Religion and Materialism - Adam Friended vs Jonathan Pageau

hey everybody it's your friend adam i'm here uh with jonathan pujo we've been talking about having a conversation for a while and my fans are dying for me to talk to you just so you know like that's everybody i've been seeing you for years like just especially i mean since the jordan peterson thing happened i've been seeing your videos watching a few videos and just kind of seeing you around with paul vander clay and and different people so i'm happy to talk to you finally yeah i'm i'm a pro christianity uh atheist so i i'm definitely i'm hated on both sides often so i'm much less hated by the christians because obviously i'm a pr i'm pro-christianity i grew up christian so i feel qualified to talk about christianity because i grew up within the religion i grew up southern baptist and though i kind of grew into atheism because of my being a fan of science and evolution and all that kind of stuff i've sort of become an atheist i still understand the value of christianity and an ethical system and an ethical package and really the people that despise me are what i call the antithesis which i like to separate the atheists from the antithesis because atheists just lack a belief in god a lot of times antitheists will say well an atheist atheism is just a lack of belief in god and i'll think yes that's true but you have a belief in something different you're an antithesis you believe the world would be a better place without religion like that's the central motivating feature of your ideology i do not believe the world would be a better place without religion i lack a belief in god i'm an atheist you're an antithesis like so i make that separation that distinction but we were talking a little bit before we started about you you recently did a a a talk with rationality rules and i listened to that talk i thought it was interesting but i i agree that with some of the people saying that there was a little bit of talking past one another so i thought you know our it made me want to have a conversation with you even more because i thought we're probably less likely to talk past one another ironically like rationality rules uh made this video completely savaging me i made some response videos to him and i thought he and i would have a constructive dialogue uh that never happened like i'm closer to uh his position uh uh like he did a video recent it's funny because okay so let me give the back story here i because yeah i didn't know about this story i didn't know this has happened so rationality rules was making jordan peterson videos uh and just straw manning the hell out of jordan peterson it was driving me crazy it was driving my fans crazy so they wanted me to do response videos because i understand jordan peterson's argument jordan peterson's argument is surprisingly close to uh brett weinstein's argument about metaphorical truth so i'm doing these videos explaining how uh rationality rules is completely straw manning the argument here uh later on rationality rules does a video where he's all in favor of metaphorical truth and i'm like why like why are you crapping all over jordan peterson if you're in favor of what jordan peterson is talking about just you're not necessarily understanding it so so we i made some response videos to him he made a response video to me basically just dismissing me as some internet troll and i'm like i've been on youtube longer than you man i know everyone on youtube i don't necessarily understand where you're coming from so i thought we were uh i would have some kind of a constructive dialogue with him about this stuff but it's it's funny to me that now he's kind of making videos that are my position so so uh that's actually a good thing like in the long run if he's going to come around to my position anyway regardless of whether or not we get along i'm comfortable with that but you evidently have a problem with his position and um well i i saw him i had been i've seen his videos like just anyway you know i've seen all a lot of the different types of atheists and different types of i you know people who have different ideologies on youtube for years uh you know i've been i've been now on youtube for about four years and i'd seen his videos and his kind of um his auntie jordan peterson videos i had written one comment on his one of his videos saying that i think that he misunderstands the argument um and we had a little bit of an exchange on one of the videos but then i thought i don't think we could understand each other and then recently i did see his video on brett weinstein's metaphorical truth right and i was really surprised at some of the things he was saying and i thought oh wait actually so if if he can find some ground in brett weinstein's argument then maybe there could be a point of contact where we could talk at least at least kind of try to to understand each other because until then i felt like we'd probably completely talk past each other and uh and that he has been really super gracious like i he was extremely generous we had a um private conversation first to kind of to just say okay look this is what i'm going to say like we don't we weren't trying the idea was like we don't want to trap each other like that's not the point you really want to try to explore the ideas um and it's been it's been really positive for me at least the the conversation has been positive i do feel like you said that in the conversation a few things happened i think one thing one thing that happened was we did end up talking past each other on certain points and i feel like he didn't he didn't he hadn't realized the extent to which i'm actually a christian and then i think that that surprised him and so then he was kind of taken off guard because you know at some point he he says something like wait so you really believe in god and i was like well yeah you know and then and i think that that surprised a little bit because because i think he saw me more on jordan peterson's side let's say um but but uh but yeah in the end in the end i i do feel if you watch the comment sections on both our channels it's clear that we we are still talking way past each other because it's very radicalized like the com the comment sections like on my side they're saying he didn't understand what i was saying and on his side they're saying i'm just trying to speak around you know i'm just i'm just just basically saying things to justify my christian position and not not really you know engaging with the argument so so it's too bad well i don't know like for me it was like a test it was like i'm gonna find the person that i feel is kind of the furthest from my position that i could actually talk to and then and then try to see if we can understand each other so i'm not sure i'm not sure it happened but i'm not totally giving up yet let's say well personal feelings aside i think he's cultivated an audience of antitheists i i harp on this distinction all the time because it's so important he has an audience that wants to believe the world would be a better place without religion even the lgbt stuff came in in your talk with him like a lot of those people who are antitheists or lgbt activists they feel religion is dangerous to the lb lgbt movement and maybe they have an argument there like i don't necessarily uh disagree with them in america we have this thing and i'm sure it's the same you're in canadian right in canada i'm sure it's pretty much the same thing like if if you're lgbt and the and uh the church has prohibitions on lgbt then you can leave the church like nobody's forcing you to stay there this isn't uh you know islam or anything like that like uh go enjoy your life without the church so i i as long as it's not being forced upon you i feel like they have less of an argument there so but but um one of the things that i thought we could talk about that would be more interesting is that i feel like i could get past some of the talking past one another that you had with him because i i the the thing about uh steve or rationality rules whatever he's calling himself these days uh you if that i'm not sure that he can win that audience over but he has more of a chance of winning that audience over than either either you or i have and i know that when he was making response videos to jordan peterson they very much saw jordan peterson as just like this bible thumper that was winning people over to christianity but the reason jordan peterson was winning people over to christianity i think is because he was putting a rationalist scientific spin on christianity that made it make sense for a lot of people who were scientifically minded uh atheist types so it was just a misunderstanding that rationality rules had about jordan peterson that a lot of my response videos were were trying to explain and um i i it's funny that you were probably closer to the type of person that he thought jordan peterson was then i think george people i'm more like an actual i go to church i totally don't go to church now because of coped but like in the normal world i go totally yes you know and i pray and i have i have taken on all the traditional practices of a christian like that's for sure do you think jordan because we have you know this running back going with jordan peterson is like is jordan peterson really just an like an atheist that uh you know understands christianity but he just doesn't want to say he's an atheist because he loses all his street cred i believe jordan peterson is probably closer to the atheist position i think that he's the thing this is the thing about jordan is that jordan is what you see there is there are no two jordan petersons and that's something you know that is important for people to understand is that it whatever you see of him none of it is like a show if you see him hesitating on a question it's because he's hesitating on a question he's not doing it he's not doing it as a as a as a way to to to play a game like i i had a conversation i mean i haven't talked to him a lot you know recently yeah because of the house sick and everything but i had a conversation with him uh maybe about a year and a half ago where he started talking about genesis again and he he was just he was just like wrestling with the the thing like wrestling with the story and and then he he says what if these stories really were true like what if they were true and he was excited about it on the phone and i was like are you like really like i was like come on man like i thought we i thought like from my side i thought we were past this you know but i think he's really kind of he's really uh wrestling with these questions existentially and so that's what it is so i so i think that he's not an atheist but i think that he doesn't he doesn't have faith let's say it that way that is there's a difference between saying there's a difference between saying that you believe that god refers to something which it has value let's say