This X Space from 29 November 2025 explores deep concerns regarding the intersection of ethics, religion, and societal integrity. Beginning with a bold assertion of having identified the foundational issues plaguing civilization, Stefan Molyneux introduces secular ethics as a potential remedy. Emphasizing honesty as the cornerstone of all virtues, the discussion challenges listeners to acknowledge their own limitations before adopting bravery, diligence, or any other virtue.
Stefan draws upon his family heritage and extensive reflections over four decades, seeking to outline the failures of traditional religious systems, specifically Christianity, in safeguarding Western civilization. The historical allegiance of Western populations to Christianity is scrutinized, with a poignant evaluation of how this system has faltered in fulfilling its promise to protect cultural and moral values. Covering historical milestones like the World Wars, economic crises, and social upheaval, he positions these as failures of Christianity to act as a moral compass and safeguard for society.
A thorough critique of the current socio-political landscape reveals a nagging sense of moral bankruptcy across various dimensions—politically, socially, spiritually, and economically. Stefan challenges the audience to reconsider the frameworks through which ethics are understood and propagated, noting that systemic failures of traditional religious structures have led to significant moral degradation. This is particularly alarming given his assertion that errors in ethical judgment have catastrophic implications not only for individuals but for society at large.
The discourse further emphasizes the necessity of developing a secular ethical framework, which can operate independently of faith-based doctrines that may not account for contemporary challenges. Stefan argues that science, reason, and the free market have already made monumental strides in improving human conditions, but often these advancements happen without moral guidance. The convergence of technological progress with ethical uncertainty is presented as a dire warning, posing risks of future tyranny empowered by surveillance and other intrusive state mechanisms.
The lecture highlights that ethics must be rational and objective—universal principles arising from evidence and reason rather than reliance solely on religious ideologies, which may no longer suffice in modern contexts. The premise of Universal Preferable Behavior (UPB) serves as the theoretical underpinning for a new ethical construct, reflecting the idea that certain ethical positions can and should be evaluated through logical coherence, consistent with human experiences of right and wrong.
Stefan challenges the audience to embrace a pivot towards secular ethics that effectively responds to human needs and societal realities. By asserting that virtues must be rational and accessible to everyone, the discussion invites a reconsideration of morality stripped of supernatural claims. Drawing parallels to natural laws, he asserts that just as physical laws govern the universe, moral laws should also be evident through rational inquiry and social consensus.
Stefan advocates for a robust discourse surrounding moral consistency and the necessity of adhering to ethical principles that apply universally, criticizing contradictions inherent to power dynamics where rules may differ across social strata. The notion that hypocrisy can exist without being challenged is treated as a primary vehicle for oppression, suggesting that moral enlightenment may derive from recognizing and dismantling such contradictions.
Stefan calls for an urgent and collective effort in promoting a rational, secular ethical framework capable of safeguarding future generations and maintaining societal harmony. He expresses a commitment to continue advocating for these principles while inviting dialogue and constructive criticism to refine the approach to be more effective in championing ethical discourse. The lecture serves as both a critique of established moral systems and a hopeful call to action for the pursuit of a reasoned, universal foundation for ethical behavior in society.
2:10 - The Role of Christianity
7:16 - Failures of Christianity
8:32 - The Need for Secular Ethics
14:00 - Reason and Science
15:37 - Benefits of Religion
18:26 - The Crisis of Morality
20:44 - The Importance of Rational Ethics
25:38 - The Challenge of Ethical Consistency
30:45 - The Argument for Secular Ethics
36:10 - Defining Universal Ethics
42:51 - The Impact of Universal Ethics
49:27 - The Necessity of New Approaches
51:30 - Potential for Change
56:04 - Invitation for Discussion
[0:00] All right, good afternoon, everybody, Saturday, 29th of November, 2025, and you will be able to tell your grandchildren that you were here for this speech. I will tell you that straight up.
[0:14] It's going to be my best speech. It's going to be my most important speech. And it's going to encapsulate and solve everything that is wrong with the world. Ah, is your appetite whetted? These are bold claims, monsieur. That is true, but I do not lie.
[0:32] Honesty is the first virtue. Without honesty, no other virtues are really possible. You have to be honest about being a coward before you can be brave. You have to be honest about being lazy before you can be diligent.
[0:46] And I am honest. I have been granted by the grace of coincidental genetics and the culmination of a long line of two truly brilliant family lines come together in me. And I say this with all humility, but I have solved the problems of the world. Now, this doesn't mean that the problems of the world immediately stop. The first person to discover antibiotics did not cure all of the illnesses and ailments in the universe immediately, but the problem has been solved, and I'm going to tell you the problem, why I worked on the problem, how I've solved it, and then fight me, bros and sisters. Come at me, tell me how I'm wrong, because in the realm of ethics, it is catastrophic to be wrong. You can be wrong in the job you take. You can be wrong in the woman that you marry. You can be wrong about smoking, and this affects largely you and those around you. Being wrong about ethics destroys hundreds of millions of lives.
