0:03 - Introduction to the Podcast
0:26 - Books for Children
1:41 - Politics and Integrity
5:55 - Turning Point USA and Cultural Commentary
7:14 - Women and Motherhood
8:44 - Feminism and Statism
9:44 - Dating Advice for Men
12:32 - Jordan Peterson's Influence
16:07 - The Nature of Morality
28:01 - Free Speech and Society
29:54 - Historical Context of Morality
34:41 - The Role of Christianity in Morality
41:53 - Economic Freedom and Social Structures
55:48 - Science vs. Philosophy in Morality
1:08:13 - The Purpose of Life and Morality
1:14:39 - Modern Dating Dynamics
1:16:30 - Closing Remarks and Future Discussions
In this episode, I engage with various thought-provoking topics, focusing on parenting, politics, relationships, morality, and the intricacies of personal integrity. I start off by addressing a listener's inquiry about children's literature, leaning towards classic Grimm's Fairy Tales. These stories, rich in dark themes, serve as a foundation not only for entertainment but also for discussions about life's complexities, such as the dynamics of familial relationships and the psychological implications of stepmothers in fairy tales.
In a shift towards political discourse, I express my reluctance to engage deeply in politics as of late. I reflect on how the political landscape has shifted, noting a significant decline in people's willingness to have tough conversations about civilizational values. My commentary includes a critique of how integrity has become synonymous with cult-like behavior for those who believe in standing by their moral principles amidst rising political adversities. I emphasize that true change starts with individuals taking a firm stand for their beliefs, rather than merely conforming to societal pressures.
As the conversation unfolds, I touch upon the issues surrounding modern relationships, particularly the dynamics between men and women. I dissect the impacts of feminism when mixed with statism, arguing that women hold significant power in societal and familial structures, yet this can lead to complex relational outcomes for men. I explore the theme of men "going on strike" in relationships due to pressures and expectations, suggesting this trend arises from a historical landscape of power shifts between genders and the implications of loyalty and commitment in the current dating climate.
The episode also ventures into the realm of morality and the philosophical underpinnings of ethics. I challenge the notion that morality can stem from science alone, promoting the idea that philosophy, particularly in the context of universal ethics, is crucial for understanding moral foundations. This includes significant critiques of how historical misinterpretations of religion and morality have shaped contemporary beliefs and behaviors.
Listeners can anticipate a rich discourse on why individuals may gravitate toward dysfunctional relationship patterns, linking back to their childhood experiences and expectations. I emphasize the importance of self-worth and authenticity when engaging with potential partners, drawing from personal anecdotes and historical context to illustrate modern relational dynamics.
Overall, this episode provides an in-depth exploration of life's complexities as I engage with my audience through various pressing questions and contemporary challenges, urging a re-evaluation of personal beliefs and moral integrity in today's society.
[0:00] All right, good evening, everybody.
[0:03] Hope you're doing well, Stefan Molyneux, from inside your brain, your conscience, as we rummage around, trying to make us all better people, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Thank you, C. Marsh. I appreciate your tip. freedomain.com slash donate. It's the best way to do it.
[0:27] All right. So, hey, Stef, I was wondering if you had any suggestions for books slash stories from my six-year-old daughter. She loves The Emperor Has No Clothes that you suggested in a previous show. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Well, I would just take some fairy tales, the Grimm's fairy tales, read through them. Don't sanitize them too much. She's six, not four. And just say, well, what could this mean, right? What could this mean? Why why would all of the mothers be stepmothers in Grimm's fairy tales why would they be stepmothers, and what does that mean right so there's two answers really to that number one is that a lot of kids can't process that their moms are really mean so they imagine that the good loving mom was taken out yoinked out and replaced with the evil stepmother that's number one and number two is, that stepmothers are kind of dangerous, right? So non-biologically related adults in a household with children are generally assholes. They're generally predatory for reasons of obvious evolutionary and familial fitness reasons. So it's not good. It's not good. All right.
[1:42] Hey, Stef, Elon Musk and Donald Trump need you to make one more political analysis podcast to help wrestle government spending. Yes, I just did a little two-second video today about, everyone's like, Stef, you've got to be on politics, man. So politics was great.
[1:57] 10 years ago, 15 years ago, even eight years ago, there was hope. There was hope that people would be able to have the tough conversations with those around. It's not about podcasting. It's about, it was never about, of course, whether I could change things or other people in an individual sense could change things. It was about, can we encourage people as a whole to have the difficult conversations they need to have in order to save their country, right? Their civilization, their culture. Because it doesn't come down to a podcast, it comes down to each individual person putting their values and beliefs on the line. Now, as it turns out, people didn't really want to do that. Because to have integrity, apparently, is to be in a cult, right? To be in a cult. And people misunderstood the against me argument, and all the other things that I.
[2:53] Put forward over the course of my show and basically if you don't and not you in particular but if people don't have integrity with regards to their moral beliefs the only thing that's left is political escalation to put it as nicely as humanly possible that's that's all that's left you either have integrity you're willing to put your relationships on the line for the cause of the non-aggression principle in other words don't have people in your life who want you thrown in jail and tortured and raped for disagreeing with them right which is what politics is all about is that if you don't do what i want you go to jail right.
[3:29] So don't have people in your life who want you.
[3:34] Confined abused and possibly raped incarcerated because you disagree with them politically right no libertarians you can disagree with libertarians politically um as long as it's like well i think that that this dro or that dro should handle things that's you know voluntary as anarchist, but status are bloodthirsty now status are bloodthirsty and status go to the gun go to the gun got a problem go to the gun go to the gun go to the gun that's all they do that's all they do, so i put out the call for integrity and everyone says it's a cult he just wants he wants you to disassociate from people who just happen to disagree with you.
[4:17] Oh my god what can you say you know uh in totalitarian takeovers it's all the people in glasses who get killed i talked about that in um.
[4:33] My documentary on Poland, which you should definitely look at. So I put forward the call that people should have genuine integrity with regards to their political beliefs. And most people did not want to do that. And what that meant to me was that's mostly all talk, right? It's mostly all talk. And also that they felt it was too late in the game to give up friends and family because they might need them in the post-apocalyptic warlord scenario that could be coming down the pipe, right? Okay, so if people say, well, I don't want to give up friends and family for the sake of my morals because I'm going to need them in the post-apocalyptic zombie apocalypse, okay, then don't complain if I'm off politics because people don't believe in it anyway. So I just wanted to mention that. Also, I should laugh. Ex-porn star Nala Ray Apparently is speaking at TPUSA Turning Point USA.
[5:38] As it's a big tent. No, it's okay. She's reformed. She only licks her ladle when making pancakes these days. Oh, my God. So porn stars are welcome. Ex-porn stars, I suppose, are welcome.
[5:56] I haven't quite received my invite yet. But perhaps if I become an ex-porn star, I'll be welcome.
[6:09] Show your vajayjay so that orbiting satellites can view it like the grand canyon no problem, talk about iq well that's beyond fail, sorry i went on a brutal hike today with my daughter up and down the bruise up and down I like the Assyrian Empire, so I'm afraid my lungs have collapsed. Turning Point USA. Ah, dear, dear. That's pretty wild, man. That's pretty wild. And you might want to follow Milo on Glenn Greenwald. Milo is like this sandblasting x-ray of exposing people. He really is something. And it's probably worth, I don't know if everything he posts is true, seems to be true. I don't know. But it's definitely worth following to see who's welcome. Who's welcome in the small government movement.
