RadixJournal - The Death of Atheism

00:00:00.000 It's Wednesday, September 23rd, 2020, and welcome back to the McSpencer Group.

00:00:07.440 We are still polling quite poorly in Wisconsin.

00:00:11.140 Joining me are Ed Dutton and Keith Woods.

00:00:14.660 Main topic, the death of atheism.

00:00:18.200 It seemed like only yesterday that all those online atheists were dominating YouTube, 1.00

00:00:23.700 owning the fundies with facts and logic.

00:00:26.580 The dinosaurs are real. Take that, Christians. 1.00

00:00:31.280 Chief Atheist Richard Dawkins just released a new book, Outgrowing God.

00:00:36.200 If anything, it expresses the intellectual exhaustion and growing irrelevancy of the movement he launched some 15 years ago.

00:00:44.820 Ed, Keith, and I look back at so-called new atheism,

00:00:48.740 revealing how those liberal edgelords never ask any serious questions

00:00:52.980 and how the battle between science and religion is not what it's cracked up to be.

00:00:57.980 Welcome back to the McSpencer Group.

00:01:01.440 The team has reassembled. I'm very happy about that.

00:01:07.440 Keith, how are you doing?

00:01:09.220 You're back from your summer abroad,

00:01:13.340 full of wandering, womanizing, and wine drinking, I presume, or at least I hope.

00:01:20.820 Keith, how many FGDs did you contract during your summer?

00:01:26.140 Well, I'm not sure, but my head feels a lot clearer.

00:01:29.920 You know, I've had no Anglo takes contaminating my thinking for the last couple of months. 1.00

00:01:35.300 Feeling clear-headed can also be a symptom of pubic lice.

00:01:37.920 That's probably what it is.

00:01:43.340 I went to a pumpkin fair yesterday with the kiddos,

00:01:47.940 so that was a lot of fun.

00:01:51.460 You know, swinging around, riding around on hayrides for hours.

00:01:57.160 Great stuff. It actually was pretty fun.

00:02:00.300 Eating caramel popcorn. Yum.

00:02:03.300 Ed, how are you doing?

00:02:04.300 I'm okay, yeah.

00:02:05.940 I haven't spent the summer contracting sexually transmitted diseases from Southern European tarts. 1.00

00:02:10.940 I've been doing wholesome things.

00:02:14.280 For example, yesterday I went with my family to a spa hotel in Vokkowa,

00:02:19.040 which is about an hour from here.

00:02:21.860 That was very pleasant and went on a long forest walk.

00:02:26.760 Cool.

00:02:27.420 Do you get in one of those Scandinavian saunas?

00:02:30.220 Oh, yeah, yeah. They have those.

00:02:31.520 Yeah, yeah.

00:02:32.680 The spa hotel.

00:02:34.300 Yes.

00:02:34.780 So there was a steam one and a finished one.

00:02:37.880 So I've been doing that.

00:02:39.580 So I haven't been having the kind of prime that Keith has been having.

00:02:43.960 Well, no one has.

00:02:45.160 I mean, that's a don't want itself.

00:02:47.220 That level has been changed.

00:02:50.160 In Italia, il ha mille tre.

00:02:53.640 How many did Keith have in Greece?

00:02:56.600 We might never know.

00:02:57.800 The real question is, from Ed's perspective,

00:03:01.040 is that race mix and air to Southern Europeans wide?

00:03:04.300 Significantly wide, yeah.

00:03:08.540 It depends whether we're dealing with Portuguese people here.

00:03:11.580 There's quite a lot of black ab mixture in the native Portuguese population. 0.98

00:03:15.600 Actually, I don't know if you're familiar with Varg Post and, you know, Varg Vikernes.

00:03:21.540 But I actually saw him recently on Twitter.

00:03:23.820 He was arguing with an Anglo and he was disparaging the Anglo on the basis that he thinks Queen Victoria was a gypsy.

00:03:31.320 I just never heard that one.

00:03:34.560 I've never heard that one.

00:03:34.600 Interesting take.

00:03:37.160 He, he's kind of, I kind of like Varg, but I like him from a distance.

00:03:43.400 Like, I kind of like that there's this madman out there kind of, you know, ranting and raving. 0.81

00:03:50.160 But you kind of want to keep your distance from madman. 0.89

00:03:53.220 All I would say about that is that Queen Victoria was a carrier of hemophilia.

00:03:57.880 And there was no record of hemophilia in the royal family before her.

00:04:02.000 So either, her father was about 50 when she was born, early 50s.

00:04:06.320 So either it was a denoma mutation on her father's sperm.

00:04:09.740 Or her mother copped it off with a gypsy hemophilia. 1.00

00:04:13.440 So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's one or the other.

00:04:18.300 Interesting.

00:04:19.120 And they're equally possible.

00:04:20.880 Equally possible.

00:04:24.440 Well, let's talk about new atheism.

00:04:28.740 So I, I asked you guys to do this just because Richard Dawkins has a new book out.

00:04:34.860 And so I thought this would be at least somewhat timely.

00:04:36.900 I'm not sure the size of the splash that this latest volume is making.

00:04:41.260 It's called, uh, outgrowing God or growing up from God or it's chill.

00:04:48.380 I've, I've actually, um, listened to about three hours of it now, just kind of as I was

00:04:54.200 doing chores or whatever.

00:04:55.940 And it, yeah, it's kind of, I, I, it's, it's like the God delusion for dummies.

00:05:00.020 It's, it's kind of, he's not saying anything that he hasn't said before and it is kind

00:05:03.660 of dumbed down a bit.

00:05:05.760 Um, so yes, he's trying to get the teenage set or something.

00:05:10.340 Um, but, uh, this book has not made a huge splash, you know, sell a lot of copies, I'm

00:05:17.200 sure.

00:05:17.660 But, um, he did make a big splash, uh, when he published the God delusion in 2006.

00:05:25.400 And there was this phenomenon that lasted about 10 years.

00:05:29.840 And it was to a very large degree, a YouTube phenomenon, which is also interesting at the

00:05:35.500 time of the growth of YouTube.

00:05:36.560 And it was the, the atheism, new atheism as they called it.

00:05:40.660 It was not new.

00:05:41.480 And most all of what they were saying was not new at all.

00:05:44.840 Uh, but it, it was something that was actually quite powerful and, um, influential.

00:05:51.780 Um, I think it might've, you could, it's, I don't think it's too much to say that it changed

00:05:57.480 minds on a mass scale and at least contributed to the decline of religious belief, particularly

00:06:04.340 Christian belief, um, in America and, and the Western world.

00:06:08.340 So it was a thing.

00:06:09.980 Um, but I, I think it's something that is, is now kind of old now.

00:06:14.140 It's now feeling a bit outmoded and I think it's something that we can kind of look back

00:06:19.080 on and examine a bit.

00:06:21.940 And, uh, I guess it's interesting that we have this panel assembled because I think each

00:06:26.640 of us in our own way is kind of a eccentric about religion.

00:06:31.920 Um, I don't think, I've, I don't think any of us really want to adopt an atheist label.

00:06:38.160 Although I, I don't think we also have the same perspective as a average church goer as

00:06:42.960 well.

00:06:44.400 Um, but anyway, I'm just kind of setting the table here.

00:06:47.140 Uh, but, um, Keith, you're younger than I am when, when new atheism came around, I was

00:06:52.360 already kind of like on a few meta levels up, but you were a teenager or even younger.

00:06:59.200 I can't remember when I met your mom, but, um, you were, um, fairly young when new atheism

00:07:05.180 was, was, you know, bounding onto the scene.

00:07:08.420 Um, was, was this influential as a kind of young, precocious know-it-all, uh, or was it

00:07:17.220 not influential at all?

