Why Atheists Become Statists
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Summary
Why is it that religious people tend to favor a more limited government, as opposed to atheists who can figure out something as blindingly obvious as libertarianism? Well, it strikes me, it comes from living in a reality where you don't have an ultimate arbiter, where there is a hint of nihilism in things. And yet, with atheists, we find that so often they start demanding these rigid controls on everything and everybody. And it's because of the nihilism that is so present in most atheists.
Transcript
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So the other day, Stefan Molyneux posted a video titled, Why I Was Wrong About Atheism,
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in which he discusses why it is, in his opinion, that so many atheists become very hardcore
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statists, demanding not just a strong government, but a left-wing, socialist, invasive government.
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And it's a great video, and I certainly don't disagree with his conclusions, but there's
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a comment I left on the video, giving a theist's perspective on all of this, and I wanted to
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Why is it that religious people tend to be much better at maintaining a limited government,
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as opposed to atheists, who are supposedly reasonable and smart, and they can figure out something
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Well, the issue, it strikes me, it comes from living in a reality where you don't have an
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ultimate arbiter, where there is a hint of nihilism in things.
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You see, on the one hand, all humans, we all have a moral sense, okay?
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We have a basic understanding that lying, cheating, stealing, we know that this stuff is wrong,
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And we also have a sense of societal purpose that comes innately to us.
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We understand that if we don't have children, there will be no society in the future, that
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we need to have a direction in society, having something like a permanent welfare class is
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C.S. Lewis likened it to having a fleet of ships.
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You know, personal morality would be how we run our own ships, making sure they're seaworthy.
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And the societal direction, the societal impetus, would be the direction that the fleet is going.
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Because if nobody can agree on where we're going, then we're all going to crash into each
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Anybody can figure it out with a moment's reflection.
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And yet, with atheists, we find that so often, they start demanding these rigid controls on
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And it's because of the nihilism that is so present in most atheists.
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It's like water seeping into rocks over the years and bit by bit causing them to crumble,
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freezing and expanding and shattering the rocks.
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Now, there's a really pithy little argument I heard in The Last Man on Earth, where the
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woman says to him, and she looks at the pornography collection, she says to him, you know all those
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And I think that's a pretty powerful argument as to why you shouldn't be supporting the
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You know, if you put your finances into that, then you're supporting an industry that does,
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to some extent, exploit the misery of other people.
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You know, and let's just take that argument, forgiven, right now.
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But what's so wrong with downloading an electronic copy of a free trailer?
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After all, you're not forcing anybody to do anything.
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You're not putting any money into the system, and that's backing the system.
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So what's so wrong with downloading a little bit of pornography?
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You know, so let's go the step further, you know, where you start saying, well, you know,
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like I understand that sex, like the basic teleology of sex, you know, it's to help,
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You know, it's a very intimate act for a married couple to share.
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You know, the best way to end an argument is probably to have sex with one another.
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It's, and this is why the human women, they're, they're, they are sexually aroused even when
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Um, it's fairly easy to look at sex and see what its ultimate purpose is, uh, to maintain
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families that can raise children with one another.
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But, you know, you're young and you met somebody and you like them and so, you know, maybe you
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don't really want to marry them, but, yeah, we'll use a condom.
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Well, and from there, you know, now that you've taken that step, well, why not take the next
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And, and each one of these is a very tiny step until you result in this, this world where
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there is casual sex happening all over the place.
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There are broken hearts happening all over the place.
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Because let's remember, you know, sex is a very intimate act.
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You can, you can play around a bit in college, you know, uh, meet a few girls and maybe it
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doesn't work out and, you know, there's some bruised feelings, but no souls are being ripped
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But what you'll find is that everybody has a different set point.
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You know, some people are more tempted than others.
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And, you know, if you have this, this free love society, if you are going to make up your
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own morality about how you maintain your ship, there's going to be people that don't maintain
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And there's going to be people that don't understand that, yeah, the, the purpose of
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sex is to raise children in a loving household, ultimately.
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And soon you wind up with a rather disastrous situation.
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And for yourself, you should maintain your health, right?
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That way you'll live longer, you'll be happier, you'll enjoy each day more if you just do a
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little bit of exercise and you try and eat, eat healthy.
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And at the same time, on a societal level, we want a population that is physically fit and
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like, so that they can go fight in war if need be, but also so that they don't cost the
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healthcare system billions of dollars on obesity treatments and, and other things.
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You know, you can mix a body modification into this.
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You know, that if, when we have people spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of
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dollars modifying their bodies, whether it's, you know, just because they want bigger breasts
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or because, you know, it's, you know, earrings, tattoos, uh, weird piercings, um, bigger tits,
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And there's no reason not to take that next step along that path.
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And eventually you wind up with a system that is a state of affairs that is very confusing
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So right now we have this, this generation of women that have been, they've been taught
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And it doesn't, you don't have to do much to convince a teenager to have sex.
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And if you tell them that it's empowering and the broken heart is worth the five minute
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orgasm and, you know, be proud of your STD status and that, you know, homosexuality is
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Uh, you get to the point where people are having, they're isolated.
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They're, they're hooking up on Tinder, but they are no longer able to feel intimacy.
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There's a lot of damage being done, a lot of confusion.
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And, you know, I was reading this one article in a mainstream publication and it was generally
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talking about the whole feminist script and how that is leaving women feeling absolutely
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You know, the, the casual sex is making them feel used and the, the careers and the corporations,
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which are all exciting and, you know, glamorous at first leave them feeling empty and hollow
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And of course the obvious solution to all of this is to say, maybe they shouldn't be
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You know, maybe there's a way that people are meant to live that they're not, they're
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You know, which isn't to say we're, we're all identical robots that need to be the same,
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but to say that, you know, we're each unique, but we do fall into patterns.
