[0:01] Hi there, it's Stefan Molyneux again. Thank you so much for tuning back in for a quick sprint through a philosophical analysis of religion.
Now, when people talk about the existence of a deity, they're usually not talking about the existence of some utterly abstract being that lives in some other dimension or even possibly permeates our own space or dimension, but that does nothing to intervene or to communicate with or to respond to human affairs, human desires, human obedience, human virtue, human wishes, human prayers, and so on.
So they're not talking God like an invisible being that never interferes with human affairs prayers whatsoever.
Usually what people are doing when they speak about God is they're talking about a deity who created the universe, who is moral, who intervenes, who listens to prayers, and so on.
And I just wanted to run through some of the stages of belief and a few of the critiques that we might bring to bear upon these stages of belief based on the analysis.
[1:19] That we're putting forward, or we have been putting forward, over these last half dozen or so videocasts.
And the reason that I'm doing this is not to pick at people's religious beliefs.
[1:31] Probably doing a little more than picking at them. But the reason that I'm doing this is because I really want to show how a rational and focused and logical and empirical philosophical understanding can answer some pretty major questions in life.
We don't want philosophy to be really about esoteric or abstract arguments.
What is truth? What is beauty? I mean, there's nothing wrong with those things.
But fundamentally what we want is for philosophy to be able to be able to answer the fundamental questions that we have about nature the universe society men women virtue vice good evil and so on because if philosophy can't do that then it's kind of like a it's kind of like a hobby you know like stamp collecting or something like that so the reason that i'm bringing these topics that we've developed to bear on a topic as large and controversial as religion is because I really want to show that what we've developed as principles here are very applicable to some very fundamental beliefs that are very common in society.
[2:36] So I could have picked the state, I could have picked classes, I could have picked particular economic theories, and we could have have applied the same kind of rigorous empirical logical philosophy to those beliefs, but I chose religion because I want to go to hell.
So I'm going to run through a few of the stages of.
[3:05] Reasoning that have to be fulfilled in order not for the question to be does god exist but is religion valid so i got a couple of notes here because this is quite complicated and i i don't want to ramble so the first thing of course is that god has to be believed or has to be proven to exist and as we talked about in the last video cast there are some significant problems with putting forward the proposition that god exists so let's um but let's accept that god does exist for the moment one of the wonderful things about philosophy is that it doesn't matter when the premise is illogical it doesn't matter what you accept every single following premise will be illogical as well so you can accept that god exists and and still not end up with religion, right?
Because it certainly could be the case that God exists, but religion is not valid.
And what that would mean is that God exists, but really does live in some other dimension, has no capacity or desire or willingness to intervene in human affairs, doesn't listen to prayers, you know, this idea, the deist idea from the 18th century, the blind watchmaker, just winds up reality.
[4:23] So to speak, and watches it tick down, and doesn't move to intervene any more than you move to intervene to make your computer process stuff you know sort of get back in there and push electrons around.
[4:36] So even if we accept that something like a deity exists it still doesn't lead us to the conclusions of religion of of changing one's behavior if i said that an invisible being lived on the far our side of the moon that knew everything, but was never going to communicate with everyone and could never be detectable by any methodology.
[5:02] Then you would sort of say okay, That's nice, I guess, but what does it really have to do with me, and how would it conceivably affect anything that I do in my life?
So even if we accept that God exists, then it certainly doesn't translate into any particular change in your behavior.
Because if this being is never going to communicate with you, if this being is never going to intervene in human affairs or in the world in any way, shape, or form, then to all intents and purposes existing for a deity like that would be exactly the same exactly the same as not existing so first of all we have to say that god exists now, if we're trying to put forward a philosophical truth and as we've talked about before every time you put forward a proposition you are also by the very nature of propositions including including principles in that.
So a physicist cannot say that a rock exists, because that's a very specific thing, right?
A physicist can't just pick something up, pick up a pair of sunglasses and say, my physical theory is that these sunglasses exist.
Because that's not a physical theory, that's an observation of a discrete physical instance. It's not a theory. theory.
[6:25] 2 plus 2 is 4 is a theory. A bunch of apples on a desk is not a theory.
