Leo D.M.J. Aurini - Atheistkult

00:00:00.560 So, you figured out there's no God.

00:00:04.560 You realize that the Bible looks more like something written by Bronze Age savages than 1.00

00:00:09.960 something from He Who Is On High.

00:00:13.820 You realize that the question, is there a God, makes roughly as much sense as asking

00:00:19.520 what happened before time began.

00:00:21.880 Aren't you guys clever?

00:00:26.640 Nameless to say, this is my video on Atheist Cult.

00:00:31.980 Now as a precursor to this, yesterday I did a video on nihilism, about rationality, about

00:00:40.760 what it means to actually be somebody pursuing the truth who asks tough questions and won't

00:00:48.160 accept platitudes for an answer.

00:00:52.040 See I want to start off with that, because that's what we need to establish.

00:00:56.320 The Atheist Cult is not a rational movement, that they have a very narrow range of things 1.00

00:01:03.100 that they criticize and they do with to great length, but they're not actually interested

00:01:08.460 in understanding what the world really is.

00:01:11.980 They have their own belief structure and they are going to push that agenda to the ends of

00:01:15.660 the earth.

00:01:16.660 Compare them, for instance, to a community like LessWrong.

00:01:22.440 LessWrong.com, linked below, is a site devoted to understanding human biases and trying to overcome

00:01:31.660 them.

00:01:32.660 Trying to be as rational as possible.

00:01:34.440 That 90-95% of the members there are Atheist, but they don't really discuss it that often,

00:01:41.220 because, quite frankly, it's a boring question.

00:01:43.220 Yes, there's no God.

00:01:44.220 Good for you.

00:01:46.220 Atheist Cult, on the other hand, can't shut up about it. 0.89

00:01:51.120 Now if we're going to attack Atheist Cult, let's not attack the YouTubers, let's not attack 0.82

00:01:56.460 the small guys.

00:01:57.900 Let's try attacking one of their strongest arms.

00:02:02.500 I'm thinking particularly of the skeptic community.

00:02:06.660 Granted, there are a few theistic skeptics, but the overlap with atheism and skepticism

00:02:12.220 is huge.

00:02:13.220 Now you'd think, with a group of people called skeptics that like to go on and on about the

00:02:18.720 scientific method and falsifiability, that they'd be some of the most rational people

00:02:23.440 around.

00:02:24.440 Maybe they wouldn't agree with some of the things that we say around here, but we could

00:02:27.480 sit down and have a conversation with them, and either sway them to our point, or be swayed

00:02:33.040 to theirs.

00:02:36.040 And they do a lot of good.

00:02:37.700 They attack the crystal healing, the inoculation paranoia, all this pseudoscience mumbo-jumbo that

00:02:48.140 people are being tricked into pain for, they attack all of that, and that is a good thing.

00:02:53.140 But overall what you see isn't so much a devotion to the scientific method, to rationality, to

00:03:00.480 understanding what's real.

00:03:02.700 What you see is status-seeking behavior. 0.98

00:03:06.260 And the status amongst skeptics tends to be making fun of those silly southerners that believe 0.98

00:03:16.320 in the healing power of prayer, and believe all this nonsense, and have all these conspiracy 0.98

00:03:22.000 theories, and so on and so forth.

00:03:24.240 And so they just attack these people without thinking about it.

00:03:30.220 They identify themselves as being part of the university intelligentsia, and so they attack

00:03:34.760 anybody that seems to be an outsider.

00:03:37.700 And the problem with that is that a certain number of these conspiracy theories are going

00:03:46.080 to be correct.

00:03:47.080 A broken clock is right twice a day.

00:03:49.260 So yeah, certainly there's no lizard people inhabiting government, I don't think so anyway.

00:03:55.540 Almost definitely no UFOs visiting us.

00:03:58.460 But if you follow the Paleo diet, and if you study how the modern American diet was developed,

00:04:06.940 you discover that yes, there are financial interests, and it's actually very dangerous

00:04:12.020 for you to follow the common wisdom.

