0:11 - Moral Experiments of Life
13:23 - Atheists and the Quest for Truth
16:57 - Integrity in the Face of Adversity
21:46 - The Mirror of Self-Reflection
23:04 - Confronting Hypocrisy and Comfort
In this episode, I delve deep into personal reflections on my life's moral experiment, examining how society's proclaimed values often stand in stark contradiction to its actions. Throughout my life, I have witnessed and endured various forms of toxic behavior, especially toward children, which serve as a profound commentary on societal hypocrisy. While society clamors to profess its love and care for children, I have experienced the reality—an uncomfortable truth where innocence is neglected, and children often suffer in silence. My experiences of violence and abuse went largely unnoticed and uncared for by those around me, raising troubling questions about our collective responsibility to protect the vulnerable.
I recount my turbulent childhood, steeped in strife that persisted without intervention from those who knew of my suffering. Family members, despite their awareness of the violence in my home, chose silence over support, demonstrating a troubling apathy towards not only my well-being but to the wider implications of such disregard within familial bonds. This ambivalence extends beyond my immediate circle to societal systems that are supposed to uphold moral integrity—claims of family love diminish when action to protect is absent.
Throughout my education, whether in schooling or professional environments, the call for truth and moral integrity becomes muddied by personal discomfort. I explore the contradiction faced by those who claim to uphold the truth while simultaneously shying away from defense when the truth is inconvenient. In my academic encounters, the facade of enlightenment is shattered as I note the hostility directed towards inconvenient truths, emphasizing a trend that prioritizes comfort over honesty.
The discussion furthers into my reflections on the atheist community, which, based on its tenet of truth-seeking, paradoxically fell silent during my own persecution. I've often engaged with atheists who champion the pursuit of truth at any cost, yet when it came to defending honesty in my circumstance—an apparent betrayal of moral integrity—they vanished. Instead of lending support, many chose to disengage completely, prompting me to scrutinize the authenticity of their proclaimed values.
As I grapple with these experiences, I confront difficult questions about the nature of morality, personal integrity, and the stark reality of societal responses to injustice. I compel listeners to reflect on their values and actions: do they truly align? I draw on both my personal journey and the broader philosophical implications of our choices, urging all to consider the uncomfortable truths about our societal narratives—ones that often prioritize convenience over the truth. Ultimately, it becomes clear that understanding morality, integrity, and human connection demands more than mere reflection; it requires courageous action in defense of what is true and just, especially when it challenges our own comfort.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well. Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain. So, I was thinking, actually, this morning, sort of back on my life and.
[0:12] One of the sort of largest themes of what's been going on in my existence, conscious or sort of unconscious at the time, it's this idea that my whole sort of life has been a constant moral experiment. It is sort of an empirical program or like process to see what people in society say, and then see if they do that right especially of course around morals right especially around morals so when i was growing up of course, society and everyone said we care about the children uh children are everything and And the most important thing, our greatest resource, and all of that. So then I guess I listened to what society said, and I was curious in my core as to whether that's what society actually did, like actually lived that way. And no, society doesn't live that way. Society herds children around. Society, you know, hits and beats the majority of children, yells at them, screams at them, locks them in these terrible schools, uses them as financial instruments to have as collateral so that they can borrow and spend on themselves through the power of the state. And so no, not the case, right?
[1:37] I went through a lot of violence as a kid that was sort of very audible. I lived in sort of very cheap paper, thin-walled apartments, or flats, of course, as we called them in England at the time. And nobody cared, nobody phoned the cops, nobody came to my aid, nobody, an anonymous report, it was no risk to them or anything like that. And this went on for years and years and years. And people don't care about...
[2:07] Their neighbors or children you know suffering some pretty extreme violence like right in their vicinity just turned up the tv maybe they put on some headphones but they didn't care i had um, on my father's side of the family um they were very christian and i spent a lot of time with them both near Wales and in Ireland and they knew of course the nature of my mother's violence they knew who my mother was they never once asked me how I was doing or if there's anything I could do in fact I was left alone with her for a couple years in my early teens just me and her this is when she was really going crazy ended up being institutionalized nobody phoned to ask how I was So, you know, this idea that like family is everything you do for family, we care about our kids, I assume, just based upon the demographics, that most of the people, and this did facilitate my exit from Christianity. It's an interesting way to put it but anyway uh the people who were around me were christians.
[3:23] And they didn't lift a finger to do anything to counter an obvious evil i mean it wasn't like we were at a farm in the middle of nowhere right like right in the middle of the city right in the middle of a whole bunch of apartment buildings like right in apartment buildings and my whole childhood, I sailed through with this violence and so on. No one did anything. Nobody asked about anything. Nobody got any authorities involved. Now, of course, you may say, well, the authorities wouldn't have helped in any particular way, but that's not what people's general perception was, right? People's general perception was that the authorities would be helpful in these kinds of situations and so on.
