 So I got a bunch of comments on the issue of religion and atheism and the new atheists and, you know, Kesson's article about, well, we need something for morality, and most people can discover it by themselves. So, you know, this is why we need religion and atheism doesn't provide anything. And indeed, atheism, quietism doesn't provide anything. Atheism, quietism is just the recognition that there is no God, that there's no such thing, and that religion by relying on God is just bogus. It's just fairy tales. It's just make-believe. It doesn't tell you, then, what set of ideas, a rational, makes sense, what kind of life you should pursue, what morality looks like. It's just, all atheism does is say, this is fantasy. Don't take this seriously because it's not based on logic, not based on fact. There's no reality to God or religion. So that's what atheism does. And then it's up to you, and it's up to you, even if you're religious, it's up to you, no matter what, to make choices about what kind of moral codes you want to guide your life. But you see that the challenges, and this is the challenge new atheists have, is one of the things religion has incocated deep into our culture. Is that the fundamental purpose of morality is to dictate how we treat others and how we relate to others. And that the standard of morality is the other. Not God, maybe, but the other. So if you become an atheist, but you still hold the view that morality fundamentally is how I should treat other people. And that the standard is the other. Okay, where do I get a, where does that code come from? Where does this idea of the other being more important than me somehow, or what do I do with that? How do I know how to behave to other people? What are the rules that should guide me? And it's a little bit well-doing. And I don't think, I don't think as a consequence, people then become lying, cheating, stealing, SOBs and motorists and whatever. But it is now a challenge that kind of naked in front of life, without any tools to guide their morality. And, but they're still, because they're still stuck in Christianity. They're still stuck with religion, and they don't know it because they don't associate the belief in God and belief in religion with a particular morality, they think morality is the same, no matter whether you're religious or not, no matter where it comes from. And this is to some extent a fault of the new atheists, who basically concord all kinds of ways and all kinds of means to justify their conventional morality in atheistic terms. But it all seems like a caution. It doesn't seem right, because it's not based on any reason, rationality, reality. It seems like they're just replacing God with, well, this is all we know. Do what others, as you were doing to yourself, don't hurt other people, don't lie, don't cheat. But that's all the guidance we have, that's morality, that's it. It's a list of don'ts, commandments. We don't have God to give us commandments. So we need to use our moral instincts. It turns out people don't have moral instincts. We need to just follow the Christian ideas, just don't call it Christianity because we don't believe in Christianity, we don't believe in God. And people are stuck. People are stuck. They don't know exactly what to do. And again, they try. They do all the right things, but without a proper morality, it's hard to achieve happiness. Without a proper morality, it's hard to be successful in life. Without a proper framework for thinking about life, it's hard to be successful at it. So a lot of people who become atheists fail. And then some people blame their atheism for it. A lot of people who become atheists, maybe they don't fail, but they feel like they might fail. They feel like they're going to fail. And as a consequence, they give up on atheism. Or they give it lip service. Or they become agnostics. Oh, they become something. Very few of them become religionists, but some of them do. Look at Dave Rubin, right? And Kissen won't exactly tell us where he thinks he gets his morality from. But they all think they need to get their morality from somewhere outside. That's what they've been taught. It's the only option they have. The article is an article that Kissen, what's his name? Konstantin, wrote about, and I talked about this on a previous episode, wrote about basically being enamored with the new atheists when they first appeared, and then basically becoming agnostic and now kind of not really saying but understanding how important religion is in the lives of so many people. And you get a lot of, and there's a lot of people out there talking about this. There's a lot of people talking about the emptiness, the fact that we now have in America and in Europe we have growing percentages of people who define themselves as atheists. And we also have growing percentages of people who are depressed. We have growing percentages of people who are lost, confused. And of course they link the two, even though there's no evidence of linking those two. Constantly Kissen. No, I don't know what that is. And there's a lot of people who say, no, the solution and what we need is religion. A lot of people say, yeah, look, atheism is true. There is no God. But look, most people can't handle life without religion because they can't handle life without morality. And there is no morality without