something like that or and faith which is a celebration of that which is above you and a participation in that story so those two things are different so do you want to get into your conception of god first of all just since we're talking about the the the rationality rules talk is there anything that you'd like to say that you felt well wasn't said there or what after you've had some time to reflect on it what what are some of your afterthoughts well for sure i really i do feel like i i wasn't like i wasn't able to communicate what i wanted and so and it's been helpful to be honest like it's been helpful to watch paul vander clay did a comment on the talk and i've been reading his comment section in my comment section and so it's been i think it's going to help me in the end because you know these things are hard to talk about and so i feel like i wasn't able to communicate one basic thing which is that i can maybe summarize it this way which is that i have a cosmological frame and this cosmological frame is actually universal it actually isn't limited to christianity christianity has some key puzzle elements of that cosmological frame which i think are extremely important i would say make christianity ext you know truer than anything else but the frame itself is the same in taoism and in hinduism and and in all the religions like it's a basic cosmological frame and that and the the the applications of that pattern are what cause all the rules in terms of morality that i believe in and so if you're going to argue against some moral position in the christian in the christian world view then you have to be able to tell me what it is first of all from which position are you arguing that because i know like i have a i have a whole pattern that tells me how a pattern that is as useful to my moral positions than they are to how i build houses and how you build cities and how you organize government all of these things come down from this cosmological pattern there's variety it's not a totalitarian thing there's variety so if you're gonna tell me that this moral position of christianity is wrong then you have to be able to argue your frame to me not just this position and you also have to be able to tell me what is the good you're aiming towards because i know what the good i'm aiming towards is whether i succeed or not we can argue about the application and say this application doesn't lead to that goal but if you're going to tell me that you it's not good enough and you need something better you have to tell me what the better is and i feel like that's the that's the place where we were stuck where i was saying if you if you're telling me it's this this aspect of christianity is inadequate then you have to be able to tell me towards what i need to modify it to if i'm going to modify it towards what is it liberty is it equality is it uh what is the value i don't know i'm not sure i could understand what that is is it comfort is it more people alive and less people dying is what is it like what is the thing you're aiming towards what is the telos and so i think that that's that was where to me at least it stuck and we were unable to kind of get past that but i feel like it's maybe because i didn't articulate enough the idea that that i don't care as much about the the particular laws and rules that you don't like in christianity because the frame is so powerful that i'm willing to even accept some things that i might disagree on in detail because because it's worth to keep this frame and to live inside this story and to participate in these communities it's worth it to accept a few things that i might even disagree with i should i forgot to mention too that we're both artists so i think i think i think we have that in common but just back on the on the topic the arguing against the morality i think like i've hung out with these people enough and you know i'm sort of tacitly part of their tribe i think they would say something to the effect of of you know truth uh scientific truth materialist truth has a higher higher survival value just because of they always want to point to medical advancements and things like that that uh go putting all of our eggs in the metaphorical truth basket would be uh more detrimental to the survival of more people than to focus on scientific truth so i think that is really their biggest disagreement or argument against your ethical package that i i think that they would pull out so what so let so this is something that has come up with brett weinstein as well which is so on the one hand you have this evolutionary thinking and this this like basic scientific thinking which is also bound up in evolutionary thinking and these two things are strangely bound up together and and so what i hear is on the one hand i hear people saying that scientific truth is the highest it's the most important and then i hear at the same time the same people saying we need to break our evolutionary code we need to move out of our evolutionary code because it's dangerous because it leads to genocide because it leads to rape because it leads to all of these horrible tribalistic things and so they're saying we need to be able to now to now transcend our evolutionary impulses and my question is again towards what like where are you standing like if you're if you're not then in the evolutionary camp and you're in another camp then tell me what's your camp like tell me where you are and what you're aiming towards what do you think the evolutionary camp is let's because you're a believer in evolution right i mean you're not i i think evolution happened i don't know if i believe it okay what would you or believe in it how about if i said i i don't really believe in it but i i don't mind it so maybe we're just talk i don't want to talk past each other like yeah so you you believe evolution by natural selection is happening today uh you know the origin of species you believe in that right i think i definitely think that you think it's true i guess it's powerful it's a very powerful process that has been brought to light in the last you know few centuries believe is a tough term i think that's a term we're getting hung up on you you think uh you accept that it's true that evolution is happening evolution by natural selection yeah i'll say yes that that's fine what is it i didn't say yes that's okay reproduction variation selection i think is what you can nail it down to okay this also happens culturally do you accept that that i think so culture cultural evolution happens through the same process right a bunch of people think let's let's try something different let's all switch our genders and form a commune and see what happens maybe this will be a successful cultural adaptation if it's not successful if it doesn't reproduce offspring it dies out and that cultural uh mutation dies correct same way as uh organisms themselves uh reproduce and die yeah well that that that that has some even in evolutionary terms that has a there's a problem because there's a limited amount of energy you can expound sure totally most evolutionary processes are actually hyper conservative very much so because you have very little energy and if you start to ex you start to put all your energy in these experimental forms then you're going to be dead before you have the time to even know whether or not all these forms you're trying to experiment with will be going to be fruitful and this is the best argument against the celebrity atheists like dawkins and harris and those guys because like religion is all these costly has all these costly features to it uh evolution is the best argument that religion is doing something useful evolutionarily or why would it exist it's all we're we're expending all these costly energies you know going to church helping people meeting other uh you know meeting together forming coalitions all of that stuff has to be evolutionarily advantageous somehow because as as religion leaves the public sphere then the birth rate goes down so sure exactly that too that too so so you you are probably in agreement with brett weinstein that evolution or that religion is some sort of of extended phenotype i think is the way that he referred to it in his talk with richard dawkins which doesn't bother me like i obviously do not view the world primarily in evolutionary terms right like i i interpret the evolutionary terms based on i i think that the the frame the cosmic frame that is given by let's say traditional society is more powerful than that but i i don't mind it like in the sense that i that i i think it's fine you know i think it's okay but i i think that when you try to apply these types of patterns to religious thinking what happens is you catch a few things like you catch a few things that are true and a few things connect so you look at the rules in the scripture and you and you're like oh i can explain this through this really this evolutionary process i can explain this but then there's like 80 percent of it that you still think is nonsense but even if you do believe that it's a it's like this emergent thing that happened then it it needs for it to have been selected for it needs to have some coherence or at least some some some application so are you talking about christianity specifically total nonsense for thousands of years you know i don't think that that that's true and and the frame that i'm trying to to explain to people make sense of it all like it doesn't none of it falls up falls to the side there's nothing in scripture which falls to the side if you use the basic cosmic pattern that that that you find that you find in religion itself okay the i'm not i'm not completely sure what you're meaning on the cosmic pattern but we'll get back to it because i just if well i i want you the some one thing that can't came up continuously in your talk with rationality rules was like the goal the what's good that kind of stuff so yeah i just think you know as as impartial observers of evolution like we both believe it's uh reproduction variation selection what is the goal of reproduction variation selection in the context of physical organisms to me it seems like it has to be something on par with utilitarianism like the most well-being for the largest number of people and it's it's perspective oriented because it is going to be the you know obviously what's good for us is not necessarily what's good for chimpanzees like there's a reason why humans have dominated this planet and chimpanzees have not right but why is it the most good for the most people i really can't get there with evolutionary thinking because because it can be to your advantage to to massively dominate other populations evolutionary like in an evolutionary way it's it's way it's your advantage to completely dominate the other lines yes no i agree so that your line is disadvantaged i agree that's why i specifically said that it's perspective oriented because obviously the utilitarian argument for lions