00:07:18.040 I'm curious.

00:07:19.540 Not, not really at the time, but I remember when, I don't think I got like regular, uh,

00:07:24.020 internet access.

00:07:24.980 So I was like 16, 17.

00:07:26.420 And then it was actually like when, when I started using YouTube or whatever, that was

00:07:31.220 actually one of the first things I gravitated towards was, uh, the new atheism stuff.

00:07:35.560 Cause I don't know, there's a certain kind of person, I think on the internet that's just

00:07:38.780 kind of attack, attracted to, uh, drama and conflict and arguments.

00:07:43.640 But, uh, it is kind of funny to look at the, the progress that some of those, uh, internet

00:07:49.760 atheist types made. 0.98

00:07:51.140 It kind of, I think it, in a funny way, it kind of mirrors a lot of the people that sort

00:07:54.880 of came into the alt-right and that like, you know, you look at the, you look at the

00:07:59.620 channels of some of them, um, like what's that guy, TJ something, the amazing atheist or

00:08:04.700 whatever, but it's like, he's kind of almost alt-right or something.

00:08:09.420 Yeah.

00:08:09.600 It's funny.

00:08:09.940 He's kind of funny.

00:08:12.000 Yeah.

00:08:12.220 I mean, I, I, I'm not trying to, uh, you know, uh, slander him or anything, but he, he's

00:08:17.920 definitely kind of edgy in a, in a real way, not just like making fun of Christians, which

00:08:22.820 is not particularly, um, uh, edgy at this point.

00:08:26.440 But, um, but then there are other ones.

00:08:29.100 Like, I remember when I would watch these, because atheism is unstoppable, got banned a

00:08:33.700 couple of months ago, but he had, you know, he started talking to like Jared Taylor.

00:08:37.360 Cause it's like, it's funny.

00:08:38.640 And the route they went, it was like, they started off like arguing with theists and

00:08:41.880 then they moved on to like veganism.

00:08:44.180 And then it was like SJWs.

00:08:46.340 And then the next thing, it was like a little bit of race realism.

00:08:48.760 And then, oh God, you know, all of a sudden they're like, well, it is true in the sense 0.99

00:08:55.960 of, I mean, uh, of a lot of them are genuinely open-minded.

00:09:00.820 I will, I may be autistic.

00:09:02.860 I'm willing to go there and so on.

00:09:05.280 And then they actually do go there.

00:09:06.620 I think atheism unstoppable is, is a lot like that.

00:09:09.620 I mean, I've, I've watched a number of his videos.

00:09:11.660 He does seem to be ultimately a kind of classical liberal, but he is willing to go there on a,

00:09:17.080 on a lot of different subjects.

00:09:18.880 And, um, and then you had the other ones.

00:09:21.240 I remember, um, Jackie Glenn, I believe was her name.

00:09:24.220 And she was kind of like the, uh, cute young, I'm not like the other girls, uh, amazing 1.00

00:09:30.320 atheist.

00:09:31.060 And, uh, I, I remember seeing some of her videos, you know, I don't know, 10 years ago or something.

00:09:35.720 And then I caught one last year or something.

00:09:39.100 And she's like talking to transsexuals and full on, you know, SJW hating her parents and 0.95

00:09:46.360 whatever. 0.72

00:09:46.660 So there are many different paths that they can take.

00:09:50.020 Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean, look, I, I, I would say this.

00:09:53.600 I mean, one of the reasons why I don't have a tremendous amount of respect for new atheism

00:09:58.840 is that it's coming at a century or two centuries after a major crisis of faith that was occurring,

00:10:09.260 uh, to a degree due to enlightenment thinkers who were kind of operating on a, on an elite

00:10:14.840 level.

00:10:15.260 Um, it was, it's coming after Darwin, it's coming after Nietzsche, it's coming after the 0.64

00:10:21.140 world, the first world war, which, you know, itself just brought about a, a kind of, you

00:10:26.280 know, end of tradition and everything you take for granted.

00:10:30.680 Um, and they're doing it now.

00:10:33.020 And it just, it's all, it, you know, even if I might agree with many things that they

00:10:38.560 say, uh, there, there's a level at which they're just kind of tedious last men, um, uh, kind

00:10:45.520 of arguing for things that have already been kind of won in a way.

00:10:49.900 But they've absolutely nothing to lose.

00:10:52.680 So, and everything to gain.

00:10:55.500 So it's a way of signaling how rational and logical they are and then how intelligent they

00:11:01.140 are and how thought, how thoughtful they are.

00:11:03.400 They have that to gain, but there's essentially, apart from pissing off a few nutcases, a few

00:11:08.040 extremist fundamentalists, there really is nothing to lose.

00:11:11.120 There's nothing to lose.

00:11:11.900 It's weak.

00:11:12.420 It's a weak thing to do.

00:11:14.180 So whereas, whereas when people were doing something like that, um, a couple of hundred

00:11:18.020 years ago, someone like Darwin, he, he seriously didn't want to come up.

00:11:22.300 He, he, he, he came up with the idea of evolution and then he held back on it for about 20 years

00:11:27.920 because he knew what offense it would cause and how, how, how socially problematic it would

00:11:32.260 be and how much it would upset his wife, who was a highly committed Christian and then 0.83

00:11:37.020 he wouldn't get sex, I suppose. 0.87

00:11:39.020 And, and, and things, and things, and things like this.

00:11:41.740 And he held, and when he was under the impression, some people say wrongly, that somebody else

00:11:46.520 was about to go there with the same idea, then he, then he went ahead and published.

00:11:50.060 And these people had something to lose.

00:11:51.740 They could be socially ostracized.

00:11:53.420 I mean, if you go back a couple of years before that, there was no worse insult that

00:11:57.840 could be thrown at people than, than being an atheist. 0.73

00:12:00.280 To be an atheist, if you were found guilty of atheism, they'd burn you.

00:12:03.080 And so, and it was, although there, it seems that there were atheists around, nobody kind

00:12:10.260 of knew their names or whatever, because this would be done kind of secretly and in secret

00:12:14.340 societies and you'd all be very careful and whatever.

00:12:16.740 And so there really is, there's no, they're not brave.

00:12:19.140 It's like, it's like if you, if you live in Eastern Europe, parts of Eastern Europe now,

00:12:23.340 and you're woke and you're pro leftist.

00:12:26.200 Well, I don't necessarily agree with you.

00:12:28.280 I don't agree with you.

00:12:29.140 I don't think what you're doing is good for the society, but I have a certain amount of

00:12:32.040 respect for the activists that are pro LGBT in like Russia or whatever, because they're

00:12:37.840 losing their jobs and having serious problems.

00:12:41.660 You've got nothing to lose doing this in the, in, in Britain or, or, or somewhere like that.

00:12:46.460 And so it's kind of like, I have very little, it's a, it's a sort of a feeble thing to do.

00:12:52.040 I suppose with the God delusion, sorry.

00:12:55.100 Yeah.

00:12:55.240 Let me add real quick, although I think you might be going there.

00:12:58.240 Um, just to give a slight bit of credit to Richard Dawkins, um, in 2006, this, it was

00:13:06.660 a bit of a different time.

00:13:08.200 You understand this, this was the height of the white house or so he said, and this was

00:13:15.520 the height of the religious right.

00:13:17.580 And we're going to, they were, they were openly in some cases, maybe a minority view, but we're

00:13:22.540 talking about, we're going to install a theocracy and God is on George W. Bush's side and we're 0.56

00:13:27.140 going to invade the entire planet and install Christian democracy. 1.00

00:13:30.680 So, I mean, he, he at least took on something.

00:13:35.060 That is true.

00:13:35.940 I was about to go.

