Who is America’s ＂god＂ now？ ｜ Easter Special ｜ 4⧸17⧸22
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 20 minutes
Summary
In this episode, I talk about the dangers of technology and artificial intelligence, and how it s going to change the world, and what we need to do to prepare for it. I also talk about how technology is changing our society, and why we should be worried about it.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
All of history's strongest empires are no more.
00:00:17.720
And the British Empire, from rising sun to setting sun, dissolved.
00:00:35.120
The point is that every society that has ever led the world has diminished or collapsed.
00:00:42.820
And in those times, it's a scary and exciting time to be alive.
00:00:55.400
America is not the unsinkable ship we thought she was.
00:01:04.120
If you think the currency is unstable, have you looked at our kids?
00:01:08.940
We live in a time where every woman of the year this year is a man.
00:01:13.420
We live in a time where every woman of the year this year is a man.
00:01:25.300
Our Ivy League students want more censorship and our government wants more surveillance.
00:01:44.580
All while we grow more and more isolated, depressed, and unstable.
00:01:59.800
While all of this is going on, the brave new world is accelerating towards us at an incredible speed.
00:02:06.780
Futurists, dreamers, and innovators foretell a future where man and machine become one.
00:02:16.980
A world where technology extends life beyond death and intelligence beyond our universe.
00:02:28.600
Others say we have to do that because we've got to get off this planet before we link to computers.
00:02:47.840
If we don't enter into this brave new technological era with some collective moral agreements,
00:02:54.340
then our advancements will overtake and doom us.
00:02:58.760
If we can't define the difference between a man and a woman,
00:03:01.820
can we know the difference between man and machine?
00:03:17.560
Are we just giant pieces of meat being driven around by machine brains?
00:03:29.920
Or do we have immortal souls trapped in mortal bodies?
00:03:33.200
If all of the data of who I am can be downloaded, does that mean I live forever?
00:03:46.180
Something that could never be downloaded, reproduced, or preserved?
00:03:50.300
If a machine can deduce, communicate, abstract, out ideas, imitate, infer patterns,
00:04:02.460
if they can write poetry and art, tell us they love us, is that real?
00:04:10.380
If they respond to touch and seem to make friends, if they say, I am lonely, are they any different
00:04:22.240
If a car is driving itself and there's no time for that car to stop, Elon Musk is on the
00:04:27.820
right and the president is on the left, and Mother Teresa is in front of us, who should
00:04:34.500
We, as humans, won't be able to decide, but MIT is already working on that, because the
00:04:43.340
car will be fast enough to decide who lives and who dies.
00:04:47.180
My question is, what moral standard are they using?
00:04:52.660
Because I don't know what our moral standard is anymore.
00:04:55.540
According to the NIH, artificial intelligence will be used more extensively in healthcare
00:05:04.960
But don't fear the machine, fear the programmer.
00:05:08.480
Someone, somewhere in the world of big tech is developing the technology that literally will
00:05:31.800
Also in the NIH website is a report that scientists now are using CRISPR technology for human enhancement.
00:05:40.640
They are genetically modifying babies in test tubes, and they say it's working.
00:05:54.340
Oh, and the Pentagon went ahead and admitted, we have seen UFOs.
00:06:02.020
If aliens come down with a higher level of intelligence, are they our masters?
00:06:23.300
And how could we even make this case to aliens or a machine if we're not living it now?
00:06:33.000
According to Pew Research Center, the secularization, the shift is now evident in the American society.
00:06:40.180
So far in the 21st century, we show no signs of slowing.
00:06:45.440
Pew's religious landscape study breaks the data down by age group.
00:06:49.040
They found that each new generation cares about God less and less.
00:06:59.940
And even frequency of feeling spiritual peace and well-being.
00:07:05.160
Our nation is abandoning the God of our founding.
00:07:08.380
So where do we go to answer huge questions about right and wrong, life and death, meaning and values?
00:07:17.080
Without a God to order our society, a God that empowers you, not the government, not special interests, but you,
00:07:23.900
who's going to step in to fill that gap and will that person empower or enslave?
