Asatru Folk Assembly - Reasons to Believe in Asatru with Matt Flavel

00:00:00.000 Matt thanks for coming on really appreciate you taking the time to have a conversation with me

00:00:13.080 would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself before we get started um sure first

00:00:17.160 off thank you very much for having me I I really appreciate the the invitation and I'm always always

00:00:22.500 happy to talk about Ausitru. My name is Matthew Flavelle. I was born and raised in Anchorage,

00:00:28.380 Alaska. I am the Ausitru Folk Assembly, and that's a fancy word that basically means the

00:00:36.140 high priest to the Ausitru Folk Assembly. I've been following Ausitru for 20 years this

00:00:43.140 year, and I've been leading the AFA for six. Okay, could you tell me more about Asatru? What

00:00:53.520 is it? Okay, sure. All right, well, Asatru is an ethnic religion of European peoples,

00:01:02.600 and it's basically the paganism that existed amongst European people before the conversion

00:01:09.660 to Christianity. We believe in the Aesir. As a matter of fact, the word Aesir is an Old Norse

00:01:17.200 word that means loyalty to the Aesir. Often people are confused and think it means belief in,

00:01:23.260 but it doesn't just mean believing in them, but being loyal to them. So gods that your audience

00:01:30.220 be familiar with odin thor freya those gods we also within us true practice uh ancestor veneration

00:01:41.100 and the veneration of heroes and the afa has been around 28 years this year

00:01:48.460 and that also true in its modern form has been around since 1968.

00:01:53.580 okay and could you tell me if why should is there any evidence of why people should believe in these

00:02:03.100 kinds of gods as opposed to um the other ones that you don't believe in um i think evidence

00:02:11.900 is a tricky word there's certainly reasons why i think it's advantageous for um people of european

00:02:20.540 descent to believe in in these gods and i think like i said earlier it's not so much just a

00:02:26.780 belief in them but it's a it's loyalty to and it's a building a relationship with them

00:02:32.540 and some of the reasoning for that is that these are our gods they're the gods of our ancestors

00:02:38.540 therefore we are intimately relatable to them in a way that's not the same with

00:02:47.420 with other or different gods i very much believe that each ethnic grouping of people have their

00:02:54.460 own native beliefs and their own gods and the existence of my gods doesn't negate the existence

00:03:03.020 of their gods so it's not a you know one or the other existing thing but i do think these are the

00:03:09.500 gods that our people are most um tied to by kinship and by our unique soul makeup

00:03:19.420 well i'm an atheist so which i mean i believe that there are no gods i don't think there's any

00:03:23.900 reason to believe anything beyond like just physical natural stuff

00:03:27.420 so is there any reason to believe that gods exist at all

00:03:31.900 um yeah but the the quantification of it's really different uh different it's one of those things

00:03:38.220 that's experiential um trying to think the best way to say it from my own experience i've always

00:03:48.860 certainly believed in divinity in one form or another and uh figuring out the fine points of

00:03:55.740 what to attribute that to is took and has taken a large part of my life until i was you know in my

00:04:01.500 my early twenties, but the belief in the assurity in my case, that there's something out there

00:04:07.800 beyond, um, I guess, beyond the physical into the metaphysical is, uh, I think it's fairly

00:04:16.700 fundamental in the human condition. And it's certainly something that in my own life I've

00:04:21.460 have always felt was, I don't know, a natural state of, of existence.

00:04:26.500 sense. Well, I think there's lots of natural states of existence for humans, lots of biases,

00:04:36.100 fallacies, illusions, delusions, lots of things that are inbuilt in human psychology that aren't

00:04:40.980 true. So why would this example being inbuilt in human psychology make it reasonable to believe

00:04:48.120 it's true as opposed to one of the false ones? Well, I mean, all things aren't equal. There's

00:04:52.800 a spiritual need amongst people that I think has pretty much always been there. I'm sure there are

00:05:01.100 certainly outliers in situations where that's not the case, but by and large, all sentient creatures

00:05:08.040 on the planet, as far as by the broad stroke of society go, have had religiosity in one form or

00:05:17.580 another, a belief, you know, at the most basic level in their

00:05:21.880 ancestors looking on from an afterlife. And it's one of those

00:05:26.280 things is kind of fundamental to the human condition. It's like

00:05:28.820 the saying, there's no atheists in foxholes, when people find

00:05:31.480 themselves in moments of, you know, when everything gets

00:05:34.940 stripped away intellectually, there's a tendency to reach out

00:05:39.340 beyond the physical towards something else or towards

00:05:41.740 something more.

00:05:42.420 yes i mean the no atheism foxholes thing has been um researched and there are actually many

00:05:52.140 atheists in foxholes but um my question is more does the fact that we have the desire

00:05:58.380 mean it's true versus having the desire for a billion dollars in my bank account i mean most

00:06:04.280 people have a desire for money in their bank account but it's not there and so why would this

00:06:10.500 desire indicate that there is something there as opposed to it just being a desire well it's it's

00:06:19.420 more than just a desire it's a need um me needing food doesn't make food appear but me needing food

00:06:25.780 makes me search after that food until that needs satisfied um and i you know i have to assume this

00:06:35.060 isn't my state so i don't know but i have to assume that atheists fill that need in a different way

00:06:40.060 or with different conclusions than i would reach um so it doesn't mean that gods exist but it does

00:06:47.580 mean that it's a question that needs to be resolved in some way and asking that question

00:06:53.020 and looking for those answers have led me to the surety that our gods do exist

00:07:01.660 sure i definitely agree that uh it's a question a drive that humans have to try to search for the

00:07:06.460 answer but my question is more what evidence would lead you to the answer that they exist

00:07:14.460 and why would you believe that simply having the drive would do you count that as evidence

00:07:21.260 for the answer yes

00:07:26.460 built on the backs of the eons of human history i think it would propel us towards the answer yes

00:07:36.460 um i don't think that it may evidence is a hard word because the the standards of evidence are

00:07:43.300 different than the standards that make us believe something to be true or false evidence is

00:07:47.900 in my understanding of evidence makes it completely rock solid and i just don't think

00:07:52.240 the metaphysical works that way um uh what could you explain what you mean by evidence because i

00:07:58.020 think evidence is anything that increases the likelihood of proposition is true okay i like

00:08:02.140 any like one percent is still evidence okay so i would say that the majority of human history

00:08:09.420 accepting the existence of belief in metaphysics would make it you know would be at least one

00:08:18.740 percent in the favor of there's probably something to it i think respecting the wisdom of our

00:08:24.660 ancestors is a good place to start on believing in accepting truth i think listening to people

00:08:33.460 that you respect and that you understand have a relationship to where you understand where they're

00:08:38.020 coming from and them sharing their experiences with you of metaphysical reality would lead me

00:08:46.260 towards placing credence in it as a concept and specifically and this is something that i always

