WTW7: Is Wokeness a Religion? Two Old Men Yell at Cloud
It's a Woke Monster of the Week! Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins take turns giving each other public handies while they debate the most important question of 2014. That is - Has the Left gone too far? Dawkins lies about the one thing he should be an expert in in order to outdo Peterson's transphobia. Fortunately we have the Richard Dawkins (Eli Bosnick) to read his own shitty Substack and get to the bottom of this whole thing. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress Green M&M will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode seven.
And before we get to it, some updates for you.
So I'm realizing that only the patrons and only the patrons who would have listened to the bonus that I did are really informed as to what's going on here.
I realize I didn't really talk about it on the normal feed.
So apologies for that.
To sum up, after doing the first, you know, five or six episodes of this show, I've realized that it's much more an art than a science.
It's something that doesn't strictly abide by a weekly schedule.
I don't think there's any way of that because there's no way to know what it's going to be before I get into it.
I think it's the nature of trying to do something like investigative journalism.
I think there's a reason why the stories you hear covered on New York Times Daily or the Washington Post podcast, often those are, you know, Four months of reporting and stuff like that.
I'm not going to flatter myself that I'm doing that level of thing, but it is, I think, telling that it's, you know, you have different irons in the fire and they develop how they develop.
And so what I told the patrons was, I'm still going to do my absolute best to maintain the same number of posts in the month, somehow.
They might just be clumpy.
And I need to do that because that's how I get paid anyway, and I need to get paid, unfortunately.
So, I will end up with likely 4, 5, 6, somewhere in that range.
Could be 4, could be 5, could be 6, I don't know.
Somewhere in that range of episodes per month.
But it's not always going to be perfectly even by the week.
And perhaps it'll be the kind of thing where it's like, here's a bunch, you know, and then you can binge them on your own leisure, either quickly or space amount.
We'll see.
And I actually have a decent amount recorded.
But what I wanted to do after finally finishing the James Webb series, which was just so much And then doing the Pizza Fires episode, which I thought was really fun and one-offs like that will be good.
I realized that I've started this new show and I've yet to do an episode that is what I envisioned the show to be.
I mean, I would say actually, perhaps episode one, Elevator Gate, is the closest thing.
You know, I envisioned taking a anti-woke controversy, showing you how it was reported or how it was shared and all that, and then giving you the truth of the matter, whether or not that's a full debunking or maybe it's a partial bunking.
Who knows?
That's what I envisioned.
And I have some other stuff recorded, but they were not quite that.
There's still it's all stuff I think is really good and I want to share, but I got something in my mind to where I was like, you know, I need to do an example of what the show is like.
I need to do that.
And so I started research on a story and as always, it just took off into a bunch of different stuff.
I can't wait to do this one.
It's a fun story in that it has everything that I expect to cover on the show.
I don't want to spoil too much more, but it did branch off into other stories, and I just need to see where it goes before I get it out.
And so what I was going to do was wait until that's done, but it's getting on and the month is getting long in the tooth, so I thought I will relent and post another one-off This one I think you're going to really enjoy.
The other week, Richard Dawkins posted that he did an advertisement that he was going to answer Jordan Peterson's questions on his Substack, which I thought was really bizarre.
We get more into it in the show.
But the topic was, is Wokeness a religion, which is certainly right on topic for the show.
And of course, by very popular request, we've gotten Eli Bosnick back to play the role of Richard Dawkins.
It's Eli at his Dawkinsist for the whole episode.
So it's so much fun.
I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed it.
So why don't you listen to Eli and Lydia and me break down this whole is wokeness a religion thing that you would think came from 2014, but actually still came from now.
And in the meanwhile, I'll be working on this next story.
I also have another three hour recording that's I need to figure out how to how to get to you folks in the best way that makes sense.
And we have a bonus plan for the month.
So there's so much good stuff.
The best way to keep up with it all and to have, you know, ad free shows and more stuff than everyone else is to go to patreon.com slash where there's woke.
Thank you so much to the supporters.
I love you so much, and you're the reason the show happens.
If you can't do that, hey, maybe share the show with someone.
Give a recommendation to someone to, hey, if you heard about the James Webb thing, you know, something.
Whatever it may be, that would be equally awesome, and I'd appreciate it so much.
All right, without further ado, let's talk about Richard.
Let's talk to Richard Dawkins, actually.
We'll get him on the line, and we'll talk about wokeness being a religion.
Welcome back to Duncan on Dawkins, the new show.
Duncan on Dawkins, Duncan on Dawkins.
Why didn't that stroke work?
That's the theme song to Duncan on Dawkins, everybody. - Or did it?
Maybe it did.
Or maybe it did.
What's, yeah, how do you define working?
I don't know.
Yeah, exactly.
Why didn't it achieve its ultimate purpose?
Oh, Eli Bosnick, of course, is joining us.
Welcome back to Where There's Woke, sir.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Happy to be here.
Really enjoying the show.
I like listening to it.
It's a good podcast.
It's not as good, though, as our new podcast, Duncan on Dawkins, in which you just pretend to be Richard Dawkins.
We got several requests for you to just be Richard Dawkins for the rest of your life, actually.
Just role-play Richard Dawkins.
Honestly, Richard Dawkins pretty much is doing that.
Yeah, and you're not doing a great job.
Was he always this dumb?
Crap, dude.
Eli, what were we done to?
That's, you can't dig in that hole because it sucks.
Sometimes I look past through old stuff where I'm like, here's what people don't understand.
And I'm like, or maybe it's me.
But I don't believe in self-reflection.
So here we are.
We're right in this moment and he's wrong.
And that's all that I care about.
We're just going to reflect on Richard Dawkins.
He has no self-reflection either, so I think we need to do it for him.
And of course, we're joined by Lydia, Eli's wife.
No, my wife, Lydia.
How's it going?
Good, good, good, good.
I'm Eli's wife.
You're my... How does that work?
Yeah, I was going to say, there's not a... I don't know.
We can create that bit.
I don't think Lydia wants a part of that.
It's fine.
We're all together.
It's fine.
There it is.
Sweet, sweet Thrupple vibes.
Yeah, so we have a radar now for anything woke, which means just the whole internet.
You know, like, why did we set a Google alert for the internet, hun?
That doesn't make sense.
Yeah, it is pretty rough.
I feel like I probably need to expand how many results they email me to, because I think it's cutting stuff off.
It's like, all right, we're giving you the top 50, but you can't possibly want more than this.
Yeah, top 50 per hour.
Yeah.
It's like when people ask us if we're going to run out of Christian movies on GAM and I send them a screenshot of our 750 movie list and they're like, oh, okay.
Yeah, nevermind.
That's funny.
I actually was worried about that early on too.
You run out of the God's Not Dead.
Eventually.
I'm not, have you run out of them?
I was gonna say, they're making another one right now!
How many times do you have to tell us he's not dead?
Like, I guess just tell us when he is dead, then.
I don't know.
Save you a few movies.
I have said, because we have a couple of, like, one-step connections to David A. R. White, and I have told those people, just communicate to him, like, look, we're both doing great here.
Like, just put us in your movie.
You can win your fight against us.
It doesn't matter.
We have fun with the fact that you put us in your movie.
You have fun with whatever the fuck you're doing.
It's a win-win-win for everybody.
Oh, I took it a different way.
I thought it was like, you're the police and the gang members and you're like, yeah, we'll let you...
Keep doing crime because then we get to keep getting funding and crack.
It's like a fake.
Well that too.
He keeps making shit movies.
You keep making fun of him and you're both in on it.
Like the reveal is you're actually best friends and it's a business model for both of you.
Yeah, I always tell people, and people don't believe, we were the saddest when Pat Robertson died.
That was a big source of our income.
Well, that's of course God of Movies, the show we're mainly referencing there, and you absolutely have to check out Eli on that if you haven't.
I think 100% of people have on listening to the show, so we'll assume they have.
Nah, you got some fresh ones.
You got some fresh people who want the real scoop on New York City pizza ovens.
Yeah, from the podcast that brought you that.
