Philosopher Stefan Molyneux explores the profound question of whether God's eternal power and divine nature can be deemed clearly evident, rendering humanity without excuse for its behaviors. Exploring this concept, he introduces his theory that God not only embodies omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence but also must exist as omni-experiential—experiencing all possible facets of existence.
Stefan articulates a contentious view, proposing that God fundamentally represents the power that invades the void left by insufficient argumentation. He highlights a poignant moment from "Terminator 2" to illustrate the importance of understanding why moral boundaries exist, questioning the absence of foundational reasoning behind actions deemed right or wrong. The inquiries cascade into a detailed exploration of our moral responsibilities, prompting listeners to confront their own beliefs about why we must adhere to ethical principles if we are to elevate ourselves above the animal kingdom.
Throughout, Stefan presents scenarios that juxtapose human morality with animal instincts, interrogating why societal norms prescribe different behaviors for humans as opposed to animals. He examines the historical context of moral reasoning, suggesting that the reliance on divine command becomes an answer for what we fail to comprehend rationally—serving as a placeholder for necessary arguments that have yet to surface.
He further analyzes the transition from the geocentric view of the universe to modern scientific understandings of our existence, framing evolution as a parallel to our moral inquiries. He asserts that the Universally Preferable Behavior (UPB) theory reflects the truth to morality akin to how evolution has advanced our understanding of life. This exploration leads into a critique of false answers generated under the guise of necessity, emphasizing that unsound beliefs can stifle genuine philosophical progress.
Engaging with historical and contemporary societal structures, Stefan draws parallels between moral frameworks and the behaviors of civilizations. He illustrates how societies that adhere to UPB and reject moral equivalence with the treatment of animals are more likely to flourish compared to those driven by outdated paradigms. Through extensive contemplation, he arrives at the notion that the explanations we uphold deeply influence both societal dynamics and our personal interactions.
As Stefan tackles the complexities surrounding the concept of God, he contends that divine attributes often invert human characteristics, presenting a counterintuitive anti-concept that ultimately fails to provide lasting answers. By diving into the necessity of God in the absence of rational discourse, he encourages listeners to re-evaluate their own frameworks of reasoning and the implications these have on collective morality.
Throughout the episode, Stefan urges the audience to consider the ramifications of belief systems that permanently anchor themselves to outdated narratives, leading to a stagnation in philosophical evolution. The discussion culminates in an invitation for listeners to reflect critically on their moral foundations while embracing a greater understanding of human nature and societal obligations.
0:09 - The Nature of God
1:47 - The Absence of Arguments
2:20 - Why We Struggle with Morality
5:28 - God as a Placeholder
7:06 - Evolution and Its Challenges
11:12 - The Need for Answers
13:07 - Reason vs. Violence
14:31 - Divine Commandments
16:46 - Human Characteristics Reversed
19:07 - The Anti-Concept of God
22:05 - God as an Answer
25:49 - The Role of Religion in Society
[0:00] All right, question, or I suppose a comment from a listener, freedomain.com/donate to help out the show, shop.freedomain.com for your lovely Christmas merch.
[0:10] Are God's eternal power and divine nature clearly seen so that all are without excuse? I have a theory. God is not only omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, but he also must be omni-experiential. God must experience all that is possible to experience, or else he isn't really God. A human cannot experience something God has not. God must experience. So I will tell you what God fundamentally is. And then, you may dislike me, that's fine. You can let me know where you think I'm wrong, as always. As always, don't really need to say that. But I'm going to tell you what God is. God is the power that rushes into the vacuum of not having an argument. I'll say it again for the people in the bank. God is the power that rushes in to a necessary.
[1:07] Requirement that does not have a good argument. So, there's a scene that always struck me as very powerful, for sort of obvious reasons, in The Terminator 2, where the kid says to The Terminator, you just can't go around killing people. Why not? Why? Why? Why not? Because, because, because you just can't, okay? Right? That is, why should people not kill? Animals kill. Animals kill other animals. They kill their prey. Why should we not kill? In the absence of UPB, what answer do you have?
[1:47] What answer do you have? Why should we not steal? Animals take without out, quote, permission, all the time. Why should we not rape? Animals rape all the time.
