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  • You

  • Well, I'm pleased today to be talking to Ben Shapiro

  • Ben I think really doesn't need an introduction at least not to most of you who will be there watching or listening to this given

  • That he's now one of the most recognized individuals on the american political

  • journalism scene in any case

  • Ben's an American Lawyer writer journalist and political commentator. He's written 10 books

  • The latest of which is the right side of history a reason and moral purpose made the West great

  • Which has become a number one New York Times bestseller. I think it's at number four right now

  • I

  • think Ben just mentioned to me that he sold about a hundred and fifty thousand copies since it was released and that was only a

  • Couple of weeks ago so that's going very well. He became the youngest nationally syndicated column in the u.s. At age 17

  • he's also one of the most recognized current commentators on the new media YouTube and

  • Podcasts serves as editor in chief for The Daily wire which he founded and is the host of the Ben Shapiro show

  • which runs daily on podcast and radio

  • He's managed to transform himself into a one-man media empire and it's quite the accomplishment done

  • He's also an extraordinarily interesting person

  • I think to fall Omaha to watch in his interactions with people publicly because he's an unbelievably sharp debater and one of the

  • Fastest verbally fastest people that I've ever met. So it's good. We're gonna talk about his book today

  • That's the right side of history. How reason and moral purpose made the West great and I can tell you right there

  • there's four reasons for social justice types to be irritated just if the

  • Just at there

  • What would you call it the daring of the title? So let's talk about it

  • Tell me about your book

  • The reason that I wrote the book is because in 2016, I kind of looked around and

  • For the record I didn't vote for either of the presidential candidates in 2016

  • Neither of them met my minimum standard to be President based on the evidence and I looked at

  • The sort of attitude that had changed in America used to be that we'd have elections and they were really fraught people were angry

  • Other people were upset each other but the rage seemed almost out of control in the last election cycle in 2016

  • I was personally receiving enormous number of death threats for my positions on

  • Politics I was receiving enormous amount of hatred from the the alt-right

  • I know that there are some of the media like the economists who have falsely labeled me outright

  • Which is hilarious to me since I've been their most outspoken critic for several years at this point and that year in 2016

  • I was their number one target according to the anti-defamation league

  • One of those tricky enough to be part of the alt-right and also their enemy, right? No we Jews man

  • Various

  • Yeah

  • In any case. Yeah, I was receiving all sorts of blowback for that at the same time

  • I was going on college campuses and being protested to the extent that I was requiring hundreds of police officers to accompany me on

  • At certain college campuses and I started to think

  • There is something deeply wrong here and it's not just that we are disagreeing with each other

  • it's that there's a certain level of hatred and tribalism that's building up in American politics that I hadn't really seen before there was a

  • feeling like

  • Even back as late as 2009 that America was moving in the right direction. You post Obama's election

  • There was a feeling like, okay. Well, we have the same fundamental principles. We're trying to perfect those principles

  • We may disagree over the ramifications of those principles. Some of us may want more government involved in health care

  • So must want less some of us may want more regulations in markets

  • Some of us may want less or redistribution ism or non or non redistribution ISM

  • But the the fundamental principles things like free speech things like the inherent value of the individual

  • Things like the idea that I'm supposed to

  • Generally respect your right to your own labor

  • these these were all things that we sort of agreed on and then we were trying to broaden that out to encompass further groups and

  • As time moved on it seemed like we were moving away from a lot of those fundamental assumptions

  • He started to see rises in the opioid epidemic in suicide rates

  • He started to see a general level of unhappiness crop up that was reflected in the political tribalism

  • I was feeling but wasn't reflected more general as more generally in

  • actual lowered life

  • Expectancy in the United States for the first time in decades and I started to think there's an actual deeper problem wrong here

  • Than just we disagree on politics. There's something deeply wrong here. We don't trust our institutions anymore by poll data

  • Most of us don't know or trust all of our neighbors all of this stuff speaks to a dissolution of the social fabric

  • So why is that happening? What's and this is nearly unjustifiable. I mean if you look at us just from a material prosperity level

  • It's unjustifiable. If you look at us from a political freedom level it's unjustifiable

  • We are the freest most prosperous people in the history of the world and yet we're totally pissed off at each other all the time

  • and we're filling that that hole with anger and with social mobbing on online and with woke scolding and

  • And where's all this coming from?

  • and that led me to to write the book which

  • essentially argues that

  • We've forgotten the foundations of our civilization the principles we used to holding calm and have deep roots

  • and when we forget those roots we tend to move away from the principles themselves, and this is

  • Manifested in what I think is the great debate over Western civilization right now one side

  • Which says Western civilization was rooted in good eternal immutable truths that were not always perfectly realized and that over time

  • We have we have moved toward greater realization of and that's why the West is great

  • That's why the West has provided material prosperity to the vast majority of the globe

  • It's why 80 percent of people have been raised from abject poverty since 1980

  • It's why you've seen this this massive increase in the number of people who are living in decent conditions

  • It's also why you see a rise in democracy a rise in political liberalism. Small small-l kind of classical liberalism

  • all of this is the results of the West and so we ought to thank the West and we got to look back to the

  • roots and see what is there worth preserving and then there's a that seems I would say to be a viewpoint that would have broadly

  • characterized both

  • Conservatives and classic liberals as far as I'm concerned no research. That's right

  • and

  • then there's the second point of view and the second point of view has cropped up and become very prominent in the West in the

  • last

  • couple of decades

  • Particularly since the 1960s and that perspective is that Western civilization is really just a mask for hierarchy that basically there's a bunch of power

  • Hierarchies and subjugate sub and not natural hierarchies

  • forcible oppressive hierarchies white people against black people rich people against poor people

  • the powerful against the non powerful the 1% against the 99% and all of these institutions things like the

  • Things like the things like free speech itself things like free markets

  • These are actually just excuses for domination and subjugation. They're not actual principles. We hold to they're not important principles

  • in fact

  • those principles have to be

  • rooted out so that we can have a better humanity bloom in the wake of all of this now in my perspective this takes for

  • granted all of the prosperity

  • It seems to assume that the natural state of man is

  • Prosperity and freedom when in fact the natural state of man is misery and short life

  • Okay, so that's an interesting thing right there that I've been thinking about quite a bit. It's as if the radical left I

  • mean there's denial on the radical left of let's say

  • Biological differences between men and women right? Everything's socio-culturally constructed that seems to me to be rooted in an even deeper

  • denial of biology and nature in a more fundamental sense

  • I mean the left worships nature as something intrinsically positive

  • you see that reflected in the more radical forms of

  • environmentalism and some of the more toxic anti humanism that goes along with that like the idea that

  • We're a cancer on the face of the planet or that the world would be better off if there weren't human beings on it

  • but what seems to not be part of that which is quite surprising to me is any recognition that although

  • Nature is let's call it at least or inspiring

  • Which also includes the positive it's also now unbelievably deadly force and the the truth of the matter

  • is that the natural state of human beings is privation and want right from birth and

  • to blame

  • What and what seems to happen so often on the radical left is that that's ignored entirely

  • it's as if the natural state of human beings is

  • Plenty and delight delight in existence and that all of

  • The terrible things that happen to people in their lives are actually can be laid at the feet of faulty social institutions

  • it's like three is such a strange position given that the

  • evidence that nature is trying to do us in on a regular basis is

  • Overwhelming I don't know if the if the left is so

  • positively inclined in a romantic manner

  • towards the idea of nature because that strengthens their position that all of the pathology that

  • characterizes the world can be laid at the feet of

  • institutions and particularly capitalist institutions

  • But it still seems to me to be

  • It's a strange phenomenon. Well, it's it's strange and it's and it's obviously

  • Ignorant, but I think there's something else that that really is going on here. The Marxist of today are

  • Arguing many of them are arguing that what they're really wanting is greater shared material prosperity

  • I don't think that that's actually what's capturing the minds of people right now

  • I think what's actually capturing the lines of people was the spiritual promise of Marxism the idea that Marx lays out

  • even in the communist manifesto

  • When he is talking about the transformation of man in his initial argument is that markets war people that people who have become?