Today on our WOCO meter, our fucking Google alert that tells us everything ever posted on the internet, Richard Dawkins made a weird, like, announcement on Substack the other day.
It was like a pre-announcement thing that he was going to respond to, like, a fucking tweet by Jordan Peterson.
Yeah.
What have we come to?
Hon, did you look into any of the context for this?
Yeah, so essentially it's Twitter back and forth, Jordan Peterson's preferred medium in addition to videos, right?
And Richard Dawkins had posted, you know, just that the God in the Old Testament, you know, is horrible, horrible, horrible.
Which I think we could all agree with.
And Jordan Peterson responded, that's actually doing harm.
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
And there was like some Twitter back and forth going on there.
Jordan Peterson said, you know, I'm happy to debate you anytime, anywhere.
Name the place.
I'll go donate.
All the proceeds to charity if we ticket it, but I'm in it to talk.
And I guess there was just that back and forth where Richard Dawkins then essentially said, you know, like, to properly respond to some of the things that Jordan Peterson is saying on Twitter, I need more characters than Twitter.
Like, I don't think he's going to thread things.
I don't know that he knows how to do that.
He doesn't know how to thread.
Yeah, yeah.
So he took to his Substack to do a proper response.
Yeah, and the main heading is, is wokeness a religion?
That's the main one.
And I love it too, because they always... Okay, Eli, in this process of wondering whether or not we've actually been dumb this whole time, one thing that really is irking me lately is all the trappings of trying to look smart all the time.
Jordan Peterson is a dumb person's idea of a smart person.
We all agreed there.
I mean, we saw right through him immediately.
Some other people took a little time and then pretended they saw through him right away.
But Richard Dawkins, like he, I, you know, I thought he was smart.
I don't know if he still is, but it's all, once you take a little bit of a negative view, once you get a peek behind like how bad his reasoning is now, all of those little things he throws in there to try to look really bookish and smart and intellectual, they just sting that much more.
Cause then I'm like, was this just an act?
We're fucking Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Innocence.
Do I have to watch this movie if you're going to reference it every podcast?
Damn it.
What?
Martin McDonough!
You're not watching Martin McDonough?
Lydia, what's going on here?
We've watched the other ones.
Yeah, we watched Three Bow Boards and... Wasn't there another one?
Yeah, overrated.
You can't call yourself a theater nerd and not watch everything Martin McDonough puts out regardless of quality.
Well, good, I don't call myself a theater.
It's like how we listen to everything Sara Bareilles sings, no matter what it is.
We were like, waitress!
Fucking love it!
What's it about?
It's about a waitress, right?
This is important stuff.
Pie!
It's about pie.
Which I lull in.
Exactly, it's about pie.
So, Jordan Beerson tweets, does woke count as a religion?
Sir!
A serious question, which is like, nobody talks like that.
You're pretending, they just want to try to look smart.
Sir!
Ah, hereby, sir, doth wokeness count as a religion?
And so that's the opening salvo.
And right away, you know, this is, of course, the answer for Jordan, for Dawkins, for Jordan Peterson is going to be, yeah, yeah, it's a religion, which unlocks right away my favorite thing that religious people ever do, which is try to insult other people by calling them the thing they are.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Every Republican accusation is a confession.
Well, but it's worse.
It's like if, you know, let's say if you and I are progressives and then we see someone doing something, I don't know, stupid and we're like, yeah, that's progressivism if you think about it.
Gotcha.
Like, wait, but you're, you're that though.
You're that.
That's the thing you do.
Yeah.
It's going to be huge news when they realize that Christianity is a religion.
I wonder if that would be the next.
And that Jordan Peterson is, in fact, promoting it.
But, you know, that grift got old.
And so we're going to spend a lot of Digital Inc.
bits on Jordan Peterson, both Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins, but this was fun because this was all over.
It's woke, it's a religion, and the worst thing is they've been asking the same fucking question since 2014.
Like, am I crazy?
Yep.
It's the same jokes, it's the same bits.
How are they not exhausted?
That's my question.
Don't they ever wake up and they're eating breakfast and they see some college student crying on a YouTube video and they're like, Fuck, I gotta do a take on this.
Why?
The Reinhardt U student represents the new religion of attack helicopter.
Well, look at that, 100 likes on Twitter.
Fuck!
A thousand million trillion likes on Twitter.
Yeah, I would be the guy who takes off the mascot helmet, the big head that's on me that's like the anti-woke thing at the end of the day, and you're sweating your ass off from doing the same fucking tired routine day in, day out, nine shows a week.
And I would just put a gun to my head.
I don't know how you do this same thing over and over.
And they say it, you know, I'll give them credit.
They deliver it as though it's their amazing realization that they've had a million times.
It's the same shit, but I don't think we've covered it on this show yet, oddly enough.
So we get to hear these for the first time.
There's going to be some people in the audience, wow, those are some really good points.
I've never, I haven't heard those every day since 2015.
What are we doing?
We don't want to send people down the Jordan Peterson rabbit hole.
Hold on, this is just in.
I'm hearing we've got Richard Dawkins on the line.
Hello!
It's me, technically Lord Richard Dawkins, here to give you my amazing opinions.
Are your opinions on biology, evolution, like a bunch of the cool science-y stuff that you know?
No, no.
No, it's on Twitter.
I have some opinions on Twitter.
Now, Thomas, I must take issue with you.
You've allowed a woman in here.
What if her nightshade contracts a bear?
A bear could come rolling in here in a moment.
I haven't a pot of honey to my name!
Lydia, will you just move down?
Are you in your moonshade?
Good.
There you go.
Excellent.
Alright.
Dr. Dawkins, we brought you here to please, would you read your... Please, please, Mr. Dawkins.
My doctorate is bullshit.
Please, Mr. Dawkins.
Most of my evolutionary biology is stolen from other people.
Actually, while I have you here, are you still writing these or is one of your staffers using AI to just write the same shit from 2015 and just cash checks?
I'm so glad you asked.
Yes, so we have a chat GP anti-PC, is what we call it.
And what we did is we fed it just poison.
We didn't actually have to send it any, you know, text or anything.
We just sent it some poison.
And it began to vomit this, which I use as my sub stack and my Twitter and of course, my new video podcast, which I've labeled after Joseph Rogan, the philosopher Joseph Rogan.
On the most recent episode, I interview the rapist Peter Boghossian.
That's fun.
Tells us all about raping.
That's a lot of fun.
So check that out.
Don't forget to smash that like and subscribe button like a maid who's going to report you for insider trading.
Jump right in.
A colleague sent two challenges to me, posted by Jordan Peterson, suggesting I should respond.
I'm happy to do so, because I greatly respect Dr. Peterson's courageous stance against bossy, intolerant thought police whose Orwellian newspeak threatens enlightened rationalism.
And by that, of course, I mean he got famous for refusing to use the correct pronouns for college students in Canada.
Yep.
Anyways, I said Orwell, which means I need to repeat the plot of Orwell.
The hero of 1984, Winston Smith, was eventually persuaded by O'Brien.
Will I tell you who that character is?
No!
If the party wills it, A 2 plus 2 equals 5.
Winston had earlier found it necessary to stake out his credo.
Freedom is the freedom to say that 2 plus 2 makes 4.
If that is granted, all else follows.
Well, right away, I mean, Orwell...
equals bad and and it's a book so smart person saying thing bad right away i'm already convinced do we need to keep going because i think we've i think he's nailed it or well so far richard i've never so who is this or was anyone ever brought this up in this no one's ever brought it up before maybe it's an obscure book look what i know
And I haven't read that book, just like Richard Dawkins, but what I know about 1984 is that George Orwell was definitely advocating for a series of internet-empowered homophobes and transphobes to say whatever they want, whenever they wanted.
That is the core message of 1984.
It's conservative bigotry.
It's not the new Taylor Swift album.
Oh!
Can we somehow arrange for Jordan B. Peterson to date Taylor Swift ever so shortly so that she can release a barely cloaked diss album so that more than 53% of this country now understand what a piece of shit he is?
Oh my god, that would be amazing.