is going to be different than the utilitarian argument for human beings because the most good for the most people is different than the most good for the most lions the most good for the most lines is the frame of reference for a lion though they're obviously they would like to be in the humanity role right now and lions will eat the offspring of other lions if they if yes that is actually that is actually a bad thing in the utilitarian argument because the the the most thriving for the most uh organisms in that um in that uh uh species is going to help because you've got to admit that numbers matters especially in an evolutionary game so while different uh different speed different humans formed different tribes that competed against other tribes a bigger tribe always had a better advantage correct like if i have 100 people versus 10 people obviously you put your money on 100 people right well not always i don't think that's why i know obviously that's also why that's why you have moments in history where the small like mongolian tribe comes in and savages the chinese empire why though why what what what is the advantage that they have over the numbers the technological advantage or flexibility okay so they have a better ethical system sorry so they have a better ethical system a better a better strategy like everything or they have a better system to dominate because when you have let's say you have a a system which is too big then it it had lacked flexibility and so when the bigger it gets the more chance you have of a small thing coming in and piercing the bubble right and because it has massive flexibility then it can wiggle itself into into a space and take over but if you have two teams like that and one has a superior i i'm just i call it an ethical system because that's basically what ethical systems are they're the rules of engagement between a group so if that group has a rule has a ethical system that allows them to form a bond of 10 guys that can beat a hundred guys that ethical system everyone's going to look at and go that's a good ethical system i think we should adopt it and pretty soon that 10 guys is a hundred guys and they can beat a thousand people right yeah so that ethically a thousand then there's another ten guys with a different with a different ethical system maybe the ethical system will change as society's that's why societies change as you as you get rich and as you get as you in stabilize then your world is going to start to look like what you are it's you can't just you can't you can't be uh you know it's like jordan it's like you can't be a boxer a super aggressive boxer if if if at some point you stop fighting for your life like at some point you're going to lose your edge you need to find ways to keep your edge but it's going to happen all it's going to happen by itself right it's just going to could be part of your success is going to be that you're going to lose that edge that you had at the beginning it's just a normal cycle of things well i i view christianity and and different religions as these ethical systems that are uniting people and and allowing people to uh cooperate with one another that that's the way that i see these ethical systems so so what if we could say that it's not an ethical system i don't think christianity and i don't think religions are ethical systems i think that that's one of the problems which makes it hard for people to understand religion is because if you think that they're really if they're an ethical system then you don't understand why you have to build an ark of the covenant and have two angels with their wings touching and you don't understand why you need to to uh to have you know veils around holy places all of this stuff makes no sense if it's just an ethical system you know it's it's actually more than an ethical system it's a it's a frame of reality it's a it's a way to understand value and to understand not to understand but to participate in hierarchies of being okay so that so that these hierarchies lay themselves out and create units so it has more to do with identity than it has to do with ethics has more to do with who you are what your place is in the world and what's your relationship with others and then downstream from that you have rules and regulations and and let's say ways of acting but at first it's like we worship the thing that unites us we celebrate the thing that unites us just like a a basketball team will celebrate their their logo their mascot that the the they will find rituals to cohere and they'll have a totem like a mascot that will go out into the crowd and get everybody to cheer for the team that's the most important part it has to do with identification and and uh social cohesion through participative identity more than the moral stuff the moral stuff comes down downstream from that once you understand that then a lot of religious stuff is going to make way more sense to you you know you're going to understand what people gather together why they sing together why they pray together whether they look in the same direction why they eat a meal together all of these things are manifestations of participat participation in the same identity under a god under uh something which unites them an identity which unites them together well i i i from an evolutionary frame all of this makes complete sense so it's it's i can understand it from my frame and i think you can understand it from my frame i don't um i don't know that i completely understand what you're talking about from your frame well no and that's that's i mean that's that's the goal here right i mean what is what is what is your goal what are you what are you trying to accomplish with your youtube channel and you're just talking about this kind of stuff so what i'm noticing in the world is a breakdown there's a breakdown going happening there's a fragmentation of identities there's a fragmentation of of all the places which in which we find our communion or in which we find unity are breaking down and people are just surfing through surfing as if this is normal but at some point it's going to move towards more chaos riots all of this stuff the chaos that we see that we saw in in 2020 and it's also going to move towards authoritarian clampdowns because one of the problems which happens when normal identity starts to fragment is that there's an over compensation on the other side and so what i'm seeing down line is very dark there's a very dark uh horizon and one of the reasons why it is is because we've ceased to understand what makes things exist as one like why do we think that nations have identity why do we think families why do we think a person has unity and this is because we've lost the cosmic frame we've lost the frame this traditional hierarchy of being which which is shown in the temple in the church in the in the story of genesis and all of these images that help us to understand and participate in how things are won jordan talks about this all the time which is the problem of john vervicky uses the words combination combinatorial explosion there's too much stuff in the world like there's just too much phenomena and so there are ways in which phenom phenomena coalesces into identities in which you're able to see that uh a chair has parts but is also one like why do we think that a chair is one thing it's not one thing it's a million things it's and why do you think that that chair is participates with other furniture and we can see it as one room and why do we see one room as one house or one house as one you know these all these houses as one city there are processes by which this is possible and if we attack ritual and we attack the notion of concentric spaces or the idea of the way in which society communes then it's going to become the suburbs all of reality is going to become the suburbs it's going to become a flat a flat a distribution of particles that have no coherence it's going to happen in the way we build houses it's going to happen in our morality where everybody has their own morality it's going to happen in our identities where everybody has their own identity and there's nothing joining us together and we're going to not know our neighbors which is already happening we don't know our neighbors we don't know the people next to us we have nothing binding us there's no glue and that glue is ritual it's based on concentric it's based on worshiping the same thing no i i have to celebrate the same thing in order to be together this is jordan peterson's uh idea of god god is the thing that you orient yourself towards and different communities orient themselves towards different things like i would say the social justice community is oriented towards uh fighting for the rights of the oppressed that is technically their god because that's what they're orienting themselves the antitheists they orient themselves towards the world would be a better place without religion that is their god that is the god that they serve every day with every video that they make they're trying to turn everyone else into anti-theists well actually and you know by extension into scientists because they worship truth they think religion is bad because it doesn't worship uh truth over over well-being even though it's funny that actuality is what they worship well but you said one thing i think i think i want to go back to the the fragmentati you see fragmentation as a problem i'm torn over whether or not the fragmentation is due to material conditions or whether it's due to uh philosophical breakdown i think there's good arguments for both but i they're going to they go together yeah they do they kind of feed off of one another because you're in christ that's why christianity has an ascetic aspect to it right the idea that we accumulate all this stuff we think that it's good in itself is not necessarily not necessarily so that's see that's where the philosophy shapes the material conditions because if you're living in horrible material conditions it's helpful to have a philosophy that makes you enjoy not having anything well the guy monks could live in very uh lavish conditions if they wanted to they choose not to right like monasticism is a voluntary choice it's not a it's not a it's not caused by the outside world it's it's it's the the ascetic spirit of christianity is can flower even in the empire like even if when constantinople was the most glorious city in the world there were still monks you know standing on pillars and and living in caves so the the ascetic tendency is not is not just based on uh material it's not just based on a lack of material possibility there's something else in the ascetic thing but i just want to say one thing about what you said in terms of the gods and i think you're right they really are gods and one of the problems we're seeing one of the things we saw in the last few thousand years is through christianity through islam through judaism through neo-platonism and and