like to not exist, although we cannot directly experience it.
[00:15:42]  That would be a contradiction because consciousness is about experiencing things, and we say unconscious when our consciousness is not experiencing things, but we know what it's like.
[00:15:51]  To some degree, to not exist because we can think about how the world and the universe existed before we were born, but we did not experience any of it because we weren't there.
[00:16:03]  The energy that powered our consciousness had not been gathered into our brain and manifested as mind.
[00:16:10]  So, comparing the divine with energy and consciousness, when we directly experience energy and consciousness, we can measure both energy out in the world is not wildly variable.
[00:16:25]  I mean, the sun varies and so on a little bit in sort of heat and cold.
[00:16:29]  But, you know, the speed of light is constant, and there are certain measurements of energy equals mc squared, right?
[00:16:35]  Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
[00:16:38]  These are all constant.
[00:16:39]  Gravity is a constant.
[00:16:42]  And again, of course, it varies a tiny little bit.
[00:16:44]  Stuff escapes from the earth to the air out into space, perhaps a little, I don't know, whatever, right?
[00:16:49]  A little meteors hit the ground, thus increasing gravity a tiny bit, right?
[00:16:53]  But gravity as a force.
[00:16:56]  Upon us varies in a tiny, tiny way, but gravity as a force is constant.
[00:17:02]  It doesn't appear one day and disappear the next.
[00:17:06]  And the factor of gravity does not change.
[00:17:10]  I mean, if it did, we couldn't have a stable orbit, we couldn't have life, and so on.
[00:17:15]  So comparing God entering the flesh, which is a reported phenomenon from over 2,000 years ago, for which there is no empirical evidence, no Direct experience, right?
[00:17:31]  Because, I mean, there's things that you hear about that make no sense, like ghosts and so on.
[00:17:36]  There are things you hear about that make sense, like there's a monsoon in India, though I've never been to India.
[00:17:42]  I understand that there's rain and I've seen videos, but I've not directly experienced it myself.
[00:17:45]  That's fine.
[00:17:46]  And then there's things which we ourselves directly experience.
[00:17:49]  And then there are things that we ourselves directly experience only occasionally.
[00:17:53]  And then there are things which we ourselves experience continuously, right?
[00:17:58]  I saw the northern lights when I worked up north.
[00:18:00]  I've never seen them since.
[00:18:01]  But I experience consciousness on a near continuous basis and I experience energy on a near continuous basis.
[00:18:11]  I mean, in particular, the energy of gravity is a constant force which I have to navigate and negotiate every single moment of my waking life.
[00:18:21]  In fact, I have muscles because I lift weights and lifting weights is effective because there is gravity.
[00:18:28]  Lifting weights in a space station, I guess there'd be some momentum, but it really wouldn't be quite the same.
[00:18:33]  So saying that.
[00:18:35]  The merger of the divine and the human, which nobody has experienced that is around, of which there is no evidence, which itself is self contradictory, which is a mere reported thing that occurs in a lot of different places.
[00:18:51]  And when we know, as a basic reality of the world and of life, that people hallucinate, they have psychotic episodes, there was no real conception of our modern understanding of mental illness and psychosis and schizophrenia.
[00:19:08]  And visions and hallucinations.
[00:19:10]  We had no real understanding or processing of that in the past.
[00:19:16]  And so we know all of these things.
[00:19:17]  And so, comparing something like God merging with man with our direct, empirical, measurable, objective experiences of consciousness and energy is a completely false equivalency.

=== Why Absolute Truth Is Arrogant (14:56) ===

[00:19:33]  And it's really kind of embarrassing to see.
[00:19:35]  And also, I wanted to mention something that was written on a post I made on X related to this.
[00:19:44]  And somebody wrote, To do the right voice.
[00:19:48]  Have you ever considered the possibility that the reason things which seem so obvious and clear to you are mysterious to others because there's an aspect of the matter you simply can't or even refuse to understand?
[00:20:03]  Who am I kidding?
[00:20:04]  Of course you haven't.
[00:20:09]  Absolute top tier, blue blooded, brain dead, intellectual nonsense and debauchery.
[00:20:18]  Yes, this is.
[00:20:21]  Is it possible that other people understand things that you don't?
[00:20:25]  And maybe that has something to do.
[00:20:31]  Oh, God.
[00:20:32]  Oh, the staggering, mind boggling, truly wild levels of pomposity.
[00:20:39]  That is something else.
[00:20:42]  That is something to truly behold.
[00:20:46]  I tell you.
[00:20:49]  We call my daughter and I. Call this character Smuggins.
[00:20:53]  Oh, Smuggins.