00:13:36.620 I was about to say that.

00:13:37.500 That is true.

00:13:37.900 In the context of 2006, we just had the Iraq war, or it was ongoing, the Iraq war, um,

00:13:43.640 and it suggested that this was, you know, he and Blair prayed together or whatever.

00:13:48.080 Blair was this extremely committed Roman Catholic.

00:13:51.400 Uh, Bush was this, uh, born again Christian who'd been an alcoholic or whatever it was 0.74

00:13:55.420 and had some kind of experience.

00:13:56.740 So it is true that religiousness was much more powerful then, and therefore there was

00:14:02.140 the degree to which you work.

00:14:03.600 There was a sort of religious establishment to some extent, or the woke establishment wasn't

00:14:08.460 as dominant, uh, as it is now.

00:14:11.240 And so, and so, so, so, so now I think the reason why this atheistic tracks are so much

00:14:16.980 less interesting is because religion is now marginalized.

00:14:20.720 Religion is now disempowered. 0.79

00:14:22.340 Uh, it's, it's the woke people who are all kind of atheists or whatever, anyway, who are

00:14:26.720 in charge and who have power.

00:14:28.360 And so you're not really, you know, it's rather feeble to, to, to waste your energy

00:14:32.780 on it when there are kind of bigger fish to fry.

00:14:34.980 Also, more importantly, we are now, the society, the irreligious society is bearing fruit and

00:14:43.820 we are seeing the results of a generation who have been raised not with a group selected

00:14:49.320 ideology, i.e.

00:14:51.480 religiousness, uh, which pushes them in a group selected pro-social direction where you

00:14:55.700 sacrifice the interest of the self for the interest of the group and whatever, but an

00:14:59.360 individualistic ideology, which is all about the feelings of the individual and everyone

00:15:03.520 not feeling upset and feeling they're all equal and feeling the same.

00:15:06.480 And we're seeing this bear fruit in this emotionally incontinent snowflake generation, 0.98

00:15:12.180 um, who are utterly black, who are utterly bigoted in their thinking and can't take criticism 1.00

00:15:17.740 and can't deal with people that think differently from them. 0.99

00:15:19.900 Uh, and so, uh, therefore it's no longer in any way brave to challenge religion and to

00:15:27.100 challenge God and whatever.

00:15:28.260 It's, it's, it's brave to challenge atheism and to challenge those people.

00:15:32.720 Um, and so, and, and, and, and it becomes intellectually dangerous to toy with the idea that not only

00:15:40.280 could, whether God exists, I don't know, but, but that there could be positive things about

00:15:44.240 religion because that's what undermines really a kind of state communism, um, which is now,

00:15:49.200 so, yeah, so I think it's just, it's just the last gasp of a, a man who's, who's spent his

00:15:55.420 career obsessed with slagging off, uh, religion and I don't know, maybe he needs the money.

00:16:00.380 I don't know.

00:16:01.020 I think the, I think the interesting question about new atheism is what, you know, what was

00:16:05.620 new in the new atheism because, oh, you know, obviously, as you said, like other people,

00:16:10.280 better people have made these arguments before them.

00:16:12.380 Well, I, I think what was new was one, how bad the arguments were. Uh, I do actually think that

00:16:18.340 was part of why it was a popular phenomenon is it was like, you know, it was kind of like the

00:16:22.440 McDonald's of like a secular philosophy and that it just sort of stripped any of the, you know,

00:16:28.320 any of the, any of the good arguments that's in atheism as a tradition.

00:16:32.480 It stripped, do you know what I would say, Keith, is that it stripped the tragedy from it all

00:16:37.500 because.

00:16:38.080 Yeah, well, that's where I was going with the second aspect. One aspect is how bad the arguments

00:16:42.340 are, but the second aspect was the evangelical tone that came with it. And that, you know,

00:16:47.340 previous atheist philosophers, I mean, you know, like Nietzsche was grappling with this

00:16:52.320 as a serious problem. And I think he recognized the, you know, the tragedy of the death of

00:16:57.120 God and the huge problems. I think he foresaw a lot of the problems that were.

00:17:01.480 Earthquakes and volcanoes, whatever he was writing about. Yeah.

00:17:04.080 Yeah. And the whole, you know, and the whole project of modernity and that's like, that's

00:17:08.320 just completely lacking in the new atheists. I mean, you know, there's a few of them are 0.98

00:17:14.680 actually, Dennett is a philosopher, A.C. Graylin is a philosopher. I mean, Dawkins doesn't

00:17:19.380 put forward any philosophical arguments, really. It's basically sort of moralistic tomes against

00:17:24.500 the Old Testament God. Yeah. But no actual engagement with, you know, classical theism

00:17:29.960 in terms of, you know, the basis for it as a philosophy. But the remarkable thing is how

00:17:35.020 much they just kind of presuppose this, like, secular Christian morality. I mean, like, Dennett

00:17:40.480 at times will make arguments that, well, morality is just, you know, evolutionary adaptation,

00:17:45.540 Darwinianism and things. But then at other times, he'll just, you know, he'll just treat

00:17:50.500 it as obvious that these sort of, you know, this very complex Christian moral worldview is

00:17:56.080 just, it was just always obvious to people. And, you know, as well, the way they'll just

00:17:59.740 kind of skirt over some of the horrors of the 20th century, which are, you know.

00:18:05.000 Right. And it wasn't. I mean, I think, you know, in The God Delusion, Dawkins does make

00:18:11.540 some gestures towards, I mean, he actually, he doesn't quite dismiss, but he is skeptical of

00:18:18.200 group evolution in a way that Ed is not. But he does kind of say that, you know, morality

00:18:24.660 is going to evolve and it's going to precede religion in the sense that you have to get

00:18:31.700 along and cooperate with your group. You obviously have a lot at stake with your own children and

00:18:37.600 even your nephews and cousins.

00:18:39.560 That is true. There were some studies which I've found on this recently. It is true that,

00:18:44.620 well, no, I've just found, this is a review I did of The God Delusion in 2007. I just dug

00:18:53.920 it out. But no, one of the things that was found is that moral, is that highly complex

00:18:59.580 societies precede moral gods. So the order in which it goes is high level of societal

00:19:06.240 complexity, then moral gods seem to develop as a way of holding that society together.

00:19:11.000 And as for his skepticism of evil, of group selection, I think that's just a result of,

00:19:16.540 I think that's his own personal problem. So in the 70s, when he basically talks about

00:19:21.340 group selection, the National Front, which were the main British far right party at the

00:19:25.360 time, picked up on this and said, oh yeah, Richard Dawkins, this professor has said this

00:19:30.960 and so therefore we white people. And then he was horrified that he should be associated with

00:19:36.180 the National Front. And so he came out and condemned group selection. I mean, I've recently

00:19:43.560 written a video on this for The Jolly Heretic and I looked at it. There is no logical argument

00:19:49.700 against group selection at all. It is quite clear. The first argument they use is that,

00:19:54.940 oh, we were in these small bands in the player scene or whatever. And consequently, we couldn't

00:20:02.080 have developed group selection because we were in these sparse bands. But it's been shown that

00:20:05.860 there were appalling wars, appalling genocide in the player scene, A. B, that though there

00:20:12.080 were these sparse little bands of clans that were separate, they would come together in

00:20:17.020 perceived times of crisis when outsiders were trying to destroy them. They would come together

00:20:21.400 like, you know, 10 times their numbers. And so there would be group selection. There's clear

00:20:26.020 evidence of massacres of huge numbers of people. There's historical evidence, archaeological

00:20:31.620 evidence of the wiping out of entire tribes by other tribes. So that is group selection.