00:07:32.500
As America shakes off our religious foundation in the name of freedom, we have not freed ourselves from dogma or religious strictures.
00:07:41.960
We've just introduced new dogmas, new strictures.
00:07:54.820
It is accepted wisdom that you cannot serve two masters, but it should be equally regarded that everyone serves someone or something.
00:08:05.900
So one God must perish, and in its death, all of its traditions, histories, and decency will be buried along with it.
00:08:18.620
Because this is the choice in front of us now, the elephant in the room,
00:08:26.820
Not to just question and think, but come up with an answer.
00:08:34.360
And if you think you don't have to answer this question, no answer is an answer.
00:08:42.460
The good news is this has all happened before, and if we know the results, perhaps we can change our thinking to change our course.
00:08:49.620
So today, as we enter in this new era, an era rife with ethical debates, a crisis of meaning, and the last-ditch efforts to remain functioning in the world,
00:09:04.460
We have to ask the question, who is America's God now?
00:09:10.940
We aren't the first country to attempt nationally to rinse that God right out of our hair.
00:09:24.380
There's really nothing new under the sun, and although we sometimes remember the problems of the past,
00:09:32.400
We then go on to tell ourselves, ah, it's not going to happen here, or this time, it's different.
00:09:38.520
So in doing that, we rarely remember any of the solutions,
00:09:42.420
And in that way, we doom ourselves to repeat our failures over and over throughout history.
00:09:48.740
This is our country, our freedom, our children's future.
00:09:58.140
Do we want this new world order, the Great Reset, or any of its other names or prophets, CRT, BLM Inc., Wokeism?
00:10:07.220
If not, we can stop the cycle, but we have to recognize the pattern first.
00:10:12.780
So let me take you back to the French Revolution in the 1790s.
00:10:17.220
The French Revolution was the result of many things, but religious unrest was undeniably one of them.
00:10:24.140
When the Cathedral of Notre Dame was stormed by angry revolutionaries,
00:10:28.640
They decapitated 20 statues, because they thought they were beheading French kings,
00:10:34.600
But they were actually statues of kings of Judah.
00:10:40.540
The Cathedral of Notre Dame represented everything the revolutionaries hated.
00:10:45.220
Not only was it religiously significant, but the cathedral was the symbol of the monarchy.
00:10:52.240
Henry VI of England was crowned king of France there.
00:10:56.200
Religion and politics had corrupted each other in the pursuit of power,
00:11:02.480
In the revolutionaries' rage against the establishment, they were eager to destroy all connections,
00:11:11.980
This would prove to be a real challenge, considering most French citizens were Catholic.
00:11:17.380
Catholicism was the state religion, and the church owned a lot of property.
00:11:22.000
Yet, people had grown tired of the church and its guiding hand in the nation.
00:11:28.540
The vision of a de-Christianized France captured the minds of the revolutionaries.
00:11:34.020
They massacred and jailed priests, made public worship illegal,
00:11:39.660
And rushed to destroy every symbol of religion left standing.
00:11:42.860
The cathedral itself became the site of the anti-religious festival,
00:11:48.600
The festival of reason, which moxed Catholicism,
00:11:52.180
And suggested Parisians worship the principles of the Enlightenment instead.
00:11:57.860
This festival was the opening ceremony for the first state-sponsored atheistic religion,
00:12:05.060
The new atheistic religion held their launch party at the cathedral,
00:12:10.920
To send a very clear message that reason would replace traditional religion,
00:12:18.440
The bishop of Paris and the clergy were forced to attend the festival,
00:12:23.860
And promised to henceforth only recognize the public worship of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
00:12:31.140
What Constantine had done in the name of Christianity,
00:12:39.300
But the great irony in the fallout of the French Revolution,
00:12:42.060
Was that the revolutionaries thought they were freeing themselves from religion,
00:13:05.020
Who was wholly unimpressed with the cult of reason,
00:13:11.960
Where the cult of reason insisted on a world without God,
00:13:16.860
Accepted the existence of a supernatural deity,
00:13:36.200
And instilled in them proper morals and patriotism.