00:08:52.820 suggest to people when they come from a an atheist or an agnostic background

00:08:59.860 is when you start any form of ritual work or any any prayer or any offering

00:09:05.540 i don't feel that you have to go into that with a firm belief but i do ask that people go into

00:09:10.100 that with an open mind and an open heart and that they reach out and that they see what happens

00:09:14.900 and very often people feel very much like in a way something reached back and i i certainly

00:09:21.300 felt that to be true in my life but the main question is like how do you differentiate

00:09:30.980 imagination from reality because when you say like you felt something reach back when i watch

00:09:35.940 a scary movie at night and i have the lights out i i feel like there's something in the dark looking

00:09:42.020 back at me even though there's not i can go over there turn the lights on nothing's there and so

00:09:46.500 we humans have these sensations of a hyperactive agency detection where we'll

00:09:51.940 we'll feel agency in things that don't have agency people think that a monster under the bed shot guy

00:09:59.220 lurking in the shadows um the lion in the bushes like if you hear rust in the bushes you're afraid

00:10:05.140 because you think it's a lion when it could just be the wind um and the group of people who thought

00:10:12.020 it was a lion and ran away every time survived and the group of people who are more skeptical

00:10:16.980 and they're going to wait to see if like wait for a scientific test to find out if it was a lion

00:10:21.300 were the ones who got eaten and so our inbuilt evolutionary biases give us this tendency to

00:10:27.700 think there are agents in lots of things where there is no agency like a monster under the bed

00:10:34.020 and so why would this be an example that's different from that or if we know that this

00:10:39.780 is the case how do you filter out those examples where we do know it's just our psychology playing

00:10:45.220 tricks with us well i think a lot of that comes with maturity and experience i think that you

00:10:50.740 know whatever age or period of human development those fundamental instincts get get honed you know

00:10:59.140 i think when somebody first goes in the woods the first time then yeah every rustle in the bushes

00:11:04.180 must be some animal either it's what they're hunting or it's what's hunting them or

00:11:08.420 certainly but the more seasoned you are the more often you're in the woods the more you can

00:11:12.420 differentiate what rustling sounds like a big animal what sounds like a squirrel what might

00:11:17.620 just be the wind and i think the same is true for for the others if you're watching a scary movie

00:11:22.340 you're artificially stimulating that uh that impulse within yourself to feel like you're

00:11:28.660 being watched but very often it's a very valuable skill if you find yourself in public and you feel

00:11:33.140 like someone someone's watching you i would say chances are somebody probably is

00:11:39.540 so i don't think you ever shut those things off i think you use your dis or i i don't think it's

00:11:44.820 good to shut those things off i think it's good to use your discernment over your life and your

00:11:49.380 life experiences and you know hone those and keep you know hone those towards the directionality

00:11:57.220 science would typically say that since we know that that methodology is unreliable that our

00:12:04.420 brains can't really tell the difference very well we can't count that as evidence we just go

00:12:08.040 like nope it doesn't count we got to find some different way to assess is this a reliable

00:12:13.740 sensation or is it a figment of our imagination that's we have novel testable prediction double

00:12:19.000 blind studies control groups these things have over time been able to filter out which things

00:12:26.620 are just human imagination in which things are correspondent to reality and so from my perspective

00:12:33.660 i would require something more along those lines rather than um feelings that we have

00:12:39.980 because i don't know of a reliable way to hone those feelings and contexts

00:12:45.300 that have ever worked or ever been able to correspond to those higher level tests that

00:12:51.520 science does because when people say um that they can hone their psychological skills in such a way

00:12:58.480 to detect um astrology homeopathy uh dowsing etc etc it always fails we tested against science

00:13:06.460 double line control studies always fails and so i've never seen cases where simply being able to

00:13:12.720 hone psychological skills has given anybody any access to the fundamental nature of reality

00:13:18.900 um beyond chance essentially um and so i would go ahead go ahead oh no what i was going to say

00:13:27.720 with that is but we do every day on things that we trust that we don't require evidence for

00:13:35.040 um we deal with relationships with people to where we build trust relationships based on our

00:13:41.140 experience of that person and oftentimes based on our intuition based on past experiences on

00:13:49.220 whether we feel we can trust a situation or not and uh we've learned to use that and it's certainly

00:13:56.660 not infallible but i think that people have learned to use that in a way that's been very

00:14:03.700 beneficial it's not always right but i think that it's been a useful tool and on the scientific

00:14:11.060 studies um and i don't claim to be any sort of a scientist that's that's certainly not my claim

00:14:16.980 But I found very often that. As a premise, I don't. I believe you can't out science truth. Truth exists and science is an attempt to understand or to express truth. But things are true whether we're currently able to scientifically quantify or explain them or not. True things are true objectively, I think.

00:14:43.460 um and so i think that by whatever tool you use to come to them the the important part is that

00:14:51.340 you're you're accurate not that you can you know show your work as you'd say in math class

00:14:57.200 i'm not sure i understand that you can't out science truth i think that's an interesting

00:15:03.740 catchphrase um but it's like knowledge is a justified true belief it's how it's defined in

00:15:11.720 philosophy. And it's not just a true belief. So even if you believe something that happens to be

00:15:17.000 correct, unless you have a justification for it, then it wouldn't be counted as knowledge. It'd be

00:15:21.980 called a lucky belief. So like if they use this, the example of a broken clock, broken clock is

00:15:30.600 right twice a day, but it doesn't mean you should trust the clock. The clock is pretty unreliable

00:15:34.860 99% of the time. And so the ability to show your work, as you put it, and to have some kind of

00:15:41.920 rational justification for your belief is an integral part of what counts as knowledge. And

00:15:47.480 without that, it doesn't seem to count as knowledge at all. And so I don't think I would agree that

00:15:52.940 simply believing something that's true is rational. Because in order to have a reason to believe it's

00:16:01.560 true. You have to have a justification, not just happen to be right without a justification.

00:16:07.600 But track record is a form of justification. If someone happens to be lucky over and over and

00:16:16.320 over again, the more often that they're lucky, and I use lucky to buy into your analogy, but

00:16:21.720 the more often that they're lucky, the more reliable their luck is, I'd say.