00:20:38.060 It's a logical extension of kin selection. And computer modelling has demonstrated that

00:20:42.400 group selection seems to explain this. He has just a prejudice against group selection.

00:20:47.800 And it's as for what he says about religion as well. He says that, oh, well, religion,

00:20:52.500 it's this kind of misfiring of various adaptive things. Well, that's clearly bollocks, because

00:20:58.260 for something to be adaptive, for it to be accepted to be adaptive in evolution, and he

00:21:03.320 would know that as an evolutionist, it has to be partly heritable, or religiousness is

00:21:08.660 at least 0.4 heritable. Aspects of religiousness, 0.7, fundamentalism is 0.7 heritable. It has

00:21:14.720 to be associated with fertility, which it is heavily. It has to be associated with mental health

00:21:19.980 and physical health, which it is at the genetic level. There have to be certain parts of the

00:21:25.840 brain that are associated with it. You stimulate them with magnets, you become more religious

00:21:29.200 or whatever, which is the case. It has to be associated with pro-social traits, because

00:21:33.220 we're a group-oriented species, which it is. So on every single marker of it, religiousness

00:21:38.700 is something that's been selected for in itself. And so therefore, he can't just dismiss it

00:21:45.840 as some misfiring of adaptive things, like following the leader and over-detecting agency.

00:21:53.980 That's not the case. As Keith said, it's how bad the arguments are. He's so dismissive of

00:22:02.120 things. He's so emotional in the way he presents things. He's so completely over the top. In this

00:22:08.480 new one, for example, rather than talk about the existence of God, he kind of poisons the

00:22:12.420 well by saying, oh, well, you know, there are people that believe in fairies, and there

00:22:14.920 are people that believe in imps, and there are people that believe in, you know, talking

00:22:18.700 dinosaurs or whatever.

00:22:22.660 That is true.

00:22:23.880 Well, yeah, it just seems to be a complete... And you mentioned, you said that you think

00:22:29.800 he's the worst of them. I don't think he... I think he's the... In some ways, someone

00:22:33.680 like Daniel Donet, who you mentioned a minute ago, or Keith mentioned, openly said that scientists

00:22:40.360 should lie. Yeah. Interesting.

00:22:43.700 Yeah, if the social consequences are too... I think he said actually specifically about

00:22:47.800 something like race and IQ. Yeah, he did. He did. He was one of these new atheists, and

00:22:52.160 he openly said that. And at least Dawkins hasn't said that. And my counter-argument to that is

00:22:59.500 that traditionally, scientists have these transcendental values, these values that the truth, the truth

00:23:07.180 is sacrosanct. And what that ultimately comes from is Neo-Thomism, is really a belief, what

00:23:13.620 these scientists originally believed was that their purpose was to unveil God's revelation,

00:23:21.060 and therefore to lie. That means that you can't lie. You believe in eternal truth, and what backs

00:23:27.800 it up as true is a sort of traditionalist idea that there's a metaphysical realm which verifies

00:23:33.440 it as true, or God verifies it as true. And then the belief in God died, but the belief

00:23:39.340 in truth without God, the worship of truth, hung on for a while. And I don't know if Dawkins

00:23:45.500 has that to a greater extent.

00:23:46.740 This is a very Nietzschean argument. I mean, and he might very well have not been the only

00:23:51.300 one to make it, but he basically made exactly the argument that you just made. He overturns

00:23:57.480 this notion of the opposition, the great battle between science and religion, and he demonstrates

00:24:03.560 that science, in a way, overestimates truth. And that's a kind of very, you know, kind of

00:24:10.240 a little bit sarcastic way that Nietzsche would put things. But in the sense that truth itself

00:24:17.300 is divine, and you must pursue it. And so science is lit by the same lamp as religious fervor of

00:24:24.640 previous years. And then there's a kind of historical irony to this, in the sense that

00:24:30.420 this quest for truth at all costs is bringing about the end of religion, and might be very

00:24:35.840 well bringing about the end of civilization, in the sense that it makes us question too

00:24:39.640 much, that we overestimate truth. And this is, again, in Nietzsche's kind of, you know, playful

00:24:46.060 way, and in a discomforting way as well. He'll kind of look at, you know, we shouldn't just

00:24:53.080 value memory, we should also value forgetting. And we shouldn't just value truth at all costs,

00:24:59.520 even at the cost of ourselves, we might actually need to value illusion and delusion at some

00:25:04.480 point. I mean, this is, again, a very kind of Nietzschean move in that sense. But you

00:25:12.140 want to go ahead, Ed? I have some more to go on this.

00:25:15.140 He gets, people argue that he's a bit like a fundamentalist, because he's dogmatic, Dawkins,

00:25:19.980 because he's dogmatic. He's highly, he's highly emotional in his argumentation. He seems very,

00:25:25.580 very certain and whatever. And his counter argument is, no, I'm not a fundamentalist,

00:25:29.780 says in The God's Delusion, because fundamentalists know they are right, because they have read the

00:25:33.440 truth in a holy book. Now, that's what I mean about the, just the badness of these arguments.

00:25:38.980 So what about religions that are not religions of the book, like Hinduism? I mean, it's just

00:25:46.320 evidence that he doesn't care. He's not even trying to argue a logical case if you say something

00:25:51.100 as dismissive as that, but can be just pulled apart very, very quickly. It's just a way of

00:25:58.780 rallying the troops with a load of emotional bad arguments and saying, oh, yeah, there's no

00:26:03.460 God. Aren't we clever than these stupid Christians that believe in a God on a cloud? 1.00

00:26:08.980 And it's, I mean, let's, let's go, because, you know, Dawkins himself acknowledges as he did 1.00

00:26:15.960 in The God Illusion, and as he would now, that their morality is evolved in the sense that it

00:26:24.660 actually is good to cooperate. It is good for people to trust you and not lie, etc. And that this

00:26:33.020 operates also in a kind of group level in the sense that for those things to work and good, you have to

00:26:40.860 have trust and investment with the people around you. So you might very well be as gentle as a lamb

00:26:48.480 with your children and nephews and friends and colleagues. And you might be as violent and ruthless 0.69

00:26:55.280 and amoral as a lion when you are facing off with another band that also wants that piece of territory 0.94

00:27:02.940 or might want to kill you or take your territory, etc. There is a kind of in-group, out-group component

00:27:09.720 of morality in the sense that it evolved. And you can even, you know, see this in populations like

00:27:19.120 Germans and Japanese who are completely nice and, if not goofy, when they're within their own societies 1.00

00:27:27.860 and then utterly made a total maniacs when they're going to war with other populations.

00:27:34.120 Yeah, precisely. That's what's been selected for. That is the morality that's been selected for.

