Ben Shapiro vs Alex O'Connor • Is religion good for society?

pretty much universally social science suggests that many of the institutions that we hold de that shape us that provide us social support a huge amount of this used to happen anyway inside of these traditional religious structures and there really has been nothing to replace it we're talking about what the self is here I mean atheists believe in the self everybody believes in the well no that's I mean that that that I I find difficult to believe why why would an atheist believe in the self the self is a series of non-deciding mechanisms this show does seem to have an extraordinary capacity for putting me face to face with people that I've been talking smack about online so thanks again the arguments against God are are fairly compelling and I think the arguments against atheism are fairly compelling and I think that the difference is that most people who believe in God have expressed doubts and a lot of people who are atheists tend to be more religious in this way than many of the people who are God Believers if people listening agree with me that Free Will in fact doesn't exist and simultaneously agree with you that Free Will is somehow necessary for the upkeep of civilization then I would simply ask them to consider who's relying on the delusion here if you want more from today's conversation register now and you'll have a chance to win a free ebook and tell us who persuaded you in our survey with today's show Welcome to the big conversation part of Premier unbelievables roster of shows brought to you in partnership with the Templeton Foundation I am your host Andy kind today we are talking about a very interesting topic the question is is religion good or bad for society and I've been joined by two very Dapper chaps Ben Shapiro and Alex OK Conor who some of you most of you maybe will be completely aware of we're going to have a very substantive conversation I'm going to introduce them first I'm going to give a little summary on on who they are and uh stop me if you've heard this before so Ben Shapiro is a prominent American conservative political commentator and columnist okay so far so far so good a graduate in political science from from UCLA and the Harvard Law School Ben has authored over a dozen books including the number one New York Times bestseller the right side of History how reason and moral purpose made the West great he is co-founder and editor emeritus of the daily wire and host of the aply titled Ben Shapiro show which in 2021 was ranked in the top 10 most listened to Apple podcasts he also has a YouTube channel with over 6 million subscribers hudos to you sir joining Ben today is Alex OK Conor Alex OK Conor is a YouTuber and host of the within reason podcast a philosophy platform designed to present philosophical discussions in an accessible format a graduate of philosophy and theology from St John's College Oxford University he is also an international public speaker and debater having defended his philosophical convictions against a wide range of experts across multiple continents and whose online video material has been viewed more than 70 million times is that true it might be more now actually depending on on more than 70 million times that was written that great well it's great to have you both thank you both for taking the time and uh for both of you I'm a longtime listener firsttime caller so hopefully we're going to have a lot of good stuff uh to say we're talking about religion and society and um how they interconnect and we want to know really and I'd like to get this settled once and for all at the end of this conversation so nobody else ever has to discuss it if we can is religion good for society can a society hold together if there are no underlying beliefs that everybody shares and we're going to be exploring what both of you believe are the most important principles undergirding any civilization what are the foundations of morality and ethics based on so without further Ado let's let's start I'm not going to go into back story too much because most people will be aware of of of who you are there'll be a lot of uh fan boys and girls out there watching um but let's talk about something that Ben you have um spoken on and Alex you have responded to this idea of the atheist delusion Ben could you sort of concisely if you can um talk about what you mean by The Atheist delusion sure so I should start off by saying I don't actually think that it's possible to prove the existence of God I'm also not a believer that you can disprove the existence of God I don't think that logical argumentation is going to get you there one way or another and so I'm not going to try and do that with with Alex today because I think that if people would have been able to provide dispositive proofs then people would believe them and if people were able to provide dispositive proofs that God does not exist then people would be more apt to believe those as well the what I think is a an atheist illusion is that it is possible to live ideologically purely in a way that does not rely on fun fundamental Faith principles when I say faith principles I'm not going to make the claim that those Faith principles are direct from siai or those Faith principles require the New Testament for example I'm going to make the claim that there are a bunch of principles upon which we base ourselves that are external to what we know about nature and evolutionary biology and that many of the things that Alex does in his daily life for example are going to be things that rely on principles that are external to a philosophy that would assume a lack of the supernatural a lack of the the extra natural um so some of those principles for example are free will so every day we get up We Believe virtually all of us whether we whether we say we believe it or not we actually act in ways that that betray the idea that we believe that we have control over our own actions at least to a certain extent and that that control makes a difference in the world and that's what gives us purpose it's what allows us to wake up in the morning and and make the decision to do what we believe is right or what we believe is wrong that the principles of right and wrong are externals who evolutionary bi ology so both of these principles that I've mentioned Already Free Will right and wrong these come from a language that is external to the the darwinian language of evolutionary biology if you're talking about free will there is nothing in nature that suggests the ability to make a decision free of environment and genetics in combination in some sort the same thing is true of right and wrong the idea that there is a right and there is a moral wrong that we can reason our way to another principle that I think that you're obviously very big on it's something that you rely on all the time your entire podcast is is based on the idea of Reason these ideas do not exist in the context of a purely materialist atheist Universe now I'm not going to make the claim that I can prove that it's God who's behind those things because one of the principles of faith belief is that I don't understand God so for for people who don't believe in God that's that's an easy way out right that's an easy way out for people like me because I say well I I don't have to explain the relationship between God and free will because frankly I don't fully understand God but that's not really the the that's not really an open window window that's just part of of pretty much all Faith systems is that if my mind were the mind of God then I would either be God or God would not exist one of the two things so the the idea that reason makes a difference in our lives that we can reason our way to propositions and that that's more than just saying a few magic words and that's setting off a few neurons in somebody else's brain in a naturalistic way that there actually is principles of Truth another concept that comes from the extra natural world that these principles exist so so far I've mentioned Free Will good right and wrong reason and Truth all things that we consider extremely key in our daily lives and that Alex considers key in in what he does it's I assume why you get up every morning or at least why you feel you get up every morning you know what what what gets you up to do your podcast it's because you want to say things that you believe are reasonable are going to convince people to act in a better way or I assume not a worse way that that get people to to change their lives in some way in a self-motivated fashion that's not merely in a a sort of pavlovian response to circumstance and environment so if I were going to talk about the atheist delusion that's what I would suggest is the delusion that that that an atheist can use terminology that is drawn from a world that is external to atheism for itself and again that's not an argument for God even that's just an argument against atheism again I think the the arguments against God are are are fairly compelling and I think the arguments against atheism are fairly compelling this is one of the things that I've said to Sam Harris um and I think that the difference is that most people who believe in God have expressed doubts and a lot of people who are atheists tend to be more religious in this way than many of the people who are God well well something's certain we don't do uh cold opens or soft starts here on the big conversation Alex well I am glad to begin on a point of agreement with you Ben that yes if there is no God there is no free will but I think that's because of the truth of this of the latter of those statements that I suppose the biggest criticism that I made of you in in a video response that I made to the atheist illusion and and this show does seem to have an extraordinary capacity for putting me face to face with people that I've been talking smack about online so thanks again by the way I should say it's a great video and everybody should watch it if they haven't well I'll I'm going to put that uh put that in the description I think that that glowing endorsement the principal disagreement that I think I had with you Ben is that there was a subtle or not so subtle implication in my view that yes uh with no God there's no free will but somehow having God can solve this problem I mean you said a moment ago that you don't think you can establish God's existence through reason alone but assuming that you do believe in the existence of free will you think it's a real thing that you have yes and simultaneously saying that if there is no God then Free Will makes no sense yes that does read to me like an argument for God's existence such that in order to to to either say that there is Free Will in order say that there is Free Will one must believe in God and and that does strike me as argument for God's ex I mean to to slightly curve that or to to kind of sand off the the rough edges there I would say that the argument I made is is an argument for something extra natural sure can call that God or not God but but but the thing that I'm making the argument for is that you cannot get from a materialist darwinist Universe to Free Will that is not possible so I know that the way you solve that is that you say that there is no free will that's right and what I'm saying to you is you don't act that way I hear this all the time people say look you may say there's no free will but you don't act as though