[00:20:54]  Oh, yes.
[00:20:55]  And it's a funny, so it's an appeal to sort of insecurity, incomprehensibility, and all of this sort of stuff.
[00:21:03]  And it's really pathetic.
[00:21:07]  I know this is just a bunch of insults.
[00:21:09]  Let me sort of get to the point of what I'm saying.
[00:21:13]  So this is a fallacy.
[00:21:18]  It's an interesting fallacy.
[00:21:20]  And the fallacy is.
[00:21:22]  Is it possible there are things you haven't taken into consideration?
[00:21:27]  This is a trick, right?
[00:21:29]  It's an intellectual trick.
[00:21:31]  Is it possible there are things you haven't taken into consideration?
[00:21:35]  Now, the reason why it's a trick is that if you say, no, it's not possible there are things I haven't taken into consideration, then you sound arrogant, right?
[00:21:46]  And if you say, well, yes, it's possible that there are things I haven't taken into consideration, Then you can't be certain.
[00:21:55]  Right, there was a rather enraging Friends episode where Phoebe, who's a bit of a doofus mystic, asks Ross, who's like a paleontologist, I think, scientist, Isn't there the tiniest possibility?
[00:22:11]  Are you so arrogant as to believe that there's not even the tiniest possibility that your worldview could be wrong?
[00:22:16]  And of course, if he says, No, it's not possible that my worldview could be wrong, then he sounds arrogant and bigoted and Dogmatic and all sorts of nonsense.
[00:22:27]  And if he says, well, it is possible that my worldview could be wrong, then he can't be certain.
[00:22:35]  So you're either arrogant and close minded, or you admit the potential for fault or error, in which case you are more open minded, but then you cannot be certain, my friend.
[00:22:49]  Certainty is arrogance, blah, And it's all manipulative.
[00:22:55]  Girly nonsense.
[00:22:57]  Actually, it's kind of an insult to girls who don't even do this kind of nonsense.
[00:22:59]  But yeah, it's all very, very sad, very, very silly.
[00:23:03]  So, why is it a fallacy?
[00:23:07]  Well, it depends what you mean by your worldview.
[00:23:12]  So, it kind of depends what people are talking about with regards to my worldview.
[00:23:17]  So, if we look at this post from, who was it, Dr. Ransom, have you ever considered the possibility that the reason things which seem so obvious and clear to you are mysterious to others because there's an aspect of the matter you simply can't or even refuse to understand?
[00:23:33]  Have you ever considered the possibility?
[00:23:36]  And then he says, Who am I kidding?
[00:23:38]  Of course you haven't, right?
[00:23:40]  And somebody asked more details.
[00:23:41]  He said, I'll be perfectly honest with you.
[00:23:43]  I don't have the time or the patience to type out my entire philosophy on these matters on X on a random Thursday morning.
[00:23:48]  I typed what I typed as a knee jerk reaction with my general frustration with Molyneux's philosophical shallowness, not as an attempt to persuade.
[00:23:56]  It's your choice whether or not you want to act like a midwit and call that a dodge.
[00:24:00]  Right?
[00:24:01]  So, are you certain?
[00:24:03]  You can't be certain.
[00:24:04]  If you're certain, you're dogmatic.
[00:24:06]  And if you're not certain, you have to entertain the possibility that everything is true.
[00:24:10]  Everything, even including things that are the complete opposite of your philosophy.
[00:24:14]  Blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
[00:24:16]  That's the trap.
[00:24:18]  That's the trap.
[00:24:19]  So, why is it a fallacy?
[00:24:21]  Well, there is a standard which says all certainty is arrogance, right?
[00:24:29]  That's the implicit statement, which is if you say, Steph, if you say that your worldview is 100% true, then you're arrogant and close minded and not giving any respect to contrary or even counter opinions, right?
[00:24:43]  So, that is the standard that if You don't admit for the possibility of being at fault, then you are arrogant.
[00:24:51]  And if you do admit at the possibility of being at fault, then you cannot assert certainty.
[00:24:58]  And of course, I'm sure you understand philosophy enough to know that the reason that that is a fallacy is because that is a standard that is considered to be absolutely certain.
[00:25:11]  You see, you see, somebody says, Steph, have you even considered?
[00:25:18]  That there are things that you don't understand.
[00:25:20]  Therefore, you can't be certain of anything.
[00:25:23]  If you admit that there are, if you say, no, I've never admitted the possibility that there could be things I don't understand, then you're arrogant.
[00:25:30]  And if you do admit it, then you have to accept any or contrary positions.
[00:25:35]  It's like, okay, so that is a standard.
[00:25:38]  And I would say to someone, so is it 100% certain that anyone who says they're 100% certain is arrogant?