00:27:39.480 High and positive and negative ethnocentrism. And once you get a group where, once you get a group

00:27:44.600 which is sufficiently large, like a city or whatever, where you're not going to, where you're

00:27:49.140 not closely genetically related to the person, they're not a member of your family or your extended

00:27:53.760 family, and where indeed you might not even ever see them again, then you have to have some reason

00:27:58.620 to cooperate with them. And that's where moral gods then come from. Because if he believes in the

00:28:05.780 same moral god as you, then it's an insurance policy that he will cooperate, you know, he will cooperate

00:28:12.500 as well for the greater good of the society. And you're not, you know, he's not going to be a

00:28:15.900 free rider. He's not going to pay a parasite off the society. He's going to cooperate. He is going 0.81

00:28:21.000 to cooperate with you back. You can trust him. It's an insurance policy. And if they don't believe

00:28:25.780 in the same gods as you, then that shows that, well, maybe you can't trust them. And so that's where

00:28:30.440 religion becomes important. And therefore morality, it becomes, being highly moral and pro-social,

00:28:37.880 internally cooperative and externally hostile, becomes selected for concomitantly, but both

00:28:45.160 because of religiousness, because the group that is better able to be positively negatively 0.99

00:28:50.160 ethnocentric because it's the will of the gods they believe in. But also it becomes, religiousness

00:28:54.020 therefore becomes selected for concomitantly with greater morality and whatever. And what you

00:28:59.320 find, the group that is going to be more, is going to become selected for, is going to be more and more

00:29:03.960 internally ethnocentric, more and more religious at the same time, and they'll go up. And we know,

00:29:08.800 Dawkins in that book goes on about all the terrible things religious people have done, all the wars

00:29:13.280 and massacres and whatever. Yeah, to different groups, to outgroups, that's the point. With regard

00:29:19.040 to in, with regard to in groups, or simply with regard to generalized morality, when asked questions,

00:29:24.320 religious peoples, it's just a fact, religious people are higher in agreeableness, in the trait

00:29:29.160 agreeable. They're higher in generalized altruism than atheists, and they're higher in generalized

00:29:34.280 conscientiousness. They're more pro-social people on average. Let me take this in a, in a

00:29:38.900 interesting direction. So, I mean, there's a quote from, I'm forgetting, he's, he's actually a Jewish

00:29:44.260 scientist. It's, it's not Weininger. It's, he has a name like that, but there's this classic quote

00:29:49.780 that new atheists always say, which is that, you know, whether religion can make a bad person good

00:29:57.540 is up for dispute. Maybe that happens in some cases, maybe it doesn't happen in others, but

00:30:02.580 religion can make a good person bad. That is, religion can give you the power to go to war.

00:30:10.220 Religion can make you conquer because God is on your side. Religion can make you persecute 0.96

00:30:14.660 heretics, maybe within your community to maintain group cohesion. So religion can make good people

00:30:20.460 bad, but whether it can make bad people good is up for dispute. And I mean, I guess my answer

00:30:26.380 that is kind of like, yes. And the people who have God on their side are going to win. And, you know,

00:30:34.700 at some point you have to back away from this kind of moral peacocking and just recognize that those who

00:30:44.560 believe in themselves and believe that their triumph is good for the world are going to triumph.

00:30:51.060 It is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense of belief. Sorry, the sun is rising,

00:30:57.800 perhaps symbolically right now. So my, the lighting in my room keeps changing, but don't worry about

00:31:02.260 that. Um, or maybe I'm about to be struck down by lightning, uh, who knows? Uh, but so it's those

00:31:08.640 who believe that God is on their side are going to win. And I think in some ways, I mean, I gave

00:31:13.940 Richard Dawkins a smidge of credit, uh, for writing the God for publishing the God delusion in 2006 in

00:31:20.560 the sense that this was the height of the religious right and George W. Bush and the Iraq war. And I

00:31:25.600 agree with him on being at the very least skeptical of those things and certainly opposing, uh, the Iraq 0.93

00:31:32.720 war. So, you know, good on you for that. Uh, but I think it, it also kind of has a neoconservative

00:31:39.960 element to it. And remember perhaps the second most famous new atheist is Christopher Hitchens,

00:31:46.640 a, you know, contrarian left winger, uh, for right writer for the nation. And I think he was a

00:31:53.200 Trotskyite at some point or something like this. Uh, but someone who ultimately became a kind of 0.99

00:31:58.080 neoconservative who, who endorsed the Iraq war, wanted to crush Islamofascism, uh, et cetera. He,

00:32:04.240 he was the contrarian of the left, uh, of his day. And there's this almost neoconservative quality to

00:32:12.160 new atheism in the sense that yes, they want to demoralize and demean the, the religious right and

00:32:19.280 the fundies and the Vangies and all that kind of stuff. Uh, but their target seemingly is Islam at 0.81

00:32:26.420 some level. I mean, particularly with someone like Sam Harris, uh, their target is Islam. You want to

00:32:32.200 demoralize Islam at the very least, you see this growing religious fervor on the horizon as a threat 1.00

00:32:39.880 to your, you know, secular liberal society that you're wanting to, uh, defend. You seem quite

00:32:46.480 skeptical of this. Well, yeah, well, you may be right about that, but it was about the demoralizing

00:32:51.860 Islam, but that's not really what they do, is it? These books are aimed at white middle-class people

00:32:56.080 that these kinds of, we're talking about, this is not going to be read by Muslims. Muslims aren't going to 1.00

00:33:01.720 So it's a, so Dawkins is engaging in a completely anti-evolutionary process of demoralizing 0.98

00:33:08.360 his own people so that they will be conquered by Muslims. 1.00

00:33:11.220 He's demoralizing his own people so they will be conquered by Muslims. So is Christopher Hitchens, 0.99

00:33:15.840 because he's taking away their religion. And the thing that will allow them in the battle of group

00:33:20.040 selection to triumph, as they did do, as they did do at the time of the Crusades, the thing that

00:33:26.120 allowed them to triumph over Islam was that we were at an earlier stage of civilization that the Muslims 1.00

00:33:30.820 were at that stage. We were the desert tribesmen. We were, we were, uh, uh, Ibn Khaldun's desert

00:33:36.580 tribesmen with our high level of Asabiya. And that is why, and that was also the case a bit later.

00:33:41.740 And that is why we were able to successfully, one of the reasons why we were able to successfully

00:33:45.920 fight against Saladin and people like this. Um, and, and so, and he is, and people like Hitchens

00:33:51.320 and Dennett and, uh, Dawkins and these other posers, these intellectual posers,

00:33:57.600 Dennett and his impenetrable, impenetrable books about consciousness and whatever,

00:34:02.840 are, um, are, um, are, are, are, are, are just damaging their own side.

00:34:07.000 They're individualists who, who realize that they can attain status as individuals by doing this,

00:34:13.420 by not by rocking the boat in a small little kind of, kind of way, which doesn't damage them much

00:34:19.300 themselves or creates a, a few enemies, but creates much more friends that does enemies

00:34:23.540 signaling that how clever they are and how rational they are and damaging their group in the process. 0.90

00:34:28.620 They're just, there's parasites off the group. And the fact, the fact that Islam will not tolerate 1.00

00:34:33.460 this nonsense within its own societies is one of the reasons why, one of the reasons why,

00:34:38.100 of many, um, that, that it, that it is growing.

00:34:42.220 The, the only, the only interesting part of that new Dawkins book is, uh, at the bit where he's

00:34:47.460 trying to justify morality and he obviously, you know, he has no philosophical basis for

00:34:52.340 any of his ethical claims, but he, he keeps using this phrase where he talks about like

00:34:57.780 some of the progress of the, the past few hundred years, like abolishing slavery and giving women

00:35:02.880 the vote. And he says there was just something in the air, you know, he uses this like quasi

00:35:08.100 mystical language about like the progress of liberalism. And you kind of see this with all

00:35:13.080 of them. I mean, like atheism obviously is a, a sort of value neutral worldview. I mean,

00:35:18.800 it should be a, you know, you should be a moral nihilist if you're an atheist, but they're all 1.00

00:35:23.720 do all of this complete reification of like Western liberalism and progressivism, uh, that they can't

00:35:30.180 really ground in anything, but that just so it seems so obvious to all of them. It's the same in that

00:35:34.240 book, uh, Sam Harris wrote about moral foundations where, you know, he spends the whole book showing how

00:35:39.060 like science can show us like levels of suffering and how to alleviate suffering. But again, he has

00:35:43.820 no, you know, he has no philosophical basis for why, uh, progressivism and alleviate and suffering

00:35:49.500 is a good thing. So they're so, it's funny at once they're attacking Christianity, but they're all so 1.00

00:35:53.620 bound up in the Western tradition that, uh, liberalism. They're not self-critical or self-aware of

00:35:59.980 it. Yeah. They don't see at all the, like the historically contingent nature of some of the,

00:36:05.900 the moral truths they believe and how reliant they were on the Christian tradition. Like

00:36:10.680 in a weird way, they reify Christianity more than anyone.