  • Meaner and cruder and ruder and more terrible because of markets because they are self-interested in that the markets emphasize

  • Self-interest as opposed to altruism and therefore if you got rid of markets

  • Then you could exist in greater peace and prosperity and plenty

  • Because human beings themselves would transform so it's not that the system itself would create greater material prosperity

  • It's that in the initial run. It probably would create more privation

  • It's that in the long run

  • Human beings would be transformed in their souls by all of this and then they would feel greater

  • Bonds to the people around them. That was the spiritual promise of Marxism

  • I think that that's I at root what a lot of people in the West are resonating

  • ok, so that's that's a hope for something like

  • Well, it's almost like a religious Redemption. Yes

  • It's a strange thing to you know, I'm preparing for this debate that I'm going to have with Slava g-shock on April 19th

  • and I've been trying to think it through and one of the things that's really struck me is that

  • Not only are the solutions that Marxist

  • Marxism offers

  • Error ridden to say the least given the historical evidence and and I just don't see how anybody can deny that

  • Although people certainly do but that the problem that the Marxists originally identified seems to actually to be vanishing

  • I mean as you already pointed out

  • There's unparalleled increase in material prosperity among

  • Not only among the rich which you could complain about if you were concerned about inequality

  • but among the poorest people in the world like we have

  • absolute material privation based on UN standards by 50% between the year 2000 and

  • 2012 and the cynics say that's because we set the standard for material privation too low, which is dollar ninety a day

  • But if you look at the curves

  • that you can generate at

  • Levels of three dollars and 80 cents a day or seven dollars and sixty cents a day

  • You see exactly the same thing happening and you see rapid increases in

  • Economic growth in sub-saharan Africa, like, you know 7% growth rates

  • which are more typically characteristic say of China or India and and

  • And that's manifested in

  • unbelievably positive

  • statistical evidence such as not suggesting that now the

  • Child mortality rate in Africa is the same as it was in Europe in 1952

  • And so the Marxists original complaint was that you know

  • the rich were going to get richer and the poor were going to get poorer and

  • that that would that could be laid at the feet of

  • capitalism just like the fact of hierarchy itself could be laid at the feet of capitalism and a

  • It's clear that capitalism although it does produce

  • Hierarchical inequality just like every other system that we know of it also produces wealth and that wealth is actually being very effectively

  • distributed to the people

  • You know, perhaps not primarily to the people who most need it

  • But to the people who most need it in ways that are truly mattering and so to me the entire the entire

  • Structure of Marxism is is it's it's an anachronistic. The problem is no longer

  • appropriately formulated and the solution tends to be deadly if

  • Counterproductive if not deadly. So it's it's

  • Maybe here here's something I've been thinking about too. You tell me what you think about this

  • You know

  • Some of it still has to do with the

  • Innate human emotional response to inequality, you know

  • When you walk down the street, you see a runed alcoholic schizophrenic who's obviously suffering in 50 different dimensions

  • It's very difficult to feel positive about the state of humanity in the world, and it's very easy for a reflexive

  • Compassion to take over and say well wouldn't it be something if we could just retool society so that none of that was necessary

  • It must be someone's fault

  • It must be something that we're not doing right and you know

  • There's some truth in that because of course our systems could be better than they are and and it seems to me to be that

  • unreflective

  • Compassion that drives whatever residual attractiveness that Marxism still has apart also from the darker

  • possibility which is that it really does appeal to the jealousy that's characteristic of people in the envy and

  • Which manifests itself as hatred for hierarchy on the basis that some people are doing better than me

  • You know

  • so I

  • think there's also there's also a

  • Failure on the part of advocates of the free-market to point out that free markets are good for what they are good for meaning that

  • the two things that are important to recognize about free markets 1

  • Free markets are there to create a generalized level of cheaper goods and better products at cheaper prices more widely available

  • That's what markets do and they do it brilliantly

  • Well, that doesn't mean that that that markets are there to take care of the person who is unable to work

  • I mean that's not something that markets are there to do it's something I talked about in the book the need for a social fabric

  • If you want a free market

  • You also have to have a social fabric that helps pick people up

  • Now people on the Left have said the government should be the air SATs social fabric

  • the government should pick those people up and in large-scale cases, maybe that needs to be the case, but

  • Usually it was religious communities and informal social fabrics that actually filled those gaps beyond that

  • there is a

  • Second problem and that is I hear a lot of populist on both left and right make the statement that we just need to

  • Make markets work for us and all I can think when I hear that is your funder Lima. You have fundamentally misunderstood

  • What a market is so Marxism is a set of values and then a system of economics crafted atop the set of values

  • so the set of values as you said before is that

  • Equality should trump prosperity and equality should from freedom that equality should trump everything

  • So if equality Trump said then the only way to make everyone equal is to turn them into in

  • Indistinguishable widgets controlled from above until we create an economic system to do that

  • There are principles that undergird free markets free markets are not a human

  • Construction free markets are a recognition that you are an individual human being in control of your own labor

  • That's simple understanding means that you cannot support any other form of a market now

  • You can support some form of redistribution ISM at the local level

  • You can try and urge people to be more moral by giving to their fellow man

  • But markets themselves are a recognition of a basic truth that Marxism rejects

  • Which is that freedom and individualism ought to trump and indeed need to trump the the need for equality

  • So the freedom versus equality battle is very much alive in our time

  • And because we have such freedom people tend toward equality

  • I think when you have we should talk about a little bit about equality - because there's two

  • important but there's two important modes of equality that are

  • that that have to be segregated and discussed separately because

  • people tend to confuse

  • Equality of opportunity with equality of outcome, right? I think that it's perfectly reasonable to be a free-market champion

  • let's say or at least an appreciator of

  • the utility of free markets and to be strongly in favor of equality of opportunity, which means that you try to

  • remove from the market system any

  • impediments to people

  • manifesting those talents that would make them effective and competent players in the

  • productive market itself

  • Not on the basis of the fact that that's counterproductive for everyone the individuals but also for everyone who could be benefiting from their talent

  • Yeah, that's absolutely true. And I think that's inherent in the idea of markets

  • It's why when people use terms like crony capitalism, I always think there's no such thing. There's there's corporate there

  • There's corporate corporate ISM, which is a better description of it

  • crony capitalism is a self refuting proposition capitalism and free markets are based on exactly what you're talking about because again,

  • The fundamental principle is I own my own labor

  • Which means that if you impede my ability to alienate that labor you are now interfering with my labor

  • So free markets are predicated on an idea of equality and rights and the idea of every human being

  • Made at is why I say there's a judeo-christian heritage to free markets

  • Every human being made in the in the image of God

  • Which I think is the single most important sentence written in the history of humanity

  • When you abandon the the we tend to think that these things naturally occurred

  • This is where you get into the Enlightenment argument. The Enlightenment argument is that you can just reason your way to these things

  • Well, you can reason your way to these things there

  • Also a lot of other things you can reason your way to including communism and fascism

  • The question is where what are your starting points?

