The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 478. Heaven, Hell, & the Human Condition ｜ Jack Symes

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00:00:30.000 Hello, everybody. I'm talking today to Dr. Jack Symes.

00:00:48.420 He's a public philosopher and researcher at Durham University.

00:00:52.280 He's also known as a podcaster, the Pan Psychast Philosophy Podcast,

00:00:58.600 which is one of the UK's most popular higher education programs.

00:01:04.060 He's also the editor of the Talking About Philosophy book series.

00:01:07.560 So he's written and edited a couple of books on the philosophy of consciousness

00:01:11.460 and then books that describe the concept of God and also the morality of the God that's being,

00:01:20.160 what will you say, portrayed.

00:01:21.900 That doesn't mean that Dr. Symes is a religious believer, by the way.

00:01:27.280 And the discussion that we had that you'll watch,

00:01:32.340 what would you say?

00:01:33.940 What did we delve into?

00:01:35.940 Conceptualizations of consciousness.

00:01:38.320 Also, we discussed,

00:01:40.700 what do we have in the popular culture now

00:01:44.380 with regards to the arguments between the atheists and the believers, let's say?

00:01:48.080 Well, we have an argument about perhaps whether or not God exists.

00:01:54.160 There's an argument underneath that, which is, well, what exactly do you mean?

00:01:57.680 Who is this God that you're discussing?

00:01:59.820 How is he characterized?

00:02:01.760 And is that characterization reasonable on the theist or the atheist side?

00:02:06.140 That's what we delved into.

00:02:07.780 You know, before you can have an argument about belief,

00:02:10.600 you have to specify what it is that you're actually talking about.

00:02:14.260 Now, one of the things we alluded to, let's say, in the conversation

00:02:18.560 was the fact that the God that's criticized by the atheist types,

00:02:24.420 the materialist, reductionist, atheist types,

00:02:26.620 is somewhat of a straw man and a parody God.

00:02:29.760 And that that's not helpful,

00:02:30.860 because if we want to get to the bottom of things,

00:02:32.760 we have to make sure that we're actually arguing about the right thing, let's say,

00:02:37.940 rather than to reduce it to a kind of foolishness that can be easily dispensed with.

00:02:43.340 Well, that would be fine if you could make that reduction properly,

00:02:46.920 but it's not fine at all if you have to reduce it without knowing what you're talking about.

00:02:51.880 And that actually happens to be the case for much of the argumentation that's put forth by the atheists,

00:02:57.220 is the God they're dispensing with is not the God that's portrayed in the relevant work.

00:03:02.420 So, anyways, we walked through that kind of differentiation.

00:03:06.920 And so, what's happening in the world right now, in the West in particular,

00:03:13.040 there's a crisis of belief.

00:03:15.060 What we believe fundamentally is up for grabs.

00:03:17.980 Well, there's an ongoing intellectual conversation about how to re-specify that.

00:03:22.780 And this conversation was part of that.

00:03:24.660 So, to the degree that you're interested in participating in that and understanding it,

00:03:28.600 then, well, this is the conversation for you.

00:03:31.140 Well, so, you have three books, one on consciousness, two on God,

00:03:38.940 one associated more with existence itself, and the other, I think it's the newest one,

00:03:43.920 Defeating the Evil God Challenge.

00:03:47.700 Maybe we'll start with consciousness.

00:03:52.040 So, tell me a bit, and everybody who's watching and listening,

00:03:55.880 how you approach the problem and how you conceptualize it.

00:03:58.960 Let's talk about that.

00:04:00.440 I've done a fair bit of reading on the topic of consciousness.

00:04:05.440 So, I'm very curious to hear your take on it.

00:04:09.800 Well, what I thought was interesting, Jordan,

00:04:12.840 is this interview you did with Elon Musk recently.

00:04:16.220 And he actually expressed a view that's pretty close to mine.

00:04:19.660 He explained how, in the beginning, 13.8 billion years ago,

00:04:23.920 there was just hydrogen, and all of these physical processes evolve over time.

00:04:29.420 And somewhere in that picture, consciousness must come into it.

00:04:33.100 And he raised this question.

00:04:34.380 He said, well, is it everywhere or is it nowhere?

00:04:38.520 Consciousness is that feeling you get that when you see your parents at the school gate,

00:04:44.520 or that drop in your stomach when you realize you've said something you shouldn't, perhaps.

00:04:49.380 And that process of thinking one plus one equals two,

00:04:54.820 those are all conscious experiences, and they make up the fabric of our worlds.

00:04:59.560 And just to understand the value of that,

00:05:03.120 try and imagine your life without consciousness.

00:05:05.400 It would be a meaningless wasteland, as the philosopher Gregory Miller puts it.

00:05:10.520 So, there's nothing more valuable to us.

00:05:12.280 And as George Orwell said,

00:05:14.340 it's difficult to see what's on the end of your nose.

00:05:16.700 It's a constant struggle.

00:05:17.680 So, that thing that the person watching this, or you hearing my voice now,

00:05:22.100 these are all conscious experiences,

00:05:23.560 and they don't seem to be captured in the language of mathematics and geometry,

00:05:28.560 i.e. the language of physics.

00:05:30.500 Galileo put consciousness outside of the picture when it comes to physical science,

00:05:35.520 in order for science to make all of the incredible advances that it has.

00:05:39.780 And so, our question is,

00:05:41.300 where does consciousness fit into the scientific picture of the world

00:05:44.740 that, on the whole, people seem to be accepting in Western societies?

00:05:50.000 My view is that you should put consciousness at the bottom,

00:05:54.200 that consciousness has to be there from the beginning.

00:05:57.240 You need some rudimentary consciousness for evolution by natural selection to play with.

00:06:01.900 In the same way, you need some physical properties to make eyes and ears.

00:06:05.100 You need conscious properties or particles to make the kinds of interesting consciousness that you and me enjoy.

00:06:13.520 So, are you coming at this primarily from a philosophical perspective?

00:06:17.560 And to what degree is your viewpoint informed, for example, by biology and neuroscience?

00:06:22.260 I'd say my view is 100% philosophical,

00:06:27.680 but it goes on the basis of the things that are missing in neuroscience and biology.

00:06:35.420 Neuroscience and biology are the wrong sort of methods of understanding consciousness.

00:06:40.680 You can't scan someone's brain and see where the colour red is.

00:06:44.860 It's not going to come up.

00:06:46.940 It's a different kind of thing.

00:06:48.260 It's a private experience that isn't available to third-person observation.

00:06:53.680 So, anyone who thinks that neuroscience or biology is going to tell us where consciousness comes from

00:06:59.220 just doesn't understand what science is.

00:07:01.740 Science can't tell us about the inner nature of what particles are.

00:07:08.280 It tells us what particles do.

00:07:10.100 This is known as the easy problem of consciousness, right?

00:07:12.740 The easy problems are the problems of trying to map out what David Chalmers calls the neural correlates of consciousness.

00:07:21.280 So, I give you a sharp punch to the chest, right?

00:07:24.120 And your brain lights up in a certain way.

00:07:26.840 And so, I can go like, that part of your brain gives rise to these experiences.

00:07:31.340 But it still doesn't tell me where consciousness itself comes from.

00:07:35.240 So, that's what's always going to be missing from biology and neuroscience.

00:07:38.220 And the hard problem of consciousness, as Chalmers formulates it?

00:07:43.900 He gives it in two words.

00:07:45.440 Explain consciousness.

00:07:47.280 So, okay.

00:07:48.120 So, let me ask you a couple of questions about that.

00:07:51.220 Because I've thought for a long time that the formulators of the hard problem of consciousness

00:07:57.780 are actually wildly optimistic, in a sense.

00:08:01.320 Because I don't really think they are tackling the hard problem of consciousness.

00:08:06.380 I think the hard problem of consciousness is distinguishing consciousness from being itself.

00:08:13.280 And I have a hard time distinguishing consciousness from being.

00:08:17.460 And it's also quite difficult in some ways to distinguish consciousness from intelligence.

00:08:24.560 So, let me delve into that on the consciousness side a little bit to begin with.

00:08:30.760 So, I've spent a lot of time studying comparative mythology and also binding that analysis with my knowledge of neuroscience.

00:08:44.560 And so, I don't want to generate interpretations of cosmogonic narratives that run in contradiction to what I know on the neurobiological side.

00:08:57.440 And I like that way of triangulating, so to speak, because it seems to me the probability that ancient mythology and modern neuroscience will come to the same conclusions by chance is very low.

00:09:08.760 Because they're so disparate in terms of their mechanisms of generating knowledge.

00:09:14.000 So, in the typical cosmogonic myth, which seems to involve consciousness, you have three fundamental attributes of being and becoming.

00:09:25.200 You have something that's equivalent.

00:09:28.220 It's usually represented by a paternal figure, a figure of order, a father, a figure of light.

00:09:36.180 Those are all symbolic associations.

00:09:38.600 And it represents something like an extant structure of interpretation.

00:09:46.900 And then there's something to be interpreted, which is like a field of possibility.

00:09:50.920 That's usually represented as chaos or it's often represented as feminine.

00:09:55.600 It's represented as the night.

00:09:58.000 It has a terrible aspect and a positive aspect because out of potential comes everything good and everything terrible.

00:10:04.120 And then you have an active mediary agent that's an intermediary.

00:10:08.380 And in the Christian conception, that's the logos, for example.

00:10:11.860 The logos is the active principle that mediates between the forces of order and chaos.

00:10:17.220 And this conceptualization makes a lot of sense to me phenomenologically.

00:10:22.700 And I think it actually maps on quite well to the neuroscience.

00:10:25.040 But the reason I'm giving you this lengthy exposition as part of this question is because it's relevant to this issue of separating consciousness from being.

00:10:35.100 So I don't see how you can separate consciousness from being, even in principle, because I don't understand what it would mean.

00:10:42.680 And you alluded to this, what it would mean for there to be a reality without awareness.

00:10:49.080 Now, that doesn't mean I understand anything about what awareness is.

00:10:52.160 But I don't think it's distinguishable from the problem of being itself.

00:10:57.020 Well, I think you're in very good company.

00:11:00.180 Bertrand Russell thought this.

00:11:01.600 Darwin thought this.

00:11:04.140 Philip Goff, Galen Strawson, Miriel Bahari.

00:11:06.860 There are a lot of people who share this view that you can't separate consciousness from being.

00:11:12.920 And that being as a whole, whether that's cosmos, existence, God, the divine, as a whole, has to have the property of consciousness.

00:11:21.660 And I suppose that is slightly separate from intelligence in the sense that I can imagine some large language model being intelligent.

00:11:29.900 Or some, let's say, on the physicalist worldview, you could imagine some insect being intelligent in the way that it responds to its environment without being conscious.

00:11:40.420 That's conceivably.

00:11:41.400 I don't think that's the case in the world as it is.

00:11:43.900 But you can conceive of such a thing.

00:11:45.620 So you can pull them apart conceptually.

00:11:48.260 But what I think is interesting is this seems to me to tie into what I understand to be your wider view.

00:11:55.380 And I think perhaps it'll be good to just get that on the table so you can see the comparisons there.

00:12:00.980 I find it a little bit difficult to follow some of the language you're using there.

00:12:05.680 So excuse me if I oversimplify this for the sake of trying to keep it clear in my mind.

00:12:11.500 It seems to me that your view consists of essentially three broad propositions.

00:12:17.260 Those propositions are something like, one, when we perceive the world and act in the world, we're making value judgments.

00:12:24.460 Like, the reason I see you now is because I value this conversation rather than seeing some other thing out of the infinite ways I could see the room before me.

00:12:34.960 The second is that you think these values exist on a great chain of being, on Jacob's ladder.

00:12:41.520 They emanate the form of the good or they lead to an Anselmian conception of the divine or something like this.

00:12:48.700 And third is that I believe you think something like this, and I'm eager to hear any clarifications, is that you see story or fiction and scripture as tapping into the divine, tapping into truth or goodness, whatever that thing is that exists on top of Jacob's ladder.

00:13:08.140 And to link to our discussion on consciousness and being there, that the greatest being or the fullness of being, the thing that sits on top of the ladder, must be conscious and must be the totality of being.

00:13:23.180 And again, that seems to run through the entire history of Christian philosophy and maybe philosophy more generally.

00:13:29.600 So I wonder, do you think that captures it?

00:13:31.960 Am I getting the bits and pieces in the right order there?

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00:16:00.320 Well, I think you've got the bits and pieces in the right order with regard to conceptualizations of the divine.

00:16:08.480 I mean, let's take that apart a little bit, because that's very much worth delving into.

00:16:13.280 So, in principle, the postmodernists, their ethos is defined by so-called skepticism towards metanarratives, right?

00:16:22.900 So, their proposition—this was leotard, but it was shared—well, it's one of the defining characteristics of the postmodern school, I would say,

00:16:29.760 is that there's no overarching metanarratives, skepticism toward metanarratives.

00:16:34.900 And that actually—I find that—what would you say?

00:16:38.920 It's a puerile idea.

00:16:40.960 And the reason for that, as far as I can tell—you can tell me what you think about this technically—is that

00:16:46.120 every perception and every action requires a unifying ideal.

00:16:53.660 So, for example, if I want to lift a glass of water to my mouth, I'm sequencing—I'm unifying a tremendous number of unbelievably complex operations in order to do that.

00:17:05.560 Now, it seems simple in some ways to my consciousness, because I'm operating slightly above what I have automatized neurologically.

00:17:14.280 And so, I don't really have any conscious idea of the complexity of the molecules and the atoms and the cells and the muscles, even, that I'm using to move.

00:17:23.740 But I'm unifying all those with regards to a value-oriented purpose, and that would be to quench my thirst,

00:17:30.340 and then that would be nested in a higher-order structure of values, because I'm quenching my thirst, I presume,

00:17:35.420 because I believe it's better not to be thirsty, not to be in pain.

00:17:39.860 I believe it's better to be alive than to be dead, etc.