It's just an empirical manifestation of a theory.
So whenever you put forward a proposition like God exists, what you're really doing is not putting forward a proposition that says God exists.
What you're doing is you're putting forward a proposition which says consciousness exists without matter matter or energy.
[6:53] Consciousness exists without matter and energy, and consciousness exists without matter and energy, and it lives forever, and it knows all things, and has all power, and we'll forget about the contradictions about those for the moment.
What you're doing is not saying, this exists, but this type of thing can exist.
So you're not saying, this is a pair of sunglasses, sunglasses this sunglass these sunglasses exist what you're saying in sort of the equation here is that sunglasses exist of which this is an instance right so you can't just make up a rule that says god exists what you're saying when you say god exists is infinite all wise all knowing all powerful benevolent virtuous perfect consciousness can exist without material form without sensual evidence, with no energy traces or anything like that.
Now, if you do put forward that as a proposition, then if you accept that it's true that consciousness can exist without matter or energy, without any biological constraints, then there's no reason reason in the world to believe that only one of those things exists.
[8:20] This is a very important thing to understand. If you say as a principle that consciousness can exist without matter or form and blah blah blah, then there's absolutely no reason to believe that only one of those things can exist.
So, the first thing that you have to accept is that God exists.
The second thing that you have to accept is that only one God exists.
Now, the third thing that you have to accept is not only that God exists, or gods exist, but that only one God exists, and also that only your God exists.
The god that you were taught about, Krishna or Set or Osiris or Zeus or the Christian deity or Yahweh or the Islamic deity, that only the god that you were taught about when you were a child and grew up with, that only that one god exists and that all the other gods are false.
[9:31] So this is a pretty heavy series of propositions to stomach from a you know we're just looking at this from a standpoint of rational objective and empirical philosophy that's quite a lot, to ask a philosopher to accept god that consciousness can exist without matter in the contradiction to all biological and physical effects of reality and against all principles of logic, and that only one of them exists, and that the one that I grew up with and was taught about in Sunday school, or the madras, or wherever you learned about your religion, that only that god exists, and that's completely correct, and everybody else's definition of the deity is completely incorrect.
And of course, atheists are even more incorrect.
[10:17] Now, the next thing that you have to believe, the fourth thing that you have to believe in order for religion to be valid, organized religion to be valid, because if God exists, only one God exists, and only your God exists, there's still absolutely no reason for there to be such a thing as organized religion, because you can just sit and have a chat with your God, or believe in your God, or do whatever.
[10:41] The next thing that you have to believe is that God intervenes in the world.
That God intervenes in the world.
Because, going back to our invisible, omniscient elf on the dark side of the moon, you might have a vague, distant regard for such an entity, but you wouldn't get up early on Sunday to go sing songs and pray because this deity would be completely unresponsive and would never interfere or intervene or ever be traceable in any way, shape, or form, would never dream of calling you up a mountain and handing you a bunch of tablets, would never imagine burning bushes or turning water into wine or any of the things that you read of in certain religious books, would never dream of, in the Greek mythologies, of raping a mortal and putting forward a half-divine, half-mortal entity.
So there would be no possibility whatsoever that this deity would intervene.
[11:49] But in order for there to be such a thing as organized religion that you're willing to follow, then you have to believe that this deity intervenes in human life.
[12:03] Now, of course, once you start to believe that kind of stuff, then you get into even more logical difficulties, because if...
[12:16] A deity is going to intervene in human affairs, answer prayers, burning bushes, Jesus driving the pigs off a cliff, or healing the lepers, or whatever, then you have a deity that is willing to alter the behavior of matter and energy at will, and to some degree at whim, it would seem.
And now this deity has moved from a non-detectable, agency to a detectable agency.
Right now, we're beginning to have a null hypothesis. If a deity is going to intervene in the affairs of the world, then we are going to begin here to have a null hypothesis.
So, to take an example, if Zeus was not the thunder god, but just, I don't know, some white-haired guy sitting somewhere.