[1:55] Destroys hundreds of millions of lives. So, this is the last thing in the universe that I want to be wrong about,
[2:02] but the most essential thing to get right for a happy planet and a secure and peaceful future. So let me lay out the reason why I've spent over 40 years working on secular ethics.
[2:18] And what I hope to achieve, and what problem is it trying to solve. So, Christianity, which is a faith that I was raised in and have a great deal of respect for, Christianity was the border guard, of the suffering of my ancestors since I was a child, long before I was a child, stretching back thousands of years, 2,000 years, and 25 to be precise, or you could say minus 33.
[2:48] But Christianity was the border guard of the land. My ancestors died by the tens of millions to build up, to maintain, to service and preserve. And we said to Christianity, we will give you our allegiance, we will give you our treasure, we will give you our tithes, we will give you our children, we will give you our faith, we will give you our salvation. All you have to do is protect what our ancestors built. That's it. That's the job. If you have a great treasure open to the general pillaging of the planet, you hire a security guard, you hire security specialists, and you say, I will pay you well. I will pay you a king's ransom. But all you have to do is protect this great treasure, handed down through generations at the cost of immense blood, soil, sweat, and tears. All you have to do is hopefully expand, but at least preserve.
[3:59] If you have an executive for an estate, and you say, hey, you know, we will pay you a million dollars, but you have to protect the value of this estate. We don't ask you to double it, but at least preserve it. If you could double it, that'd be great, but at least preserve it. How's that been going since 1914? How's that been going? Certainly, white Christians were 30% of the world population. Now, white women of childbearing age are 2% of the population of the planet. If that's not an endangered species, I do not know what is. People say the West and Christianity are intertwined, are merged, are like two trees that have grown together to one solid trunk? Very well. Very well. The West handed its soul over to Christianity in order to preserve its lands, its peoples, its culture. How's that been going as a whole? If you were to evaluate it objectively from orbit.
[5:03] Well, it's been going catastrophically. It's actually quite hard to imagine how it could be going worse. If it were going worse, there might be in fact some fight or pushback, but it's this boiling frog thing. We all know the story. Christianity was unable to prevent World War I. It was unable to stop the takeover of currency through the money changers. One of the few times Jesus himself, capital H, himself, got angry, was with the money changers, pillaging the faithful for the sake of personal profits. Christianity was unable to prevent the takeover of education. In fact, Christianity was foundational to the government takeover of education. It was Christians demanding the government takeover of education in America in particular to protect itself from those Catholics who were swarming in from Italy and Ireland, Southern Ireland, and France, often.
[6:07] Christianity was unable to stop the money printing of the post-First World War period. It was unable to stop the stock market escalation and crash. It was unable to stop the 14-year Great Depression that led to the Second World War. It was unable to stop the spread of communism, which swallowed up a third of the world's population in its endlessly chomping, chewing, eviscerating, disemboweling, and bloody more. Christianity was unable to stop wokeism. Christianity was unable to stop the disintegration of the family. Christianity was unable to heal the growing oppositional divide between hyper-woke women and generally normal men. Christianity has been unable to maintain borders. It has been unable to prevent the evisceration and pillaging of the next generation through unfunded liabilities, deficits, and endless debt.
[7:05] It has been unable to prevent the catastrophic decline of the Western populations. One job, protect the West.
[7:17] It has catastrophically failed. Look, I understand the arguments against it, and I'm certainly happy to hear them. Man is sinful in nature. Satan rules the world. It is not the God who has failed people. It is people who have failed God. But that is not what was sold. That is not what was proposed.
[7:41] Give us your allegiance. Give us your faith. Give us your children. I will protect you from the ravages of an amoral or evil planet.
[7:52] I'm afraid with that level of promise, the answer, well, you just not good enough, is not good enough. I promise to cure you of this fell disease. Here is the medicine. Take it three times a day for three months and you will be cured. And you take the medicine three times a day for three months and you die. And your family goes to the doctor and says, you promised a cure. Well, he just wasn't good enough. That wasn't talked about. If mankind is too sinful for religion to defend itself, we need something else.
[8:32] Blaming the victim is wrong. Ah, people failed Christianity. People failed God. No. Christians facilitated the handing over of the children to their natural mortal enemy, the state. Great clamoring vociferous enthusiastic here you go entity that killed jesus go raise the christians christianity has been unable to preserve the west that is a fact it is irrefutable there's a wide variety of reasons for this.
[9:12] Of the concept of the soul, denial of disparate IQs, there's a wide variety of things, but it doesn't really matter at this point. It is the post-mortem analysis of a body half-rotted. The West, not Christianity. But Christianity has failed to defend and protect the West. I am a businessman, first and foremost before, I mean, I've been into philosophy since my mid-teens, but I spent many, many years as an entrepreneur and as a businessman. In fact, now it's been almost three decades that I have been an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, you sell a product. If you fail to sell that product, and if you go out of business or you're about to go out of business, what sense does it make to blame the customers?