00:04:16.100 Sometimes you do need to go against the common wisdom.

00:04:19.620 Whereas these guys, the skeptics, completely follow the common wisdom because they want to

00:04:24.360 fit in. 0.89

00:04:25.360 It's just another troop of monkeys. 1.00

00:04:28.080 Even the best skeptics make stupid criticisms at times. 0.99

00:04:37.880 The example I'm going to use is Penn and Teller, who actually go against a lot of the stuff 0.98

00:04:44.040 in the skeptic community.

00:04:45.500 And I think if you gave them another 20 years, they'd come around to be properly right wing.

00:04:52.100 But every so often on their show, which is quite enjoyable usually, they say something 0.98

00:04:56.500 that's just asinine. 0.81

00:04:58.300 And the one example that really stands out to me is their criticism of cryogenics. 0.95

00:05:03.260 Now for those of you unfamiliar with it, cryogenics is the idea that at the end of our lives,

00:05:10.540 if we freeze our brains, then 20 years, 50 years, 100 years in the future, if we freeze

00:05:17.220 them fast enough and we contain all the data that's still there.

00:05:20.300 They'll be able to go in, recover the data, and reinstall it into a new biological sim or

00:05:29.060 they'll install it into a computer or what have you.

00:05:32.100 So you don't have to die.

00:05:33.100 You're basically in a frozen 100-year coma.

00:05:38.900 Now for the skeptic, this promise of eternal life sounds like religion.

00:05:45.720 And the skeptics don't like religion.

00:05:48.380 And so they knee-jerk to the reaction that this cryogenics must be complete pseudoscience 1.00

00:05:52.980 preying on the naive and foolish. 0.99

00:05:58.160 And their attacks on cryogenics are utterly weak. 0.98

00:06:03.100 If you go to the Alcor site, it's very quick, very easy explanation.

00:06:08.080 They actually don't do a lot of detail, but first of all, no, there's no ice crystals forming

00:06:14.200 in the cells.

00:06:15.920 Two, you have until about six hours after death or so, probably, to freeze the brain before

00:06:23.040 the data is too damaged to be recoverable, too decayed.

00:06:27.540 They have done this to rat brains where they've frozen the rat brain and then de-thought it

00:06:33.160 and demonstrated that, yes, there is still usable data inside the brain.

00:06:39.640 And then there's just the fact that we're constantly pushing back what the definition

00:06:44.460 of death is.

00:06:45.460 It used to be that when a heart stopped, it was considered death.

00:06:47.560 Now we will try and restart the heart.

00:06:50.240 There's surgeries performed where they cool the body down to five degrees, stop the heart,

00:06:54.620 and perform brain surgery for half an hour, and then revive the person.

00:06:58.240 It's a dangerous surgery, but it works.

00:07:00.240 The theoretical basis for cryogenics is completely legitimate, and all these criticisms are addressed

00:07:08.620 by the cryogenesists.

00:07:10.340 Now, whether or not we'll ever awake is another question, and they certainly don't promise

00:07:14.960 that, but the frozen brain still contains the data.

00:07:17.860 And yet the skeptics, and go ahead, look up any skeptical critique of cryogenics, they attack

00:07:25.960 problems that were solved in 1985.

00:07:28.100 If they did a minute's worth of research, they would realize that they're talking out of their 1.00

00:07:34.780 asses. 1.00

00:07:35.220 But they are interested in criticizing these wacky, crazy scientists who are believing in 0.94

00:07:41.880 woo and crystal healing rather than actually reaching the truth. 1.00

00:07:45.080 And, on a general note, my experience with skeptics is that they are remarkably ignorant people. 0.98

00:08:01.540 Now I don't consider myself particularly well-educated. 0.90

00:08:05.920 I will break open history tomes written a hundred years ago to see what people thought back then

00:08:12.080 rather than what they think now.

00:08:15.080 I'll work through economic textbooks, I'll study Bayes' theorem, and I'll break out a pen

00:08:20.360 and a piece of paper to work through the mathematics myself on it.