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The article completely sidestepped this absolutely obvious conclusion to conclude that we needed
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more feminism, you know, or as the, the radicals in the university like to say, we need more
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You know, I've commented before how evil spreads faster than good.
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You know, it's like Yoda says, it's quicker and easier, though it's not stronger.
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And so when you, you have this hookup culture, there's a lot of damage that gets spread around.
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And so somebody needs to come and arbitrate that pain to, to say who did what to whom,
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When you have this casual sex resulting in lots of single mothers, you know, well, who's
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going to support those single mothers, you know, letting, letting them starve to death
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So progressively we need more and more of this, this state to regulate things.
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When we have people, you know, and it's like, okay, well, you know, today I want to have,
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you know, a cigar and some whiskey, or I want to eat some Doritos, or I want to,
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so on and so forth, until you get to the obesity epidemic.
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And so now we want the state to do something about it.
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We want free health care for everybody, because it's not fair that somebody with a glandular
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disorder should have to pay more for health care.
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And we also want them to start limiting the size of beverages.
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You know, when we start saying that there's no judgment to be had on any sort of sexual
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deviancy, we, the transgender bathroom issue is the natural result of that.
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All of a sudden we need government stepping in and saying, saying whatever.
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Either that you have to allow men that claim they are women to use the women's washroom and
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to change at the pool in front of little girls, or that we aren't going to allow it.
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And then you have this complete liberal uproar over what the government's doing.
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The problem is that both sides are trying to do something instead of people policing themselves.
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Now, a religious people, people that acknowledge a higher truth and strive to live up to that
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higher truth, will naturally police themselves.
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And Lord knows there is constant debate within the church and between different branches of
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But when religious people disagree with one another, they don't disagree on the existence
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of God and that we are being watched, we are being measured.
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You know, and that we're also offered a lot of help and that we help one another out.
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Listen, the father at my church, he is very morally courageous, incredibly compassionate.
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So I think he's entitled to indulge a little bit in, you know, having a little bit too much
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You know, and like, we all have our own burdens to overcome, our own difficulties.
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And so nobody in the religious community is pretending to be perfect.
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We're trying to mitigate our errors and improve upon them as time goes on.
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You know, what is appropriate in this scenario?
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And it's not always the same answer for everybody.
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And so we not only, we police ourselves as individuals, but with one another, we try and
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Because we're each trying to understand what the best version of ourselves is.
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And we understand that there's a much higher commitment that we all have.
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So we, the pornography, the reason that we resist even that first step down that road, you know,
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But you understand that you're doing something to yourself in the process and that you're
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It's a question of what we're most tempted, what is most dangerous for us, and trying to
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So, religious people will wind up naturally policing themselves.
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You know, certainly over finances, over property and whatnot.
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But it's rather, those are rather simple things to put into a code of law.
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That's the sort of the thing, that's the sort of thing government can define because it's
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Even if you don't like the property law, at least you understand what the property law
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You can lobby to change it if you really think so, but it's more about having the rules
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Where is the definition of what sort of people we're trying to be?
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That's something governments aren't very good at defining.
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And in the church, we work with one another to be the best versions of ourselves.
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And again, you just go back to the innate common sense.
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Collecting STDs, irresponsibly having children, being incredibly unhealthy, being addicted to
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drugs or to video games or to movies or anything.
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And we appeal to the guilt that we feel within one another.
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Because we do acknowledge that we're imperfect and there is a higher moral power.
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If you reject the concept of absolute truth, the concept of God, of a higher moral law that
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we all feel in our hearts that can be appealed to, if you reject that, then somebody needs
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Somebody needs to define what human life is meant to be.
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And so currently in our society, the good life being promoted is sexual degeneracy.
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The good life in communist countries was the exact opposite.
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You know, because we didn't try and help them become better people.
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And so this is why atheists so often turn to statism.
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Because they're nihilistic at the end of the day.
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They try and have the objective truth without acknowledging the higher truth, the absolute truth.
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They're trying to have their cake and eat it, too.
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And because they reject this higher moral law that they're called to, what they end up doing
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Sleeping with this girl that I like but I don't want to marry, that's okay.
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Or just sleeping with whatever girl I run into, you know, even if it breaks her heart, that's okay.
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Leaving her with a kid and then running off on her, that's okay.
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And so now you need some organization to implement some mockery of justice and try and just keep things medicated and keep things running.
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We are all called to sainthood, to live the life of a saint.
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And when we throw away the idea of becoming better people, when we accept ourselves just as we are, well, you're either getting better or you're getting worse.
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And when we try and make moral law on our own, when we try and invent our own moral law, there's always a piece missing.
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And each time somebody cheats the system, we need a new law.
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And we wind up with this monstrous, this corporate world of just misery and enemy and isolation.
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And so instead of acknowledging that the corporate world is sick, that this society is sick, we medicate people.
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Little boys aren't sitting down and learning all the schoolwork in a boring environment.
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You know, women are miserable because they don't have children and none of the men they sleep with love them.
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You know, we induce the problems because we're selfish and we don't want to admit we're wrong.
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And instead of saying, oops, we made a mistake, we try and invent a new solution.
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Until we are nothing but a fleet of ships held together with duct tape and bubble gum and not a prayer in sight.
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Oh, and one last thing, before any of the wags down the comment section complain.
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I'm just observing that people who have faith tend to live in freer societies.