00:13:41.380
It was the transitory ideology between the worship of a God,
00:13:50.860
Robespierre doubted the cult of reason could actually handle the work of organizing society,
00:13:55.820
So he peppered this new cult with recognizable religious undertones,
00:14:11.280
Where Robespierre gallantly climbed up a papier-mâché mountain,
00:14:17.600
While the ordinary people looked on from below.
00:14:29.720
So why did the French leap from one religious order to the next?
00:14:34.340
Is it possible that in their zeal to get rid of anything resembling church,
00:14:39.380
They took for granted the role religion plays in ordering society?
00:14:47.060
They removed the iron fist of the Catholic Church,
00:14:50.120
But it appears they had no plans of what to replace it with.
00:15:05.200
So the opportunistic ideologies of men stepped in as an alternative.
00:15:11.080
They replaced the idea of forgiveness with the guillotine.
00:15:29.280
Are we not experiencing a digital beheading for those who betray the gods of our new society?
00:15:38.000
It's ironic that we look now at what's happening in Paris again.
00:15:49.020
There was a fire in the great cathedral of Notre Dame.
00:15:54.480
And it destroyed everything that had been rebuilt after the temple of reason.
00:16:31.940
Have we not just done exactly the same thing that the revolutionaries did
00:16:42.180
Wanted to rid themselves for something that would be better?
00:17:07.120
When political government becomes the church and the church becomes the government.
00:17:22.880
And sometimes we throw the baby out with the bathwater.
00:17:26.260
And we swing, as they did in their fervor in France, too far in the opposite direction.
00:17:37.820
But not for the reason everybody else says he was right.
00:18:08.560
Where we ask, what God is it that we are worshiping now?
00:18:44.880
Absent the discussion of whether or not God is real.
00:18:48.620
Is the discussion of whether or not cultures need some sort of faith to bind them together morally.
00:18:56.280
And do the people find that themselves or is it inflicted upon them?
00:19:04.200
Regardless of a person's belief in God, if you ask them if there are things that they could do to make their life worse,
00:19:19.180
So would, you know, abandoning a child or abusing an elderly person.
00:19:25.060
These are the kinds of actions we almost universally agree would make life worse and we shouldn't do them.
00:19:32.060
But on the reverse, there have to be things that we can do to make life better.
00:19:41.660
They must conform to, as our founders put it, some sort of natural law.
00:19:51.720
Because those are the actions we point to when we say, and we all agree, that's a good person.
00:20:05.740
I used to think these rights are self-evident, but I'm not sure anymore.
00:20:10.760
I think maybe we have to be taught what is good.
00:20:23.740
Why is it everybody knows how hard that is, but they don't question your right to put your dog down.
00:20:29.860
But now putting your mom down would be different.
00:20:38.060
I think we still have some national morals that bind us together, that prioritize human life, but those are quickly dwindling.
00:20:51.000
Last month, we may have universally agreed that teaching kindergartners about sex and transsexuals is wrong.
00:21:07.980
We used to agree that a man shouldn't be allowed to bunk with a woman in a women's prison.
00:21:16.540
But California, they can't figure out why the trans women, the people who were men, still are men, somehow or another, they've been introduced into the prison.
00:21:29.880
But the women, strangely, almost miraculously, are finding themselves pregnant in an all-women's prison.
00:21:44.280
Colorado just passed a law saying that unborn babies have no rights and can be aborted at any time without restrictions.
00:21:51.740
We are so far away from safe, legal, and rare, which should show us that the slippery slope is real.
00:22:10.100
We have not paid attention to our national values or tended them.
00:22:13.880
We expected them just to naturally sustain themselves.
00:22:24.040
Can we count on knowing right and wrong innately?
00:22:36.940
For example, if I only believe that murder is wrong, but my neighbor who wants to kill me does not, then I think we're going to struggle living in a neighborhood together.
00:22:48.860
A nation requires at least a minimum level of moral order.
00:22:57.880
The question of our time is actually, how much order do we need?
00:23:02.800
Terrible things, yes, have been done in the name of God and religion.
00:23:07.180
But let's not forget the horrid things done under the umbrella of a godless system like Nazism and communism.
00:23:16.120
Communism alone is estimated to kill up to over 100 million people last century.