00:08:23.880 I have a basic understanding of quantum mechanics.

00:08:27.700 But I actually consider myself incredibly ignorant on these topics.

00:08:32.200 If I'm anything, I'm possibly a renaissance man.

00:08:35.920 I know a little bit about everything, but I'd never call myself an expert.

00:08:41.760 Skeptics, on the other hand, when I talk to them, are just absolutely oblivious to the

00:08:47.640 realities of any of this.

00:08:49.120 Economics, science.

00:08:51.140 These aren't the low-level skeptics I'm talking about.

00:08:53.720 I'm particularly thinking about one who has a radio program in Edmonton that I met.

00:08:58.200 Just remarkable levels of ignorance.

00:09:02.840 And yet the arrogance to go out there and proclaim what is true and what is false.

00:09:09.880 I know some of you guys on this channel here have criticized me for doing the Schrodinger's

00:09:13.580 Cat video.

00:09:16.080 Schrodinger's Cat actually confuses these people.

00:09:18.800 These harbingers of truth and lighthood and all that.

00:09:23.080 And that's one of the strongest branches that's not obsessed with bashing Christianity in the

00:09:29.520 atheist cult. 1.00

00:09:31.040 And they're just remarkably ignorant. 1.00

00:09:35.840 Remarkably status quo, status seeking. 0.99

00:09:38.640 They really don't impress me as great minds of our generation.

00:09:43.320 And see, that's, I think, really the final nail in the coffin is just how unreasonable

00:09:54.660 atheist cult is. 0.53

00:09:56.840 Now, Fringe left some comments in my last video about the fact that I might have to argue with

00:10:02.480 some of these guys and their propensity to use personal attacks, to constantly shifting

00:10:08.320 the goalposts.

00:10:09.420 In fact, I'll link to the bottom, on Freedom Main Radio, there was an anti-statist who was

00:10:16.780 talking to a bunch of Mensa members about anti-statism, and he's just describing the

00:10:23.520 evening.

00:10:23.880 There was only like one lady out of the 20 or 30 of them that would actually have a rational 1.00

00:10:28.300 conversation without using biases, using manipulation techniques to control the conversation that

00:10:37.480 would actually deal with them honestly.

00:10:38.560 And atheist cult, if you disagree with them on something, they tend to be just as bad as 1.00

00:10:45.320 the fundamentalists in attacking you.

00:10:50.800 So with all that said, what can we definitely say about atheist cult?

00:10:56.340 What are their features?

00:10:59.240 Well, first of all, they are very high IQ.

00:11:02.260 They do tend to be on the right side of the bell curve. 1.00

00:11:09.020 Proal atheist cult that love to chant out the most idiotic slogans they can find from the 1.00

00:11:14.500 third of Dawkins' book that they made it through. 1.00

00:11:17.560 But generally, atheist cult tends to have IQs above 100.

00:11:21.360 However, as much as we talk about the importance of IQ around here, IQ is not the same thing as

00:11:29.260 truth-seeking.

00:11:30.800 And in fact, a lot of high IQ people are very, very good at deluding themselves.

00:11:36.800 And that's what we find with atheist cult. 0.92

00:11:39.860 Very high IQ, not very concerned with truth-seeking so much as they are concerned with winning the

00:11:46.060 argument.

00:11:47.940 The second thing we notice about them is their obsession with Christianity.

00:11:55.560 They attack it constantly.

00:11:59.500 They will go to great lengths, pouring through the Bible, taking notes about any little inconsistency

00:12:05.960 they can find here or there.

00:12:08.320 They'll produce all these videos repeating the exact same arguments.

00:12:11.400 They'll create trite moral arguments criticizing some passage in the Bible that was written

00:12:17.340 by a semi-literate person and didn't even go into motivations.

00:12:20.660 And they're absolutely obsessed with the Bible.

00:12:24.260 And yet they also have some of the most facile criticisms of it.