other gr and other versions of tradition some aspects of hinduism like let's say vedanta hinduism there's this idea that the gods stack up and so the identities of these different things they stack up and they they stack up towards something which is goes moves towards a point and you could call that point being you could call it you know the origin there's all ways of of talking about it but it they stack up so it's like you have modes of being let's say that social justice god you know the god of war the god of money the god of this you have all these gods and they're all competing and they're competing in society but they're also competing in you right so you have desires not me those desires are fighting amongst each other and you can feel the same you can see two you can feel two at the same time right you help someone hate them at the same time and it's ripping you apart and so the they say that the christian answer and it's not just a christian answer but is that there's a way to unite those into a single mode of being which unites all other modes of being and that's the movement towards the transcendent god which who is not like all the other gods it's not the you can't one of the problems that people when people the kind of weird atheist argument which is that like everybody's an atheist you just believe in you know you just believe in one more i just one lesson you do right yeah he's like no that's not true i believe in all the gods i think all the gods exist but the the infinite transcendent is not the same as all these particular gods just like just like in order to unify the different cities of the united states you need us you need an identity which is higher which is the state and if you want those states not to fight amongst each other you need an identity hire which is the country and so you need these transcendent identities in order to unify things below them so the in the context that i said like uh an idea can become a god in the sense that it's some idea that a community orients around social justice uh we talked about um antitheism we talked about what would be the i the central idea that christianity rolls around i i have my idea but my idea is through an evolutionary framework obviously so but your idea and everything that you're saying i don't disagree with anything that you're saying i'm just i'm kind of translating it into an evolutionary framework in my mind yeah that i i think it's love love yeah okay and so what love love what love does is that it is the the balance of the unity and multiplicity let's see so love is when you can have let's say unity amongst people but that unity doesn't dissolve the difference the multiplicity you know it's like if you love someone you don't you don't like suck them into you you don't like you you know just like it's like like the way that you that you like to eat something that type of desire that's not what christian love is you don't you don't make everything the same through love you there's a a there's a it's a there's a a recognition of the unity and also a recognition of the multiplicity at the same time and it creates this kind of balance or this this dance between one and many and i think that that's what that's what that's the the highest value of christianity and it manifests itself in the incarnation where christ is seen as both fully transcended fully god fully you know and at the same time fully incarnate fully multiple fully linked down all the way down into death you know and so it's like there's this joining of of absolute fragmentation and multiplicity in all the way to death with the ultimate transcendent uh principle you're you're expert at talking in the metaphorical truth like so much of this is i can see this is there since does it sound like i'm just spouting gibberish i hope i know a little it's i i i can understand it and and respect it because i respect the idea behind metaphorical truth but i think a lot of like scientifically minded types it sounds like gibberish too because they don't they can't necessarily grab on to it into in a like a materialist type framework you are talking about let me use a scientific example okay right and so you have a transcendent principle right that's you could call it uh theory is it is it okay so it's it's like the theory of evolution so that's like a yeah you have a pattern right selection variation uh reproduction it it doesn't matter which one it is any scientific theory will do and that is a pattern and that what that pattern does is first of all it tells you what to look at because you could look at a million things in the world sure totally so the theory first of all frames what you're talking about a little slice of reality frames the slice and then it also gives you the parameters by which the pattern of this thing is going to happen okay so that's the heaven of that scientific thing and then there's also a earth a lower part and that's all the multiplicity of facts which you encounter all the variety of facts that the pattern creates in sort of a fractile type sense yeah but it doesn't just create them it also kind of it it it uh let's say it has to recognize them also right it's not just about creating them because those those pa those facts you know have have a way of speaking like they they they you know and sometimes the facts will start to contradict the theory and so then you have to find a way to balance the theory with the facts correct if you un if it's not balanced then either the theory will like start to crush the facts and will start to suppress the facts that they don't that it doesn't like so that it will continue to make the theory look plausible yeah it'll start to marginalize facts this is where the metaphorical truth comes in right here this is not me this is what happens right well definitely yeah if it's not metaphorical it's like if this is scientific so you you have facts and you're looking at them through your theory but some of them don't fit if a few of them don't fit that's fine right you kind of leave them with to the side yeah if a lot of them you start to push them push and push them at some point the theory is overturned yeah it's going to split apart and this the the theory and the facts would just won't fit together anymore correct yes reality will stop to be coherent well what they do in science so is they throw the theory away they say that's right we need a new theory yeah you need a theory which is more explains these facts better these new facts exactly yeah and so that but when the theory and the facts are together and there's a balance between the unitive capacity that the theory offers and the the the variation at the bottom that's love they see and then you go to something that's completely subjective completely it's not subjective subjective well there's different uh different types of love there's like love love that you have for your family and then there's love that you have for like your wife which is well let's let's use let's use the christian agape love there's love that you have for your brother there's love that you have for your friends the i don't disagree on the love thing but there's a specific aspect of the love in christianity one of the reasons why i think christianity has dominated the world and and has so many adherents and so many people i mean going back to the example that i have of those 10 tribes with the 10 guys with the superior ethical system that could beat a hundred guys that ethical system of christianity is spread around the world because it's so incredibly useful especially in modern in modern times one of the hardest things uh to do in society is to uh foster an attitude of forgiveness uh forgiveness makes the modern world possible like a lot of accidents happen a lot of terrible things go on if people aren't able to let go of those terrible things they can consume a lot of their resources a lot of their family resources a lot of their individual resources a lot of their tribes resources like we have a lot of contention going on in politics and whatnot until somebody has the capacity to step up and say okay let's start over i'm going to forgive everything that's happened up until then and i encourage you to do the same let's move forward with a fresh slate like things can go off the rails this is how genocides happen right yeah things spin in the wrong direction so but but the center of the christian narrative is a dude on the cross forgiving doing this grave act to forgive the world for all of the injustice in it so i mean that is a powerful idea and it definitely plays into the love thing that you're talking about but it's more specific than that because it does take a an extreme type of love to forgive your enemies yeah like it's easy to love your uh you know love your neighbor love your family love you love your friends but to love the guy across the street that's been a pain in your ass yeah like as long as you've lived there yeah that's an extreme type of love and i think the the uh there's a christian narrative that like the love your enemy thing it's important to understand it is that one of the problems of reality is that the these hierarchies let's say the hierarchies of tribalism and the hierarchies of identity they're inevitable you can't avoid them they have to exist or else the world stops to exist the world ceases to exist and so how do you deal with it and so a lot of the christian answers are something like that which is love your enemy and so love your enemy doesn't mean he's not your enemy right it's not saying this person's not your enemy saying this person is your enemy but you have to find it in yourself and you could you could you could still defend yourself actually like in terms of christian understanding in terms of a country like no christian country would ever say you need to let yourself get invaded by other countries but but the idea is you need to also be able to continue to see the humanity of the even the person that's attacking you and to see that they share something in common with you even though they are your enemy yeah and so and so that's those are the kinds of answers that christianity gives which are based on this finding a balance between the unity and multiplicity like this finding this space where you have the best relationship between you know the tribal aspect and also this openness towards the outside all of this is all of this is manifest itself in the incarnation so you said one thing also in your previous talk that i didn't quite understand because the argument that you seem to be making is which i completely agree with the only way that you can really change a system or a group or an identity or or a community is from within and the implication that you made was the really you need to join christianity and help change christianity from within but that argument applies to any group i completely agree with you that the only the only people who are going to listen to you are people within your tribe uh