[13:11] If Zeus was not the thunder god, then there's no null hypothesis really in this sort of particular instance for Zeus's existence or non-existence but, if you say Zeus causes the lightning that he rides in a chariot and he hurls his thunderbolts down from his chariot then you begin to have a null hypothesis for the existence of a deity right so if you say that Zeus rides a chariot hurls his thunderbolts and that's where the thunder comes comes from well then you're starting to get somewhere because then once you develop the technology or whatever you can then examine the clouds through infrared spectrography or you could fly a plane up there with whatever sensing devices and if you did in fact find a guy up there with white hair and flowing beard hurling his thunderbolts down upon the unsuspecting masses then obviously that would be a pretty good argument for the existence of a deity right because this deity is now intervening in the physical world.
And so you can measure the effects of that intervention.
[14:18] And if you said Zeus causes the thunder, sorry, Zeus causes the lightning, and you go up and you find that it's just electrical charges built up in clouds zapping down to the earth and so on, then that's a disproof, right?
Since the proposition is that Zeus creates lightning, then the disproof is that no, Zeus doesn't create the lightning, built up of electrical charges in the atmosphere, that causes the lightning.
So once you have a deity that intervenes in the world, you're starting to put together a measurable criteria for whether that deity exists or not.
[14:54] So if you have a belief, and we'll get to this in a minute or two, if you have a belief that God answers prayers and so on, well, that's great, because now you're saying that the behavior of God is dependent upon the supplications of the faithful.
Fantastic. Now we're starting to put a hypothesis together which we can actually prove, right?
So we have a whole bunch of people who can then sit there and pray for something, and a whole bunch of people who can sit there and pray for the exact opposite, and then a whole bunch of atheists, we want all our control groups, a whole bunch of atheists who pray for nothing and wouldn't even imagine doing such a thing, and then a whole bunch of random people doing whatever they're going to do, not even knowing they're part of the experiment.
And you would see, between these four groups, Christians praying for one thing, Christians praying for the opposite thing, atheists not praying for anything, and a bunch of people who are just going around doing their daily lives, you would then see, because you're saying that God responds to prayers, therefore the prayers versus the non-prayers, you would have a testable hypothesis to test the theory.
The moment, the moment, the moment that a deity touches one atom, one atom, nudges one light beam, then you have a testable hypothesis.
If a deity does nothing to intervene intervene in human affairs, in the state of nature, in physical laws, in anything like that.
[16:16] Then you don't have a testable hypothesis, and the deity, even if it exists or doesn't exist, it makes no difference.
You may have a deity, you may believe, who knows, who cares, but you certainly aren't going to have organized religion, or prayer, or Sunday school, or any of these sorts of things, because there's no null hypothesis, there's no intervention.
Once you get a deity that intervenes in human affairs, then you start to have a null hypothesis, right?
So, you have to believe that God intervenes, and you also have to believe that even though God intervenes, there's no testable hypothesis whatsoever to determine whether or not God intervenes.
So, God is like those psychic experiments, right?
If you're on the right side of the bell curve of accidentally guessing right, then people go, ooh, you're psychic.
And if you're not, then it's well because you didn't believe.
This is the standard methodology of faith, that God would say, if you put these four control groups together, that God would say, say, oh, well, I'm not going to answer those people's prayers because it's not genuine, it's just part of a scientific experiment or whatever, right?
[17:18] Now, the next thing that you would have to believe if you want to do something like support a religion, or support the, as a valid conclusion, the principles of organized religion, is you would obviously have to go through the four that we've talked talked about so far.
God exists, only God exists, only your God exists, and God intervenes.
[17:45] Now then, what you would have to do is you would have to believe that God is moral.
This is sort of a two sides of the same coin. God is moral, and God wants something from you, and in return for that, he's going to provide benefits, or she's going to provide benefits.
Now, the question of whether God is moral or not is an ancient, ancient, ancient question, goes all the way back to the pre-Socratics, but to just take an example sort of from the Christian philosophy, or I guess this would be, yeah, this would be the Christian philosophy, theology, not philosophy, but to go and have a look at this particular example, we would say, like if I put forward a particular moral proposition, which says, says, thou shalt not kill, and then I go around killing people, it could be said to be a little bit hypocritical, right?
Or, if not hypocritical, at least it could be said that the morality that I represent, or the morality that I claim to represent, might be just a little bit in question.