[4:03] And I think the only time the cops showed up at my place was when my mother called them once because I yelled back and they just gave me a lecture on trying to understand my mother better. So that's the, I mean, that's the reality. You say, oh, it's my lived experience. But it's a lived experience in three different continents. Three different continents. Thousands of people had direct or indirect knowledge of what happened to me. Nobody, and just even in the years since, like I went public with what I suffered as a child, and nobody's called me up from my past and said, oh boy, you know, I really felt bad, but I didn't do it because of X, Y, and Z, or I thought about it. Nothing. Nothing. people don't care and that's the state of the world as it is after 2 000 years of christianity.
[4:56] Right you can't wish it away you can't unsee it you can't tell me i'm wrong that is a pretty important experiment to live through to go through and you can't look at like if you've been particularly if you've been mistreated as a child, you can't look at the world and think that it's good. Not because there were people who mistreated you as a child, but because nobody does anything about it. Nobody asks, nobody questions, nobody brings in resources. You know, I would go to school, you know, hungry, tired, because my mother would keep me up all night. And I would just get lectured about, well, if effort matched ability, you'd be an A+. Why are you lazy? Why don't you do your work but nobody asked how are things at home what's going on maybe that's changed now right this is obviously quite a while ago but that that's the reality of the world now that's the reality of 5 000 years of moral philosophy of christianity and that is the result that children can be tortured and beaten and screamed at top of the lung screaming in an environment with.
[6:09] Dozens of people around in families. I went to a variety of different schools. I lived in a variety of different neighborhoods. I went to government school. I went to private school. I lived in, well, I spent summers in Ireland. I lived in England, of course, until I was 11. I spent a lot of time in Africa because my father was there. And I lived in Canada and nothing, nothing.
[6:34] That like that's the reality you can't wish it away i mean i can't wish it away maybe you can i don't want to wish it away now then of course you know in school uh you were told that uh, the truth matters right the truth matters but then of course if you bring up inconvenient truths sorry mr gore if you bring up inconvenient truths uh the teachers just get mad at you right so it doesn't matter right.
[7:00] Um, in, in university, of course, if, well, I mean, I did an English degree and I would talk about, you know, the free market and, and voluntary solutions to social problems and point out that, you know, government solutions are based upon coercion, right? The law is an opinion with a gun in most cases. So, uh, people said, well, we want the truth and we want, we like peaceful solutions. We don't like violence and so on. And then you'd point out that people who want a lot of government action are kind of addicted to coercion and they get mad, right? And then, of course, I remember when I first learned that I was born into, I don't know what the numbers were back then, but now it's well over a million dollars in debt because elder generations had overspent and demanded things from the government the government couldn't afford. And the only way you could get elected would be to steal from the unborn. Man, that's some silver-fingered pickpocketing to steal from people who aren't even a glimmer in their daddy's eye yet but now when I learned about that of course I was like wait what all of these freaking boomers who have been spent their entire life lecturing me on responsibility and hard work and and uh owning up to my actions and doing the right thing they've actually stolen a million dollars from me before I could even get a job.
[8:25] Holy unholy right i mean that's just reality that's just the reality i went to theater school and uh when they found out about my politics they turned on me pretty pretty viciously i mean in canada of course uh 90 of artists survive on pillaged government money so free market would not would not do them very very much good at least in the short run and then of course you know i went to took a history degree a graduate degree and you know everyone's like well you know that the truth is important and we're here to find the truth and i'll say bring the truth and they'd get mad they'd get mad uh so it's all uh it's all a lie it's all nonsense um i skip over the business stuff um i was in the business world for many years and i'll just fast forward here so i want to make this huge long long thing here but uh for the atheist right i mean i was in the atheist in and around the atheist community for many, many years. Millions and millions of atheists have listened to my show over the last 20 years. And atheists say, right, what do atheists say? Well, we're all about the truth, you see. We're all about the truth. The atheists say, it is not true that God exists. It's false that God, the proposition that God exists is false, because we're all about the truth. And the truth is so important that you should give up the moral.
[9:48] Commandments of your ancestors. You should give up the comfort of everlasting life. You should give up the comfort of being reunited with loved ones. You should give up the comfort that your suffering will be rewarded in an eternity of bliss. You should give up everything. You should give up immortality because God is not real. So you must sacrifice the entire moral and metaphysical worldview of your ancestors. 2,000 years of moral development must be cast aside because it's not true. And this brings a lot of suffering to the religious.