[2:02] Why should we not be cannibals? Why should we not have incest? Why, like, all these terrible things? We know they're wrong. We know they're wrong. But we don't know why they're wrong. And any sort of decent person, they have a foul taste. You know, have you ever had this where you bite into some food and it's rotten?
[2:21] I don't have it anymore because I'm married. But when I was a bachelor, it would happen on occasion. Or maybe you don't bite into it, but you open up your... Tub of yogurt, and it's got that aquamarine fur on the top. And you're like, oh. Now, you don't have to know anything about bacteria or replication or anything like that. You just know it smells bad. I'm not going to eat it. Do that sniff with the milk, right? Oh, is that just milk crusted around the top, or is that the actual milk? Like how edge-cased you want to be, right? so why should we not do these terrible things? Why are we allowed to kill animals, but not people?
[3:05] Why do we take eggs from our domesticated chickens, which is robbing them of their offspring, but stealing from human beings, stealing a loaf of bread from a human being is unacceptable? Why do we take the milk from cows? You get it, right? Why do we take the freedom of cows? Why do we fence them in and then slaughter them? Why do we take the lives of pigs? Like, why do we do all of these things, these terrible things, so to speak, with animals? Or as Paul McCartney said, if abattoirs had glass walls, everybody would be a vegetarian, right? Why? Where did we come from? We're the first creatures to even think of that as a valid question.
[3:52] Why should we obey the law? Why should we obey those in authority? Why should we restrain our impulses? Why should we be loyal to a particular clan? Why, particularly as men, should we lay down our lives for the safety and security of the clan, the group, the tribe, the nation, whatever? Why should we go counter to our instincts?
[4:19] Why is a monk better than Genghis Khan? Genghis Khan spread his seed throughout Asia in a spray-and-pray murder fest. Why be good? What is goodness? These are essential questions. I mean, really the most essential questions. So, everyone gets a sense, of course, that we are different from animals, and that the obligations and responsibilities we have for each other are enormously different from the obligations and responsibilities we have towards the animals. Sure. But why? But why? So, God is the answer that rushes in to the vacuum of knowledge when there is no argument, no compelling, rational, empirical argument. Where did we come from when people didn't know prior to the mid-19th century? When people didn't know, they said God made us. Why should we treat people differently than we treat animals? Ah, because we're made in the image of God and we have a soul.
[5:29] Why should we not steal? God commands it. It is an ultimate argument from authority that has evolved in the absence of an argument that answers these things without reference to impossibility.
[5:46] God is a placeholder for a desperately needed argument that has not been generated as yet.
[5:54] Earth is fixed and does not move. We are the center of the universe. God created the universe for us. God created us in his image. We must obey the laws of God or we go to hell. If we obey the laws of God, we go to heaven. These are all answers that are desperately needed in the absence of rational and logical and empirical arguments and evidence. So we see this in the realm of physics, in the realm of physics, the Earth being the center of the universe, everything rotating around the Earth, and so on, was an answer to why are we here, and by the way, where are we? There was an answer to that, that physics has now answered, and therefore the Earth-centered universe has fallen by the wayside and been discarded to the ash heaps of history as an answer that people had, that was wrong, that has been replaced by an answer that is correct. We are in the Goldilocks zone, around an M-class star, in a galaxy full of 100 billion stars, in a universe full of 100 billion galaxies. We are not the center of anything, and we evolved from primordial ooze.
[7:07] Now, I get that that's not the answer for some people, and I get that evolution has its challenges, But honestly, I didn't realize how much evidence there was for evolution. But I read Dawkins' book about it, and it's pretty compelling.
[7:22] So UPB is to morals as the theory of evolution was to biology, to life. It is the answer. Now, the problem, of course, with false answers is that they prevent real answers. If your cosmology and your morality and your religion and your society is based upon God having created everything and Earth being the center of the universe, then trying to shift Earth from the center of the universe is pretty dangerous, pretty dangerous. And if you must obey the ruler because God has appointed him there to rule over you and to disobey the king is to disobey God, to disobey the queen is to disobey the divine, then that's why you must obey. But of course, when people stop believing in God and the divine right of kings and so on, then society has to change. or society will change. The aristocracy faded out after physics and biology came onto the scene. So, God is when you have to have an answer, you must have an answer, but you don't have an answer. And also, to have an answer is very dangerous. To have the right answer is very dangerous. We know this, right? I mean, I am...