00:23:23.680
The only thing that beat communism at death was disease.
00:23:28.660
Yet I argue that our ideas of morality are not conceived of independently.
00:23:36.600
Morality is received from the wisdom of others throughout history.
00:23:40.620
In America, our morality has Judeo-Christian framework, a framework many of us have just taken for granted.
00:23:48.320
This morality is baked into our system of government through the protection of natural rights, the freedom of religion,
00:23:55.620
the value placed on human life, equal justice, and so on.
00:24:17.660
He meant this as a physical principle, but it is aged into an idiom that basically means if there's a hole, it's going to be filled.
00:24:31.420
We see this in practice when somebody tries to quit smoking.
00:24:36.220
The smoker doesn't usually quit the habit without forming a new habit.
00:24:39.680
That's because we humans are more motivated by positive actions than negative ones.
00:24:50.040
More powerful than when I want to smoke, I just am not going to do it.
00:24:56.940
In religious circles, there's a concept that inside every person, there is a God-shaped hole.
00:25:02.820
And if God doesn't fill that hole, something else will.
00:25:13.200
In Matthew 43, Jesus warned of this in a cautionary tale.
00:25:18.900
An unclean spirit came out of a man and then traveled around looking for somewhere else to live.
00:25:25.660
So it went back to the man and found that the hole he was living in before was still totally empty.
00:25:33.180
So he grabbed seven more unclean spirits and they all moved back in together.
00:25:43.980
The man in the parable neglected to fill his hole.
00:25:50.640
It's kind of like what happened during the French Revolution.
00:25:53.900
The French revolutionaries destroyed institutions without understanding the role of those institutions
00:26:00.540
and the importance that they played in holding their nation together.
00:26:20.880
He's remembered for his work, The Madman, in which he wrote, God is dead.
00:26:37.900
Time magazine in the 1960s came out and they celebrated.
00:26:43.620
But the sentence that he followed the murderer of all murderers with is important.
00:27:09.480
It is the greatness of this deed that is too great for us.
00:27:14.640
Must we not become gods simply to appear worthy of this?
00:27:21.620
Nietzsche, in that sentence, asked the question that we should be wrestling with today.
00:27:37.220
In our society, we're already answering that question.
00:27:53.100
We now have people going to the mob on Twitter to absolve their guilt when they sin against its religion.
00:28:05.200
Worse yet, is there even forgiveness in this new religion?
00:28:11.100
The high priests of wokeism, what's his name, X Kendi?
00:28:16.320
They will tell you, if you are white, you will always be guilty.
00:28:31.660
If you look at modern culture, you see we are trying in every way we can to absolve ourselves of guilt.
00:28:39.840
Do we give acknowledgments to every Native American tribe, hoping that we feel better about us existing?
00:28:53.960
We apologize for assuming that someone who looks like a man is a man.
00:29:01.760
We've started to say things like, ah, as a cis white male, I feel it's best for me to keep my mouth shut, to make space for other, more marginalized voices.
00:29:12.680
We try to atone for our skin color, but you can't, our sex, but you can't, our families, our friends, our ancestors, even our old Facebook photos or posts.
00:29:26.460
We will confirm even the most outrageous ideologies if it means we can separate ourselves from guilt.
00:29:34.200
When Nietzsche said, God is dead, don't interpret that as, God is dead and all is well.
00:29:44.980
No need to give that any more thought, we're good.
00:29:57.400
And that without God, everything about humanity must change.
00:30:07.100
Throughout our history, we have organized ourselves around the belief in God.
00:30:22.940
Most importantly, the battles that were being fought with inside our own self.
00:30:34.240
The model for the Judeo-Christian world was Moses and Jesus.
00:30:40.240
But most people, even people that claim that that is their faith,
00:30:46.680
don't really even understand who those people really were.
00:30:51.800
More and more Americans don't know anything about them.
00:31:07.220
we have incidentally diminished a crucial part of what holds us together as human beings.
00:31:11.940
The part that looks upward to align itself with something better, with holiness.
00:31:21.060
I see what Nietzsche wrote as a warning to us about the vacuum left when we remove God from a God-shaped hole.