00:36:14.840 I was, uh, I think that's a very interesting point that Keith makes there. This is a book

00:36:18.720 I got some years ago called God is Dead by Steve Bruce. And it's basically, it's the secularization

00:36:25.600 thesis. Oh, they call it a thesis. It doesn't actually predict anything or allow any predictions

00:36:30.260 to be made. But basically what it says is it basically, basically the idea is we get, we get

00:36:34.180 the, we get, well, it starts off with Weber. We get Protestantism. Protestantism makes us 0.94

00:36:38.480 kind of more hardworking and makes us more rational somehow. I'm not sure that's true that

00:36:41.900 I would say Protestantism is perhaps more religiously fervent. But anyway, from, um, from then we

00:36:46.820 get the industrial revolution. From then we get science and science then just sort of magically

00:36:52.000 spreads. People, people, people, people realize that science is, is the answer and science is

00:36:57.940 the way forward. And we become more scientific in our thinking, more and more and more scientific.

00:37:02.280 And religiousness is relegated to private life and eventually religiousness dies out.

00:37:06.780 And again, it's rather like there's something in the air. There's a, there's, there's a sort

00:37:11.200 of miasma of science that floats, floats over, over the, floats over society. And it becomes

00:37:18.640 more scientific. And when you show evidence that, well, look, yeah, it's become more scientific.

00:37:22.400 And then this happens and people become more religious. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Wars,

00:37:27.520 for example. Well, I would say, well, it's because of stress. It's reduction in stress that's

00:37:32.420 causing this. There's, it's got science itself that sets off this process. There's factors

00:37:37.260 behind it, genetic factors and environmental factors that are reducible to biology. And he

00:37:43.280 just says, oh, well, yeah, these are just humps and bumps. Well, you're always going to get

00:37:46.440 humps and bumps in a general process. That doesn't explain anything at all. It just describes it.

00:37:50.780 I think that's exactly what Keith was saying. This idea, it's just in the air. And anyway,

00:37:54.780 is it good that women have the vote? I mean, is that progress? I mean, let's think about 0.99

00:37:58.680 what that set off. But now, Ed, you know, I mean, that's their own fundamentalism because

00:38:07.180 obviously they have no, they have no ethical foundation for why it's good that women vote. 1.00

00:38:12.000 But if you, if you challenge that, you know, they'll all be perfectly happy to, to silence

00:38:15.880 your Troy Odey Academy because, you know, there's something in the air. It's just as mystical

00:38:19.860 a statement as, you know, I believe in, I believe in the, the God of the Old Testament

00:38:24.560 because I feel it in my heart, you know, there's just something in the air.

00:38:27.800 Yeah, frankly, frankly.

00:38:28.820 They just blithely accept postmodern liberal democratic norms. And it's just kind of like,

00:38:35.480 well, of course, science taught it, you know, it's science. 0.93

00:38:38.220 Women are less rational than men. Women are low in autistic traits than men. Women, the extreme 1.00

00:38:47.100 male is hyper, hyper, hyper systematizing and to do with system and logic and solving problems 0.99

00:38:53.580 and basically empirical truth. And the extreme female is high in empathy and therefore disinterested 1.00

00:38:59.600 in those things and more interested in everybody cooperating and everyone getting along and nobody

00:39:03.360 having hurt feelings and not much competition and everyone just getting along. So what does

00:39:07.080 it result in? If you have more women in just forget about voting in the academy, it means 1.00

00:39:11.900 less science. It means less science because suddenly something is more important than the

00:39:15.940 truth and reason and logic and the empirical fact. Something's more important than that.

00:39:21.660 And that's getting on with people and everyone getting along and no one being upset and whatever.

00:39:25.760 And so you get the rise of these midwits who are, who are, who are, you know, reasonably intelligent,

00:39:31.320 but more important than that is that they're good social skills and they're good at getting

00:39:35.160 along with everybody and they conform. And that's why women are highly conformist. 1.00

00:39:38.900 They're much more conformist than men. That's documented. They're much, much more 0.58

00:39:43.580 conformist. They're higher in conscientiousness.

00:39:45.960 They're more religious than men.

00:39:47.500 Yeah. Traditionally. Yeah.

00:39:49.040 They're higher. Traditionally, the women would be more, women are more religious than men 0.99

00:39:53.140 because they're higher when the, because they, they are more moral, more pro-social, more

00:39:58.300 altruistic. They're selected to be more religious because if you're under a society where you have

00:40:02.420 to invest in the female to get sex, then the fact that she's religious is a, is a insurance policy 0.97

00:40:07.540 that you won't be cuckolded. And so religion is sexually selected for women in a way that 0.99

00:40:11.740 it isn't in men. So they're more religious, um, um, uh, more conformist. And when the religion

00:40:16.580 is a process is a, uh, uh, an adaptive religion, then they are the enforcers of that. And they

00:40:22.080 are, they are the church ladies and they are more conservative. And initially giving the

00:40:25.800 women the vote meant that you had more conservative government because women were more religious. 0.99

00:40:29.760 Religion was conservative. Um, and women voted conservative with the collapse of that 0.95

00:40:34.300 religion and its place with liberalism. Women are more conformist, uh, more pro-social, more 0.85

00:40:40.020 group oriented, more, more not wanting to hurt feelings, therefore more liberal. Um, and that's

00:40:45.540 what we see now with the new church ladies of these woke harridans with their purple hair and,

00:40:50.200 and bingo wings. Right. So is it good to, and as Keith says, the fact that you can't question it,

00:40:57.200 but yeah, is it, is it necessarily good that they have the vote? Are these, these things,

00:41:00.820 these moral progresses, are they necessarily good always? Shouldn't a scientist like Richard

00:41:06.960 Dawkins and a philosopher, as he proposes to be, think about these questions, you know,

00:41:11.920 cut carefully and without, without rancor and without prejudgment. So the work, I amazed Keith

00:41:19.460 got far enough in the book to find this stuff because I try, I tried to read the book. I tried

00:41:25.080 to, but it was so bad. It was like teen fiction, as you say, it was, it was just so bad that I

00:41:32.500 couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't get far. Yeah. Like, I don't think you can stress the point

00:41:37.180 enough how bad their arguments are. I mean, they basically have three arguments that they

00:41:42.040 repeat ad nauseum. One is that evolution is true. Uh, and they kind of build up a straw man

00:41:47.420 of like fine tuning arguments. Whereas, you know, normally fine tuning arguments have, have

00:41:52.060 nothing to do with evolution anyway. I mean, most theists know philosophy departments accept

00:41:56.840 evolution. The other one is that, uh, atheists can be moral, which again, uh, no one really 0.70

00:42:03.160 contests. No theist really contests that. It's not really a challenge to anything. Uh, and then

00:42:07.420 the third one is that, well, look how evil the God of the old Testament is. And that's, I mean,

00:42:11.360 that's basically, that's their main argument is that they, uh, they hold up God as like just

00:42:16.300 another contingent being like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. And then they make like a logical

00:42:21.700 positivist argument against that. But I mean, the problem is the whole tradition of theism

00:42:26.200 doesn't argue for, uh, you know, a contingent finite being that argues for out of logical

00:42:31.800 necessity, uh, some being that's the, you know, the necessary ground of contingent being and

00:42:36.480 comes to that true, you know, yeah, true, you know, logical modal inference, but then they'll

00:42:42.060 never deal with that. And even Richard Dawkins famously avoided a debate with William Lane Craig