[8:47] Most cancelled but the least harmed prominent philosopher in human history. In other words, I've been kicked off more platforms than any other philosopher, but that's obviously a bit of a rigged game because they didn't have that many platforms in the past. And I have been allowed to live and I still have some corners of the world where I can speak, as long as it's not really in person. It's dangerous. If you say, there is no God, and the king derives his power from the belief in God, the king will kill you, or silence you, or excommunicate you through the church, or he will ostracize you by sending you to the land of Oz. So, God is a way of trying to map the difference between human and God as similar to that between animals and humans. If animals could be religious, they would look at human beings as gods, right? They can, you know, kill from a distance. They can fly without wings. We can do all these kinds of wild things. So the way that we control our animal nature is we create a superhuman who is to us as we are to the animals. So when you have to have an answer, but you don't have an answer, you make up an answer.
[10:14] To take an extreme example, maybe not that extreme. So imagine that people will torture and kill you if you don't tell them where the buried treasure is. Now, let's say you don't know the buried treasure. What are you going to do? Are you just going to let them torture and kill you? No, you will try to buy time, hopefully get rescued or something. You will try to buy time by saying, oh, yes, I remember. Let me draw you a map. It's been a while, so I think this is it, and I will draw you the map. Now, I think it's right. I'm not sure. Because if you say, I don't have any knowledge of any buried treasure, they'll just kill you. If you tell them, I know exactly for sure that it's right here, then they'll kill you. But if you say, I think this is it. It's been a long time, but it's definitely in this region. I think it's right here. Then they will keep you alive because they want to come back and torture you some more if you're wrong.
[11:08] So when you have to have an answer, but you don't have an answer,
[11:11] you will make one up, right? You will pretend that you know where some buried treasure is in order to stay alive. So, human beings have to have an answer as to why we should treat each other in a different way than we treat our animals. Because if we treat each other in the same way that we treat our animals, then we don't flourish, to put it mildly, right? And so societies are generally taken over by other societies that have this separation or this gap between how we treat animals and how we treat each other. The conquistadors generally treated people better than the Aztecs. The Spanish society at the time, was not tearing out the hearts of children in public places to appease a god who fed on the tears of miserable and slaughter children. I mean, it wasn't great by modern standards in Spain, but it was almost infinitely better than the Aztecs. I mean, if you had a choice.
[12:18] Choice with full knowledge of the societies, would you rather be born as a child among the Aztecs or as a child among the Christian Spaniards? So, societies that treated each other better than they treated their animals tended to win over societies that treated each other closer to how human beings treat animals, which is why societies that eliminated slavery, which of course is treating human beings as livestock, tended to flourish relative to those societies that maintained slavery. I mean, because there's still about 15 million slaves in the world as a whole. But why, why, why? So, why should we treat each other better than animals? Now, the real answer is that we have the capacity to reason. Animals do not.
[13:07] And so, we should reason with each other because we have the capacity to reason, and reason creates a win-win situation, which is better for human flourishing and does not require violence and so on, right?
[13:25] So, a human being who beats up and steals from another human being, that's win-lose.
[13:35] In negotiation is win-win. So, it doesn't violate the non-aggression principle to trade. It makes society healthier, wealthier, and happier, and stronger. So, it is both moral and practical to reason rather than use violence. But why? Well, UPB answers that question, and in the absence of UPB, because UPB also undermines the validity or the perception of the moral validity of hierarchical political power. So, is it dangerous? Is it dangerous, my friend? Is it Luigi? So, the true answer was too dangerous. The false answer gave power and allowed for the enhancement of human flourishing. So, why should we reason with each other? The Christian answer is that we have a spark of divinity, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal.
[14:31] And that's why God commands us to not use violence, but rather use our words, not our fists.
[14:39] Just as the farmer imposes rules on his livestock, God imposes rules upon us. Just as the animal owner issues commands to his pets and punishes those who disobey and rewards those who obey, so does God issue us commands and punish those who disobey and reward those who obey. Because God is not a concept.