that's the case I I suppose that I'm just confused as to what it would look like for somebody to act as if they beli there was no free will I mean the very argument that there is no free will that I subscribe to at least one of the various forms that it takes is a sort of shop enhan view that you can do as you will you just can't will what you will and that you are essentially just a biological machine reacting to its uh to its internal and evolutionary drives that's what's Happening Now call that nihilistic if you like that's a separate question but as to the question of how this would make one act the idea that this might cause us to sort of lay around in bed all day or something the very mechanism that I think is responsible for eliminating the possibility of free will that is the drives that make people do what they do like I say do exactly that make people do what they do they make them get out of bed in the morning why do you get out of bed and go and make your breakfast if there's no free will or you go and get breakfast because there's no Free Will and something is driving you to do that that's outside of your control for sure so the so to get back to the nihilism point which you kind of put aside so that that means that this conversation is essentially worthless in any sort of real sense I mean effectively we were driven here by evolutionary biology and environment to have this conversation body who's watching this is driven by evolutionary biology and and environment to have a particular reaction to that thing and ever round the cycle goes that seems like a very purposeless life maybe that's maybe again I'm drawing from a realm that is not evolutionarily bi biologically you know connected the word purpose is is really thology obviously has been taken out of the realm of science pretty thoroughly by by atheists and by by many people in The Sciences although I would argue that again most scientists speak in the realm of thology literally all the time and they're borrowing language from the language of thology even when they're describing functions of particular body parts right the heart pumps blood in order to keep you alive right they're constantly using language that's theological in nature um the the real question that I have and this this is what goes to the question that you were asking at the beginning before the sort of pre-quest question which was the good of religion to society one of those goods is people believing that their Free Will matters and this actually is a useful thing so I believe that it is deeply important for people in society to believe that they have the capacity to change themselves and to make different decisions than what biology would drive them to do so you say well it's biology that drives you to get out of bed in the morning which is almost calvinist and in sort of the the way that it's described right it's like you're predestined to get out of bed in the morning so thus you get out of bed in the morning but the reality is that we are constantly making decisions as though those decisions make a difference in the universe and what social science actually does tend to show is that when people believe that they have control over their own actions that when they believe that they're they're capable of changing the way that they live they do make those changes with more alacrity and in better directions than if they don't believe that if people tend to believe in a deterministic universe they do act worse so it may work this is this is going to be sort of straussian in its implications but the that may work for you you're a very high IQ individual who can somehow reconcile the idea of living a very purposeful life with the idea that actually there's no purpose to anything but for the vast majority of people that is not actually how they live and I would suggest that even in your daily life you don't get out of bed in the morning thinking man my biology is driving me this morning to get on the bike have a great day the sun is shining that's my biology doing this and I don't think that that most people who live purposeful lives even if they believe that everything they're doing is predetermined by the world around them by their own biology I I don't believe they actually feel that they have to engage in what they themselves would would term an illusion in order to feel a a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives of course but that's what the evolutionary process in my view in my world view I should say has done so well is provide precisely that illusion I mean it's not as that I mean you say look you don't get out of bed in the morning thinking gosh you know look at my biological are firing yeah of course not because if I did then the whole evolutionary purpose that this this illusion serves would fall away I mean you say that this is a fairly purposeless life and and perhaps you know the implications that it's a bit of a depressing one uh I I didn't come here to inspire optimism in people I just it is in fact it is in fact the case that Free Will doesn't exist and and we may feel very uh nihilistic towards that but as a wise man once said facts don't care about your feelings and I will say that the argument against Free Will in my view is based upon something broader than just scientific analysis or Empirical research rather we can build an argument I think from from a law of logic the uh the proposition that that P must either be true or false and it can't be both it can't be neither it has to be one or the other now this law of the excluded middle one of the one of the foundational precepts of of of philosophy we can simply ask a question of any kind of mental activity and and this will be regardless of whether it's material or immaterial that's what makes this a crucial argument and an important one pertinent one is that you can ask if that of that mental activity is it determined or is it not that is is it determined by anything else or is it completely undetermined by anything if it's undetermined by anything then it's random and you're by definition not in control of that which is random if it's determined by something then it's either determined by something further inside your mind or inside your brain or indeed inside your soul or it's determined by something external to your brain if it's determined by something external to yourself I should say yourself rather than your brain here to rid this conversation of any implicit materialism exterior to yourself if that's what's determining the action then clearly you're not in Ultimate control of that action if it's something inside of yourself somewhere then all you do is push the problem back and you ask the question again is that thing determined or is it indetermined indetermined it's random determined you keep going back until you either terminate in something outside of the self something uh or I suppose something undetermined and therefore therefore random either of which you are completely out of control in if you say that it terminates in something like a soul people like to do this they say well look with a religious philosophy we have the benefit of introducing a soul that doesn't solve anything because you still need to it's not it's not a matter of having to explain the mechanism by which the soul brings about actions that may well be a my but if it is the case that whatever it is that's doing that is either determined or it's not and that if it's not it's random and therefore out of your control and that if it is It ultimately terminates in something outside of yourself or something random and both of which are out of your control Free Will cannot exist and so that does argument that that argument does rely on the complete deconstruction of the self I mean you're using the term self in this argument in I think a couple of different ways you're saying something outside yourself but then you're breaking down the self into a bunch of separate components as though the self is a computer right as though if if you took the self and you broke it down into a machine and there's like the micro there's the microchip and You' got the processor you got you got all these different parts of it so it has to be coming from here or it has to be coming from here but I think the very idea that we have of ourselves as selves is as a deciding being and so the the attempt to carve that down into so which parts of the deciding being that is an avoidance strategy so I I don't think that the argument quite holds well if we can call the self just a deciding being a deciding being then that sort of fundamental assumption that we make about the nature of the self I don't think is going to be incompatible with atheism how so because we're talking about what the self is here I mean atheists believe in the self everybody believes in the self well no that's not I mean that that that I I find difficult to believe why why would an atheist believe in the self the self is a series of of of non-deciding mechanisms as you've described I see that your view of the self is is an atheist view of the self a a meatball wandering through space as I've put it somewhat colorfully the the sort of Spinosa idea that that you're a stone that's been thrown and and you can comprehend that you've been thrown but you're a stone that's been thrown and that's just the way that it is why would there be in atheist philosophy such a thing as a deciding self the deciding self the deciding being is external to the idea of an evolutionary cause because it it again it the very word deciding suggests uncaused decision- making and you've just excluded it through your own philosophy uncaused decision making I I suppose it's a concept that I think is intelligible and and therefore if there is if there is an unintelligibility of the self on atheism I suppose the thrust of the criticism that I made to essentially every point you made in that video except for uh the argument from motion is that what you're saying to me if it applies to atheism I think simultaneously applies to theism as well an uncaused decision I mean what is the process by which a decision is made but now you're but now you're you're falling into the the same sort of argument that I excluded at the beginning which was I said that the beauty of religion is that there's a bunch of stuff I don't understand H so I can't explain to you how the uncaused self makes decisions well then I can't explain to you how the uncaused self exists on an atheist you have bur and I don't meaning that that's the case you do though I mean the the simple fact is that you are the one who's claiming that a reasonable materialist universe is the cause of all and so if that's the case you do have to explain the mechanism in a way that I certainly do not my entire philosophy rests on the on the positing of an entire realm of things I don't understand in terms of their interaction with the world now as I said at the very beginning that leaves me a giant escape hatch I'm not going to pretend that not a giant escape hatch it it acts in practice as a giant escape hatch it also tends to act as a fundamental principle of Faith right again in in every moral realm right when when you get to the problem of Good and Evil right one of the big questions is well how can God allow evil to to take place in the world and the fundamental religious answer as it has been for thousands of years is my mind is not God's which is a giant escape hatch it also