 May 40 here. So I remember reading in the New York Times back in 2017 that Ben Shapiro is the cool kid's philosopher. He dissects arguments with a lawyer skill and references to Aristotle. Wow. New York Times quotes praise of Ben Shapiro as a brilliant polemicist and a principled gladiator gladiator. Wow. Quick witted man who reads books guys. He reads books and he takes apart arguments in ways that make the conservative conclusions seem utterly logical. Ben Shapiro is the destroyer of weak arguments. He has been called the voice of the conservative millennial movement. He is a genuine intellectual. He is a man who does not untack of barely. He does not sterk anger for the sake of it. He's not someone who mischaracterizes his opponent's positions. He is principled. He deploys Donald Trump. He cares about truth. Right. His personal mantra facts don't care about your feelings that captures his approach. He is passionate but he believes in following truth and empirical observation and reason rather than emotion. He is the best in contemporary right wing thinking and he is the cool kids philosopher. Right. Here is going up against Andrew Neil back in 2017. In your book you say there's quite a key phrase we are so angry at each other right now. But as I say aren't you part of that anger aren't you encouraging that anger. For example you just you described Mr. Obama's state of the union address in 2012 as fascist mentality in action. Well I think that if you are want if you want to argue with the characterization then we can talk about what exactly his state of the union address said. Plenty of things are bad and wrong but it doesn't make them fascist. Well I suppose that's true. You said they should turn their badge in as a Jew. Yes I believe that if you are a I believe that if you are somebody who takes Judaism seriously that comes along with ideological ideological commitment. I mean I guess. Look for those people religion whether it's Judaism or Christianity or Islam is just something that they grow up with and taking it seriously really just means that you take your family and your extended family seriously. There aren't a whole lot of ideological commitments that come in turn with just taking your family and your extended family seriously. Yes. Also I'm just I mean I hope you're having fun by the way going through every old tweet that I've ever sent to try and do gotcha questions. Well you said sure Israelis like to build Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. Well as I say in an article entitled here's a list of all the giant bad dumb things I've ever said was that was that done. Well yes that's a dumb tweet. Frankly I find this whole thing a waste of time. If you want to read the book and critique the book why don't you read and critique the book. If you want to read if you want to critique me you can think whatever you want of me. Frankly I don't care. I don't frankly give a damn what you think of me. Now in fairness to Ben I don't think the interviewer did a right. This seems to be a British thing that the idea of a good interview is to frame questions and comments in the most provocative way possible to try to make the other person look as big an idiot as possible. It doesn't make for a good interview generally speaking but it can make for compelling viewing. This is JJ McCullough out of Canada. A particularly good job here. I don't think it's that fun or useful to the audience when the host just spends like 15 straight minutes trying to get the guest to justify the worst things he's ever said. It makes the whole thing seem less like an interview and more like a trial and as anyone who has ever been to court will tell you trials are boring. Yeah so I think that's a pretty good analysis. What makes for a good pundit? Well what makes for a successful pundit? Free trade because that's also the opinion of the host. So while it's important to be able to analyze just to boot anything that happens in the world it is also very useful if your opinions can be sort of broadly consistent and predict. So now it goes into the characteristics of the successful pundit. Bernard says Ben should have just doubled down if he was ship hurting just doubled down. Yeah so Ben is kind of torn between two sides himself. I think there's a part of him that wants to engage in logical rational discussion and then there's another part of him that just wants to provoke and the provocateur in him usually wins but sometimes that part of him crumbles as we saw in that exchange with Andrew Neil. So Ben Shapiro is definitely a smart guy and a successful guy. He graduated from Harvard Law School. He's got the daily wire company with something like 70 employees and it's got over a million paid subscribers. No one that I encounter online is curious about my thoughts on Ben Shapiro wants to discuss Ben Shapiro but a lot of people I know in real life and much of my real life is in Orthodox Judaism comes from people don't spend much time with politics but when they do they're very likely to listen to a Ben Shapiro podcast. So a lot of people I know in Orthodox Judaism largely get much of their view of the world and politics from Ben Shapiro and he meets their needs. I think Ben Shapiro must be meeting a lot of needs. If I assume that his growth is not just astroturfed to the extent that it reflects something real