  • What are the actual fundamental assumptions that you make about human beings and the nature of the world?

  • That you then apply reason to to arrive at something great

  • and

  • this is why I'm

  • not a fan of the the Enlightenment view that just if we start tabula rasa we can come up with exactly the system that we've

  • built today, I don't think that that's either historically accurate or philosophically accurate because

  • We see that human beings reach a wide variety of conclusions based on different premises

  • Well, it's also the case that it assumes that reason in fact in some sense can be complete in

  • Its ability to generate its own

  • Comprehensive axioms which can also be justified on rational grounds and it's not obvious to me that that's the case

  • I think that's why that founders of the Declaration of Independence were forced to say we find these truths to be self-evident

  • right, you have to have a starting point and this is something that I do believe that people like Steven Pinker who I have a

  • great amount of admiration for

  • are

  • make an error in their over valuation of the Enlightenment and and their

  • devaluation of the historical

  • What the vast historical epochs that produced the works of imagination?

  • that produced the axioms on which the Enlightenment could originally emerge and and you and I seem to agree I think very

  • Precisely on especially that phrase that you just used. I mean, I think there's two

  • statements in

  • The in genesis that are of equivalent importance actually

  • one of them maybe there's three one of them is that

  • What God used to create?

  • order Oh of

  • potential and chaos was something approximating a

  • process that was characterized by truth and courage and so there's a

  • There's an idea there and which is why I think God continually repeats after he creates day after day

  • That the creation was good

  • And so the idea is that if you face the potential of the world

  • Which is I think something that human beings do with their consciousness

  • I think that's what consciousness is for if you face the world with truth and courage then what you generate out of that field of

  • Possibilities is in fact good even though the price the print you may pay a price for the truth in the short term

  • it's an act of faith even in some sense, which

  • reflects that axiomatic presupposition that there's nothing that's going to improve the world more than

  • Forthright confrontation with the structure of reality and an attempt to abide by the truth and then you have that second statement

  • Which is a miraculous statement, I believe it's hard to see it as anything else

  • That both men and women are made in the image of God

  • We've we've already had gone established as the Creator and the Creator who creates in a certain

  • ethical manner and then that power or ability or virtue or privilege or

  • responsibility is

  • transferred to

  • human beings and it's transferred to men and women and I also find out actually quite stunning, you know, because there's no shortage of

  • postmodern

  • feminist criticism of the judeo-christian tradition

  • Claiming that it's fundamentally oppressive and patriarchal and yet right at the beginning you have this

  • incredible statement which which seems to fly in the face of its of the

  • Anachronistic nature of the document stating that it's not just men that are made in the image of God

  • it's men and women and that's and that's

  • It isn't obvious to me how that conclusion was reached so long ago

  • Yep, that's that's exactly right and it's also important to note that historically speaking if you look at surrounding documents documents for Mesopotamia typically

  • The the actual language that was used the image of God language is actually not unique to the Bible exist in other cultures

  • But it was always the king who was made in the image of God, right?

  • So the people who are most powerful who are mainly that extension of that to all human beings is a unique moment in in philosophical

  • History and as you say the idea that God has created an orderly universe and that we have the capacity to act out within that

  • Universe and to see God from behind so to speak that we can't necessarily see his face

  • but we can see sort of the general outline of what he is intending and then

  • Another verse from Genesis that I think is deeply important is from the Cain and Abel story the verse where God says to Cain Tim

  • Shell that you have the ability to do better than this

  • Stephanie says, you know I why didn't you accept my sacrifice and God says well 10 your control

  • you know go out and do something about it and then of course came rejects that and it's

  • That story is so deep and I think it really is the story of what's happening right now

  • Exactly you have

  • God's reaction. The Cain is that I rejected you because you could do better

  • Right, and that's actually a kind of compliment even though you know

  • If you're not offering up the proper sacrifices and things aren't working out for you

  • It might not be the kind of compliment that you want to hear but it is a testament to the potential of the human

  • Spirit and so you're making the case in your book

  • And and this is the this isn't what would you call an injunction an encouragement to the Enlightenment types?

  • to look to their

  • Axioms and to think hard about how it could be that the idea of individual democratic freedom. For example

  • and all of the wonderful explicit political

  • ideas that came out of the Enlightenment could have possibly

  • emerged and I do agree that

  • you have to have that initial conception of the individual as sovereign and that that sovereignty has to be associated with something akin to

  • recognition of divinity at least

  • insofar as what's regarded as divine is regarded as the highest of all possible values and then it is absolutely

  • Surprising as you pointed out that not only is the idea of the image of God extended to men and women

  • But that it is not

  • Explicitly not the domain of kings

  • Who in fact might be more at risk for?

  • abandoning their actions as

  • Avatars of God so to speak then those who are in privation, you know

  • You see that consistently in the Old Testament where the Kings are being taken to task

  • Constantly by prophets who do appear to speak more in the language of God

  • let's say and then you see it also in the New Testament with thee with the insistence that

  • the wealthy and powerful have

  • impediments to

  • Proper ethical action that those who are less materially fortunate might not face

  • Ya and that sematic is is present obviously in the old testement

  • There's actually a passage where it's talking about the sacrifices. I believe it's in the Book of Leviticus where it talks about bringing

  • accidental sin sacrifices and it talks about the common man and says if you shall sin then you bring the sacrifice and then it says

  • With regard to the Prince the nasi it says with regards to the Prince. The Hebrew word is cost share

  • It says when you will sit

  • so the assumption is that if you have great power the

  • chances of your sinning are going to be greater because you are going to conceive of yourself as higher than others and this is going

  • to lead you down a pretty

  • dark path

  • The the point with regard to the Enlightenment is that we actually have some counter evidence of the Enlightenment being awesome

  • All the way through if it is predicated solely on

  • Reason and not on a historic understanding of of these principles and that is the French enlightenment

  • I mean this was one of my key points when it when I was looking at a Pinker's book enlightenment now

  • But you again you and I agree on this. I have great enlightenment for pinker

  • I took a class with him when I was at Harvard Law School. He did a joint class with Alan Dershowitz

  • I was kind of fun, but

  • Pinker goes a

  • 450 page book about the Enlightenment and he never mentions the French Revolution once

  • And I thought I don't know how that's historically possible to do

  • The Enlightenment was not just David Hume and Adam Smith and the American Founding Fathers the Enlightenment

  • Also was Russo and Voltaire and Robespierre and it was the and it was the German progressive enlightenment

