In this lecture, Stefan Molyneux explores the complexities of atheism and its interplay with religious beliefs, societal morals, and child abuse. He reflects on personal experiences in a religious environment, critiquing the disconnection between professed morals and the failure to protect the vulnerable. Molyneux argues that if religious doctrine does not inspire moral action, it questions its validity. He also critiques atheism's inability to resolve moral dilemmas and discusses the dangers of a lack of moral frameworks leading to societal chaos. Concluding, he emphasizes the importance of dialogue on belief and moral responsibility.
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LearningTranscript
00:00All right. Good morning, everybody. This is F. M. Molyneux for FreedomAid. I hope you're doing well.
00:04James Earl Jones' voice is deployed.
00:07So, a question that floats across the purview of my consciousness from time to time is people saying to me,
00:15what is your relationship to atheism? And the question of atheism is big in the world at the moment.
00:22Even people like Richard Dawkins and so on are saying that it seems like that Christianity was the immune system
00:29against sort of the woke stuff in the Western world, and with the fall of Christianity comes the rise of anti-rational stuff,
00:39like the woke-isms and so on. And so I'm asked, and this is from people who've listened to me for a long time,
00:47have, I guess, dabbled or moved into circles of atheism, and then have found that, for various reasons,
00:56usually to do with consequentialism and emotions, which is not unimportant, I'm not trying to dismiss that,
01:02they return to the realm of Christianity or of religion as a whole, and then they ask me, are you still an atheist?
01:10Now, this is another one of these words that has been kind of poisoned by society as a whole,
01:16so I will sort of lay out where I'm at. These are not necessarily syllogistical arguments,
01:24but more of a sharing of my thinking, if that makes sense. That's what I'm sort of aiming to achieve.
01:32So I talked about this in my Terpin presentation, T-U-R-P-I-N, which at the moment is for donors,
01:38a presentation about the Terpins. Now, the Terpins who tortured and went to jail for life for torturing their 13 children,
01:49the Terpins were very religious and came from a very religious community, and in that very religious community,
01:55there was massive amounts of sick child abuse, right? Child rape, molestation, beatings, torture, you name it, right?
02:05And that is not to be sneezed at. You can't just sort of wave that away.
02:12Now, of course, you can find abuse and so on within the atheist community for sure,
02:18but the atheists don't claim to have an omniscient or moral god they can pray to for answers about their life.
02:25It's a little bit of a different situation. So if a doctor says,
02:31I have access to omniscience about diagnosing an illness, right? I have a god who I pray to who's all-knowing,
02:48who gives me answers about diseases, right? What's going on with diseases, who's sick and why and how to cure and all of that, right?
02:58Now, if a doctor says that, then he's a little bit more responsible for curing illnesses than a doctor who says,
03:06I have to sort of reason and puzzle things out myself, sort of house MD style,
03:11and I don't have access to omniscience in the diagnosing of medical complaints, medical issues.
03:19So, you know, the bar is pretty high, right? Because if you, as a Christian or as a religious person,
03:26who says religious person as a whole, if you as a religious person as a whole say to me or to anyone,
03:33or to yourself for that matter, I have access to omniscience through prayer,
03:40then it makes it pretty high stakes for you to make mistakes, right?
03:46So, if we say that the doctor who has access to the god of doctors, Dr. Spock or something, right?
03:56So, if there's a doctor who says I have access to omniscience when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of ailments,
04:03then if you get something wrong, that's pretty important, right?
04:10And so, in my life, in my experience, we live, I mean, I grew up.
04:16Things were much more religious when I was younger than they are now.
04:21And I grew up in a society where I went to church in boarding school several times a week.
04:28I was in the church choir. I fervently believed and accepted the premises and tenets of religion,
04:34as did, of course, the people around me who had access to divine knowledge of good and evil in their environment
04:43and how to fight it, because there was a sickness in society as there remains even now,
04:50and perhaps in some ways it's worse, a sickness in society called child abuse.
04:55And the question is, how did religion solve the problem of child abuse when I was a kid?
05:05And how has religion solved the problem of child abuse now that I'm older?
05:10You know, it's a pretty essential and important question, right?
05:14Because remember, and I talked about this in my presentation, that my aunts in particular,
05:19and my mother was not very religious to put it mildly, but my aunts were.