he meets the needs of what mid-level intellects who don't want to delve too deeply into anything but just want to see the other side destroyed with facts and logic. So he's meeting an audience's needs and he's apparently doing it very successfully. If your views are kind of all over the place that tends to come off as a sign that you're not a very mature or organized thinker and that's kind of unattractive. This mix of being confident consistent and knowledgeable might not seem like that big of a deal but it is much harder than it looks. Having had to do this myself for many years is one of the reasons why I tend to have a lot of respect for successful pundits at the professional level even if I don't necessarily agree with them at the. Okay so that's the business formula and Ben seems to have studied what does it take to be a successful pundit and that seems to be his number one agenda. So it's different than a Dennis Prager for whom a punditry is just one way that he gets to take his values to the world. Now in in effect there's really no meaningful difference between Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager though Dennis Prager does conduct his interviews and debates in a more gentlemanly and polite fashion but overall the effect of Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro is pretty similar. They muddy the waters. They produce tremendous epistemic corruption. They damage people's ability to understand the world correctly by framing things in demagogic terms. They elevate the importance of politics. They elevate the possibility of apocalypse and civil war and they elevate the evil of the other side and they will tend to make you more angry and more upset after you listen to Ben Shapiro or Dennis Prager or pretty much any other right wing pundit Sean Hennedy you'll be like more engaged on your in group side and more angry at the out group the left than if you're not listening to them which will generally speaking make you less functional and less effective in the world. So let's have a look at some logical fallacies here in Ben Shapiro. You talk about kosher food. The original logic was that you were supposed to kill the animal in the most humane way was the idea. Now do I know if it's the most humane way now? No there's nothing pretty much in the Torah or the Bible or the Talmud saying that the logic behind kosher is to kill the animal in the most humane way possible. But Ben Shapiro is just trying to put a you know a nice gloss on an ancient practice. And it's no idea. It's most certainly not because you have to slice it up with a rabbi's man. I don't know when Shapiro says take it up with the rabbi's man. I don't know that is an example of the faulty appeal to authority fellas. Has Ben Shapiro ever had anything truly thought provoking to say I don't know but he is genuinely funny at times. He is quick wedded and he does have his moments where he's funny. What is the difference between a guru and a politician when a priest and a guru or between a pundit and a guru. So a pundit all right is generally just talking about the particular topic at hand say politics or economics. They're not trying to teach you how to live your life. They're not trying to create a virtual relationship with you. They're not trying to say I am your your friend come come join my in group and they're not trying to make proclamations about all sorts of things outside of their area specialties such as politics or economics. So pundits usually confine themselves to a particular area and they don't try to develop a virtual relationship with you. Gurus try to shape how you go about vast wilds of life and try to develop a parasocial relationship with you and often engage in all sorts of dubious tactics to raise money from you. So your typical political or economics pundit is not out there shelling supplements for example. See that's using the opinion or position of an authority figure or institution of authority in place. And the difference between a priest and a guru. OK. So if the priest is making proclamations on all sorts of things that he doesn't know anything about and trying to recruit you into his own personal in group as opposed to the organization that he represents then you've got more of the characteristics of the guru if the priest is keeping his advice to things that he knows something about and he isn't trying to create his own you know personal cult within the organization then he's acting in his priestly function rather than as a guru. It's of an actual argument. One can be guilty of committing a faulty appeal to authority by trying to impress us or make. Does religion have things to say about money. Yeah. Religion has things to say about money. So if a priest relays to you what his religion has to say about money and he is knowledgeable in that area he is acting within his priestly position. If he then goes on to make all sorts of investment advice that has nothing to do with the teachings of his religion then he's taking on the characteristics of a guru. I think it's reluctant to challenge that authority's viewpoint. It just seems like he is making it up. How can you say that every week he keeps on changing things. He's doing it to make sure the faith. OK. I guess I have to play full. Do not become complacent. But what is it with all the chickens. Well that is to level