[7:15] Oh, it's so liberating, man. Oh, I love them. I love them for all the freedom that they provide to people like me. Are you going back to twitter no doesn't exist anymore oh my gosh, hi staff there is a lot of talk about women not having children today and a gloomy forecast for those women when they reach advanced stages of their lies to include vulnerability and financial devastation oh you mean lives please spell check. Don't make me puzzle it out. It's not an escape room, bro. They reach advanced stages of their lives to include vulnerability and financial devastation. But women have children with men. Doesn't this mean that men are also not having children? And what will be the fallout for men as well? Men can survive childlessness a lot better than women. Because men generally build in the world and so we don't need to build people quite as much and so this this is the most i'm not saying for you i'm just in general the most absolutely mind-numbingly boring thing is when you say something about women if you say well what about men.
[8:33] You have a tumor on your left kidney. Yeah, well, what about my right kidney? It's like, well, we're kind of talking about your left kidney. What about my right kidney? What's the story with my right kidney? Let's focus on my right kidney. It's like, well, right.
[8:45] So feminism plus statism is just way too much power. Women have an enormous amount of power. They're the gatekeepers of sex. They're the gatekeepers of marriage. They're the gatekeepers of children. And in sort of the traditional sense, given that sexual desire led to marriage and children, and they um get all these resources from men men are constitutionally and biologically programmed to throw resources at women like buckets of water on an everlasting fire and so women have an enormous amount of power just in the determination of who gets to reproduce who gets to date who gets to marry and you throw that in with the state power uh the state then bends to the will of the women the women wish to escape consequences which means the consequences all land like a ton of bricks on the gonads of the men, and the men go on strike. The Alice Schroch is men going on strike, and men are going on strike in relationships, and men are going on strike, at least white men, in marriage.
[9:45] I mean, I've said for 20 years, right, the statism leads to collapse, and people have people have decided I'm wrong, all right how can I approach a girl and feel I have value and or actually have value my approaches lately are basically begging for her to like me when I believe I have nothing to offer at least nothing that she would appreciate it seems to me that all Gen Z girls care about is Instagram likes I can be clever and flirty but I come across as low value including due to my fundamental beliefs, I believe I cannot compete with the sexual market value of a 20-something girl. Any suggestions? Well, stop being a fraud. Stop approaching people that... You don't believe you're worthy of. I mean, you don't see me applying for jobs as a neurosurgeon because I'm not worthy of it, right? You don't see me saying, well, you know, everybody has to donate $1,000. What, Ross Ulbricht, did he just get 30 plus million dollars in Bitcoin? Freedomain.com slash donate. But yeah, stop being a fraud. If you feel that the girl is too good for you, don't approach her because that's fraudulent, right? Because you're asking her to think better of you than you do of yourself.
[11:06] Nobody is going to praise you when you are down on yourself except somebody who wants to rip you off, con you, or exploit you. So if you approach a woman and you're down on yourself, she doesn't know you from Adam. She doesn't know who you are. She doesn't know what your value or your worth is. So if you believe that you have little to no value and you are approaching a woman who you believe is significantly above you in sexual market value, she's going to reject you. And that's what you prefer. You prefer women to reject you, which is why you approach them like, well, I guess you don't really want to go out on a date with someone like me, huh? Ah, women, they're so cold. They just reject me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've approached probably 100 plus girls this year in very high risk settings. It's probably what I'm most proud of. I couldn't even bring myself to say hi to a girl last year, says someone.
[12:07] That may be a little bit undifferentiated, right? Like if you don't have a reason to choose a woman, she's just gonna be insulted. Hey you with the boobs and the pulse. Wanna get together and make a family, right? A woman likes to feel that you've chosen her. So just talking to everyone, maybe a little bit, maybe a smidge undifferentiated. Ah, oh my gosh.
[12:32] Yeah, I mean, it's hard to find. Oh, so, okay, so I've got the Jordan Peterson thing queued up because there's some very interesting arguments there. If you have questions, issues, comments, I'm totally happy to hear those. Or I can do the Jordan Peterson stuff. I did it more for exposure therapy. All right. All right. But don't you actually want to get a date at some point? rather than just do exposure therapy. I could be wrong, but I think the purpose is to get a date, to get married, whatever, right? So just something to think about. Yeah, I have a tough time explaining why people pursue negative interactions. Oh, you got dates too. Okay, do you have a girlfriend? I mean, the whole point is to get married and have kids, right? So you get dates, but are you upgrading, right?
[13:32] My son gets mad at me if I bring up a possible girlfriend. LOL. I don't think that's funny. No girlfriend, yeah? Okay. Well, then you've got to read people better and differentiate people better. So nobody wants to be in a giant collective called females as a whole who I ask out. It's got to be a bit more individual. At least a woman of quality is not going to want you just going down the line. Hey, want to go out? Hey, want to go out? Hey, want to go out?
[13:58] So, yeah, it's a tough thing to explain. to people why they, like, let's say you grew up with a really, I don't know, a nagging mother and then you end up with a nagging girlfriend. You say, well, how do you explain that? Why? I mean, it's negative. I didn't like my mother nagging me. Why do I end up with a nagging girlfriend or wife? Why do I end up with a wife who nags, right? Or you grew up with an emotionally distant father and you end up with a husband who's emotionally distant. You say, well, why? Why would I do this?
[14:28] I don't like it. said yeah but you prefer it and the the analogy that i would use is let's say you move to some foreign country far away from your native land and let's say your native land is i don't know america whatever right and you move to some panama or something like that and then you end up you're going to gravitate towards an expat community right you're going to gravitate towards uh americans who speak english americans who speak english and you're going to hang around them because it's a language you're familiar with. And it's the same thing with dysfunction. You move someplace, you end up just hanging out with the people whose language you're familiar with, which is called dysfunction. If you come out of the pickup artist tradition, you feel obligated to approach every okay looking woman and kick yourself when you don't, even if all the interactions are unpleasant. I don't believe you. I don't, like I don't believe you. I mean, the pickup artist tradition has, got a wide variety and it's the pickup artist tradition is it designed to get you laid or is it designed to get you a wife if it's designed to get you laid then it's just animalistic lust right so it's kind of pathetic right oh i'm lighter in an ounce and a half of semen enlightenment, very sad all right so um the questions are not flying fast and furious which is totally fine of.
[15:53] So I'm going to throw in the Jordan Peterson stuff. I will keep half an eye out on the questions, of course. All right. Okay. Morality and purpose cannot be found within science. I see your question, Jay.
[16:07] So we'll get to that. Morality and purpose cannot be found within science.
[16:15] Fine young man in the blue shirt. What is up, Mr. Canada? How are you doing, man? I'm doing great. What's your name? Brian. I think it's interesting that you said... The man they called Brian. All right. The morality and purpose can't be found in science. Actually... Not within science. Within, sure. Sure, sure, sure. Purpose, I actually grant you, because purpose is subjective, right? Unless you want to boil it down to the purpose of life is just to procreate, right? Okay, so he's not going to say that the purpose... I'm going to speed this up just a smidge. But the purpose of life, yes, is not just to procreate, for sure. Okay. Sure, whatever. Morality is actually something that we do see. We actually have examples of Neanderthals and older individuals found in the tribe. Okay, so Jordan Peterson says you can't get morality out of science. And this guy says, well, tens of thousands of years ago, long before there was science, we had morality. And it's like, that actually serves Jordan Peterson's point completely perfectly. So I'm not really sure. It's just a listening thing. If he says morality can't come out of science, and then you talk about a vastly pre-scientific system of morality or situation of morality, then...
[17:23] That's not listening to the objection. That's just saying stuff. So most people have a bunch of talking points and whatever you, and we had this in, I did the telegram chat earlier today. Most people have a bunch of talking points and they just try and jam those talking points into whatever it is that you're saying. And this guy has a talking point like, hey man, Neanderthals have morality. And it's like, but that's not relevant to Jordan Peterson's point. So it's just coming up and saying stuff that you've memorized as if you're actually contributing to the conversation. Missing an arm, missing teeth, still alive. somehow in his 40s, 50s, right? Typically, you're an Eanderthal. You can't eat, you can't hunt, you die, right? But we know the members of his harboring care of him, right? Okay, so this is to say that morality is taking care of others.