happens to be true from a religious point of view so if I may that there are two sort of Escape hatches here there are two appeals to mystery going on here and it seems to me that what you're saying is something along the lines of my appeal my my simple appeal to mystery here is disallowed in the way that you're allowed to appeal to this this this mystery because I'm the one making the claim I think that in no not because I'm the one making the claim but because the I'm the one with the burden in the context of this sorry I'm I'm missing the who is the you and who's the the i in sense but yes I see I see what you mean I'm I'm speaking for myself there sorry um if in the context of this discussion this this the the subject which I think is the first one you bring up in this video free will here's this thing that I think exists and on the basis of its existence think entails the existence of a God or or at least points to the existence of a God I shouldn't say entail and then when I say that I don't think that the the concept of Free Will is is intelligible and you say well how is it intelligible on atheism and I say I'm not sure it is but it's not on theism either and you say well there's my Escape patch I can appeal to mystery I don't think the burden is on me there I think you were the one who's making the claim that Free Will does exist that there is this mysterious property of the universe escapes this this determined or indetermined dichotomy and then when I say that this is this this is unintelligible to me and and based on what I see to be fundamentally appeal to a law of logic suddenly I'm the one making the claim I'm the one with the burden who has to do the pr no the the actual claim that I originally made if you if you recall was a conditional claim I did not claim Free Will exists therefore God I claimed if you believe Free Will exists it cannot exist in a materialist Universe now you say okay fine it doesn't exist in materialist Universe I don't believe in Free Will yes that's fine that's totally plausible as I said right at the top here I'm not going to prove to you that God exists today what I am going to say is that the vast majority of people throughout nearly all of human history have believed there is a thing called a self it is a deciding self that makes these decisions if you are a person who believes that you're right it can't exist in your world so I'm not saying that it does exist maybe it doesn't maybe you're right maybe you're totally right and all of this is just a series of chemical firings that's quite plausible that's fine what I have said and this is the argument that hasn't yet been rebutted is the is the that Society does require an extraordinary number of people to believe that they are capable of making decisions for the good or for the bad because again not everybody is you not everybody is capable of waking up in the morning putting one half of their brain on hold the side that says what I'm doing today doesn't matter and we are all going to wind up in the cosmic nothingness of space anyway and the sun's going to explode neath the Earth most people don't function that way and so a a functional Society a society that Works relies on people actually believing that their fate is in their hands and the way that people tend to understand that on a day-to-day level is I get up in the morning and I make a decision whether I'm taking my kids to school today I get up in the morning and I decide whether I'm giving charity today I get up in the morning and I decide whether to go to a job today because the truth is that for for a huge number of people and I would say this is true for virtually not virtually all many many many I'll say the majority of people if they were informed since the time they were small that their decision-making process does not exist there is no decision to be made whatever's going to happen is going to happen those decisions have no moral weight in the universe because the universe has no moral weight there is no way to create a functional Society on the basis of these premises there may there may be a platonic world where philosophers you know can can think about this in The Gardens of their imagination and feel great about it but that that's not actually how Society functions not for children not for teenagers not for adults I'm we're going to go on and talk about that in the second section um I had free will to ask any of the questions I've had written down here but I just didn't want to I didn't want to stop either of you it's been breathless and captivating I'm sure you'll agree um before we go to our first break we are going to go on and talk about society and how morality undergirds society and civilization may I just say just I know we're coming to the end of the section just to just to close off this this this moment that if people listening agree with me that Free Will in fact doesn't exist and simultaneously agree with you that Free Will is somehow necessary for the upkeep of civilization then I would simply ask them to consider who relying on the delusion here you know yeah and and I don't mean that as an insult but you see what I'm saying I I I totally agree and so from my argument you would be and from your argument I would be meaning I I think that that you are delusional there's no free will and you think I'm delusional in the sense that that there is no Free Will and yet I believe in it something like that so for you Alex just before we go to the break then um because we're trying to break it down we've got two insane Minds here really kind of uh grappling and uh I feel as I've won a prize in a competition just to be here sitting with you both um to break it down for the viewers Alex would you say that Free Will is maybe if there is no such thing as free will is it nevertheless a helpful fiction for people a convenient narrative that we can cling to to sort Bat Away despair precisely why it evolved in my view I I I think I totally understand that but but because it evolved so strongly I will say that we are all if we are sort of delusory in our belief in Free Will I mean you're quite right in saying that I I act as if free will will exist in the sense of not constantly being aware that it doesn't I don't wake up and do those strange mour affirmations that you mentioned into the mirror about you know the the sort of heat death of the universe maybe people people I think it is good to reflect on on your mortality in that manner every once in a while and and it does inspire some some serious thought about whether you're really taking your philosophy seriously but I will say that the the mechanism is so useful and has been so successful in embedding itself into our psyche that we cannot shake it off so I can convin I I I can have conversations with people as I do regularly talking about the existence of Free Will and they come away saying you know what that's extraordinary maybe you're right about this and nothing about the way they live their life changes precisely because of the fact that the very argument I'm making relies on the assumption that we will still be driven by our drives all I'm doing is identifying what's actually going on there in my view it doesn't actually change what happens or what the brain indeed does the utility argument for what you're saying about free will is that the main utility in you saying these things is for people not to believe you in the end we are predetermined to go to a break at this point so um we're going to continue this um you're watching and listening to the big conversation from Premier unbelievable with me your host Andy kind I've been joined today by Alex okona and Ben shapira and we are having a fascinating um conversation about uh religion and whether it's good or bad for society there's lots more to come so we'll be back after this short break enjoying the convers ation tell us who persuaded you in our survey and if you want more from today's conversation then register to get early access to the next show welcome back to the big conversation from Premier unbelievable with me your host Andy K today our topic is religion is it good or bad for society and I've been joined by Ben Shapiro and Alex oconor and uh in the first section we basically solved the problem of Free Will that's that's done no one need write on that ever again so congratulations um that's another credit for you yeah I think on the delusion point we we terminated in something like an I know you are but what am I correct yeah yep yeah and uh my dad can beat up your dads so let's move on in this section to uh talking about another easily solved question um morality and its role in society so uh Alex we started with Ben in the first section let's start with you what for you makes an outcome good or bad and feel free to break that down Define things as you want and how do we determine what is good and acceptable in society here is where I may disappoint you and potentially excite Mrs Shapiro in that I I don't have a good answer to that question in in that obviously attempts have been made for a long time to ground God uh to ground good uh outside of God I must say that similarly to to rehash the same theme I think there are issues with with grounding good in God as well I don't think that removes the problem I I don't quite know what good is if it indeed exists I'm quite suspicious of the concept I think it might be another one of these unfortunate unfortunately quite nihilistic evolutionary uh sort of illusions of A Sort I guess I I ascribe to emotivism more than anything which has sort of gone out of fashion in the past decade but I think still has some some some truth to it in in a sense it's um more of a philosophy of language than it is a philosophy of of what good and bad actually is what I do know however is that there are problems I think with trying to ground Morality In the existence of a God especially if it's done so on the grounds that it essentially can't be done anywhere else I mean as far as I'm concerned the religions of the world are false I I think that they are incorrect that is I don't think there really is a supernatural Authority and what that means is that the inventions of religious morality are just those inventions and inventions of a human mind now if you have a human morality that recognizes that it is essentially a series of compromises between the history of mankind trying to get along with each other on a planet then what happens is sometimes these ideas and these philosophies rub up against the real world and we can we can adapt them as necessary now there is a there is a deep problem with this and that is if I meet a man who wants to kill me or a friend and he says that he doesn't believe in God there's very little I can do to talk him out of that except I can threaten him with legal sanction I can threaten him with moral reproach exclusion from the moral Community but there's not much more I can do however if a person says that he wants to kill me and he believes that he wants to kill me because God has told him to do so then I don't even have that minimal approach uh reproach available to me because there is no law written by Any Man of any time that could ever count one iot against the dictates of the creator of the universe therefore if that God in fact does not exist and if these moralities are in fact human inventions then what you have in the grounding of an ethical system in the dictates allegedly of the creator of the