[10:05] Christian parents, religious parents, we're talking about Christianity because that's by far the dominant religion in the West historically. Christian parents have complete control over their children from birth to, let's say, 15 or 16 years of age, when the children are still legally dependent, but they're significantly influenced by their peers. And the parents bring the children to church, and the parents bring the children to Sunday school, and the parents lecture the children about life and death and birth and resurrection and magic and miracles and faith and salvation and heaven and hell. And it has not been enough to maintain the religiosity of the West. And it doesn't matter why. The why is irrelevant. The fact is the West is bankrupt morally, politically, financially, spiritually, ethically. The West is bankrupt. And who was in charge of the, quote, business? The Christians, the priests, the clergy, the parents. Say, oh, but it's the customer's fault we went bankrupt. Don't care.
[11:16] People just didn't believe in the product enough, doesn't matter. The West has invested everything into Christianity. Everything. Everything. And it has failed to protect, maintain, preserve, and defend the West. Why does it matter? I could go into a speech about why, which would be interesting and important, but not particularly relevant. It's called a post-mortem. does not bring the body back to life. Because if human beings are so innately sinful that they will always betray religion, that they will always betray Christ and God and be tempted overly much and succumb to the temptations of the devil and of their own baser natures, if the entire history of humanity is Adam and Eve over and over and over, here's paradise, Oh, betrayal. Here's paradise. Oh, betrayal. Here's paradise. Oh, betrayal. Then we need another answer. We need another answer. This answer doesn't work. And nobody who's been alive for the past five minutes could think otherwise, or imagine otherwise.
[12:39] It's like prayer. I read this on my show last night, that the very kings at the summit, the peak, the tip of the social and political hierarchy in Europe, that kings regularly buried half or more of their children. And those kings, and those queens, and those courtiers, and those families prayed with tears of blood over the dying bodies of their babies to gain five minutes more of life, to rally the resistance to infection or disease. And they prayed, their brows furrowed, their teeth clenched, spit forming in the corners of their mouths, tears falling from their eyes. They begged God Almighty to save their children, and more than half of them died. Prayer did not save the children. What saved the children? Niger is the most dangerous place to be a child in the world at the moment because 10% of them die, which is still about five times better than Europe at the height of Christianity. What?
[13:55] The children. Well, reason saved the children.
[14:00] Science, the free market, rationality. You and I are alive because of reason. Reason leading to science, the free market leading to the distribution of life-saving medicines. We live due to reason. My brother was born, then another child of my mother's was born dead and then I was born. 33% mortality rate still better than most of history. We are alive we are having this conversation we were able to communicate in this way not just because of science. Science creates the raw materials it is the free market that delivers them in a cost-efficient manner to consumers and brings the price down and the efficiency levels up. It is not science that builds the trucks and the roads. Science just says you can, but what makes it actually happen is the free market.
[15:01] And what makes science possible is freedom of speech. People say, well, why is there such difference in these different cultures? It's not just IQ. It's related, but it is freedom of speech, which is not just IQ-based. East Asians have a higher IQ on average than whites, but whites are much more supportive, particularly white males, especially white males, almost exclusively white males, are far more supportive of free speech than East Asians.
[15:27] Hide us tidy-whities, having lower IQs on average. Without free speech, you don't have science, because you have to be free to disagree, to oppose, to undermine, to criticize.
[15:38] Not just science, but its great competitor called religion. This is not, though it may sound like that at times, and that is my fault, but this is not a speech that is against religion at all, at all. If you had a religion that says you must wash your hands before a meal But you didn't know why It's just a commandment.
[16:01] Would have done countless instances of goodness in the world by presenting, sorry, by preventing countless deaths in a population by having hands washed before a meal. Infections, transmissions, transferals, and so on, viruses, bacteria. Christianity has done untold virtues, goodness, passionate moral projects, the end of serfdom and slavery being primary to these. The infusion of divine dignity to every human being in the world has done untold good in the world.
[16:40] And for that, in my view, Christianity in particular being one of the few universal moral religions where it's not in-group preference, it's not tribal, it is universal. All men, all women, all children, are imbued with a divine spark placed in them by an all-knowing, all-powerful creator. And we must truly love the shards of God placed into the breast of every human being, and that has produced a commitment to universal virtues and values unmatched in any other religion. And for that greatest gift to humanity, Christianity should be praised and respected and honored in its promotion of these virtues and values. But just as a doctor who says to a mother who's calling up frantic with a sick child, a doctor who says, do not go to the hospital but instead pray, would be guilty of malpractice.
[17:46] Benefits that science, reason, and the market have provided humanity are unparalleled, and relying on faith rather than reason would be a disaster for a dying child, for an engineer, for an architect, for a businessman, a scientist, a doctor, a researcher. I mean, the list is virtually endless. Now, the one place, of course, that science and reason and the market have failed is in morality.
[18:26] Completely failed, which has been the greatest catastrophe in history. Right now, right now, you know, we stand on the verge of losing everything. You put AI together with general surveillance, together with a social credit score, we could have a tyranny that lasts forever.