  • That had a real dark side in

  • its

  • Human reason can lead you to a lot of different very bad places the the metaphor that I like to use with regard to Western

  • Civilization is that Western civilization is a suspension bridge and then on one

  • and it's over a river of as you would say chaos and on the one end of the bridge the big pole is

  • These fundamental assumptions you have to make about the nature of the world that I don't believe could be arrived at other than through some

  • Form of divine revelation. This would be the judeo-christian tradition and those principles are things like we have free choice

  • That's an assumption you have to make and is not implicit in scientific materialism the idea that history has a progressive nature you can improve

  • The world around you again. That is not a that that is reliant on an assumption

  • You have to make the idea that human beings are held to a morality that they themselves do not

  • Subjectively create out of emotional mean and that is something that you have to make an assumption about

  • The thing that the idea of objective truth itself is something you have to make an assumption about and that's an assumption that I think

  • can be made most

  • Specifically by the idea that there is a mind outside of us that creates that objective truth and stands behind an ordered universe

  • all of those are some

  • Judeo-christian values. I think there's evidence for much of this, you know

  • One of the things that I've been discussing with my audiences is like, you know

  • It depends obviously on what you're willing to take as evidence

  • but it isn't obvious to me at all that you can establish a functional relationship with yourself unless

  • you hold yourself responsible for your actions and you regard yourself as a

  • Free agent in at least in some regards like obviously we're not omniscient

  • Omnipresent and omnipotent that's clearly the case. We're subject to stringent limitations and there are

  • situations in which our actions

  • devolve into

  • Determinism that's obvious. Neurophysiological II. It has to be the way the world works

  • Is that once you execute a decision there comes to a point where that decision is

  • manifested in something approximating a deterministic manner

  • I think the evidence for that is overwhelming

  • But that doesn't mean that when you're looking out into the future and you're contemplating the many paths that you could take that

  • What you do to make your decisions then is deterministic in a simple in a simple manner

  • I think if that was the case, there'd be no need for consciousness at all

  • And then I look at how people react to themselves is we hold ourselves responsible

  • despite our own

  • inclination

  • for the sins that we

  • Manifest for the manners in which we wander off the path people wake up at 4:00 in the morning and they berate

  • themselves for the actions

  • they took that they knew they shouldn't and the in action that they manifested when they knew they should have acted and

  • If we were masters in our own house without that central moral compass

  • There'd be no reason at all for us to wake up and torture ourselves to death with our moral

  • inequity and if you have a friend or a family member and you insist upon treating them as if they're a

  • deterministic agent with no

  • Effect on the future and no responsibility for their choices. It's actually impossible to have a relationship with them

  • You can't even have a relationship with a two or three year old if you insist upon

  • Infantilizing them in that manner and not attributing to them the choice that enables valid punishment

  • Let's say on the one hand you've done something wrong, and you need to be held accountable for it

  • but also valid accomplishment on the other which is that you've done something that you didn't have to do that was voluntary that's deserving of

  • approbation and

  • reinforcement and we act that out and then the next level of evidence seems to be that if you found your

  • quality on

  • Propositions. Other than that that the sovereignty of the individual and the responsibility of the individual the whole thing goes sideways

  • So rapidly that it's almost indescribable and it doesn't just go sideways. It goes sideways and down and so like I don't know exactly

  • What to make of that as a proof, you know?

  • It's a strange sort of proof the proof being that well, there doesn't seem to be any

  • reasonable way for human beings to organize their

  • social interactions at any level of social organization without

  • Accepting those initial I would say being Christian assumptions that this is right

  • And then this is where the main debate happens between me and sam Harris because Sam will

  • Reason himself to those assumptions and away from those assumptions and to those assumptions in a way

  • he'll use those assumptions in building other assumptions and

  • I've said to him before I feel like you're using bricks from a house that you just turned 40

  • So you can't really do that

  • This is why I say I'm the one hand you have to have those

  • judeo-christian assumptions and those by the way under guard even the very concept of reason because the idea of reason is that you are using

  • a willful process of thought

  • in order to convince someone else

  • Predicated on the notion that the other person's opinion is valuable and that you shouldn't just Club them over the head and take their stuff

  • I think that reason it has the value of reason has implicit moral biases and those moral biases

  • You can't reason your way to as I said, it's an evolutionary biology perspective

  • There's no reason for reason other than if you think that maybe you can convince unless especially in a world of non mass communication

  • What is the reason for reason right in a world that pre-exists mass communication?

  • What is the reason that you need reason wouldn't force be more effective for most of human history

  • It was it was significantly more effective than reason

  • Certainly, it's certainly what the radicals on the Left would argue even now I mean and the idea of reason seems to be predicated

  • so and that would go along with the idea of free speech which I think is also equally

  • Grounded in these underlying axioms is that you know, each of us as sovereign individuals have a valid mode of existence

  • about and there's something unique about that valid mode of existence and it's also something that can be communicated and

  • that part of the reason for rational discussion is that

  • the ability to share that unique and valuable element of

  • private experience with someone else is

  • salutary, but it's also so you tell it salutary in a manner that allows for the mutual spiritual transformation of both of the

  • people that are involved in the

  • Discussion it seems to me that you can't

  • If you're pro reason you've already bought that argument exactly

  • This is exactly right and so faith and reason to this

  • extent are not intention faith undergirds reason because you have to make us

  • Fundamental assumptions even to get to reason and this is why I think that one of the things that has happened and it's really unfortunate

  • I discuss it in the last chapters of the book is that when you take away the assumptions that undergoing reason reason itself?

  • Collapses in it's not that reason the stains appear on top of the structure

  • Once the structure Falls reason falls that too and we returned to our sort of tribal

  • naturalistic roots that are quite dangerous

  • this is why I say that you need Jerusalem on one end of the bridge the other end of that suspension bridge is

  • Reason meaning that we can't be theocrats. We can't look at

  • fundamentalist religious texts and take them as

  • As complete literal is completely literal and then hope to develop as a civilization on the basis of that complete literalism

  • So you have to look to which of these Commandments for example in the Torah are directed toward human

  • Eternal human nature so I would suggest that

  • Commandments that are directed toward reining in certain appetites are directed toward God's understanding of human nature that certain

  • Injunctions with regards how we behave in the Ten Commandments. These are predicated on a on an understanding of human nature

  • That is truly profound and worthwhile preserving

  • it's also worth noting that the story of Western civilization is the expansion of

  • These principles out from the tribal and toward a broader range of humanity. And that's why the book is not just an argument

  • Here's how I interpret the Bible and here's why that's right. It's an argument that

  • Historical development was necessary after the Bible. So it is not just that the Bible solves all your problems

  • It's that God

  • Understands even from a religious perspective in Judaism and I think in Christianity too that we are going to apply human reason to these texts

  • That's from a religious perspective from a non religious perspective

  • the point I'm making is that you have to take these fundamental assumptions whether you like them or not that are religiously rooted and then

  • apply your reason to

  • Develop from the fundamental assumptions that we have already stated and that tension is what allows the suspension bridge to

  • Continue to function that doesn't mean that it is always equally solid throughout time

  • It isn't because the tension sometimes wavers sometimes reason takes dominance. Sometimes judeo-christian values or Judaic biblical literalism