universe it's all of the arbitrariness and subjectivity and and failure and faults of nihilism and human invented morality with all of the certainty and all of the faith and all of the unanswer ability of the creator of the universe that to me seems a dangerous cocktail that we drink at our Peril so so many things there in and so much that you're saying is is quite brilliant I actually thought you were going in a different direction with that last example which I'll explain in a second so you to to start with the the very beginning obviously the the idea of right and wrong so there are many problems of the motivis alisar McIntyre does a good job sort of breaking down the problems of the motivis but the the sort of idea that there has to be C there have to be certain moral absolutes that are Beyond contention and those moral absolutes have to be universally accepted you can ground that I suppose in a sort of descriptive Universe the problem is that to go back to your example which again I think is a really interesting one if a man comes to kill me I think the the the real question of religion versus non-religion in the utility sphere here is is it more likely that a man is going to come to kill you being a a devote of a religion that says that he must kill you or is it more likely that a man is going to kill you out of self-interest because he is not a devote of a of a God who says that killing is wrong so if you are faced with these two alternatives to kind of remove your example One Step the question is why the man has come to kill you I mean that's that's the your premise is the man has come to kill you because God told him to and so he can't be dissuaded by force agreed we see that full scale in the real world on a fairly regular basis it is also true that over the course of human history men have come to kill one another on the basis of self-interest in extraordinary amounts of the time tribal self-interest particularly having no particular relationship with God just the idea that I want to kill you over territory I want to kill you over resources I want to kill you because you're not a member of my immediate kin family or because you killed a member of my kin family and so in Revenge I need to kill a member of your kin family the entire to to borrow from your language the entire sort of evolution of religion on a utility basis would have been to create moral absolutes that are applicable more broadly to than to you and your friends any morality that can be created on an individual level is inherently dangerous because you can immediately graph that morality onto your personal self-interest the entire purpose of religion whether you want to ground that in evolutionary brain functionings or whether you want to ground that in Revelation the entire purpose of religion on a utility level is to remove morality from the purview of my special interest and to say here are things that I cannot do even if they are are in my interest because there is a higher power that says I cannot do these things I think that a society that does not have these moral absolutes is in deep trouble a society that that refuses to say that there are certain absolutes that cannot be crossed under any circumstances that are universally applicable it reduces things that we all take for granted like Equal justice before the law like the idea that the law is supposed to equally apply to everybody whether they're a member of your family or whether they're not and there are broad cultural differences in these questions I mean to pretend that all human societies have equality under laws obviously not true it's not remotely true actually uh there's a a very good book called the weirdest people in the world all about the idea that we in the west have this sort of ethnocentric view of ourselves where we think everybody thinks like people in the west but the truth is that because we are Western educated industrialized rich and Democratic we have particular views of the world those views are drawn from a particularistic tradition that particularistic tradition is biblical in nature I mean it is judeo-christian in nature even if you're just describing European Society or American society historically speaking so the the kind of removal of God from the equation your suggestion is that God makes a person impervious to counterveiling responses and my answer is yes God does make a person impervious to counterveiling responses including the evils of One's Own Heart if you truly believe that God is standing above you telling you not not to do that thing and again social science tends to bear this out people who believe that that God is is above them tend to give more charity for example people who tend to live inside religious communities in religious within the religious community and I again I'm not going to pretend that I think all religions are equivalent in their in their truth propositions because I don't I mean if I did I wouldn't be wearing a yamaka right so that's just what it is inside religious communities a lot of social bonds and a lot of social Frameworks are built on the basis of this shared belief system in other words diversity itself di self-interest cannot always check self-interest and in tends to tear apart societies and communities unless there is an orienting goal that orienting goal traditionally has been performed by Church it's been traditionally performed by the idea that you are serving God together and because of that people build these these social bonds including the institutions of police for example to to prevent people from from killing each other because we now all agree that killing is wrong and so we ought to have a third party that we can actually give the power to to stop to stop that killing so again I think that the the question of utility here is one of whether you think that the chief danger is that people are going to believe in a God who tells them to to kill in in God name or whether you think that the chief the the chief danger is in man's own heart and that man is going to be driven by his own self-interest to commit murder and then call it something else I think it's all very well and good when this religious tradition is protecting what you think is good but as we know it can do the exact opposite and it can do so with the same force and I suppose the question we have to ask is whether this is a worthwhile tradeoff that is to say you know that there may be uh some social utility in in putting our fundamental ethical assumptions outside of the realm of debate but when those ethical statements begin to inspire what we would probably consider to be less than socially cohesive Behavior there is nothing you can do nothing to talk people out of them because precisely because that's where they've placed them and that seems dangerous to me and it seems it seems for for example you know a lot of people talk about how religion can make people happier it can make people more socially cohesive it can it can promote people to to start families and have children this is true of most religions this is also true of Islam which I'm not sure you would want to I don't want to put words in your mouth but I'm not sure you'd want to say as a Force for good in the world I don't think in other words that it's always a worthwhile tradeoff now agree with way just because you mentioned the how the sort of culture of Europe and its success and America is indebted to Christianity I mean this is of course true in a sense but there's been a a recent Revival it seems I don't really know quite how it's happened I think it's got a lot to do with Tom Holland maybe that's the historian not the super hero not Spiderman the the this idea that that actually he's good too actually the great I wonder what he would have to say on all the that the western civilization sort of depend and and should be in gratitude to uh to a religious tradition because it provid Ed this kind of ethical framework in which this could have Arisen we hear about the scientific Enlightenment we hear about you know the the grounding of ethics and God the creation of of natural rights as if these things weren't established in resistance all the way along to the religious tradition a society that today I'll expand on this if you like the society a society today that decides that religion throughout its history has been wrong about the position of women in society wrong about the Mortal fate of practicing homosexuals wrong about the position of the Earth in relation to the sun wrong about the age of both of those celestial bodies wrong about the common evolutionary ancestry of every animal including the human animal on planet Earth wrong about the ownership of other human beings as private property now now has to contend with a religious tradition that doesn't come to us with Contrition and apology and say well maybe we were wrong about these things but no these are all our things after all we're going to claim these things that is you know I know that St Paul says I suffer not a woman to teach nor to authority over a man rather she should remain silent for Adam was formed first then Eve and that man is the glory of God but woman is the glory of man but don't you know that the social justice movement is essentially judeo-christian in origin I know that the Old Testament not only explicitly condones the ownership of other human beings as private property but gives detailed instructions about exactly how to buy and indeed take them sometimes including a sexual property but don't you know that the Abolitionist Movement was essentially judeo-christian in origin yes I know that Galileo was shown the instruments of torture by by the Inquisition for having the temerity to suggest that the Earth might orbit the sun rather than the other way around but don't you know that the Scientific Revolution which he authored was essentially judeo-christian in origin I I I'd find it funny if it wasn't so offensive to the people who established these very developments except against the very religious Traditions that now want to claim them as their own okay so I would buy that except for the fact that many of the people that you mention in these contexts explicitly counted themselves as religious Believers and were speaking in the name of the religion while they're doing it so to take the Abolitionist Movement as as example I mean William Wilber Forest obviously a tremendously religious person and a big believer in in the New Testament Isaac Newton obviously deeply ins sconed in in the New Testament right certainly important to the Scientific Revolution the point about religion and this is why when I wrote my book I have to name the title now and plug myself because that's the way the right history the reason that I talked about how reason and moral purpose made the West is because I think that one of the fundamental precepts of at least judeo-christian religion is that when God gives a text or or a set of ideas to human beings he expects us to use our reason to apply to those texts and so the the sort of evolution of interpretation is part of the religious tradition I mean that's always been the case in in My Religion anyway so I can only I I I always hesitate to speak on behalf of other people's religions because I don't know them nearly as well as I know my own uh so when I when I talk about sort of the application of reason to tradition in the religious tradition obviously have books and books and books of texts