[18:49] Because science, reason, engineering, technology, the free market, has created and delivered tools of liberation and tyranny far exceeding anything ever in human history. We stand before a bottomless pit of endless surveillance and control and subjugation, where resistance will become impossible. You cannot talk, you cannot organize, you cannot meet, you cannot resist, you cannot fight. Propaganda is destroyed in the cradle. The government owns everything, everyone, all the time, forever. What has limited prior tyrannies is the labor cost of tyranny. Automation robots, AI, scanning, various computer tools, and algorithms lower the cost of human ownership to the point where it remains profitable despite its inefficiencies. The moment, and I have criticized atheists for decades about this, the moment that the power of science really showed itself, the power of reason, the power of markets. Markets are just universality in property rights. Science is just the universal acceptance of the rules of matter and energy. And when the power of science and its innate universalization and its free speech became known and shown and absorbed.
[20:14] Should have put aside their test-tube meanderings and focused ferociously, exclusively deeply, pathologically, I would say, on the development of secular ethics. Otherwise, science, reason, and the free market has simply delivered humanity into endless enslavement and bondage. Endless. Those are the stakes. At the moment. And we don't have long to turn it around.
[20:44] If we look at the benefits that the age of reason and of markets have brought to humanity by shouldering into existence universality in matter and energy and law, those all pale to the benefits of true universality in the realm of ethics. As science was to faith, so rational ethics are to superstition. The degree to which science and the market have benefited humanity will pale to the degree that rational ethics will benefit humanity, because science without virtue is seppuku for the rational.
[21:32] Reason without ethics delivers the engines of enslavement to the most evil among us. And most of you here who've listened to me for a long time have been hesitant to push the solution.
[21:50] Preferable behavior, the rational proof of secular ethics, you've been hesitant to push it because of pushback. And we can happily line up into the eternal story of your enslavement, surf pens that await us in the absence of rational ethics. And I pointed this out recently and got a lot of pushback, which I appreciate. I said God was a placeholder until secular ethics could be developed. People said, ah, there's no such thing. It doesn't exist. It's a fantasy. It's a ghost. It's a chimera. It's a unicorn. It doesn't exist. The only ethics are the ethics of God. But if the only ethics are the ethics of God, we are doomed deeply, passionately, in a heartfelt and humble manner. I tell you, if the only ethics are the ethics of God, they have not been enough. They have delivered unto our enemies the greatest tools of control and subjugation that have ever been conceived of. If the only ethics are the ethics of God, we are doomed. If the only cure for a dying child is prayer, the child will die. There must be something besides prayer for medicine, and there must be something besides It's God for virtue.
[23:19] Everything in the universe is rational, objective, and makes sense. Why should... Be true also. For ethics, if you are religious, why would God give us a rational objective universe, minds drawn like a moth to a flame to reason and evidence, but then also make the most important aspect of human life, ethics, entirely reliant upon the argument from authority to be self-contradictory, not open to rational explanation or definition, and then judge us by virtue. To give us a rational universe, rational minds, an aversion to anti-rationality.
[24:09] Rational minds drawn to reason and opposed to unreason, and then say, oh, you're going to be judged by ethics. I'm going to give you a rational universe, a rational mind, an aversion to anti-rationality, and I'm going to make ethics, the one thing I'm going to judge you by, completely irrational. No, that would be a sadist, not a loving God. That would be Kafkaesque. In that you would be judged by your adherence to a law that you could never understand, that was contradictory, convoluted, open to wild differences of interpretation, that would be a tyranny, and I say, God, no. It cannot be that virtue, the most essential aspect and defining glory of humanity is not subject to objectivity, facts, reason, and evidence. I refuse to believe it, because that would be to say that humanity defined by our capacity for abstract reasoning must do good, but goodness cannot be analyzed or defined by abstract reasoning, that the most essential element of us is our reason and the most essential characteristic of us is our capacity for virtue, but the two are in complete opposition?
[25:38] And about us is reason, what is most valuable about us is virtue, and our greatest capacity, which is to reason, can have nothing to say about our greatest glory, which is virtue, is madness. It's madness to say that virtue is not subject to reason, because if virtue is not subject to reason. All we can be is ordered about. All we can be is bribed and threatened with heaven and hell like any other lab rat animal. No, no, it cannot be. I refuse to believe it. Now, me refusing to believe it proves nothing. I could be crazy. always a possibility that's my morning mantra don't be nuts it's a good goal it's a good plan it's really a life mission of mine don't be nuts cross your fingers don't be crazy because you know i've seen what happens to crazy people and uh it's well it's bad it's very bad don't be nuts so the fact that i refuse to believe something.
[26:55] Other than I have a ferocious willpower to find the reason of virtue. Virtue cannot be self-contradictory because our minds are primed for consistency. How do we know someone is crazy because what they say and how they act is self-contradictory? I was at the top of the mountain and in the bowels of the earth at the same time. Who would say that? A crazy person, a psychotic, a schizophrenic, somebody with no remaining capacity for consistency, rationality, objectivity, dare I say it, reason. I am both a man and a shed at the same time. Open my doors, store within me your tools and old bicycles.