00:42:46.980 for years, who is a, you know, a serious and respected theistic philosopher that engages

00:42:52.220 in, uh, Christian apologetics. He avoided that for years. Uh, Craig, like Craig fairly easily

00:42:57.840 dispatched, uh, Hitchens and Harris. I think that's when it was kind of came to an end is

00:43:02.060 when actual philosophers like Craig and David Bentley Hart started, uh, writing books. Um, but

00:43:08.760 yeah, Dawkins avoided a debate with Craig famously and wrote an article saying he'd never debate

00:43:13.840 him because, uh, Craig made apologies for, uh, some, some crime that God committed in the

00:43:19.860 Old Testament. So Dawkins started accusing him of being an apologist for genocide, which

00:43:24.700 was like, Oh, I remember seeing that. Yeah. Yeah. Like a very transparent way of, of getting

00:43:29.820 out with someone who was actually competent in the field. But yeah, I mean, you know, again,

00:43:34.700 it's where point note, like for all their popularity, it was, I think a large part of their popularity

00:43:38.800 was because it was, it was such, you know, slop of slop for the pros. It was not some serious.

00:43:44.240 I won't dwell on this, but yeah, I mean, I, I tweeted something out about this the other

00:43:49.920 day. I don't know if you saw it, but I, you know, Craig is, is putting forth a kind of

00:43:54.440 Platonism and I, I actually think that's what needs to be interrogated in the sense of like

00:44:02.520 the, the, as opposed to the low hanging fruit of the religious right or crazed Muslim fanatics.

00:44:08.800 Uh, I, I think we actually need to examine that. Uh, and that's more interesting. I mean,

00:44:14.060 I do think Craig is, is, I don't want to dwell on this, but I, I do think he's, he's kind of

00:44:18.380 fundamentally wrong or backwards, but he's, he's wrong in a much deeper sense. He's wrong in the,

00:44:24.280 in the way that the whole Platonist tradition is wrong. Yeah. I mean, like it's funny. And I mean,

00:44:32.400 everyone has this idea that, you know, uh, like the new atheists, everything is secularizing and

00:44:38.000 we're moving past the list, but theism actually a huge resurgence in philosophy, uh, since like

00:44:43.720 the mid 20th century, people like Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig, uh, that have, you know,

00:44:50.120 taken some of the work that was done on logic in the 20th century and have kind of revived

00:44:54.440 like theistic personalism. So, but I mean, yeah, that is an interesting brand.

00:44:59.040 Anthony Flew, who was very famous and, and he, he spent his career arguing for atheism. And in the

00:45:05.940 end, he came to this. Yeah. I remember reading his book and he was actually convinced by a fine

00:45:11.400 tune and argument of sorts based on, you know, the variables of, of, uh, you know, contingent

00:45:17.600 variables of the universe and that they were so fine tuned for life. But again, you know, Dawkins

00:45:21.960 will like build up the straw man of like, if evolution is true, then you have to accept like a

00:45:28.080 materialist atheistic worldview when there's like, there's hardly a philosopher that believes that.

00:45:32.280 So a lot of the stuff was preying on his audience's ignorance.

00:45:36.700 I know. I mean, I, again, I don't want to dwell on this too much, but just from speaking nearly

00:45:41.180 from my perspective, I think we actually need to go back to the ancient world to look at the roots

00:45:46.620 of this and particularly look at the just major shift that occurred post Plato and to understand

00:45:54.120 ourselves because this is, I mean, Nietzsche's flippant one liner is Christianity is Plato for 0.98

00:45:59.320 the people or Plato for the masses. Um, but what he, I mean, that was a insult, but he, if you

00:46:05.500 understand it deeper, uh, it is that whole line of thinking of logic and, uh, beauty and truth

00:46:14.380 existing in an outer realm.

00:46:16.460 The famous quote by, the famous quote by Alfred North Whitehead is that all of Western philosophy

00:46:21.280 is a series of footnotes to Plato.

00:46:23.620 I agree. Yeah. And I mean, let's go back to the pre-Socratics and let's just go back to the 1.00

00:46:28.680 fundamental idea that the, this should, I agree, Ed, but I'm not, but you know, look,

00:46:35.660 this question that societies as they knew, even then, as they documented societies rise and fall. Um,

00:46:42.460 they, they, they, they go through these, these seasons and it's when they lose their religiousness,

00:46:47.680 they lose their fear of the gods. They become decadent. They rationalize everything, including

00:46:51.880 having children, the intelligence, stop having children and the society collapses and the, 0.93

00:46:56.380 and the cycle, uh, carries on and there's not, and there's very little that can be done about it.

00:47:00.700 But at the most one can say that we shouldn't encourage these people like Socrates to, to,

00:47:05.700 to corrupt the younger.

00:47:07.340 Yeah. I mean, you were speaking my language. I mean, Socrates was, you know, he was killed for

00:47:14.500 a reason. And it's like, we, we like to put up, Socrates was kind of the Dawkins of his day. He 0.60

00:47:20.680 was a gadfly hanging around Athens, pissing off everyone, making them question everything. 0.58

00:47:27.800 Yeah. And, and, and corrupting the youth. And I have to say the term corrupting the youth

00:47:34.600 has some other associations and I don't think.

00:47:37.580 And he, which Plato did, I go, I want to go on record as saying this. Socrates is an absolute

00:47:42.320 fuckwit. 1.00

00:47:45.940 Dunn's like gone full. I, look, I, I basically agree. I mean, the, the only thing I would say, 0.99

00:47:52.720 we, the problem is we don't know enough about many pre-Platonics or pre-Socratic philosophers

00:47:59.760 like Heraclitus. And so, and, and, and, and they, them, Heraclitus himself was kind of,

00:48:06.740 kind of Nietzschean, kind of like poetic, kind of being playful, playing with words. But that the,

00:48:13.240 the, the one, you know, you know, passage of Heraclitus that almost everyone knows is that

00:48:19.740 you never step into the same river twice. The river has changed, but then so have you.

00:48:25.500 And I think what you can glimpse from these passages like that, which again, are very poetic,

00:48:31.420 you could hang it up on your wall. But it's that tension of opposites within man, it's himself,

00:48:37.880 and to understand something as both flowing and as static. It is still a river, even though it is

00:48:44.140 changing and moving. And you are still you, even though there are actually tensions and conflicts.

00:48:50.580 And so it's, and, you know, even the, the word logos, which again, is now, I mean.

00:48:54.820 It sounds more like Plato than Heraclitus, right?

00:48:58.800 What?

00:48:59.760 It sounds more like Plato.

00:49:02.960 How?

00:49:04.100 Oh, you know, you're, cause, you know, you're finding like a, a kind of a transcendent identity

00:49:09.300 within the, within which you're situating the change, no?

00:49:12.140 But the transcendent identity does not exist outside of this world. The transcendent identity

00:49:17.300 is within the river itself. I mean, it really is fundamentally different. I mean, logos itself

00:49:22.160 is, I mean, well, you can have your own reading of Plato. That's better. I mean, I'll, I'll give

00:49:29.140 you that. But I mean, I, I, that is the fundamental move with Plato, but like logos itself. I mean,

00:49:35.760 it means word obviously. And there's this, you know, now, I mean, a couple of years ago,

00:49:39.800 we had this like logos is rising meme of going back to the text or the dogma of the church or,

00:49:45.100 or, or what have you. Uh, but I, Heraclitus, his conception of logos is different than that.