religion. His name is Konstantin Kissen, K-I-S-S-I-N, Konstantin Kissen. Thank you, Rob. And you can find the article online. Here's an example. This is from one of the comments on my video. I'm an atheist and I also think that most people need some sort of religion in their life. I'm not sure why many people need that in their life, but they do. But how do you know they need it if you don't know why they need it? How do you know it's a need? How do you know you can't replace that need with something else? With reason, rationality and objective morality, a morality based on reason and rationality. So right off the bat, we just assume they need it. And partially it's this, it's a certain, and I think a lot of young atheists have this, it's a certain arrogance of, well, I don't need God, but they do. Can't trust them. Can't trust those guys. They're low IQ people or something? I don't know. I don't think it's even correlated IQ. But they're not to be trusted. I'm okay as an atheist. I can live my life, but they can't. Then he says, even as an atheist, I would rather live in a town with a very high Christian population than in the neighborhood of atheists. I don't get this. Why? Why would you want to live in a town surrounded by irrational people, surrounded by people who believe in a non-being, a non-entity, who are guided not by reason and rationality, but by commandments and by revelation? Why would you want to live in a town surrounded by people who are basically advocating for a primitive ideology, a primitive philosophy, a philosophy that maybe made sense a thousand years ago, but is completely debunked and refuted and gone? So, you know, these are people who rely on the emotions. These are people who can't handle the world without a super being. Why would you want to live amongst them as compared to atheists who at least don't have that problem? And which makes atheists open to, guess what, arguments, reason, persuasion, whereas with a religionist, it's a book. It's written in a book where preacher told me it's in a revelation. It is what it is. So, I don't get it. I would live, I would much rather live. I mean, by orders of magnitude, surrounded by atheists and surrounded by Christians. He goes on to say, clearly there are people that have a sense of morality without religion. A sense of morality? What does that even mean? What does morality mean? But not enough people do. Religion gives enough people the sense of morality that society needs that it is a new benefit. It is a new benefit. As long as one is not a fundamentalist about it. I think he meant net benefit. That is a net benefit. But here you have, he has a super narrow view of morality, a view of morality that Christianity upholds. That is that morality deals with other people. That is, morality is about not hoarding others. It's about not killing, not stealing, not cheating. And that's all he cares about. But that's such a poor man's morality. That's such a pathetic view of morality. Morality is about giving you the tools to live the best life that you could live. Not just about how to deal with other people. And if you're concerned about dealing with other people, if you're concerned about being robbed and being stolen and being cheated, is there any empirical evidence that suggests that murderers and thieves and muggers and violent criminals tend to be atheists and not religious? Any evidence of that? Indeed, since the 1990s, the United States has become more secular and violent crime has declined in the United States. Now again, causation, you know, correlation is not causation, but it certainly doesn't look like it's the other way around. You'd expect Europe to be a lot more violent than the United States. And where Europe is violent, it tends to be violent because of religions, people, Muslims in this case. So where's this correlation? Where's this cause of relationship between atheism and violence and treating people badly? I don't know of such a correlation. Neighborhoods that are predominantly atheistic, more violent, more crime-prone than neighborhoods that tend to be religious? No. So it's all just bogus. It's all like a sense of you have. At least they have God watching over them. Oh, it's like you've listened to Dennis Prager videos too much. It's like, no, no, take away God and these people are just going to rampage and rape and pillage and slaughter and kill everybody around them. It's not reality. Not reality. And then he says, this is the funniest one. Would you ever live in Los Angeles or Salt Lake City? Now I'm asking you guys in the chat, where would you ever live? Los Angeles or Salt Lake City? I mean, this is one of the dumbest questions I've ever seen. I mean, it isn't even close. And look, I hate Los Angeles. I really dislike Los Angeles. It's not a city I want to live. But if you gave me a choice between living in Salt Lake City among a bunch of boring Mormons or living in Los Angeles, I'm going to Los Angeles in an instant. It's no competition. Yeah, Los Angeles is probably more violent than Salt Lake City. Probably. I'll take the risk. I want to be around interesting people. I want to be in a culture. I want to be stimulated. I want to be interesting stuff. I want to be able to have a conversation with people. I mean, what are you talking about? And I want to at least have the possibility that people