[27:54] Person. Our minds are primed and developed for consistency, because reality is consistent and rational. Since we abhor inconsistency, we recoil from it. I've been in thousands and thousands of debates over the course of my life, many hundreds of them public, thousands of them really, which you can't call in shows, which are a debate with unreason and subjugation with a person's rational a future in virtue. I've been in thousands of debates over the course of my life. I have never, ever had someone say, yes, I contradict myself, but I'm still right. Even our good friend, Dr. John Balfour, who called in to rip me a new one from his ivory tower of immaculate conception. See, get them thinking, not belly. When I proved to him, UPP, he did not say, no, that's wrong. He said, so what? When you prove people wrong, they don't say, I'm wrong, but I'm still right. They gaslight, they move the goalposts, they change definitions, they go on. Long, windy, gish gallops of anecdotes and emotions.
[29:18] But they do not say, as Walt Whitman famously did, he was a poet and a crazy guy, he did not say, you say I contradict myself. Very well, then I contradict myself. They don't say that.
[29:31] Do not say, I contradict myself, but I'm still right. And people say, secular ethics, well, Stef, come on, man, they don't exist.
[29:44] Ah, so you're saying I should disavow things that don't exist because it would be illogical to avow that something exists when it does not? Ah, but does logic exist? It does not. Doesn't mean it's subjective or invalid. Math doesn't exist in the universe as a physical thing that doesn't mean that you can say two and two make five your statement is inconsistent with reason okay does reason exist nope does science exist nope does math exist nope does that mean they're subjective nope people are saying to me Stef ethics doesn't exist so you should stop promoting them rational secular ethics don't exists, you should stop promoting them using reason, which does not exist. That which does not exist is invalid. Your argument is irrational, therefore you should reject it, but reason doesn't exist either. The moment you deploy reason, you can't say something is invalid because it doesn't exist, because reason doesn't exist.
[30:46] It's a cope. I'm almost done, my friends, and I appreciate your patients, but this is the most essential topic in the world, which is why I hammer on it so consistently. I may not be able, with your obviously massive help, to save the world. Perhaps UPB is for 7,000 years from now when people fight free of the decaying brain robots.
[31:12] If you have the answer, you have to go hoarse screaming it from the rooftops. If you have the medicine in a time of plague, even though people think your medicine is actually going to make them worse and you know it's going to make them better, you still must try to convince them to take the medicine. That is for matters of conscience. I may not save the world. I probably won't because it's not up to me. It's up to everyone here. I may not save the world, but I will literally be damned if I don't do everything I can to try, to risk life and limb and survival and income and security to try.
[31:47] Because it is for certain that the world will not be saved if we don't hold aloft the shining beacon of secular ethics. The world will not be saved. In fact, the world will be damned by the combination of superstition in ethics and reason, evidence, and engineering in science and the market, because we then create, as I mentioned, powerful tools of control, the power of which could scarcely be imagined by any prior tyrants, and deliver it to our enemies because we have the power of a god and the wisdom of an ape. You've seen that famous picture of the monkey with the gun. I used it as a thumbnail for one of my videos many years ago.
[32:32] That's where we are. Rape, theft, assault, and murder. The Four Great Corners of the Square of Evil Rape, Theft, Assault, and Murder Theft can never be universally preferable behavior, ever. It is self-contradictory to say that it could be. Theft, takes your property and you don't want them to. I took a picture. I haven't published it. I took a picture the other day when I was on a walk with my daughter because somebody had a little kid's bicycle out front of their house with a sign saying, take me. Take me. It's not theft. If somebody wants you to take their property, so when somebody doesn't want you to take their property, it's theft. If you say theft is universally preferable behavior, you're saying everybody must want to steal and be stolen from at all times.
[33:17] But if you want to be stolen from, it's not theft. Therefore, if you say that theft is universally preferable behavior because it's asymmetric, one person wants it, the other person doesn't, it can't be fulfilled by both people at the same time. It's like saying, here's my rule. If I go north, you go south. Now we must both go north together. Only one of those rules can be fulfilled. If the, go north and you go south, we cannot both go north together.
[33:45] If the rule is we both go north together, I cannot have a rule that says you also go south. This is not complicated. It's just hard to grasp because of the trauma of superstition in the realm of ethics and the degree to which we realize that our world is hell because superstition in the realm of ethics delivers godlike powers of tyranny to the most scurrilous and venomous among us. My daughter's brain just said, among us! Like the video game. Theft can never be universally preferable behavior. Rape! Can rape be universally preferable behavior? Can everyone want to rape and be raped at the same time at all times? Nope. Rape is unwanted behavior. If you want to have sex, it's not rape. If you want to have sex, it's rape. Rape can never be universally preferable behavior. Because if you say everyone must want to rape and be raped, then the category of rape disappears. We must all go north, but you must go south. We must both go north, but you must go south. And I must go north. Doesn't work. It doesn't work. So, as it turns out, as it turns out, morality, virtue, ethics is entirely revealable, definable by reason and evidence.