It would seem to be a fairly sensible approach. If I say, you shan't kill anyone, you must not kill anyone, killing anyone is the ultimate evil, and then I go on some sort of stabbing spree, it may be fairly questionable about whether or not I'm the most perfect moral human being in existence.
[19:06] Now, God, of course, gives commandments. I'm just talking about the sort of Old Testament, New Testament stuff.
God, of course, gives commandments that God regularly breaks.
Thou shalt not kill. He wipes out the whole world except for Noah.
Thou shalt not kill. He wipes out Sodom and Gomorrah.
And in a sort of more specific example that's closer to this question of intervention, God says through Jesus Jesus is walking along the road and he sees this Samaritan no sorry he sees this guy who is let me start this story again there's a guy walking along the road he gets beaten by a bunch of robbers thrown into a ditch a Samaritan walks past and does not just sort of say hey guy in a ditch and walk on he actually stops and binds the guy's wounds takes him to a doctor reads him a bedtime story and this is considered to be the parable of a good Samaritan it's a very good thing that this guy did it he saw suffering he had the power to change it he did not change the suffering.
[20:03] And therefore it's good, right?
It's good if you have the power to alleviate suffering to alleviate that suffering. But this is the problem.
God himself clearly has the power to alleviate suffering, and not all suffering is caused by free will, so we can sort of dispense with that argument for the moment.
But God does not intervene to prevent suffering, although God both, A, has the power to intervene in a way that is far less consuming of his resources than the Good Samaritan, because for God is infinite all-powerful, it's not even a finger snap to solve all of the evils in the world.
[20:43] But the Good Samaritan has to sort of take a day and bind the wounds and pay the money and so on, so it's far less, infinitely less resource requirements for God to alleviate or prevent or get rid of evil, and God says that it's a moral thing to do for human beings, but God himself, obviously, not so much with the prevention of evil.
[21:04] And yes, you could say that, and of course, this is the standard argument that you'll get in response, which is to say that, yes, but God gives human beings free will and won't break that by intervening and so on, but God has already intervened in human life, right?
We know, for instance, that the Old Testament deity and the deity that founds the three biggies, right, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, that this deity has no problem intervening, continually.
Not only does he intervene by having people write down his holy words in these books and so on.
[21:36] But he sends prophets, he sends saints, he sends Jesus, he does miracles, he goes down and talks to people, he argues, he debates, he blows people up, he gives other people benefits, he tells this person, go sell your child into sexual slavery, and then he sets fire to this town.
Constantly intervening, right? So you can't really logically make the argument that God won't intervene to prevent human suffering because God doesn't like to intervene.
The whole story of deities in all religions is that they intervene because you can't get religion without a God that intervenes.
Just as I'm not going to found a successful religion based on the principle that Eboo, the invisible elf, lives on the far side of the moon, knows everything, but will never talk to you, or do anything on your behalf, right? I mean, there's nothing for me to sell, right?
[22:29] So, this question of the ethics of God, or gods, is a very important one, because you can't worship someone who's evil.
You can obey them, right? And the big question is, right, do you obey God because God is good, or because God is powerful? awful.
It's sort of very, it's a very important question. We won't sort of be able to get into it quite a bit here. I've done a podcast or two on it.
If you're sort of interested, you can have a look for those.
But you definitely do have to believe that God is moral, despite the fact that God puts forward moral commandments which God himself or herself does not fulfill, right?
And this is what would be known as hypocrisy, and certainly not anything that you would would admire in your average human being.
So by God's own moral standards, God is not a good entity.
[23:30] So you have to believe that God intervenes. You have to believe that God is good.
And you also have to believe that God wants you to perform certain actions, right so god has a need for you uh to pray to give money to the poor to give money to churches to, kneel to pray to mecca x number of times a day to cut the foreskin off your off your baby uh your baby boy that god wants you to do a whole bunch of things and in return for you doing those things.
[24:09] You get a variety of benefits. Wealth, prosperity, life after death, the paradise, 72 virgins, whatever, right?
So, I'm sort of trying to build all of the steps that are actually required for organized religion to be considered valid from a philosophical standpoint.