Just turn it into a TikTok sound.
Why don't we get to the next paragraph in which you instantly ruin your entire case and then for some reason continue to write about it, if you don't mind, Mr. Dawkins.
Thank you so much.
All right.
My answer to the question is no.
Ah, done.
Okay.
Bye!
Oh, by the way, that was, sorry, the picture of the tweet was right above that.
I should have introduced it.
Does woke count as a religion, sir?
Serious question.
And that's your response.
No.
Okay.
Done.
Well, there's a bunch more words after that, though, for some reason.
Yes.
No, I have more words because Substack pays me by the word.
If you include supernaturalism in your definition of a religion and a dear colleague takes a stand on this distinction, But the following three similarities are enough for me to justify a yes answer to Jordan's question.
Oh my goodness, someone put no earlier in my own essay.
Shit.
Fuck.
Where's that delete key?
Never mind.
The first of the three characteristics of religion in general.
The other two are akin to Christianity in particular.
One, heresy hunting.
Ruthlessly uncompromising, relentlessly unforgiving persecution of heretics.
Kill a TERF today!
If you see a TERF, punch them in the fucking face, etc.
There is an orthodoxy, not written down in one particular scripture, but understood by all votaries.
I don't know if you were caught that there at the end.
Votaries is a big fancy word for means.
People.
Oh, sorry, I have to clarify, I'm not doing a bit right now, because it sounds like I'm about to be doing a Richard Dawkins silly character, but I should clarify, I'm now word for wording.
You'll find yourself in the Twitter stack, belted with abusive epithets as a bigot.
And you may well find yourself out of a job as universities, governments, and businesses queue up to signal their virtue.
Such latter-day tokemandism.
We're not smart enough to know what that is.
Do you mind?
I'm afraid you're going to need to look it up.
Tokemandism means to be like a toke.
Oh, former Grand Inquisitor, Tomás de Torquemada.
Oh, well that solidifies the case right there, because... Yeah, obviously.
Yeah.
Such latter-day Torquemadism rams home the fact that what we have here is a cult, with its own religiously enforced dogma.
Dogma that makes no sense to anyone outside, but which resonates perfectly with cult insiders, the evangelical leaders, and their sheep-like followers.
Why is a white woman in America vilified and damned if she identifies as black, but lauded if she identifies as a man?
That's topsy-turvy, because race really is a continuum, whereas sex is one of the few genuine binaries of biology.
Why do journalists, police, and prison authorities respectively kowtow to a convicted rapist by referring to her as she, even as she uses her erect penis to assault yet more women.
Why do so many of us go along with a distortion of language so perverse that it comes perilously close to 2 plus 2 equals 5?
We know the answer.
Cowardice.
Too many of us are afraid of the baying mob, but not me!
Technically a Lord Richard Dawkins, I am brave.
This is insanely melodramatic.
Like, this is absolutely ridiculous.
I'm glad you clarified.
All that was word for word.
That would have been... For one, no offense, Eli, I don't think you could have come up with something that... No one could, yeah.
That would be pretty hard.
So that was number one, heresy hunting.
First, just a quick question to Mr. Dawkins.
Hello.
Mr. Dawkins, while we still have you, I see a bunch of quotes there like, her and her erect penis to assault more women.
Do you, was that, those are quotes.
Do you have a source or like anything that like you, like I could look at to see what that's from or?
What?
What now?
Did the case happen?
Oh, yes.
I have a bad source.
Yes, I have a bad source.
It's actually quite bad right now.
I got it during my reprise in Thalon.
And I really... No, like, you have like a link I could click to look at that story, which would then obviously be bullshit.
But, you know, like, at least a link would... Mr. Smith, if you wish to click my link, you'll have to wait until we are out of the air.
My goodness, I have not been propositioned such stint.
Michael Shermer stayed at my Thalon.
He's also a rapist.
I know a lot of rapists!
Almost exclusively, that's so weird.
That's crazy, that's crazy.
One second, I need a second.
Michael Thurman, no, he's a rapist.
Peter Boghossian, a big ol' rapist.
I don't know any non-rapists.
Thomas, will you be my friend?
I need a non-rapist friend.
You're going to be my token non-rapist.
No, I don't want to break your streak.
I know you'll be referring to me every other day.
Some of my best friends have actually not raped someone, weirdly enough.
All right.
Well, thanks, Mr. Dawkins.
Maybe put Eli back.
I will too.
I will be asleep until you need me again.
Guys, he brought a hammock with him, and he's just, he like put nails into my walls, and he's just asleep, but he's like curled in it, like he's spun it around.
I assume he has a manservant that did all that, I don't think he- Yeah, no, he's got six.
Dainty little lord hands.
Yeah, it's weird.
I don't know if he can do that.
He dresses them in like speedos and stuff, and they've all got like his logo on it, it's really, it's pretty upsetting.
So, I mean, we can talk about point one here, and obviously in doing so, we'll also talk about why none of this is valid in any way.
Yeah, heresy hunting.
Here we go.
This is the big case for why wokeness counts as a religion.
By the way, again, this is his answer in agreeing with someone who openly subscribes to a religion.
So you would think that would be a little weird to be like, yeah, got him.
This thing is the thing that you also do.
That you also do.
That's ridiculous.
But the key error here, and it's just so embarrassing to see someone who was once a regarded scientist make, is just you don't get to just count whatever example you want of any bad thing as emblematic of an entire side.
And then put that all together in like a big ball and then count a whole group of people.
By the way, how does he define who this is?
Do we know who he's talking about?
Do we know the boundaries of the group of people at all?
Do we know anything or is it just...
If I take the five worst things I saw on Twitter and call them one person that is in control of the world, then I get to make all these points about them.
It's really actually, it's one step removed from lizard people.
I've been listening to too much Marsh.
I know lately I've been referencing him in every single podcast, but like, It's not that far removed from- It's why it leads to lizard people, right?
The joke is always like it always comes back to the Jews, but that's like, cause you do need a boss, right?
Just like fucking Hero of a Thousand Faces, you need a villain.
And they always are like, well, you know, there's a bunch of people, a bunch of people, a bunch of people, George Soros, right?
And George Soros is a fucking paper's width away from the Jews, which is a paper's width away from lizards.
Yeah.
Just a couple things that I really want to point out here, because I think it's actually super important that people understand that, like, this isn't Richard's just, like, difference of opinion, right?
Because he's not, like, mad and doesn't like wokeism.
He actively lies about the thing that he is an expert about, right?
Uh, that's topsy-turvy, because race really is a continuum, whereas sex is one of the few genuine binaries of biology.
So that, factually untrue.
Right?
Factually untrue.
And you know who really, really knows that on a scientific level?
Ooh, a biologist?
Richard Dawkins.
Yeah, Richard Dawkins.
An evolutionary biologist, or at least a science representative in that field.
So like, It's important when we recognize, like, because it's easy to just be like, you know, folks are just folks.
And I bet if Richard just met the right person or did the right thing, you know, he shook a hand and gave a hug.
He just met the right stroke, I think.
Right, exactly.
If he just had the right stroke, he would, but like, it's important.
It's so important for us to value, like when we talk about this stuff, not only is Richard lying, but he knows he's lying and he doesn't care.
Well, yeah, he gets to weaponize his credentials, right?
What is in it for him at this point?
He's on death's door.
Just a big J.K.
Rowling fan.
Big, big Harry Potter fan.
That's something I plan to look more in on this show is the weird, there's like a UK-centric transphobia, like TERFdom over there.
Is it in the House of Lords?
I don't know what it is, but it's like there's a weird Jesus, man.
kinship over there that they all intensely they're so upset about trans people existing to a degree that's just i mean you could be like anti-trans and still look at those people and be like well okay they should get a fucking life though like they're just all day you got a billionaire you got you got jk rowling billionaire bajillion kajillion million zillionaire and And she's all day just threatened by the existence of someone who wants these different pronouns.
Of children.
Yeah, like.
Of children who loved her books.
It's a mind virus.
Who loved her books.
It really is a mind virus.