05:24And uncles, and like a lot of these things, it was to a significant degree driven by female sentimentality
05:32and devotion and dedication and so on. It was the aunts who got everyone up.
05:36I think the men would prefer to sleep in after their labors, but it was the aunts who got everyone up
05:41and you had to go to church and they believed and so on, right?
05:46And so, it's kind of hard to miss that, that as a child victim of fairly severe abuse,
05:54I had religious people surrounding me all over.
06:00And they all, of course, claimed through prayer to have access to omniscience,
06:08to the identification and cure of evil.
06:12In other words, I was somebody with a giant tumor surrounded by doctors
06:21who claimed to have a perfect knowledge of illness and how to cure it.
06:27And yet, of the hundreds, and in this case thousands, of people over the course of my life
06:32who've been aware of the abuse that I suffered as a child, certainly hundreds when I was younger,
06:38possibly more, but let's be conservative in our estimates.
06:42So, when I am being preyed upon violently and abusively, I have an illness,
06:51I have, in a sense, a virus that is attacking me, mind, body and soul,
06:56and I'm surrounded by hundreds of doctors, all dedicated to the identification and salvation.
07:03Identification of evil and salvation and promotion of virtue.
07:07I had a giant attack that went on for, I mean, really decades, but as a child, you know, 15 years straight.
07:17With, you know, the exception, of course, of boarding school when I was away,
07:21but then I was beaten with a cane there.
07:23So, it's, that's sort of the reality of my history.
07:28So, this is the claim that is put forward.
07:33And it's a really, really, really important claim.
07:36I don't just dismiss stuff or say, oh, they're deluded or it's superstition or, I don't, I don't do that.
07:45I take the claims seriously and test them according to the evidence.
07:50I value, of course, reason, empiricism, the scientific method.
07:55So, I was being attacked by a very obvious virus for 15 years.
08:03I had hundreds and hundreds of doctors who claimed access to omniscience
08:10in the identification of evil and the salvation of virtue
08:14with a God and Jesus who commanded them to protect the young.
08:20And in that time, hundreds of people over 15 years,
08:26not one person identified that I was being abused,
08:31despite obvious signs, not one person identified that I was being abused
08:35and not one person talked to my mother or did anything about it.
08:40Because if they had talked to my mother, my mother would absolutely have told me about that in no uncertain terms
08:46and demanded to know how that person knew or what they suspected and why.
08:50So, those are the facts.
08:53If you have a guide, let's say you're on some safari, right?
08:59And you have a guide who says, I have a great knowledge of predators.
09:04I have a great knowledge of predators and I am an expert at identifying predators
09:12and keeping you safe.
09:14And that's really what you're hiring the guide for.
09:19Sorry for the raking sound.
09:21So, you're hiring the guide because the guide has intimate knowledge of predators
09:27and an unrivaled ability to keep you safe.
09:32And then in the morning, in the bush or the jungle somewhere,
09:37you are out doing something in the camp, like you're in the campsite
09:42and you are being attacked by a lion or a tiger or a bear.
09:48It's roaring, it's screaming, it's ripping at your flesh and chewing at you
09:54and doing all kinds of unholy things to your physiognomy, right?
09:58Well, you would, of course, expect that the expert you paid to keep you safe
10:03in the jungle would leap forward with his amazing abilities, his weaponry
10:10and his skill and his knowledge, that he would leap forward
10:14and he would save you from the predator.
10:18Especially if he said, you know, I have cameras set up all through the camp,
10:23I'm immediately alert and awakened, I never sleep or whatever it is, right?
10:28So he would, and so he, but what he does is he just goes about his business
10:34while you are being torn apart by the predator.
10:37He's just making his coffee.
10:39I don't know, he's checking Twitter on his sat phone or something like that, right?
10:44And so this guy who says, my sole purpose is to identify predators and keep you safe,
10:51walks around while you're being torn up by a predator
10:55and does not change his behavior, does not change his demeanor,
11:00does not change his habits or his pace or his heart rate doesn't change.
11:07He just, dum-di-dum, off he is, he's getting his coffee, he's taking a pee,
11:12he is choosing his outfit for the day while you're screaming
11:17and being torn apart by a predator, right?
11:20Well, you would not say that this was a very good protector.
11:24In fact, you would say he's a total freaking fraud, right?
11:28And you would say that this is not even somebody who swore to protect you,
11:33sees that you're getting attacked, but instead hides and cowers.