[10:30] But the atheists say, but it's not true, and your suffering is not important. It's not that important. You should just focus on what is true. It doesn't matter if it makes you suffer. The truth is worth it. You should live in reality. You should not believe. What do they call it? Sky daddy fairy tales, all this kind of stuff, right? So it's not true. The immense suffering that you go through when I tell you these things aren't true and you can't argue against it or you believe what I say, that suffering, suffering for the cause of truth is super, super, super important. So I'm going to ask you all these tough questions, and if you suffer, then, well, it's not my fault that people told you things that weren't true. All this kind of tough guy stuff. And that's fine. That's fine. So then, of course, when I ask tough questions of atheists, they should welcome it because they've kind of lived asking tough questions of others. So when I ask tough questions of atheists, they should say, wow, you know, I guess I've spent my career asking tough questions of others. So it's fine to be asked tough questions, but they don't. They just kind of get mad and verbal abuse, bag on Christians, rage quit, you know, all of this kind of stuff, right?
[11:50] It's not really the worst of it. So my experience, you know, I'm Stef the White, super white, because I came back from my half decade in the wilderness.
[12:03] And I came back with a certain knowledge. this knowledge cannot be undone you can't argue me out of it you can't tell me that I'm wrong because I know and the knowledge that I came back with was actually quite simple.
[12:19] I was deplatformed because people lied about me. This is when people say, well, lying is inefficient. Lying doesn't work. It's like, bro, the vast majority of my life's work was erased on falsehoods, right? So, it is funny. It's been so long now. I got so much good stuff out of those five years that I'm not complaining about it. I'm simply pointing out the absolute epistemological, branded in to my spinal cord reality of the last five years. So the atheists say the truth is important. Telling the truth is important. Your discomfort is not that important, which means that they obviously, atheists, would be willing to endure discomfort in order to speak the truth. Endure discomfort to speak the truth. Now, quick question. Millions of atheists listen to my show over the last 20 years. Atheists say the truth is essential, regardless of personal discomfort.
[13:24] How did atheists respond to my unjust de-platforming based upon falsehoods?
[13:35] My whole life is a moral experiment to see if people have integrity to what they say. You must tell the truth. The truth is much more important than any personal discomfort. Well, atheists knew, of course, that what was talked about with regards to me were falsehoods. And I was unjustly deplatformed. How did they respond? Come on. We know this. We know. How did they respond?
[14:13] They vanished they ran away they did not stand with me they did not stand by me they did not invite me on their shows I mean I've actually done shows with, strong atheists knew that I was unjustly de-platformed, the truth is important regardless of your personal, emotional difficulties with it okay so lies were told about me somebody that they had some respect for and millions had interacted, did i get email messages even if you just want to create an anonymous account say it's totally wrong i'm so sorry blah blah blah did i get any messages did i get any invites to shows did i get any articles written about how unjust and wrong it all was because remember the truth is important, it doesn't matter if it upsets you personally it doesn't matter if it's difficult emotionally the truth is essential.
[15:09] So, of course, when I go to atheists and I say, hey, what are your reasons for telling the truth? Did you tell the truth about what was said about me that was false?
[15:25] I mean, you understand the basic principle is they de-platform some pretty horrible people, which I don't agree with. I'm a free speech absolutist. They de-platform pretty horrible people so that when they de-platform people who aren't horrible, they get mixed into the same vat. A vitriol right so yeah how did um how did our good friends the atheists do when a prominent atheist was deplatformed for lies did they say well you know you know we've made a lot of christians we've made you know hundreds of millions of christians uncomfortable over the decades with our very tough questions but we've told them you must stand for the truth no matter what? Oh, a prominent atheist is being lied about. I wish I could do this Homer Simpson disappear into the hedges behind me. But yeah, I mean, that's just the reality. So then an atheist come and say, well, you know, I guess I was just raised better than you. I guess I just value the truth more than you do. I guess I just have better morals than you do.
[16:30] Come on, come on. Stop larping as a moral hero. I mean, just stop it. I don't mean this with any contempt, I don't mean this with any hatred, but you have to have a clear-eyed view of who you are and who you aren't, right? If you're fat, but you think you have abs, you're not going to lose weight. If you're cowardly, but think you're brave, you can't get braver.
[16:57] You can't get the virtue courage if you think you're already courageous.
[17:05] So, when the atheists say to me, well, I know, I know, I tell the truth, and I have morals, and I have virtues, and it's good for society, and it's good socially, it's like, okay, then why didn't you tell the truth about the lies told about me? Millions of you knew about it, or hundreds of thousands. I mean i had a combined uh you know close to two million a set of followers at that time i was deplatformed i had three quarters of a billion views and downloads so i don't think it's that unfair to say that millions of atheists knew about me and my deplatforming was kind of talked about and they all just.