[00:25:49]  This is the judo move that is common in the realm of philosophy as it should be practiced, and certainly as I advocate, which is you say to the person, let's apply the standard you're applying to me to what you're saying.
[00:26:04]  As I said, probably a decade, decade and a half ago, one of my biggest contributions in the realm of philosophy is to examine the form of the argument before engaging with its content.
[00:26:16]  So if someone says to me, If you're 100% certain of your methodology, then you are by definition arrogant.
[00:26:26]  I would say, well, are you 100% certain of that?
[00:26:30]  Are you 100% certain that anyone who asserts 100% certainty is arrogant or not taking into account contrary perspectives or whatever, whatever, whatever, right?
[00:26:41]  Are you 100% sure of that?
[00:26:43]  Now, if they say, well, I'm not 100% sure of that, I'd say, okay, then why did you put it forward as 100% certainty?
[00:26:52]  Because you didn't put any caveats in the statement that you gave to me.
[00:26:57]  You did not insert any caveats into that.
[00:27:00]  You put it forward as 100% certain.
[00:27:04]  And it's not.
[00:27:06]  Now, what percentage uncertainty do you have in the statement that everyone who asserts 100% certainty is being arrogant?
[00:27:17]  So you can't be 100% certain of that statement, obviously.
[00:27:22]  So, what percent are you unsure of that statement?
[00:27:27]  And of course, they haven't thought about any of this.
[00:27:29]  They've just used this as an emotional tool to oppose any kind of certainty.
[00:27:34]  See, people hate certainty in the philosophical and moral realm.
[00:27:39]  For fairly obvious reasons, of course.
[00:27:41]  People hate certainty in the philosophical and moral realm because then, once they're certain, they actually have to get off their asses and do something to oppose evil in the world.
[00:27:54]  And it's kind of a corrosive appeal to insecurity, saying if you're certain you're arrogant, and therefore you don't want to be arrogant, therefore you have to be uncertain.
[00:28:06]  And if you're uncertain, then you cannot robustly oppose any contrary.
[00:28:11]  Alternative or opposing viewpoint.
[00:28:14]  If you assert truth 100%, you're arrogant.
[00:28:18]  And what they're doing is they're saying that their shitbird cowardice is a virtue called not being arrogant, being humble.
[00:28:30]  I'm humble.
[00:28:31]  I don't know if things are good or bad, right or wrong with 100% certainty.
[00:28:37]  So I won't assert good and evil, right and wrong with 100% certainty because that would be arrogant.
[00:28:43]  I don't want to be arrogant.
[00:28:44]  I want to be open minded.
[00:28:46]  I want to hear what other people have to say.
[00:28:48]  I want to not tell them that they're wrong because I can't be certain.
[00:28:52]  Right?
[00:28:53]  This is the argument by an annoying voice.
[00:28:57]  Hey, I've earned it.
[00:28:58]  I've been hearing this crap for almost half a century.
[00:29:01]  Can't be certain.
[00:29:02]  Can't be certain.
[00:29:03]  Shouldn't be certain.
[00:29:04]  Won't be certain.
[00:29:05]  Certainty is bad.
[00:29:05]  Wrong.
[00:29:06]  Blah, blah, blah.
[00:29:07]  Okay.
[00:29:08]  Are you certain of that?
[00:29:10]  And if you're not certain, so if you're certain that certainty is arrogance, then you're arrogant by definition, right?
[00:29:16]  All certainty is.
[00:29:17]  Is arrogance, are you certain of that?
[00:29:20]  If you say, yes, I'm certain that all certainty is arrogance, then you're arrogant, and that's bad.
[00:29:25]  And if you say, well, I'm not certain that all certainty is arrogance, then it is still rational to say that certainty could be truth without arrogance.
[00:29:37]  I mean, if we say the world is a sphere, we are certain it is true, it is valid, it is empirical, it is tested, it is witnessed, it is mathematically correct and in line with all theories of physics.
[00:29:50]  To say that the world is a sphere rather than say banana shaped is not arrogant.
[00:29:54]  Well, it could be banana shaped.
[00:29:55]  Have you ever considered the possibility that it could be banana shaped?
[00:29:58]  Blah, blah, blah.
[00:30:00]  So you can be certain and correct without arrogance.
[00:30:05]  It is arrogant to say it is impossible to be certain as well as being self contradictory.
[00:30:11]  If you say it is impossible to be certain, that is a statement of certainty.
[00:30:15]  You know, it's the old boring there's no such thing as the truth.
[00:30:18]  Is that a true statement?
[00:30:19]  Blah, blah, blah.