[15:07] Is the removal of human characteristics and the substitution of the opposite of human characteristics. The opposite of knowledge is not a lack of knowledge, because all knowledge comes out of a lack of knowledge, and knowledge is constantly increasing, and something cannot increase by its opposite. You can't get bigger muscles by lying around. You can't learn a new language without studying it or being exposed to it. And so the opposite of knowledge is not a lack of knowledge. It is not the impossibility of knowledge. The opposite of knowledge is omniscience, to know everything effortlessly. That is the opposite of knowledge, because no knowledge is ever gathered that way. Instincts, perhaps, but that's not knowing everything. It's just knowing how you feel. The opposite of life is not death, because all life dies, and life exists because of death. Because human beings die, we need new human beings, right?
[16:08] So the opposite of life is not death. The opposite of life is not inanimate things like rocks and clouds. That's not the opposite of life, because those things never participate in life. The opposite of life is eternal life, right? The opposite of mortality is immortality. So, when we look at God as all-knowing, all-perfect, all-powerful, all-moral, and so on, we are taking human characteristics and removing from them everything that makes them human. In other words, we're turning them into the opposite of human.
[16:46] The opposite of a human is everything that has human characteristics. You simply reverse all of those characteristics and make them the opposite and then you have the opposite of a human. So the opposite of a human who is mortal is an immortal being. The opposite of a human who works to acquire knowledge is automatic omniscience.
[17:07] Beings are limited in our powers, and so the opposite of our limited powers is all-powerful. So, God is taking human characteristics and absolutely reversing them and turning them into the opposite of human beings. Human beings are born, eternal life is the opposite of that. Human beings acquire knowledge, being automatically all-knowing, is the opposite of that. Human beings die, being eternal. Human beings are limited in their power. All-powerful is the opposite of that. So, to perceive that God should rule over human beings is to perceive that the opposite of humanity should rule over humanity. It's not an extension. All-powerful isn't an extension of limited power. Eternal life is not just life plus eternal, because life only exists because it ends. Human beings only exist because of mortality. You and I, as individuals, only exist because of death.
[18:08] Human beings were eternal, then we wouldn't die, you and I wouldn't be born, so life would be prevented by eternal life. Not a lot of kid elves, I guess, right? So eternal life is the opposite of human life, because eternal life would prevent human life from coming into existence. If all human beings were immortal and unharrible, then human beings wouldn't need to be born. But then why would human beings be there? See, like eternal life is the opposite of life. It's not just life plus. There would be no human life if there was eternal life. In the same way that there has always been God, therefore we don't get new gods in the monotheistic framework.
[18:58] So, God is an anti-concept in that it takes all the characteristics of life
[19:05] and reverses them completely. And it does so in an absolutely natural and inevitable requirement, which is we have to answer why we are different from animals and we don't have an answer prior to UPB. This is why when people ask me in the show, and I've said this for many years, decades really, when people ask me in the show, why do animals not have rights? What is my answer? Well, my answer has always been the same, because animals cannot reason, animals cannot compare proposed actions to ideal standards, and therefore animals do not have free will in the way that human beings have free will, and also because animals cannot be negotiated with.
[19:52] Marriage in Christianity, consanguinity, is forbidden as a form of incest. Now, I'm sure, of course, that people noticed that when cousins got married, and Albert Einstein married his cousin, but when couples who are cousins produced children, I'm sure people began to notice over time that this produced some very bad outcomes. So, you had to convince people, in the absence of the knowledge of genetics, right? With genetics, if two people are too closely aligned, then the pairs that produce deformities, the genomic pairs that produce abnormalities.
[20:34] Too often, and so, you know, isn't it sad when cousins marriage, right? Cousins marry, that's the line from WKRP of all places. I guess you're proof of that. So, they knew instinctively that cousin marriage was bad, so they had to ban cousin marriage. And, of course, even closer, incest, not only being morally revolting, is also bad for genetics. So, in the absence of the knowledge of genetics, they had to ban carousin marriage. And that was a pretty desperately necessary, situation because if you have a lot of deformities within the community, then you either have to, well, what happens is you end up expending a lot of resources, maintaining people who don't provide for themselves, and that makes you weaker relative to other tribes or groups, right? So, so they had to get people to stop sleeping with their cousins. So, what do they do? They say, it is a sin. It is forbidden by God. They need an answer. Don't have babies with your cousins. They need an answer, but they don't have an answer because they can't say, well, trust me, bro.