I mean, you can get into arguments with theologians and get all different kinds of answers.
I'm just joking from a purely rational, logical, empirical, philosophical standpoint.
Point philosophical standpoint this is what philosophy has to offer and i'm so far i'm just doing a bunch of breaking down i am aware of that and this is not the end of the road we're not just breaking dang things down here i'm certainly no nihilist that we are going to aim to actually break uh build a shining city on the rubble of historical era but we are going to make sure that we do it carefully because i don't want to be putting forward anything that doesn't have a fair amount of rigor to it because that would just be theological rather than what i wanted to achieve which was some sort of philosophical rigor so god wants praise god wants obedience god wants particular and specific actions which usually involve the transfer of time money or resources from one human being to another i.e from you to your local priesthood whatever and you have to believe that so god wants something from you and in return for you doing those things for him he He will give you certain benefits. So it has to be a reciprocal relationship.
[25:33] But of course, at the same time, you have to believe that God doesn't intervene.
Well, good luck with all of this.
Now, the next thing that you have to believe for organized religion to be valid is that God himself speaks to others a whole lot more than he speaks to you.
[25:53] Fairly important. important god beaks a whole lot more to others than he does to you right this is a little bit of case of the emperor's new clothes if you've ever read that story it's very good now you at least i hope are not the kind of person who is going to email me and say uh Stef uh while you were doing your podcasting there dude you have this is a god sent this text scrolling across cross, saying, see, he dresses in black, he's stone evil, and God told me this, and it was scrolling right there, like you'll see an end text at the bottom of your screen there.
No, that's probably not what's happening to you in your relationship with God, if you are a religious person.
God is not sending thunderbolts, God is not making your barren wife fertile at the age age of 70, God is not allowing you to live to 500 or 1,000 years like Methuselah, God is not, smiting your neighbors or your competition in business, God probably is not doing a whole lot of interventionary stuff for you, and if you feel that he is, medication would probably be the correct answer.
[27:09] But the fact that you don't have any direct communication from a deity that you maybe will get some odd impulses or feel better after you pray, which I fully respect and understand, and I believe there are good psychological reasons for that.
It's not that meditation or prayer or introspection don't have any benefit. They do.
You just don't want to confuse them with the existence of an external deity.
But you kind of have to believe that God at some point either in the past or maybe in the present but not to you has really opened his heart and had quite the presidential sit-down powwow with a bunch of people just not really you so much so when God wrote or caused people to write the Old Testament you know you hope that the big guy was whispering in people's ears and getting them in and all the translators and the people who mistranslated the uh hebrew word for a young woman got confused for a virgin so you end up with the virgin mary and a whole bunch of messed up italian men.
[28:17] But you hope that god was sort of whispering in their ears saying write this next no you you misheard me on that one go back erase that that's the wrong word do it like this do it like that you know i've changed my mind it's a virgin birth so just just go with with that, and we'll figure it out.
[28:31] Then you hope that God was saying all of these things, and it wasn't just a bunch of visions that people were having, but God was actually communicating to them directly about what to write, and so on, and all the translators and all the lost texts, and all this and that and the other, that God was kind of there as the editor-in-chief for the whole process, and that people really did see, because it's written in the Bible, so you've got to believe it, burning bushes, and lepers being healed, and, water turned into wine, and real honest-to-goodness miracles, right?
And so you really do have to believe that God spoke a whole lot more to other people in the past than he is speaking to you right now, and that God is, if you're in the kind of religion that has, organized religion has sort of central religious figures, and priests or rabbis or imams or whatever, if you believe that God speaks more to those people than God does to you, so if you're a Catholic, you can't take communion without a priest and so on, because God speaks a whole lot more to the priest than he does to you despite the fact that you're all human and you're all created by God and all this kind of stuff.
You have to believe that somebody out there has a PhD, direct red phone line to God, and you have to then go to that person to get God's opinion.
You can't just sort of go straight to the deity.
You can't really go straight to the source. You always have to go through all of these other areas.
[29:55] Now, you also have to believe that the holy books are accurate, and not only do you have to believe that the holy books are accurate, but you also have to believe that they're the product of divine perfection, and that all of the inconsistencies in the holy books, of which there's tons and tons of information on the internet, you can just go and look for it if you want.