[00:30:20]  No, it is a cowardly disintegration of other people's certainty and a sort of arch, lip curling superiority to say that anybody who's certain is a fool or arrogant or has just failed to take other things into consideration.
[00:30:38]  Have you taken absolutely everything into consideration?
[00:30:41]  I mean, that, of course, is an impossible standard.
[00:30:44]  I don't know what it means to take everything into consideration.
[00:30:49]  I strongly suspect and strongly believe.
[00:30:51]  Doesn't actually mean anything other than, for God's sakes, don't be certain of anything.
[00:30:55]  Because if you're certain of stuff, then heaven forbid, I'm going to have to start making conclusions and fighting evildoers.
[00:31:05]  And if I fight evildoers, then those evildoers, oh, they might, they'll fight back and it'll be bad and wrong and blah, right?
[00:31:15]  So that is the basic reality of the situation.
[00:31:21]  It's sort of similar to the people who say, well, you know, we kind of live in flatland.
[00:31:26]  Like a two dimensional space.
[00:31:30]  And God, you see, is vertical or he's up from flatland, and the people who are in flatland can't see up, can't conceive of up, and so on, right?
[00:31:39]  But you cannot claim that something cannot be perceived and then call it God.
[00:31:49]  You can't say that something is impossible for the human mind to process, but it has the characteristics of omniscience, all powerful, all good, interferes with human relationships.
[00:32:00]  Responds to prayer, blah, right?
[00:32:03]  Cares about humanity, loves you very much.
[00:32:05]  Like, nope.
[00:32:06]  If you're going to create a dimension called X, which is inaccessible to reason and the senses, to any kind of empirical testing, any kind of rational analysis, if you're going to create a dimension called X that is the opposite of everything that we know, then you can't say anything about it because you have, of course,
[00:32:32]  Defined X and its contents as completely inaccessible to human reasoning and the human senses.
[00:32:41]  In other words, you've created a realm wherein nothing can be known.
[00:32:46]  It is the opposite of human knowledge.
[00:32:49]  Or to put it another way, you've created a realm where the opposite of reason and evidence is the truth.
[00:32:58]  So all you've done is to find non existence.
[00:33:02]  As potential existence, and you defined anti rational as potentially consistent, you have simply created an imaginary world of opposites.
[00:33:14]  Something can exist despite the complete absence of empirical evidence.
[00:33:19]  Something can exist despite being self contradictory, violating a number of Aristotle's basic laws of physics.
[00:33:27]  So if you're going to make up a schizophrenic, insane world, people who believe the opposite of the truth. Are insane, right?
[00:33:37]  People who think that there are things there when they're not there are hallucinating.
[00:33:40]  They are mentally ill.
[00:33:42]  They are schizophrenics.
[00:33:42]  They are psychotics or having some kind of psychotic break.
[00:33:47]  People who hear voices when there isn't anyone talking have derangement.
[00:33:52]  They have a mental illness.
[00:33:54]  They have a brain problem in the same way that people who experience pain have a medical issue for the most part, right?
[00:34:05]  My back is killing me.
[00:34:06]  Okay, well, something's not working right with your back.
[00:34:08]  So people have just created a world that doesn't exist where the opposite of truth is truth.
[00:34:18]  And it is a realm wherein we put things that are false, anti rational, self contradictory, and against reason and against evidence.

=== Worlds Where Truth Fails (04:30) ===

[00:34:29]  And it basically is saying, well, what if the opposite of truth was truth?
[00:34:33]  Well, the opposite of truth is falsehood.
[00:34:36]  What if the opposite of empirical evidence was existence?
[00:34:40]  Well, the opposite of empirical evidence is non existence.
[00:34:46]  If I open the door and walk through the doorway, the reason I open the door is I can't walk through the door.
[00:34:50]  The door is not present in the doorway after I've opened it, so I can walk through the doorway.
[00:34:54]  It's like, well, what if there was a realm where you could walk through the doorway?
[00:35:00]  You could walk through the door, but not through the doorway.
[00:35:03]  In other words, the door would be open and you wouldn't be able to walk through.
[00:35:07]  But then when you close the door, you would be able to walk through.
[00:35:11]  Okay?
[00:35:12]  So you've just created an idea that is the opposite of truth, reason, and evidence.
[00:35:20]  You've created an imaginary alternate dimension where the opposite of truth is truth, the opposite of existence is existence.
[00:35:27]  I mean, you've created an insane asylum and called it epistemology.
[00:35:33]  Well, metaphysics, really, the nature of reality.
[00:35:35]  Imagine a realm where everything was opposite.