discussing and debating these very ideas and the idea of religious debate has always been Central to the idea of judeo Christian religion and when it hasn't been it's been seen as repressive and his spawn than other Christian movements that then argue with the original movement and and end up generating almost hegelian fashion some new form of of interpretation the the point that I'm making is that outside that framework it doesn't exist meaning that that once if if the argument is over interpretation of particular Biblical verses in a context in which there is a God who puts certain moral precepts Beyond human judgment those arguments you can have without threatening the entire social structure what is very difficult is to have a social structure at all in the absence of fundamental moral precepts that are presupposed by everyone and I think one of the reasons that you're seeing uh a sort of Revival of this idea that religion is very important to the West is because one of the things that we have seen is that as religion has become less important to the West we've seen declining birth rates on mass we've seen rises in suicidal ideation we've seen especially over the last 10 years tremend tremendous individual atomization certainly an extraordinary amount of less social connection right all of these things are things that frankly used to be provided by church and these social institutions that again were oriented toward a single purpose so when when you talk about the idea that I'm going to put aside the Free Will discussion because I think again there's it's easy to get caught up in the reversion to the argument that I was making before when you were saying that you know can you argue the man out of out of stabbing you to to use your framework I mean you can't argue him out of doing anything I mean you're you're going to say words the words are going to have an impact but you can't argue him out out of doing anything but not not not to get back into a topic that we've handled Free Will is done I I'm not going to I'm not going to answer that although hopefully people will know from what I said before that I I think it's still sensible to say you can argue somebody out of something um the first half of what you say there is in so many words I think what I was saying before which is that yes this goes both ways that is thanks be to God when he is able to provide us with the grounding for resisting oppression and throwing off tyranny yeah but what about when the same God is used to justify the exact opposite I'm saying is but you're going to have to weigh in one side or the other meaning in terms of utility right you're building a society let's say that that I won't say you're god let's say that you are master of a society and you get to build that Society one of the things that presumably you are going to do is you're going to build in certain things that are untouchable right there's going to be certain moral precepts that you're going to build in that are Untouchable and how are you going to justify those things to people such that they are going to believe you you're going to either have to use compulsion or you're going to have to use some sort of other argument that is that is so strong that they are going to overweigh their self I mean this there's a reason why voler suggested he didn't believe in God but he hope that his ma did so she wouldn't steal the silverware yeah that's an interesting uh indictment on the position that that theists don't say that atheists can't be moral right when when people when people have this argument about morality aist can certainly be moral well often often times people have this have this uh misunderstanding of the argument Christopher hit did it best and saying you know we don't need Divine permission to be good and all of this fine but as you say you don't need uh you don't need to believe in God to be good but you need to believe in God to to ground that goodness but then when you have when when you sort of casually throw in this this statement by voler I don't believe in God but I hope that my maid does that implies that actually maybe you do think that without the belief in God somebody isn't good no I think that voler thought that he was good meaning that voler was was was an atheist and thought that he was good but his point was sort of back to the straussian platonic Point his his point was that he hoped his made believed in God because without that belief she wouldn't be able right so so another because again when we're arguing on the basis of broad societal utility one of the things so I I happen to be in the happy position of being able to argue that what I think is socially useful also happens to be true mhm the question I'm asking you and I think that's what a lot of this conversation is is whether you think that what is socially useful is actually false or an evolutionary illusion and I think that that that's kind of the position that you're taking unless you want to argue that generally speaking religion is either not evolutionarily adaptive which would be a hard position to actually take I think it must be otherwise otherwise it wouldn't exist or you would have to argue that it's even if it's adaptive it's of no General benefit to to humankind and and or and or is an illusion right I mean that's the position that you're taking so one of the things I'm enjoying about the conversation is that I don't think either of us are going to argue each other in anything but it is clarifying what exactly the lines of the division are yes to to backtrack a moment um because you said more than one thing and what I just responded to you also mentioned uh while you talked about Isaac Newton being a Christian I mean people would would astonished discovering his private notes to find that he spent more time talking about theology than than he did science this is this is certainly the case but I do think it's worth pointing out when people like to to notice that The Originators of the Scientific Revolution in particular were Believers in God there are a few things to say on that first we don't know what Galileo thought in his heart of hearts and part of the reason for that is because despite tripping over himself to say now look I don't think scripture is wrong now look I I I I believe in God and I am a Christian and I believe in scripture but maybe the Earth orbits the sun his life Falls AP part so suppose he did secretly have doubts about the existence of God do you think we'd ever have even found out about it and that's an unfalsifiable argument I think not a chance in other words makes it diff Mak counter argument in other words let's not be so confident maybe he did have a secret diary but I proof that he had a secet saying is let's not be so confident about this the second thing to say is that these men if that's what they were remembered for that is their theology then they wouldn't be remembered thirdly is that just on on the minor point that people I often like to point out that well the The Originators of the Scientific Revolution were religious and so science can't conflict with religion I'm not going to make the claim that science does conflict with religion in principle but supposing that it did this would not serve as a rebuttal because if it were the case that the Scientific Revolution and the scientific method undermines religion then of course the people who invented the scientific method would themselves have been religious because they hadn't invented the mechanism by which it came to be undermined yet afterward they presumably would be irreligious or A- religious which is what happened to Darwin for example it doesn't happen that quickly right it it really do individual talking about if we're talking about the development of the of the scientific uh scientific method we're not talking about the kind of thing that just happens in a lifetime I mean to attribute it to you know Galileo and Newton as as we as we happily do is far too simplistic this is something that happens over over over at least decades but you're making both an individual argument and a broader historical argument so pick one and so what what I'm saying is that the individual beliefs of the founders of that Revolution I don't think that Revolution would have gotten off the ground enough from just their contributions within their lifetime to shake Decades of Prior Faith however when you when you get to Someone Like A Darwin then we start to see agnosticism then we start to see see people having their doubt and then when you get into the modern era atheism abounds and so in other words if it were the case that this ceases which like I say is not something that I'm that I'm defending here I'm just sort of rebutting the rebuttal to it that is if it were the case that the scientific uh method were were this this king of undermining religion then I think we would expect the fact that those who invented it to have been religious it would be like saying isn't it amazing that the person who invented the motor car didn't own a motor car before that well no because again you've now also made the case that perhaps they had secret diaries or in their heart of hearts they weren't actually religious or convinced away from that so again that's why I'm saying I feel like you're you're making a broader historical argument that works and I think you're making an individual argument that doesn't quite I'm not saying that that is the case I'm saying that we would never know because and because why is that why will we never know what Galileo really thought about religion I I'm I'm I'm going to just accuse you of assuming facts not an Evidence I mean like I move away like I don't want to get into the mind of Galileo nor do I I care very much but the the reality is that many of the people who were the progenitors of the Scientific Revolution and participants in the Scientific Revolution specifically were searching for something higher because they thought that that was their Godly duty to do so I mean this has been true since the time of Roger Bacon I mean the the idea that that you have people who are specifically seeking out the nature of the universe because there's an understandable again another religious precept there's an understandable universe that God has created and your mind is reflection of certain truths that are in that Universe these are all non-materialist atheistic Concepts that was the basis for virtually all of science including the origins of the Scientific Revolution now you can make the argument very easily I mean I make it all the time because I have to metaphorical IE the the beginning of Genesis for example that that the the words of Genesis don't jive with the with the words of of science when it comes to the age of the universe for example and obviously that's true which is why both myones and aquinus are talking about in the Middle Ages the idea that if science comes into conflict with religion you're either getting one of them wrong you're getting both of them wrong and so the the the constant sort of reinterpretation of of religion in light of the facts that are established by the scientific method I don't think that that's a rebuttal of of religion and so the the and more than that I think that the I the The Peculiar idea that religion itself must fundamentally be undermined by scientific discovery I I don't see quite why well I I I would agree with that I'm just saying that that the rebuttal that's