I've done podcasts on it, you might want to have a look at it, I can't remember the number. It's early on, and it's called 10 Questions to Ask Your Religious Friends.
But you are also going to have to believe that the books are perfect, that the books are divine, that they're correctly interpreted, all the way down to the language that you're currently speaking, unless it happens to be ancient Aramaic, and also that all of the inconsistencies in the books don't exist.
[30:46] And basically, you have to have some belief that you understand what God wants, and that you can provide what God wants, and that God is going to provide you all these benefits if you give money to the priest and so on and so on and so on.
Anyway, I don't want to labor the point too, too much, but let's just go over our blinding recap of the things that you have to believe, all of which are completely irrational, problematic, not proven by any sense evidence, and, which we won't even get into, which have considerable motivation for falsehood on the part of the people telling you this, right?
So for the priest to tell you, give me some money, because of all these things, there's a clear financial benefit in that for the priest.
I mean, look at the, look at Vatican City, right? These people aren't exactly poor.
So not only are there an enormous number of falsehoods that you have to swallow in order to accept something like organized religion, but there are clear, clear financial and political power benefits or motivations for the people to tell you these lies, right?
So we have an intellectual crime called and we also have a motive called financial material political gain and so on so uh you know for me the case is clear you can certainly let me know what you think.
[31:57] Gotta believe. God exists. You gotta believe only one God exists.
You gotta believe only your God exists. You gotta believe God is moral despite all the evidence.
You gotta believe that God both intervenes in the realm of telling you all this stuff about himself and blowing up cities and drowning the world and also that God doesn't intervene because if God could intervene but didn't, then he would be immoral or she would be immoral.
That God wants something from you. He wants praise, obedience, money, resources, time, whatever.
Wants you to wake your kids up early on Sunday. that god also speaks a whole lot more to other people than he does to you and so you've got to go to these people and sort of buy knowledge from them by giving money that the holy books of organized religion are accurate despite constant mistranslations inconsistencies error problems lost books and so on and that you understand what god wants and that god will reward you for providing it and that's just a sample there's a whole ton more that you would actually need to accept in order to accept something like organized religion as a valid and appropriate way to live your life i think i think that philosophy has just a little bit more to offer people i think that philosophy has just a little bit more to offer you in terms of a more rational healthy happy joyful way to live your life and to make the decisions that you need to make in your life If the fundamental moral and productive and loving and genuine and wise.
[33:22] Decisions that you need to make in your life. I think philosophy has a whole lot more to offer than that pack of nonsense.
And I'm sorry to put it so, dare I say it, baldly, but I just sort of want to point out, because philosophers for many years have been sort of tiptoeing around religion, and I think that it's really a bad idea. I don't think you want to tiptoe around religion.
I think that we need to point out that it's full of the most egregious errors, contradictions, exploitations evils catastrophes subjugations and and falsehoods especially those taught to children which i think is extraordinarily destructive to the mind of a child and i think the philosophy has and i think that they've stated some good reasons why the philosophy has an enormous amount more to offer you in terms of helping you to organize your thoughts and live your life in a productive and happy manner than listening to a bunch of people who want to exploit you and take your money and take your obedience and frankly cut up your children uh i think that philosophy has a whole lot more to uh to offer you than this sort of superstition and falsehoods and all this kind of nonsense that comes out of religious ideas and i will continue to make that case though not particularly in the realm of religion i'll let that sort of sit for a little bit because what we need to talk about a little bit next is to begin to build the case for for philosophical ethics, for a system of morality, because we don't want to just pull a Nietzsche and get rid of organized religion without putting anything in its place to help people to make ethical decisions.
[34:50] So the next thing that we'll do is we'll start to begin the most exciting part, for me at least, of this journey that we're on. And thank you once more for joining me on it.
But we are going to start the process of building ethics from pure reason and from pure scientific knowledge and from pure empirical observation and logic.
Seems like the ultimate card trick. Maybe it is, but I hope that you'll join me as we take a swing at it and let me know whether I connect with anything or not.
Thank you so much for listening as always. I'll talk to you soon.
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