00:12:30.340 Vox Dei actually wrote a book, which is a free download.

00:12:33.860 It's only 150 pages.

00:12:35.160 I would recommend reading it.

00:12:36.640 He's a Christian, but he really points out the intellectual vapidity of Dawkins and Hitchens 1.00

00:12:45.100 and these criticisms of atheism, or criticisms of Christianity, that is.

00:12:52.980 The atheist really does attack Christianity as if people, as if Christians believe there's

00:12:59.880 a guy with a beard up in the sky watching down over them.

00:13:02.980 And maybe a few Southern Baptists believe that, but generally Christians are a little bit

00:13:09.200 more astute than that.

00:13:11.380 So, and it's not even that they're strawmanning.

00:13:14.620 It's that they're just very philosophically naive.

00:13:17.740 And the third thing we can notice about the atheist cult is, as much as they talk about being oppressed

00:13:27.800 and being such a small minority in America, they're actually pretty mainstream.

00:13:33.960 They regularly show up on talk shows.

00:13:37.200 They're extremely politically correct.

00:13:41.280 They are the mainstream.

00:13:42.860 So, three, those three things about them.

00:13:47.720 First of all, high IQ but not truth-seeking.

00:13:52.520 Incredibly critical of Christianity, without being critical of any other modern delusions.

00:13:58.840 And extremely mainstream.

00:14:01.600 So, you know what they are?

00:14:09.520 They're a sect of Christianity.

00:14:12.360 They are the latest sect of Christianity. 0.94

00:14:16.320 And these intellectuals are the vanguard of it all.

00:14:21.920 They're the loudmouthed Priscilla-tizers. 1.00

00:14:23.940 Now, I'm going to have to justify that claim, won't I?

00:14:27.920 I might have pissed off a few of you atheist cultists out there. 1.00

00:14:32.420 Now, Christianity.

00:14:35.420 Christianity is the bedrock of our modern civilization.

00:14:40.960 And I know a lot of people don't want to hear that, but our modern civilization, our modern

00:14:45.580 myths, the way that we organize ourselves socially, is entirely based upon Christianity.

00:14:51.280 No, it's not based upon the Ten Commandments.

00:14:53.980 It's not based upon the Bible.

00:14:55.520 It's based upon Christianity, the theology.

00:14:59.980 I'll give you a few examples here of modern values, of mythical religious values that we

00:15:07.900 hold that directly derive from Christianity.

00:15:10.880 First, you have the concept of equality.

00:15:14.460 Equality is a Christian concept, unique to the Christian religion.

00:15:18.540 That each soul has equal value and is judged before God based upon the decisions that they

00:15:25.480 made.

00:15:26.400 You don't see this particular idea in other religions.

00:15:29.720 It's a uniquely Christian value.

00:15:31.980 And the Christians, they used to, the old Christians anyway, 200 years ago, they only considered 1.00

00:15:36.740 that equality to be of the soul.

00:15:38.740 Obviously, the intellects were different.

00:15:40.660 Obviously, the physical body was different.

00:15:43.960 But it's this idea that led to the French Revolution, that everybody should be an equal

00:15:50.940 participant in the country.

00:15:53.280 And nowadays, atheist cults embrace this value to the point where they absolutely demand that 0.93

00:15:58.960 everybody be equal intellectually, everybody have equal opportunity emotionally.

00:16:04.820 So if somebody has a personality disorder, it's not their fault.

00:16:08.160 We have to medicate them, so on and so forth.

00:16:11.040 Equality is one of the basic fundamental values of our society, and it's directly derived from

00:16:16.620 Christianity.

00:16:18.480 Another one, fraternity.

00:16:21.360 This was, it's not quite so popular nowadays.

00:16:24.640 You won't hear it put that way.

00:16:26.420 But the idea of nationalism, that we're all in it together, and certainly all the revolutions

00:16:33.980 200 years ago, were based around the concept of fraternity, which, again, comes directly

00:16:40.100 from Christianity.