presented to that opinion fairly commonly I don't think works for the reasons that that I've that I've said um okay well let let's have a give you both a little breather because we're going to go to another break very uh shortly we fitted in so much and um I had all these questions and I haven't asked any of them uh and I'm worried now that I'm going to be left unemployed i i i before we move on I don't know if I can have one final word on this on this Gala point because I know it seems quite strange that I'm sort of hypothesizing in this way but you said like when when religion and science come into conflict either one is wrong or both is wrong Galileo was was wrong about one of these things potentially what happens if I mean you can it's it's great talking about the utility of his religious belief and inspiring his scientific Endeavor but what happens when the immediate fruit of that is him discovering something which should have been a celebrated idea and instead was suppressed and he ends up under house house arrest in Tuscany for the rest of his life why specifically because the religious authorities in their sentencing of Galileo did not just say that he failed to prove it did not just say that he was you know being a bit of a being a bit of an a-hole in his approach to things but said specifically because it is false absurd and contrary to to scripture that is why that scientific position was suppressed on specifically religious motivation far be it for me to the Catholic church and it's and it's cracked down in G you've come to the wrong place for okay okay it's time few it's time for another break here you are watching and listening to the big conversation from Premier unbelievable I am almost Anonymous here Andy kind but my day will come and I've been joined by Ben Shapiro and Alex okon we talking about religion and Society is religion good for society so much more still to talk about we'll see what we can uh fit in we will fit in as much as we can but we'll be back after this short break enjoying the conversation tell us who persuaded you in our survey and if you want more from today's conversation then register to get early access to the next show welcome back to part three of the big conversation from Premier unbelievable today we are discussing religion and is it good or bad for society and we're having a lot of fun with it I think I mean I know you're I know you're sort of in disagreement on things but I think we're just having fun with it today aren't we as ever well I've been joined by Ben chiro and Alex OK Conor and as I say we're talking about religion and its role in society one observation I've got from uh watching you guys talk I wonder whether religion is being used as a bit of a a Capal term you know there is no sum of Festival where Ben and I would meet up because we're religious and have a beer together you know plenty of Buddhist people don't even believe in God so we probably don't have the time to unpack it now but religion is maybe not a helpful catch all term at all points I wonder whether when we're saying religion in this context we mean the judeo-christian world you but it's interesting you know I as a as a as a Christian there's lots of things I agree with Ben on some things I disagree on lots of things as a an Englishman that I agree with Alex on and other things that I wouldn't spelling so yes spelling AB absolutely it's aluminium anyway um I just think that that's that's interesting and I'm not trying to start this theist gang and gang up on you uh Alex Alex at all but um yeah what do you think quickly about about that when we're talking about religion do we need to be do we need to be more semantically sort of accurate rigorous yeah I mean yes I mean again I'm I'm not here to defend every form of religion Under the Sun there there are various forms of religion ranging from things that you know people in judeo-christian Tradition would consider Pagan to judeo-christian monotheism to the distinctions between Judaism and Christianity which are substantial obviously and so you know I I do believe that there are right forms of religion or wrer forms of religion than others if I didn't then I wouldn't be a particularist in my religious practice or or My religious belief and so I do think that you know you're right to sort of boil down the question so that people don't end defending things or be forced to defend things that they wouldn't defend when you mentioned before Islam I I'll say more radical forms of Islam because again I'm I'm one thing that that I tend not to do as a religious believer is simply take people's texts as sort of face value because the reality is that very few people in religious circles take their text and like the I can just pick up a Bible read it now I know everything that's going on in the Bible value that that really is not how the practice of religion works I tend to actually Judge Faith by faith practice uh more more so than I do by by trying to read somebody else's book and then figure out exactly what they're saying because I've seen people do that enough to to my religious practice to to sort of object to it um but yeah of course I think that you would have to talk if you're going to talk about the value of religion you should be more specific I will say that the value of religion more generally if you were going to talk about in just general terms meaning belief in Supernatural things that can't be explained by a materialist universe the social cohesion point would be the best casee in favor of religion is that that virtually every study ever done has shown that social cohesion relies on a common orientation among people in order to build commonality between people there really only a few structures in in human history that do that one is a kinship structure the problem with kinship and tribal structures that they pretty quickly devolve into tribal Warfare upon other members of of different tribes one of the things that that religion has done is an attempt to univ universalize that beyond the immediate sort of tribal self-interest that we discussed a little bit ago uh and again pretty much universally social science suggests that many of the institutions that we hold here that shape us that provide us social support uh that provide us friendship structures marriages that a huge amount of this used to happen anyway inside of these traditional religious structures and there really has been nothing to replace it and so the the sort of breakdown of those structures you could make the case I suppose for the breakdown of those structures but there's been pretty much no replacement for those structures in secular society and it's it's creating some pretty significant strains on societal bonding say I'm going to ask you yeah I want you to say both of those things but I want to ask you Alex can secular societies potentially achieve the same level of social cohesion as religious ones potentially maybe I don't know that seems to be an empirical question in so far as we can have empirical data on social cohesion as as a subject I I I wanted to I suppose in response to that question mention um The History of the United States as a constitution secular Nation presumably the discussion there devolves into whether America can be described as a Christian Nation or not but based on what you just said a moment ago before we maybe get into that uh you you said of course we need more specificity is is hardly ever worse than than less and that you're not trying to defend all religious traditions and then you say but look this idea of there being a God and they being an unalterable authority and a moral author of the universe is itself valuable and and without it there are all kinds of societal uh all kinds of societal discohesion comes about in that case for example I I wonder and I hope it's not a crude question and it's one sort of stemming from genuine interest would you would you rather uh your child comes to you and says you know I I think I'm going to convert to Islam or said I I don't think I believe in God anymore as a Jew I'm I'm fairly indifferent on the question meaning that my priority is for my child to remain a Jew and which direction they go from there is a is of much less interest to me than than staying inside the religious tradition that I believe is correct okay maybe I should rephrase to say uh suppose that you know half of the US population immediately right now and half of let's say the let's say half of the Christian population so it's not to do with Judaism and it's and and it's not to do with your own family half of the Christian population in the United States are immediately going to convert today to atheism if you press this button or to Islam if you press this button which one which one would you press so I'm gonna ask for more specificity in line with the conversation so which form of Islam are we talking about and which form of atheism are we talking about because they come in various reins but meaning like if if if we're just starting from the premise of no God or Islamic god that actually is not enough information because as I say I'm not judging people based on their faith propositions nearly as much as I am based on their behavior which I think they base on faith propositions so say this is the only thing that changes uh you press this button half the Christian population become convinced that there is no real God of the UN universe everything else is is is random what whatever you might because what we're discussing here is essentially what what are the implications of such a worldview what are the implications of atheism which is just the disbelief uh in God or the belief that there is people have memories sorry in this in this hypothetical do people have memories or they don't have memories because this this makes a difference they yeah they have memories okay fine so then then probably in the west atheism as opposed to a more radical form of Islam that's why I was asking for specificity on the right hand side was going to be that they just become convinced that Muhammad is is the final prophet of God right and and again I was going to ask for more specificity on that I know many moderate Muslims who are not radical in the implication of their faith as opposed to some who who very much are quite radical in the implications of their faith so but let's if you don't mind I'm I'm going to set up you're hypothetical in a way that I think is more clarifying for me anyway and that is version button on the right is radical Islam like Taliban style Islam okay and button on the left is don't believe in God well I mean you can do that no the reason I'm doing that is because that elucidates that that elucidates a difference that think is being obscured by the simple sort of belief in God not belief in God question meaning that the cultural heritage of that that's why I asked if people have memories or people don't have memories uh if people have memories then that looks very much like secular Europe right now which does have cultural in the blood stream a lot of judeo-christian values in a way that that would not be true if you were without memory right would I rather that a child found in a forest be raised in a moderate Muslim household or be raised in a secular communist household or secular a household if I may say again from which tradition are we talking in the USSR are we talking in Britain like what what are we talkinging Britain okay so we're we