  • Takes dominance. And if your bottom line is you collapse the reason you end up with theocracy

  • You collapse judeo-christian values you end up with nihilism is sort of the basic argument. Okay, okay

  • so so so, you know, one of the things that that Sam is afraid of and you know

  • There's some validity in this fear

  • And I think he tends to apply this more to is to the the state of an Islamic fundamentalism

  • But her same argument can be made with the other religious traditions

  • You know

  • Evangelical Christianity for example and maybe Orthodox Judaism who knows that the danger is that we'll take these

  • revealed truths which differ and

  • that

  • Holding them as absolute revealed truths will make us parochial tribal and the consequence of that will be all sorts of

  • catastrophe and horror

  • right and you know one of the things I learned when I was studying the Old Testament, this was very interesting a

  • Jewish friend of mine or monoid sort of clued me into this because one of the things he told me was that

  • Christians who emphasized the New Testament tend to

  • Parody the Old Testament God - odd somewhat unfair degree casting him as much more

  • Tyrannical in some sense the god of Wrath. Yeah

  • Justice versus mercy. Yep, right exactly exactly

  • So I took that seriously and especially when I was reading the Abrahamic stories and you know

  • You see you see throughout the earliest writings the idea that in some bizarre sense

  • God can be bargained with

  • right

  • and and and so you see that even in the Cain and Abel story because Cain actually faces God with his complaints and

  • Says well, you know, here's how I look at the world and go on

  • Excoriates and because he believes that he's looking at the world

  • improperly and I think for good reason but there is the implication that you could have a conversation with God and

  • Hypothetically learn something and but then it that transforms even more

  • when you see the that the stories that follow so Abraham directly intercedes with God on on

  • in in favor of Sodom right right because and and he makes a pretty

  • What would you say extreme case for redeeming Sodom which seems to have degenerated into quite thee?

  • They did quite the state of Hell

  • Trying to entice God into not being more destructive than necessary if there's any goodness to be found

  • And he actually does that successfully and so that's very interesting

  • So even though God is absolute in his judgment in some fundamental sense

  • there is this Kapow Seifer dialogue which seems to be an

  • analogy to the idea that reason and revelation can coexist and and and and and

  • Bolster each other in some sort of upward development

  • Well, then this is exactly right and then the idea of natural law which the seeds are there in the Judaic value system

  • I think natural laws more fully fleshed out in sort of Greek

  • teleological sense when when they talk about the idea that the

  • Aristotle Plato when they talk about the idea that you can look at the world around you and discover the purposes of the world around

  • You simply by using reason well in the in the genetic sense

  • There's the idea that God abides by the moral code that he himself created and you can ask him questions about it

  • In fact, the very name Israel is in in Hebrew Sorrell. Yes, sir. I'll literally means struggle with God. Yes

  • That there is this and that's a remarkable that's a remarkable

  • Story that it's it's it's Jacob. I always get Jacob and Joseph confess

  • It's Jacob

  • The other side of the river so he hasn't crossed back to his homeland right he hasn't returned home after his hero's journey

  • He sent his wife and his children and his belongings

  • ahead to try to make peace with the brother that he's seriously betrayed and

  • And he's had his adventures and maybe he's learned his lessons

  • But then he's on the bank the river and he's visited by an angel who appears to be gone and he wrestles with him all

  • night, and he comes out damaged, right which is an indication that this sort of like the the

  • Egyptian idea when Horus encounters Seth and has his eye torn out that there's some high

  • Probability of damage that if you encounter the divine even even in some positive sense

  • but he wrestles with him all night and then defeats God apparently in some sense and

  • and is allowed to move forward with his adventure and then is given this new name and

  • The name really struck me when I started thinking about it because what it does imply

  • I think this is such a positive message and I don't know how to reconcile it precisely with it Jewish claim of

  • chosen us as a people because my reading of the of that particular text seemed to imply that

  • The chosen people are precisely those who do in fact wrestle with God and so that they take these ethical questions

  • Seriously, they're not

  • Accepting them without question and without thought because there's no wrestling there

  • right, but the real morality comes in the in this struggle between the revelation and

  • And and and and and the freedom for thought and choice

  • I mean

  • I think that it's a beautiful idea and one of the things that's fascinating about that is if you read the rest of the book

  • Of Genesis every time in Genesis somebody's name is changed because there are several name changes right aber Abram it becomes Abraham

  • Sir, I becomes Sarah there there are several points at which there are angels who come and basically change the name or God changes somebody's

  • Name that's their name going forward when Jacob is returned Israel. He is not called Israel consistently from there to the end of

  • Death he the names are used at different times. So sometimes he's Israel. And sometimes he's Jacob

  • So the idea there is that

  • Sometimes he is

  • The best version of himself that the version of self who struggles with morality who struggles with God who tries to come up with proper

  • Solutions and sometimes he's still the old Jacob the old Jacob who ran away from Esau and who served seven years

  • Unjustly under Laban and all the rest of it

  • so

  • It's really fascinating one of my favorites home eunuch stories that this has been deeply embedded in Judaea tradition for a long time the idea

  • of struggling with God and struggling with the dictates of morality because

  • Part of Jewish tradition is of course the idea of the oral tradition the idea that we were given a written document on Sinai

  • But then there was an oral tradition that was also passed along to Moses. That was the interpretation of the written tradition

  • Which in some ways maybe a backfilled justification, but I think that there's a fundamental truth to it

  • There's there's a segment that I quote in the book from the Talmud

  • It's a really

  • amazing story where

  • It's it's part of these sort of apocryphal stories what they call the Agha Tata and tell me you to in tome you to parlance

  • There's there's a story where there's a rabbi who is in an argument with a bunch of other rabbis about a particular point of Halawa

  • Of Jewish law and this rabbi is arguing

  • He said the rabbi's and the other rabbis vote one way and he votes the other way

  • So he loses and the rabbi who loses says listen, I know I'm right not only do I know

  • I'm right if I'm right let the walls of this the walls of this this synagogue

  • close in around us so the walls starts to lean in and then the rabbi said

  • You know what? That's not evidence. That doesn't show that you're right. It just shows that the walls were closing it

  • He says well, you know if I'm right then let the river outside start to flow backwards

  • So the river starts to flow backwards and the rabbi's insights. It's still not evidence. We're not gonna take that

  • he says well if I'm right let there be a Bott call that there be the voice of God literally come down from heaven and

  • say that I'm right and

  • sure enough a voice from heaven comes down and says that he's right and the and the other members of the

  • Parliament the other members of the Sanhedrin they say to him

  • You know what none of that counts because God gave us a rule and the rule is that we have a majority rule in this

  • Body right here. And so our interpretation is correct, and yours is wrong

  • It doesn't matter what miracles you bring to to show that your side is right and the conclusion of the story is that God says

  • One of the Angels asked God about it

  • And God says my children have defeated me and the idea is that God is happy about this

  • God wants us to use our reason to take those fundamental principles that he gave us and then develop those across time

  • That's how you get development. I

  • Would also interpret this to some degree from a psychological perspective, you know, because and this this might be

  • Far-fetched speculation, but I don't think that it precisely is. I mean, I do believe that our cognitive