stuff way out of my league. Here's another example of the faulty appeal to authority fallacy about the 1619 project which we will get into more later. It's not good history. There are four Pulitzer Prize winning historians who said this is not good history. OK. Be listening for the phrase. This isn't my argument coming up here soon. The story of America is trying to fulfill the promises of the Declaration of Independence. OK. That's one story of America. The idea that there is just one story of America is low brow. Right. America like other nation states is a nation state formed by a particular people for themselves and for their progeny and then in response to this combination of particular genetics. So at the time of the war of independence America was 75 percent 80 percent of white Americans were from the British Isles. So it's a particular set of genetics in a particular environment struggling to adapt and survive and thrive in a particular environment which produces culture. Right. Genes environment together they produce a particular culture. So America has a particular culture. Australia has a particular culture. It's a combination of genes struggling to adapt to a particular environment. Over time make those promises available to everybody. And this isn't my argument. This is Martin Luther King Jr.'s argument when he talks on the March in Washington about fulfilling the promise or a note of the Declaration of Independence he says we're here to cash the check right you issued us the check and then you didn't let black Americans be Americans. We're here to cash the check is the argument Frederick Douglas the freed slave makes an 1852 makes a famous speech before slavery is ended. And he says July 4th doesn't mean anything to black Americans because we're not included in the bargain. Martin Luther King said in the name of the flag. So we shouldn't expect minority groups in a nation state to have the same identification with the nation as the majority. So it is not weird if many black Americans or Chinese Americans or Mexican Americans don't feel the same excitement or feel anything at all about the majority nation state or about the leading rituals of the majority nation state we shouldn't expect them to we shouldn't judge them for it. We shouldn't be surprised when that happens. Question is from my perspective does the majority have the will to keep the ship of the nation state sailing in a direction best suited for the majority's interest. So this is what's happening in India under Modi. We've got the rise of Hindu nationalism so that now India is governed in the best interest of its approximately 80 85 percent Hindu majority. China is very much governed in the best interest of the approximately what 91 92 percent Han Chinese majority rather than in the interest of protecting the rights of minority groups such as Uighurs. Civil rights are necessary. OK OK enough of those. Let's move ahead a bit and the the move from L.A. being a pretty safe fairly nice city suburban in orientation to just overrun with with horror shows is really it was a lot faster than I thought it would be but it's sort of a great you're right it's a gradual decline and then it's just off a cliff. Obviously this is an exaggeration here but I'd also argue that this is an example of the either or fallacy also known as the black or white fallacy or false dichotomy fallacy. And these are fallacies that the pundits tend to depend upon. So pundits and gurus tend to be really good at analogies and these kind of either or fallacies. So L.A. is a place with some serious problems with some horrific problems. Overall the quality of life particularly in West L.A. is pretty good but it's also very expensive. The either or fallacy is when someone asserts that we must choose between two things when in fact we have more than two alternatives. So here Ben is basically saying it used to be a very nice suburban like city. And now it is the worst city ever. You basically have two extremes when I think we all know that L.A. is somewhere in between. OK here's another example. Right. You're not going to get a following. You're not going to become a big hit as a pundit. Saying the truth is somewhere in between two you know warring positions. So this kind of voice of moderation which is also the voice of realism is not going to be one that. Sends you flying into the stratosphere as a successful pundit. Much of that is historic redlining and how much of that is an 18 year old kid today deciding to pep a gun and shoot somebody. And yet another example. It's a shift that's happened throughout American society that went from the notion that men were acting like pigs and they should stop acting like pigs to what if everybody acted like pigs. Here's a part of the episode. So this is the comment I've always made about Ben Shapiro. I've been acquainted with him for about 23 years. He was a teen sensation as a published author in his teens. He seems to take the most conservative position possible even if he knows nothing about what he's talking about. And he's making proclamations on so many different topics. Obviously, he cannot possibly know what he's talking about. Right. RFK Junior is a topic of discussion with people I know in real life and online. They're incredibly excited about this guy. So let's play some of his latest comments. Talking about