talking about the US in in in Britain um depends on the strain of Islam if we're talking about like a a liberal form of Islam which do exist and probably a liberal form of Islam if we're talking about a fundamentalist form of Islam then then probably a secular strain of of Britain fine the second point was to say uh I mean you mentioned not wanting to just take scripture at face value and I understand that the difficulty of of taking scripture essentially out of context and and trying to take a literal approach where a literal approach isn't supposed to be uh isn't supposed to be taken I mean people forget that the Bible is a is a collection of books rather than a book with with lots of different tradition all I saw I saw a video Once of of somebody trying to to to use the Bible to disprove the Divinity of Jesus by quoting The Book of Job saying uh God is not a man that I might question him God is not a man you see and and I thought not only is this in the mouth of job but also you know that's the kind of thing that we want to avoid but it does seem to me that there are some things within religious scripture that do need to be taken uh seriously and do need to be taken essentially at face value that is some of the some of the very specific legalistic Commandments of the Old Testament for example or or the the Hebrew Bible I should say these are not when people list these and say that these are potentially morally problematic and and may have done something towards hindering for example like I mentioned earlier the abolition of slavery in the United States of course there was a great deal of religious influence on both sides as as which is something that I've already mentioned but don't you think that this problem could have been solved a lot more easily if there had been a stronger religious tradition of opposition to the ownership of other human beings why can't that have been the case Okay because scripture quite explicitly condones it and and and and in fact gives you the details of how to do it that's something that couldn't have been done in other words because law this moral principle that's placed outside of of uh of meaningful debate before we move on can I ask where are we getting these buttons from are they from Amazon you know that you press one and every a this this wonderful thing he's available on the market that I think you both need to use uh in in in this conversation which is Imagination all right so let's H so as far as why didn't the Bible prescribe the perfect world as I would see it or as you might see it and the answer is because two two reasons one as stated right up top I'm not God I assume he has different logic than I do two the Bible is in an inherently problematic position in the sense that on the one hand it's trying to divulge important truths for all time at the same time it's talking to a people of a particular time yes and this is this is a well-worn tradition inside Judaism so to take the slavery example there is no mandate to hold slaves in the Bible there are lots of mandates in the Bible many many mandates there are 613 of them according to my religion right that's why I do all these weird things that I do um but the but one of those mandates is not to hold slaves right and so the idea of there was a society that existed at the time of the Bible in which slave holding was not only ubiquitous it was Universal and which was true for virtually all of human history that's right and could be justified not just in terms of religious scripture but in terms of Aristotelian thought right I mean the great philosophers we like to cite in the in sometimes in the secular tradition are big fans of slavery and that's true virtually up until the 18th century yes so the idea would be is this verse attempting to woo people away from a tradition of slavery or to humanize the slaves or is it attempting to reinforce that by making it harsher and more difficult and that's why I actually one of the things I enjoy doing in terms of how I study the Bible for example is I like to look at contemporaneous religious texts of the time so I like to study the Bible alongside for example H's code and it's really interesting to notice the differences and where the Bible is liberalizing ham robi's code for example and so the and so the idea that a divine revelation has to be has to be given to human beings who are capable of following that in the time again that that's part of the difficulty of of I think rebutting religion in a certain sense because again it seems Wiggly but it really isn't in the sense that if you believe as I do in a God who spoke to human beings in some form or fashion and has to speak to them on a level that they can understand in ways they can understand then that immediately is going to Discount the ability to do a lot of very radical things that have that would have appeared radical in 1 1200 BC but now appear to be common place for us yes I understand this argument and I I've heard it many times I must say that it seems strange to me that God does seem willing to completely and utterly condemn a bunch of other practices including by the way imaginary crimes like witchcraft just done away with entirely and even if it is the case that God for some reason couldn't just say couldn't even hint at the idea that maybe eventually we should be moving towards the abolition of the idea of owning human beings as private property he just I still think it's the case that he would not permit a flat immorality and I think you would agree with that too and so when I when I open the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible and when I look at the texts saying that you you if you lay Siege to a city you can you can kill if if the Lord delivers it into your hand you can kill the men and the women uh but keep or you can kill the men and keep the women and the children and the and the and the livestock as plunder as Deuteronomy says and and uh in the very next verse uh sorry the very next chapter says that you know if um if you see a good-look woman and and I'm not I'm not interjecting that if if somebody finds an attractive woman yes if is the actual Hebrew then then they can take them for themselves and if they want them as their wives and they they take them home they shave their head they cut off their fingernails they give them 30 days to mourn their old husband who you may very well have just killed and then you can take them as your wife when numbers 31 has Moses instruct the the slaughter of the midianites saying kill all the men and this time the women get killed too but not the women who haven't slept with a man and why might that be and it says that you know keep them for yourselves and I I hear all the time that this is some kind of liberalizing process maybe it's because you know these these people wouldn't survive on their own is some kind of protective measure to make sure that you're you're looking after them if that's the case then why does it only apply to the virgins that seems a little bit suspect to me you know in in it's sort of scriptures littered with these with these kinds of with these kinds of well again so to go back to the sort of oral tradition nature I don't think God would would permit and a proactive immorality even if he can't for some reason abolish the practice altogether if you I me the well no that last point I don't see so the the when you say even if he can't abolish the practice altogether well which I able to do right so the question is whether he can or whether he can't if he can't abolish the practice then the idea of wooing people away from a particular type of sin through a through a gradualistic process is known throughout societies across human history I mean the gradualistic processes are the way that that most things get done across human history and by the way the the the universal practice unfortunately up till today in many places in the world is in fact the extreme version of what you're talking about raise everything kill everyone that sort of stuff unfortunately does take place even on planet Earth in the year 2023 and the idea of a culture arising from the Bible that not only abolish slavery on its own chores but then abolish slavery literally everywhere else which is what Great Britain did that again to separate that off from a tradition that also says that every human being is made in the image of God right which the verse from Genesis or or that you have to treat the stranger well right which is repeated more than any injunction in the Bible right there are these these Traditions that are that at war with each other inside the Bible which is why there is this hotly fought kind of argument inside biblical Circle about all this stuff which again is one of the reasons why I said right up top that when it gets to I can't just open the Bible and interpret the text as I would see fit I don't this verse right here contradictory what was that you you say that scripture is contradictory well I say that that scripture is some some scripture is time Bound in some scripture is not so the the the easy one that the sort of easy way to distinguish is that when the Bible says not to do a thing then that tends to be non-time bound and when it says to do a thing and when it says to do a thing that may be a temporary permission structure but it it could Al be a wooing a w and by by the way again I'm not speaking out of turn here this has been 1500 years of Jewish reinterpretation of a to take a quick example right that sorry the the the uh the War prde uh that like that the the long-standing talmudic tradition which again is almost 2,000 years old at this point is that that was deliberately an attempt to avoid Mass War rape which again you can you can scoff at that but Mass War rape happened on this continent 70 years ago when the Russians literally raped everyone as they came into Germany so you know the these evils continue to exist in the human heart even if this was a liberalizing force and even if this was uh not as bad as other slavery do you think that the ownership of other human beings under the conditions of the Hebrew Bible are immoral yes so how do you account for God commanding something which you now see to be or or or rather permitting something and explicitly and giving you details about how to do something which is proactively immoral because permitting he's not permitting me permitting my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather to do something to do imoral that in the time was not considered immoral it wasn't considered immoral but was it immoral stand by standards were by the Jude Christian tradition sure by by today's standards developed under the Jude Christian tradition immoral which by the way you're you're living off the you're again not to get back to the town Holland argument you're living off the remains of this I mean where's your morality coming from but who's the moral relativist now I mean I it seems that a moment ago you say that the great the great success of religion is providing a sort of Untouchable moral basis that sort of transcends human Affairs and human debates and now when I say well look at this open your own religious scripture and look at this blatant immorality you say yeah but well that was considered to be fine at the time it's considered to be bad now by the progress of judeo Christian question who's the moral relativist well that's not it's not relativistic to say that the that a thing that is wrong