This would be like if one day I was like, fuck April Puff.
And just like, my whole life, and everyone was like, why are you being so mean to April Puff?
And I was like, fucking April Puff is coming for your eyeballs!
And everyone would be like, April Puff really liked you!
And I'm like, no she didn't!
April Puff tried to kill me!
She has threatened my life!
The thing that's so crazy, and it's core to understanding transphobes, right?
Because transphobes, we romanticize them as like these, oh gosh, you know, some women, they've been through, well, a tough time, and they hear these new things, and well, gosh golly oh molly, they make the wrong decisions.
And it's like, no, no, no.
Every transphobe you will ever meet is entirely aware of why they are wrong.
They just want someone to beat up on.
They just want someone to rough up.
And J.K.
Rowling looked into her audience, saw a bunch of trans kids who, guess what, really identified with this boy who has to live in a closet under the stairs and finally reveals that he's this new magical thing that his family doesn't understand.
She saw that.
She saw the opportunity to open that world up for her audience.
And she fucking changed it because she fucking got in trouble.
She got in trouble for four minutes.
She could have just shut the fuck up.
And because she got in trouble for four minutes, she will be remembered for this.
She will destroy her legacy.
This is why I pay Callie $100 a year to chop my head off with a samurai sword if I ever go broke.
Oh, Callie, is there a group deal we could do?
Yeah.
I think it would require we have to go to the same physical location.
That's fair.
Like, we're reimbursed for travel.
Callie, let's talk.
They could just do a pass-through at the pajama party every year.
Oh, there you go.
Just take a quick attendance.
Turf inspector.
Transwomen are women.
Transwomen are women.
I mean, so right away, sex, not a binary.
Obviously there's lots of different ways, but even if you want to say broadly... Oh, one of my favorite notes on that, by the way, I'm sure that everyone's seen, but just in case you haven't, is the Adams one.
It's one of my favorite memes, and I love it because we live in a weird world where, on one hand, the internet is probably ruining all of our lives.
On the other hand, Things get distilled, like really good arguments get distilled, actually, through a mimetic process that Richard Dawkins could have once, his job, by the way, could have just been, he coined the phrase meme.
He coined the term, this person we're making fun of right now, coined the term meme.
You know what anyone else would be doing if that was their thing?
Just be the meme scientist for the rest of your life.
He could make an appearance on every news channel anytime the olds don't understand the internet.
He could get on- Selling t-shirts all about meme.
Make sure you check it out.
What up?
It's me, your boy, R-Dog.
I got a new coin offering coming out this Thursday.
Everyone check it out.
I'm pulling it.
Meme coin.
Oh boy.
This is my favorite drag queen meme, I'm first.
Everyone, check it out.
Jokes aside, you could even do a serious version of that, which is continue to study memetics on the internet.
Which is only getting more rich and saturated.
The reason I even brought it up is because the counter argument to this is so fucking perfect and funny, and it gets distilled through evolution, through an actual selection process on the internet.
Yeah.
To like the perfect meme.
That's why there's a meme for everything.
You just have to find it.
This one I love.
It says, atoms are binary.
They're either intended to be hydrogen or helium.
We can't just scrap this worldview just because of a handful of exceptions.
And that shows a graph, types of atoms in the universe.
And it says hydrogen, 74%, helium, 25%.
Other 1%.
Yeah.
Right.
Which is accurate.
I mean, yeah.
Like, okay, it's the other that's pretty important, though.
Like, it's not, you know, like, it's actually kind of important that there's other Adams.
And there's also, the other thing I wanted to mention is the, like, cowardice part at the end, right?
Which is a very interesting way to speak to his audience, right?
Because His audience and him, right?
Again, he's being dishonest.
He's a professional communicator.
He knows what he's doing.
He's providing a brand.
But his audience are people.
Many of them are mentally ill.
Many of them are sad.
Some of them are bad people.
But most of them are somewhere in the middle, just sort of making their way through the world.
And those people are often plagued by doubts because they look at culture around them.
They see culture.
They see movies and TV and the people they admire saying, hey, you're wrong about this thing.
And Richard's doing them a real service with this cowardice line at the end because what he's saying is, hey, everyone secretly agrees with you.
Yeah.
Oh, God.
They're just too afraid to say it.
And that's a huge part of conservatism is like, hey, you're brave for saying this because everybody actually thinks it.
Yeah.
So we're several steps into the light.
And like to your point, Eli, so many of those people will just see this man with his credentials and think, well, I guess if he's saying he's literally a fucking biologist, if he's saying it's got to be true.
That's why it's pretty harmful when you lie directly about the thing you're an expert in.
That tends to cause problems.
Like the one climate scientist or whatever who will lie about that, or the one doctor who will say vaccines cause autism or whatever.
Nevermind that they're instantly discredited and they don't even get to be a doctor anymore.
It does a lot of damage.
Can we do that with Doc and Spidey chat?
No, probably too late.
I've got great news for you, Thomas.
We take away his any credentials he ever had.
So it's two levels of that.
Not only that, we're not talking about sex.
You could even just grant for fun, like, OK, yeah, sure.
Biological sex, pretty much a binary, just biologically speaking, even though it's not pretty much doing a lot of work there.
But whatever.
You could lie.
We'll set that aside.
Yeah.
You could lie about biology as a biologist.
Even if that were the case, sex is not gender.
It's the simplest thing in the entire fucking world.
And this is why it gets so weird.
It's quasi-religious.
Dawkins has turned into a Christian here because he's demanding that, oh no, there's some like fucking The science god came down and told us that if you have certain chromosomes, you have to be a he.
And if you have other ones, you have to be a she.
And who are we, mere mortals, to disobey God's command?
No, that doesn't make any fucking sense, Dawkins.
Like, that's why we got into you in the first place, was not having to listen to bullshit like that.
Yeah.
Find yourself in the Twitter style.
I mean, it's the same victim mentality.
Again, what are we comparing this to?
Who?
So is there a side?
The 40 states that have anti-trans bathroom bills or the fucking like what?
Tell you what Dawkins, you put your meanest tweets versus making it illegal to get trans kids medical care in Florida.
Like, is this the game we want to play?
But again, like, It's tough because are we speaking to the people who fall for Richard's arguments?
I hope so.
Are we speaking to Richard?
No, he's doing it.
This would be like, come on, Pepsi.
You know you're worse than Coke.
Like Pepsi's never going to be like, you got me, guys.
You did a podcast and we changed our mind.
It's too sweet.
It's too fucking sweet.
We're sorry.
OK, we don't know.
We don't know what the fuck we're doing.
You're right.
I know we're just trying to go for the Pepsi drinkers, I guess.
I don't know if that's a fair analogy because I Yeah, I like Diet Pepsi.
But it's weird.
We're going for the Coke.
Not to get too meta about our own careers, because that's not what this is about, but we're not even going for the Pepsi drinkers.
We're going for the Coke drinkers who are occasionally at a soda fountain while someone fills up on Pepsi so that they can be like, oh, you should listen to Where There's Coke.
Oh, God, so good!
That's so good!
The episode's over.
The episode's over.
Hey everybody, thanks for having me on, guys.
This has been fun.
Gaudible Movies, Scathing Atheist, Dear Old Dads, D&D Minus.
Finale's coming up next month.
Check it out.
So good.
The last point, I know this sentence cannot be fucking serious.
Why do journalists, police, and prison authorities respectfully kowtow?
By the way, Lydia, you had a note on kowtow.
Yeah, we probably shouldn't be using kowtow.
It's not, you know, like, like, incredibly derogatory, but it is related to a Mandarin word that means to, like, bow respectfully.
It's very, like, specific Chinese tradition, and some other Asian cultures also have a similar tradition.
But I was just reading some folks saying, like, why can't we just say acquiesce?
Yeah.
Why do we have to, you know, kind of Romanize this term?
Especially coming from someone like Richard Dawkins, who was actually there for the imperialism process.
Yeah, for the first cow.
Coming from a thousand-year-old British guy, like any sort of imperialist language doesn't come across well.