bio weapons, I know a lot now about bio weapons because I've been doing a book for the past two and a half years. And, you know, the technology that we now have to develop these microbes, we have put hundreds of millions of dollars into ethnically targeted microbes. The Chinese have done the same thing. In fact, COVID-19, there's an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. They are the races. OK, so if COVID does target different races disproportionately, it doesn't mean necessarily it's a bio weapon. It's something that I did misfire on early on in the epidemic, noting that I think East Asians seem to have been the earliest fatalities from COVID. I was wondering if there was anything different about the ways that their lungs worked, anything different about their biology and their unique predispositions that may have made them more vulnerable to COVID. That doesn't seem to have held up, but different groups have different strengths, different weaknesses, different predispositions evolved differently in different places over time. So it wouldn't be surprising if certain diseases hurt certain groups more than other groups doesn't make COVID a bio weapon. The reasons that are most immune to COVID-19 are because of the structure of the genetic structure of genetic differentials among different races. Of the receptors of the ACE2 receptor, COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ascomodic Jews and Chinese. And we don't know whether it was deliberately targeted that or not, but there are papers out there that show the racial and ethnic differential and the impact that we do know that the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bio weapons. And we are developing ethnic bio weapons. That's where all those labs in the Ukraine are about. They're collecting Russian DNA. They're collecting Chinese DNA that we can target people by race. OK, I wouldn't surprise me if there are bio weapons. I'm skeptical, though, of the claims that RFK Junior is making there. I don't think he's motivated by anti-Semitism. But let's have a look at this new article by Colin Liddell. What the hell is Robert Kennedy Junior playing at? Recently, he came out with some interesting comments on the origins of COVID. He warned that there were more biological weapons in the pipeline with a 50 percent infection fatality rate. Mainstream media were quick to accuse him of fomenting anti-Semitism as if that's the only thing that matters in this world. It does not. To me, what this looks like much more than America's naval gazing obsession with Jews is a Russian designed paranoia map, something in which Jews have always played an important but extremely subservient role, contradistinction to their supposed control of global elites. It's nothing new. Russians have been using Christendom's semi-dormant hintret of Jews for centuries to gin up narratives and fears that serve their agenda. This is a thoughtful perspective that I would not have come up with. A good case could be made that the reason Hitler after a lot of Jews in the 1940s because he was badly infected by bad white Russian memes in the early 1920s also wasn't just the whites. The Red Soot learned these tricks, used them all the way through the Soviet era. In the latest Russian paranoia maps that seem to be at work in the American collective some consciousness, the Internet of Recent features to create a kind of synergy between anti-Semitic tropes and Sinophobic ones. This has a number of benefits. First, the old anti-Semitic tropes just generally look stale and jaded. Now, how much more exciting and paranoia inducing to combine them with the fear of a new rising superpower, China, instead of a failing one, Russia. The original purpose of Russian pushed anti-Semitic means was to create polarization in Western societies. So the whole thing then made sense later after the Soviet Union collapsed. It also made sense for an oil producing country like Russia to create dissension between the West and the Islamic world. All the better to create an oil producing cartel effect. Right now, Russia's main fear is that it is the bad guy and will be widely seen as such. Longer the war in Ukraine goes on. The more hatred Russia is like to draw on itself, what the Kremlin needs to do is to find another four guy for the world's hatred, fear and paranoia. This is where China comes in on the hate map. But China, despite as many failings, is not seen as the bad guy quite intensely enough. This fresh meme needs to be spiced up. So JFK Junior linking Jewish paranoia with China is perfect. It's not clear where RFK Junior got this COVID conspiracy theory from. Perfectly reasonable to suspect as I do that he is compromised in some way as a Kennedy and a man of weak character. He's just the sort of person that the Russians would attempt to target in some sort of blackmail operation. He's helping to boost an architecture of conspiracy that seems ostensibly designed to shunt conservative small government right wing Americans toward the country's long suppressed isolationist tendencies or at least give Russia a break. None of this is to say that JFK Junior is even factually wrong about anything he's saying is highly probable that China, like most big military powers, is developing nasty biological weapons. And these may well take into account human DNA and racial