00:17:43.400 So, even that micro—that unifying, that micro-unity of a given action unifies all sorts of things that are subordinate to it,

00:17:55.320 but it also partakes in a higher unity.

00:17:57.800 And what the postmodernists seem to be claiming is that you can just draw some arbitrary upper limit to that unity.

00:18:04.340 And so then let's go there for a second.

00:18:06.540 Okay, so there's no overarching metanarrative.

00:18:09.520 This would be, I suppose, in some way, skepticism about God.

00:18:12.860 There's no upper unity.

00:18:15.420 Okay, so what's at the highest level then?

00:18:17.540 Disunity?

00:18:18.840 Like, nothing? 0.99

00:18:21.160 Well, nothing is a stupid answer, because if it's nothing, you can't unify. 0.97

00:18:25.520 And if it's disunity, then really what you've done is you've developed a metaphysics of discord and disunity. 0.98

00:18:32.540 And you also have done it arbitrarily.

00:18:34.900 It's like, okay, so you admit to the existence of the uniting narrative that allows you to drink from a glass,

00:18:40.680 but what, you don't admit to the uniting narrative that enables you to live in harmony with your wife?

00:18:46.280 Like, where do you draw the line exactly?

00:18:48.320 And exactly is the issue.

00:18:50.380 Like, you don't just get to say, well, there are micro-narratives and metanarratives,

00:18:55.060 and we don't believe in metanarratives.

00:18:56.540 It's like, first of all, there's not a qualitative distinction.

00:18:59.760 So, like, what exactly are you talking about?

00:19:01.860 And second, if there's no uniting metanarrative, then what the hell do you think's at the top?

00:19:06.860 Because it's either unity or discord.

00:19:09.500 Or nothing, I suppose.

00:19:10.860 And then you're in this nihilistic catastrophe that seems to do nothing but demoralize and wreak havoc.

00:19:19.880 So, okay, so you mentioned Jacob's Ladder.

00:19:23.020 It's like, well, it seems to me that the monotheistic insistence is that all goods unify towards something that brings everything together,

00:19:33.840 which would include, but even transcend consciousness, right?

00:19:37.740 Because God would be beyond consciousness, beyond unconsciousness.

00:19:41.580 But certainly, one definition of God is what stands at the highest level of unity.

00:19:47.460 Now, well, so we can bandy that about a bit.

00:19:50.300 Well, I wonder, just to ask you then, at the top of Jacob's Ladder, then, you take God to be there.

00:19:56.220 You take God to be the thing on which all values hang on, slash the thing that grounds all other values.

00:20:03.180 To be clear, are you happy to say that?

00:20:05.400 To say, I believe in the existence of God as the greatest conceivable being, let's say?

00:20:10.740 Well, I think it's, in some ways, it's a matter of definition.

00:20:15.420 I guess I would, it's a matter of definition.

00:20:18.460 So, because before we can talk about whether or not God exists, we should have some sense of exactly what it is that we're talking about.

00:20:25.760 In the moment, we're talking about the highest conceivable potential unity.

00:20:30.180 But then I would also say, so it stands at the top, but it also stands in the top in a peculiar way.

00:20:35.800 And this is definitely insisted upon in the Judeo-Christian canon, because God is inconceivable and ineffable. 0.82

00:20:43.940 And so, even if you do put him at the top, as you approach him, he recedes, and that capacity to recede is infinite.

00:20:51.420 It's also not within the scope of conceptualization, right?

00:20:55.460 I mean, the classic atheists, they perform a sort of sleight of hand, and what their God is always the wise old man in the sky who's the superstitious obstacle to the progress of science. 0.94

00:21:09.580 But that's not at all how God is conceptualized in the biblical corpus.

00:21:13.120 I mean, God is put at the top of Jacob's ladder, but he's also ineffable and receding.

00:21:18.220 Well, let's pick up on a few of those ideas then.

00:21:21.240 The first thing I think that's worth pointing out is, obviously, as you've said there, there are conceptions of God in which God is ineffable.

00:21:30.320 And there's a big debate, as you know, there in philosophy of religion to the extent to which God is ineffable.

00:21:35.220 Some people take God to be completely ineffable.

00:21:37.560 You can't say anything positive about God.

00:21:39.620 You can only say what God's not in this view.

00:21:41.860 So, God's not a pineapple.

00:21:43.420 God's not an Adam Sandler movie.

00:21:45.040 Thank God for that.

00:21:46.320 And God's not this delicious beer to my side or anything like that.

00:21:50.140 So, I can say negative things about God, but I can't say anything positive because God's beyond my own descriptions.

00:21:55.960 But I think the majority of philosophers of religion agree that you can say some things about God.

00:22:02.480 Descartes gives the example of trying to get your arms around a great mountain.

00:22:07.360 And the great mountain is God.

00:22:09.080 You can't understand God in his entirety, but you can pick up a few rocks.

00:22:13.520 You can describe a few rocks and say, hey, this is the property of omnipotence, omniscience, somnibenevolence, consciousness, being immutable, being unchanging, and the like.

00:22:24.220 And so, I think there are some things we can reasonably say that God must have as part of God's essence.

00:22:30.880 On this question of, oh, let's, okay, let's go, there are some things that we can, let's pause for a moment.

00:22:40.420 Some things we can say about God's essence, such as this.

00:22:43.620 Right, okay.

00:22:45.740 And just finally on this, because I know that you know your scripture very well.

00:22:50.340 I don't know my scripture certainly as well as you do.

00:22:54.440 I'm more from the camp of perfect being theology.

00:22:57.740 As you know, there are three major strands of theology and philosophy, which all try and arrive at a different or the same definition of God, really.

00:23:06.080 Revelation theology looks at religious experience and scripture and tries to infer properties from God from revelation.

00:23:12.920 Creation theology looks at God's hand in the world and says, well, God must be powerful enough to create the world,

00:23:18.220 good enough to give us the world and knowledgeable enough to give us such a finely tuned universe.

00:23:23.660 And then when we look at other versions like perfect being theology, and this is the version I think is the most reflective of God,

00:23:33.120 is that God, by definition, must be the greatest conceivable being.

00:23:38.840 If there is a greater being than God, then the thing that you're talking about that isn't the greatest thing isn't God.

00:23:45.780 God must have all great making properties, that is power, goodness, knowledge, and anything else we take to be intrinsically great at the top of Jacob's ladder.

00:23:56.440 If God has those things, then it is worthy of the name God.

00:24:02.660 Okay, so with regards to the argument about ineffability, Mercia Eliade points out one of the consequences of a God that's too ineffable.

00:24:14.120 So a God that you can't characterize this, and he's mapped out the death of God phenomenon across many cultures and over many times.

00:24:27.780 And what you often see happening when a culture emerges and begins to flourish is that there's a revelation at its beginning,

00:24:36.200 interestingly enough, that has a certain amount of psychological and sociological energy, and it unites people.

00:24:43.000 It offers them a framework of meaning that quells their anxiety, and also a goal or a destination that imbues them with positive emotion,

00:24:50.840 and that pulls a culture together.

00:24:52.860 And then it happens upon occasion that the pinnacle value that's posited by that culture comes under rational assault or perhaps falls prey to conflict with other religions,

00:25:08.220 and people start to doubt and the system decays, the death of God, let's say.

00:25:12.120 Well, Eliade pointed out that a God that is so ineffable that nothing can be said about him tends to float off into, what would you say,

00:25:22.740 into the cosmic ether and lose his connection with humanity.

00:25:27.440 And so I think it's better to think about it as in a hierarchical manner.

00:25:32.040 And so here's one way that I've come to understand it that's both neuropsychological and mythological at the same time.

00:25:39.360 So, you know, in the story of Exodus, Moses is compelled forward to take a position of leadership as a consequence of his encounter with the burning bush.

00:25:51.420 And the bush is a tree.

00:25:53.480 It's the tree of life, and it's on fire because it's alive.

00:25:56.180 And a burning bush is a representation of that which calls you forward.

00:26:02.900 That's a good way of thinking about it.

00:26:04.360 Now, that takes concrete form in your life, right?

00:26:07.520 So you might be attracted to a particular lover.

00:26:10.340 You might be attracted to a particular profession or a particular book on a shelf when you walk into a library.

00:26:18.460 It's like a light turns on and you're called forward to it like a moth.

00:26:24.200 And then, as you know, as you mature and you transform and the way that you look at the world changes, the thing that compels your interest transforms.

00:26:33.800 But then you could imagine something at the bottom of that that's constant across all those transformations that's like the spirit of calling per se.

00:26:44.380 And it spirals you upwards in a developmental path, and it recedes as you move towards it.

00:26:51.020 Now, that's one characterization of God, particularly in the Old Testament, is God is calling, right?

00:26:57.580 And that's reasonably well mappable, I would say, onto the neurological systems that mediate positive emotion because the positive emotion systems do call you forward.

00:27:09.240 They fill you with hope.

00:27:10.260 They fill you with enthusiasm, which is a word derived from the phrase for being possessed by God.

00:27:16.940 But, you know, you can kind of understand that behind all the things that call, proximately, is the spirit that calls transcendentally.

00:27:26.540 And you could think of the essence of that spirit as a closer approximation of the divine.

00:27:33.000 And that's not a full characterization of the divine because in the Old Testament, for example, you also have God as the voice of conscience, which is quite different.

00:27:42.260 That's more of a restrictive voice or impulse, so to speak.

00:27:46.720 This is good, though, because I think that these things that are in Scripture, whether Scripture is revealing truths or it's revealing moral truths and the like, whether it's revealing symbols,

00:27:57.440 I take your view to be, they're reflecting the divine, they're, as Schopenhauer would put it, Schopenhauer's view of aesthetics was that when we're having an aesthetic experience, it taps into the rhythm of what he called the will.

00:28:11.660 So you're tapping into the form of aesthetic beauty, which I think your view is sort of similar to there in terms of Scripture.

00:28:19.740 There's certainly parallels, at least.

00:28:21.340 But what I think is interesting from a philosophical point of view is, and I think for people more generally, is whether these events are concrete in the sense that they're historical events.

00:28:35.900 And second, whether or not you do take this God to be a perfect being, like the God of Anselm, the God of Aquinas, the God of Augustine, like the classical conception of God.

00:28:48.220 Because I think there are a lot of Christians out there at the moment that are holding you up and saying, look, Christianity's back. 0.99

00:28:55.160 Here's Jordan Peterson saying he's a Christian, and here's him talking about Scripture.

00:28:59.920 Like, new atheism's dead, and here we are with the resurrection of Christianity.

00:29:05.920 But I don't think you're the type of Christian which they have traditionally had in mind, for sure.

00:29:12.720 My colleague at Durham University, Philip Goff, is either coming out, or maybe I'm going to be coming out for him here, as a heretical Christian.

00:29:22.600 And he thinks you don't have to believe in a perfect God, and you don't have to believe that the Christ event was a real event in order to be a Christian.

00:29:31.420 There is a middle way between God and atheism, and that's my view as an agnostic as well.

00:29:35.940 There is a middle way.

00:29:36.560 It's just different to perhaps yours and Philip Goff's.

00:29:39.060 And I wonder, would you be happy to be characterized in that middle ground, in finding new radical solutions to what's been a very partisan debate between theists and atheists?

00:29:51.080 Well, I don't think that characterization is quite accurate, although I think, not in its details, but I think perhaps there's elements of the gist that are accurate.

00:30:00.860 I mean, I suppose, would you say, you could say philosophically that I'm an existential Christian.

00:30:10.280 Maybe that's a reasonable way of putting it, in that I think that what, I believe that the Judeo-Christian ethos is not an ethos of, what would you say, of propositional belief.

00:30:25.280 The propositional belief is a surface, and it's necessary, but only insofar as it's in accordance with something deeper.

00:30:32.640 Just like your words should be in accordance with your actions, but your actions are the fundament.

00:30:38.300 Now, the words shouldn't contradict that.

00:30:40.400 And I'm not saying that words are trivial, because they're not, but the commitment to faith that's demanded by Christianity is an existential commitment.

00:30:49.220 And what that means, it's an all-in commitment, and that's a definition.

00:30:53.140 I mean, Christianity is actually an outline of an all-in commitment.

00:30:57.340 It's a representation of that.

00:30:59.760 And so, now, with regards to God being perfect, well, in some sense, for me, that's a moot point.

00:31:08.260 In a way, partly because with this Jacob's Ladder conception, it's enough for me to know that no matter how high I continue to climb, there won't be an upper limit.

00:31:21.420 I mean, you know, hell is being characterized as a bottomless pit, and part of the reason for that existentially is because things, no matter how bad things get, and they can get very, very bad, you can make them worse.

00:31:36.280 There's something you can do to make them worse.

00:31:38.240 But I also think that that's true on the positive side, which is that if you follow your calling, let's say, and abide by your conscience, there's no limit to the upward track.

00:31:48.000 And I guess I would say that we've conceptualized belief improperly in our culture, and because of that, we're caught in a dilemma between the Enlightenment rationalists and the Christians, because we have a propositional dispute. 0.53

00:32:03.360 But I would say, let's talk about calling for a minute.

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00:33:43.440 Well, can I just come in on?

00:33:47.840 Yeah, please, please.

00:33:48.800 Because these are three fascinating points.

00:33:50.580 I think we're into the detail and where things are perhaps different between your views.

00:33:55.300 And let's call them the analytic philosophers of religion, the people who are in the universities thinking about this question in detail.

00:34:04.780 I think there are three things there, right?

00:34:07.000 The first is that you said there that you can climb Jacob's ladder, but you'll go on forever.

00:34:14.280 Like, you'll never reach it.

00:34:15.440 And there are two ways of interpreting, I think, that statement.

00:34:18.200 The one is that you, Jordan Peterson, and me, Jack Syams, can climb the ladder towards intrinsic goods,

00:34:24.180 but perhaps will never reach what we might consider perfection, i.e. reaching the fulfillment of goodness, knowledge, power.

00:34:31.680 We'll always be striving.