11:39So we would say, well, he saw the attack,
11:42but unfortunately he was just coward about it, right?
11:47So he talked tough about his courage,
11:50but ended up showing his true colors as a coward, right?
11:54And therefore he was fraudulent in his taking money to protect you, right?
12:00He was fraudulent.
12:02So you would have an issue, right?
12:04So growing up, as I did, around religious people
12:09who swore to protect children, claimed to have access to divine knowledge
12:14and to want to protect the helpless and fight evildoers,
12:20they did nothing.
12:22They did not even at the time or even years after
12:25when I became a fairly prominent person and talked openly about the abuse,
12:29nobody from my past ever contacted me and said,
12:32oh gosh, I'm so sorry about how it was for you.
12:35I'm so sorry about what you suffered.
12:37Nothing, none of the religious people.
12:39So it was not a lack of knowledge, although they should, of course,
12:42by their own theory have had no lack of knowledge of me being preyed upon
12:47because they had access to divine knowledge, right?
12:49So I was in this bizarre, truly bizarre situation, of course,
12:54of people praying in church with me, like older people,
12:59and not just relatives, of course, but the priests and other noble.
13:05I mean, I saw policemen there.
13:08I saw everyone in church praying for guidance,
13:12help me do good, help me identify evil,
13:16help me to follow the path of righteousness and virtue,
13:22which would, of course, involve protecting children
13:25from rampant child abuse, which was right in their environment.
13:30Now, the signs were there, right?
13:32It's the same thing true with the teachers.
13:34I grew up with a whole coterie of very religious teachers,
13:38both in public and in private school,
13:40and in schools in three different continents.
13:44I grew up with very religious teachers
13:47who prayed daily about doing good.
13:50We did the Lord's Prayer every morning,
13:52deliver us from evil, help me identify the good,
13:55help me fight for the good, help me oppose evil.
13:58We did this prayer every morning,
14:00and the priests, the teachers, the family, the parents, the adults,
14:04everybody did this prayer.
14:05I don't mean to labor the point here,
14:07but it's really important to understand this,
14:09because I'm not alone in this, obviously.
14:11I'm tragically not alone in this, right?
14:14So, clearly, there was a break in the causality, right?
14:20When a doctor says,
14:22I have access to perfect knowledge and all,
14:25I have access to omniscience about the identification of
14:29and treatment of disease,
14:31I have that.
14:32I inhabit that paradigm,
14:36that I have perfect knowledge about disease and its cure.
14:41I don't even need to take a test,
14:43I just need to pray, right?
14:45The disease being evil and the cure being intervention, right?
14:49So, if I have a giant tumor,
14:53and I'm surrounded by hundreds of people
14:55who claim to have access to perfect divine knowledge
15:00regarding illness and its cure,
15:03and I remain undiagnosed and uncured,
15:07then clearly something is not working, right?
15:10Something is significantly breaking down, right?
15:13There is a disconnect.
15:16Rather, they have access to divine knowledge,
15:20and the divine knowledge is telling them,
15:23Hey, you know,
15:25Steph and his brother are being woefully mistreated here, man.
15:28You know, Steph and his brother are being woefully mistreated,
15:30and here's all the other kids in the environment
15:32who are being woefully mistreated,
15:34and thank goodness you prayed for this.
15:36In fact, you didn't even need to pray.
15:39I will stand before you, as I did in ages past,
15:42and tell you all of the good that you can do
15:45in your environment by helping and saving the victims
15:49for child abuse, right?
15:51So, either they were told this
15:54and did not act upon it,
15:56and have never acted upon it,
15:58which is a challenge, right?
16:00Because if you have access to divine knowledge,
16:04and the divine knowledge is given to you,
16:07yet you do not act on it,
16:09then that's a problem, right?
16:11So, if you're a doctor, right, and you say,
16:13my sole purpose in this veil of tears
16:16is to identify those who are sick.
16:20With my access to divine knowledge,
16:22my sole purpose here is to identify the sick,
16:24and to cure them,
16:26well, you have a problem.
16:28If there are tons of sick people around,
16:30and you don't notice anything,
16:32and you don't do anything,
16:34so what does that mean?
16:35It means something, right?
16:36It can't mean nothing.
16:37It can't mean nothing.
16:39Otherwise, nothing means anything.