differences. Just highly unlikely that Jews are hardly a single race could be granted exception exemption by the food man choose in their Wuhan laboratories. Like good stuff there from. Call on the Delft. But Nathan Robinson has written some pretty sharp critiques. A bench of people who have frequently claimed that leftists are unwilling to engage in serious arguments. Instead, we burn things down, punch people and throw milkshakes on them. We do this, they say, because we cannot handle the facts. We are unreasoning, feely type people, afraid of the truth. And we know that we'd be beaten in a battle of intellect. Now, one of these points should be conceded. Occasionally, a person on the left does throw a milkshake at someone. And that is because it's amusing to see arrogant. No, it's not amusing to see people being assaulted. Right. So throwing milkshakes is probably just a prelude to other forms of assault, which are more serious. But throwing a milkshake at someone is not amusing. It's not OK. It's not something that one should just laugh away. But at all, it has been with name calling and glib dismissals that don't actually address any of the points I've made. If the right really were very serious intellectuals and my arguments were as soft, morric and silly as they claimed, you'd think they'd quickly and simply debunk the fallacious arguments I'd advanced. And yet, for some reason, they don't. Consider Ben Shapiro, the cool kid's philosopher. I wrote an article about Ben Shapiro, which everyone should read, explaining why I think he's not actually very smart or a philosopher and is instead just a person you might think is smart because he talks quickly and confidently and seems like a nerd. I made lots of arguments and they were very good arguments. We'll go through some of them shortly. Now, here is how Ben Shapiro described me in response. Some guy that I've really never heard of, who's kind of an obscure gadfly who this is Ben Shapiro's like go to put down. I've never heard of you as though that has some deep significance. As far as I can tell, his only prominence in life has come from. And this is his other quote. How significant of you? Where's your prominence come from? Incidentally, I looked up Ben Shapiro on Google Scholar. There is zero academic interest in Ben Shapiro. This is virtually zero academic interest in Dennis Prager or very little academic interest in Sean Hannity. And that's because their ideas don't have depth. Writing a piece about me for for a magazine that he self funds or funds on charitable contributions. And that nobody. OK, because you self fund a magazine or rely on charitable contributions, it says nothing about whether your arguments are sound or strong or not. What he has ever read, except for this one article about me. Yeah, this idea that no one's ever read Nathan Robinson or his current affairs magazine is absurd. So I'm a man of the right. I basically agree. I'm pretty much everything. With regard to Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager and I guess Sean Hannity, but the way they make their arguments, right, is just so weak and so dishonest frequently and so polluting of, you know, decent epistemics like epistemology refers to how do we know what is true? So Nathan Robinson begins his 2017 essay admitting he was not immediately dazzled by the force of Ben Shapiro's intellect. I started with his controversial Berkeley speech toward the beginning. He addresses Antifa protesters whom he calls communist pieces of garbage. You guys are so stupid. You can all go to hell. You pathetic lying stupid jackasses. Now, according to the New York Times, there is a wide gulf between Trump and Milo-Unopolis style vulgar conservatism and Ben Shapiro style logical conservatism, but it's kind of hard to see. Rest of Ben Shapiro's speech makes Botox jokes about Nancy Pelosi is strong on insults about Pucillanimus cowards, hard left morons, uncivilized barbarians, rather light on actual argumentation and substantive factual claims. So the first sign when you investigate Ben Shapiro's works that he might not be a philosopher is that he's not particularly interested in central task of philosophy, the critical scrutiny of one's own beliefs. His own worldview seems fixed and unmovable. Ben Shapiro believed that President Barack Obama Harvard, a deep hatred of Jews. I don't think that's true. But I've often defended Barack Obama from charges of anti-Semitism in the real world, in real life, when people on the right just assumed that because I wore a yarmulke, I would regard Barack Obama as an anti-Semite. Now, I just think that like with many left wing Jews, Barack Obama's a man of the left, and he will inherently regard with suspicion an ethno-state such as Israel, a state that has been developed, created for a specific people, the Jewish people. And I think because Barack Obama's upbringing, he has he has a sympathy for brown underdogs, such as Muslims. But I don't think that Barack Obama's hates Jews, right? But according to Ben Shapiro, Barack Obama's a philosophical fascist. Absolutely absurd. His anti-Semitism is clear cut. And how does Ben Shapiro support the charge of fascism? That Obama makes a dictatorial demand such as I want a jobs bill on my desk without delay. And because of Barack Obama's scornful looks and high handed put downs directed at his