today is considered wrong today because of a tradition developed over time the question I'm asking is is not was it considered right or wrong at the time of biblical slavery was it wrong it was wrong then to hold a slave yes it was wrong then to hold a slave obviously and also if you are God and you are pragmatically attempting to woo people away from slavery was it a practicable thing to Simply quote unquote abolish slavery or here's an idea for examp in in the book of Exodus uh God says I I think in chapter 21 maybe 22 uh says that if uh if if you have a if you have a Hebrew slave you let them go after seven years if that Hebrew slave comes to you with a wife then after the seven years you let them go too if you give the Hebrew slave a wife and they have children then after those seven years are up you give the man a choice he can go after the seven years as per but you keep his children and his wife or and here the scripture says you know if if he says I love my wife I love my kids and my master as if that's going to be one of the principal considerations then he can stay with you at which at which point you take him outside you pierce his ear like cattle and he becomes your property for life now here's a suggestion for example if it was already established that Hebrew slaves go after seven years and it's already established that if they come with a wife they can go after seven years then if I give them a wife and they have children would it not be it doesn't seem to me particularly revolutionary it doesn't seem to me the kind of thing that would have caused such social discohesion that God just couldn't have found a way to do it to say well why not let the whole family go free after those seven years with the knowledge beforehand that if you give this this this Hebrew slave of yours a wife and children they'll get to leave with them that seems to me for example a minor Improvement that would not cause this kind of revolutionary Earth shifting he couldn't have just gotten away with slavery maybe that's true but something as obvious as this to me it seems that if that is the case that that could have easily been done then the failure to do so and and the the uh the keeping of that Hebrew uh wife and their children as the Master's property that itself becomes an immorality that is that is dictated if I agree with your premises I agree with your your conclusion I think that the question is to how much Social discohesion would it have caused to do a thing is an open question I think the other question that that sort of remains open here is the the incentive structure as to whether you accept a wife from your master right so the I don't want to get into the abstr I mean we can do this literally all day step from the past there's 70 volumes with the tomw they're literally about this sort of stuff and then copious writings in terms of reinterpretation people to talk exactly this is not the first time these questions have come up um and but I think the the general point is is sort of one where either we can dive into that full time and and you can spend your life becoming a rabbi which you know in could you have the beard for it it's your beard is further along than mine uh or or we can sort of you know stipulate at the top that there are certain biblical interpretations that are abstruse and difficult yeah and that that has been a reality of religious life since the beginning I can agree with that we need to step we need to step from the past into uh the future through this uh conversational portal that we've got available to us um obviously everyone at this table would agree that holding a slave is wrong in the same way that the man you kept talking about who you thought was coming to kill you we would all agree that that's a problematic thing um and it it does it does seem so I'm not going to get you to defend this because I want you to um come up with another game show where you solve the future uh problems of society for us Alex um it it does seem that on an atheist worldview it is difficult ultimately to say what is good what is right what is wrong but we can be practical about it we can be functional about it so come on then for the future give us some practical secular philosophies that can really help to build social cohesion for the future you've got about a minute to do that then we'll give um Ben a minute to respond and then we'll wrap up I can I can uh provide an answer that I don't think will will be ca of further debate uh which is to say that'd be shocking I I think I think everything that that that I've I've heard you say Ben on this on this subject and everything that I I think you may be about to say not everything but some of it uh involves saying that look you know what we need to do is encourage uh strengthening family and and and having uh having children and and you know not doing drugs and and all of this kind of stuff stuff which people like you say traditionally this has been somewhat the prerogative of the church to maintain I think that people just don't believe in God anymore and so what I would say is just to encourage those things without the god the question I would leave and I'm sorry I just promised no debate but here's something look suppose it's the case that I agree wholesale with your proposition that religion is good and maybe even necessary for society in some way right suppose I just say that that's true I don't believe it's true I've tried I'm sorry I just don't believe it and so I'm now left with a choice here I don't think it's true but I become convinced that it's somehow useful or beneficial what am I to do with this information am you can't just choose to believe in God people say you can choose to act as though you believe in God that's kind of true until something really testing comes along if you don't really believe it in your heart you will falter at the first opportunity how am I to raise my children am I to lie to them am I to say well I don't believe in any of this nonsense but because I think it you know promotes a sort of non-replacement um uh you know um birth rate then I'm I'm just going to bring them up believing things that I think are false I I don't think this can this can happen it's amazing how quickly ostensible deontologists transform before our very eyes into utilitarians on this question that outgo the idea of being you know truthful and being honest and and talking about things that you think are philosophically sound now it's it's it's essentially faith-based and it's about trying to make as many people you know the greatest good for the greatest number across society and societal cohesion even if you think it's false in other words me I'm someone who is an atheist I don't believe it's true if I just grant everything you've said about the the the utility that religion provides what am I to do so let me ask you've got about 30 seconds so I mean it really it's a quick question which is do you know it's not true or do you not believe that it's true I believe that it's true you you believe that it's not true or you don't believe that it's true I believe that it's not true you believe that it's not true in a in a full fashion let's say that's the case right so I if you believe that then obviously I think that you're wrong in the sense that as I said right at the outset I think that a lot of atheists are more religious than religious people religious people constantly admit to doubts and and problems in interpretation and all all the rest of this sort of stuff I don't think that that a true religious believer can can be truly religious without experiencing those doubts because you're taking a leap of faith right off the top and what I would normally say to somebody who who is not fully committed to disbelief I would say is that you'd be in the position of being able to say to your kid I don't know if it's true not which I think is a more honest answer by the way and I think that and I think that that that is something you can teach your kids you can say here's an atheist perspective here's a religious perspective I don't know what's true I can provide you evidence on my side why I don't believe it fully but there are people who provide evidence on the other side and arguments on the other side that that are not foolish that are not out of the sky crazy you know like they and and so the and and make your own decision I think that's the way that you would address that with a child if you if you're somebody who who doesn't who believes in the social utility of religion but doesn't necessarily believe in the religion itself I think giving the child the ability to choose that that themselves by saying I'm not sure or by presenting both sides of the argument would not be a bad way to go I mean just in terms of practical Solutions in terms of what I would say to better Society I I have a much easier answer which is I think that you should re-engage with your social institutions including your church I think that that saying to people on an individual level don't do drugs study hard for your test get married before you have kids get a job like it's it's it's easy to say that to people and I think that without supporting social institutions that reinforce that nearly every day and make it part of the culture that surrounds you it's very difficult for people to live that and so I think that removing God as sort of the Capstone of these institutions the whole institution tends to fall apart so on a practical level if you get rid of God the institution just ceases to exist and you can yell as much as you want but individuals are far less likely to provide the social reinforcement and social networks for support that actually create the bases of a good fundamentally solid civilization than an individualist civilization in which all you can do is basically encourage someone to quote unquote do the right thing amen well the fact we've managed to keep Ben chapiro within the 24 minutes is a miracle in itself a miracle that Alex doesn't believe in by but uh we have been talking today on the big conversation uh about religion and whether it's good or bad for society and I've been joined by two literally World beating Minds Alex OK Conor and Ben Shapiro I have enjoyed it so much thank you so much to both of you you're both so wonderful and uh impressive and we've seen areas of uh convergence we've seen areas of Divergence uh Alex has given some ground on the areas where religion is good for society Ben has conceded that it's not always good for society in certain iterations um so we didn't come to a uh full uh verdict about whether religion is good or B for society uh but what we have seen is two men Avid and persistent in their pursuit of reason and I can tell you something that is good for for the future of society join us next time on the big conversation goodbye thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed this episode click the Subscribe button and if you want more from this conversation register now and you'll get exclusive access to enter a draw for a free ebook also tell us who persuaded you in our survey with today's show [Music]

Channel: Premier Unbelievable?

Views: 1,352,499

Keywords: unbelievable, justin brierley, premier christian radio, christianity, atheism, philosophy, faith, theology, God, apologetics, Jesus, debate, science, evidence, Bible, big conversation

Id: yspPYcJHI3k

Length: 79min 41sec (4781 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023