[17:53] Despawned. They went to the back rooms. And they didn't even send me anonymous messages of support, which is fine. It's fine. And it's data. And it's a whole lot of data. Now, Christians were actually quite kind. Christians were actually, you know, hey, we know what it is to be persecuted, man, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So, I mean, I have empirical evidence that, empirical, direct personal evidence that Christians behaved infinitely better than atheists when it came to upholding the truth or providing sympathy for somebody who was being unjustly persecuted. You can't undo that knowledge in me. And it wasn't, it wasn't two to one. It really wasn't two to one, five to one, 10 to one. It was a lot to, I mean, I'm thinking zero. I'm thinking zero.
[19:14] So, as far as personal integrity, upholding the truth despite emotional discomfort, I mean, morals are not for what you want to do. Morals are for what you don't want to do, right? Diet is for things you shouldn't eat or things you don't want to eat, but you should. Exercise regimes are for when you don't want to exercise, right? Discipline is required for the things you don't want to do. This is why but the atheists if they say well i just don't like lying i don't like lies and liars never prosper it's like bro you're talking to a guy whose life work was erased because of lies and very successful lies you're literally talking to a guy whose life works because the lies saying well lies don't work man lies are impractical again i'm not saying that i'm not saying everybody needs to know my history but i think most people do i think most people do.
[20:03] So yeah i mean this that's the thing right as you get older i mean particularly if you have a sort of moral a real moral backbone i mean obviously i've got my flaws i've got my faults i've got my peccadilloes but i've never disavowed anything i know to be true and i have talked about things that are true that are really important to society that are very controversial you know, i think you know if anything i fall a little bit on foolhardiness which is an excess of courage and that's a fault that's a flaw i'm not saying this little humble brag look how but i i fools rush in where angels fear to tread i definitely have that fault to a degree i'm working on it and, actually one of my characters i wrote a book in my early 20s called just poor you can get it at freedomaine.com slash books. And one of the characters who's old and wise says to a young person who tells truths that are very dangerous, he says, the truth is not a sword to be drawn at all costs.
[21:10] Should have listened to old nodded Bob, but I mean, I did what I did before love came to town. So, yeah, I mean, I have my faults and flaws. But as far as courage goes, you know, not bad. Again, a bit too much, a bit too cocky. That's all right. I mean, I didn't go bored by having low testosterone. So I would say that when I asked atheists, what reasons do you have to not lie? And they say, well, we have all these reasons to tell the truth.
[21:47] We have all these reasons to not lie, then of course, my question is, so when lies took me down, where were you?
[22:01] If the truth is so important, millions of you knew about me, you knew that it was unjust. Where were you? You Homer Simpson hedged. You were in a hedge fund called Yellow. So, I mean, you can't undo this amount of data. These are facts. Now, I don't say this with any hostility, any contempt. I don't even say this with any disrespect. It's just that as atheists, yeah value the truth and the truth is you don't really value the truth you value comfort right this is why i kept responding to people on these threads saying well you're just hedonists, you're just hedonists because when it became well i couldn't say again send me an anonymous email saying i'm so sorry blah blah blah it's not not a not a lot to ask didn't matter right, so yeah you don't you don't value the truth um you don't value justice really um and.
[23:04] That's fine i mean that is in accordance with evolution right evolution says do what is best for your survival and it could have been risky to publicly support me back in the day i get it i understand i sympathize i'm not even mad at you i'm just pointing it out that then when you say, it's hypocritical to say to Christians you should accept the truth even though it makes you suffer enormously and then refuse to even send an anonymous email of support when someone is treated unjustly.
[23:38] You just gotta look in the mirror and see who you are, unadorned no vanity no pomposity and look I'm not perfect at this. Obviously, it's a lifelong project, but it's a really important project. You're looking, and I'm just holding up a mirror. These are the facts, and you don't have these facts, right? I have these facts because I went through it. So this is who you are. You, failed to support someone who was being unjustly attacked because it was uncomfortable, because you didn't care because it was inconvenient because it was potentially upsetting so you did not uphold the truth because it was upsetting to you or you were afraid of it and then you tell christians you should let go of 2 000 years of moral history and immortality and reuniting with loved ones and so on comfort in the face of death and illness and suffering well um.
[24:42] You're not what you think you are. I'm sorry to tell you, you're just, you're not who you think you are. And you pick the easy fights, not the difficult fights. You don't value the truth. You value dominance. And when you're asked tough questions and you get tough data, and I recognize this is tough data, and I sympathize with it. It's tough to go through that dark midnight of the soul when you say, gee, am I living up to that which I claim is the good? Easy to talk about the good. I can say the word diet, diet, diet over and over again. Muscle, muscle, muscle, it doesn't change anything, right? You can say, say, words are cheap, right? Deeds are expensive.
[25:24] You are measured by what you do. Your conscience measures you, if you have one, by what you do, not what you say. So I say to atheists, I ask atheists, did your words match your values? Did you do one one hundred thousandth of that which you demand of Christians when it came to telling the truth? No. So, sorry atheism, you're not enough yet. You're not enough and you need to start working on that.
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