other people will tend to dismiss you but until you i mean that that attitude is uh also applies to communism which i wouldn't imply i wouldn't advise anyone to join the communist community and improve it from within so yeah well communism is is deficient at the outset yeah it's a bad ethical same at all yeah like trying to put communism on the same level as traditional religious systems is just really it's it's really hogwash it's just not it's it's really isn't uh but do you you understand conceptualize religion as as a thing that a people orient around and communism is a thing that people orient around and therefore can be conceptualized as like a durkheimian view of religion can be conceptualized as a religion it's like social justice can be conceptualized everything can become a religion money can become that's why we have the idea of idolatry in in christianity like how the my i'm maybe i'm specifically i'm talking about a goal or a cause that a community orients itself around so making money like like i don't know that money itself can become a religion but like um i would conceptualize any corporation that you know works together to make money by doing some service or product could be conceptualized as a religion not necessarily you could understand that the god of the god of of uh of our system is money like or mammon and the god of the communist system is this weird equality thing and so it's like they worship equality and so and and then they want to make the world in the image of equality uh and it's actually probably worse than the other one because it obviously it self destroys in just a few generations like it communism doesn't just doesn't have legs it as soon as you ins and as soon as you put it together i don't want to get destruction i don't want to get sidetracked on communism because i could very easily but the the eye the argument about the argument that you're making i didn't understand and i think other people if i didn't understand it other people didn't understand it so maybe you could make it clear what like what exactly are you advocating for you have to understand it in the general context of what i said i i did wasn't able to communicate properly which is that i have a cosmic mythological frame in which i exist and participate and and i live in now you're standing somewhere and you're telling me there are aspects of your mythological your aspects of what you're doing which is wrong and and my question is okay i i'm saying that about it no no like the the the the critique of the new atheist let's say the critique of the atheist type which is that this practice of christianity is is wrong because it's factually incorrect yes well it's not it's not about prescriptions that are not factual descriptions well no th but i'm just saying that's what their critique would be their critique would be you believe untrue things believing untrue things is dangerous because the next thing you know you're a suicide bomber like that's basically their argument no am i wrong i mean that's basically their argument they're like if you can be tricked i'm like uh everyone believes untrue things there's like you can't get out of bed without believing untrue things because like there's things that you don't have the facts on and there's also this is the thing is that this is what i mean we're getting sidetracked again but there are this is going to be hard for people to understa to understand which is that there are truths which are more immediate to you than scientific truths scientifically i agree are actually abstractions most of the time do you are you a fan of donald hoffman do you yeah okay yeah yeah i'm a huge donald hoffman fan so and donald hoffman and vivek are really going at the same kind of ideas from different perspectives verveiki's more on the philosophical side and donald hoffman's more on the scientific side so i don't agree with him makes a mistake he he makes a mistake in his original premise which is fine because he's a scientist but he makes a mistake in his original premise which is that we experience illusions and and and there is this other thing behind which is more true than what we experience right but we can't experience it and i'm like okay i don't know why don't you posit your experience as the first frame and then the rest as secondary so like the experience that we have that's all our meaning is made out of it like all our meaning is made out of that experience and so i'm not saying that scientific truths are untrue of course they're true but there's they're they're secondary to that first experience like you don't experience h2o you drink you experience wet you experience cold you these are the first categories the uh and the and they're they're not subjective they're personal like because they're human experiences but everybody has similar has it's a universal personal experience but you don't experience molecules you don't experience atoms you don't experience the solar system like you you all of these things are not are abstractions from your experience and they're they're they're useful and they're they're valuable but they come after they come after the first experience well donald hoffman would say yes it's all experience uh so i don't i don't disagree with you there the just to bring it back to the christianity thing i do you believe the world would be a better place if everyone was christian is that is that your position or why i believe that the world would be a better place if everyone was christian well the the impli that's kind of the implication when you say you know i have this frame of reference we have no confess what i mean is that i have this frame and i have ways of knowing what's good inside of it and i have these ways of of making it better and you standing in a place that i don't know where you are like the let's say you ended my discussion with rationality rules he's standing in a place that i don't know where he is he's talking to me about a good that he won't define yet he's telling me that i should improve my thing it's like i i don't know what you want from me like where should i go where tell me where to stand tell me where to where tell me what's your frame and then and and help me understand it so that i can evaluate but for now like this seems way superior to whatever it is you're offering me because you're offering me something which is vague and imprecise and a good that i don't that i can that i can't really uh identify and so it's like this is where i am i'm speaking out of i know what i'm speaking out of like i know what my frame is but i don't think you do the major contention that came out of the dialogue there was over the lgbt stuff he was basically saying uh you have an ethical package that five percent of the population can't use because they're homosexual and the ethical package just castigates their entire lifestyle so the ethical package is unavailable to them yeah i know i think that my my difficulty with that is several fold well he would say change your ethical package he would say make your ethical package inclusive of homosexual lifestyles and we're having a conversation what about well no he wouldn't he wouldn't say that because obviously the truth would have the truth see that's just that's just what about ism the no it's not what about ism we just literally said what about no but what i mean is that if you have to give me a reason why to change it i don't disagree that 20 years from now 20 years from now definitely the amount of patterns of behavior that exists and those indefinite amounts of patterns of behavior can also say why don't you accept my behavior well my my my understanding of the world is there are different strokes for different folks like different people will utilize different ethical packages more successfully like i think we're in a better situation if we have uh 10 15 of the population that are atheist scientific types and why are you laughing i'm dead serious like if we have 10 15 of the population when you have a football team you have an offense and a defense right you have different positions for different people like it doesn't you can't form a football team if you have you know everyone is a quarterback that team is not going to be successful but i see a lot of our ancient software is if we don't go kill the tribe over the hill they're going to come and kill us therefore we is we're in a safer world if everybody is the same as us that that's ancient ancient primal programming and a lot of the the disagreements that i see online are people just advocating for their tribes saying i would feel much safer in a world where everybody was christian or i would feel much safer in a world where everyone was lgbt or i would feel much safer in a world where every no one believed in in in religion because they might become a suicide bomber and end up on the bus that i'm on this is this is really the dialogue that we're having but really the the system that we need to work on and and i think brett weinstein is is brilliant in illuminating this fact the system that we need to work on is the system that interfaces between the ethical packages because in certain ethical packages you have kill all apostates kill anyone who's not inside our group that's a bad thing because that that ethical package becomes caustic to the rest of the ethical packages and it's helpful to have uh fit 10 to 15 of the population that's atheist scientific types working on medical advancements that everybody benefits from they don't necessarily believe in evolution but when they show up at the hospital they have help there's help for them there's help for them and their family so so what what is your position on on that multi multiplicity of ethical packages so this is the thing this is also in terms of first of all like i said one of the difficulties that religion is is not first and foremost an ethical and ethical package it is it is a it is a communal package it's a package which makes us know that we are in communion with each other that we have things in common that help us to see each other as together you could see it that way everything that you're saying goes along with my beliefs maybe the term ethical packages no correct but and in that there's a hierarchy of practices sure yeah and so there are things which are high up on the normative ladder and there are things which are low on the normative ladder and there are things which are considered sinful now the thing about the sinful part is that everybody sins yeah it's not like there's a particular type of person that sins and everybody else doesn't sin is just a normal part of reality and so the idea that certain behaviors are prescribed as sinful doesn't mean that they don't exist because everybody sins and that's one of the aspects of christianity is to say don't judge your name don't judge the other because you also have that in you the way that you're framing this is completely offensive to the atheist types i want you to