16:41So, if you say, I'm a doctor,
16:43I have access to divine knowledge,
16:44my sole purpose here is
16:47to identify illness and cure it,
16:50and you don't identify any illness around you,
16:53and even when somebody says to you, I'm ill,
16:56you don't notice, you don't say anything,
16:57you don't do anything,
16:59then we have a big problem, right?
17:02Which is, what is the purpose of having access
17:04to divine knowledge if you don't act upon it?
17:07Now, we can understand that
17:11people with bad incentives,
17:13or people with misincentives,
17:14might do the wrong thing, right?
17:16So, if doctors, for instance,
17:20are subsidized or get financial considerations
17:24and fancy trips and all these kinds of cool things,
17:27if they get all of that
17:29as the result of prescribing particular medicines,
17:33we can understand that they're not particularly objective
17:36in the prescription of those medicines, right?
17:39They don't have objectivity,
17:41they have a conflict of interest, right?
17:43And people are supposed to talk about this
17:45with research papers,
17:46and even if you read financial news,
17:49if a financial writer holds a stock
17:54that he's recommending you buy,
17:55he's supposed to disclose that,
17:57all kinds of things like that, right?
17:59Well, then you could understand
18:03why this corruption might occur.
18:05However, in the Christian paradigm,
18:08in the religious paradigm as a whole,
18:09in general, with some exceptions, but in general,
18:11in the Christian paradigm,
18:13you do good for, you know,
18:16according to many believers,
18:17not all, many believers,
18:18you go to hell for eternity.
18:20So, you are incentivized
18:23with the eternal reward of heaven,
18:25and you are punished
18:27with the eternal torment of hell
18:29if you don't do the right thing
18:33and identify and fight the illness called evil.
18:38So, with access to divine knowledge
18:42and with the eternal incentives of heaven and hell,
18:45not one person in my childhood, youth, or adulthood
18:50who knew about my abuse as a child,
18:53not one person,
18:54has ever said anything
18:56or done anything, ever.
18:59I met these same aunts many years later
19:01when they came to Canada for a family wedding,
19:04and nothing.
19:06Nothing, nothing, nothing.
19:07They didn't say,
19:08how was it?
19:09Gee, that must have been tough.
19:10Single mother.
19:11You know, she seemed kind of high-strung.
19:12How was it?
19:13Nope.
19:14Nothing.
19:15So, either they have access to divine knowledge,
19:18but even with the greatest incentives
19:20of eternal punishment or eternal reward,
19:23they do not act to protect children from child abuse,
19:27or they don't have access to this knowledge,
19:29and it's just an excuse and a cope.
19:31Either way, or of course,
19:34there is no efficacy to prayer and so on, right?
19:38People just pray for their own comfort,
19:40and they have no intention of actually doing good in the world, right?
19:43Belief, or a moral system,
19:45or a philosophy that claims omniscience
19:49and claims to inflict the highest positive and negative consequences conceivable,
19:54such a belief system that does not lead you to action,
19:58is not even believed by the people who claim to adhere to it, right?
20:02My family, my aunts, this is on my father's side,
20:05they all knew that my mother was highly unstable,
20:07because, I mean, these aunts,
20:09well, I mean, one of them literally took me in for months
20:11when my mother was hospitalized for depression,
20:13shortly after I was born.
20:15So they knew about her craziness, mental illness, and so on,
20:19and then for years,
20:21my brother was airlifted to England
20:24while I had to struggle with the mental decay of my mother on my own
20:28at the age of eleven or so, or twelve,
20:31and to thirteen, maybe fourteen.
20:33I had to struggle with this for years on my own,
20:35and nobody called.
20:37Nobody wrote a letter, nobody asked me how things were going, at all.
20:41Now, were they praying to God for information?
20:45Were they praying to God for the ability to identify evil and do good?
20:51Well, yes, of course they were, but nothing happened.
20:54Alright, so that's sort of the issue.
20:56Now, given that religion does not solve the problem of child abuse,
21:01it cannot solve the problem of evil as a whole,
21:03because you cannot solve the problem of evil
21:05without solving the problem of child abuse.
21:07It's like trying to move a shadow without moving the statue.
21:10It's not how reality works.
21:13So, it's like trying to manage the symptoms of smallpox
21:17without there being a smallpox vaccine.
21:20You want to stop it at the source,
21:21and then you don't have to deal with the effects all the time.