00:34:33.100 But I don't think you can make a second claim, which would be that the ladder itself goes on forever.

00:34:38.760 Because ultimately, I think you need something to ground or hang up those values onto.

00:34:44.540 You need an intrinsic good at the end, a fulfillment of what is taken to be good.

00:34:50.980 So I think those two things can be consistent.

00:34:52.200 And you need one that's understandable.

00:34:54.380 I completely agree you need one understandable.

00:34:56.640 But in terms of the idea of God as perfection, again, this is just a side point of information.

00:35:03.700 What's interesting is that Eugene Nagasawa and Catherine Rogers, two brilliant philosophers of religion,

00:35:09.320 have claimed there has never been a philosopher of religion who has argued for anything less than a perfectly good God.

00:35:17.380 And that's phenomenal.

00:35:18.240 That's changing.

00:35:18.960 As I mentioned a second ago, maybe Goff fits into this view with a God of limited powers or the God which,

00:35:26.120 to go back to our earlier part of the discussion, a God whose consciousness underlies our world but is constrained by the laws of physics, let's say.

00:35:34.260 There is a greater being than that and there's a being that's not confined to the laws of physics.

00:35:37.860 So we're in a really interesting part of philosophy and religion at the moment in our culture where that's changing.

00:35:43.340 But the third point, and I think this distinction shows the difference perhaps between your thinking and my thinking on this,

00:35:51.620 is that let's take that statement, I believe in God.

00:35:55.860 For me, that can be taken in two ways, the focus being on belief.

00:35:59.760 Either I believe in God like I believe in humanity.

00:36:03.540 When I say that, I don't mean like there's a thing called humanity.

00:36:06.000 I mean, there's a thing which I'm putting my hope in.

00:36:08.680 There's something that I trust, i.e. humanity.

00:36:11.620 But obviously, there's a second way of taking that statement, which is, I believe that this thing exists, like the concept of humanity or God.

00:36:20.400 And so when you say you're an existentialist believer in God, I think you probably fall into that first category that you take the leap of faith towards God.

00:36:29.320 You trust God.

00:36:30.280 You put your belief in God in that way, rather than making the propositional claim, there is some concrete entity that is satisfied and is true and described in the proposition there as a perfect being who's conscious, powerful, good, and the like.

00:36:47.900 Do you think that's a fair characterization?

00:36:49.200 Well, I have a hard time understanding exactly how to get to the second without thoroughly dispensing with the first or thoroughly arranging the first properly.

00:36:59.020 So let me respond to that in a way that also addresses another issue that you brought up.

00:37:03.280 So you said, with regards to Jacob's ladder, and I described this like infinite upward climb, let's say, at least of human beings, you said, well, there has to be something at the top.

00:37:15.620 So let me describe for a moment how I think that's dealt with, at least in part, in the combined Old Testament and New Testament canons.

00:37:25.420 And I'll make reference, I think, primarily to the concept of the Logos.

00:37:29.460 So there's an insistence in Christianity that, and Christ himself makes this claim, that he's the embodiment of the prophet and the laws.

00:37:37.900 And this is a very interesting claim technically, because what you have in the Old Testament, and you already alluded to this, is a series of characterizations of God.

00:37:47.400 It's not all the Old Testament is, but the narrative part of it is a sequence of characterizations of God.

00:37:53.640 It's sort of like, there's a human being in this situation, and this is what God appears like to him or her.

00:38:00.820 And then there's a human being in this situation, and this is how God appears to him or her.

00:38:05.680 And so the God of the Tower of Babel is characterized in a different manner than the God in the story of the flood.

00:38:14.160 There's an underlying insistence that these are all manifestations of the same transcendent reality.

00:38:20.060 But the characterizations differ.

00:38:21.740 Now, there's a pattern across those characterizations.

00:38:26.720 Now, Christ's claim is that he's the physical embodiment of that pattern.

00:38:31.360 And it's an extremely interesting claim.

00:38:33.860 I have a very difficult time dispensing with it, let's say, on rational grounds.

00:38:39.580 And this is an answer to the definition of what's at the pinnacle, at least insofar as that might be comprehensible by human beings.

00:38:46.960 Because Christ, like Job, is the mortal man who says yes to existence in the most radical possible manner.

00:38:58.320 And so, to understand that, you have to take apart, in some sense, what that radical acceptance would mean if it was truly radical.

00:39:07.140 And what it would mean is something like what was initially outlined in the story of Job.

00:39:12.260 So, Job is a good man by God's own testimony.

00:39:15.480 And God essentially turns him over to the powers of evil so that they can have their way with him.

00:39:22.280 And there's historical precedent for that idea because Cain invites in Lucifer to have his way with him.

00:39:30.200 This is something that happens in the Old Testament canon.

00:39:33.360 But in the case of Job, Job doesn't invite Satan in.

00:39:36.560 God basically sicks Satan on him.

00:39:38.460 And then everything that can possibly happen that's terrible to a person happens to Job.

00:39:42.560 So, not everything.

00:39:45.060 Not everything.

00:39:45.960 But it's a close approximation.

00:39:48.100 And Job's response, Job has two responses.

00:39:50.900 Like, he's so tortured that his wife says to him, 0.96

00:39:54.060 there's nothing left for you to do except shake your fist at the sky, curse God, and die.

00:39:59.180 And she has reason, viewing his misery, to make that claim. 0.92

00:40:03.740 And part of the claim, and this would be relevant to the discussion we will have about notions of the evil God,

00:40:09.980 it's like Job is pushed past what you might regard as reasonable mortal limits.

00:40:17.340 But he does two things that are extremely interesting.

00:40:21.080 He refuses under great duress to lose faith in the essential nature of his being.

00:40:28.720 So, he says to his friends and to God, he says,

00:40:31.120 Look, I'm not a perfect man.

00:40:34.500 I have the imperfections of a good man.

00:40:39.980 But, that doesn't mean that I'm deserving of the existential catastrophe that has visited me.

00:40:47.600 It isn't a mere cause and effect consequence.

00:40:50.420 There's an arbitrariness about it.

00:40:52.260 But, and so I don't lose faith in myself as a being, no matter what happens to me.

00:40:56.780 But I also, simultaneously, don't lose faith in the divine itself.

00:41:01.200 Even though all the evidence in front of me at the moment suggests that

00:41:04.620 life is nasty, brutish, and short, and perhaps even unforgivable, and it's evil.

00:41:09.900 Now, what happens in the Christian story, in the Passion,

00:41:12.500 is that that story of Job is magnified across virtually all conceivable dimensions,

00:41:18.880 so that Christ is the archetypal figure who faces the worst life has to offer by definition,

00:41:27.120 but also throws himself fully open to that.

00:41:32.260 And so, you might say, well, that's what it means that he takes the sins of the world unto himself.

00:41:39.020 So, imagine that the proper pattern of being for a human being is radical, open-armed acceptance of fate.

00:41:47.920 Not just acceptance, but welcoming.

00:41:49.620 But then imagine, because the insistence there, it's a very interesting idea,

00:41:54.380 is that the more radical you are in that willingness,

00:41:58.800 the more what the Old Testament thinkers characterized as the Spirit of God

00:42:04.840 is likely to dwell within you and walk with you through your trials.

00:42:10.040 And I can tell you, as a clinician, I can't see a flaw in that argument,

00:42:15.840 because one of the things we've learned in the clinical realm is that if you encourage people

00:42:20.560 to face the terrible things that they're tempted to avoid,

00:42:26.840 that their character develops radically and they become much stronger.

00:42:31.060 And that's been discovered across all the fields of clinical endeavor.

00:42:35.200 I think this might be the point where we find some interesting disagreement.

00:42:40.420 I think we've been getting along like brothers so far,

00:42:43.500 but those brothers might turn out to be Cain and Abel.

00:42:45.840 When I give a couple of clarifications here,

00:42:48.420 is that it seems like your argument there is,

00:42:51.240 like there is one of putting faith in the divine,

00:42:53.900 in believing in, in the sense I gave a moment ago,

00:42:56.620 to trust and place your hope into something,

00:42:59.720 in God in this example,

00:43:02.500 despite evidence to the contrary, you might think,

00:43:05.160 or despite punishment from a God who claims they are perfectly good.

00:43:09.380 And that seems like an existential claim,

00:43:12.620 and I believe it is an existential claim.

00:43:14.560 But you put them the other way around a moment ago.

00:43:18.220 You said,

00:43:18.780 I can't imagine the first idea of belief I gave you without,

00:43:23.320 I can't imagine the second idea of belief I gave you without the first,

00:43:26.780 i.e. you thought that without believing in,

00:43:29.300 putting in the trust or the hope in something,

00:43:31.640 then you couldn't have the latter.

00:43:33.860 But I think it's the other way around.

00:43:35.520 I think you need to know that this thing exists

00:43:38.480 before you put your belief or hope in it.

00:43:42.120 And so you could think of an example, right?

00:43:44.040 Like, I believe in Santa Claus,

00:43:47.140 i.e. I believe that Santa Claus will punish naughty children

00:43:50.260 and be good to the good children,

00:43:52.480 the children on his nice list.

00:43:53.880 And you might think that's a reasonable thing to say I believe in,

00:43:58.580 but it's not,

00:44:00.820 there is such a thing called Santa Claus that exists.

00:44:03.980 So it seems like you do need the latter there.

00:44:07.020 Now, I have a couple of problems.

00:44:09.040 It might be this, eh?

00:44:10.240 Yeah, well, that might be a dance.

00:44:13.240 There is certainly a dance if you take them both to be true.

00:44:17.720 But I don't think you want to commit to the second one.

00:44:20.560 So I don't think you can dance the dance that you want to.

00:44:23.240 I think there's one person tangoing in that scenario.

00:44:26.340 There's only, I believe in God and make the jump.

00:44:29.180 There's no, and the proposition that God exists is true.

00:44:32.880 You don't say that one.

00:44:34.160 So I don't think you're welcome on God's dance floor, let's say.

00:44:39.260 But let's-

00:44:39.600 Well, I have a hard time with what people

00:44:42.400 who ask that question.

00:44:44.620 People ask that question as if

00:44:47.260 the statement exists is self-evident.

00:44:50.660 It's weird, eh?

00:44:51.340 Like, because when you're putting together a statement

00:44:54.520 and one of the objects of the statement

00:44:58.980 or the subjects of the statement

00:45:00.720 is the ineffable unity of all things,

00:45:04.460 you just can't cram another word in there like exists

00:45:07.700 without introducing an equal mystery

00:45:10.200 because you're trying to make an equation, right?

00:45:12.720 Does God have the properties of something that exists?

00:45:15.520 It's like, well, you already have an implicit notion

00:45:18.840 of what existence constitutes.

00:45:21.980 It's part and parcel of the structure

00:45:23.920 that's enabling you to ask that question.

00:45:25.880 And I don't know what your theology of existence means.

00:45:29.760 So when you say to me,

00:45:31.180 I don't mean you specifically,

00:45:32.560 but I could mean you too.

00:45:34.140 It's like, does God exist?

00:45:35.660 It's like, well, what's your conception of exist?

00:45:37.800 I mean, that's what we're bandying about to some degree, right?

00:45:40.960 It's the thing that's at the top of Jacob's ladder.

00:45:44.080 Okay, well, that's not the same thing as a table, right?

00:45:47.700 It's a different kind of existence.

00:45:49.160 There is something which is in the world,

00:45:52.900 physical or non-physical, that fits that description.

00:45:56.340 You might have a Wittgensteinian idea from the Tractatus,

00:45:59.820 although it's outdated,

00:46:01.160 that my language literally maps onto something

00:46:03.280 that exists in reality.

00:46:05.280 It doesn't need to be a physical entity.

00:46:07.600 I can speak of conceptual entities

00:46:09.820 like sets and numbers and the like.

00:46:12.380 I can speak of things that I can conceive of

00:46:15.460 existing non-physically,

00:46:16.960 like souls and angels and God.

00:46:19.800 So there are discussions to be had there

00:46:22.160 and an interesting one, perhaps,

00:46:23.520 in terms of what we mean by exist.

00:46:25.440 Why do we say that Harry Potter does not exist,

00:46:29.260 but that God does exist,

00:46:32.200 if we don't know what the word exists means?

00:46:35.060 There is something, though,

00:46:36.680 call it exist or call it, I don't know, the gist.

00:46:39.920 Give it whatever label you want.

00:46:41.680 There is something that separates Harry Potter

00:46:44.180 from God in the view of the Christian.

00:46:47.000 They're not the same sorts of things.

00:46:49.220 And I think that's important.

00:46:50.560 Now, we can have a discussion about what that thing is,

00:46:53.760 but I don't think we need to examine every tree

00:46:56.080 to make our way out of the forest.

00:46:58.000 We know generally what we mean by exist.

00:47:01.060 I've said that God is the perfect being

00:47:04.380 and we both have a broad idea of what that might be.

00:47:08.580 And to believe, we've pulled apart together

00:47:11.440 two types of belief, to believe in

00:47:13.240 and to believe that proposition's true.

00:47:15.960 So on believing in God, trust and faith,

00:47:20.180 Job's leap of faith, and yours as well, perhaps,

00:47:23.620 is that it doesn't seem like that's consistent

00:47:26.780 with an authentic existence in which one accepts the truth.

00:47:30.700 I believe that one of your rules in your successful book

00:47:34.080 is tell the truth and at least don't lie.

00:47:37.500 And perhaps that starts with getting your own house

00:47:39.540 in order first, that when you look in the mirror,

00:47:41.880 you should tell yourself what's true

00:47:43.800 and not believe in things that you don't know are true.

00:47:47.160 Because if you don't know they're true,

00:47:48.820 then you should suspend judgment on those things.

00:47:51.380 And that's strongly my view.

00:47:52.820 I'm an agnostic about being agnostic,

00:47:55.020 and I'm almost sure of it.

00:47:56.880 Because I think there are very strong arguments

00:47:59.080 for traditional theism.