[18:04] Absolutely false. Absolutely false. I mean, there are plenty of species in nature that take care of others. I think of the amount of effort that birds have to do to do their mating dances, to build their nests, to go and get food and to half-chew it, to regurgitate it into their children's or their chicks' bellies and so on. It's crazy, right? So the idea that, well, you know, some animals take care of each other and therefore that's morality is to say that all genetic energy-focused preferences are the same as morality. Come on. I mean, the father lion play fights with his baby lions, right, with the lion cups, to teach them how to hunt. Is that morality? He's doing beneficial things, expending energy in order to benefit his cups, right? So, yes, that is not true.
[19:09] That is not morality, right? So the idea that there were nice people in the past. So let's just theorize for a second here. Why would Neanderthals, why would they want to take care of those who are older and somewhat disabled? Well, a couple of reasons. Number one, they're available to take care of the offspring, as grandparents do, right? But female fertility tends to fade out when there's going to be more benefit to the offspring from the woman investing in her grandchildren rather than trying to give birth to more live kids. So that's investment in the offspring. They may have a whole bunch of wisdom that is a value to teach the next generation. So somebody's got to teach the next generation the tribal habits of here's the food we gather, here's how we store it, here's how we process it, here's how we cook, here's how we hunt. Like someone's got to transfer this knowledge. and for older people to transfer the knowledge who aren't hunting but who had experience hunting is a very useful thing. Also you will encourage people to have more children if those children will take care of the elderly which helps the tribe grow. So there's very practical evolutionary biological genetic reasons as to why you'd want to take care of those who are wounded or disabled.
[20:21] Nothing wrong with it. It's great and of course if they're wounded and disabled they don't have to they don't have as many calorie requirements because they're not out there hunting and doing all of this physical labor so um they're telling the stories right telling the tribal stories so that there's cohesion within the tribe if there's an attack all of these things so the idea that this is somehow abstract morality and virtue and so on nope it's just economic uh sorry it's just evolutionary and genetic um efficiency so all right so we know that at some level early in evolutionary history, we actually developed altruism.
[20:58] Okay. Altruism is doing things for others at no benefit or negative or at loss to yourself. Altruism is helping others at no benefit or at a loss to yourself. Now, why is that morality? It can't be universalized. The concept of sacrifice cannot be universalized, right? If I say, well, it's moral for me to give you $100. It's moral for me to give you $100 because and I don't even like you or your cause right so I'm sacrificing myself and my money give you $100 well it's asymmetrical right because if it's moral to give $100 to add a negative for you and we dislike each other then I should give you $100 you should give me the $100 I give you the $100 you give me the $100 and it can't be universalized it's asymmetrical asymmetrical morals are always a prequel or a manifestation of exploitation right There's just people telling you, well, you have to give stuff to me, even if you don't like me, because that's virtue.
[21:56] It's just a way of getting things for free. So, yeah, it's not virtue. We have examples of chimpanzees who actually have a basic understanding of fairness, right? If you give a chimpanzee two grapes, right, and his buddy gets three, right? He actually freaks out, right? But you give both chimps three grapes, and they're good. We have examples of parrots. Except for the greedy chimps. Right. So, I don't know, how is that morality? That if you do things that are unequal, chimpanzees get angry. And again, Jordan Peterson is saying you cannot get an ought from an is. You cannot get morality out of science. And then for Brian here to say, ah, yes, but chimpanzees, and he was going to come up with something to do with parrots. And these aren't morals. These are just instincts that are beneficial to the tribe. Sharing equally produces less conflict. So the chimps don't tear each other apart for inequality, right? I mean, if you've ever, my brother used to make this joke with regards to his kids that you needed an atomic way scale to make sure that if you, say, split a popsicle in two or tried to give, you know, a tub of ice cream to both kids half and half, it was like, slightly more, slightly less, right?
[23:03] Ugh. They want four graves. They want four graves. You know, those do exist, right? But we have similar examples where we do animal tests, right? And so the greedy chimps, right? So this is Jordan Peterson's point is that, yes, you can say that there are these tendencies, but there are also the, quote, sociopathic Neanderthals or greedy chimps or whatever, the people who just want more and more and more, which means it's not a universal instinct. So morality is intrinsic. I think. So it precedes science. I think. Right. So he's saying morality is intrinsic, which means it can't be morals. It's just an, I mean, if chimps do it, it's not morality, right? That's like saying, you know what, man, chimps can catch a ball you throw. Therefore chimps are physicists it's like no you got to have understand the abstractions not just manifest the behaviors that actually a better way to define it would be that social animals which we are right require some level of morality or into what i'm not disagreeing sure why do they require so why do we require some level of morality and why is that morality just about quote taking care of or giving resources to others why why do we need that human societies all human societies past present and hopefully not in the distant future, all societies run on asymmetrical false morality and predatory coercive exploitation. All! All of them! No exceptions. No exceptions.
[24:28] So is it moral to carve off a certain group of individuals and say, well, you guys can initiate the use of force at will, but everyone else has to be peaceful?
[24:38] That is how societies work.
[24:43] Well, you see, we need a certain level of ethics in society because we're social animals. It's like, okay, then why the living fuck are American children, to take one example out of many, why are American children born over a million dollars in debt? Because we need a whole system of morality. Why is it that the government can just declare a war, take your money, use it to provoke, people overseas and then you have to deal with the blowback and you have to be drafted to deal with the war how is that moral you know you you work um you work for 50 years and then the government prints 40 of the money over the last couple of years and inflates away 20 of your 50 years they have just enslaved you through inflation through money printing they've just enslaved you for 50 years. They've just put you in a fluorescent fucking cubicle jail with Janet from HR breathing down your neck for all your social media posts from when you were a teenager. They just put you in fluorescent jail for 20 fucking years. But we see we need this morality to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway.
[25:48] Require that. Because it's the only way that social groups can actually survive, right? That's my point with regards to science. Thank you very much. It's the only way. So, apparently, so societies need morality because it's the only way for social groups to survive. Okay, Genghis Khan was one of the most successful genetically, right? Power, political power genetically, was one of the most successful human beings to have ever lived. Where were his morals?
[26:15] His genes have survived and flourished. He's still on the Mongolian currency, for God's sakes. There's statues all over the place of Genghis Khan. So this is all just like a fat hyper feminine nice absolutely zero understanding of history, Absolutely. I mean, the Aztecs in South America, Central America, the Aztecs were unbelievably brutal.
[26:46] Tortured children for their cry in, he's happy, God. Cannibals, right? The Maori in New Zealand are cannibals and rapists. What are they talking about? Morals are needed for human survival. It's like genetically human survival is driven historically, not morally, but historically is driven on violence and rape. In a state of nature, right? So, yeah, it's all just very abstract and has no actual practical understanding of history. Very much. Is that? Precisely the point that you just made, that science has to exist within a moral framework that isn't in itself scientific. How is it not scientific? Well, because it's not derived from the scientific process, as you just indicated. It doesn't mean it's derived from the scientific process. It's the fact that we are social animals, and we need that to exist as a group. I agree. Okay, so Jordan Peterson's point is flawless. You know, I've got my criticism of him when it comes to religion and atheism, but his point here is flawless. And the fact that Brian, the man they call Brian, that he doesn't get it is kind of incomprehensible to me.
[28:02] You know, morality is supposed to include free speech, and how is free speech doing these days? Well, it's being utterly fucking decimated. I mean, the British police are arresting a thousand people a month for social media posts. Holy crap. Absolutely mad.