  • structures our cognitive function are

  • Embedded in narrative that seems to be a right hemisphere function and that the right hemisphere is the source of intuitive

  • Revelation now whatever

  • Metaphysical implications that have that has I have no idea. I also know that you know many

  • religious experiences seem to be characterized by

  • Preferential activity in the right hemisphere. So there's something very strange going on in the right hemisphere and then we have a left hemisphere. That's

  • argumentative and parliamentary and logical and

  • Obviously in order for us to make our way in the world

  • We have to have a continual dialogue between the intuitive axioms that are offered to

  • spontaneously in our

  • imagination by the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere who does a critical analysis and tries to lay that out in some logical and

  • And and let's say logical and algorithmic manner

  • but the left can collapse into a kind of unthinking tyranny as a consequence of that and the right without that corrective can

  • what would you say stray too far down imaginative paths and no longer be applicable to the to the

  • fundamental day-to-day problems of the world

  • so we need that balance and

  • and it is a strange thing that we have these two hemispheres which implies that we need two ways of looking at the world and

  • I don't think that it's unreasonable to

  • Look at the relationship between that and then assess atif or something like the revelation of intuition and the corrective power of rationality

  • But you can't dispense with the intuition

  • It seems to do something like ground you in the world and to provide you with your fundamental axioms. I

  • Think that's right

  • and by the way

  • that seems to me how an enormous amount of scientific discovery takes place is you people have a flash of intuition and then it's a

  • Question of them and that's how you come up with a hypothesis. Right? Well

  • They often backfield too, you know like right

  • scientific journal

  • Outlines how you came to your hypothesis through a

  • process of rational deduction

  • Step by step, right, but that isn't what happens. What happens is you have a hunch of some sort and often

  • I've seen this especially with intuitive scientists. They have a hunch that actually sounds

  • Irrational when they first put it forward and sometimes it takes them months or even years to backfill that

  • Intuition with the rationality that's necessary to communicate its integrity to other scientists

  • And so the the narrative that's written in the scientific document is actually a kind of well

  • It's a kind of formal. I wouldn't call it a deception

  • It's a formalization but it's also predicated on the assumption that it's linear rational thinking that leads to these

  • Intuitive hypotheses, and sometimes that's the case, especially if it's incremental change

  • But those major leaps forward are like the introduction of new alternative axioms

  • And then they have to be tested by rationality

  • Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think that's also the story of history that you have these intuitive leaps

  • And yeah

  • There's a history to those intuitive leaps and you do have to have both

  • You'd have to understand the history of those intuitive leaps and you also have to understand what an intuitive leap has actually taken place

  • I think he make that argument about revelation

  • I think frankly you can make that argument maybe about the Enlightenment that there's some intuitive leaps going on

  • But those intuitive leaps have a history and don't exist in the absence of the backstory

  • so the intuitive leap of the enlightenment at large part at least politically seemed to me to be the the

  • full

  • articulation of the idea that the human being made in the image of God

  • had

  • intrinsic worth that transcended that which was being

  • Allowed under the feudal system. You see that first. I would say in the transformation of

  • Renaissance art

  • Because what you see is the divine figures for example marry in Christ to take a single example or to take two

  • Particular examples start to remove themselves from their iconic

  • representation and become genuine individuals and so that's uh, that's a bringing down of the divine to earth, but it's also an

  • Elevation of the individual right is that these were real people they were like us and at the same time you see this

  • spread of the idea that well

  • Each individual is sovereign and worthwhile

  • And I do think it's out of that that comes eventually the powerful anti-slavery movies

  • movements and the demand for

  • Universal suffrage

  • Yeah

  • That's exactly right

  • I mean and this is the part where I become rather perturbed when people suggest that the the

  • Evils of Western civilization are unique while the goods are Universal. This is this is the part of the argument

  • I've never understood from people who are highly critical of Western civilization. They point out correctly that

  • Western civilization has been responsible for an immense amount of evil there. There's tremendous racism endemic in Western civilization

  • There's there's religious persecution. Obviously, there's genocide against you know, my extended family

  • I mean this sort of stuff was part Western civilization it is but here's what makes Western civilization different

  • All of those things exist in virtually every other culture throughout the vast span of time

  • the good stuff is the part that we don't have a really good explanation for

  • The good stuff is the part where we have to say. Okay, what drove all the good stuff to happen? Because

  • Unlikely well like one of the things I can't understand this is a real mystery to meat man, and I can't explain it except

  • And maybe this is an intuitive idea

  • because I haven't laid it out as well as I might have but one of the things I cannot understand is how any

  • Countries escaped absolute corruption because most of the countries in the world are absolutely corrupt. The police are corrupt

  • The politicians are corrupt. The unions are corrupt. The corporations are corrupt. The currency is corrupt

  • The day-to-day interactions between people are corrupt and and in the really corrupt countries

  • The interactions between family members are corrupt, you know, so you get situations like well East Germany

  • Which is a bit anachronistic now where you know one out of three people were government informers. It's like and corruption is easy, man

  • It's it's it's it's the Hobbesian way of the world

  • but then there's a handful of countries and I would include Japan and South Korea among those that where

  • Corruption isn't the fundamental rule where Trust is the fundamental rule, right?

  • I can't see how that could have manifested itself

  • except within the confines of a religious

  • belief system that insisted above all on

  • The enactment of a higher moral ethic right something outside of politics something outside of self-interest

  • It's a weak argument because I still don't understand it

  • I don't I don't see how a country can make that transition from fundamental corruption to honesty

  • It's it's an absolute miracle as far as I'm concerned and a number of countries have managed that and they are

  • Almost all are either West Western countries or highly westernized countries

  • yeah, I mean, I I think that's exactly right and it's also when you examine different places on earth what you see

  • Is that the social fabric is going to decide the character of the country?

  • And this is why when people start saying well

  • We should apply nordic solutions in the united states and say well is our culture the same as the Nordic culture

  • Because maybe that solution is not going to work. I mean these sort of one-size-fits-all

  • Attempt in terms of political policy to just apply things randomly everywhere and then assume they will go exactly the same

  • it's obviously untrue most famously in sort of the

  • classical

  • Neoconservative foreign policy conception that you could plop democracy down in the middle of the Gaza Strip and suddenly then

  • suddenly everybody would be in favor of free markets and and peace with your neighbors and this sort of

  • institutions tend to be successful when people are when people

  • Teach their kids the right things

  • well

  • Well, that's also part of the reason that I made the argument constantly to Harris and other atheists that I've talked to that

  • They're judeo-christian whether they know it or not, right?

  • And the reason for that is that all of their embodied actions presuppose the judeo-christian ethic. The only thing that isn't

  • Religious about them is they're

  • articulated

  • post-enlightenment

  • Rational representation of the world and I do think you see that in Harris quite frequently because he does believe in evil

  • He does really good

  • he believes that the proper way of proceeding in the world is to move from evil towards good and I

  • can't

  • You know

  • I've had the exactly the same conversation with Sam in and he it was it's been a bizarre

  • Conversation even on the notion of objective truth so Sam, it's it's kind of weird

  • so you and Sam and I I would say that I'm as a

  • Religious person more closely aligned with Sam's vision of what objective truth is and you're sort of American pragmatist Perce

  • Version of what objective truth is and with that said, I don't know where Sam is getting his version, right?