00:48:00.840 I think there are very strong arguments

00:48:02.400 for atheism as well.

00:48:03.680 But ultimately, because I don't have enough evidence

00:48:06.080 for one side or the other,

00:48:07.940 I think the authentic and perhaps cold, dark,

00:48:13.000 and I suppose empty universe I find myself in

00:48:17.820 is one where I'm striving to find that meaning,

00:48:20.380 find responsibility, and find value.

00:48:22.260 And that's a difficult task psychologically.

00:48:25.120 And certainly with the Christian view

00:48:26.680 you developed a moment ago,

00:48:28.220 you get certainty, right?

00:48:29.760 You get the ultimate cosmic purpose.

00:48:32.180 You get strong, objective moral values.

00:48:35.320 You get this story of the world

00:48:37.720 in which you sit neatly in the place.

00:48:40.700 Now, just to talk about this for a moment,

00:48:42.800 because I think this is a really interesting point,

00:48:44.500 is that those who are agnostic or like myself

00:48:48.360 or who are atheists,

00:48:49.640 they often say things like,

00:48:51.300 oh, I feel so small in comparison

00:48:54.540 to the rest of the cosmos.

00:48:56.240 Like my life seems so insignificant and meaningless.

00:48:59.340 And you sort of go,

00:49:00.060 well, if you were as big as the world

00:49:02.020 or as big as the sun

00:49:03.080 or as big as the universe,

00:49:04.600 would that make your life more meaningful?

00:49:07.000 And sort of go, no, it wouldn't change it.

00:49:08.980 So size doesn't seem to matter.

00:49:10.740 And then you think,

00:49:12.060 well, maybe it's because I only live for 80 years

00:49:14.360 if I'm lucky.

00:49:14.940 And compared to the four and a half billion years

00:49:18.060 of our world and the 13.8 of the universe,

00:49:21.160 it seems like my life's meaningless in that context.

00:49:24.080 And you go again,

00:49:24.880 like imagine you lived for 800,000 years

00:49:27.340 or 8 million years.

00:49:28.800 Does that give your life more meaning?

00:49:31.180 It seems like it doesn't.

00:49:33.060 Now, despite what my ex-girlfriend might tell you,

00:49:35.360 it seems that size and how long you last

00:49:38.260 isn't what's valuable in the context

00:49:40.500 of meaning and purpose,

00:49:43.020 the thing that's meaningful

00:49:44.380 and the thing that we cry out for

00:49:47.080 as agnostics or atheists

00:49:48.820 is what Albert Camus referred to,

00:49:50.860 as you know, as the absurd.

00:49:52.460 We call out for meaning from a universe

00:49:54.640 that's indifferent to us.

00:49:56.480 As the philosopher Michael Hauskiller tells us,

00:49:59.080 this version of the absurd

00:50:00.500 threatens to rob us of our sanity.

00:50:03.980 Here be lions and dragons.

00:50:06.140 Here be cold and dark and emptiness.

00:50:09.100 And that's uncomfortable.

00:50:11.020 That you don't belong here

00:50:12.440 or it isn't obvious that you belong here.

00:50:14.440 But I think that's,

00:50:15.920 if we're going to tell ourselves the truth,

00:50:18.320 that search for meaning

00:50:19.840 in a world that doesn't obviously present us meaning

00:50:22.840 is the world that we need to embrace

00:50:24.880 if we're going to live honestly and authentically.

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00:51:38.460 Well, I can tell you

00:51:40.100 what made itself manifest as evidence for me.

00:51:45.880 So, the first thing,

00:51:49.660 I'll sort of put a prodroma on this account.

00:51:53.760 And so, you know that in the Christian passion,

00:51:57.640 Christ faces youthful, unjust death 0.63

00:52:01.240 at the hands of his own people, 0.64

00:52:04.180 under the thumb of a tyrant, let's say.

00:52:06.500 And that's not the sum of the injustice of his death,

00:52:11.560 but in some ways, that's the essence.

00:52:13.740 And that's a pretty rough account of mortal limitation.

00:52:17.960 But that's not the whole story,

00:52:20.540 because the other encounter

00:52:22.200 that is part and parcel of the Christian passion

00:52:24.600 is the harrowing of hell.

00:52:27.300 And that's a more mythologized account, let's say.

00:52:31.040 But it has equal existential significance,

00:52:33.600 because the essence of the Christian passion

00:52:37.440 is the transcendent story of the eternal serpent.

00:52:42.720 That's a good way of thinking about it,

00:52:44.140 is that what Christ is encountering

00:52:46.160 is not only the limitations of mortality,

00:52:48.720 but the actuality of evil.

00:52:52.160 Okay, so now,

00:52:53.220 and then you might say as well,

00:52:55.960 and you could say this from a clinical perspective,

00:52:57.720 that it's not possible to live in the world

00:52:59.940 and be complete and grounded

00:53:02.960 and upward striving in the best possible manner

00:53:06.340 without contending with the issue of evil.

00:53:08.260 You have to contend with your mortality,

00:53:09.880 but that's not enough.

00:53:10.680 And it might be that contending with the problem of evil

00:53:13.200 is a deeper problem

00:53:14.980 than contending with the problem of mortality.

00:53:17.060 And that's saying a lot,

00:53:18.020 because the former's no joke.

00:53:20.140 Okay, so when I started my investigations

00:53:23.920 40 years ago or more,

00:53:27.080 I was obsessed particularly with the problem of evil,

00:53:29.920 and mostly from a psychological perspective.

00:53:32.340 And the question for me,

00:53:34.700 in a nutshell, I suppose,

00:53:36.360 was what's it like to be an Auschwitz camp guard

00:53:39.820 who enjoys his work?

00:53:42.260 And like, that's not a question

00:53:43.500 that people usually ask

00:53:44.740 because they don't conceive of themselves

00:53:46.640 as the sorts of beings who could do that,

00:53:48.960 much less enjoy it.

00:53:50.100 And that always struck me as dangerously naive.

00:53:53.120 Anyways, the consequence of investigating that question

00:53:56.780 was that I became, for whatever it's worth,

00:54:00.620 unshakably convinced that evil was a reality.

00:54:03.840 And maybe, in some ways,

00:54:06.680 like an undeniable and fundamental reality,

00:54:09.380 something akin to the reality of pain.

00:54:12.220 Now, what that did for me

00:54:13.960 was highlight out something

00:54:16.300 that was the reverse of that

00:54:18.480 by implication.

00:54:20.720 Because if you can imagine hell

00:54:23.540 and its darkest reaches,

00:54:26.080 you can posit the existence

00:54:28.020 of something that's antithetical to that.

00:54:30.840 Now, it's always been more difficult

00:54:32.300 for me to conceptualize

00:54:33.880 what might be the essence of good

00:54:36.340 than it is to conceptualize

00:54:37.960 the essence of evil.

00:54:39.020 I actually think it's easier,

00:54:40.300 in some ways,

00:54:40.800 to put your finger on evil.

00:54:43.020 But once you do that,

00:54:45.060 once you do that,

00:54:46.040 there's an implication

00:54:47.040 that immediately emerges,

00:54:48.720 which is, well,

00:54:50.200 there's some pathway to hell,

00:54:52.840 obviously,

00:54:53.600 since we can create it on Earth

00:54:55.120 and have done that repeatedly

00:54:56.640 in our own private lives,

00:54:58.000 say,

00:54:58.180 and sociologically

00:54:59.640 and politically,

00:55:01.020 that strongly implies

00:55:02.500 that there's a pathway

00:55:03.680 in the other direction

00:55:04.680 towards something

00:55:05.840 that's the opposite.

00:55:07.480 And that's been much more difficult

00:55:08.820 to flesh out.

00:55:09.720 But for me,

00:55:10.440 like that was the existential grounding

00:55:13.520 of my belief

00:55:14.380 in something approximating

00:55:15.700 a transcendent good.

00:55:16.840 At least,

00:55:18.120 the transcendent good

00:55:19.140 is the pathway away

00:55:20.500 from, let's say,

00:55:21.300 the worst excesses of Auschwitz.

00:55:23.720 This is good,

00:55:24.380 because I'm with you on this.

00:55:25.700 And I think, again,

00:55:26.620 the majority of philosophers

00:55:28.160 think that there is

00:55:29.220 something called evil,

00:55:30.740 but maybe they use

00:55:31.620 different ways of describing it.

00:55:33.240 It's interesting

00:55:33.880 you described evil

00:55:35.120 as pain there,

00:55:36.500 but at the same time,

00:55:38.040 we can cash out pain

00:55:39.680 in terms of higher order goods

00:55:41.280 that that pain gives rise to.

00:55:42.820 So, you know,

00:55:43.620 I take the injection,

00:55:44.880 so I'm immune from X, Y, and Z,

00:55:46.660 and, you know,

00:55:47.320 the pain was worth it.

00:55:48.360 It wasn't a gratuitous

00:55:49.680 or a necessary bit of pain.

00:55:52.060 And so it's not evil

00:55:53.400 in that sense.

00:55:54.120 And likewise,

00:55:55.480 when it comes to Auschwitz,

00:55:57.720 Hiroshima, Nagasaki,

00:55:59.900 the pain and the suffering

00:56:00.940 of the individuals

00:56:01.980 who died at the hands

00:56:03.380 of these weapons

00:56:04.620 or of these regimes

00:56:05.820 were themselves

00:56:07.420 the victims

00:56:08.680 of what they might conceive

00:56:09.980 to be as evil

00:56:10.840 or as gratuitous suffering.

00:56:12.940 But the Christian says something,

00:56:14.820 well, they've said it

00:56:15.400 for a long time, right,

00:56:16.420 that there are theodicies

00:56:17.980 and defences

00:56:18.740 that one can give

00:56:19.740 on behalf of God

00:56:20.840 to get God off the hook there,

00:56:22.500 that it's greater

00:56:23.420 to have free will

00:56:24.340 and do these things

00:56:25.440 than not.

00:56:26.560 And people like Richard Swinburne,

00:56:28.460 the popular philosopher

00:56:29.840 of religion

00:56:30.220 defending Christianity,

00:56:31.920 he defends things

00:56:33.440 like the Holocaust 0.92

00:56:34.280 and defends

00:56:35.100 the dropping of the bombs

00:56:36.240 of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

00:56:39.100 And that's a real bitter pill

00:56:40.980 for a lot of atheists

00:56:41.900 and agnostics to swallow. 0.91

00:56:43.300 I do think that

00:56:44.600 these defences

00:56:45.280 and theodicies

00:56:46.020 collectively

00:56:46.960 can respond

00:56:48.100 to the argument

00:56:48.820 from evil,

00:56:49.820 the evidential version,

00:56:50.980 that is.

00:56:51.860 But there is a new version,

00:56:53.560 there are several new versions

00:56:54.580 of the problem of evil

00:56:55.460 that are coming out recently

00:56:56.780 and I think

00:56:57.260 the most dangerous

00:56:58.360 of all of them

00:56:59.160 is what Eugene Nagasawa,

00:57:01.060 a Christian himself,

00:57:02.620 describes as

00:57:03.300 the systemic problem

00:57:04.380 of evil.

00:57:05.460 And he says,

00:57:06.900 a perfectly good God,

00:57:08.760 the challenge goes,

00:57:10.400 would not gear the system,

00:57:12.480 rig the rules

00:57:13.280 to give rise to life

00:57:15.920 as evolution

00:57:17.240 by natural selection.

00:57:18.300 That's not a system

00:57:19.520 that God would put in place.

00:57:21.380 It necessitates

00:57:22.380 the pain and suffering

00:57:24.020 of countless

00:57:24.740 sentient creatures

00:57:25.740 and there is no way

00:57:27.020 of getting consciousness

00:57:27.860 and intelligent life

00:57:29.020 without them.

00:57:30.660 Ultimately,

00:57:31.300 he says that actually

00:57:32.240 that problem's

00:57:32.980 a big problem

00:57:33.920 for atheists as well

00:57:34.960 because he thinks

00:57:35.740 atheists like Richard Dawkins

00:57:37.360 are what he calls

00:57:38.100 existential optimists.

00:57:40.120 They think the world

00:57:40.800 is on the whole

00:57:41.440 a good place

00:57:42.180 and they're happy

00:57:43.040 and pleased to be alive.

00:57:44.520 Yet the same person

00:57:45.480 is happy to run

00:57:46.180 the problem of evil

00:57:46.880 against theists 0.88

00:57:47.740 but maintain

00:57:48.580 their own optimism.

00:57:50.220 So he thinks that

00:57:51.560 if you're an atheist

00:57:53.220 you can't be an optimist

00:57:54.480 and you must be a pessimist.

00:57:55.740 But if you're a theist

00:57:56.660 and you've got strong arguments

00:57:58.220 for theism,

00:57:59.220 belief in God,

00:58:00.100 then you can appeal

00:58:00.860 to this broader metaphysics,

00:58:02.840 kingdom of heaven,

00:58:03.880 God's ultimate plan

00:58:04.780 and the like.

00:58:05.620 And so the theist

00:58:06.700 he thinks has the better

00:58:07.640 has the better hand

00:58:09.060 against the atheist.

00:58:10.360 But ultimately

00:58:10.860 I think that argument

00:58:11.680 works against him

00:58:12.780 and Eugene's

00:58:13.600 a philosophical

00:58:14.240 hero of mine

00:58:15.400 so I don't say it lightly

00:58:16.480 but you know

00:58:17.560 what they say

00:58:18.000 to borrow from Aristotle

00:58:19.140 Plato's dear to me

00:58:21.220 but dear is still his truth.

00:58:22.700 I think he actually

00:58:23.540 shoots himself in the foot

00:58:24.720 because I don't think

00:58:26.260 it's reasonable

00:58:26.800 to believe in a perfectly

00:58:28.180 good God

00:58:28.920 and evolution

00:58:30.040 by natural selection

00:58:31.100 at the same time.