21:24So, this is why I had some difficulties with, in particular, Christianity,
21:29which was, of course, the prevalent religion of my youth and adulthood,
21:32early adulthood, for sure.
21:34So, this is why I have issues with Christianity.
21:38Now, of course, Christians will say that we're all fallible,
21:41we all make mistakes,
21:43and that the fact that every single person around you
21:46who claimed to be a Christian did nothing to help you
21:49then or now with the problem of child abuse
21:53is because human beings are fallible,
21:56and Satan does his thing, and so on, right?
21:59Well, but the fact that Satan does his thing
22:03is why you have principles.
22:05And if you say, I mean, that's like the old line from Oscar Wilde,
22:10I can resist everything except temptation, right?
22:13So, if having all this knowledge and the threat of eternal hellfire
22:16or heaven, the promise of heaven or the threat of hell
22:19is not enough to get people to change,
22:22then it doesn't solve, right?
22:24It doesn't solve the problem.
22:26It doesn't solve the problem.
22:28So, given that Christianity does not solve the problem of child abuse,
22:32it can't solve the problem of evil.
22:35And, you know, tossing it off to the devil doesn't really solve anything.
22:39Because that's like saying, well, I, as a doctor,
22:42have access to divine perfect knowledge about illness and its cure,
22:47but the devil twists and changes it and makes it bad and wrong
22:51and has me not want to fix the problem or cure people
22:55or identify the issue, right?
22:57Okay. All right.
22:59Well, then, you don't really have access to divine knowledge
23:02if you can wave away any and all failures
23:04as the result of temptation from the devil.
23:06See, God himself raises the requirements for human virtue so high
23:12that the devil has to be invented to explain
23:15why people don't achieve this virtue.
23:18I mean, in the face of eternity, a human life is but a blink.
23:22And if the promise of heaven or the threat of hell
23:25is not enough to get people to change their minds,
23:27well, then it's not solving the problem, is it?
23:30Fundamentally, it's not solving the problem at all.
23:33In fact, it's making it worse.
23:35In many ways. We can get into that another time.
23:38So that's the issue.
23:40Now, atheism simply means against God,
23:43and I would not categorize myself at all as against God.
23:46And this having been said, of course,
23:48there are lots of wonderful things about Christianity and so on
23:51and other religions to be admired.
23:55And religion is an attempt to create, at least Christianity,
23:59is an attempt to create universal morality
24:02in the absence of true rational proof.
24:08So, lots of pluses.
24:10And Christians are staunch and often very wonderful people.
24:14And certainly had more courage with mighty platforming.
24:19I can think of individual Christians who had more courage with mighty platforming
24:22than all the atheists put together.
24:26So, where does this leave us?
24:29Well, the problem with religion is that the standards it raises are so high,
24:35like you have access to all the perfect knowledge and virtue.
24:39The standards it raises are so immensely high
24:43that human beings will almost inevitably fall short of these standards.
24:48And then you need the devil, you need temptation, fallible human nature,
24:51original sin, you need all of these reasons as to why
24:54you fail to meet these lofty standards.
24:57But because you have these excuses, right?
25:00I remember there was some cop movie, a TV show or something like that,
25:04where somebody said, but that's not very Christian.
25:07And the cop said, hey, Jesus is perfect. I'm not.
25:10And these are excuses.
25:12Well, you know, sin is tough and the devil is always watching and waiting
25:16and human nature is fallible and, you know, all these, all these, they're excuses.
25:20And I don't like that in particular. I think that is not great. Not great.
25:25Excuses are promises of repetition.
25:28And the idea that you can beg forgiveness no matter what, no matter when,
25:33is not healthy.
25:35If you imagine that if smokers, like they can smoke for 30 or 40 years
25:40and then when they get lung cancer or emphysema or COPD or something like that,
25:44when they get some, you know, deadly effect of smoking,
25:48then they can simply really, really, really be sorry they smoked
25:52and get a fresh pink pair of lungs and everything is perfectly healthy
25:55and wonderful for them after that, right?
25:57So that's not going to have people quit smoking.
26:00One of the reasons that, you know, people quit smoking, it's a good thing to do, right?
26:04One of the reasons that people do quit smoking is because by the time you're sick,
26:08it's probably too late.
26:10I mean, I remember reading this about a guy.
26:12It was a columnist in Canada back in the day.
26:16I think it was in the Globe and Mail or maybe the Star.
26:19And he was saying, like, he smoked his whole life.