[21:46] So, when you have to stop people from sleeping with their cousins, you say God has forbidden it. It is immoral. It is against God. To put it another way, the tribes that treated each other like animals lost out to tribes who treated each other better.
[22:06] So, God is the, quote, answer that rushes into the vacuum of absolutely needing an answer without having one. And when you have a real answer, that threatens the existing power structures, because the existing power structures rely on answers that are not valid, right? I did a show many years ago called The Social Contract to Find and Destroy It in Five Minutes. The answers are breaking down all around us. People are saying, oh, well, you know, you need the government to provide security. You need the government to protect people from criminals. And it's like, what's happening in the West right now? An arco-tyranny, which is the government is turning criminals loose on the population and preventing the population from practicing self-defense.
[22:52] The answers are breaking down. Well, we need the government to protect our property. The government has asset forfeiture. The government, of course, is spending so much money that citizens are helplessly born into a million or more dollars worth of debt and unfunded liabilities, so they're debt slaves. So how is the government protecting your property? The government can take out a lien against your future children's income for the rest of their lives and use it to buy votes in the here and now, how is the government protecting your property? I remember when I had something stolen once and called up the cops. And they said, yeah, just, I mean, I guess it got legs and walked away, right? So just, you know, file an insurance claim or whatever, right? They didn't do anything.
[23:38] So I put a note up in the apartment building saying, whoever took this, it was mine. Please, please return it. And so on and so on. And then somebody left the object in front of my door. And so I was the one who had to go and beg my neighbors to return what had been stolen. I'm not saying it was necessarily stolen, but I left it for a moment that it was taken. And it could have been my mistake. Who knows? Right. But the cops were not helpful. I mean, the only people who think the government is helpful in resolving disputes have never tried to use the government to resolve disputes. I had a guy I worked with once and his brother had a Porsche and the Porsche got stolen. But this guy had a GPS tracker on it and told the cops exactly where it was. And they said, just file an insurance claim. Because the cops don't want to go into some chop shop where the criminals could be armed. That's dangerous, right? And again, I'm not saying that's the only thing. I'm sure the cops do some good work sometimes. But the answers are breaking down all around us, which is why we need real answers, not fake ones.
[24:44] Is better than the Aztec society. Or if you say, well, the government is needed to protect the vulnerable in society, then explain why 50 plus years of immigrant rape against little girls has been covered up and facilitated in many ways by the British government. It's a little hard to make that case, to keep that case, right, alive. So these realities are why it's important to understand what God is. Now, God is necessary. In the absence of answers, you need an answer. If a particular plant heals a wound, then you say, oh, it's imbued with divine power, it's blessed by the gods, and then that makes people go out and get it and apply it to the wound. Fantastic. Then you're helping people.
[25:35] And once you have an answer, you have to discard the prior false answers, right?
[25:44] While also recognizing that those answers are necessary and helpful, right? So, the answers that people had in the realm of religion, and particularly Christianity, which to me is the most noble of religions, the answers that people had were very important.
[26:01] And in the absence of answers, you need an answer and God is a fine answer until you have the real answers. Where did we come from? God made us. Where did we come from? Evolution. What is good? What God commands that aligns with our instincts, rape, theft, assault, and murder. But once you have UPB, UPB is like that model of the solar system. And the Pope says, well, where's God in this, and the astronomer says, not technically necessary, not needed for the system to work. So what is good? Well, good is what God commands. With UPB, we have the model of the solar system, we have the model of ethics, wherein divinity and governments, neither are required. And that's tough for people. I was looking for the answer to morals my whole life, of course, in my naivety and my enthusiasm, and that's fine. Enthusiasm is sometimes necessary to get things done, even if it turns out later to be false. But in my enthusiasm, I thought, oh, wow, people are going to really welcome this. Look at this, particularly the atheists. Wow. It's like, well, but Christians support violence in the home in terms of hitting children, atheists less so. Christians dislike violence at the state level. They tend to be smaller government people. And atheists prefer government to have violence, more violence in the government and so on. So.
[27:25] Violence. Atheists say no. Christians say yes. State institutional violence. Christians say no. Atheists say yes. It is sort of literally six of one, half a dozen of the other. And it feels like ne'er the twain shall meet. So anyway, I hope this makes sense. And let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your arguments. And as always, thank you for your support. Freedomain.com/donate. Bye.
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