00:58:32.820 And there is questions

00:58:34.440 to be asked there about

00:58:35.620 and this goes back

00:58:36.540 to the start

00:58:37.040 of our conversation

00:58:37.800 and working as part

00:58:39.320 of the inner experience

00:58:40.760 project at Durham University.

00:58:42.200 We look at

00:58:42.920 the conscious experiences

00:58:44.760 of all things

00:58:46.160 we consider to have

00:58:47.140 capacities for

00:58:48.240 subjective experience.

00:58:49.820 And the question is

00:58:50.580 can these non-human animals

00:58:52.380 experience pain

00:58:53.420 and suffering

00:58:53.900 in any way

00:58:55.320 shape or form

00:58:56.160 that we can?

00:58:57.680 And I think

00:58:58.080 most of us think

00:58:59.080 that's the case.

00:59:00.640 90% of people

00:59:01.860 in the UK

00:59:02.160 It's much the simplest

00:59:03.180 biological explanation.

00:59:04.840 Otherwise you have to posit

00:59:05.980 that the systems

00:59:07.920 in animals

00:59:08.620 that are akin to ours

00:59:09.720 and very, very akin

00:59:11.480 operate in some

00:59:12.940 qualitatively different manner.

00:59:14.380 And that's not

00:59:15.560 a useful

00:59:16.500 Occam's Razor hypothesis.

00:59:18.340 Animals obviously

00:59:19.560 experience pain.

00:59:21.120 Look, from my perspective

00:59:23.100 the proper position

00:59:26.320 with regards to

00:59:27.340 especially complex

00:59:28.360 animal existence

00:59:29.520 is that

00:59:30.220 you assume continuity

00:59:31.560 until you can

00:59:32.380 demonstrate discontinuity.

00:59:34.060 That's the simplest

00:59:35.260 explanation.

00:59:36.160 Now, you said

00:59:36.960 a bunch of things

00:59:37.620 there that were interesting

00:59:38.660 so let me respond

00:59:40.200 to a couple of them.

00:59:42.500 So in the story

00:59:43.560 of Job again

00:59:44.480 Job has every reason

00:59:46.860 to shake his fist 0.98

00:59:48.320 at God and die 0.87

00:59:49.480 to claim

00:59:50.460 in some sense

00:59:51.480 what the antinatalists

00:59:52.780 claim

00:59:53.240 to claim that existence

00:59:54.860 like Mephistopheles

00:59:55.960 in Goethe's Faust

00:59:57.140 claims that

00:59:57.920 the existential

00:59:59.760 situation

01:00:01.260 that characterizes

01:00:02.240 reality

01:00:02.840 is so dismal

01:00:03.760 in its essence

01:00:04.440 that it would be better

01:00:05.320 if the whole thing

01:00:06.020 was just brought to a halt.

01:00:07.760 That consciousness

01:00:08.460 itself

01:00:09.080 even being

01:00:09.840 is a reprehensible

01:00:12.400 exercise

01:00:13.180 in light of the suffering

01:00:14.320 that's ultimately generated.

01:00:16.000 Now, for Goethe

01:00:17.620 that was Mephistopheles

01:00:19.020 speaking

01:00:19.520 and that's very interesting

01:00:21.040 because of course

01:00:21.740 Mephistopheles

01:00:22.440 isn't one of the world's

01:00:23.400 most positive characters

01:00:24.580 and so you might say

01:00:25.920 well

01:00:26.200 and by the way

01:00:27.440 Mephistopheles

01:00:28.120 was a great hero

01:00:29.480 to Karl Marx

01:00:30.420 and Mephistopheles

01:00:32.740 does make this argument

01:00:33.960 and that's the spirit

01:00:35.360 he stands for

01:00:36.260 is the adversary

01:00:37.000 of being itself.