[28:28] We are social animals, and we need that to exist as a group. I agree. So the fact that you need something to exist as a group doesn't mean that there's such a thing as morality. Needing for something to exist as a group.
[28:41] And how is that morality if it's local? So you've got group A, you've got group B. They believe different things. Group A believes they're superior to group B. Group B believes that they're superior to group A. Yeah is islam i mean yeah go look at how islam spread right i mean the idea that it's all just morals and virtue and being nice to people and and and binding up people's broken arms and bringing them food although they've lost an eye i mean i don't even like how can you be this, completely blind to to everything that's going on in history and around you like that's just amazing to me but this is this is privilege tries to be made people who grew up in the suburbs who just, oh, everything's so peaceful and nice and lovely. And it's like, what we have and what we're losing is utterly out of the norm. It is way off the bell curve of human history. The relative peace, the high trust society, the relative peace that I grew up with in society, absolutely outside the norm. And then people are like, well, but we need to be nice to each other, immediate altruism, it's like, bro, understand the incredible outlier that you happen to be living in.
[29:54] The unbelievable outlier that you happen to be living in is not human history at all.
[30:06] But you pointed to the morality of Neanderthals, to the morality of chimpanzees. They didn't derive that from science. They don't need to. That's not how that works. That's my point. They don't need to. That's not how that works. That's exactly what. So Jordan Peterson is saying you can't derive morals from science.
[30:24] And he said, well, you don't need to. That's how it works. And so these people are in complete agreement and pretending to disagree. Science explains it. Molar science doesn't explain morality. It doesn't explain how social animals would need to be... Well, that's a complicated question. But we see it, though. Yeah, but explaining the evolution of morality and explaining morality itself aren't the same thing. Okay, so you're asking why does this happen? I ask... Yes, that's more accurate. Because we're social animals and we need to be... Yeah, but there's more to it than that. Is it? Sure, sure, for example. So we're moral animals that have a sense of the future? Sure. Okay, that makes us unique. And that's... Okay, so a sense of the future. So this is very common among atheists, is to blend and to smudge and to merge what human beings do with what animals do, right? Which is what this guy did. Human beings, Neanderthals, which are not specifically Homo sapiens, and chimpanzees, right? So he's saying, well, we're kind of like animals plus a little, right? We're animals, you know, we're on the same continuum as animals, and we're not. We're absolutely not in any way close to animals. Animals can't do one billionth of 1% of what human beings can do.
[31:35] So we're not just animals plus. We're not just beasts of the field and forest with a little bit of shine. We're not just a car with a new coat of paint, and we're not just a cake with a little extra icing, right?
[31:55] So this idea that morality grows out of in-group genetic preference is to say that human beings are specifically tribal, and what they call ethics is actually tribal success, and tribal success comes at the expense very often of other tribes. Again, if you look at the indigenous population of North America, they were doing the most appalling stuff, scalping each other, raping each other, enslaving each other. The Cherokee were almost genocided at one point. So, yeah, he's saying that that's what? That's the good?
[32:26] I don't know. It's strange. Structures are morality. No, actually, there are other animals that can predict the future. No, I'm not doing it. So he's saying that human beings have the capacity to predict the future, right? So they can say, well, I want to send a spaceship past Saturn. So I'm going to predict the position and the right payload and the angle and the speed and the propulsion and the acceleration, right? And he's saying, well, but birds build nests before they have eggs. Like, it's not the same. It's not the same at all. No, tigers. Actually, there was a tiger at the SF Zoo that killed somebody. Hunting animals. No, no, no, no. No, kids threw shit at the tiger. The tiger actually plotted its escape and it found the kids. I'm not saying that animals can't think. Okay. Yeah, my brother and I, we poured some sand or dust down a wasp's nest. And it was like two hours later, I got stung by a wasp, which had never happened before. So clearly they saw me and they chased me down and I got stung. And I remember rolling around, I was about six or so, I remember rolling around in my flat, you know, like holding my arm because it was so painful. I'd never been stung by a wasp before. And it was like right after we poured some sand down the wasp's nest that they came and found me and stung me. So, that's exactly the same as putting a spaceship past Saturn. The future is what I'm saying. Voted out by the majority. Thank you, man. Good man. Yep. He still hasn't answered the question, how does science prove morality?
[33:52] Science can prove that reciprocal altruism can benefit a gene pool. That doesn't prove morality because reciprocal altruism occurs in a wide variety of creatures.
[34:03] Hey, Tarn Peterson. How are you doing? My name's Luke. Nice to meet you. Good to see you, Luke. So, your claim that morality and purpose can only be found in science is a little shaky, because I think that your claim... Morality and... So, he says, your claim that morality and purpose can only be found in science, but no, morality and purpose cannot be found within science.
[34:20] So, is he missing things completely? But then, this is somebody, again, they're just setting up their talking points, right? So, your claim that morality and purpose can only be found in science... It's the exact opposite of Jordan Peterson's claim. I mean, it's right there on the title, not that this guy can see it, but Mr. Manbun. All right. It's a little shaky because I think that your claim is really being framed to be morality and purpose can only be found in religion.
[34:41] Is that how you're kind of framing it? I would say that the domain of religion is the domain of morality and purpose, yes. Exactly. And also that science is actually structured, at least in part, technically, to eliminate such considerations from its purview a priori. Okay. That's why we define science as value-free. but that has to be wrong because scientists have to prioritize their attention towards something before they can even engage in observation okay and that act of prioritization of attention is a value predicated act and so we as i can continue there's all sorts of things we have to assume about science before it can take place okay so what i'm specifically pointing out here is about religion in particular since you yourself are a christian right that's people debate about that and i generally don't discuss it publicly okay i understand that and me myself i am a former a young earth creationist fundamentalist. So I have experience in this. I used to run a TikTok channel.
[35:31] Directed about apologetics about the Bible, specifically in this type of facet with morality, evolution and such, and going back and forth with that. So, in the Bible, it talks a lot about slavery, right? Yes. Yes. So, in that, it teaches you how to take care of a slave. Rather than saying slavery is wrong, I think it should say that. No, it says that in the story of Moses. It says slavery is incorrect. Well, that's why Moses leads his people away from slavery. No, it doesn't say that slavery is incorrect. It says that the enslavement of Moses and his people is incorrect and they should be free, but not on an abstract level, that human beings should not be subject to the coercive control of rulers, because then the Bible would be an anarchic document. But why does the Bible predicate and tell people exactly how to take care of a slave? Isn't that immoral? Wouldn't you say that culturally we've evolved as a species, as he said earlier, about empathy? Yeah, I would say that the reason we evolved, so to speak, away from slavery was because the West was founded on Judeo-Christian morality and the presumption that every person was made in the image of God. And so slavery itself became immoral, and that was established by Protestants. Well, no, I think that slavery, well, sorry, let's.
[36:34] It's not, because Christianity had been around for, you know, 15, 16, 17, 1800 years, depending on sort of how you count the sort of slavery thing. Uh christianity he'd been around for a long time and it was slavery was the end result of other things um in particular improvements in parenting but the idea that christianity alone is responsible for the end of slavery is saying well why was there a 17 or 1800 year lag which is not inconsiderable when you're saying this causes this it's like yeah but 1800 years later it's got to be something else christians in the uk who then in other words the further that people got away from Jesus, the more.
[37:15] They valued the teachings of the Bible. That doesn't really make sense. Invinced the UK government for 200 years to go to war on slavery. And what do you say that this is about the cultural evolution of humans in general rather than just Christianity? No, I think it's the flowering of the ideas that were embedded in the biblical texts across long spans of time. I feel like this is just humans editing based on the cultural evolution. Well, but it is certainly true that the Bible tells people how to take care of their slaves.