00:16:27.000 whether you know I think that we live in a day and age that isn't entirely fair to you either

00:16:35.440 in this because of the corporate nature of a lot of science you can find studies that tell you

00:16:43.320 very often contradictory facts because of parameters and because of you know chicanery

00:16:52.880 that's gone on in the studies which makes it really hard to rely on that

00:16:59.840 well i'm not sure i would agree i'd say that there are different studies that are done from

00:17:04.400 different perspectives to highlight different facts but none of the facts are contradictory

00:17:08.160 they all agree they just seem contradictory when you phrase it in a certain way like if you say

00:17:13.840 that the number of people who have died from malaria in the past 100 years in a particular

00:17:20.000 city has gone up by 600 percent and and that sounds like a lot but really it was just it went

00:17:26.000 up from one person to six people um if the study of the focus if the focus of the study is the

00:17:31.920 percentage that it's going up obviously it looks higher than it is but it's still true that went

00:17:35.360 up 600 it's just a smaller number than what you would expect we've we've seen this recently in

00:17:39.360 the with the covet studies though depending on if they were as the recording data number of deaths

00:17:46.480 from covid record depending on where you're at people who died with covid people who died

00:17:53.200 of complications that may have included covid and people who you know legitimately died of the

00:17:58.640 disease depending on the study that you read those numbers were radically all over the place

00:18:05.120 and that's just with a very cursory you know analysis that i was able to do and that's you

00:18:10.000 not exhaustive at all. That's because usually whether you die at a particular time, COVID very

00:18:19.840 rarely kills you ever. It's comorbidities that kill you. And so COVID is usually never the cause

00:18:24.780 of death in and of itself. And so the way that medical professionals assign cause of death

00:18:31.880 were standardized by like the CDC. And so if you're using the CDC metric, you give it a specific

00:18:36.400 answer, but they're all true. They're all still using the same data. You just have to know how

00:18:41.320 to read it. I've known people in the death reporting field that are required to write

00:18:49.600 down cause of death COVID when it's a suicide and the person had COVID. My whole point is during

00:18:59.860 that we all heard different statistics over and over and over again on the news. The truth is the

00:19:05.960 truth regardless whether those studies are honest attempts to tabulate the truth is a question

00:19:13.320 and then how close they came to achieving that goal is also a question but i don't think any of

00:19:19.960 those are beyond reproach and i think that we saw a vast disparity in that but i i'm not trying to

00:19:27.320 debate you about the covid i just wanted to say that science truth is perfect science is not

00:19:35.160 perfect science is an attempt towards perfection but the truth is out there and exists and we're

00:19:41.660 trying to approach it through different means science being one of those means

00:19:45.500 right but i would say that's i don't know of any method that gets closer i think that

00:19:52.760 you can't get perfect truth your goal is to have a justification that's the highest accuracy you

00:20:00.820 can get. And as far as I know, the most reliable source of justification is science, novel,

00:20:05.000 testable predictions. And I don't know of another methodology that comes anywhere near it.

00:20:10.980 And so in the case of personal experience, personal experience seems to be incredibly

00:20:16.680 unreliable. You mentioned that there are some cases where we do trust our personal experience

00:20:21.220 and our intuitions. And that is like, if you saw a murderer or something, that's perfectly

00:20:26.880 legitimate evidence in court cases and history where people saw they said somebody killed

00:20:31.700 somebody else or whatever historical accounts but in both legal and historical epistemology

00:20:38.960 it's never evidence to have a testimony of miracles magic mythical creatures paranormal

00:20:44.380 supernatural ufos none of those things are counted as evidence that they actually exist

00:20:49.120 because of the prevalence of psychological errors in humanity and so i agree that there

00:20:56.640 are cases where you can trust personal intuition and personal testimony in cases of things that

00:21:01.480 already have been empirically demonstrated but in the context of things that have no empirical

00:21:05.940 demonstration like gods or magic or miracles it doesn't count for anything it's not if you go into

00:21:12.140 a court of law and say i saw a ufo they just throw it out or a god or a god's uh killed this guy with

00:21:17.660 a lightning bolt or something they just throw it out because eyewitness testimony isn't reliable

00:21:22.720 in those kinds of contexts. And so I don't think those would be count as something like science as

00:21:30.220 a way to get closer to truth. And science would be the more reliable way to go here, even though,

00:21:36.500 of course, you can try to manipulate data and try to manipulate statistics, still going to be more

00:21:40.360 accurate than trusting personal experience in this context. I could see why you feel that way. And I

00:21:46.240 think some of this is why I initially had the reluctance to use the term evidence, because

00:21:50.840 there does tend to be a courtroom standard that's applied and if my evidence is sentencing you to

00:21:58.200 harm then yeah the standard needs to be much higher if my evidence is to get you to give

00:22:04.360 something a shot that could make your life better the threshold's much lower if i say hey try this

00:22:10.840 pizza it's good you risk very little by giving it a shot and maybe it's great my thing that my

00:22:17.320 example that I mentioned on ritual is hey if you don't know if you're uncertain or if you would

00:22:22.600 like it to be true give it a shot and see if you find truth in it and I think that's the starting

00:22:29.240 point so you know the the the premise was is it uh like does it make I think that the that I was

00:22:36.520 invited on was like does it make sense to practice house a true and to me it does so the starting

00:22:42.520 point of i feel a very strong religious need that need wasn't satisfied by christianity because i

00:22:49.240 felt that was morally unjustified yet i still needed to fill it so i looked to my ancestors

00:22:56.360 i said what did generations of people like me believe before christ i took that as a starting

00:23:03.880 point to develop my own relationship with the gods and my life has dramatically improved

00:23:12.520 in proportion to the involvement in Alistair Truth that I've had.

00:23:17.400 And I genuinely believe wholeheartedly that when I reach out

00:23:22.960 and I participate in the gift cycle with my gods, that I'm blessed.

00:23:27.500 And I think that I am satisfied with the payoff in my life

00:23:33.120 because of that relationship that I've chose to engage in.

00:23:36.840 And so are a great many people that I know that share the faith with me.

00:23:42.520 Well, sure. I wouldn't say it's unjustified to practice any particular belief system. I think if it makes you happy, go for it. But I'd be more interested to know, is it true, is my question. And I would want to know, what is the method to differentiate imagination from reality?

00:24:03.040 and you mentioned that there's different standards of evidence and uh i would agree like for a

00:24:08.800 hypothesis you can use whatever you want you can just shake a magic eight ball you can come up with

00:24:12.560 a hypothesis perfectly rational but how do you show does that hypothesis correspond to reality

00:24:19.040 and that standard of evidence doesn't correspond to reality is the higher standard the like legal

00:24:23.920 standard science standard whatever i don't think you can say something not the standard for engaging

00:24:31.840 in an action the standard for imposing that action on someone else might be that higher standard

00:24:38.240 but i think we do things at a much lower threshold a lot um there's a saying that i think is

00:24:46.560 is applicable to not let perfect be the enemy of good i think when we grapple which

00:24:54.880 theologians and philosophers have always done with the bigger picture and the greater meanings

00:25:00.080 in life just because we can't arrive at perfection doesn't mean we can't rely or we can't arrive at

00:25:08.640 some good things that take us closer than we currently are and improve our lives

00:25:15.680 sure but things can improve our lives without being true

00:25:18.720 and so the fact that something would improve our lives wouldn't indicate something's true

00:25:22.560 it might imply that something is true how is that to me that sounds like uh in philosophy

00:25:33.600 appeal to consequence fallacy the fact that something's good or has a good outcome therefore

00:25:37.920 it's true doesn't really follow like things can have a good outcome without being true all the

00:25:42.080 time um they can but just because it's a philosophic rule of debate doesn't mean that

00:25:54.720 it's ironclad um many of those fallacies

00:26:01.920 they're a fallacy in the sense that they are not absolute but it doesn't mean they're not good

00:26:06.720 indicators um you know appeal to authority an authority of something telling you something

00:26:12.480 when you know less about it is a pretty good place to start that something you know there

00:26:17.680 may be something to it um i think that's how most humans start certainly as children and young

00:26:23.680 adults is trusting people who've who've been there before and who've you know testified to

00:26:28.560 it's worked well for them um the benefits that i've received in my life because of my relationship

00:26:36.240 with my gods. I'm certain that you could propose many alternate explanations for those things.