00:16:42.240 Rather than being subjects that are supposed to obey the priest, which you'd find in something

00:16:49.280 like Islam, where the imam is a moral and political authority, that if you're not an

00:16:55.500 imam, you should obey.

00:16:57.020 In Christianity, everybody is equal.

00:17:00.880 It's only God that's above everybody.

00:17:02.840 Everybody else is on the same level.

00:17:04.760 They're all brothers in the love of Christ.

00:17:07.660 Fraternity is a Christian value.

00:17:10.420 And finally, freedom.

00:17:12.240 The idea of political freedom, that is another myth of our current civilization, stems directly

00:17:22.300 from Christianity.

00:17:23.540 In fact, you see this in the abolitionists.

00:17:25.760 The ones trying to get rid of slavery back in the 1800s, is that they argued that God gave

00:17:35.040 us free will so that we could choose virtue or vice.

00:17:39.000 And because of that, slavery is wrong.

00:17:42.160 That the slaves should be given the choice.

00:17:46.120 They should be free to make their own choices because that's how God intended it.

00:17:50.320 So, all of these are Christian values.

00:17:54.440 And it's Christianity which devolved into the modern system. 0.69

00:17:59.480 Now, I'd like to address a couple of arguments against that that you might have.

00:18:11.160 Democracy, I would say, is largely a product of Christianity. 0.98

00:18:14.040 And the obvious counter-argument would be, what about Rome?

00:18:18.440 What about Greece?

00:18:19.220 Those democracies did not resemble our own in the slightest.

00:18:25.600 They were democracy, yes, in the organization of how politics was performed day to day.

00:18:33.540 But the society themselves, they had very strong roles dictated by their religions for what

00:18:42.440 a man was supposed to do, for what a woman was supposed to do. 0.99

00:18:45.240 They had differing castes within the society.

00:18:48.500 A Roman citizen was not the same thing as a freedman, was not the same thing as a slave.

00:18:54.140 The Greeks, for instance, were more than happy to raise young boys as homosexuals so they'd 1.00

00:19:00.160 be a vicious army. 0.72

00:19:02.160 Just generally, these are not similar values.

00:19:06.940 To call our entire system a democracy, and then to call Greece a Roman democracy, you're

00:19:12.880 comparing apples to oranges there.

00:19:14.120 But there's only a couple of minor comparisons between the two.

00:19:19.200 And as for how religions create societies, you would never see a Western-style democracy

00:19:27.340 arising from an Islamic country.

00:19:30.980 Islamic countries have the imams, are political and religious heads, and no one has absolute

00:19:37.540 control.

00:19:38.220 There is no super-imam.

00:19:40.840 There is no pope in those countries.

00:19:45.360 Iran.

00:19:46.580 The president answers to about a half-dozen, a dozen different imams. 0.98

00:19:53.860 Western-style democracy is not going to happen there.

00:19:57.100 Not organically.

00:19:58.100 It can be forced onto it, but it's not going to happen organically.

00:20:00.400 China, with Confucianism. 0.80

00:20:05.020 Confucianism itself lays out a hierarchy of society.

00:20:09.120 It has no concept of equality within it.

00:20:12.300 It's not going to result in democracy.

00:20:16.900 It's all about structures from the god and the emperor all the way down throughout the

00:20:22.280 society.

00:20:22.660 India is similar, where it has distinct castes and distinct roles.

00:20:27.700 If you've read the Bhagavad Gita, it's about how even if you don't want to go and murder

00:20:33.160 your loved ones and family, if you're a soldier, it's your duty.

00:20:37.300 And ultimately, God just wants you to do your duty in life, regardless of how it feels to

00:20:43.260 you.

00:20:44.220 These are very different concepts than Christianity, which is about us all being equal and about

00:20:49.640 achieving grace through God.

00:20:52.260 I'm certainly not judging, saying one is worse than the other or anything like that, but

00:20:55.560 they're different, and they're not going to result in a Western-style democracy.