01:00:39.120 Being is so rife

01:00:39.980 with suffering

01:00:40.540 that it's inexcusable

01:00:41.660 in its essence

01:00:42.400 you know

01:00:43.480 and that's

01:00:43.860 in some sense

01:00:44.620 that's the impetus

01:00:46.180 to suicide

01:00:46.900 right

01:00:47.380 and so

01:00:48.060 and it's understandable

01:00:49.300 now

01:00:49.660 one of the ways

01:00:51.560 that I've dealt

01:00:52.440 with that

01:00:52.840 let's say

01:00:53.400 psychologically

01:00:54.560 and conceptually

01:00:55.720 is to

01:00:56.260 I suppose

01:00:57.740 it's a

01:00:58.220 by their fruits

01:00:59.040 you will know them

01:00:59.980 argument

01:01:00.540 my sense

01:01:02.620 is that

01:01:03.080 if you take

01:01:03.760 the seeds

01:01:05.080 that grow

01:01:05.700 from that

01:01:06.280 or the fruit

01:01:07.560 that grows

01:01:08.080 from those seeds

01:01:09.680 that those fruits

01:01:11.240 are bitter and evil

01:01:12.480 that if you adopt

01:01:13.540 the antinatalist

01:01:14.460 perspective

01:01:15.120 and

01:01:16.020 look

01:01:16.960 it's perfectly obvious

01:01:18.260 why it's justifiable

01:01:19.540 because the world

01:01:20.940 is saturated

01:01:21.760 in suffering

01:01:22.440 and it isn't obvious

01:01:24.320 to me

01:01:24.660 that there's a way

01:01:25.320 of balancing

01:01:26.200 the evidence

01:01:27.220 so to speak

01:01:28.140 to decide

01:01:29.260 on which side

01:01:30.560 of the scales

01:01:31.220 you would

01:01:32.360 place your conclusion

01:01:34.160 partly because

01:01:35.020 how the hell

01:01:35.580 do you weight

01:01:36.000 the evidence

01:01:36.640 you know

01:01:37.640 Dostoevsky's

01:01:38.900 go ahead

01:01:40.360 this is great

01:01:41.500 this is an interesting

01:01:42.500 point of agreement

01:01:43.220 and I'd like to have

01:01:44.540 seen this come out

01:01:45.180 in your discussion

01:01:46.080 with Musk

01:01:46.660 because I think

01:01:47.880 he pointed to a form

01:01:49.140 of agnosticism

01:01:49.960 to begin with

01:01:50.560 and then

01:01:50.920 when talking about

01:01:52.440 antinatalism

01:01:53.740 he said something

01:01:54.600 along the lines of

01:01:55.420 it's obviously 0.74

01:01:56.340 ridiculous to think

01:01:57.400 that the world 0.96

01:01:57.860 is just suffering

01:01:58.660 and to quote

01:02:00.040 well to paraphrase

01:02:01.580 the late great

01:02:02.620 Dan Dennett

01:02:03.300 he said that

01:02:04.140 we should only

01:02:04.660 begin to criticise

01:02:05.560 our opponents

01:02:06.160 after we express

01:02:07.240 their ideas

01:02:07.880 in such a way

01:02:08.680 that they go

01:02:09.540 oh I wish

01:02:10.480 I'd put it like that

01:02:11.340 that's great

01:02:11.920 and I don't think

01:02:12.740 the antinatalist

01:02:13.340 says everything

01:02:13.900 is suffering

01:02:14.400 as you pointed out

01:02:15.360 there

01:02:15.620 they say

01:02:16.580 the world

01:02:17.760 has more suffering

01:02:18.860 than it does happiness

01:02:20.060 that all happiness

01:02:21.480 and pleasure

01:02:23.180 is bracketed

01:02:24.060 in suffering

01:02:24.640 and pain

01:02:25.140 this is the

01:02:25.620 Buddhist idea 0.98

01:02:26.400 the Schopenhauerian

01:02:27.520 idea

01:02:28.020 the views

01:02:28.720 of David Benatar

01:02:29.600 and David Pierce

01:02:30.760 the negative

01:02:31.800 utilitarians

01:02:32.720 who want to

01:02:33.100 eliminate suffering

01:02:34.140 and that means

01:02:35.920 and I asked David Pierce

01:02:36.960 this a transhumanist

01:02:37.960 I asked him once

01:02:39.020 well if you're

01:02:40.100 a negative

01:02:40.840 utilitarian

01:02:41.600 and you think

01:02:42.580 the moral goal

01:02:43.420 is to remove

01:02:44.080 suffering

01:02:44.540 why don't you 1.00

01:02:45.180 just blow up 0.99

01:02:45.680 the world 0.63

01:02:46.140 why don't you

01:02:46.740 just give us

01:02:47.200 drugs that make

01:02:47.760 us feel nothing

01:02:48.400 and he said

01:02:48.940 well I don't think

01:02:49.780 I'm going to get

01:02:50.120 voted in

01:02:50.680 if I say

01:02:51.060 I'm going to 0.82

01:02:51.300 blow up the world

01:02:51.980 but I certainly

01:02:52.780 would like to do it

01:02:53.740 you've got to

01:02:54.960 admire the honesty

01:02:55.680 there right

01:02:56.280 maybe he should

01:02:57.600 start telling

01:02:58.700 a few politicians

01:02:59.640 lies to get

01:03:00.320 himself to

01:03:00.920 what he takes

01:03:01.900 to be the moral

01:03:02.420 end

01:03:02.680 but ultimately

01:03:03.820 though I think

01:03:04.400 you're exactly

01:03:04.880 right

01:03:05.240 that the problem

01:03:07.220 with trying to

01:03:08.320 quantify

01:03:08.900 measure the

01:03:10.000 amounts

01:03:10.640 of good and

01:03:11.540 evil that's in

01:03:12.060 the world

01:03:12.500 is a hopeless

01:03:13.500 project

01:03:14.100 we can't

01:03:14.820 that's

01:03:15.220 and you mentioned

01:03:15.840 evil God

01:03:16.320 a moment ago

01:03:16.960 there's this

01:03:17.620 popular challenge

01:03:18.320 in philosophy

01:03:18.740 of religion

01:03:19.180 that says

01:03:19.700 look at all

01:03:20.400 the good and

01:03:20.800 evil in the

01:03:21.220 world

01:03:21.460 who's to say

01:03:22.280 that God

01:03:22.620 is good

01:03:22.980 rather than

01:03:23.460 evil

01:03:23.700 and that's

01:03:24.240 the essence

01:03:24.660 of that

01:03:25.040 challenge

01:03:25.460 and it works

01:03:26.220 because it's

01:03:26.980 really hard

01:03:27.400 to quantify

01:03:27.820 these things

01:03:28.440 especially when

01:03:29.540 you're not just

01:03:29.980 counting pains

01:03:30.800 pleasures

01:03:31.220 happinesses

01:03:32.240 and the like

01:03:32.660 but you're

01:03:33.100 also seeing

01:03:34.200 what goods

01:03:34.920 and bads

01:03:35.480 they ultimately

01:03:36.040 lead to

01:03:36.600 you can play

01:03:37.340 that game

01:03:37.760 all day long

01:03:38.520 but there's

01:03:39.140 one thing

01:03:39.640 that the

01:03:40.100 anti-antinatalist

01:03:41.900 has up their

01:03:42.700 sleeve

01:03:43.100 and that's

01:03:44.000 to say

01:03:44.440 that existence

01:03:45.380 itself is

01:03:46.200 intrinsically

01:03:46.980 good

01:03:47.360 existence

01:03:48.180 and being

01:03:48.900 sit at the

01:03:49.400 top of

01:03:49.840 Jacob's 0.84

01:03:50.300 ladder

01:03:50.560 that given

01:03:51.860 the choice

01:03:52.560 and take

01:03:53.460 John Rawls

01:03:54.000 you mentioned

01:03:54.360 Marx

01:03:54.680 let's use

01:03:55.120 another

01:03:55.480 lefty

01:03:56.700 looking

01:03:57.320 political

01:03:58.020 figure

01:03:58.980 in political

01:03:59.520 theory

01:03:59.900 John Rawls

01:04:00.680 said

01:04:00.920 imagine you're

01:04:02.320 behind this

01:04:03.040 veil of

01:04:03.420 ignorance 0.95

01:04:03.700 and you've 0.96

01:04:04.120 got to

01:04:04.320 create the

01:04:04.760 world

01:04:05.020 and we can

01:04:05.360 change this

01:04:05.780 a bit

01:04:06.060 for the

01:04:06.580 purposes

01:04:06.900 of our

01:04:07.360 discussion

01:04:07.740 now you're

01:04:08.600 given the

01:04:08.920 choice

01:04:09.200 whether to

01:04:09.640 bring in

01:04:10.160 life

01:04:10.680 and conscious

01:04:11.520 beings

01:04:12.120 and not

01:04:12.960 you don't

01:04:13.560 know how

01:04:13.820 much

01:04:14.060 happiness

01:04:14.640 pain

01:04:16.000 pleasure

01:04:16.580 they're going

01:04:17.640 to experience

01:04:18.580 how much

01:04:19.180 suffering

01:04:19.500 they're going to

01:04:19.840 experience when

01:04:20.540 they're in

01:04:20.800 the world

01:04:21.240 and he

01:04:22.020 asks well

01:04:22.640 we're asking

01:04:23.320 on behalf

01:04:23.760 of rules

01:04:24.060 would you

01:04:24.640 bring things

01:04:25.340 into being

01:04:25.880 still not

01:04:26.400 knowing how

01:04:26.980 much happiness

01:04:27.800 and suffering

01:04:28.280 they're

01:04:28.460 experiencing

01:04:28.860 I think

01:04:29.640 we'd all

01:04:30.040 say yes

01:04:30.580 still

01:04:30.880 I think

01:04:31.640 there is

01:04:32.300 no person

01:04:32.880 that I

01:04:33.280 know of

01:04:33.660 anyway

01:04:33.980 that

01:04:34.420 legitimately

01:04:35.140 defends

01:04:35.860 the intrinsic

01:04:37.180 disvalue

01:04:38.620 of life

01:04:39.260 even David

01:04:39.980 Benatar

01:04:40.400 the most

01:04:41.020 prominent

01:04:41.440 antinatalist

01:04:42.400 doesn't think

01:04:43.220 that life

01:04:43.600 is intrinsically

01:04:44.260 bad

01:04:44.640 he thinks

01:04:45.720 that the

01:04:46.580 suffering and

01:04:47.040 pain in

01:04:47.340 the world

01:04:47.620 overrides

01:04:48.560 the intrinsic

01:04:49.220 goodness of

01:04:49.860 the world

01:04:50.320 and I

01:04:50.960 think that

01:04:51.280 is ultimately

01:04:51.760 something that

01:04:52.320 goes in the

01:04:53.220 antinatalist's

01:04:54.360 favor

01:04:54.620 so okay

01:04:57.820 so the

01:04:58.800 I guess my

01:05:00.320 first response

01:05:01.140 to that

01:05:01.480 question to

01:05:02.100 you as well

01:05:02.660 is that

01:05:03.020 it isn't

01:05:03.640 obvious to

01:05:04.280 me that

01:05:04.560 the axis

01:05:05.140 of happiness

01:05:05.840 and suffering

01:05:06.540 is the right

01:05:07.240 axis of

01:05:08.260 evaluation

01:05:08.860 we seem to

01:05:11.060 believe that

01:05:11.600 it's self

01:05:12.040 evident that

01:05:12.700 it's let's

01:05:13.340 say something

01:05:13.840 approximating

01:05:14.540 pleasure versus

01:05:15.220 pain

01:05:15.640 but it

01:05:17.500 that is not

01:05:18.740 the only

01:05:19.320 what would

01:05:20.940 you say

01:05:21.240 that those

01:05:21.680 aren't the

01:05:22.040 only interpretive

01:05:23.000 frameworks that

01:05:23.740 are excessive

01:05:24.720 so I'll

01:05:26.880 give you an

01:05:27.220 example a

01:05:28.020 biblical example

01:05:28.800 which I think

01:05:29.600 deals with this

01:05:30.680 point extremely

01:05:31.340 well and so

01:05:32.380 the first

01:05:33.920 great hero of

01:05:35.160 the biblical

01:05:35.700 text is

01:05:36.340 Abraham and

01:05:38.180 you could think

01:05:39.000 of Abraham as

01:05:40.160 the expression

01:05:41.800 of Seth

01:05:43.800 who's the

01:05:44.540 third son of

01:05:45.660 of Adam

01:05:47.660 and Eve

01:05:48.080 right so you

01:05:48.980 have the battle

01:05:49.540 between Cain

01:05:50.160 and Abel

01:05:50.520 Abel dies and

01:05:51.380 Seth is his

01:05:52.000 replacement

01:05:52.560 if you were

01:05:53.600 searching for

01:05:54.240 the spirit

01:05:54.780 of Seth

01:05:55.400 it would be

01:05:55.920 Abraham

01:05:56.280 okay so

01:05:57.460 here's what

01:05:58.120 happens to

01:05:58.640 Abraham it's 0.80

01:05:59.180 very very

01:05:59.680 interesting

01:06:00.240 so we're

01:06:02.200 presented with

01:06:02.880 Abraham at

01:06:03.560 the start of

01:06:04.780 his story

01:06:05.760 but he's an

01:06:06.780 old man already

01:06:07.700 and he's a

01:06:09.460 man who's

01:06:10.040 lived a life

01:06:10.800 that hasn't

01:06:11.400 been characterized

01:06:12.020 by suffering

01:06:12.900 so he has

01:06:14.640 the socialist

01:06:15.340 paradise at

01:06:16.260 hand in a

01:06:17.360 sense because

01:06:18.540 Abraham is the 0.98

01:06:19.620 child of wealthy

01:06:20.680 parents and

01:06:21.980 and there's

01:06:23.060 not a lot

01:06:23.560 of biographical

01:06:24.420 information in

01:06:25.580 the text but

01:06:26.140 what we do

01:06:26.680 know is that

01:06:27.420 whatever Abraham

01:06:28.860 wanted he

01:06:30.260 got and that

01:06:31.820 that was

01:06:32.280 sufficiently like

01:06:33.220 Buddha before 0.98

01:06:34.020 Buddha is

01:06:35.060 struck down by

01:06:35.880 knowledge of

01:06:36.420 death and

01:06:36.840 mortality Abraham's

01:06:38.080 in the same

01:06:38.540 situation it's

01:06:39.380 sort of it's the

01:06:40.280 situation of

01:06:41.120 childhood paradise

01:06:42.000 that's a good

01:06:42.700 way of thinking

01:06:43.160 about an

01:06:43.500 unconscious

01:06:44.020 childhood

01:06:44.500 paradise now

01:06:45.760 God comes to

01:06:46.940 Abraham in a 0.52

01:06:47.560 very specific

01:06:48.420 form and God

01:06:50.500 comes to

01:06:50.940 Abraham as

01:06:51.960 the voice that

01:06:52.800 compels him to

01:06:53.980 leave his

01:06:54.740 security and

01:06:56.000 voyage into the

01:06:57.300 world and

01:06:58.280 that's precisely

01:06:59.300 the instruction

01:07:00.580 is that Abraham

01:07:01.720 is to leave

01:07:03.060 his kin and

01:07:04.740 the security of

01:07:05.820 his wealthy

01:07:06.400 father's dwelling

01:07:07.320 and to go out

01:07:09.180 into the

01:07:09.660 terrible world

01:07:10.460 and it is a

01:07:11.900 terrible world

01:07:12.440 because Abraham

01:07:13.120 has a very

01:07:15.720 cataclysmic

01:07:16.620 adventure war

01:07:18.240 tyranny famine

01:07:19.640 like sexual

01:07:21.200 conflict deep

01:07:22.520 sexual immortality

01:07:23.760 the requirement

01:07:24.700 for profound

01:07:25.460 sacrifice like

01:07:26.320 Abraham has a 0.80

01:07:27.200 life and it's

01:07:28.520 not it's not

01:07:30.580 hedonic okay

01:07:32.900 so then you

01:07:33.460 might say well

01:07:34.020 if the solution

01:07:34.760 to life's

01:07:35.920 conundrums isn't

01:07:37.000 pleasure as

01:07:38.440 opposed to

01:07:38.920 pain because

01:07:40.020 that's what

01:07:40.580 Abraham has to

01:07:41.380 begin with what

01:07:42.480 exactly is on

01:07:43.380 offer okay so

01:07:44.240 God makes

01:07:45.040 Abraham a deal 0.53

01:07:45.860 this is the

01:07:46.380 covenant by the

01:07:47.100 way he makes

01:07:47.520 him a very

01:07:47.900 specific deal

01:07:48.720 he says if

01:07:50.140 you hearken to

01:07:50.940 the voice that

01:07:51.680 compels you

01:07:52.560 outward that

01:07:53.840 takes you from

01:07:54.620 your zone of

01:07:55.200 comfort you

01:07:56.000 think about that

01:07:56.620 as the voice of

01:07:57.240 adventure four

01:07:58.240 things will happen

01:07:59.120 to you you'll

01:08:00.500 become a blessing

01:08:01.140 to yourself so

01:08:02.980 that's a good

01:08:03.500 deal right so

01:08:04.440 you're not living

01:08:05.060 in misery now

01:08:05.840 your your life

01:08:07.320 isn't pleasure and

01:08:08.320 the absence of

01:08:09.100 pain now it's

01:08:10.300 characterized as

01:08:10.960 something approximating

01:08:11.900 a blessing

01:08:12.300 you'll do that

01:08:13.580 in a way that

01:08:14.060 will make your

01:08:14.720 name validly

01:08:15.820 renowned among

01:08:16.840 your fellows

01:08:17.460 you will do that

01:08:20.160 in a manner that

01:08:20.940 enables you to

01:08:21.600 establish a

01:08:22.460 dynasty of

01:08:23.280 permanence and

01:08:25.360 you'll do it in a

01:08:25.920 way that's a

01:08:26.400 blessing to

01:08:26.840 everyone else

01:08:27.480 now imagine

01:08:28.880 for a second

01:08:29.680 tell me what you

01:08:30.640 think about this

01:08:31.200 because there's a

01:08:31.640 real technical

01:08:32.260 claim here so

01:08:33.000 you know children

01:08:34.100 have to move

01:08:34.880 beyond the

01:08:36.100 zone of comfort

01:08:37.260 provided to them

01:08:38.300 by their parents

01:08:38.960 they have to move

01:08:39.580 out into the

01:08:40.180 terrible world

01:08:41.060 all right so

01:08:42.560 and there's an

01:08:43.960 instinct that

01:08:44.840 compels them

01:08:45.540 forward that

01:08:46.300 encouraging parents

01:08:47.560 admire and

01:08:50.360 foster go out

01:08:52.720 now that parents

01:08:53.900 know that their

01:08:54.580 children are going

01:08:55.140 to be hurt by the

01:08:55.900 world but they

01:08:56.440 want to make

01:08:56.980 them competent

01:08:58.060 now what god

01:08:59.800 offers in the

01:09:00.480 abrahamic story

01:09:01.300 isn't pleasure

01:09:02.300 and it's certainly

01:09:03.200 not the absence

01:09:03.900 of pain

01:09:04.420 it's something

01:09:05.560 like it's

01:09:07.160 something like

01:09:07.840 noble romantic

01:09:09.280 adventure

01:09:09.900 and that's way

01:09:11.720 different that's a

01:09:12.460 way different

01:09:12.920 vision and it's

01:09:13.760 it's an interesting

01:09:14.580 vision even if you

01:09:15.460 think about fiction

01:09:16.520 and entertainment

01:09:17.280 because the

01:09:18.780 entertainment forms

01:09:20.300 that people prefer

01:09:21.520 aren't representations

01:09:23.600 of the absence of

01:09:25.100 pain or of

01:09:26.180 hedonic gratification

01:09:27.360 they're almost always

01:09:28.540 representations of

01:09:29.540 romantic adventure

01:09:30.500 and so I'll just

01:09:31.940 add one more thing

01:09:32.720 to that because it

01:09:33.380 also addresses

01:09:33.960 something else you

01:09:34.640 pointed out

01:09:35.060 and this is the

01:09:36.180 idea that god

01:09:36.960 wouldn't produce a

01:09:37.740 world where evil

01:09:38.460 could reign in the

01:09:39.660 manner that it

01:09:40.140 does but I would

01:09:40.740 say I'm not so

01:09:42.420 sure about that

01:09:43.200 because it there's

01:09:45.100 a there's a

01:09:46.200 serious insistence

01:09:47.840 in the biblical

01:09:48.480 text for example

01:09:49.480 that what human

01:09:50.660 beings have to do 0.53

01:09:51.820 is vital and

01:09:54.800 real yeah right

01:09:57.200 it's not some

01:09:57.900 sideshow and what

01:09:59.440 that implies is

01:10:00.300 that if you do

01:10:02.080 things correctly

01:10:02.920 there will be

01:10:03.660 spectacularly

01:10:04.980 positive consequences

01:10:06.080 let's say and

01:10:07.200 maybe unimaginably

01:10:08.620 spectacular consequences

01:10:09.960 but if you do

01:10:11.080 things wrong

01:10:12.000 like there's no

01:10:15.120 bottom to the

01:10:15.980 abyss now that's

01:10:17.280 a that's a very

01:10:18.540 demanding world

01:10:20.680 but I don't know

01:10:22.460 you know like you

01:10:23.160 think about your

01:10:23.840 own kids like

01:10:24.640 you want to set a

01:10:26.660 challenge in front

01:10:27.520 of them and if

01:10:29.280 you wanted to

01:10:29.760 challenge someone to

01:10:30.720 be everything they

01:10:31.980 could be if they

01:10:32.820 were everything they

01:10:33.520 could be then

01:10:34.660 would the challenge

01:10:35.520 have those archetypal

01:10:37.340 poles of hell and

01:10:38.360 heaven I mean that

01:10:40.220 is how the world

01:10:40.840 appears to be

01:10:41.420 constituted in

01:10:43.260 today's chaotic

01:10:44.060 world many of us are

01:10:45.280 searching for a way to

01:10:46.180 aim higher and find

01:10:47.320 spiritual peace but

01:10:48.900 here's the thing

01:10:49.580 prayer the most

01:10:50.660 common tool we have

01:10:51.740 isn't just about

01:10:52.460 saying whatever comes

01:10:53.360 to mind it's a skill

01:10:54.740 that needs to be

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01:11:58.920 this is good i think