[35:13] If prayer does not heal people directly, we can say that there's a state of mind, there's an optimism that prayer may engender that could help people heal. I get that. And I'm not saying that there's no placebo effect. I'm not saying that prayer has no effect, although scientifically it's pretty hard to find. But prayer itself does not heal people.
[35:33] I had a wasp sting over the summer. My hand, my hand felt just like one balloon. Swelled up. Went to the doctor, got my antibiotics while I went down. I did not pray. What's the, the reason and evidence, right? Respect for property rights, the non-aggression principle, right? Theft, the opposite of theft is respect for property rights. That's universally preferable behavior. It does not self-contradict if you say human beings should respect property. Human beings should not steal. That is universalizable. Human beings must steal is not. Thou shalt not steal is rational.
[36:10] Thou shalt steal is not. It's anti-rational. thou shalt not murder is rational thou shalt murder is anti-rational thou shalt not rape is rational thou shalt rape is anti-rational and just as there's no theory of physics that can contradict your direct visceral personal experience there can be no system of ethics, that justifies rape, theft, assault, and murder, because we intuit, we understand, we feel those things are wrong.
[36:45] Why? Why do we understand, intuit, and feel that those things are wrong? Because they're anti-rational. Now, I understand. Enforcement, yes, but you say these things, what does it enforce? Your little theories, Mr. Molyneux, do not stop one bullet, one pilfering hand, one rampaging and invading penis. I get that. I get that. Enforcement is a separate matter. But we cannot have a theory of physics that says, if you hold a tennis ball at arm's length and let it go, it will go sideways, upwards, travel up your arm, lick your ear, fondle your nether regions, and then impregnate your hamster. No. Hold a tennis ball at arm's length, let go of it, it drops to the ground, drops to the earth. There's no theory of physics that can oppose that. It may give you things that are a little bit counterintuitive i get all of that it looks like the sun goes around the earth i get i mean i get that but it's incomprehensible but it cannot, overturn your direct personal experience when we are stolen from we feel violated why.
[37:58] From is reason. What is being violated is rationality, because the thief says, you shouldn't have property rights, but I should. I will steal your wallet, you don't have any right to property, but I want to keep the wallet that I've stolen, because if somebody steals the wallet that I stole from you, I'll be outraged. It's a contradictory mindset. And just as the discipline of physics affirms our direct experience, but disorients our entire view of the universe. Did you ever have that when you were a kid? I was fascinated by astronomy from when I was a little kid. Got all these books out, read about it, and it blows your mind, right? I'm pacing around, having my speech, looking around. I'm in my little house, stable. There's a little bit of wind outside, some blowing snow.
[38:53] And I don't think that I'm on a giant turning ball rocketing around the sun. The sun is rocketing around the galaxy. But I'm actually traveling at hundreds of thousands of miles an hour. It's disorienting. At a personal level, physics validates everything that happens. I go to play pickleball with my wife, the ball behaves in a predictable and stable manner. If I make a mistake, it is me, not physics, not gravity. Nobody's dialing it up and down. So physics validates your personal experience, but is utterly disorienting in your view of the universe. And we kind of only stay sane by not thinking about the implications of physics and what it means about you'd feel dizzy if you constantly looked and thought the world is turning and rocketing and spinning and the sun is, and spitting. It's the same with you, Peepee. You know. It's what we teach our children, right? Don't steal. Don't hit. I mean, don't rape, don't kill is out of the bounds for children, but most children. But we certainly say to people in our lives, don't steal, don't rape, don't hit, don't murder.
[40:10] These are the personal ethics we all live with, just as the tennis ball drops from our hand to the ground when we open our fingers. So it validates our personal experience and intuition and thoughts and feelings and everything we teach our children. It just completely screws up our sense of society. It's the U in UPB that is the toughest part. I did not come up with a radical theory called rape, theft, assault, murder, are wrong and bad. Everybody accepts that as a whole. Even sociopaths pretend to. If you catch a sociopath who killed someone, they'll say, I didn't kill anyone. Murder's bad. I would never do that. Right? But just, Physics takes your perspective of standing on a stable Earth while the universe wheels around you and says the universe is way more stable than you are, you are turning and rocketing around the sun and the sun is rocketing around the galaxy. And the stars are sometimes hundreds of light years away. And the tide is the skin of the Earth pulled back and forth by the weight of the moon. What drove Aristotle mad? Why are there tides? He couldn't imagine. The moon would have anything to do with it. But the moon is partly why we're here. Tide pools give birth to life.
[41:33] So UPB is intensely disorienting when you take it to society and universalize it because it discredits political power, it discredits government schools, it discredits fiat currency, It discredits national debts. It discredits hitting children.