[00:35:40]  Things that didn't exist existed, and things that did exist didn't exist, and things that were self contradictory existed, and things that were not self contradictory didn't exist.
[00:35:50]  I mean, honestly, people pull this stuff and try and spread and share this stuff.
[00:35:57]  And they are courting and spreading craziness, mental illness, mental dysfunction.
[00:36:03]  I guess you could make an imaginary realm where the opposite of the truth was the truth.
[00:36:10]  And you could make an imaginary realm where the opposite of existence was existence.
[00:36:16]  Yeah, I mean, we can't really conceive of that.
[00:36:18]  So you're creating a realm of opposites.
[00:36:21]  Okay.
[00:36:22]  But you can't say anything about that realm.
[00:36:24]  And there's no evidence that that realm exists or we can access it.
[00:36:28]  Or has any reality whatsoever.
[00:36:32]  It's like trying to base physics on your nightly dreams.
[00:36:35]  You can't do it.
[00:36:37]  And so when people say God exists beyond space and time, they're saying that there's something that is not existence outside of existence.
[00:36:48]  There is something that is not existence that is existence.
[00:36:52]  Everything is subject to time.
[00:36:55]  And what people are saying is there are things outside of time.
[00:37:00]  That exists.
[00:37:02]  Everything that exists is subject to time.
[00:37:05]  That's one of the characteristics of existence.
[00:37:07]  If you could imagine something that appeared and disappeared in the same instance, that would be pretty much the same as non existence.
[00:37:15]  I could say that there are tiny things materializing and vanishing in front of me as I walk and talk.
[00:37:22]  It would be the same as them not existing at all.
[00:37:25]  Everything that exists has to be measured, which means it exists throughout a period of time.
[00:37:30]  And so existence is consistency, logical consistency.
[00:37:36]  It's not a thing and its opposite at the same time.
[00:37:38]  Existence is logical consistency.
[00:37:41]  Existence is empirical observation, the capacity to be detected by empirical observation.
[00:37:48]  Even if you can't see the thing itself directly, like gravity, you can see the effects of the thing, which is mass attracting mass.
[00:37:59]  So everything that exists is logically consistent.
[00:38:02]  Everything that exists is empirically observable in some manner, or the effects thereof.
[00:38:09]  You can't see a black hole, you can see the effects.
[00:38:12]  And everything that exists is subject to time.
[00:38:17]  So it basically is just an exercise in mental derangement and self flagellation to say, yes, but maybe that which exists is self contradictory, not subject to time, and not subject to empirical observation, and not subject to Time.
[00:38:35]  Well, you've just taken the definition of non existence and say, well, what if that which doesn't exist exists?
[00:38:41]  And that's mental illness.
[00:38:42]  I mean, it's mental illness.
[00:38:43]  I view people as mentally ill, like, and not only mentally ill, but coughing and spraying their mental illness upon others because they're spreading this brain eating virus.
[00:38:57]  What if the opposite of truth was truth?

=== Rejecting Intellectual Corruption (01:43) ===

[00:38:59]  Well, you can't say that.
[00:39:02]  What if the opposite of going north was going north?
[00:39:05]  It's like, by definition, that's just not what it is.
[00:39:08]  You're proposing something self contradictory in its very essence and definition.
[00:39:13]  Don't do that.
[00:39:14]  Don't do that.
[00:39:15]  Don't have and spread mental illness.
[00:39:18]  Don't have and spread craziness, corruption.
[00:39:22]  You are hamstringing the human mind.
[00:39:26]  You are a brain virus attacking the rational consistency of life and thought.
[00:39:32]  It's wretched.
[00:39:33]  And the reason why you don't want to define evil and corruption is because in the harm that you're doing, you are malevolent and corrupt.
[00:39:41]  So the reason why people don't want to define good and evil and truth and falsehood.
[00:39:46]  Is that they are corrupt liars.
[00:39:48]  And any more than people who make their money from counterfeiting are going to work very hard to build and develop a counterfeit detection machine, people who lie and hurt and corrupt others.
[00:39:59]  This is a form of philosophical or intellectual sadism.
[00:40:02]  Of course, you have it.
[00:40:05]  It is a form of intellectual, moral, and philosophical sadism.
[00:40:09]  And the sadist doesn't want people to avoid his cruelty.
[00:40:14]  So.
[00:40:15]  He will define the truth as being uncertain.
[00:40:21]  There's no such thing as certainty.
[00:40:23]  He would be perfectly certain about that.
[00:40:24]  And then, like all corrupt people, he wants to create a rule and immediately exempt himself.
[00:40:28]  So I hope that makes sense.
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[00:40:41]  Thanks, everyone.
[00:40:42]  Bye.