01:12:04.180 ultimately though all of

01:12:05.700 those points are sound

01:12:08.340 within a theistic framework

01:12:10.020 which we we already need

01:12:11.720 to have right if god

01:12:13.440 exists or if it's

01:12:14.800 reasonable to take the

01:12:16.000 leap of faith and believe

01:12:16.980 in god then it's

01:12:18.720 reasonable to think that

01:12:20.220 god has a plan for you and

01:12:21.800 that your life is

01:12:22.800 meaningful despite the

01:12:24.200 pain and the suffering you

01:12:26.000 experience there is value

01:12:28.520 to dierdrich bonhoeffer's

01:12:30.400 life when he's

01:12:31.000 or in consequence not not

01:12:32.760 despite even right yeah

01:12:34.400 not in consequence good

01:12:35.840 well could be you know

01:12:37.460 yeah so so all it seems

01:12:39.600 like a meaningful and

01:12:41.020 fulfilling life is

01:12:42.700 probably more important

01:12:43.940 than having hedonistic

01:12:46.620 pleasures for the

01:12:48.580 abrahamic believer i believe

01:12:50.120 that's completely the right

01:12:51.680 way of thinking about it

01:12:52.740 but it's a very different

01:12:54.700 thing for the agnostic or

01:12:56.160 the the secular philosopher

01:12:57.660 who can't appeal to cosmic

01:12:59.620 meaning you have the benefit

01:13:00.980 of of cashing out all of

01:13:03.000 these other things in in

01:13:05.380 god's ultimate plan and

01:13:06.700 your ultimate destiny but

01:13:08.340 the agnostic doesn't get 1.00

01:13:09.380 that i mean you can have

01:13:10.760 things that are like that

01:13:12.040 right you can have like an

01:13:13.120 aristotelian view where

01:13:14.820 fulfilling your natural end is

01:13:16.600 what's good

01:13:17.260 martha nussbaum defends a

01:13:18.980 version of this in a book

01:13:20.060 justice for animals which

01:13:21.880 have just finished and she

01:13:22.960 says you know there are

01:13:24.140 creatures all over the

01:13:25.400 world that want to

01:13:26.760 reproduce and play and

01:13:28.680 and grow and all of

01:13:29.820 these things she says

01:13:31.560 thwarting those ends would

01:13:33.320 be bad even if you snuck

01:13:35.520 up and gave them the 0.99

01:13:36.520 bullet in the back of the 0.97

01:13:37.520 head and they didn't know 1.00

01:13:38.440 you're about to kill them 0.99

01:13:39.380 and they didn't suffer it 1.00

01:13:40.580 would still be bad because

01:13:42.060 the dog buried his bone

01:13:43.240 yesterday and can't get it

01:13:44.480 tomorrow and you're taking

01:13:46.140 that thing away from that

01:13:47.460 entity that can't be

01:13:49.060 understood within a

01:13:50.820 framework of hedonistic

01:13:52.120 utilitarianism such as

01:13:53.920 that defended by peter

01:13:55.220 singer the hedonistic

01:13:56.740 utilitarian wants to say

01:13:58.080 that the things that i am

01:14:00.540 fulfilled in doing the

01:14:01.700 purpose that i reach has

01:14:03.920 to create more happiness

01:14:05.580 and pleasure for entities

01:14:07.080 as a whole than it does

01:14:08.420 pain and suffering it has

01:14:10.280 to cash out of that so i

01:14:12.000 think within this

01:14:13.100 abrahamic view that

01:14:14.060 you've developed there and

01:14:15.460 which seems to be your

01:14:16.560 view is that yeah meaning

01:14:17.880 and purpose is more

01:14:18.700 important than hedonistic

01:14:20.200 pleasure and happiness but

01:14:21.880 for the the agnostic and

01:14:23.540 the atheist i think we've

01:14:25.120 got a bit more of a

01:14:26.180 challenge on our hands we

01:14:27.520 need to we need to find a

01:14:28.780 ground for that morality

01:14:29.880 okay well thing is i i

01:14:32.520 actually think that that's

01:14:33.700 i think that that's not only

01:14:36.360 possible but inevitable in a

01:14:38.000 sense you know so what's

01:14:39.780 the quote by christ is i am

01:14:41.740 the truth i am the way and

01:14:43.560 the truth and the life i

01:14:44.740 believe no one comes to the

01:14:45.900 father except through me

01:14:47.560 that's a technical

01:14:48.720 description in a sense i

01:14:50.820 think well okay so you

01:14:52.260 you could take that apart

01:14:53.360 and let's do that for a

01:14:55.140 moment and so the way is a

01:14:56.860 pathway forward it's a road

01:14:58.280 and so the best possible

01:15:00.400 road leads to the best

01:15:01.540 possible destination and

01:15:02.900 part of what you perceive

01:15:04.840 literally what you perceive

01:15:06.300 is a road like we see

01:15:08.840 pathways we see pathways we

01:15:11.200 see tools we see obstacles

01:15:12.680 we see friends we see

01:15:14.060 foes but what we see is a

01:15:16.220 pathway okay now the

01:15:17.940 question is what's the

01:15:18.820 pathway now we described it

01:15:20.120 earlier in terms of jacob's

01:15:21.320 ladder and that's a

01:15:22.080 reasonable way of

01:15:22.900 conceptualizing but then you

01:15:24.440 might say well how do you

01:15:25.300 find the golden pathway and

01:15:26.640 this would be a question for

01:15:27.720 atheists and agnostics as

01:15:29.520 well and one answer to that

01:15:31.280 is you tell the truth and

01:15:35.240 then these other

01:15:36.320 realizations revelations let's

01:15:39.120 say come to you you could

01:15:41.660 say you tell the truth in

01:15:42.860 relationship to the upward

01:15:44.600 aim that's another that's

01:15:46.020 another useful way of

01:15:47.320 conceptualizing it and so I

01:15:49.100 don't think that that

01:15:50.200 realization is out of reach

01:15:54.120 for the atheists or the

01:15:55.720 agnostics unless they

01:15:57.620 proclaim verbally procedurally

01:16:03.140 no that's no no that's not

01:16:04.460 the right word verbally let's

01:16:06.420 say explicitly that this higher

01:16:09.740 order transcendent

01:16:11.660 reality that transcends even

01:16:13.600 being is off the table it's

01:16:15.860 like what happens if you do

01:16:18.500 nothing but pursue the truth

01:16:19.980 well the biblical promise is

01:16:22.320 that the revelation of the

01:16:24.440 fundamental structure of

01:16:25.440 reality comes to you that's

01:16:26.700 what happens to Moses by the

01:16:27.940 way because see Moses is

01:16:29.820 willing to go off the beaten

01:16:32.200 path to pursue what compels him

01:16:34.760 forward that's the key to the

01:16:36.660 transformation of his life

01:16:37.820 because before he encounters the

01:16:39.600 burning bush he's just a

01:16:42.020 shepherd now that's not nothing

01:16:43.700 right he's an adult he's married

01:16:46.020 he's taken on responsibility but

01:16:48.320 it's his willingness to engage in

01:16:50.160 the pursuit of the transcendent this

01:16:52.360 is what happens to Jacob too when

01:16:53.960 because Jacob is a pretty

01:16:55.140 miserable character at the

01:16:56.400 beginning of his story he's a 1.00

01:16:57.560 liar a mama's boy a coward a 1.00

01:17:00.480 cheat but he decides that and this 1.00

01:17:03.140 is when he has that great dream he

01:17:04.440 decides that he's going to leave

01:17:06.020 that behind and and and aim

01:17:08.820 upward and make the sacrifices

01:17:10.540 that are necessary and so I think

01:17:12.760 that pathway I think that's an

01:17:15.440 inevitable pathway for people too

01:17:17.060 because the problem the atheists 0.58

01:17:18.660 have in a sense and the agnostics is

01:17:20.560 well if you don't have a purpose if

01:17:24.780 you didn't have a purpose for what

01:17:26.200 you were doing you wouldn't do it and

01:17:28.020 so then you might say well I have

01:17:29.400 micro purposes well and and they

01:17:32.280 have to suffice because that's the

01:17:33.900 best I can manage but the problem

01:17:35.420 with that is that micro purposes are

01:17:37.760 fragmented and they're not very

01:17:39.680 motivating so like it's not a it's

01:17:42.800 not a stable solution and that brings

01:17:45.780 us back to the unity problem that we

01:17:47.540 described at the beginning well I

01:17:49.420 remember you saying this to my friend

01:17:51.220 sue blackmore in a debate you have 0.96

01:17:53.100 with her once and you said like I

01:17:54.860 don't even think you're an atheist

01:17:56.580 sue because you need this ladder of 1.00

01:17:59.320 values let's say to paraphrase you

01:18:01.120 you need this chain of motivations to do

01:18:03.940 these things I raised this with a friend

01:18:06.620 recently I was discussing it and they

01:18:08.080 said well I've been getting up and

01:18:09.900 getting dressed every day since 1998

01:18:12.440 like and I don't believe in the system

01:18:14.420 of values and then you sort of push them

01:18:16.400 and you start to realize that what

01:18:19.220 they're doing is they're not doing what

01:18:21.860 we might call a humean track of moral

01:18:26.360 motivation or motivation for action so

01:18:28.880 a humean view would say that we're

01:18:32.180 acting in accordance with our desires

01:18:35.400 and the reason is the slave to our

01:18:37.440 desires and that might give you a few

01:18:39.400 like micro motivations in your

01:18:41.960 environment like I feel like take the

01:18:44.640 example of of good I desire to be good

01:18:47.660 so like I see someone in the street and

01:18:49.640 I give them to them charitably or

01:18:51.400 something but then you've got non-humean

01:18:54.560 views which you are motivated by reasons

01:18:57.020 and I think that's the best place for

01:18:59.460 this view that that you develop in terms

01:19:02.300 of pushing towards the divine or the

01:19:04.860 realization of the intrinsic good that

01:19:07.320 if you are motivated by reasons you can't

01:19:10.420 keep going on forever with your reasons

01:19:12.340 there needs to be an end to that reason

01:19:14.300 the truth with the capital T

01:19:15.840 so I think there are different frameworks

01:19:17.820 of them and both might be true at the

01:19:20.740 same well I think both are true at the

01:19:22.240 same time right that we are guided by

01:19:24.260 reason and we're guided by our desires

01:19:26.400 so maybe you don't have too much of a

01:19:28.360 problem with that one

01:19:30.180 well that's that's well there I would I

01:19:32.320 would say to some degree that you're

01:19:34.560 you're alluding to the fact that in the

01:19:36.460 absence of a formal structure of

01:19:38.340 integrated belief in a fundamental unity

01:19:41.180 let's say a monotheistic belief that

01:19:43.340 people are still motivated and then you

01:19:45.880 you made allusion to the fact that those

01:19:47.480 motivations can take you might say they

01:19:49.160 take instinctual form and that's a

01:19:51.300 that's a reasonable way of construing it

01:19:53.040 I would say that many of the pagan gods

01:19:55.960 are representations of of the instincts

01:19:59.780 that drive motivation and perception

01:20:01.420 right and so you so but what I think that

01:20:04.240 means is that if you if you if you look at

01:20:06.380 someone who has a propositional

01:20:08.520 framework in hand that dispenses with the

01:20:11.960 divine unity there's an implicit god

01:20:15.700 hidden inside their motivational

01:20:17.720 structure that's not explicated

01:20:19.520 I don't think they need that because of

01:20:22.420 as we said they don't need it I'm saying

01:20:23.980 it's there whether they need it or not

01:20:25.680 it's it's part and post no as in like

01:20:28.600 it's it might not be there even if they

01:20:31.180 do or don't need it like I think you can

01:20:33.620 have a view in which you're just acting

01:20:35.860 on the basis of your desires and there is

01:20:38.620 no further end like we've got instrumental

01:20:40.880 like reasons right I act in such a way

01:20:43.620 because it's instrumental to this good and

01:20:46.320 I think that can stop pretty quickly if

01:20:49.400 the thing in front of you is just fulfilling

01:20:51.240 your desire but then if it's reasons you

01:20:53.740 need something at the end look I think I

01:20:56.300 I've got no dispute whatsoever with that I

01:20:58.440 would I would only point out this and you

01:21:00.740 can think about this neurodevelopmentally in

01:21:02.760 a way so the the motivational situation that

01:21:06.720 a two-year-old finds him or herself in is a

01:21:10.280 sequence of short-term perceptual frames that

01:21:14.240 are motivated by instinct and and each of

01:21:17.900 those frames when they emerge seeks for its

01:21:20.280 relatively immediate and self-serving

01:21:22.260 satisfaction two-year-olds aren't really

01:21:24.560 capable of integrated social behavior and

01:21:27.920 then and they they can manage they like

01:21:30.240 they live they're alive they can operate

01:21:31.920 in the world over it has to be an

01:21:33.500 abounded environment but the price that's

01:21:35.380 paid for that and this is the is what

01:21:37.340 Christ refers to when he talks about a

01:21:39.180 house that's divided against itself is

01:21:41.020 that if you're if you're motivated by a

01:21:44.780 welter of chaotic short-term instrumental

01:21:47.840 drives so to speak that's going to

01:21:50.820 produce the Buddhists know that that's 0.98

01:21:52.960 going to produce a a complex of suffering

01:21:56.740 in consequence of that even though

01:21:58.760 there'll be times when the gratification

01:22:00.960 occurs but but I would also say this is

01:22:04.840 also so so that's an incoherent

01:22:07.440 motivational structure if you iterate it

01:22:11.700 across time and you think about it

01:22:13.180 socially it doesn't function well by its

01:22:15.820 own definitions it causes pain but

01:22:17.460 there's another thing that's interesting

01:22:18.840 too which is that you can take these

01:22:21.740 fragmentary motivations let's say lust

01:22:24.340 and hunger for example desire for status

01:22:27.220 those would be good ones because they're

01:22:28.840 very primordial their interactions do

01:22:33.540 produce a developmental impulse that is

01:22:36.480 something akin to movement towards a

01:22:39.320 monotheistic unity that's what motivates

01:22:41.920 that's what motivates maturity so for

01:22:45.220 example as a two-year-old turns into a

01:22:47.120 three-year-old the two-year-old starts to

01:22:49.440 become able to integrate his

01:22:51.380 motivational desires and emotions with

01:22:54.660 those of a friend a play partner and so

01:22:58.780 you see that those underlying motivations

01:23:02.280 they're not inhibited by social society

01:23:04.820 they merge into something that's

01:23:07.480 integrated across time and people and

01:23:10.160 that is a movement towards something like

01:23:12.400 a monotheistic unity and so even these

01:23:14.420 people that are fractionated in their

01:23:16.280 motivation and pursuing a fragmentary

01:23:19.860 hedonism under that in a way there's

01:23:22.440 still a unifying force that's attempting

01:23:26.220 to spiral them up Jacob's ladder in so

01:23:28.680 far as they're social at all or future

01:23:30.520 oriented at all good okay there's a there's

01:23:33.320 a few interesting points that I want to

01:23:35.700 pick up on the first just to end on to

01:23:38.140 piggyback off the point you raised there is

01:23:40.580 that I think that's a generally a sensible

01:23:43.780 view and I can see that working out in the

01:23:46.360 broader scheme of things but I think

01:23:48.320 ultimately there's still a problem there

01:23:50.200 of like why won Jacob's ladder or something

01:23:53.080 like this if we've got multiple things that

01:23:55.480 we value intrinsically I don't see why that

01:23:58.000 would have to end in a monotheistic belief

01:24:00.860 rather than something like Plato's realm of

01:24:03.860 the forms where you've got a form for justice

01:24:06.440 a form for let's call it order let's say

01:24:09.600 there's a form of the good as well there's a

01:24:12.040 form of power why not say that you've got

01:24:14.940 multiple of these several of these entities

01:24:17.640 rather than the god of classical theism and

01:24:20.760 I don't think this I think this is again is an

01:24:22.920 interesting point of agreement here is that

01:24:24.580 the agnostic I think although they're agnostic