[41:52] At a personal level, we say, yes, yes, of course, among the people I know, rape, theft, assault, and murder would be terrible or wrong. If you universalize it, if you U-P-B it, it's incredibly disorienting when looking at society as a whole, and it becomes incomprehensible. And the Western mind has not had to deal or grapple with this level of disorienting incomprehensibility. Since Copernicus, Galileo, and Tycho Brahe first said, the earth is not fixed, and it does move. Nevertheless, it moves. It feels still. It looks like the universe revolves around us, but it does not, and it is not. That's disorienting. That messes with people's heads in a very fundamental way. Getting to the truth makes you seasick. It gives you bad dreams. It makes you feel, unwell. It tears you out of the matrix.
[42:52] We all accept rape, theft, assault, and murder of wrong. Once we universalize it, almost all of our social structures dissolve under the acidic.
[43:05] Cascade of moral consistency. A schoolteacher in a government school says to a child, do not hit, you must not use force to get what you want, yet the teacher's salary is paid for by enforced property taxes. The teacher is perfectly allowed to use force to get what she wants, but the child is not. And the teacher will never acknowledge that, because that's power. Power is when you carve out exceptions to universal virtues, morals, and values. What I can do, you cannot do. You must not use force to get what you want. I must use force to get what I want. It's the creation of opposite moral universes while never acknowledging them that is the root and source of power. A parent hits a child saying, you must not hit people. A parent bullies a child saying, you must not bully. A parent lies to a child and says, you must tell the truth, while often punishing the child for telling the truth.
[44:04] Universalization is incredibly disorienting and incredibly dangerous, because people who universalized in the past got their asses killed, burned at the stake, slaughtered on an altar. Why do the priests have so much power? Why don't I just talk to God directly? Off with his head. What if the king is just a guy in a funny hat? Off with his head. why should we not universalize not just because it's incredibly disorienting but because.
[44:39] Greatest predators on our necks. Because power is the creation of unspoken opposite moral rule universes, wherein noticing the opposite moral standard is fatal, and we have been trained and evolved to not require moral consistency, because requiring moral consistency removes the greatest source of power, which is unspoken moral opposites.
[45:11] Hypocrisy that can never be identified is power. That's what it is. You're taking away the greatest weapon of subjugation to demand and require moral consistency. If a man says, a witch doctor, a charlatan says, I can perform miracles. And science says, no, you can't. That's a lie. Then you're taking away his power because you're saying there's universal physics which cannot be denied or opposed or subverted or undermined by a guy with cap teeth in a shiny suit and a bouffant hairdo. It's a lie that you can violate the laws of physics. Physics are universal and consistent. They do not bow to your own personal preferences, you take away his power to lie. Once people accept physics, they reject magicians and miracle workers and all sorts of charlatans. It takes away their power. It's the same thing with moral consistency, but even worse. If you create money out of nothing, that's counterfeiting and you go to jail. And if you resist, they'll kill you. Ah, but you see, central banking, blah, blah, blah, blah. We all know this, right? We all understand. We all accept. And it really...
[46:31] Modern technology which has allowed this to occur. I'm smart, for sure. I'm dedicated, for sure. I have a ferocious will to solve, and having solved the problem of secular ethics, but there would have been little point in doing it if it was simply a bunch of papers that would be thrown into a landfill after I die. There had to be the capacity to get past the gatekeepers which are entirely dedicated in preserving these opposite moral universes that can never be spoken on, wherein our subjugation originates and is reinforced and maintained by, it would be little point, developing UPB in the absence of the technology that both can, subjugate us and liberate us forever and ever. Amen.
[47:16] When I was in university, I mean, I was recognized as brilliant. Everybody said so. I had professors read out my entire essays to people saying this is a perfect essay. The very first year I was debating, I came in sixth out of all of Canada, but nobody wanted to touch my moral absolutism. Richard Dawkins regrets promoting atheism in that it has diminished Christian morality. But Dickie D, Richard Dawkins, cannot promote universal morality because he takes his money, good portions of it, from the state and all his friends get money and privileges and power from the state. So how could he possibly develop a system of universal ethics that said absolutely and objectively.
[48:10] Left is wrong, since he is paid, padded, protected, promoted by the power of the state to transfer resources against people's wills. He is compromised, which is why he is allowed to be promoted, and I am not. He is compromised. I am not. I get no money from the state. In fact, it is somewhat the opposite, to put it mildly. It is as the result of certain personal virtues, and to a large degree, accidental intelligence, and to an even larger degree, almost exclusively, the capacity of the internet and these amazing technologies to broadcast these arguments that the solution of secular ethics has been possible. It is maybe 10 or 15 percent my will, and the rest of it is accident, fortune, and circumstance, which is why I'm humble about it. And I don't want people to talk about me or care about me. I want them to talk about and care about universal, secular, rational ethics. It is the one thing, my friends, that has never been tried.
[49:27] Everything else has been tried. Everything. Political power, religious power, economic power, all of it has been tried.
[49:36] Augustinian ethics, Aristotelian ethics, Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, pragmatism, idealism, all have been tried, and all have led us to the precipice of ultimate disaster wherein we tremble and grip the crumbling edges with our toes. All has been tried, except universal, objective, rational, rational ethics. And that's great news. I bring good news. Great news, the greatest news. If every approach but one has been tried, it means there is yet one approach still to try, to promote universal, rational, secular ethics. That's fantastic news. It's like there are.