are rational. I mean, when people start talking to me about religion and God, I don't know what to do with them. Where do you go with that? What do you do with it? I find it the most boring and satisfying, distracting, possible place you could think of. And by the way, I think the neighborhoods in LA, primarily where the atheists live, that are just as safe as Salt Lake City. Just as safe as Salt Lake City. But why would you... I mean, have you ever read what Mormons believe in? Why would you want to be among a bunch of people who believe in the complete and utter ridiculous nonsense that Mormons believe in? I mean, it's completely weird and bizarre. I mean, when I look at somebody who tells me, oh, I'm a moment, I'm a practicing moment, I go, whoa, you just dropped a few rungs in my evaluation of you. That's nuts. So I don't get this admiration for Christians. And he says, I get your discussion of past Christian, Jewish, Muslim behaviors, and sadly many Muslims today. But come on. Christians and Jews and Muslims are not acting like that like they did a few centuries ago. No, they're not. They have that capacity. They have the capability. Most of the communists I meet today are not acting like Stalin. But ooh, give them the right circumstances. Give them the right power. I have a feeling they'll do the same thing. One of the great achievements of the West, one of the great, great achievements of the West, is that they separated religion from politics so that we took away that tool of oppression, that tool of violence that Christians had. And he says, now, if you could get everyone trained up to understand that you don't need religion, a god of gods to know right from wrong and how to behave morally just from yourself, and then I'm on board. But people just seem to want religious founding for their morals. People want that, but they're wrong. And we need our responsibility to teach them that they're wrong because they are only getting, because morality is much greater than what they think it is. And this is the beauty. Once you get rid of religion, once you get rid of some being up there dictating to you, telling you how to live, guess what happens? This amazing, exciting thing happens. The world actually opens up to you. What's good is now accessible. What is good, the options of what is good expand. And the standard by which we evaluate what is good is not now some being telling us, thou shalt not, it's reason and rationality. And the orientation of morality now is not just don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. It's what should I do? Suddenly, when you're free of religion, the question becomes, what should I do? And there's a really, really important question that goes along with what should I do, which in religion you're not allowed to ask. It's why? Why should I do that? Versus doing that. You have options. And you have to understand what you're doing. And what happens when you abandon religion and you embrace a scientific morality, a morality based on human survival, human flourishing, human success, is suddenly you discover that morality is not a set of restrictive, scary commandments. But morality is now a tool that opens the world to you. It's a scientific tool to discover, to discover what is good for me. What is good for life? All human life? And what is particularly good for my life? And how should I live? And what should I do? And how should I do it? I mean, how beautiful is that? How amazing is that? I mean, religion is boring and stupid and narrow and offensive and restrictive and scary. There's a God there looking and evaluating. If you thought that you have never mind the actions that you take. Suddenly you're the only one evaluating and it's your job to discover, success to discover a life, discover how to live it. And yeah, that's in some sense scary. Not really. I never felt scared by that. It's liberating. It's exhilarating. It's motivating. I have this tool, this amazing tool that is going to guide my life to help me be more successful, to help me live well, to help me be happy. And now, you know, what does morality demand of me? I mean, ranch morality demands of you really one major thing. But it's a thing you'd expect as a human being you want to do anyway because it's in your nature. What does Rand expect of you to think? Think. Figure it out. Use reason. Be rational. Rationally evaluate a situation and decide how you should act. Be guided by rational principles. Principles that are there not by dictate, but are there because they are the means to an end. The end of your survival. The end of your happiness. The end of your success. And notice that morality, if morality is a guide to living a good life, morality is a guide to identifying right and wrong, is impossible in religion. There is no morality in religion. All there is in religion is following orders. All there is in religion is doing what you're told. I don't have to do the Abraham example again, but you know, yeah, is Abraham moral for agreeing with God's commandment to murder his son? Yes. He's the symbol of morality according to all the Abrahamic religions. There's a reason they're called the Abrahamic religion because he is an emblem of morality. Because morality for religion is mindlessly following. Following in any case. That's what you're told. Accepting. That's not morality. That's