  • I'm getting my version from the idea that God created an objective truth that the mind of man can ferret out from time to time

  • and Sam's version is

  • What like I just don't understand how evolutionary biology results in anything remotely approaching the idea that an objective truth is possible

  • I see evolutionarily beneficial stuff happening right that if you if you come up with an idea that makes your species more likely to predominate

  • Then you hold by that but that doesn't make it objectively true. It makes it objectively useful which is a different thing

  • I also don't see how it's a straightforward matter to get from reliance on evolutionary biology

  • say as your fundamental way of orienting yourself with regards to reality the world and something like

  • The primacy of rationality and the ability to extract out from that rationality something

  • Approximating a universal morality. I can't see most these three things fitting together at all

  • This is right. And even even Sam's moral standard, which is generalized to man flourishing. There's a lot of play in those joints

  • I mean I've asked him several times

  • I was on my Sunday special and I asked him to define human flourishing and I was pointing out to him that the vast majority

  • Of human beings disagree on the very nature of what bets firm constitutes

  • If you if you talk to religious people about what human flourishing constitutes

  • They're not going to tell you about all of the nice stuff they have in their house

  • They're gonna tell you about their ability to teach the religious precepts to their kids

  • if you're talking about human flourishing on an evolutionary level and

  • Presumably that would assume us having more kids rather than fewer kids and in developed countries, we have fewer kids rather than more kids

  • So what exactly is the standard for human flourishing other than sort of what sim likes I?

  • Think part of the way that he

  • Circumvents that problem is that is by pointing out that it might be possible for us to agree on what constitutes

  • Unnecessary human suffering and to work for the opposite of that like it it makes it kind of right and we agree on cruelty

  • I think

  • And that's why we even agree on that is the trouble

  • I'm not sure that we agree on that either because it's not like there's been any shortage of

  • high cruelty warrior cultures in the past

  • I mean it was certainly the case with Rome

  • Right or or cruelty on behalf of a greater good right. You could easily make the case for cruelty on behalf of human flourishing

  • I mean Hitler did it's it's it's an evil case. That's the whole point

  • Okay, that's the that was the case of communism that you break a few eggs to make an omelet

  • That is the higher human flourishing is the root is the interest of the majority. It's

  • Not rational, I mean one of the things I really liked about the Solzhenitsyn's book The Gulag Archipelago was that you know

  • He makes this he makes an anti enlightenment case in a very matter because he says well look

  • Here's four or five axioms or six or seven axioms. They're derived directly from Marxism and

  • If you accept those and then you act rationally as a consequence of your excite those

  • axioms and of course the Marxists would claim that those axioms were derived by rational means that all you get is something

  • approximating all hell breaking loose and

  • So what's to be the case is that there is a necessary set of underlying axioms

  • And I do believe they're coded properly in the judeo-christian ethic that if you then act upon rationally you get something approximating

  • Whatever progress we've managed to make and a promise is substantive

  • Yep, totally agree. And this is effectively the case that I'm making in the book

  • I think that the big difference we have right now in civilization is the difference that was first articulated

  • I think beautifully by GK Chesterton in in his sort of contrast between left and right his

  • Analogy and it's a beautiful metaphor is that you're walking through a forest and you come across a wall

  • It's just this old archaic wall old stone wall. You don't know why it's there

  • If you're on the left, your first instinct is I don't know why this wall is here

  • Probably I should tear this wall out because why is the wall here?

  • I don't know the person on the right the kind of conservative or traditional person the traditionally minded person their first instinct is I

  • Don't know why this wall is here. I'm gonna go try and find out why the wall is here

  • And then maybe I'll think about tearing it out. Mm-hmm. And that's and that's

  • The case I'm making I think with regard to what our civilization there are

  • Foundational things in our civilization that maybe it's possible to remove that particular Jenga block and everything stands

  • But I'm not gonna pretend that just because I don't understand

  • the reason for this particular revelatory principle at the revelatory principle isn't important and

  • Undergirding and therefore a reason and put there by people who are just as smart as I was there's a certain arrogance to two people

  • Who are living now that they were much smarter than people who came before?

  • No, it's just that you're standing on those people's shoulders so you can see a little bit further

  • But the truth is that they were probably seven-foot. You're probably a 4-footer. Yeah

  • well, it's definitely the case that my intellectual attitude changed quite substantially when I decided that I was going to

  • risk

  • Taking the religious texts that I was studying with some degree of seriousness

  • Mike and I came to that through Solzhenitsyn and young I would say fundamentally because they made a strong case for

  • things

  • Let's say they made a strong case that there were

  • Presuppositions

  • Encoded in those narratives in a dreamlike manner

  • Same way that Piaget did that we couldn't do without and that we should be very careful in

  • dispensing with them in that a

  • arrogant rational manner so that you you treat you start by treating the text with a certain amount of reverence and

  • You with a certain amount of ignorance, right?

  • It's it's there's something here that you don't understand and you

  • should probably assume that it's worthwhile because it's being being kept rather than to leap to the

  • Proposition that you and your ignorance can clearly see why it's unnecessary

  • Yeah, and and I think that the greatest impact the the saddest part of this. Is that the greatest impact in terms of throwing away

  • the the stories of

  • our heritage basically is that that impact is generally not going to be felt in the

  • urban centers with people who go to Sam's lectures or listen to his podcast those people have a

  • worldview that they have shaped by listening to stuff like Sam's or or Steven Pinker's or Richard Dawkins and

  • That worldview. Well, I think it may not be fully coherent it coheres for them

  • but the problem is that you apply that to people whose main draw to

  • to

  • morality is not going to come from listening to these particular sources the people who got their social fabric from churches in the middle of

  • The country in the United States the people who have built a social fabric along with their neighbors because they have a commonly oriented goal

  • And then you take that away from them and you offer them go find your own purpose. Good luck with that. Yeah

  • That's right. They're not going to turn into fully fledged

  • humanistic

  • Positively thinking enlightenment types merely as a consequence of abandoning

  • The religious superstitions is exactly the thing that that the Enlightenment types I think are

  • naive about

  • Its now and then to build up is is is sort of the way that I put it to see em

  • Yes, you can tear apart my religious tradition and you can probably do so in an entertaining way

  • I mean you do obviously and then how are you gonna build? What exactly are you building?

  • You know and and I can do the same thing to to your worldview

  • But then what am I building the question is going to be?