26:21He decided to quit in his 50s and his doctor said,
26:24well, I don't know if it's going to do you much good, but, you know,
26:26it's a good thing to do anyway because, you know,
26:28I assume a lot of the damage had been done.
26:30Now, I've heard other things that say if you quit and exercise,
26:32it's better for you and you can return to a state of health and so on, right?
26:37But would smokers quit smoking if they knew they could simply repent of smoking
26:44later in their life and be perfectly healthy?
26:47Well, no.
26:48They'd smoke and then they'd just repent of it later and so on, right?
26:52That's what they would do for the most part, right?
26:55Same thing with drinkers, right?
26:57If your liver could be repaired if you were genuinely sorry for drinking,
27:00if your liver could be repaired by your sorrow and your regret,
27:05then how many drinkers would quit drinking, right?
27:07So one of the problems, of course, in my childhood was that if you did wrong,
27:12you could simply ask for forgiveness.
27:14So you didn't have to do right because you could get all of your sins taken away
27:19at the end of your life and be as if you had never sinned.
27:23And again, I know that there's mortal sins and so on.
27:25But unfortunately, ignoring child abuse is not one of those.
27:28So a little bit of a problem as far as that goes.
27:33So I think it does tend to lead people to ignore evils because you don't have to
27:38quit smoking because you can just pray away lung disease later in life.
27:44You can pray away all the effects of smoking later in life.
27:49And of course, the other reason why I have issues with this stuff as a whole
27:55is that you can walk away from religious morality by no longer believing in God.
28:04So you can go to Darwinism, to secular humanism, to rationalism,
28:07and so on, and you can walk away from the morals of religion simply by disbelieving in God.
28:13And then what happens, of course, is when enough people disbelieve in God
28:16and therefore of morals prior to UPB, if people are willing to accept it,
28:22the validity and truth of it, then what happens is people cease to restrain themselves
28:29and you gain liberation from morality by disbelieving in God.
28:32But then what happens, of course, is sort of the well-known correlation
28:35between atheism and totalitarianism, atheism and big government,
28:40atheism and fascism to some degree, is that when people disbelieve in religion by
28:47disbelieve in morality by disbelieving in religion, if morals come from God
28:51you can erase morality in your mind by no longer believing in God.
28:57Well then, people stop restraining themselves, they behave in a hedonistic manner
29:01which creates chaos and negativity and problems in society.
29:07People become hedonists so they sleep around.
29:10And then you get children out of wedlock, you get STDs, you get heartbreak,
29:14lack of pair bonding, increased divorce.
29:16So people become hedonists and because they're hedonists they demand theft for their sins.
29:26They demand that people have to be forced to pay for the consequences of their own bad behavior.
29:32So a woman who gets pregnant outside a wedlock demands either sort of free abortions
29:36or welfare, child support, free health care and education and subsidized housing
29:42and free food, all that sort of stuff.
29:45Because then it's just about the amoral acquisition of resources which generally
29:49brings sophistry and increased coercion from the state to bear on the challenges
29:54of the organizations of human society.
29:58Now I understand the argument and I'll repeat it here, this is a good argument.
30:02So people will say to me, Steph, Steph, Steph, you silly goose, let's be real here.
30:07So you say that people can walk away from morality by disbelieving in God
30:13and becoming atheists and claiming to be rationalists and so on, right?
30:17Okay, but what if people just walk away from reason and philosophy?
30:23If people just choose, I mean you know that most people have either never heard of
30:28or don't accept UPB, so you haven't solved anything.
30:33You say, oh well people can just disbelieve in morality by disbelieving in God
30:36but then people can just disbelieve in your morality by refusing to accept UPB.
30:42And it's like, well I understand that argument, right?
30:45But atheists have a veneer of rationality, right?
30:49So atheists can only reject UPB by rejecting rationality,
30:53but if they reject rationality and quote science, right,
30:57then there's no reason for them to remain atheists, they might as well be religious.
31:01So atheists take refuge from religious moral commandments
31:06by claiming to be materialists, empiricists, secularists, rationalists and so on,
31:11which means that they have to accept reason.
31:13So if UPB is proven rationally and people who claim to be atheists reject it,
31:19then they're just rejecting rationality and science and evidence, right?
31:23So there are scientific reasons to accept UPB as well as historical evidence.
31:27All the empirical evidence points towards it.