[37:41] And taking care of them is not saying, free them, right? Just. Just? Yeah, just humans. Well, humans. Editing. Well, based on culture and history, right? We get better- Well, they did do it based on culture and history, but culture and history have their foundations too, so- Well, yeah, but we're talking about slavery. So many people bolstered it based on the Bible. Everyone except- Based on the Bible. That's much less true. They looked at it and they justified it in the United States and the Deep South. They justified slavery based on the Bible. Yeah, but the main thrust of Protestant thought in particular was stringently against slavery, and it was about the only movement in the history of the human race that had an anti-slavery direction. Which was driven by humans and their understanding of morality. Well, it depends. It's the same with women's suffrage. I mean, women's in the patriarchy. What do you mean it was driven by humans? Humans drove slavery too. Yes, exactly. So there's no argument there. If slavery and anti-slavery were both driven by humans, what does your claim that they were driven by humans have to do with it? Evolving morality based on the culture within the society that they live in. Okay, fine. So with women's suffrage as well is a very similar topic in the Bible. There are denominations in Christianity such as Pentecostal movement which do bolster women to be pastors, right? Which I think that's a great thing to do. but most like to disregard women. Where do you think the idea that human beings were sufficiently equal to all vote and not be slaves came from? Humans. Yeah, but so did the idea of slavery. So did the idea of God. Fine, but what's your point? Like, you're not making an argument. You're just saying all thoughts come from humans, regardless of the thoughts. Now, that's actually a very good, again, Dr. Peterson, very smart fellow and a good debater, no doubt.
[39:04] So that is, very true. And.
[39:12] The question of where the end of slavery came from, again, there's lots of different arguments. One that I would make would be that the end of slavery came out of the Black Death. So the Black Death wiped out a third, sometimes even half of the general population. And so the serfs, the slaves had a much better bargaining position and the lords and the landowners had to make pretty significant concessions in order to get people to work from them. Some of those concessions involve freedom. So then what happened was when you gave more freedoms to your workers, you found out, lo and behold, that they were more productive, right? So you had a shortage of workers, you give more concessions to workers, you start to erase.
[40:00] Uh serfdom which was a prequel to the erasure of slavery and i mean slavery is worse than serfdom but serfdom had to go first because it was more tied to the western uh um land ownership structure and land productivity structure so what they did was they you had the black death the black death, restricted the number of of workers therefore the landowners had to give many more concessions to the workers they had to give them more freedom more ownership more property rights more liberties and so on. And then they very quickly found out that the more freedoms their workers had, the more productivity their land produced.
[40:38] Now, that's a very powerful thing. It's a very powerful thing. So there then became a race between lords within a country and countries within the international framework to say, who can we liberate the most to become the most productive so for instance if you've got uh lord john and lord ralph right lord john and lord ralph now lord john gives his workers a whole bunch of freedoms and then they produce 50 percent more as a result of that right and maybe he taxes half of that or whatever so they but they're still producing 25 percent more so because lord uh john i think it was lord john sorry maybe go backwards Because the lord who gives his serfs more freedom ends up with more wealth, so he can buy out the other guys. And this is how that kind of freedom spreads. So then the other guy is like, holy crap. Also, he might lose workers to go over to the freer demons, the freer lands, right?
[41:41] And so he's then got to offer more concessions, more freedoms, and then it becomes an upward spiral. And then what happens is you end up with so much land productivity, and I wrote about this in my novel, Just Poor. You should get it at justpoornovel.com.
[41:54] But I wrote about all of this, about you had 10, 15, sometimes even 20 times the crop productivity with winter crops, with turnips, with, you know, there's a whole turnip townsend, like there was whole books written and all of this kind of stuff about how to increase agricultural yields. But all of that had to do with property rights and trading rights and market rights and freedom.
[42:17] So when you start to get a significant excess of crops being produced, you end up with with an urban proletariat, right? There's not, you don't need that many workers on the land. And so you kick people off the land. This is called the enclosure movement. And then they end up in the city and they're a great pool of labor for the beginning and the foundations of the industrial revolution. You can't have an industrial revolution unless you have excess food productivity in the countryside, because there's just not enough for the city dwellers to live on, right? cities all survive on excess crops from the country. So.
[42:58] There was a war between those who gave their workers more freedom, whether it was urban or rural.
[43:06] There was a war between those who gave their workers more freedom and those who gave their workers less freedom or kept their freedom limited. And this was not just within particular countries where the most liberal lords ended up with the greatest productivity, the greatest wealth. They could buy out the other people. They could bribe the king more. They could move up in the hierarchy because they were wealthier. And then this also occurred between countries so that the more productive countries and in particular i'm thinking of england and let's say the netherlands right it was very productive and netherlands was actually the birth of the stock market which is the defining characteristic of a free market and so the countries that liberated their serfs and their workers such as england ended up with immense amounts of power, not just in terms of economic productivity, but once you give people their liberties, they become incredibly creative and productive, right? So you had the invention of all sorts of, you know, ships and weaponry, navigation systems, transportation systems, the train, and I think it was 1825 that the train first was really the steam engine, because there's intellectual property rights, there is the ability to buy and sell, there's a stock market so you can get the investment. So you get this cycle where the most economically liberated countries win the race of colonialism.
[44:29] So, of course, we just want to keep that going until people are free from all political violations of persons of property. So that is a start, right? Is that a perfect explanation? It really depends on whether you say, well, it was the Black Death or whatever it was, right? I mean, it could be any number of things, but the Black Death was certainly a pivotal and seminal event in European history to the point where, when we know from the very facts of the matter that massive concessions were wrung from the lords, by the workers on their fields, on their lands, and as a result of that, productivity went through the roof and people got kicked off their land and went to the cities. Like, that for sure we know. There's all the dominoes, right? So it's not that the Black Death caused it because the Black Death hit other people, but the Black Death plus offering more liberty, to the serfs and the workers and so on. And so it's not just, well, Christianity just happened to win this. And...
[45:39] I mean, another argument would be that why did it come out of the Protestant countries? Well, the Protestant countries, by allowing the most educated to have children, right? So remember, in Catholic countries, a lot of the most educated and the highest IQ people are priests, and the priests can't have kids, at least not officially. I mean, I know there was a lot of stuff on the wayside. So the countries that became more Protestant had higher IQ people have children, given that IQ is 80% genetic by late teens and I think goes up even further after that. You have more and more intelligent people over generations. And so that is another aspect of things as well. In other words, freedom for priests to get married and have children, which occurred in Protestant countries and not in Catholic countries in general, that level of freedom was positive for the intellects of the people over generations. Right? You've got smarter and smarter people. So, did it come specifically out of Christianity? Because as Dr. Peterson says, it's the Protestants. Well, why was it the Protestants?
[46:47] Well, the greater the abstraction, usually the higher IQ that is required not to understand it, but to discover it, right? So the greater the abstraction, the higher the IQ is required to discover it. So to look at physics, look at UPB to pat myself on the back a little bit. And so not to explain it and not to understand it, but to discover it, to figure it out. So if we're going to say, well, it came out of the Protestant tradition, well, the Protestant tradition was not the, quote, Christian tradition in many ways. It was a rebellion against what was going on in the Catholic Church at the time, which was the sale of indulgences, was one of the big issues that Martin Luther had, which is that the Catholic priest was selling for gold reduction of your time in limbo for the sins you'd committed on earth. So you didn't go straight to heaven, you went to limbo, you might be there for 100,000 years, but if you give the priest 20 gold pieces, he'll knock 10,000 years off that. And then they began to sell the indulgences, not just about past deeds, but about future deeds. You say, oh, I'm going to go have a dirty weekend with my mistress. Here's five gold pieces, and I'm already forgiven. I can go and have fun without a conscience and all that kind of stuff, right? So it became the sale of imaginary release from limbo. And it became purchasing forgiveness, not through contrition and morality, but through cold, hard cash. So one of the things that they were rebelling against was that level of corruption.