know because you're you're basic um i'm asking you about these so much better though because you don't have the totalitarian move in what i'm saying there's no totalitarian move because you can't say so so are you saying now that the atheists the atheists like we're comparing a christian you're i'm talking about the peaceful cohabitation of the atheist tribe and the christian tribe and you're saying the atheist tribe is always going to become totalitarian no not like how is that not always just 40 percent of the time 50 of the time no no no well what i mean is that the idea of having a normal hierarchy of norm normativity is the way that you kind of deal with this stuff and so and so the idea is that they're so let's say in terms of sexuality the id christian sexuality traditional christian sexuality is radical like it is very radical it says all sexuality even your thoughts has to be geared towards uh a monogamous relationship which is in the pattern of of procreation yeah like that's a great how can you not see the evolutionary advantage of that right exactly and also everybody sins everybody falls short of that everybody no one doesn't fall short of that and so that's that's the way that christians have approached it and so the idea that in christian societies there are always behaviors which go outside of that that goal is just normal it's just going to happen so so homosexual behavior has always been part of christianity adultery has always been part of christianity masturbation has always been part of christianity it was prescribed but it was also understood but you're everybody is tainted by it everybody framing it though as sin as something that is missing the mark framing it as sin though is offensive to people who don't view it as sin they have a different ethical pattern of sexuality well i listen in an evolutionary term what's the mark when do you hit the bull's-eye when you when you return grandchildren there you go yeah so missing the mark means going right aside from that but they would the the they would argue that they live in a society where it's not necessary for every single person to be churning out children and that they might live a more meaningful life to them if they forgo having children and have a same-sex marriage or even not have a same-sex marriage but screw around with every single person that they come in contact with like maybe that's their uh beautiful life their thriving life uh the christians have been people who do that it's that's not like yeah but they are welcome inside the christian they aren't welcome inside the christian church though they they're you think prostitutes don't go to communion once a year well okay my we're we're getting away from my point here it might be no it's important it's a really important it's because we're so used to like weird totalitarian systems where we think that everything which is illegal there's going to be a cop at your door putting you in jail but in normal societies that's not how it works do you the fact that there are prescribed actions doesn't mean that they are all enforced through like force of police state if a if a if a person wants to live a lgbt lifestyle have a same-sex marriage maybe adopt kids even if they become a part of christianity i don't necessarily think it's going to be a comfortable fit for them i mean i have friends that are gay and catholic and just love it so i mean it's definitely not without the realm of uh outside the realm of possibility i've seen it happen but uh it becomes a private question it becomes a question of private life and a private relationship with your priest with your confessor with you know it becomes something which is not in the normative uh prescription of the system but it like i said we all have those it has those things that aren't normative it has entered the public sphere though when you have uh laws against gay marriage being funded by the mormon church so it definitely does enter the the public space in ways that are not necessarily good in a utilitarian way for for everyone well that depends what what exactly is the purpose of gay marriage the purpose of gay marriage is for people for freedom liberty people to be able to pursue the lifestyle that they want the whole reason that we're able to have the purpose of marriage like what what is what was the traditional purpose of marriage uh the body system like well in the modern no the traditional purpose was to have kids but it's changed over time now it's more the buddy system it's so you have someone that you can share your life with so it's like yeah so it's basically living together with a contract is that yeah sure yeah yeah a contract you know you're not gonna you're not gonna leave me it's the buddy system so but i mean you understand that marriage can can function in different ways as well right christianity has a specific way of defining marriage that works for christianity that way of defining marriage is not going to work for everyone and what i'm saying is it's better to have a world where we have different groups that pursue different avenues of thriving and those groups uh have a system for interacting with one another that doesn't end up in genocide i agree with the last part so in terms of not ending up in genocide right but you also have to be careful not to like i mean i i'm not convinced i'm not so diverse that it's like chocolate pudding and then someone's going to come in with a knife and cut you up i'm not convinced that if the shoe was on the other foot and the lgbt community had the numbers that they wouldn't genocide the christian community i'm not convinced that that wouldn't happen yeah well they can't have the numbers they can't have the numbers because the lgbt is like five percent of the population yeah no but i'm saying like the the lgbt community is worried about the christians genociding them like they basically but they have a they have total they have reason to my goodness yeah okay so we're in agreement i totally agree look i think that a lot of the stuff that we're seeing now is because of an excess of of insane regulation that happened in the 1950s and the early 20th century like castrating chemically castrating people and putting people in jail and all this insane stuff that happened in terms of attacking people's lifestyles yes exactly that's crazy well i think that that is what led to uh to to to the movement and so i have a lot of sympathy for for what happened like i totally understand you know i don't think i think that in a normal traditional world there's a lot more flexibility for people to live out their idiosyncrasies you know and it there isn't this like weird police state enforcement of people's private lives like you know you just there's there's room like i said traditional societies always had prostitutes like prostitution is just part of you can prescribe it and then also not enforce not enforce it it just happens this is part of society you say that's taboo but it's still going to be there and that's the same with all kinds of other behaviors which have always existed from all time and so i think that the the modern clampdown on on the path pathologization of homosexual behavior which happened actually with scientific reasons you know led to a crazy backlash like it was actually more the scientists that ended up castrating homosexual than the christians the the the behavioral the all the behavioral psychologists all of these people who who said that it was the disease that needed to be they needed to be cured and needed to be you know that's a modern phenomenon it's not an ancient phenomena the the system that the thing that i'm talking about the system for interaction between systems i think christianity has an advantage on developing that system because it it has the one ethic that is important that must be in this like system to system uh management ethics package basically and that is the the love thy neighbor or love thy enemy thing because if there's any conflict between those tribes like the tribalism is so embedded in our psychology that that tribalist program takes over so quickly that if you don't have that forgive the enemy ethic involved in your in your ethics package there's no way that you can stop that like we're down the road yeah to the next genocide so this is the these are the things that i think you know brett weinstein is talking about a lot i think rationality rules was talking about in your conversation with them but not necessarily as specifically as i'm talking about them yeah but you need you would need to so if if you want to create something which navigates a super system let's call it the super system the problem with the super system is that it's it's being brought about by people who don't aren't aware that that that the system is not arbitrary no nobody's driving the ship now john and so and so i i'm afraid of anybody who wants to place themselves above the systems like i'm really afraid of that because they have a blind they have a blind side like they they're blinded by by something and they think that they can stand outside we definitely want the right we want the right people in charge of it i totally agree with you well actually it's better if they if we don't have anyone in charge of it i believe in institutions like we need to build institutions that allow terrible people to that basically forced terrible people to do the right thing we want an institution that's strong enough that even if terrible people grab the reins there's not too much damage that they can do the building institutions is the important thing well for sure the u.s the u.s system at least what seems like that's what it was made for it yeah it seems to have lasted for a while it's it might be it might be stretched don't talk like that don't talk like don't we're doing just fine down here you're doing just fine okay that's good sorry i'd have to stop paying attention to you to to what's being said on twitter that's for sure i only have about 15 uh 15 or 20 minutes left but i i want to talk about something before we go because right you're in a very a very famous video with jordan peterson and is it i think it's brett weinstein where you're talking where brett weinstein makes an argument and you guys never really get back to the argument i don't think brett weinstein even finishes the argument but the argument is that the argument is what we're talking about science is the super system because science is the the way that we mitigate between the other systems i don't i don't know that i totally agree with that science is a component of the super system but the super system has to be has to have a moral component as well and we both know where science falls down like science is not prescriptive but descriptive yeah exactly but the super system needs to be proscriptive like obviously it has to have uh yeah it has all of our all of our ethical packages are proscripted that's the whole point of the ethical package yeah it has