So yeah, respectfully acquiesce, we'll say.
To a convicted rapist.
Okay, stop right there, Dawkins.
Do you think we have an issue in this country with police and prison authorities being too respectful to trans people in prison?
Do you think that's, do you think if I Google that right now, what I will find is police officers and prison authorities being just too nice I just looked it up.
Florida prison officials make trans person head of prison.
That's crazy.
Yeah, my first Google was trans imprisoned and trapped.
Transgender prisoners are almost never housed according to their identity and investigation found.
That's putting many in danger.
Boy, if it's dangerous for trans people in the outside, which it is, imagine how fucking dangerous it is for trans people in goddamn prison.
Do you think they're just doing a bit?
Do you think they're like, oh, I know what I want to do.
I want to declare myself trans in a group of prisoners, like other inmates, just, just as a goof.
Just cause that'll get me good treatment in fucking prison.
Do you think that's something they're doing?
Or do you think- Just a high risk bet.
Yeah.
Eli, you're an expert on high-risk bits.
This is higher risk than I think you would ever do.
It's braver than even I would do, and I've tried to do some prison-based bits.
And you have put on a Dallas Cowboys cheerleading uniform, and this, I would say, is on par with that, at least.
Can I throw this out there, though?
Sure.
Okay?
If I was doing a blog, right, where I was trying to shit on people, I would not talk about overeating.
You know, I wouldn't talk about overeating.
And Richard's over here just throwing the word rapist around an awful lot for someone who, as a bit just now I mentioned, seems not to have a friend who's not a rapist.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, well, I want to clarify.
Like, I don't think he's ever been accused of anything, right?
No, he's not a rapist.
Every single friend that he still stands by.
Just the company you keep.
Come on, Richard.
I don't know.
All I'm saying is I wouldn't throw it around.
Shall we wake him up and bring him out for item number two here?
Wait, I have one more note.
I just wanted to jump back on the line.
No, it's not.
You will find yourself out of a job as universities, governments, and businesses queue up to signal their virtue.
Obviously, that's overly dramatic.
That rarely happens.
Sometimes it does.
But most recently with Budweiser, when they're trying to show inclusivity, right?
And it's a specific campaign that they did.
Well, no, no, it's worse than that, hun.
Okay, this is a good one to bring up.
Perfect comparison.
Glad you thought of it.
They talked about it a little on If Books Could Kill.
This was not even a campaign by Budweiser.
This thing that Budweiser got in trouble, in quotes, with the right for.
Do folks know this?
It was just like one person sent a customized fucking Budweiser can thing or whatever to a trans person.
It wasn't like, oh, Budweiser, we're the new trans beer.
There wasn't a bunch of it, which obviously not, because it's fucking Budweiser.
You think they went on like a pro-trans campaign, like a national pro-trans?
No, it was one custom thing they sent.
I think they sent like custom beers or whatever.
To influencers?
Yeah, like some influencers.
And so among that is a trans person who received probably a six pack of undrinkable beer.
And conservatives talk about heresy hunting, you fucking asshole!
Yeah.
Jesus Christ.
This is, by the way, this is just someone existing.
This is what the guy on If Books Could Kill pointed out.
I'm sure he's not the first, but it was the first place I heard it put this way, because I think I've gotten a little numb to it even.
The controversy here is just trans people existing.
It used to be some made up shit about a kid or a, you know, oh, they're something.
Now it's just, no, no.
They sent their beer to a trans person.
What's like, what's the contra, what is the thing that you're protesting?
You're just protesting the existence of trans people.
That sounds like heresy hunting to me.
Holy fucking shit.
That person got harassed forever.
Budweiser took a serious business hit over that.
So what are we comparing this to?
When we talk about, oh, wokeness is a religion.
Compared to fucking what?
The other side?
All right, Dawkins, wake up.
Wake up.
Eli, go wake up Dawkins.
I was having the most wonderful dream that it was 2003 and everybody didn't know I was a piece of shit.
Alright, here we go.
Number two, hereditary guilt.
One of Christianity's nastier doctrines is the notion that we are all, even tiny babies, born in sin.
Every baby inherits, via a long lineage of semen, according to St.
Augustine, the sin of Adam.
Augustine could not be expected to know that Adam never existed, and therefore could own neither sin nor semen.
Neither thin nor semen is the name of my new podcast coming out, everybody.
Check it out.
Smash that like button.
But post-Darwinian sophisticated theologians should know better, and their learned treatises are harder to respect.
And I put a little link here.
Oh, to assure us that he's still anti-Christianity, I guess.
The semen, yeah.
Today's original sins are slavery and colonial oppression.
Oh yes, no, because you know I like to cite my sources.
Anyway, today's original sins are slavery and colonial oppression.
All white people are born in sin, the sin of their ancestors.
From the moment they are born, all white people partake in the institutional racism, handed down like Adam Seaman.
Can you stop saying semen?
I have to clarify his exact words.
I'm not doing that.
Still in quoting, good to know.
Yep, still quoting.
From their great, great, great grandfathers, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.
Deuteronomy 5-9.
So, I guess what Richard, Richard you can go back.
Thank you.
Goodbye.
So here's what's interesting, right?
Is that original sin isn't real.
Yeah.
And I think Richard knows that slavery is.
Does he?
I hope so.
Why does he not?
I mean, he was physically, you made a joke before, but like he was physically present for colonial oppression.
Right?
It was handed down to him by nobody.
He was just literally, physically able as a child to visit places of colonial oppression.
It's like if Adam were still alive and was like, fucking, oh, you're gonna, you're gonna say I'm guilty of original sin.
Well, you are.
Yeah.
You were there.
You are.
You were there.
I mean, it's one thing if you want to argue with the other people born today, but like, you're still the guy, man.
Like you were, You literally are a lord, a little lord, Dawkins.
Okay, here's my slight defense of us circa 2009.
Eli, you ready?
Well, no, I won't include you in that, never mind.
Thank you, I was about to say, save yourself, Thomas.
Save yourself, there's not enough room on the door.
Regarding Richard Dawkins, my defense is, I think back then, even though I think we can usefully look back at what he was doing regarding Muslims, for example, and see some of the same terrible techniques.
And that's important.
I think we all, if you are an atheist, if you're somebody who followed him and you haven't tried to reconcile that a little bit, you know, at least done some examination, I encourage you to do it.
No, don't do any of that.
It's not as though everything he said...
For one thing, he didn't used to just lie about his exact specialty in order to make those points.
He didn't used to just say exactly wrong things about his specific fucking area of study in order to score cheap points against Muslims or something.
Like, at the very least.
Like, it's qualitatively different, just the dishonesty of his techniques now regarding wokeness.
And this hereditary guilt thing...
I mean, you know it's a bad argument when all of this can be solved with one sentence.
You can just be like, oh no, it's not that we're all guilty of sin or something that we, you know, like I'm not, I didn't do slavery.
I'm not guilty of it.
It's that some people did a while back and they And their descendants benefited a lot from that.
And on the other side, the people who were enslaved, they and their descendants sure didn't fucking benefit from that.
And that effect carries on.
And so maybe we should do something to try to reconcile that ever.
Done.
End of point.
Oh, okay.
It's so easily solved.
Nobody thinks that all white people are born guilty of slavery.
Nobody thinks that.
Literally fucking nobody thinks that.
And the way he phrases this, too, is sort of set up in a way to make it seem like all white persons are born in sin and born guilty, right?
And it becomes, like, more identifying for a white person reading this, perhaps, as opposed to, no, we're talking about systems.
We're talking about the entities of people, not the individual persons within those entities.
Well, it's like, OK, let's say, Eli, your dad stole my entire farm.
And then, like, bequeathed it to you, and dies.
And then, my children, Arlo and Phoebe one day, they come over.
Remy, he's got his own shit to do.
Arlo and Phoebe come over, and they're like, hey, your dad stole, like, here's the proof, like, literally just stole this from us.
Like, and we have nothing now, and your farm, you know what?
People grow weed on it now, so it's actually super profitable.
That seems pretty, like, don't you think, you know, maybe you owe us something?