[48:11] So if it comes out of the protestant nations it's because the protestant nations allowed, the smartest people to have the most kids it's the same thing in the jewish community the rabbis tend to be the smartest and they statistically we've seen that they have the most kids and that is a very very big power so the idea and this would explain why it didn't happen for 16 17 800 years after christianity was established that you look at what happened uh economically you look at what happened, in terms of land ownership and in terms of self-ownership when it came to trade and voluntary employment and so on. And also that.
[48:48] Uh the protestant reformation you know 15th century and so on a couple hundred years later when you've had you know eight to nine generations of smart people getting smarter well they can grasp the abstractions of the universal value of human life which was what was used as the underpinnings to the end of slavery so anyway i just want to point out that and again i'm not saying you get all of that across in this kind of debate but it's not driven by a higher power it's driven on our experience which is what is best for all people is it driven by conscience It could be, which conscious is also something that has evolved over time. And I think that's something that does evolve within morality and empathy. Okay, I don't understand the point that you're making. My point is that God influenced slavery. People looked at the Bible and went, this is moral because God says it, just like women's suffrage. There's lots of— And just like homosexuality. All human societies were slave only. So you can't blame that on the Bible. If humanity— Well, you can blame it if God is supposed to be all good and all-knowing, right? This is the one test of the Bible, right? is if God is all-powerful and all-knowing, there should have been things in the Bible that were completely incomprehensible to the current society, to the society of the time, right? That's if I say, hey, man, I've got a pipeline to omniscience, right? Right, then you can ask the Bilbo Baggins question, right? You put your hands in your pocket and say, play some pocket pool, right? And so you ask the Bilbo Baggins question, right?
[50:11] What has it got in its pocketses, right? so you put your hand in if i say hey i i got a jet i got a pipeline to omniscience then the way that you would test that of course is you would say, uh you would ask me something i couldn't know right what have i got in my pocket now if i answered that okay and i kept answering right then you'd say well you couldn't possibly have that knowledge therefore it is established that you have a pipeline to the divine right.
[50:37] However if i claim to have a pipeline to the divine apparently this is my right arm because it's right, it's correct. Pipeline to the Divine, But I never tell you anything or write anything down that I couldn't have known at the time, right? I mean, if you're going to write the Bible with reference to the omniscience of God.
[51:05] Then if someone in ancient Roman times had written down E equals MC squared, we'd be like, whoa. Well, God knows E equals MC squared because God designed the whole architecture, right? So God completely knows E equals MC squared. So if someone in the Bible had written that down or the inverse square law or, I don't know, the price of Apple stock, June 27th, 1997, that would be like, well, they couldn't possibly have known that at the time. There's no way they could have known that. So clearly, there's a pipeline to the divine. So if general if in general uh slavery was accepted but it was kind of understood that to be good you had to treat your slaves reasonably well then you would expect that in the bible, the fact that some people fled slavery is not a condemnation of slavery.
[52:06] At all right so it's like saying well some people escape unjust prisons therefore all prisons are unjust it's like no no that's people escaping a gulag is different like that would be good i suppose if they're innocent victims of of totalitarianism versus you know people who escape who are put justly in prison because they're serial axe murderers they go and escape and start chopping up the population robert de niro style then uh that's that's bad right so saying people escape a prison doesn't mean that all prisons are immoral which they would be in an anarchic, not that punishment or confinement would be immoral, but the sort of state apparatus for controlling and managing these things.
[52:45] Wait, address that first. All human societies were slavers, so you can't blame that on the Bible. Well, you can say it bolstered it. Well, not if you look at the broad sweep of history, because it was the... Ah, the broad sweep of history. Well, no, if the Bible bolsters slavery, that's responsible. If God is all good and all-knowing and all-moral, then God should have condemned slavery because slavery is evil. On the bible well you can say it bolstered it well not if you look at the broad sweep of history because it was the protestant christians based on their interpretation of the bible it was the protestant christians over time yes and that's it's really rude to just not let dr peterson make make his case right he's got to make his case and it's not the worst case in the world it just doesn't explain why it took more than a millennia and a half all right so the first thing i would to say i would like to engage in this discussion in a symbiotic manner i would not like to engage where there is one clear winner and one.
[53:42] Clear loser emotions are activated and ultimately comes about ego so i'm just saying i'm really trying to understand your position and i would just like you to really try to understand my position deal okay sounds good with that if you're saying that morality and purpose cannot come from science is the opposite of that true that morality and purpose can only come from god so i mean what bothers me of course is that science is a methodology for understanding and predicting the nature and behavior of matter and energy, right? It's an objective, rational, empirical discipline for understanding the behavior of matter and energy. So when people say morality and purpose can't come from science, I get that. I get that. What I would like to have a discussion about is can morality and purpose come from philosophy, right? So science is a physical subset of philosophy as a whole. It uses reason and evidence in the pursuit, again, of understanding and predictability of the behavior of matter and energy.
[54:46] So saying morality doesn't come from science is a category error, because science is not there for the production of morality. Philosophy is the all-discipline, science is a sub-discipline, and the central purpose of philosophy is not science, but morality, because that's the one aspect of philosophy that is not shared by anything else.
[55:12] So saying that morality, which is a discipline of philosophy and not of science, saying that morality doesn't come from science is like saying bread doesn't come from physics. Physics is not supposed to produce bread. Physics is supposed to be the analysis of the behavior and interactions of matter and energy.
[55:37] So it's a category error. And it bothers me, of course, fundamentally, and this comes out of a lot of Richard Dawkins stuff, that people want to, atheists in particular, want to create a new deity called science.
[55:49] And they say, well, morality comes from evolution, which is scientific, and morality comes from biology, which is scientific, and therefore we can get morality from science. It's like, what the hell is wrong with philosophy as a source of morality, right? I mean, philosophy, as I've proven with UPB, philosophy can produce, it's the only thing that can produce rational and consistent ethics. It's the only thing. Philosophy is the only discipline that can produce rational and consistent ethics, not religion, not science, no other, not language analysis, not history, no other discipline can produce universal morality other than philosophy. Science cannot do it. Because science is a description of what is, not what ought to be. I mean, you can't get the is from the ought. That's the sort of old distinction. Of course, saying that means that you have gotten an is from an ought, which you ought not get an is from an ought. So you've already crossed that Rubicon, and it's just a matter of figuring out which oughts are universal that claim to be universal.
[56:42] Morality and purpose can only come from God. That's a way of defining it, yes. Okay. That's a way of defining it. Ooh. Ooh, come on, man. Right, that's good. So I would say that with regard to the first claim, say, atheists don't understand what they're rejecting. Because I would say, by definition, God is the unity upon which moral claims are based. God is the unity upon which moral claims are based. Because I'm all about the base, about the base, no worries. What does that even mean? God is the unity upon which moral claims are based.
[57:18] No, God commands morality. So the answer to morality from religion is we know what's good because God is all good and God commands this. It's an argument from authority and it's fundamentally buttressed by punishment and reward by hell and heaven, respectively.