to have it has to be able to identify the good towards which it's aiming yeah so you so in that in that talk just as just to sum it up uh they were uh you're you're talking about the various systems christianity is one of the systems but brett weinstein makes the argument that science is the is the highest the top of the hierarchy and i know like you're one of your things is hierarchy so i could see oh he's getting triggered here he doesn't like this it has to be so i would think about this a lot i think that a good way to understand science let's give the background a little more for people who haven't necessarily heard at all so do you were there that's why i'm do you what what exactly happened there well it was mostly about it was mostly about this this idea of the the problem because i did i did a video on the the the idea of metaphorical truth because he made it brett made a video on metaphorical truth where he talked about how he was saying that science is the higher truth science is is above the other truth right i was trying to point into him the the the performative contradiction which is that he was using metaphor to make science higher right you know and i was and i was joking in the video i said i said i looked at it on the top shelf of my of my room and i couldn't find science like it just wasn't there and so it's like i i if i stack science on top of a pile of other things it's like if you're if you go down into the materialist scientific frame this idea of a hierarchy just doesn't make any sense so your your argument is that if you're going to make an argument that science is higher than metaphor you're literally using a metaphor to make that argument yeah i mean which is kind of which makes sense so you're saying metaphors are you saying but i don't necessarily understand because i understand brett's argument brett's argument is there are all these ethical systems uh they all believe different and contradictory things science is the only one that can discern truth among those things in a materialist way therefore if you are if truth is really what you're looking for because there's also well-being like one system may be terrible at truth but they are very good at well-being like uh the people who live there are very happy none of them believe anything in the real world but they're so happy they're producing kids they're thriving over time uh so one of the things that i'm always talking about is uh the one of the ironies of the world is where like truth and well-being often diverge so the antithesis community they want to see truth and well-being be on the same page but it's that's not necessarily how the world works so but you understand the argument that brett is making you're just making kind of technical i definitely disagree okay so how do you disagree that's it i disagree because the jump between different levels of all reality is not a scientific jump there you cannot you have to take a category for granted before you analyze it the ana the analysis of a category will not give you the category but you analyze it how because brett would say so science science is taking bounded taking bounded phenomena and then giving a description which is good enough so that maybe you can predict what's going to happen right and so you you you bound to phenomena and then you describe it in a way that is is is so good that then you can actually predict other versions of it or how it's going to act let's say all right it's going to how it's going to continue right so that is what scientific things do but the category of a car is not a scientific category you need the category first before you analyze the car you need the category of a mountain before you analyze a mountain okay the world is fluid like the boundaries between phenomena are permeable but they're not they're different ways to analyze a category though sorry there are different ways to analyze a category right but the the the scientist science all it does is analyze the categories for truth for truth categories are not scientific themselves science only and science only analyzes for materialist truth claims that's all it analyzes for for it and you analyzes for factuality yes right yeah but it doesn't it doesn't give you even the categories it's like a river is not is that is a river is a category of meaning so if you're going to study what lives in a river that that a species are it's like why do we think that species we have arbitrary not arbitrary we have meaningful ways of differentiating species but those are not in the you can't find them in the the the actual analysis of the category what would be your rebuttal what would be your argument so uh or you're rebuttal to brett's argument so if brett is saying that science is the only way that you can study how the study the truth claims between the various ethical systems or religions whatever you want to call them um and he's saying that's why that's the that is the defining factor of science over the different systems what you're saying no science is you're saying what is what is the highest is at the bottom of the hierarchy but in a good way at the bottom of the hierarchy in a very good way because what it does is it helps you understand how things work right and so for example like the top let's say a car at the top of the of of a interacting with a car is why does the car exist like it's the ghost you need to drive transportation is higher in the hierarchy transportation is higher driving the car is higher in the higher key than understanding how it works if you don't understand how it works obviously you're going to have a problem driving it but the reason why you even want to understand how the car works is because you have a goal you have a you haven't yeah utility hellos yeah utility so what and so that's that's what i think is higher it's just inevitably higher on any hierarchy of meaning has to be purpose and goal and and the frame of you know the category itself that you're then using science to to to decipher but those categories are meaning categories they're not they're not you know you you don't this is the problem of emergence you can't you can't get to the higher level being just by analyzing its parts life cannot lay out the hierarchy here with well there's christianity is is a a system of interacting between people like an i identity of of like you say uh a way that you're going to interact with the world and with other people in christianity and other people outside of christianity like there's rules in christianity for that as well scientology is a different way of interacting with people and well it's it's just one of the packages out there and science is a is a different way of interacting with people and and the world there is a hierarchy there that brett weinstein would say science is at the top of the hierarchy because science can explain the workings of christianity and of scientology in a way that scientology cannot explain the workings of science and christianity what if this simple hierarchy of three things where you're saying science would be at the bottom of that hierarchy and christianity would be above it but where does scientology fit in that hierarchy the thing that's above the hierarchy is the is the logos it's not christianity okay so that's what i want to get at right there so what's above what is above all science scientology and christianity what is that thing well the divine logos like the divine logos is the is the reason and origin and end of things and those those that you could see it as the highest version but that scales down all the way down to anything you can identify and so any every category in terms of every category has a and unity aspect to it right has something which makes you know that it's one right even though it has parts okay okay and so i know that that's hard it's so hard i know we have to dumb it down to atheist speak here you have to give me the materialist version of it okay because i i understand how metaphors work it's not a metaphor it's not a metaphor in the in the simple sense so so let's say let's say you you um it's it's harder for smaller things because people because they see them physically together so a chair is a good example so there a chair has parts right yeah oh and those parts also have parts yeah no it's a conceptual case okay so why do you think that a chair is one thing well it's based on the utility of the chair obviously once once a certain amount of matter coalesces in a way that it has a certain utility we start categorizing it by that utility i'm you're talking to a jordan peterson fan here like obviously the the we want the drill for what it does we want the hole that the drill puts in the wall you don't care necessarily about the drill it's about the utility right and so that that is not a scientific description right the reason why something exists is not it's not is not a it's not a scientific description of that thing you could you could bring it into a scientific description of something above it but not of the thing itself what is the what is the utility in categorizing the world this way because jordan peterson connects this way of categorizing things to evolution he says utility is what we're geared to look for it's the same thing that donald hoffman is talking about donald hoffman is saying you know we look at things by their uh evolutionary advantage they're like a point system so we don't look at them in a scientific way like we don't look at the chair and say you know break it down to its parts we look at it as something that we can use to sit on yeah exactly but then that scales up like way up in the sense that it's easy for a chair because the chair is physically you can see it as physically together but uh uh let's say the category of all chairs are not physically together what right but but all chairs share an identity like they they are a body and they have a logos which is above the individual chairs right and so that truth is higher than the analysis of what a chair is made of so you're saying what's at the top of the hierarchy is just the system that we categorize things by it's the it's the reason the ability to categorize things yeah yeah something like that you could i mean i could i could go that far the ability to see utility in things or the inevitability of seeing utility and things in the sense that that's one of the reasons why they appear to us as categories in the first place right because because there is no there is no neutral reason to posit categories [Music] well that's super interesting but i mean that is this thing that we do that we turn objects into utility like our people have said this for a long time like humans that's what separates us from other animals now we realize that other animals use tools all the time i don't see how you can look at the elaborate nests birds make and think oh yeah we're the only species that uses tools yeah so but you're no i think logos logos definitely goes down into the chain