00:26:48.660 Yet, I have engaged in the gift cycle and I have benefited while doing that. It implies to me that

00:26:57.480 the two are related. I see the commonality when others who share my faith have engaged in a

00:27:03.520 similar situation. My life is full of meaning that it did not have before. I am a better person than I was before. I am benefited in a great many ways, and it correlates pretty directly with my involvement and my interaction with my gods. One of the things that we see as the gods acting in the world is, is synchronicity. When synchronicity occurs,

00:27:33.920 disproportionately or when you notice auspicious things continuing to occur to occur at auspicious

00:27:42.240 moments we very much believe that that's the gods you know acting and revealing themselves

00:27:49.440 in some way or the ancestors or other metaphysical folks beyond the veil

00:27:57.280 certainly there's a million other explanations but when they add up

00:28:01.120 and they have a level of consistency that's more credence towards believing that there's

00:28:07.360 something intelligent behind them well that's something i would uh have issue with because

00:28:14.480 from my understanding appeal to consequence fallacy um coincidences those things are

00:28:21.920 things that humans look at and try to find meaning in all the time like when if you look at a clock

00:28:26.480 and it says 3 33 pm or whatever you're like oh it's a pattern you see this there's 3 3 3 this is

00:28:31.840 special but really is just a survivor bias because you just don't remember all the other times you

00:28:35.920 look at the clock and it's like 2 45 or whatever um and so we see patterns and they stick out to

00:28:42.000 us in our brains because our brains have been designed to look for patterns and it's not and

00:28:48.560 so that we we every time we look at the clock it says 3 33 or something it's like wow this is

00:28:52.560 really special but when we actually compare that to um the rest of the data it's not special at

00:28:58.480 all it's just it's just we think it's special that those particular instances stick out to us

00:29:03.760 um and seem statistically relevant because it's what we remember what what comes to our mind when

00:29:10.080 but when we compare it to the actual data it's not statistically relevant and so

00:29:14.560 all of those cases where we see these synchronous synchronistic kinds of effects we have to compare

00:29:21.600 and say is this really there or is it just our brain seeing things that aren't there so we have

00:29:27.760 to compare does the result happen at a higher rate than chance or is it just chance rate um and so no

00:29:34.080 we don't i mean you you may want to and you may choose to but we don't have to do that we can take

00:29:40.960 those things at the face value that we feel they are we can act accordingly and we can gauge the

00:29:47.600 results we don't have to arrive at perfect truth on them in order to do that we can choose to do

00:29:54.400 that and we can choose to do it consistently by doing so i think a lot of us have had our lives

00:30:01.040 drastically improve well sure i would agree with that i mean i'd say the same thing about christians

00:30:06.720 or hindus or muslims or any particular religion they believe in their religious faith they believe

00:30:13.920 that they're getting signs from their particular gods and or deities or whatever thing they believe

00:30:20.480 in and that gives them sensations of hope and meaning and purpose and guidance that they then

00:30:26.800 use to gain an emotional benefit from but i would want to say that until you can show that all of

00:30:34.640 the things you're saying are at a higher rate than chance i don't think it's rational to believe from

00:30:39.600 my position i want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible

00:30:42.960 and if we can take the data that you're presenting and compare it to whatever scientific methods we

00:30:51.260 have and show that nope it's just the exact same rate as chance even if it had a benefit in your

00:30:55.520 life i'd still think that would essentially prove it to be false because it was just the same as

00:31:00.060 chance and so i don't see the connection between the statistical data and the benefit both of

00:31:08.020 those things seem to be a dubious basis for belief from my perspective, because I want to believe

00:31:14.100 as many true things and as few false things as possible. Well, I suppose some of that's just a

00:31:20.700 question of, I don't know, hierarchy of values or what you're shooting for. I mean, certainly,

00:31:28.340 I think we would all say that we want to believe true things and not believe false things. But

00:31:32.500 as far as the hierarchies of values in people's lives, many of us would say that one of the

00:31:39.680 highest values is to have a meaningful life and to be successful in your life, to be fulfilled

00:31:46.940 with your family, with your position in your community, with your relationship to the world

00:31:53.100 around you. A lot of those things, I think, come before, I'd say, a courtroom standard of

00:32:00.700 evidentiary truth for a lot of people. You may not be one of those people, but I do think that's

00:32:05.520 true for a lot of us. Would you say that simply because people put it before,

00:32:15.340 if we can demonstrate that it happens at the same rate of chance, that it's rational to place it

00:32:21.340 before? So like I can put my faith in a lottery ticket or whatever, and I could potentially win,

00:32:26.280 but does that mean that i was rational to to buy a lottery ticket i would say no it's the

00:32:32.660 probability you're going to win is very very low so it's not rational to buy a lottery it's not

00:32:37.120 rational to go to a casino um and the fact that many people gain meaning and purpose and value

00:32:44.800 and money from doing this um doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing so like say somebody

00:32:50.420 had the religion of the the Vegas casino and they said I adopted this lucky

00:32:59.780 rabbit's foot and I take the lucky rabbit's foot into a casino every time

00:33:03.240 I see the stars align or whatever and I win occasionally about a thousand

00:33:07.760 dollars and he says that this has benefited his life quite greatly he's

00:33:14.300 gotten money he's being unhappiness has become more fulfilled and as a

00:33:19.180 scientist i'm going like well that's nice i'm happy for you but if we compare your success rate

00:33:25.200 to the success rate of everyone in general the success the ability for you to make a success in

00:33:32.440 this particular instance isn't isn't a thing that's outside of the realm of chance some people

00:33:39.360 are going to win in fact casinos have to pay out uh in a slot machine has to pay out 80 cents on a

00:33:44.580 To back to people and so we know that some people are going to win

00:33:48.720 Does that mean that you're lucky rabbit's foot?