[57:33] It's an argument from authority. God is incomprehensible, all good. You have to do what he says. And if you do what he says, you go to heaven. If you don't do what he says, you go to hell. So it's an argument of authority and an argument from brutal consequence. That's not an argument that's an appeal to authority followed by a threat of infinite torture or eternal orgasm of heaven right so moral claims are based no and and of course the problem the problem with religious morality is of many problems it's not rational it's not empirical it's not provable it's relatively subjective because every god and every denomination and each individual within that denomination has different views of what's moral, it tends to amplify personality to the universal and the eternal which produces a kind of narcissism and megalomania because if you believe that your particular instincts are at one with god's will, then you can't be contradicted and you can't show any particular self-restraint or self-criticism because you are united with God's will, God is universal, perfect, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-moral, all-good. So if you've self-identified a unity between your preferences and God's preferences, you know, it's like the old thing that both sides on the war or the sport are praying for God to give them victory, right?
[59:01] So, that's number one. It tends to be subjective. And the subjectivity is not identified as subjectivity. Subjectivity is wound into universal perfect objectivity in that the subjective preferences are united with universal divinity, which means they're no longer perceived as subjective, nor even objective in a human sense, but universal and perfect in the sense of God. So, that's very dangerous, number one. And number two is that if God is the source of all morality, and the alternatives are not God and science. The alternatives are theology and philosophy. God and science, science is the new God, wherein atheists try to extract their religion. I dare say cult, bit of an abused term. So the problem is that if God is the source of all morality.
[59:53] Then you can eliminate morality by no longer believing in God. That's a big problem. You cannot eliminate morality by ceasing to believe in UPB any more than you can eliminate theories of gravity by refusing to believe in them. You're still subject to it. And of course, people can say, I don't accept UPB. UPB is false. UPB is wrong. Okay. Then they have to prove it, right? They have to, and they can't. They absolutely get UPB is beyond dispute. People have been hacking at it for like 17, 18 years. I've had endless debates about it. It's true. It's true it's valid it's factual i mean there may be details in which you can explain it better and so on but.
[1:00:35] Stealing can never be universally preferable behavior because stealing means everybody should want to steal and be stolen from. Everybody should prefer stealing. But if people want to be stolen from, it's no longer stealing. The category collapses. It's a self-detonating argument. It cannot be universalized. The same thing with rape, assault, and murder. So, excuse me, you can disbelieve in UPB in the same way that you can disbelieve that two and two make four.
[1:01:08] But if somebody says to you, I reject two and two makes four, I think two and two make five, or the color blue, or a dragon, right? Then you would say, not that they're wrong, but that they're crazy. If somebody were to say to you, the earth is shaped like a banana and a dodecahedron, and my armpit at the same time, you wouldn't take that person seriously they would have no place in a rational discussion right so people can reject upb but only by saying that two and two make blue or that um it's true that all men are mortal it's true that socrates is a man but it's not true that socrates is mortal, right you wouldn't like it's like well no if all men are mortal and socrates is a man then socrates is mortal there's a basic syllogism right we're talking deductive upb is not inductive reasoning it's not probability it's not odds upb is a hundred percent it's it's deductive logic it's not inductive it's not odds are so people who reject clear deductive reasoning are never taken seriously at all.
[1:02:27] Right? All birds can fly. A pigeon is a bird. Therefore, a bird can fly. A pigeon can fly, right? I mean, whatever. I mean, you could say, I don't know, emus and ostriches and so on, right? But so if people reject clear deductive syllogistical reasoning, nobody takes them seriously. If somebody just say, well, it's true that I owe you $1,000, but I don't owe you $1,000, us. People say, what? You just contradict? And that's the sign of a broken brain, and nobody takes anybody seriously. So it's true that people can reject UPB, but only by casting themselves out of any rational discussion. If somebody were to say, I believe that gases both expand and contract when heated. Say, well, no, no, come on, it's got to be one or the other. It can't be both, right?
[1:03:23] Right if somebody at the equator says north is both this way and the opposite of this way we would say i i don't know what's wrong with your brain but this is not right it's not right so so people can reject upb once it's one widely accepted and so on and logically true people can reject upb but nobody would take them seriously they'd be completely ejected from rational discussions, you just be like people would just roll their eyes and say well you have some emotional problem or some mental problem or some brain problems or you you can't um like if somebody says japan is in africa you don't like no like have you seen that guy he's on um he's on youtube and he asks the most blindingly obvious questions like in what country is the panama canal japan yes he says yes at the end of it with a face of despair a face of despair um.
[1:04:17] So, philosophy can prove secular ethics through UPB. So, God is the unity upon which moral claims are based. That's a definition. Okay, if there is a God, what is the purpose of life? Well, in the Christian tradition, the purpose of life is to engage in voluntary, upward, self-sacrifice, so that the kingdom of heaven can be established on earth. So, you're trying to make it to heaven and avoid hell? Yes, that's a good way of thinking about it. What is the purpose of heaven?
[1:04:47] You understand? So here's the deal. At minimum, it's the opposite of endless suffering. How about that? Okay, and so should we... So what is the purpose of heaven? I don't think that that question is relevant to the concept of heaven, because happiness is the end goal of human activity as a whole, or at least self-satisfaction. And so it's like saying, if you're trying to get home, what's the purpose of trying to get home when you're home? Well, the purpose of trying to get home when you're home is no longer valid. It's been shed like the skin of a snake, because you try to get home, you work to get home, you're traveling to get home, you get home. So what's the purpose of getting home when you're home? Well, there is no purpose of getting home when you're home, and there is no purpose to heaven, because it's already infinite pleasure. Not try to achieve infinite suffering on planet Earth, and if we can achieve infinite suffering on planet Earth without God, avoiding it, if we can do that without God, then does that defeat your claim well if we can avoid infinite suffering on earth without god can these people not just argue from first principles and define their terms yeah except that it doesn't you circumvented my initial definition because i said that by definition god was the unified source of morality and so if wait the unified source of morality or the unified basis for morality.
[1:06:09] Ah source and basis are not the same thing basis is a foundation source is a passive like the source of a river it's a passive entrance all right if we engage in a moral exercise when you're when you're talking about morality though when you really reverse engineer it and you get it down to its root you're a psychologist it really seems like it just has to deal with motivation people are saying there is a god there is more specific than that well i so let me ask you this so if there is a god and there is a moral code and it doesn't come at your benefit are you going to follow it wait what sorry i lost this thing there is a god and there is a moral code and it doesn't come at your benefit are you going to follow it and there is is a god there is more specific than that well i so let me ask you this so if there is a god and there is a moral code and it doesn't come at your benefit are you going to follow it well of course because the benefit is is your soul so your your for the atheist means you as an individual mortal being your for the christian is your soul and the purpose of your soul if it's massive suffering to get to heaven then that's just like a little bit of dental drilling to save your teeth right so um are you going to follow it well for the christian yes because it gets me to heaven freedom.com slash donate to help out the show by the way i haven't even really been keeping track of donations but i don't think they're flowing in and i'm i'm working fairly hard here it depends on how you define your benefit if it if you find your benefit if it's going to come at your expense would you still follow it if god came down and said.
[1:07:33] Here is my moral code, and you should follow it, but even if you follow it, you are still going to end up in hell. Are you going to follow it?
[1:07:40] Okay, so these are theoreticals that just don't make any sense at all.
[1:07:45] Here's my moral code. So God says, would you still follow it? If God came down and said, here is my moral code, and you should follow it, but even if you follow it, you are still going to end up in hell. No, because God can't do that, because to punish people for following virtue would be immoral and God can't do that by definition.
[1:08:05] Are you going to follow it? Well, that was the question that was put to Job and to Christ, right? Because they were required to, hang on, I'm answering your question.