Like, it was stolen and handed to you, and then you go off on a rant.
Oh, original, the semen!
The semen of Adam is in me!
It's like, no, it's not, I don't, again, you didn't do it.
I'm just covered in sinful semen, aren't I?
It's so funny that even in trying to make a metaphor just now, you made so much more an extreme example, right?
Because no one is asking that the people who are the family of stories get anything back.
They're just like, hey, would you mind acknowledging how difficult it's been so that we can build from it and fix those systems that Lydia was talking about?
And we're like, I'm just drenched in semen, aren't I?
Oh, look at me.
I'm trying to get it out of my eyes into this margarita glass so that I can drink it for the end of the short film, but I'm not going to.
You've got, fool me once, shame on you.
And Lydia, I love the point you made because, again, I think it's important, like, what's being sold to the Pepsi drinkers here, right?
What is he selling to his brand?
And what he's selling to his brand here is like, look, you're a racist.
That's why you follow me, right?
Because that's the cause of so much of it is, right?
You were born white, you got, oh, a transphobe or a homophobe, but you're a bigot.
You're a bigot, you got some bigot ideas.
And the truth of the matter is, if you grew up white in like a suburban environment, the chances that you do not have some bigotry is slim to none.
Slim to none.
Either you're Aaron Ra or you're a little bit of a bigot.
And so what he's telling that audience is, hey, they're coming for you.
They hate you personally.
Because the truth of the matter is, the fixes that are being proposed by social justice, by wokeness, are things that everyone agrees on, right?
When you do surveys and you're like, hey, should we make it easier for this?
Should we make it better for that?
That's why the brand has to be shifted from, hey, let's make it easier for those who have had a hard time of it, to they're coming to take the farm from you, right?
That's the thing that Dawkins is selling to his audience here.
Here's where I want to make just a recommendation for people who've said stuff a lot better and a lot smarter than I possibly could, which is an essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates called The Case for Reparations.
Holy shit, this was in 2014?
I wonder if he re-upped it, because there's no way I read this back then.
Oh, crazy.
Anyway, he might have put it in a book later on, and that's why I read it.
Anyway, it is incredible.
If you look at, like, the dynamic you just spoke of, Eli, the idea of, hey, no one's actually even asking for this, what we're asking, it's so much that times infinity.
These arguments go back forever, and from the very beginning, and I mean since slavery, and since slavery was abolished, and from the very beginning, The attitude has been immediately, oh, okay, you're just gonna punish white people for just, for owning slaves.
You're just like, like literally in like 18 fucking 70.
They're like, oh, you're just gonna, are you still mad about that?
You're just gonna punish.
And so they never did anything about it.
Like they would talk about it.
And to the point, I remember one of the, one of the points Ta-Nehisi Coates made in this essay that stuck with me for, you know, years later is, They won't even allow Congress to look into it.
Like they've tried to bring up bills to like, hey, should we like, you know, do a congressional like report on what reparations might look like?
Like, you know, which they do fucking all the time on stuff.
You know, they do a report on Hunter Biden's dick and his laptop and his fucking getting his dick stuck in his lap, all that shit.
They do that constantly.
They're currently doing a report.
They're doing a congressional hearing on aliens.
On aliens.
And it has been decades and decades that they won't even allow them to pass a bill or not even a bill to just look into it.
Yeah.
To just say, hey, what if we had some experts because we're Congress and we do this literally all the time and no one pays attention to it.
There's probably a billion of these reports done a year that we don't even hear about or read about because it's a totally normal thing.
But when it comes to reparations, you say that word and instantly every white person gets that Victim feeling of oh, you're gonna come after me.
Oh, I didn't do I was there You know and ruins the whole process and they have not even to the point where they can't even fucking look into it Imagine that imagine thinking that's a valid point Talk about these people who think they're freedom of speech warriors who are all that always we just freedom of ideas freedom of expression Okay, you know what?
They want to do about reparations.
They want to just like look at it like just literally just look at the now Never!
You can't do it!
It's hysterical.
That's what we're arguing against.
It's a long history of barely anything has ever been done to make up for some of these quote-unquote original sins.
We're all just covered in the semen of the fucking slave owners.
Of Thomas Aquinas.
And not only has nothing been done, we haven't even gotten to the step of like, okay, but could you let us write what it would look like if maybe we thought about, no, can't do that either.
And all along, people like Dawkins here have been the instruments of that.
What they do is they focus.
It's a pattern that goes back forever.
Focus as hard as you can on the people who have no power, who aren't getting this to happen.
Focus on the scariest ideas and writings you can find that they've done and say, they're going to do this.
"They're gonna do this." Meanwhile, they don't control Congress.
They don't control fucking anything.
They have no power.
And by the way, think about what that does to go that long with no institutional power.
Well, I think that has created this dynamic where, yeah, a lot of their ideas, there might be some anger behind it.
There might be some anger, there might be some frustration, there might be some feeling of like, well fuck, now we need to take extreme measure because nothing the fuck has ever happened.
And so that allows them, like Richard, people like Richard and others, to find even more extreme takes in their eyes and like use those to scare people even more, all the while What they're doing in Florida is banning education about fucking slavery even having existed.
Like, that's what's actually happening in the real world.
You're in the world of being scared of ideas, being scared of the possibility of looking into something like reparations.
Not necessarily tied to slavery, but there have been some instances with what reparations could look like and it not being, you know, literally taking stuff from other people.
Bruce's Beach in, you know, Southern California.
Was land that it was a beach resort owned by a black couple.
It was one of the only places where black folks could go and not be harassed, discriminated against, attacked in terms of like being on a beach in Southern California.
And it was just through eminent domain, the city took it from them.
And they just recently gave it back to the family.
They said they needed it for something, you know, back in 1924 or whatever.
We need it for something.
We need it for, um, racism.
Eminent domain.
Yeah.
And then they just, they owned it and did nothing with it for 30 years.
And then they ended up turning it into- Because they just didn't want black people there, right?
Correct.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, and then the, the couple like, you know, what are they going to do?
They, no legal recourse at that point.
They turned it into a lifeguard training facility.
And then through activism, Black Lives Matter and the protests that happened.
And the Twitter stalks.
We put them all on the Twitter stalks.
Yeah, they re-examined it and they're like, oh wow, that was a really shitty thing to do.
I can't believe we did that back in 1924.
We're going to fix that.
And so they gave the beach back to the closest descendants.
It was like the great-grandsons.
And then actually, recently, they sold it back to the city, or the county, I think, and got $20 million for it.
And it's, you know, an opportunity to make things right, right?
And that's a good model for what we could be looking at in other areas, too.
It's so great you bring that up, because I want to speak to—I bet you there are people listening, white people.
Who probably do get their hackles up.
Is that the phrase?
Like, they hear things like reparations and they, because of people fear mongering for their whole lives, they get scared.
Oh, that's going to mean someone taking something from me and giving, and they immediately go to, I've heard this from otherwise reasonable people.
They immediately go to, oh, oh, what if a black person moved here in like 1970 after they weren't, you know, they go to all these examples.
Yeah.
That are like the marginal, marginal, marginal thing.
And more often than not, and I have to confess, being a young conservative white kid, that's what I would have thought too.
Like, oh, you can't even, there's no way to whatever.
But you bring up a perfect example, hun.
And that is what's so true in my journey from being a conservative to what I am now.
If you actually take a second to fucking look at it, because all these arguments rely on just not looking at it, just not Oh, you summarize that as we give black people money out of white person's pockets, we can't do that.
If you actually look at these examples, it's like, no, the fucking government went to a place where black people were on a beach that they owned, and white people were like, we don't like that.
And then someday, eventually, a hundred years later, we're like, oh, fuck, we should give it back.
But that's just a microcosm of all these things that have happened.
Think about what that meant through the generations.
That family lost a potential fortune.
Any beach anywhere is worth a fortune.
For example, they sold it for 20 million.
Yeah, sure, their descendants are probably, those specific descendants might be okay now, but all through the years, that land would have been an asset to that family, to their friends.