[50:27] Lockboxes wherein there is a treasure. After you open the thousandth lockbox, there is no treasure. But if you've opened 999, there's still a chance for the treasure. And I'm telling you, this is the treasure. It is great news, because if we've tried everything, and this is where we are, society is doomed innately. Humanity is doomed innately. We are destined to be slaves forever, no matter what, because we've tried absolutely everything.
[50:56] If there is one thing that has yet to be tried, that is the best news in human history. Universal, rational, secular ethics. If all humanity has is prayer, children continue to die by the hundreds of millions. If there is another option called science and medicine, salvation can be or could be at hand. If we have tried everything,
[51:24] ethics. But UPB, and UPB is proven, that is fantastic news. It means we have an option and a choice and a progress that is unprecedented. And if we have a rational proven system of ethics that is unprecedented, we can change the course of history and we can get out of this blind hamster wheel bladed repetitive cycle of civilizational progress leading to wealth, leading to giant governments, leading to tyranny. But it's almost too late. I have, I think, I'm always happy to be corrected on this, as I am on anything and everything, I think I have done the most I possibly can. I have taken decades of concentrated research to produce a rational system of ethics that cannot be disproven.
[52:17] I have promoted said system of ethics through countless presentations, debates, speeches at conference, conferences, PowerPoint presentations, animations.
[52:30] I'd do rapid puppet shows if I thought they would help, but I have promoted it as much as possible. I've even done live audience participation explanations of this approach to ethics, the approach to ethics, the one that works and is proven. Beyond that, I've made the book free. I have even rewritten it to make it even more concise and digestible in the last third of my free book, Essential Philosophy, at essentialphilosophy.com. I have been eager to debate any and all comers on the topic of ethics. I have.
[53:06] Battled many storms and attacks and threats and losses. To remain steadfast in the face of massive opposition, I have given up significant sums of money, prestige, public speaking, personal safety, security, to promote this. I feel, I could be wrong, I feel that I have done as much as I can to promote this, because I must satisfy the demands and rigors of my conscience before almost anything and everything else. Obviously, I need my basic health and longevity and all that. Well, and exercise. I'm not doing UPB when I'm working out, at least rarely. I have to take care of and maintain my basic health. I think I've done all I can. The information is out there the arguments are irrefutable and children can understand this I know my daughter's smarter than your average bear but I was explaining UPB to her when she was two let's say she's smarter blah blah I'm sure she is let's say you have to wait till three or four but children understand self-contradiction they do if you say to a four-year-old I'm giving you no candy, I'm giving you candy, but there's no candy, they'll say, what? What, are you giving me candy or not? Or if you say, I'm giving you candy, and you only give them a wrapper, they'd say, that's not candy.
[54:35] If you say, we are going to the park and the doctor at the same time, they'll say, what? Wait, which? Because they understand the three laws of logic. They get it If you say to a child You must go to bed now And you can stay up for an hour They will stop and blink at you Like that's what? What? It's not what? What? Make any sense. So children can understand it. And I've done a show many, many years ago, almost 20 years ago now, I think, called the ABCs of UPB. You can just go to fdrpodcast.com and type in ABC, you'll find it. How to explain UPB to children. So I wanted to respond, as I always do, to people who criticize me and my work, which is great and fine, and I welcome it. I love it, actually. I wanted to respond to those who say, there's no such thing as secular ethics. Secular ethics does not exist. Or, as somebody said, on X, oh, come on, take your Reddit tier atheism from 1990s. We've moved on. Which, as I said in the show last night, puts forward the rather surprising proposition from a religious person that a belief is automatically wrong because it's older. Pretty sure 2025 years ago was a So.
[55:57] Those are my thoughts. That's my argument. That's my perspective. That's my mission. That's what I'm doing. That's what I have been doing. That's what I will continue to do.
[56:04] And if you have questions, problems, issues, objections, I am thrilled to hear them. Whatever I can do to refine the arguments, my methodology for communicating them. You know, I was really struck many years ago when I read, maybe in Will Durant or something, I can't remember, but somebody said Socrates never used the word epistemology. He spoke in the common language, in the common tongue, in the Old Dungeons and Dragons world. So I have tried to present this in an engaging, emphatic, hopefully somewhat entertaining. I think I only had one joke in here, but it's too serious in a way for much comedy. But I hope that I have presented it in a way that makes sense.
[56:52] If there's better things that I can do, if there are different things that I can do, which do not require the compromise of any commitment to honesty and integrity, I will do a lot. I would do anything for love. I would do anything for philosophy, except lie and misrepresent. Not that I think that any of you guys would ask that of me, but that's the limiting factor. We will end then here today and massively appreciate that if you would like to help out what I do after a pretty scurrilous series of deplatformings over the last five or six years, freedomain.com/donate. Of course, if you want to get your copy of UPB, just go to freedomain.com/books or essentialphilosophy.com and I really do appreciate your time today. Lots of love, my friends. I'll talk to you soon.
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