[1:08:14] They were required to withstand trials that would break anyone and maintain their upward orientation regardless. And they did that with the motivation of believing that this omnipotent, all-loving God would somehow turn it into a benefit. So they still did it solely for their benefit so well hang on let's define benefit like if i did something for your sister would that be to your benefit like how are you defining your benefit do you mean one of your whims gratified now or do you mean you and everyone you love and know over some reasonable span of time so when you're talking about whims i think you're talking about something that's more dopamine when you're talking about morality you're talking about something that's more serotonin and more ultimately satisfying so now the biochemistry excellent which is instead of being programmed by the 10 command it was now programmed by dopamine and serotonin.
[1:09:07] But you and i agree on a lot i mean when it comes to talking about how men should be masculine and things of that nature you and i are 100 in agreement we just don't agree on the justification that god is the only thing that provides morality it's not a justification it's a definition.
[1:09:21] What's the difference then between a definition and a justification i mean it's ultimately psychologically the same thing well we have to define what we're talking about before we can just okay well so i said that god so god being the basis of morality is not a definition it's just putting a bunch of words together and thinking you've achieved some syllogism or some argument. I'm actually a non-theist. I'm not an atheist. I believe the human condition is one of uncertainty. And what that means is that I don't believe that you can conclude there is a God with certainty, and I don't believe that you can conclude that there is a God without us in the same position. Now, with that, I don't care. I still wake up every day, and I have motivation to be a moral person. Define moral. Moral, what I ought to do. Okay, what I ought to do. That's not it. But what I ought to do, ultimately, it comes down to what not just benefits me, but what benefits the entire planet, what benefits the entire system. Nope. Nope, nope, nope. No, you cannot say that morality is that which benefits everyone, because there are evil people who are harmed by your moral actions.
[1:10:22] Right i mean if if you are want to free a hostage from a kidnapper then you are harming the kidnapper and you are benefiting the hostage so there's three people right you benefit because you're doing a moral thing you've released the hostage so she's benefited but the hostage taker the kidnapper is negatively affected he maybe you kill him maybe you wound him maybe he goes to jail or maybe he just runs away and doesn't get the the blackmail or whatever he was trying to get So the idea is, oh, I'm just going to benefit the whole world. It's going to benefit the whole world.
[1:10:59] Oh, my gosh. I think that your entire moral perspective comes from linear thinking. And when you look at the reality of the universe, it's actually more so holistic. So when you look at how Aristotle defined God when he said that there had to be an unmoved move or an uncaused cause, he was defining God from a linear perspective. And you do the same with morality and you do the same with purpose. How does my definition of morality hypothetically differ from yours? Because you're saying that there's something that exists in a vacuum, that it exists in and of itself. And nothing in the universe exists in a vacuum. nothing exists in and of itself. It's a whole systems-based morality. Well, nothing exists in a vacuum. It's by definition, a vacuum is without substances within it. So yes, nothing exists in a vacuum and bricks do not exist within clouds.
[1:11:49] So, yeah, I don't... It's a systems-based reality. Is there a hierarchical structure? Is there a hierarchical structure? that's what the quantum uh the moment quantum comes in you know you're just getting ever loading everlasting loads of intergalactic bullshit some things more important than others are some things i think some things lead to more benefits than others by your own definition some things are more important than others yes okay what is there you've been voted all right so i gotta i gotta stop here because it just it like it hurts my brain to is this is like uh freddie mercury or um who's it uh frank sinatra ah there's a couple of strangers in there when you hear sounds that were atonal from the orchestra uh i can only take this for a certain amount because my god just crazy all right so um appreciate that let's go back solo here we will get to a couple of last questions from you guys freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show three bucks a dollar and a two, Hmm. Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. Okay, let's get to your questions.
[1:13:00] Hi, Stef. This is Jay with three bucks. I'm 40 and have a problem of throwing myself into regiments, then rebelling against them. My relationships have been with teammates in various pursuits, art, dance, sports, chasing girls. I rebelled against that too and married a woman who I could not satisfy. I viewed the marriage as a challenge to satisfy a partner and become a good husband. The marriage was unhappy and is now over. No kids or alimony. What's up with me?
[1:13:26] I don't, given the information that you've provided, I have no idea how to answer that question. However, you can go to freedomain.com slash call and we can have a good old meaty chat about it. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to answer that. Why do atheists care about morals or ethics? They just enforce tribal rule. A chimp can shit and I can chimp. I'm a chimp it's pretty funny um based epicurus says i was raised peacefully and default to politeness in conflict however i feel that a massive disadvantage compared to more brutalized children when jockeying for dominance with other men and this subservience results in much less interest from women men who are more eager to resort to violence attract women on a primal level that i don't any thoughts well you men who initiate the use of force are primitive and they attract primitive women. And if you want to be with a primitive woman, you're out of luck. If you want to be with a sophisticated, intelligent, moral woman, they are not drawn to violent men or aggressive men in that way. Assertive, yes. Aggressive, no.
[1:14:30] All right.
[1:14:39] UPP is disproved when those willing to enact it are out-reproduced asymptotically. No, UPP is not disproved. No. UPP can only be disproved by finding logical contradictions within the arguments and formulations, which they aren't. There aren't. Stef clearly hasn't talked to zoomer women in the aggregate yes yes i have not talked to zoomer women in the aggregate what a what a wonderful thing you're providing to the world, all right uh that's uh i really wish we could use Stef's brain power on the issue but he's overly idealistic and out of touch with the current dating climate his methods worked for decades but we need new tactics now.
[1:15:28] Yeah, apparently I don't know anybody who's under 50. Apparently I just don't know anybody who's under 50. I don't have a teenage daughter. I just, I don't know anybody. I don't have friends who've got kids. I don't have any contact with young people. I just, I don't talk to people in calling shows who are in their 20s. I just don't have a clue. Oh my gosh, that's funny. That's very funny. We should watch A Fresh and Fit with Stef or get him on. A Fresh and Fit, isn't it just mostly, I don't know, trashy people as a whole? I could be wrong, but I mean, of course, there are people, there are young women who are idiots. There are young men who are idiots. And the beautiful thing is that they're obvious idiots now. In the past, they were much more camouflaged. So now they're obvious idiots, and you can step over them to get to the quality women. No, there aren't any quality women. It's like, no, there are quality women. Absolutely are quality women. You're just not around you. And that's not my issue.
[1:16:31] Stef glad to hear you again I've been fasting for you since you got YouTube banned ok, alright any other questions comments issues challenges problems happy to hear whatever is on your mind and I do appreciate your support at freedomain.com slash donate that's freedomain.com, slash donate freedomain.com slash donate thank you Matt, thank you Dorbens as always a great pleasure I appreciate that.
[1:17:08] All right let's check out something here and if there are no more questions I will close off for the night really do appreciate you guys dropping by it's great to be able to explain the world to everyone and doesn't particularly hurt that it helps me explain to myself, All right, going once, going twice. Thank you, Jay. I appreciate that. Thank you, Stef, for your amazing books. I've been thinking about the present a lot recently. Fantastic show, Stef, donated a day or so directly. Your work is valued greatly. Thank you very much. The Jordan Peterson video seemed like a speed dating session from hell. That's pretty funny. All right, if you're listening to this later, of course, please help out the show. The show! And get on Pills.net. I don't know what pill.net is. So I appreciate that. Have yourselves a glorious evening, everyone. What did we get to? 32 minutes and 45 seconds out of 12843. It would be fun to do one of these one on 20, 1v20. Well, maybe before I'm dead. We'll see if I get back out of the wilderness. Ah, you know what? I love exploring the wilderness. I just did that today on the Bruce Trail. Yes, pay for what you consume. If you are consuming my material and you find value in it, it's responsible to donate. There's no ads, right? There's no ads, so I've saved you years of your life with no ads, and it is the responsible thing to do, to donate. And I really, really appreciate that. Have yourselves an absolutely glorious night, my friend. We'll talk to you Friday night. Bye.
Support the show, using a variety of donation methods
Support the show