what is specifically what does logos mean specifically it just means it means the reason reason for things and the reason for things appear in the way that they're ordered so it has to do with reason in the sense that we understand and so the the the order of something so the order of something is bound up in its reason right the the order of the chair is bound up in the reason why the chair exists correct yeah the utility that it has in the world man we're making a utilitarian argument here it's not a utilitarian argument it's in my in my vision it's more like a platonic argument because this this scales up in reality because the thing the the problem with the utilitarian argument is that it nonetheless posits a neutral reality is there anything above the the uh category system in the hierarchy yes okay oh my god god okay that's what god does god is is beyond category god is infinite that's the one why the reason why we say things like god is infinite or god is is beyond all name all definition because god is the darkness out of which the categories come from the the the divine darkness god creates the categories god is the impetus behind the categories the god creates the categories through the logos that's why we say in christianity we say you know i believe in one god the father almighty creator of heaven and earth and and it says that he created all things through the sun through the logos so god god doesn't create directly because god is beyond all categories and so in in the in god there's the there's a principle of manifestation which then manifests the categories and so beyond everything it's hard to talk about this stuff man it's hard to talk so we don't have trying to talk about it at a level that i hope like like i know that now at this point what we're talking about people are gonna say okay sky daddy fairy tale exactly totally no you're on you're on the right page sadly it's good that you're it is good john that you're self-aware to note to know this because a lot of people aren't necessarily self-aware they don't even really know the other side's arguments so they don't know what the other side is thinking so think about it at the chair level let's go back up to the chair right so you have a chair right this chair has an order it has a way for you to recognize that it's a chair yes yeah right that's that order is bound up in its purpose the way that the way that you recognize though is in your head it's not in the chair correct what is the chair without the category well if you look at it like language we come in what is the chair without the category it's just a bunch of parts and then those parts are also made of parts it's just a quantum field without a category right but until somebody conceptualizes it as a chair and uses it for the utility i mean that the category of chair is inside our heads it's just i mean a rock could be a chair it will rock and function as a as a seating place it's not really a chair but it could function as right think distance okay so i thought you were talking more broadly like something to sit on like anything yeah yeah something that's fine it doesn't matter what the category is like it they're they're hierarchies of categories you know and so they they all it's a dynamic hierarchy of categories it's not just they're not just one one and also objects gonna have several identities they don't have just one right and so you can when you if you if you take a rock and you throw it at someone it's not the same it's not the same thing as the rock you're sitting on are you even it's physically the same are you familiar with transformation which occurs when you pick the rock up and bash someone over the head yeah totally the utility changes like it changes categories how do you use it soon the rock's a hammer sue likes and the rock is a a sling it's totally possible for that to happen the when you're this comes off a bit like a presuppositional argument are you familiar with pre-suppositionalists no i'm not sure they have this argument and i'm i'm not super uh familiar with it either but their argument is that without a belief in god logic doesn't exist so therefore if you're using logic you're basically admitting that god exists which i i don't necessarily understand how they do the math on that one but this comes off a little bit like that like if you're using this category system that i would argue is just innate in human psychology uh then you're admitting that a god exists because the god the category system literally comes from god you're saying god is the top of the hierarchy and the category it's not a mental it's not a mental game it's an embodied experience it's not as simple as just saying when you believe in god or whatever it's mostly that that you you so the the problem is always this positing of something which exists outside the category system like what is this other thing that you that you that you posit that exists there is no avoiding the categories no i agree i agree the category system is like an innate goes all the way down it goes all the way down to potentiality but i would argue in a donald hoffman sense that the category system is part of our user interface with the world i would argue that it's operating inside our head that it doesn't actually exist what's that he seems he posits another thing that he has no access to correct well he does have access to it but only through the user interface but he's saying that the user interface uh strips out so much information just for people who are listening and they don't know the donald hoffman argument donald hoffman really quick uh makes an argument that the real world is very different than the world that we uh uh see and understand that we have uh what is effectively a user interface a graphical user interface like you use with your computer many different operations are going on inside your computer than what we see on this depicted on the screen we all understand the screen of the computer very well and he postulates that all of science for as long as we've been studying the natural world all we've been studying is the screen the user interface and we've never looked inside the computer to what's actually going on so uh what we're talking about here is i'm saying that that category system is part of the user interface the screen and not necessarily uh i i i mean i don't want to speak for you john are you postulating that god is what is inside the computer no i'm postulating that there there is no other there's only the screen no that's not what i mean but what i mean is that you can posit as much as you want another reality that has ca that some kind of category is behind the screen but it's always categories yeah i agree with manifesto through meaning well the like so the way that the categories are the categories are essential to us understanding the world as pixels are on the screen like if you don't have pixels you don't have a user interface so so the the aristotelian or even christian way of positing it would say that behind it is chaos potential it's a potentiality and then out of and then logos light logos comes down on potentiality and then forms identities into that potentiality instead of those identities are the realest thing that because the potentiality is just potentiality instead of chaos could you say raw materials you could say raw i mean i guess if you want well you're saying all the way potential possibility like it goes all the way down to a field of of of particles that are possibly somewhere right that are that are in flux let's say we i've got to wrap it up i know you have a heart out too but this has been a fascinating we can talk again all right hopefully like i but it's not giving me hope that's for sure man really oh yeah because i'm like i'm i'm realizing just how hard it is to communicate certain things to people who haven't had a certain intuition like it's just really hard to communicate it's like trying to find words in a language which is another language it's difficult yeah i had i had one of my uh one of my fans watchers reach out to me and they really like your stuff they really wanted this conversation to happen so and they your stuff has been super meaningful to this person so i know that you're making an impact on people and people people like your stuff and there are people that understand it i i guess one of my things is i'm just i'm trying to bridge that gap so many people see things that they don't understand and they have just like a visceral disgust for it like they think that it's a threat to their identity or or whatever it is and i i don't i think that's just a bad way to look at the world i think i i mean you know obviously i i um you're a smart guy i'm i'm i'm trying to understand what you're saying you're you're well i i do i it's not like it's completely a mystery to me and i feel like uh what we've articulated here has has been useful i mean obviously uh people leave comments on this people will there are people on your side that might be able to explain things better that are uh to sort of bridge that gap and and same for you people on my on my side might be able to uh explain things a little more to you so well i hope so i hope so don't get frustrated though why why are you don't get frustrated seriously are you i think i'm frustrated with myself like i'm frustrated with the the the perception that there's definitely like a wall and it's like i and i know and i know that it's a failure of my capacity to communicate it and so when i see the confusion in someone's eyes i'm like damn like i can see in your eyes it can confuse you but there's no nothing wrong with confusion though like confusion is i mean that's what's wrong it's annoying when you're trying to explain something to someone and you see confusion in their eyes that's why i'm obviously not explaining it the right way because then i wouldn't see confusion in your eyes confu confusion is how we begin any engagement with a new topic i mean it's that's normal that's completely to be expected so the thing that bothers me is not the not not the fact that people are confused i the thing that bothers me is people are dismissive that's what bothers me because there's absolutely no attempt to even even understand so yeah that's what bugs me well hopefully people won't be too dismissive yeah well this was a great conversation all right i'm gonna talk to you man i'm going to upload it to my channel i can send you a copy if you want to upload it to your channel too so we'll see yeah i mean upload it send me the link and and i'll see how things go in the next few weeks okay take care it was great talking to you all right bye bye bye

Channel: Jonathan Pageau

Views: 44,312

Keywords: Jonathan pageau, adam friended, rationality rules, materialism, religion, debate, atheism, theism, think club, bret weinstein, stephen woodford, jordan peterson

Id: JLJd1-tRpiY

Length: 96min 23sec (5783 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2020