00:20:59.160 Democracy is a Christian invention. 1.00

00:21:05.200 Now let's get back to atheist cult again, because they believe in this leftist ideal of 0.94

00:21:11.560 democracy, this modern society that we've developed.

00:21:14.500 They believe in that.

00:21:16.060 That is their religion.

00:21:17.380 But how can they be a Christian without believing in God? 1.00

00:21:21.420 Well, from day one, Christianity has been becoming more populist.

00:21:29.800 Let me rescind that.

00:21:31.540 It started out populist, became a state-controlled Catholicism, with the Pope at the top, and then

00:21:40.040 it's becoming more populist since then.

00:21:42.040 It went from Catholicism, where only the priests could interpret the truth of the Bible, it was 0.87

00:21:47.960 all kept in Latin, to Lutheranism, where they translated it to the vulgar tongues, and everybody 0.96

00:21:54.300 could read the book now and understand God.

00:21:57.820 And eventually Protestantism, where they threw out the Virgin Mary and all the saints, and instead 0.56

00:22:07.240 had a direct relationship with just Jesus, rather than the more polytheistic sense of Catholicism,

00:22:14.480 where they have many different powers within the structure.

00:22:18.220 And as time goes on, you see less and less of a relationship between the practice of Christianity

00:22:26.220 and the words explicitly written in the Bible.

00:22:29.940 Theology becomes more important over time.

00:22:32.000 And so what you have with atheist cult is that they just threw out God and Jesus. 0.58

00:22:39.220 They still believe in everything that a Christian believes in, but they threw out God and Jesus. 0.95

00:22:44.720 And this is why they are so angry at Christianity. 0.90

00:22:52.380 The same reason that the Protestants and the Catholics were at each other's throats back in Britain. 0.97

00:22:58.140 See, if you're just an atheist, if you're a right-wing lunatic like us here, you don't really care about Christianity. 0.90

00:23:06.060 You know, I have no reason to go argue my teeth out against Jainists. 1.00

00:23:11.740 I don't really care.

00:23:15.400 Atheist cult, and this is what you see, they don't argue against other religions.

00:23:18.040 They primarily argue against Christianity because they are close enough to them to be a threat.

00:23:26.120 It's an ideological war.

00:23:28.140 And one final thing, let's compare atheist cults who believe in absolute equality between people,

00:23:40.960 that believe in political correctness, that believe in all of these foundational myths of our modern era,

00:23:48.220 to a group that's actually deeply rational and is atheist, but actually challenges these questions.

00:23:58.040 And I'm thinking again of the Lesseron community.

00:23:59.800 One of the big focuses of that community is whether or not we can build a super-intelligent AI that's friendly.

00:24:11.400 And one of the big discussions is ethics.

00:24:14.560 What are our ethics?

00:24:16.940 This evolutionary heritage that we have that creates our ethical code,

00:24:21.260 is it even internally consistent?

00:24:24.560 And what sort of ethics should a super-intelligent entity have?

00:24:30.560 Now, atheist cult, if you try and discuss anything ethical with them, 1.00

00:24:33.960 will just knee-jerk back to good old-fashioned Christianity 0.99

00:24:37.740 and refuse any discussion beyond that.

00:24:41.820 They will get very, very angry with you if you can try.

00:24:46.940 So, that's atheist cult for you. 0.97

00:24:49.180 They're intelligent enough to be good speakers,

00:24:53.980 but they're not particularly deep thinkers or theologians.

00:24:57.820 They are very angry and very unreasonable,

00:25:02.060 because they're religious fundamentalists.

00:25:04.140 They don't believe in a god, but they believe just as strongly in their

00:25:07.640 pseudo-scientific, allegedly scientific, worldview,

00:25:13.780 with all the foundational myths of our civilization in it.

00:25:16.760 So, that's what they're all about.

00:25:22.800 I don't really know what else to say.

00:25:24.580 It's a little bit funny, isn't it?

00:25:26.920 Anyway, take care, folks.

00:25:29.060 Marini out.

Leo D.M.J. Aurini - January 16, 2012

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