00:33:51.760 Has some correspondence to reality that it's actually telling us about luck. Well, no, that's no if it was doing that

00:33:58.220 Then you'd see some kind of disproportionate amount of success rate not an exactly proportional success rate to the statistical data

00:34:04.240 And so if I'm trying to compare which model is a better description of reality

00:34:09.180 I think the scientific one is a better description of reality in this context and if I want to believe what's true

00:34:13.600 I should probably believe the science one, the science interpretation, rather than the lucky

00:34:17.320 rabbit's foot interpretation. And I don't see the difference between that example and

00:34:22.820 your faith and other faiths in this context. You know, I think that raises some interesting

00:34:28.900 points. You're proposing a data set that's infallible and includes every other person

00:34:40.240 that goes into a casino under the same circumstances um but the only variable

00:34:46.800 variable being the rabbit's foot what if the gentleman who had the rabbit's foot

00:34:53.520 is consistently unlucky in his own life and his life has been a series of failures

00:35:00.480 at the moment he gets the rabbit's foot things start looking up and he starts winning

00:35:06.400 he goes to the casino he wins more often than he loses gets his life together is successful

00:35:12.640 and is happy i would say there's something that has to do with his rabbit's foot and so would he

00:35:17.040 and his inability to demonstrate it to you would not make it any less true or any less reasonable

00:35:25.680 for him to believe why not because from my perspective it would it would be like if the guy

00:35:34.000 believes that it has an effect and he's had this changes like he's unlucky his whole life

00:35:38.720 gets the rabbit's foot and he wins occasionally but then we tested against the data and show that

00:35:43.280 it's not statistically different from any of the other cases where casino payouts are registered

00:35:51.280 that seems like a very good reason for him to doubt in his rabbit's foot rather than continue

00:35:56.320 with the belief that it's actually a rabbit's foot or he'd like give the rabbit's foot out

00:36:00.000 to other people so you do these people win at this rate or um test different casinos different times

00:36:05.200 do a controlled study where he tests has the rabbit foot goes in 10 times doesn't goes in

00:36:10.480 without the rabbit's foot and they measure the exact amount of money he gambles the amount of

00:36:14.400 money he wins and we do this 100 times in a row why would he be that he's winning and he's happy

00:36:20.880 why on earth would he do that um to verify his belief that it corresponds to reality so i would

00:36:28.000 say that um if he did that that would prove one way or the other if his belief was true or if it

00:36:36.800 was just chance and if he and i would want to know that i would want to be like is this something

00:36:43.680 some fact about reality that i'm talking about or that i'm experiencing or is it just a psychological

00:36:49.520 phenomenon in my human brain um and that would be important i think for most people well you know

00:36:57.360 know, I don't know if it would for most people. I think that, you know, certainly it would for you.

00:37:01.920 And I think as a person who's a self-described atheist, I think that, you know, those folks

00:37:09.340 probably would be very important for because that is a self-identifier that you guys have

00:37:17.820 have chosen to label yourself with. I think for people of faith, not as much. And I don't think

00:37:24.840 it's it's due to, you know, gullibility or anything else, I

00:37:29.180 think the efficacy of the situation in their life that

00:37:32.940 they found to be working works. And by continuing to act as

00:37:41.080 though it doesn't, there's a certain amount of impiety in

00:37:44.040 that that might negate its continuing to work. And I mean,

00:37:49.040 we're talking about a rabbit's foot here to put it in a, I

00:37:52.080 don't know, more mundane context. But if you have a genuine faith relationship in your God,

00:37:57.820 and it is benefiting you in ways that that you are truly appreciative of, if you are constantly

00:38:03.920 trying to disprove it through, you know, whatever, whatever, double blind testing or whatever you

00:38:11.020 choose to do, I think in and of itself, that would negate that trust relationship and damage

00:38:19.340 the efficacy of your relationship. I've seen a lot of people that, again, make perfect the enemy

00:38:28.240 of good and spend their entire life testing to try to get 100% ironclad proof of a belief or

00:38:38.360 value system. And I've seen them waste their entire adult life. You know, my uncle's like

00:38:43.380 that. My uncle was died at 50. And he was one of those guys that, you know, in the in the 70s,

00:38:49.420 he really prided, he really prided himself on always searching and, you know, questing after

00:38:57.060 truth or whatever, but his life never improved because of it. He never got any closer to it. He

00:39:05.720 just was able to, to his satisfaction, disprove a whole lot of things. He died alone and unhappy

00:39:14.380 and unfulfilled. There's a lot of people of faith that when they feel they're in a beneficial faith

00:39:20.820 relationship, and they believe wholeheartedly in what they're doing, they don't forever try to

00:39:28.160 test that because that's not something we typically do in relationships. And therefore,

00:39:33.700 they're happy and fulfilled and have you know very beneficial lives

00:39:42.580 which sure i would i would agree that we don't do that in relationships because we

00:39:47.060 have examples like if you love your wife or something that's something that's uh like in

00:39:52.660 a courtroom something very mundane we have that we saw somebody saw that guy murder that guy or

00:39:56.820 saw a dog yesterday going across the street or something but if someone said they had a relationship

00:40:01.460 with an alien, or some kind of being from another universe or something, that would

00:40:07.840 be very different than saying you had a relationship with another human being from Albuquerque

00:40:14.380 or something.

00:40:16.360 And so there's that statement that many scientists, philosophers have used, you should proportion

00:40:22.440 your beliefs to the evidence or something along those lines.

00:40:26.540 And so if the extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence would be another good one.

00:40:32.480 So if you have a claim of a relationship with a being that is beyond humanity and we have no scientific evidence of any such being, then I think that the standard of evidence of you should look for to justify that belief would be higher than one of a claim that you have a relationship with your wife or whatever.

00:40:54.240 and i think that the correct epistemology is the kind that tries to destroy all beliefs i like i

00:41:01.900 like that i like that analogy you used that we should try to prove it wrong as much as possible

00:41:07.780 because we have this inbuilt bias to want to believe things that make us happy and the way

00:41:13.100 to overcome that bias is to try to um destroy all the things that make us happy scientifically at

00:41:20.760 it's not literally and if we can't do it that's a very good justification to believe it's true

00:41:25.880 that's why the scientific method works and i think that more people have been made happy

00:41:30.600 because of that method than any other method like this method of trying to destroy false beliefs

00:41:36.120 is how we got the penicillin and anti-vaccine vaccines atomic energy nuclear energy wind power

00:41:49.480 solar light discoveries like all of these things where somebody said that guy's wrong i think that

00:41:55.960 that theory is wrong i'm going to try to disprove it and that's the entire history of science which

00:42:00.920 seems to have made more people happier than literally everything else combined ever as far

00:42:04.360 as i can tell so one of the points i wanted to make earlier is i think

00:42:19.480 coming at it from an objective rather than a subjective angle is yields different conclusions

00:42:28.120 in a different trajectory um

00:42:35.080 and i i believe religion is fundamentally about relationship building certainly also true is um

00:42:43.880 um and we don't apply those scientific well okay we have all known people who have trust issues