  • What are the foundational we're not we're not standing. We're not standing up. We're not standing on the first floor of the building

  • We are standing on the top floor of a building

  • you can't go at the bottom floor with jackhammers and then expected the top story is just gonna

  • Stay there. It said that's not how this works. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly it. So, all right. All right

  • Well, look, um, I promised that I'd let you be at 1:15, and it's 1:25

  • And so I don't want to take up any more of your time

  • I'm

  • Very pleased that your book is doing well

  • I hope that it does accomplish what you set out to accomplish with it is to

  • Make the case that it's much more appropriate for us in the modern world to continue to to

  • consider the Enlightenment

  • First of all in its faults as well as its virtues. It's a very important issue

  • but also to continue to consider it as a

  • continuation of a process that started thousands of years before and that can't be just casually dismissed on

  • The presupposition that the Enlightenment was drawn out of a hat by a magician, you know four hundred years ago with no

  • Developmental precursor. I think that's an it's you know, the only thing that's remarkable to me about that

  • is that the people so many of the people who are

  • Enlightenment types like Pinker and Hitchens and Harris are also evolutionary

  • biologists and

  • Jesus they should know better man. It's like

  • even people like Fran's de Waal, you know, it's been studied chimpanzee behavior has shown very clearly the

  • Evolutionary origins of a rather profound proto morality. So even you're not

  • Looking at this from the perspective of divine revelation, whatever that might be and that's a great mystery, you know

  • Because I think often divine revelation is the revelation of our true nature to ourselves and you know

  • That might be metaphysically mediated god only knows

  • But there's a lengthy developmental history

  • preceding the development of anything like

  • Fundamental moral assumptions and the evolutionary biology seems to support that presupposition

  • powerfully, and so that's another

  • contradiction in the Enlightenment viewpoint that I just don't get it's like well as far as you're concerned as an evolutionary biologist

  • Everything has a history. That should be

  • Marked off in the hundreds of millions or at least the tens of millions of years and yet this radically important

  • Transformation in the manner in which human beings conducted themselves. Well, that was just something that emerged

  • Out of nothing, right? It's like it's it's it's it's it's so funny because it's a it's a

  • ex nihilo

  • I don't think

  • Argument it's like well we were ignorant

  • Feudalistic

  • Christians squabbling among each other in this

  • superstitious morass and all of a sudden out of nowhere

  • in some sense came this brilliant new way of looking at the world, and I don't

  • See how that's in keeping with that deeper view of history that's necessary if you're an evolutionary biologist

  • Yeah, I obviously agree totally with that and I find it kind of hilarious. So a lot of the presuppositions that are made are

  • fundamentally at odds with a lot of the other presuppositions that are that are that undergird the system of thought when you see

  • You know, I was talking to Pinker just recently really like two weeks ago and I broke this topic, you know

  • he did agree, by the way to have a three-way discussion with you and I

  • Yeah, I mean I'd totally be interested in that

  • Yes

  • talk to the CA people and we're gonna try to set it up because I centigrate I think that would be great and we could

  • We could we could see what you see. We'll have an all right festival. That's

  • Is now everybody's all right if you

  • To Jews to Jews in a self-help in Canadian

  • It would be C because one of the things that struck me so interestingly about

  • the last time I talked to him was as soon as I broached the argument that

  • these Enlightenment ideas were

  • founded in something that looked like a

  • metaphysical religious narrative, whatever its origins

  • All he did was point to all the negative examples of what religious structures have

  • Managed and right that seems to be to be such an unfair argument because it's an avoidance argument again

  • Then that's also stuff that

  • Non religious structures have created like that's that's the the question is not why bad stuff happens in religious society

  • The question is why good stuff at all?

  • Yes, that is the question is specially given that it's it's inappropriate to conflate

  • religious structures with tribalism, correct, you know

  • Especially because you can you can look I mean you might want to blame

  • Human evil on the proclivity for us to gather together in groups under a religious hierarchy

  • But then you're stuck with the problem of chimpanzees who do exactly the same thing with the equivalent degree of brutality

  • With no religious thinking whatsoever

  • And so I think it's perfectly reasonable to point out that religious thinking can become a variant of tribalism

  • but it's no more fair to

  • blame

  • human social

  • conflict on religion than it is to blame the existence of

  • hierarchy on

  • Capitalism the greatest tribalism that I'm seeing it in today's world has not only nothing to do with religion

  • But is actively anti religion or the greatest tribalism that I'm seeing right now whether you're talking about the intersection or left that creates

  • Hierarchies of value based on your group membership or whether you're talking about the white supremacists

  • All right

  • which is militantly anti-christian and sees Christianity and Judaism by extension as as a weakness that that

  • That's pure tribalism white supremacy has nothing to do with overarching religious instincts

  • In fact, it says that overarching religious instinct is quite bad

  • one of the great anti tribal forces in human history has been the presence of

  • Religion is a point that Robert Putnam makes in Bowling Alone

  • he were pretty supposed that diversity was our strength as the as the Nostrum goes and

  • He then found that ethnic diversity in a vacuum doesn't actually create strength it creates

  • diversity

  • What he said is the only two things you get with pure ethnic diversity

  • Are increased protests marches and increased television watching but if you have a common purpose if you have a common purpose a common

  • Reason for being together then ethnic diversity and experiential diversity is our strength and it's really great, right?

  • there you go to a church and you see diverse group of people all of whom came from different places and they all care for

  • each other and they're all taking care of each other and they all have different stories to tell and enriching stories to tell

  • That's how you build the society

  • To play the same axiomatic game exam is predicated on these underlying

  • Revelatory truths the most important of which as you pointed out is the notion that human beings are made in the image of God

  • which which you know, it's one of the things because I'm

  • You know, I tend never to take a religious view if I could take a scientific view I

  • Never take a metaphysical view if I could take a reductionist view, you know, it's a form of Mental Hygiene in some sense

  • but there are statements there are biblical statements that are so

  • Unlikely that it's very difficult for me to account for them

  • reductionistic aliy or even biologically even though I've done my best to do so and that

  • Well the idea that you extract the best out of the chaos of potential with truth

  • That's one man

  • Because that is one daring metaphysical statement and that requires a tremendous amount of courage to even attempt and I do believe that it's true

  • I'm not sure. It's not the most true thing. That's ever been written

  • But then a close contender would be the one that you identified which is well men and women are made in the image of God

  • It's like who the hell would have thought that up? But as much it's such a it's it's it's so crazily

  • Irrational in a sense it flies in the face of

  • Everything that you see about human beings are virtually everything that you see about them. They're hierarchical arrangement their relative weakness their mortality

  • They're flawed nature their sinful nature

  • You know their their their their innumerable

  • Inadequacies and then to say in spite of all that so long ago

  • And at the beginning of this civilizing tradition that well. Yeah, despite all that

  • self-evident

  • Pathology and radical individual difference in power and ability that each of us has a divine spark

  • It's like ha

  • It isn't it's an amazing thought and it's an inspiring thought and I hope that at the end of the day

  • that's that's if we're gonna take away one message from I think this

  • Conversation and in general if loons had one message out to the world the idea that you're made in the image of God

  • And so is everybody else if we build on that? I think we can build something. That's an excellent place to end

  • Well, thanks so much. I really appreciate it Orden

  • it's really good to talk to you Ben and get with your book and I hope it has the effect that you're

  • you're hoping for I hope that we can that we can make a

  • Strong case especially with the Enlightenment types and and even the atheists to some degree. I hope so

  • I think that in the end we can all be on the same page

  • But I think they're gonna have to recognize the the value of tradition just as we respect the value of reason great

  • Right. Awesome. It's a sword. Okay, man, II love to see it. I see

You

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宗教信仰與啟蒙運動,本-夏皮羅主講 (Religious Belief and the Enlightenment with Ben Shapiro)

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    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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