That generational wealth.
that was stolen from them. - Exactly, to their community.
Oh, someone needs a loan.
Well, good, we've got this parcel of land that's worth a lot of money 'cause it's the beach and the government hasn't stolen it from us in this example.
And think how often that happens to, like the white people, sure, there are plenty of poor white people.
There aren't examples of the black government coming and taking white people's lands because they hate white people.
I don't think that's ever happened in this country.
I'll put my money on it.
That's never fucking happened a single time.
And getting to have that wealth, that asset long term, and what that builds over time, and the good that that does for your family, for your community, all that times $11 billion is institutional racism.
And we do need to do something about it.
It doesn't mean that I took their land.
I had nothing to do with it.
I don't think.
I wasn't alive in 1924 or whatever.
It doesn't mean that, but it does mean that there's a victim.
There might not be a perpetrator currently still alive, but there are definitely victims and you can do something about that.
Yeah.
All right, Richard, wake up.
Number three.
Richard!
I'm back.
I'm back.
Transubstantiation.
Oh, I hate this.
So what's this gonna be?
What's this gonna be?
Roman Catholics are required to believe that bread and wine, when a priest says certain magic words over them, become the body and blood of Christ.
In a stronger sense than Protestants, who see the bread and wine as mere symbols.
Catholics invoke Aristotle's silly distinction between accidentals and true substance.
The accidentals of wafer and wine remain wafer and wine, but in their substance they become body and blood.
Hence the word transubstantiation.
Similarly, in the Cult of Woke, a man speaks the magic incantation, I am a woman, and therefore becomes a woman in true substance.
While her intact penis and hairy chest are mere Aristotelian accidentals.
Transsexuals have transubstantiated genitals.
One thing to be said in favor of today's Catholics, at least is that they don't, nowadays, insist that everybody else must go along with their beliefs.
Because Catholics are so well-known for their understanding.
They're not, you know, in control of the entirety of the Supreme Court and, you know, striking down Roe v. Wade or doing anything else like that!
Jesus Christ.
Peterson is right to imply in the rhetorical tone of his question that there is a religion of woke.
I have mentioned two specific similarities to Christianity, but more important in their extreme intolerant zeal shared with typical new cults, just beginning their journey towards eventual settled status as religions with a long and dignified tradition.
So I just want, just for fun, we could spitball, come up with as many examples of this exact fucking thing as you want.
Oh, we speak a magic word!
Congratulations, you've received your doctorate.
And now all of a sudden they're a doctor!
Ah!
Magical doctor!
One moment they're not, and the next they are.
Yes, this is called being humans.
We have names for things.
They're not given to us by fucking God or Darwin himself.
There are things we put names to.
And we have something called gender that, historically, that has been, we put names to it in a certain way.
Not always, by the way.
Plenty of fucking exceptions throughout all of time.
All of recorded history, there have been exceptions to this.
Forever, there have been trans people, there have been gay people, there have been every which kind of person, and they've been, to varying degrees, able to, like, you know, live that truth at all.
But there's historical proof of all of that.
But also, there's names, Richard.
Yeah.
Right?
Like, that's what's so fucking crazy, is that there's names.
No one, No one goes like, I'm sorry, I misheard your name the first time.
You said Sam and I thought you said Fam.
So I must call you Fam.
I refuse to indulge in this wizardry, this wizardry where you magically transform into Fam.
It was actually Sam the whole time.
Just say Sam.
You've been Fam the whole time.
No.
You're oppressing me.
Why?
What?
You're oppressing me.
I'm on the opinion.
You know what?
Don't even say my, you don't have to say my name.
You don't have to do it.
I must say your name.
No, no.
If you don't want, don't say it.
Just don't.
I wouldn't even have to know about this.
You could just, in your mind, you could think fam every, every day.
You could think in your mind, fam, and not say, not say fam.
And I'll just think like, oh, that person's just a person.
They didn't hurt me today by calling me the wrong name.
Couldn't you just do that?
I'm thinking fam in my head right now while you're talking.
You don't have to tell me.
No, you don't have to tell me about it.
You just think that.
You don't have to say it.
I'm thinking it again.
Damn it!
But yeah, I mean, it's just— It's no different than that.
It's so silly.
I think also, you know, like, if we're talking about him as a biologist, pulling in the secondary sex characteristics is also really underhanded, too, because that, you know, as a relation to hormones in your body, even if you identify as a woman and you have a vagina, whatever, you still could have Hair where you wouldn't expect it to because you have polycystic ovarian syndrome or another condition that changes the hormones in your body and so things present differently.
This is something that I expect we have to work on with our kids, but I would expect full-grown adults to be able to cope with.
Kids want to find the patterns in everything.
I'm sure, Eli, you've seen that with your son.
They want it like, oh, long hair equals girl.
They just do that.
Early on, they're just like, that's a girl.
And I remember I'd have an argument with Phoebe because there was a man with long hair that was like, You know, I was out on a walk with Phoebe years ago, and there was a man pushing a stroller with a baby, and he had long hair.
And Phoebe's like, oh yeah, that mom?
And I was like, I don't think that's, I think that's a dada.
And she's like, no, they have long hair.
It's a mom.
And like, we had a real argument.
She was still more receptive to logic than Richard Dawkins.
Yeah, she was like three.
She was like two, yeah.
Have you read Phoebe's stub sack, though?
Because she took you to task in that, let me tell you.
She's making a killing on the- The new religion of my dada.
Yeah, no, it's- Yeah, it's something, look, we all fall into easy patterns.
There's things we do day to day to make the world easier.
We don't, you know, whatever.
Okay.
There's also exceptions and do your best to like, remember the exceptions.
That's all.
That's all.
Just don't shout fam instead of Sam in someone's face.
And do your best, you know, that's it.
It's asking so little.
That's, again, there's 18 different levels of points.
But one of them is you could even be like not a fan of trans people and not be a fucking asshole.
They focus their life around it.
Talk about religion.
All the effort, the ink, the fucking, the word spilled on what someone else calls themselves.
It's insane.
We also have countries.
Richard, do you think there was like the world was deemed by science or God?
Like, no, this border is this.
There's a line right here that God wrote in the sand.
And one side is the United States and the other side is Mexico.
And that if you ever strayed from that at all, you are the same as pretending that bread and wine turn into the body of Christ.
Or is it just that we come up with fucking names for stuff because we're humans and language is not, we invented it.
So it's, that's fine.
It's totally fine.
So I guess to summarize one thing that I think is really important is like this name calling this like your religion right every accusation is a confession all that stuff but like and I think I said this the first time we talked about Dawkins like it's really important to keep in mind that this is a Person doing their job.
It is Richard Dawkins' job right now.
He is rewarded financially, socially, and personally for doing the job of lying to his audience, right?
And when we think of them in those terms, how we push back against those, like, marketing ideas, how we push back against the product that he's producing really changes.
And I say this because, again, we got Coke drinkers in our audience, right?
There's not a lot of Pepsi drinkers tuning in to, like, listen to me do a weird impersonation of Richard Dawkins' voice being like, I'm sure I'll be convinced by his points, right?
This isn't for them.
If they listen to this, they got 10 seconds in to me, like, making a joke, and they were like, well, you're not being civil, right?
And that's actually really important, right?
Because if you think of these people as good actors making arguments, you will treat them respectfully, And you will give them a sort of time and a platform and your energy in a way that emboldens them.
And this is something that Thomas and I learned the hard way.
And again, I know we talked about this the first time I was on this show, but like, one of the things that I had to learn the hard way is like, you don't actually change people's mind through argument.
That's not how it works.
Especially us in the secular community, in the skeptic community, we fall for that fallacy really badly because we consider ourselves to have had our minds changed through argument, right?
Like, I was on YouTube, I watched a bunch of Intelligence Squared debates, and like, then, you know, these points seemed really good to me, but a larger culture was affecting us in that moment.
And so, as sort of hopeless, or I guess even nihilistic as it sounds to say it, is like, The answer is for it to be unacceptable to be the kind of salesman that Richard Dawkins is, right?