00:42:55.640 that do apply that to mundane relationships or relationships with their wives with their parents

00:43:02.360 with their friends and end up with broken marriages and no friendships and estranged

00:43:09.320 from their family because they're constantly trying to put it to the test or they're constantly

00:43:13.720 suspicious i think in relationship senses we know much more people who are happy because

00:43:21.880 they found the level to where they feel that they can trust someone and therefore they proceed with

00:43:28.680 their life in the trust relationship i think we see more of that anecdotally in our lives

00:43:34.840 than we do the other way around where you've tried to test somebody in every possible way that you

00:43:39.400 could possibly test them through the mill and they you know have somehow come out worthy of your

00:43:44.680 trust at the end of your life when you haven't enjoyed your relationship with them because of it

00:43:52.840 we're working under a different premise as well you're assuming that the person the person in

00:43:58.840 question that's pursuing faith doesn't believe it therefore needs to believe it if you start

00:44:05.320 from a position that you were satisfied with the proof that you're given you're satisfied

00:44:10.360 with your personal revelation or your personal religious experience that you are getting what

00:44:15.000 you've asked for why would that person then step back from that position of confidence in what

00:44:26.520 they're gratified with

00:44:27.720 to question it to death to where they've convinced themselves

00:44:34.740 to go back to square one and be unhappy?

00:44:40.320 I'd say that's what honest investigation entails.

00:44:46.520 It's like, I believe something that makes me happy,

00:44:49.700 but if I want to honestly investigate this

00:44:52.340 and try to filter out my personal biases

00:44:57.040 to know if it's true you would want to um doubt yourself you want to doubt the things you care

00:45:04.020 about more than the things you don't care about like doubting that the moon is 255 000 miles away

00:45:09.580 who cares it's a number it makes no difference but if you have a vested interest in believing

00:45:14.280 somebody like uh your cousin said they didn't kill that guy the fact that they're your cousin

00:45:20.380 and you care about them isn't a reason you should believe them um we know that people who have

00:45:27.400 family relationships familiar relationships are bad judges of character when it comes to did that

00:45:33.160 person commit that crime like no my son would never do that he's such a good person the grandmother

00:45:38.360 says um and so we know that that bias inbuilt within us is a not a reliable way to understand

00:45:47.240 reality even if it makes you happy it makes you happy to believe that your son didn't kill that

00:45:51.040 guy and that you're he would never do such a thing would definitely make the person happier

00:45:57.520 to not believe that was the case that he was like a monster or something doesn't mean it's true

00:46:01.660 though and so to me i think honest investigation if you're really invested in trying to know the

00:46:07.180 truth you would want to do that from my perspective well i think that that's a i think it's a very

00:46:14.320 artificial standard. And I think that we're applying it in this case, but I don't think

00:46:18.940 that's typically what we do with things. You started with the premise of, well, if we're

00:46:26.060 trying to investigate, why are we trying to investigate? If I've reached out in a certain

00:46:32.180 way, I've made religious offerings, I've received positive results, I continue to do so and

00:46:40.500 continue to receive positive results. Why would I? It would be fundamentally impious to distrust

00:46:52.180 that without some breach of trust from the other side to try to disprove it rather than to take it

00:47:00.620 at at face value. Someone gives you a gift. You don't forensically analyze it. That's not the

00:47:06.360 typical response, you say thank you, and you enjoy your gift. I mean, and dealing with divinity or

00:47:16.300 not divinity is its own very unique situation. So I mean, I when we make analogy, the best we can do

00:47:23.020 is compare it to other things that we think have similar points. So I admit that. But I'm comparing

00:47:30.860 it to relationships because i do believe it's a relationship thing and not a science thing

00:47:39.180 it may be both in some degrees but i approach religiosity through relationship much more than

00:47:45.180 i do through empiricism why

00:47:57.500 because

00:48:00.540 i don't certainly there is a a better word for this but for lack of a better term because i think my

00:48:09.020 gods are persons. Like your producer approached me politely, and asked me to be on your program.

00:48:20.160 When I had a scheduling issue, I offered to figure out something on my end. And you offered to

00:48:29.220 completely go out of your schedule to have the interview with me. That established a level of

00:48:34.640 trust that I'm assuming you're going to treat me well. And until I know differently, I'm also

00:48:39.540 going to treat you well. And that's how I engage in any relationship with any new person that I

00:48:45.500 interact with or meet. I apply that, um, I guess with a, I don't know, a bigger frequency or on a

00:48:55.580 higher level, I suppose, with a divinity. But fundamentally, that's the position that I that

00:49:03.240 work from because I feel that's the the right thing to do when I interact with

00:49:07.080 another person so certainly it's the right thing to do to interact with my

00:49:10.380 gods so like my concern would be as it sounds like a way to filter out mmm

00:49:24.120 counter examples or something along that way and say so it'd be like if in science

00:49:32.400 if I do a test and it gets a result, it's just

00:49:34.260 here, like, combine

00:49:35.860 this chemical, this chemical either works or it doesn't

00:49:38.340 work. There's no ambiguity. But if it's a relationship,

00:49:40.700 the person

00:49:42.320 you're in a relationship can just say no or something.

00:49:44.240 So, like, if I pray to a god for a gold brick

00:49:46.240 and he says no, that's not disconfirming

00:49:48.520 evidence in some way, in some sense,

00:49:50.220 because the god has an option.

00:49:52.800 And so, in this

00:49:54.300 context of relationships,

00:49:56.860 it seems

00:49:58.440 like an out

00:50:00.320 in a way that

00:50:01.600 it gives a way for the hypothesis to have a negative result without falsifying the hypothesis.

00:50:12.700 I suppose it can.

00:50:16.320 There's certainly no conscious effort on my part to do that.

00:50:21.080 I think some of these come into play in a much bigger sense when you talk about Abrahamic faiths

00:50:30.280 where the buy-in is much higher and the stakes are much higher um

00:50:40.200 my gods you know i have no reason to believe that my gods are asking me to forsake

00:50:46.360 major value in my own life in order to worship them or in order to be in a relationship with them

00:50:54.760 um therefore i don't have that obligation like wow i need to reconsider this ad nauseum because

00:51:03.160 you know my god's asking me to you know be a virgin my whole life or to you know build up

00:51:10.500 all of my stores in heaven and not do anything while i'm on earth or some other situations that

00:51:15.340 other faiths suggest and i think were i in that predicament it would cause me to examine it much

00:51:22.840 more critically. The exchange of energies with our gods is much more of a voluntary arrangement

00:51:31.960 by both parties. I have no compelling reason to try to force you to practice house of truth.