00:49:51.600 Like the truth you are getting at is a darker, more dynamic truth. Uh, it is about tensions and

00:49:58.560 opposites. Um, it is not just simply, you know, a, a, a reading the text. I think logos in a platonic

00:50:05.420 sense is something that is, yeah, I mean, you are, I don't think it's just a metaphor. You are exiting

00:50:10.240 the cave and seeing the world as it is. You are seeing the chair itself. You're seeing beauty

00:50:15.280 itself. And I think returning to pre-Socratic, um, philosophy would be a, a, something that we need 0.70

00:50:23.720 to do kind of in the wake of the death of God, because I mean, I think we would all recognize even

00:50:28.800 the most devout theists would recognize that. It's so cliche that one of the questions they might ask

00:50:34.100 you, uh, like a philosophy interview for a university is to say on what makes a table,

00:50:39.960 a table. That's the essay. Exactly. Yeah. Well, there was this joke. Respond. That is a decadent

00:50:47.040 question. Well, the best response. Ask that question. Yeah. Um, the, the best response is

00:50:53.340 there was a philosophy seminar and the, the professor put a table up on, on, uh, in front of them all.

00:50:58.980 And he said, you know, describe tableness to me, uh, in, uh, less than 10,000 words, you know,

00:51:05.200 in, in your blue book, uh, in the next five hours, you know, have fun. And, uh, that's the smartest

00:51:10.500 student. We handed back the blue book early and he had one sentence and said, what table question

00:51:15.580 mark. Yeah. Deep. All right. I find that funnier than you do. But, but I, the only thing I would

00:51:26.520 say is that we, you, you have to find something because even Craig or, or other people would not

00:51:33.900 deny that we are living in the death of God in the sense that the, the Christian system is

00:51:40.980 self-critical. It's had the wind knocked out of it at some level. And we are living. I mean,

00:51:47.860 I don't, we're, we're living in a secular age to a degree. Now I, I'm, I am highly critical of that

00:51:54.300 term, but you understand where I'm going. We are living at a point where it is more and more difficult

00:51:58.900 to justify, um, actions on the basis of the church or a book or the Christian tradition. Um, and also

00:52:08.180 these things have been, have been suffering from withering or attacks that would not have

00:52:12.580 been tolerated previously. You didn't need to justify that was the thing. But when,

00:52:15.460 when there wasn't religious society until I know the fifties in Europe or a bit later in America,

00:52:20.020 you didn't need to justify them on those grounds. It was just obvious. Of course you can't,

00:52:24.180 of course you can't steal. Of course you can't lie. Of course you can't kill people. Of course you

00:52:28.020 can't. Of course it's bad. And, and, and, and when, when society fragments like this into,

00:52:32.500 into these group selected versus individually selected camps, then, then there's absolutely

00:52:38.740 no crossover. There's absolute polarization, which is when you get very, very serious problems.

00:52:44.660 And, and which is what we're seeing, uh, now, but I, I, I'm not sure about the debt. We're

00:52:49.300 living through the death of God. I think that if you look at the data on who's has, who has babies

00:52:53.540 or who's breeding, who's having children, then we could be, we could be living through the,

00:52:58.420 the event, the, the, the rebirth of God, but, uh, but, but, but, you know, even at the lead,

00:53:06.180 I, I agree with you. I mean, this is, um, something that, you know, just Nick Fuentes types,

00:53:12.100 high, high, religious, high and extroversion. That's what we seem to be selecting for.

00:53:17.060 Ah, that's a horrifying thought. Get ready for a world war on thoughts, I guess. Um, when WWT, uh,

00:53:26.820 is it, yeah, I mean, I, I agree with you to a large extent. I mean, we, we, we talked about this in,

00:53:32.740 in your book with like Eric Kaufman and the fact that the religious shall inherit the earth,

00:53:38.660 you know, effectively they are out, they are having, what is it like one and a half children in, in America?

00:53:44.500 Um, evangelical Christians are having one and a half children for every one child of a wasp. And then 0.98

00:53:50.740 if you, if you take it out further, it's kind of like a fundamentalist Muslim is having three children for

00:53:56.100 every secular humanist Western. I mean, it is pretty, it is dramatic and, uh, and, uh, a, uh,

00:54:02.740 an Amish is having seven children. Hmm. Um, I don't think the Amish will take over the world anytime 1.00

00:54:08.980 soon, but, but I, the point stands that it's, it's like, we might be at the end of a secular age and

00:54:15.140 it was kind of a secular moment. Um, at that being said, I think the, the intellectual crisis is still

00:54:23.060 going to persist among the elite and culture makers. I, I don't think we can go back. I don't

00:54:28.740 know. Maybe I'm wrong.

00:54:29.700 Well, yeah. Once that, once you've reached a tipping point of about 25% or something like

00:54:33.700 that of the population being religious, then, um, and they, and they'll be religious remember

00:54:38.420 for genetic reasons. So you can be religious for environmental reasons. You can be religious

00:54:42.260 for genetic reasons. The environmental reasons are out. Stress is so low that that's probably not

00:54:46.740 a factor. People that are religious now or a right wing now or a conservative are utterly resistant

00:54:51.700 to the environment, utterly resistant to an environment which is telling them to be maladaptive.

00:54:56.180 They're totally resistant to it. And once those people become about 25% of the population,

00:55:00.980 those are the people that are breeding, then you, then you get a tipping point and then you

00:55:04.420 get a change in the elite. And, um, that's the kind of thing that one would, as I'm writing a short

00:55:10.180 thing on this at the moment, that that's the kind of thing that I would suspect is going to be

00:55:13.620 happening within our lifetime. Certainly.

00:55:15.460 Hmm. I think the, I'll say, yeah, I think, uh, you know, I think this current of,

00:55:21.380 um, relativism and materialism and humanism. I think it's, uh, I think it'd be a mistake to

00:55:27.860 see it as, as, uh, as something that has any kind of permanence. I think it's, I think it's largely a

00:55:33.220 reflection of, uh, sort of technical progress in, in civilization and how that influences people's

00:55:39.220 thinking. And I don't think it's, uh, I don't, I mean, there was no great revolution of thought

00:55:44.020 that displaced theism or Anton. So I think this is entirely...

00:55:47.380 I think how quickly these things, these changes can happen, how fast they can happen.

00:55:51.540 And often as well, it's when, it's, it's when the, the system feels itself under threat

00:55:56.740 that it doubles down and becomes even more extreme. So the height of conservatism was probably the

00:56:02.340 fifties where you, you were at a point where illegitimate children born to working class 0.80

00:56:07.540 people were put up for adoption. That didn't happen in Victorian times. That was happening in the

00:56:12.900 fifties. Um, that was the, the height of extreme persecution, homosexuality. They went from being

00:56:18.820 tolerated in the thirties and forties to being persecuted heavily in the fifties in Britain and

00:56:22.980 America, uh, McCarthyism and whatever. It's when it's a bit height that it tends to, that's when

00:56:27.780 you know it's falling apart. I mean, I think about Ireland, the change has been so rapid that when,

00:56:34.340 when I went to Ireland in 2002, it was, it was Ireland. It was the stereotypical Ireland that we all

00:56:40.100 know of. And when I went there in 2015, it wasn't. Um, and it completely changed. And that was in,

00:56:47.300 that was in just about 13 years. Yeah. I mean, it's easier to like up to 1992, uh, almost sexuality

00:56:54.420 was still illegal in Ireland. So you want an example of how quickly things can change, you know?

00:57:00.660 Yeah. And now you've got basically everybody that runs Ireland is gay. 0.99

00:57:03.700 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Symposium as it were. 0.98

00:57:09.380 It's just a bit of information.

00:57:33.700 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

00:57:43.380 Eight quem?

00:57:45.220 Mm.

00:57:47.460 Yeah.

00:57:49.520 We'll be right back.

RadixJournal - September 24, 2020

The Death of Atheism

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