31:29It's internally self-consistent.
31:31It accords with reason, evidence, history, science and all of that.
31:36So it's true that you can abandon religion for the sake of reason,
31:43but then you leave the church and you come to UPB.
31:47And if you then reject UPB, you've got nothing.
31:49Like you've got no excuses anymore.
31:51You can't say, well I reject religion because it's not rational and then reject UPB,
31:55despite UPB being supremely rational.
31:57So it shows the lie that they're not interested in reason.
32:03They're interested in escaping morality, which is a fantasy.
32:08You can't escape morality because it's in the conscience.
32:12Some people don't have a conscience, but other people do,
32:17and it can inflict negative consequences on those without a conscience
32:19because of their own consciences.
32:21So when atheists walk away from, say, Christianity because they say,
32:26well, reason and evidence, I'm oh so rational, actually,
32:30well then they come to UPB and they can't overturn UPB and then they reject UPB.
32:34It's like, okay, but then at least nobody believes that they're rejecting religion
32:37because of reason and evidence, because reason and evidence absolutely supports UPB,
32:41and they're rejecting that too.
32:43So they have no interest in reason and evidence, they just want to,
32:45and they're just naked half-ape hedonists, right?
32:49They're using rationality as a cloak to escape morality.
32:53In other words, they're trying to run away from their conscience into science,
32:58and then they just end up in this maze of dopamine and decay.
33:02So it is important. It is important.
33:06And this is what has, and also are atheists solving the problem of child abuse?
33:11No. No, they're not.
33:13In fact, by demanding more government control over education and other things,
33:16they're actually fairly central to increasing some of the truly horrific aspects
33:23of modern education that denies the child their right to think and reason
33:26and have self-esteem and have their own choice and independence and morals.
33:30Well, not their own morals, but to affect their own morality.
33:33I mean, atheism, for a lot of people, turns them from ineffective angels
33:38to highly effective predators.
33:40Because religion was unable to solve the problem of child abuse.
33:45Atheism is unable to solve the problem of child abuse.
33:49And so it's really just all for show.
33:53But there's self-restraint and a denial of materialism in religion,
33:57particularly for Christians.
34:00Satan offers Jesus the whole planet, and he says,
34:02Nope, not so much.
34:04I may not be quoting directly, but it's something to that effect.
34:06So there's an anti-materialism, which means that, as Jesus says,
34:10sell everything you own, give your money to the poor, and follow me.
34:14So there's an anti-materialism.
34:16But atheism is literally materialism.
34:19There's nothing more important than matter.
34:21And there's no such thing as a lie, because all is nature.
34:25There's no such thing as morality, therefore there's no such thing as a lie.
34:28There are just different strategies for getting resources.
34:32And if saying something that is not true gets you resources,
34:35that's perfectly acceptable in nature.
34:38And nature is based on deception.
34:40The tiger pretends to be grass.
34:42The cuckoo drops its nest in another bird's nest.
34:45And the rabbit pretends to be going one way,
34:47then changes direction quickly in order to escape the fox and so on.
34:50So nature is based upon deception.
34:54And so once you lose your morals,
34:56you can say anything you want to get the resources that you want.
35:01And moral people become fools and dupes so you can lie to them
35:05in order to subjugate them.
35:07So with regards to atheism, I am a philosopher.
35:12And trying to put me into a category is unproductive.
35:17I mean, if you're a scientist, you're a scientist.
35:19If you're a Planckian or a superstring advocate or X, Y, and Z,
35:25if you're any and all of these things,
35:27then you're not a scientist, you're a dogmatist, right?
35:30So I do not accept the existence of things opposed to reason and evidence.
35:38It's not particular to any category of those things.
35:41I do not accept the existence of things that are the opposite of reason and evidence.
35:48And I am wholly dedicated to taking, you know,
35:52whatever slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and insults I have to take
35:55in order to promote the virtues of peaceful parenting
35:58through which no other virtues can be sustainably achieved.
36:02So I'm not an atheist.
36:05I'm a philosopher.
36:07And I hope that this explanation has helped clear my perspectives up.
36:10I really, really, of course, look forward to your feedback enormously.
36:13You can join a great community at freedomain.locals.com.
36:16Support what I do at freedomain.com.
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36:22All right.
36:23Hope this makes sense to you.
36:25Looking forward to your feedback.
36:27Lots of love. Thanks so much. Bye.