00:51:39.240 That's not a tenant of my faith. I could suggest it to you because I think it would benefit your

00:51:45.240 life but i have no obligation to try to somehow compel you to or convince you to by a preponderance

00:51:53.160 of the evidence um i chose to enter that relationship and in a corresponding time frame

00:52:01.240 and to a corresponding degree my life has been greatly benefited that is a common data point

00:52:07.000 amongst people who are involved in my organization so that lends us to feel that we're doing

00:52:14.600 something right, and we're getting it right to some degree. I also don't presume to know the

00:52:19.340 be-all and the end-all of the divine or to hold them to my standards of understanding, but I very

00:52:26.980 much am satisfied with the level that they have interacted in my life and revealed themselves to

00:52:33.700 me to where I don't have a question, so I wouldn't question or further investigate that because I

00:52:40.320 feel I'd be impious. Gotcha. We have a few questions from the audience, if you don't mind.

00:52:46.940 Of course. Martin asks, does Matt think that unbelievers are by default searching for belief

00:52:55.020 in a God or gods? I think that by default, they are compelled to. I think they could very well 0.98

00:53:07.300 have ended that search in concluding that they don't believe in one. But I do think that's a

00:53:12.420 fundamental inborn curiosity that they have. Gotcha. Tim asked, what is the cost of apostasy?

00:53:28.600 Apostasy, okay, I'm taking apostasy in this sense to mean

00:53:32.020 going from a place of belief in our gods to rejecting that belief and speaking against it?

00:53:41.580 Yeah, I think there'd be two things there. One is just simply not believing and two would be

00:53:45.360 being in the faith and then leaving it. So on the first case, I don't think that there is a

00:53:50.580 cost other than you are missing out on the benefit of that faith. I think natural processes carry on

00:53:57.120 naturally i think you have a tremendous amount of of benefit from having a relationship with

00:54:05.040 the divine but i don't believe you're you know punished eternally if you don't i also don't

00:54:10.320 believe i think you miss out on some of the possible elevation of yourself after after

00:54:15.760 death because of it but i don't think there's there's any kind of lash that you get because of

00:54:20.720 it um if you are in a relationship with our gods and you violate it or you you choose to break from

00:54:28.720 it and then you choose to reject it and speak out against it i think that you have um

00:54:37.200 created bad faith and a break of frith which is a really specialized ostrich concept but basically

00:54:44.080 you've gone against a fundamental agreement that you had with your community with your

00:54:48.560 gods and with your ancestors i think there's a um a debt to be paid that way with your

00:54:57.520 your weird and for those that aren't familiar i think that's similar in a way to karma it's

00:55:02.480 not exactly the same but i think that's the closest idea that capsulates it but again i

00:55:06.880 don't think i think our gods have more important things to do than to personally pick at you and

00:55:11.600 and try to punish you gotcha um benjamin asks what would cause you to doubt your beliefs

00:55:23.920 it's a good question um

00:55:34.320 it's hard to answer. And it's not because I'm closed off to the concept. I think it's important

00:55:43.440 to reevaluate why you believe things perpetually. I think you learn things either way that way.

00:55:50.800 It's hard because my faith is very sincere. So it's hard for me to

00:55:54.880 imagine a situation where it wouldn't be true for, okay. So for an example,

00:56:00.700 when I was a much younger man I did I was a Christian and I believed in Christianity

00:56:07.000 but as I mentioned about altitude it's not just believing in the existence of my gods

00:56:12.120 it's being in a relationship of loyalty to them well with Christianity it's not that I rejected

00:56:18.300 a belief in a deity that ancient Jewish people worshipped and named Jehovah or some variant

00:56:27.040 it was because fundamentally i felt the god of the bible was for lack of a better term a bad person

00:56:33.620 and if that were the case regardless i did not want to be associated with that person that i

00:56:41.080 felt was morally inappropriate so if fundamentally i learned of my gods that all of the things that

00:56:48.680 i felt were true about their character were somehow fundamentally untrue or different then i

00:56:54.660 that would change the nature of our relationship i don't think it would cause me not to believe

00:56:59.300 they exist but it would change the the relationship that we're in in terms of loyalty

00:57:07.780 do you not think that the norse gods for example are bad just like the christian

00:57:12.580 god is in some sense because they do equally as bad things some sometimes

00:57:16.580 no i don't think they do equally as bad things and the other thing is there's no

00:57:21.380 So Abraham ism is very unique in the fact that it's a literal faith, and within its own tenants, it says that everything written in the Bible is divinely inspired and useful for variety of purposes, and it's all the word of God, or that the Quran is the word of Allah, or whatever that case may be.

00:57:46.020 no our lore is a collection of stories that teach us truth through poetic descriptions of things

00:57:53.380 but i don't think it's a chronological listing of specific actions that take place in a in a

00:57:59.860 historical sense i think those actions are mythic and take place in mythic time and i

00:58:04.420 think they're described in a poetic way um so in that sense i can't hyper analyze a story from the

00:58:13.300 eddas and claim that it's you know divine writ and that specifics of our god's behavior is

00:58:20.180 inappropriate now there's characters in the eddas that you can like loki every character

00:58:25.700 everything that he does is malicious to one degree or another is and is an agency for chaos

00:58:32.660 so whether i believe he did the exactness of that that behavior i certainly know that the totality 0.60

00:58:39.780 tells me he is a force of chaos that seeks to break trust with the iser and so i make a judgment

00:58:46.660 that way but i the engagement of whether of the literal truth of a book is i think what makes that

00:58:53.940 a very very different standard gotcha um martin asked does matt believe in the separation of church

00:59:05.380 state that it should be or that it exists uh that it should be i believe um

00:59:18.340 that's a social contract issue in the society that you're in when society was homogenous

00:59:25.540 no i think they function as one in the same because i think our gods are fundamentally

00:59:29.700 the tribal gods of our people um when you're in a multicultural state like

00:59:36.340 many of many modern states i think you've got it you've got to re-examine that

00:59:46.500 that's a no you think there should not be separation between church and state

00:59:50.020 no it's a condition it's a depends on the condition the homogeneity or not homogeneity

00:59:54.980 of the people who find themselves in that state to tomorrow decide america needs to be a religious

01:00:01.380 state and then to pick the relatively you know the population that you're going to choose whose

01:00:07.860 religion decides it fundamentally violates the relationship that we're all in as americans

01:00:14.340 if we were living a thousand years ago and we are all a particular germanic tribe

01:00:19.860 then yes that faith should be part of this state that is that tribe and we see that with most

01:00:25.700 ancient cultures all right um mr creanian asks matt are your gods be god's beings

01:00:35.220 independent of a living mind to think of them yes

01:00:43.620 um do they live inside of space-time or like because the christian idea is that's outside

01:00:47.780 space time is it like are they like being still in the universe somewhere

01:00:55.780 again i i premised earlier i'm not a i'm not a scientist so i don't want to misspeak but

01:01:02.500 i believe our gods exist

01:01:08.820 say yes and no i think our gods exist outside of space time but interact within it if that makes

01:01:17.300 sense like the stories and the eddas i believe they exist in mythic time i think that they are