00:31:33.240
America was never special because every single American believed in God, although many did.
00:31:53.280
What made us special was Americans agreed to participate in a culture that was formed by those who did believe in God
00:32:02.480
and expected us to behave as if there was a God.
00:32:07.720
I've known many people who don't believe in God.
00:32:12.720
Those people hate it when the government encroaches on their personal liver.
00:32:18.820
There is no quality justification for individual liberty without God.
00:32:27.700
In America, atheists are equally protected by it because God, somebody bigger than the government,
00:32:42.920
Before we lose our freedom or worse, our souls,
00:32:46.380
America needs to consider again the role of God and moral order in our nation.
00:32:54.700
This week, Easter week and the week of Passover,
00:33:09.360
Tomorrow, it's not about some mass conversion to a single faith,
00:33:18.160
but we have to look at our old system and its hierarchy.
00:33:35.960
we looked at what seems to be a missing moral code,
00:33:50.680
and basic common decency seem to be in rapid decline,
00:33:56.700
Maybe it's because we're finding ourselves with less and less in common.
00:34:07.020
Is it really just we have to elect the right party and then they'll fix it?
00:34:15.420
survive the policies that protect the collective over the individual?
00:34:20.100
Can the individual survive the vicious mob mentality of that same collective?
00:34:30.580
Our ability to muster a mob literally within a minute through social media
00:34:40.700
But I think there's something more that is missing.
00:34:48.720
In the past, it wasn't that all Americans agreed or believed in God,
00:34:54.320
and certainly we never were in lockstep on religion.
00:35:00.660
America's moral code, which helped the individual self-regulate,
00:35:05.460
came from an understanding of a universal right and wrong,
00:35:24.100
Today, I want to look at our relationship with science.
00:35:27.080
And before we begin, it's important to point out that we are looking at science,
00:35:33.480
We can and should embrace the scientific method,
00:35:40.620
As it would have one believe that science and its conclusions are final,
00:35:50.200
Science gives us just the best explanation currently available for those questions of the physical world.
00:35:56.640
And when those seeking honest answers, not political ones,
00:36:03.960
which technically, religious answers were political,
00:36:07.080
as the church had enormous power in the state apparatus,
00:36:10.020
perhaps all of our problems stem from the lack of understanding and pursuit of those things that cannot be found under a microscope,
00:36:23.680
but rather only upon reflection of the why as well as the how and what.
00:36:32.840
We estimate that human understanding can account for about 5% of the universe.
00:36:47.920
And within that 5% is something labeled dark matter,
00:36:56.420
ah, yeah, we don't have any clue on what it is.
00:36:59.660
There is clearly some sort of unknown energy that holds the universe together,
00:37:07.820
And it's much more than everything else we can see.
00:37:16.960
which means most of what we, quote, know, we actually don't know.
00:37:26.100
we agree that there is some unknown force holding our galaxy together,
00:37:30.940
and we can't fully comprehend what or who or how it even works.
00:37:42.880
Most of the world still is a cosmic mystery to us,
00:37:47.460
just like it was when the Greeks were writing their myths,
00:37:50.660
or the Hebrews, when they passed down the story of creation.
00:37:54.400
Each generation does its best to answer these questions.
00:38:16.600
that material things have spiritual significance.
00:38:35.640
requirements to disclose the horrific events to a potential buyer.
00:38:41.640
In 2021, Realtor.com found that 80% of Americans would not live in a home where a murder took place.
00:38:55.580
Just because somebody was murdered in a house doesn't mean the house is a murder house.
00:39:00.200
It's not affected once it's been cleaned and cleared.
00:39:03.420
But most people think that's just not the case.
00:39:12.000
There's some unexplainable, non-material energy there, some people think.
00:39:19.340
There's so many mysteries in this world that can't be explained by only looking at the things we see.
00:39:25.220
We also have to consider the things that we do not see,
00:39:31.320
With science rapidly advancing discussions of religion, faith, philosophy,
00:39:43.640
We can calculate light speed, but we can't figure out how to keep our families together.