frigging suicide. That's the anti-morality. It's immoral. So no, embrace atheism not as an ideology, but as a door, a little door that opens you up to this vast world of possibilities. And then it's really, really important and Rand's morality and Rand's morality, objective morality is a morality that unleashes your potential by unleashing your mind. To not just think about how do I obey but to think how do I live? How do I choose the best life possible to me? What values should I have in order to be successful at living, at being, at existing as compared to religion? God. Think about how much more interesting, fun expansive this is, this becomes. And, you know, it's objective morality is beautiful because it's testable and you can actually go out there and try it. You can test it. You can figure out what works and what doesn't. It's consistent with reality. It's grounded in logic, so if something doesn't make sense to you, don't do it. Go back, figure it out, test it. It's rational. You can see the connections between the things, but if you're still not sure, you can rethink it, redo it, re... It's like science. Does it make sense based on the principles? And does it work? Got a testable hypothesis. Lying is bad for you. You can check. You can test it. Be careful. Experimentation is risky, but you can test it. I tell people and I give a talk on honesty. I say, you don't believe honesty. Dishonesty is bad for you. Spend the day lying to your best friend. See what happens. They all laugh. They all know exactly what the result would be. They've all tested it already. They all know. So it's not a commandment that shall not, and it's not even lying that objectivism is interested in. It's be honest. Don't accept falsehoods, and therefore don't communicate falsehoods, but don't accept falsehoods. Don't deceive yourself. Facts, reality, that's what matters. That's what an amazing morality that is. What an amazing path that can set you on in life as compared to, again, dogma. The limited scope of dogma. And dogma that is set, that says right in advance, we don't care about you. We care about God. We care about the world. We care about society. We don't care about you. Here's a morality that says, oh, you're it. All right, Troy. Thank you. Really, really appreciate it. Troy came in with 500 Australian dollars as he does pretty regularly. I really, really appreciate the support, Troy. He usually does it, almost always does it, on one of these rants that I give about morality or about something positive about the objectivist virtues in some way or another. So really appreciate that. All right, what else do we want to cover? So, you know, the bottom line is life, to have meaning. You need to take control over it. And that can only happen by giving up on mysticism and religion. And morality, again, should be a guide to success. Not a list of things that you have to do. Not a list of things that somebody else requires that you do. It should be things that you have identified, proven, shown to yourself rationally that you should do in order to achieve the goal of living, of being successful at it. So, you know, I think that it's sad that so many atheists are turning away from atheism and going back to religion. I think it's laziness, but it's more than laziness. It's cowardice. It's basically an admission that they don't want to do the thinking, that they don't want to put in the effort. And it's not even like they don't know about Iron Man. Many of them do know about Iron Man. But it's too hard. It's too complicated. It's much easier to say, and this is the appeal of religion at the end. The appeal of religion is, I don't have to think. God tells me what to do. Priest tells me what to do. Tradition tells me what to do. Somebody else tells me what to do. And there we go. Just do it. Religion is for lazy people. People who do not want to take responsibility over their own lives. But people do not want to take responsibility over their own minds. Don't want to take responsibility over their own values. Don't want to take responsibility over their own happiness. They want somebody else to tell them. And again, this is why religion opens the door up to all kinds of authoritarianism because it's the same thing, right? And people maybe are the forms of maybe secular forms of religion, like environmentalism, like wokeism, but it's all the same thing. It's other people telling you, oh, we've got a Jesus thumper on the chat who's somehow discovered us. I have no idea how we got here. But he has discovered us and I am warring against Jesus. Yes, I am. I am warring against Jesus and therefore I guess I am Satan, the devil, whatever. Oh, God. I mean, this is the kind of nonsense that you get, right? The kind of nonsense you get. Not argumentation, not debate, not discussion, not reason, but just, you know, authoritarian yelling. Everything's all caps and it's like, you are the devil. Why? Because you disagree with me. So be it. So I encourage everybody to, you got to take your life seriously and that means invest in studying a morality, invest in internalizing that morality, invest in working it, in living it, in integrating it, in making it part of you so that you can gain the benefits from it. And it's incredibly liberating it's incredibly liberating as compared to a religious morality which is so stifling. Stifling.