01:01:24.020 going to happen happening and have happened simultaneously i realize it's an odd concept

01:01:30.980 but i think that's the case with mythic time but i do think they interact in in in our world

01:01:37.620 certainly in the ways they interact with their followers gotcha um blaster master asks i like

01:01:46.340 to set a positive model behavior for others do you think using your method could allow someone

01:01:50.900 to arrive at harmful beliefs like i couldn't i take the same approach towards jihadism

01:02:01.380 i think that people could take anything to any amount of crazy or that's not even fair to any

01:02:08.100 amount of extremism based on a lot of factors but what i will say is there's no reason to do that

01:02:16.340 in our corpus of belief there's no admonition in our scripture to do so as there is in

01:02:21.940 you know the quran for example you mentioned jihadism um that's not a tenet of our faith

01:02:29.060 and you don't find that in our corpus of lore and i have no reason to believe that's true

01:02:35.300 what i do think is fundamentally true based on the question that you asked um

01:02:40.180 our relationship with the divine isn't that the divine send us on missions to do stuff

01:02:48.680 our relationship with the divine is very much wanting them to be proud of us

01:02:53.080 by living nobly and by doing great deeds to bring pride to them so i think fundamentally that primes

01:03:01.080 you towards being the best person you can be and towards high achievement

01:03:05.680 okay

01:03:09.920 no name asks what else in your life causes you to have a lower epistemic bar like you do for the

01:03:22.600 thoughts? Um, well, I mentioned, um, relationship wise, you, I tend to

01:03:35.500 approach a relationship with a person from a place of trust until I know

01:03:41.440 different base. My valuation of them on how they've treated me in the past to

01:03:49.840 predict how they will treat me in the future. I mentioned I did that with this show. I do that

01:03:57.480 with anyone I meet. I do that. I'm assuming this isn't a trick question. I'm assuming this is a

01:04:04.680 forthright question. I'm assuming that you're a reasonable person. I'm assuming all of these

01:04:09.740 things as an initial assumption because that's my default setting in a relationship. If you were to

01:04:16.620 come back on the side with with comments that would that would change that then then I would

01:04:22.140 I would change my my setting accordingly gotcha Abigail asked can you read my mind I'm zero

01:04:30.780 interested in gods or not but I do have an innate curiosity and yearning and was I born lacking

01:04:36.960 colorblinds or something I think referring to it like a god so this would be a great testable

01:04:41.040 prediction if you could read somebody's mind that would be great evidence for sure no I I wish I

01:04:45.420 I wish I could say yes and prove that to you. That would be awesome. There may be somebody out there that can do that, but I'm not that guy. I would venture, though, if, if you do feel something, but you're uncomfortable with divinity. One thing that I think is very approachable is ancestor reverence towards your loved ones that have passed. That might be fulfilling to you if you were to open yourself in that way.

01:05:15.420 Gotcha. Vlad, the stoner asks, do you believe your religion is the correct and true religion and why?

01:05:23.600 I don't believe that my religion negates other religions. I think that when there's a religion like Christianity, Islam, or current Judaism, that demand theirs is the one true faith and everything else isn't true.

01:05:41.340 that's not what i believe that's not what else the true believes so i don't know how to answer

01:05:48.760 your question other than i believe that my faith is true i think that it is the correct

01:05:55.060 faith for people of european descent i don't think it negates other faiths except for faiths that

01:06:05.080 suggest they're the only truth and i think it negates them in so much as they aren't the only

01:06:11.380 truth but up to that extent gotcha uh no name asks so all the bad things yahweh did were poetic

01:06:19.100 metaphors or i think he's asking like you could interpret christianity that way just like you

01:06:23.520 said like you interpreted your religious belief that way well i don't think that i don't think

01:06:29.380 that you can because it's always been a core tenet. Okay, so I don't want to overspeak.

01:06:35.380 There are Gnostic Christians that may say that. But if your Christianity means accepting the 0.84

01:06:42.340 Bible, then the Bible within its own text says, you know, disclaimer, this is all completely 0.65

01:06:48.980 100% true. And that's always been a foundational tenet of that same with with Islam. I believe 0.99

01:06:59.360 that Yahweh existed before organized Judaism, and I do believe that it was originally one of several

01:07:07.480 Semitic tribal gods. So I think in maybe that very original sense, that corpus of lore that

01:07:16.300 we don't have access to, maybe you could take it that way. But I think that in the way that

01:07:21.800 Christianity or Islam has been presented to me, they have put themselves at that standard. There 0.97

01:07:27.320 has never been that claim amongst the religious texts of my faith. Gotcha. Matt asked, so nothing

01:07:36.360 could convince you that your gods don't exist, only that they were immoral or change your

01:07:41.120 relationship with them? I mean, it's hard to say that an unknown circumstance couldn't happen that

01:07:50.620 would you know the curtain goes back like haha it was me all along um I don't know I mean

01:07:57.580 the circumstance seems preposterous to me that that something like that could occur

01:08:02.980 but I don't want to be so ignorant to say that's not a possibility what I do say is I currently

01:08:09.580 feel 100 certain that my gods exist all of the facts of exactly how and exact mechanisms I'm

01:08:19.560 up for for you know um refining my understanding of that i don't claim to know all of that but i

01:08:28.840 do know that when i reach out to odin odin he a being that answers to odin hears me and um has

01:08:39.320 participated in a gifting cycle with me the particulars of that are up for discussion but

01:08:44.680 But the fact of it is not to my mind.

01:08:47.880 I 100% believe that that's true.

01:08:51.740 Gotcha. 1.00

01:08:52.860 Big Bag Mama asks, how does his particular Asatru church teach LGBT folks?

01:09:02.780 I think our default stance is to treat anyone kindly. 0.83

01:09:06.860 But we do believe that LGBT and the other things along with that as regards sexuality and gender identity are tragic mental illness.

01:09:20.040 And we wish those people would get back to good health.

01:09:27.300 All right.

01:09:28.200 And I think that was it for the questions.

01:09:30.920 We've been going for a little over an hour.

01:09:32.480 It was a great conversation.

01:09:33.440 Thanks for having me on.

01:09:34.280 We appreciate it.

01:09:34.920 and do you want to give any links or references where people can find more about your work

01:09:38.200 uh sure absolutely um look up alsatru folk assembly here on youtube if you want to check

01:09:43.480 out our channel and see what we're up to also our website is runestone.org feel free to reach

01:09:51.000 out there we have contacts and you know the the incorporation documents of who we are and what we

01:09:56.520 believe thank you so much for having me on tonight it's been great to talk to you absolutely thanks

01:10:00.920 Thanks for coming on.

01:10:01.940 I really appreciate it.

01:10:02.660 And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your night.

01:10:04.800 Night.

Asatru Folk Assembly - December 02, 2022

Reasons to Believe in Asatru with Matt Flavel

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