00:39:49.440
Medicines extend our lives, but we don't really know how to fill the extra time.
00:39:55.840
Yet, I believe, if we allow them to work together,
00:40:06.060
At their best, they're both fundamentally based in an honest curiosity about the world.
00:40:11.700
They both inspire endless questions and a general sense of awe
00:40:16.420
about how masterfully this universe is put together.
00:40:31.760
Every campfire, maybe we stopped asking this because we don't sit around campfires enough anymore,
00:40:37.720
or we live in cities where we can't see the stars and feel small.
00:40:41.240
But we would sit around a campfire and everyone would start to talk about the meaning of life,
00:40:48.740
and it would always end up with somebody looking up at the heavens and saying,
00:40:58.480
and people were a little apprehensive of what it would mean if we could prove alien life,
00:41:12.900
In 2019, the Pentagon began to release information on what I believe is the biggest story in the history of mankind,
00:41:21.280
the physical proof of intelligent life previously unknown to us.
00:41:26.860
They verified it through three-point high-tech tracking systems that we now have.
00:41:33.420
We also verified that we have physical material and technology that experts say most likely come from outside of our solar system.
00:41:44.940
Yet you say that to people and it's not widely spread.
00:41:51.820
Is it because science has become about politics and has lost its partner of philosophy and religion,
00:42:00.380
which encourage us to answer the biggest questions of who am I and what is the meaning of life?
00:42:09.120
In a culture that loves to talk about following the science,
00:42:23.360
We have made a huge mistake pitting religion and science against each other,
00:42:28.860
as if you had to choose just one of these lenses to view the whole world through.
00:42:34.900
I guess we thought the material truth discounted a spiritual truth or vice versa,
00:42:42.360
The practical study of the material world is an amazing and extremely important endeavor.
00:42:49.300
It has extended our lifespans and taught us what our bodies are literally made up of.
00:43:10.400
Similarly, religion doesn't teach us how to transplant a lung
00:43:14.500
or calculate velocity or even how to get from one place to another.
00:43:21.880
It's like science is a knife and religion is a spoon.
00:43:27.220
You don't eat steak with a spoon and you don't have soup with a knife.
00:43:33.540
If you did, you would assume the utensils are irreparably broken.
00:43:44.040
You wonder why such useless utensils even exist.
00:43:53.800
we should turn to science and the material world for solutions.
00:44:00.940
then we have to find our answers somewhere else.
00:44:03.920
It is truly a tragedy when this nation belittles the collective function of faith in our society
00:44:11.220
or when they refuse to examine physical realities.
00:44:15.340
It leaves us with only a fork for our soup or a spoon for our steaks.
00:44:20.400
The scientific method cannot produce proper values,
00:44:26.440
nor can the Bible teach you how to split an atom.
00:44:34.160
There's archaeological evidence that we may have started believing in the supernatural
00:44:38.280
as early as the Paleolithic period over two and a half million years ago
00:44:43.760
when we buried our dead in what looks like what may have been preparation for something after death.
00:44:54.620
it seems like humans have been talking about God or gods for a very, very long time.
00:45:02.560
There are evolutionary anthropologists who argue that human beings evolved for belief in God.
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Evolutionary biologist Bridget Alex wrote in an article in Discover magazine
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that make humans ideal candidates for belief in God.
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from the sun cycles to the seasons to traffic patterns.
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because we recognize the patterns of how it has gone before.
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Humans can look at what they see and infer what they don't see.
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We rely on juries to do this in murder trials, for example.
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It not only helps us navigate human relationship,
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If you've ever had the privilege of raising a child,
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just by watching other people and repeating what they do.
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This is where the images of Moses and Jesus come in.
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We could just imitate whoever and whatever somebody else knew
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if we saw that our ancestors' moral code was working,
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But to just blindly reject our ancestors' ideas
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without thorough examination is not only foolish,
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it defies the natural human trait that got us this far.
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have done their best to imitate the way he lived.
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The story of his ministry is the perfect imitation.
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Religious instinct can even be seen now in our brains.
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to religious rituals like prayer and meditation.
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You could understand that from a secular worldview.
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Or as a religious person would make sense of that,