01:24:27.860 about the existence of god or several gods and I take

01:24:33.260 that what to be theism or atheism theism to

01:24:36.020 believe in one god or many and atheism to say

01:24:38.080 there is no god and not many agnosticism I

01:24:40.560 define as rejecting that either of those views has

01:24:43.900 the answer or is highly reasonable but you can

01:24:47.000 be non-agnostic about a bunch of other things right

01:24:49.340 you can be non-agnostic about how many corners a

01:24:52.480 triangle has or whether kicking dogs and

01:24:55.340 children is bad or whether Jonah Hill should

01:24:58.080 direct any more films like the answers to those

01:25:00.760 questions are pretty clear still for the agnostic

01:25:03.020 but that means we can perhaps form ourselves a

01:25:08.600 patchwork blanket to keep us warm in the cold

01:25:11.600 indifference of the universe so I can draw from

01:25:15.220 Plato's forms and have this view which you've worked

01:25:18.320 out there in terms of this chain of reasons and why I

01:25:23.460 act in the world I see that to be completely

01:25:25.780 compatible with agnosticism so my question to put

01:25:29.780 to you is why your view rather than agnosticism beyond

01:25:33.420 the leap of faith which seems to be something which is

01:25:36.120 that maps that maps perfectly on onto how we started the

01:25:40.160 conversation with regards to say skepticism of uniting

01:25:43.420 metanarratives because you're making an argument

01:25:46.300 that's analogous to that the patchwork quilt

01:25:48.240 argument and I would say there there's two reasons for

01:25:51.880 that that are technical one is that if you have a

01:25:56.540 a plethora of competing values the competition in itself

01:26:02.900 engenders anxiety and that's well mapped neurophysiologically

01:26:09.020 and you could say in a sense that anxiety is actually an

01:26:13.060 index of disunity and so the price you pay for the

01:26:16.500 patchwork is the consequence of the multitude of values that

01:26:22.400 you have competing they're going to compete there'll be

01:26:25.060 situations where they go head to head it's very stressful

01:26:28.200 conflicts of duty even like it can be a good against an evil

01:26:31.860 but it could be two goods against one another and then you

01:26:34.540 have to mediate between them or you're or you're trapped

01:26:36.940 between them in a place where you can't make a decision very

01:26:40.120 existentially demanding and then I would also say that the

01:26:43.940 same applies on the positive emotion side is that the more

01:26:47.960 union there is behind the aim that unites the more positive

01:26:53.400 value there is in movement towards that aim and so the price

01:26:56.980 you pay for the patchwork is that you're not as formidable

01:27:01.040 as you would be if that patchwork was arranged into a hierarchy

01:27:06.300 with something uniting all those values across your own being

01:27:12.240 across the social world and across time and so and I'm not saying

01:27:18.500 that that's not possible people do live that way and you could

01:27:21.940 also say that perhaps the world is constituted that way but

01:27:24.800 the price for that is disunity a certain degree of hopelessness

01:27:31.040 and and a complexity now that doesn't prove that things

01:27:35.680 resolve into a union I'm not saying that at all I'm just

01:27:40.100 pointing out what the price is now and I would but I would also say

01:27:44.240 to return to another theme that we developed that

01:27:47.440 one of the things that the Christian passion does as a story

01:27:51.800 is provide that framework of unity

01:27:55.860 now then you might say well why would you prefer it I would say

01:28:00.200 you'd prefer it now that's a tough one

01:28:02.380 I think the reason that well the reason that you prefer it is because it's

01:28:07.480 deeper and then you might say well who cares and the answer is well

01:28:10.820 when you're going to be in the most existentially demanding situations in

01:28:15.160 your life right so where you're making decisions of

01:28:18.000 mortal import let's say or decisions between good and evil

01:28:21.580 like decisions that really matter you're going to need something deep

01:28:25.700 on your side or you're or you're going to face the consequences of your

01:28:30.320 disunity and foolishness and so it isn't exactly a hedonistic argument it's more

01:28:35.560 like there will be situations in your life that are so challenging that you

01:28:40.300 better have what's highest walking with you because otherwise you'll suffer

01:28:46.500 immensely you'll degenerate but you could also easily become an a passive or

01:28:51.580 an active agent of evil and that's work

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01:29:45.080 what okay this is this is good so there's two things there right there seems to be one which

01:29:53.780 there's going to be conflict in the agnostics patchwork blanket let's say and the the competing 0.74

01:29:59.300 values of these different systems they draw together might end up competing i'm not sure

01:30:04.020 about that maybe we can come back to that with a an example but i think what's really interesting

01:30:08.440 and what reveals our difference and the types of philosophy that we're doing is that you're saying that

01:30:14.920 there is like a pragmatic benefit let's say to believing in a god in terms of like your

01:30:22.420 your flourishing right if you're a if you're an you and everyone else yeah if you're like a right

01:30:29.480 let's say you're an agnostic and you're an existentialist so you don't think that the life has

01:30:34.480 any obvious meaning and this is my view again is that it might be the case yeah that you experience

01:30:40.140 existential dread that and i feel this like most mornings right every every morning i personally

01:30:45.120 wake up and you kind of check in with yourself right as the sun comes in and i sort of think like

01:30:49.560 like am i happy and pleased to be alive like or do i feel that dread today and i sort of go like some

01:30:55.200 days it's good and some days i feel like that that emptiness of the ultimate purpose of things

01:31:00.380 now i wouldn't trade that right and this is something which well simone de bovois gives this great

01:31:05.580 bit and memoirs of a dutiful daughter where she says i was in paris one day and i returned to my

01:31:10.800 apartment and i just started screaming and i tore up the carpet and i was terrified that one day my

01:31:16.720 life would come to an end but the thing i was more scared of was that this feeling would arise again

01:31:21.860 the fear that i might die and like i get that right i think a lot of people who don't believe in god

01:31:28.020 do experience that but we should believe things because they're true and not because they make us feel

01:31:33.420 good like it might be the case that theism increases well-being that theism helps people flourish that

01:31:39.940 society needs some kind of religion to get along like maybe those things are true maybe truth isn't

01:31:45.880 the thing we should be guided by but as an agnostic i find myself guided more by by truth than feeling

01:31:54.060 good about things i suppose and i think perhaps you would like the truth to correspond to the religion as

01:32:00.560 well but i think it's missing that extra bit of reason like think about that word rational

01:32:06.560 proportionate are my reasons proportionate to my belief and i think you were saying earlier you need

01:32:11.360 to take that extra step without the reason like job but i think by definition job's faith is irrational

01:32:19.840 right but he takes the leap despite the lack of evidence despite evidence it's pre-rational

01:32:25.300 it's pre-rational how would you say it's in a way pre-rational

01:32:29.140 it's it's you need a stance within which your rationality makes itself manifest the stance itself

01:32:38.000 is bounded and the the mythological response to your query including i would say the aspect that brought

01:32:47.380 in the issue of existential dread is the stance is this it's not this it's not the stance of a prey

01:32:54.100 animal it's not the stance of someone paralyzed by anxiety and and you said you you made reference

01:32:59.200 to waking up in the morning you know and and balancing in a sense the happiness with the pain

01:33:04.140 see i actually think it's the wrong framework like and and so i don't think the problem can be solved

01:33:10.140 within that framework at all it has to be solved it's something like solution in the within the

01:33:16.320 framework of the the ultimately what an infinitely painful and rewarding adventure and so in some

01:33:24.720 sense the hedonistic and the painful become irrelevant and i'm not saying they're meaningless

01:33:29.760 because that would be foolish and it could easily be cruel but it's not the right frame the right frame

01:33:35.720 is the frame that job takes which is i could say i could say this to you for example this would be

01:33:41.300 derived from the morality in the book of job it is morally incumbent upon you to manifest a courageous

01:33:46.580 faith and that's a pre-rational decision but we already admitted both you and i already admitted

01:33:52.520 that you can't weigh up the evidence first of all you're not in possession of the evidence which is

01:33:56.880 also something that god tells job and job admits it's like i don't have the evidence at hand okay so

01:34:04.400 you're fragile and mortal and prone to evil and you don't have the evidence at hand okay so what

01:34:10.060 stance do you take well the the the stance that job takes is i will be a faithful scout of the

01:34:18.520 formidable future no matter what hell comes my way and it's a very interesting stance because job and he

01:34:25.620 does this very explicitly his claim is i am not to lose faith in myself or the ultimate spirit of

01:34:33.680 reality no matter what happens to me and the pervert the interesting thing about that and this isn't the

01:34:41.480 reason for it but it is a consequence is that that is a stance that does in fact maximize flourishing

01:34:47.440 but that that's not the justification for it right and you pointed that out correctly this isn't an

01:34:53.020 argument from hedonism or or even i guess the the argument that it's the pathway that is least likely to

01:35:00.220 lead to hell that's a that's kind of a variant of the hedonistic argument except reversed right is

01:35:06.460 that any alternative pathway tends to degenerate into the most abysmal suffering you can possibly

01:35:12.500 imagine and i do believe that that's true in the final analysis now that's a bit of a hedonistic

01:35:18.120 argument but but it's only one of the elements of the argument good i i think this is important because

01:35:24.160 you you say that it's still relevant the suffering the happiness the pleasure the pain

01:35:28.340 the hedonism is still relevant even if we have meaning and purpose but suppose god decided that

01:35:35.440 our purpose and meaning was to ensure the process of evolution continued with all of its blood and

01:35:43.060 glory and we we stuff animals into factory farms and slaughter them and torture them forever

01:35:48.240 you'd go like okay that's not the kind of meaning that i was thinking about god right i didn't think

01:35:54.660 that's what constituted a meaningful existence i thought my meaning would correspond to my happiness

01:36:00.360 and pleasure like they can't be completely i don't think that's right no they can't but i don't think

01:36:05.160 that's right i think i think the abrahamic vision is more is more existentially accurate and also more

01:36:10.800 desirable see dostoevsky kind of knew this say when he when he laid out his objection to reductionist

01:36:17.860 rationalism in in uh notes from underground one of the things he pointed out about human beings this

01:36:24.260 was his fundamental critique of socialist utopianism and it's kind of an abrahamic critique he said look

01:36:29.760 if you gave people the opportunity to live a life devoid of let's say anxiety and pain so that they had

01:36:36.960 nothing to do this is basically his words but eat cakes sit in bubbling pools of hot water and busy

01:36:43.820 themselves with the continuity of the species that human beings were constituted such that the first

01:36:49.660 thing they would do is take a mallet to the utopia and destroy it just so that something interesting

01:36:55.060 and adventurous would happen smash the table exactly because we're not the the hypothesis is and this is

01:37:02.800 the abrahamic hypothesis is we're not built for hedonistic infantilism that whatever the world's about

01:37:09.360 it's not about pain and pleasure not that they're irrelevant because that's that's not a reasonable

01:37:15.080 thing to propose but that that's not the issue and that that higher unity is something like it's

01:37:21.160 something like the intermingling of pleasure and pain think about it this way man when you think about

01:37:25.780 your life and you you wake up in the morning and you're just trying to justify your miserable existence

01:37:31.480 to yourself and your memory wanders down the pathways of your life and you remember some event that

01:37:38.200 befell you where you disciplined yourself and you strove against remarkable odds and you suffered

01:37:43.160 along the way but you accomplished the aim and you take refuge in that memory and that isn't a memory of

01:37:50.560 the absence of pain quite quite the contrary and it also might be that the antithesis of pain is

01:37:57.980 something like the willingness to undergo it voluntarily and it's certainly what's represented by the

01:38:03.940 crucifixion and so it's an embrace even of what's negative it's certainly not a replacement of

01:38:10.760 suffering with with like hedonic gratification and certainly not the eradication of suffering now

01:38:16.720 maybe you don't like that world and you know but there's a problem there too this is the problem

01:38:22.460 job faces it's like you that you cannot like the world but that doesn't mean that you can what would

01:38:31.460 you say it isn't obvious that you have the capability or the right to stand in opposition to its moral

01:38:37.780 order so now you can debate that obviously but this this seems that i mean we mentioned again this

01:38:45.320 concept of of an evil guard earlier on this is you find this in in the literature like trying to run

01:38:51.460 this parody argument against the existence of a good god quite a lot in that okay so i'm gonna i'm gonna

01:38:57.640 hang on one sec that we have to do something here because we're running out of time so what i would

01:39:01.860 recommend is this i wanted to get to the to the new the meat of your new book now we have another half

01:39:07.920 an hour on the daily wire let's let's delve into the issue of the good versus evil god that's come up

01:39:13.080 in philosophical discussion if that's okay because that'll be a good that'll be a great thing for us to

01:39:17.300 do just for half an hour you can walk us through that so everybody for everybody who's watching and

01:39:21.940 listening that is what we'll do on the daily wire side so if you want to join us there uh please feel

01:39:27.320 welcome to do that and you can throw some support the daily wire way too if you're inclined to do

01:39:32.340 that and there are good advocates for well this kind of discussion which they help bring to everyone

01:39:37.220 you know gratis which is i think quite a remarkable uh offering so in any case let's do that and so

01:39:45.640 we'll we'll close this off we did a fair bit of wandering around theological and conceptual territory

01:39:52.480 we laid a nice groundwork for the next part of this so as i said everybody if you're watching and

01:39:56.560 listening join us on the daily wire side thank you very much for the discussion and for sharing it

01:40:02.840 with everyone who's watching and listening and we'll continue in in a couple of minutes and as i said

01:40:08.060 everybody join us

01:40:09.000 you

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - September 05, 2024

478. Heaven, Hell, & the Human Condition ｜ Jack Symes

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