Not to refute his points, not to, you know, beat him in a debate, not to intellectually debate him, right?
That's why Jordan Peterson was so obsessed with debating him, because he knew if Richard Dawkins debated him, it would lend him a ton of legitimacy, and his fans would get to say there and go, oh, my guy won, right?
Because there's not a ref that comes out at the end and is like, just a reminder, everybody, Jordan Peterson's a fucking hack and an idiot, right?
Nobody forces you to listen to the points the other side makes, but the moment it becomes difficult to be that kind of salesman, right?
The minute Richard loses awards that he was once awarded or is no longer invited to Skepticon or any of the real world consequences that Richard has had to face, those are the things that will shut him up, essentially, and keep the people that we care about safe.
And I know it feels almost totalitarian to say that, but like, we're talking about the physical safety of trans people, right?
This is not like a philosophical argument at this point, right?
There are laws being made against trans existence, and so I often find myself talking to people who are quote-unquote in the middle, and my question is always like, where do you draw the line?
Because like, I don't know if we would need a trans person concentration camp.
For people in this country to go, okay, you know what, all the argument stuff was a bad idea, now we have to do, like, real physical things that we did to stop the Nazis, right?
It wasn't the changing of minds of Berlin, it was the bombing of Berlin, right?
And so, like, right now, we're already way too far in the anti-trans movement.
I just think it's so funny, he uses that, like, punch-a-turf example, and it's like, Yeah man, maybe punch a TERF because right now TERFs are making laws to make the existence of trans children impossible.
Like, the medical care, not to get too dramatic, and I really don't want to get too dramatic because I know you brought me on to do a funny voice, but like, the medical care that's being denied to kids in Florida right now will kill a non-zero amount of trans kids.
It'll kill them.
Contrast that with if I went to the town square in my hometown right now and I was like, hey everybody, I'm gonna kill a kid, someone would come by and at least Check.
Right?
Someone would do something.
I would get thrown to the ground, rightly so, while they checked to make sure I didn't have a series of saw-like traps in my basement.
I know it feels good when you're not the one at risk to say, let's keep this as civil as possible.
Let's change minds.
Let's win hearts.
But it's important that when we talk about this, and again, you're Coke drinkers and you're gonna maybe talk to your Pepsi drinking uncle, or maybe you're just gonna tweet to your Twitter follower, sorry, ex-follower.
What am I?
I'm a senior citizen over here.
Your ex-followers and tell them like, you know, your thoughts about this or tweet out this episode.
It's really important that people remember what the stakes are and that they remember that the proper response to this kind of stuff is real, measurable consequences that they care about.
And if you want to know what consequences to enact, just ask these people what they think is unfair to do because that's what they actually care about.
Yeah, I struggle with this exact point.
I don't know what to do about this because I still I'm interested in it, but I don't know how to do more either research or an episode on it.
But I still struggle with, you know, Eli, we seem to always be kind of at this.
It's not really an argument, but we kind of take two different sides.
I think they have to believe this.
I think there's no question that Dawkins believes this.
It doesn't make sense otherwise.
Like, there's nothing else.
What else explains somebody like J.K.
Rowling?
On top of the world, she doesn't need money.
Zillions of money forever and fame forever.
and goodwill forever if she just shuts the fuck up about trans people.
She can't not.
Similarly, these people instantly, Dawkins, Sam Harris, they instantly latched on to Jordan Peterson because they, I think they are anti-woke and they have drunk the Kool-Aid of there are college kids Yeah.
And I think they firmly believe that.
And I think they justify it to themselves.
And it makes them say stupid things like there's only two sexes, like sex is a solid binary.
Like, I really do think they believe it.
It doesn't make any sense otherwise.
But I agree with everything you say about the civility trap.
That's something that I've long done my best to try to disabuse people of.
Like, if you notice the civility thing, it seems to only go one way.
See how civil?
Jordan B. Peterson is a fucking Christian.
Look at how civil Dawkins has been in his career to Christians.
Now all of a sudden that, like, once it flipped in 20-whatever, 10, 12, 14, and Dawkins cared more about anti-PC crap than he did about religion, then all of a sudden Jordan Peterson is the person that he can have a debate with.
Jordan Peterson is the one he can say, well, you know, friendly debate, I disagree with whatever.
Has he ever talked to a trans person?
Has he ever, like, just had a quote-unquote debate or an exchange with somebody who disagrees on trans issues?
The civility only goes toward the people who he already agrees with.
I do think there are a lot of people in our audience who fell for that.
Well, okay, you must be civil.
You're only an intellectual if you use these civil words.
And it's a trick.
It's an illusion.
It's a thing they do because people with really shitty, awful ideas can forever lean on civility, on free speech, on free exchange of ideas.
Oh, we're just talking it out here.
That's the only thing they have.
That's the first thing they do to get a foot in the door, to get their shitty views out into the world.
And it's a trick.
Don't go for it.
It's absolutely a trick.
Yeah.
Anyway, fuck this guy.
I think he really believes that someday we'll solve this question between you and I, Eli.
I don't know how.
Wait, we have Richard Dawkins on the line!
I'll never tell.
Smoke bomb!
Oh, nope, that was my cocaine schedule.
And the rest of the thing, if you want to read it for yourselves, folks, it's really funny because after all that, then Jordan Peterson is like, and by the way, Doc, sir, he uses a few more sirs just to show how he's so academic and old-timey or whatever.
Welcome to the world of post-humanism, sir.
Or he's in Hamilton.
He's going to start, he's going to make some rhymes.
Oh, yeah.
How does a philosopher who once started his...
And the whole thing is, well, you created this world, Richard Dawkins, with your science, you know.
He invented atheism.
It's true.
Yeah.
God is the only way you keep the whole, like, you know, girls have vaginas and men have peepees.
That's the only way you can.
And what's funny is Dawkins then is like, well, that's bullshit.
And so it's really hilarious that he somehow keeps that in mind.
He still does hate religion that much, Richard does, that he's still like, all right, well, that's bullshit.
You know, I think what we can do is we can be anti-trans and be scientists.
All we have to do is lie about the science.
It's pretty easy.
And that's kind of where he ends this rant.
Do you guys ever think about like, because they have to eat together, right?
They go to events and shit and they're like, we're the way we do with atheism, right?
Like we're all the atheists.
We kind of end up at a dinner table together eventually.
Like it's just, it's kind of what you got to do.
And I know there are a couple of true believers among them.
I don't think all of them are true believers, but I know there's a couple.
Do you think the ones who are faking it are ever like this fucking guy?
Like, Like they're trying to eat and Jordan starts crying about like the nature of duality and Sam's just like, dude, can you stop?
Can you stop?
The apps just came, Jordan.
And if you cry, everyone's going to look and then people are going to want pictures.
Can we just, I just want to eat these fucking pasties.
Fly on the wall.
I don't know.
Well, Eli Bosnick, thank you so much as always.
I don't know why I'm thanking you for being on our podcast, Duncan on Dawkins.
Duncan on Dawkins?
You might as well thank me for being on our podcast, Duncan on Dawkins.
Lydia, thank you for being on me and Thomas's podcast, Duncan on Dawkins.
Thanks so much for having me.
I enjoyed Duncan.
Good stuff.
Good stuff.
A secondary soundboard.
A backup one in case I steal yours.
Yeah, exactly.
In case you and Noah team up for the first time in history to destroy your shared common enemy.
We have you strapped to a chair.
Where is the soundboard?
You're just like, I'll never tell.
I'll never find it.
I'll die before I tell you where the soundboard is.
Then we hear a wah, wah.
What?
I heard it.
I swear.
No, I can't tell.
How'd he do it?
Why don't we read it and I can cut out the part and I'll edit it down if that's okay with you, Eli.
Please don't edit my words.
I just don't like- No, not you.
I mean- No, even when I'm doing a character, I think it's very important that the full character's- I'll leave the whole thing in.
Leave the coughs in.
Do the Marsh thing where he has to leave the coughs in so that the flat earthers can't say gut them to make them sound like assholes.