political opponents, that makes him a fascist. Also, the arrogant chin up head tilt he uses went waiting for applause. Definitely, definitely sign. Definitely sign of a fascist. Ben Shapiro says Barack Obama's vision for America is a totalitarian. So I think Obama's hope that the American people should have a government that matches their decency and that bodies their strength. Well, scary totalitarianism. Ben Shapiro called Rob Emanuel former Barack Obama chief of staff who held Israeli citizenship for two decades, his middle name is Israel, who spent considerable time in Israel. But Ben Shapiro calls him a capo, right? A Jew who does the Nazis bidding. Ben Shapiro says any Jew who voted for Obama was not a Jew, but a Jew named only serving an enemy of the Jewish people. They may eat bagels and locks, but by supporting an openly anti-Semitic administration, they are disgusting and a disgrace. And the twisted and evil self-hating Jews who enjoy multiple soup and emerge from Jewish uteruses, but nevertheless, choose to undermine the Israeli government. Don't care a whit about Judaism and hold anti-Semitic Jews views. Every man who supposedly cares about facts rather than feelings, Ben Shapiro doesn't seem to care very much about facts at all. There are plenty of mistakes in his work. He's got all sorts of unsourced generalizations walking to any emergency room in California and illegal immigrants of the bulk of the population. There are major embarrassing bloomers such as promoting the false rumor that Chuck Hagel received a donation from a group called Friends of Hamas. Now, even if Chuck Hagel had received a group or any politician receives a donation, big deal. How can you prevent people from donating to you? Ben Shapiro thinks the criticism of those like him who love wars but declined to fight in them are explicitly rejecting the U.S. Constitution itself, which provides that civilians control the military. So try to figure out the reasoning on that strongly against the federal ban on using cell phones while driving because it would take away driver's freedom of choice. He believes it's morally tragic that we no longer use the police to stop people from making and watching pornography. Ben Shapiro says if pornography is legal, there should would be no logical reason not to legalize the murder of homeless people. Ben Shapiro argues that atheism is incompatible with free will because religious people believe that free will is a gift from God. Ben Shapiro praises imperialism, saying that the United States empire isn't a choice, it's a duty. So when America builds an empire, it's just a moral duty guy. Maintaining U.S. global powers and end in itself, even if a million Iraqis lose their lives as a result. Ben Shapiro endorsed invading countries that do not pose any immediate threat, suggesting that any Muslim nation could legitimately be attacked if doing so shows the interest of our global empire. This is Ben Shapiro. Did Iraq pose an immediate threat to our nation? Perhaps not, but toppling Saddam Hussein and democratizing Iraq prevents his future ascendance and his material support for future threats globally. The sole principle, same principle holds true for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and others. Pre-emption is the chief weapon of a global empire. No one said empire was easy, but it is right and good both for Americans and for the world. So Ben Shapiro is a very confident man who consistently takes the most conservative views possible. He speaks very quickly and he doesn't really care about what he's right, but he uses very effective debating and lawyerly trick, lawyer tricks, insisting there's no evidence whatever that something is true, demands the other side, produce the evidence immediately, and when they pause for even a second or two, he'll interrupt. See, what did I tell you? No evidence, because his opponent's nasty, evil, brainless and jackasses, and these techniques work well for a middle-brow audience. Right, his mantra of accident call, care about your feelings is worthless if you're going to be like Ben, interpret every last fact in the way most favorable to your own preconceptions if you're going to ignore evidence contrary to your own position and refuse to understand what your opponent's saying, the New York Times, but it's a sensible sounding ex-Ben Shapiro, Ben. So you realize over time that Shapiro is just concerned with convincing other people he was right rather than actually being right. Oh, it's of course not wrong I am, but an insignificant gadfly and he is the cool kid's philosopher. But I'd also draw your attention to the fact that this is, as they say, not an argument. I showed that Ben Shapiro was a sloppy thinker with gaping holes in his reasoning. His reply, in essence, was I am very famous and you are not. Now, I presume you're thinking right now, well, but Mr. Robinson, as you say, Ben Shapiro is right, you are not very famous. That's why should he engage with you at all? Good point. But let us re-watch some snippets of a recent interview Shapiro did on the BBC with potato editor Andrew Neil. You say in your new book, you suggest that America's largest struggle at the moment is, quote, the struggle for our national soul. We are so angry at each other right now and I think that's true, I've just returned from the United States. But aren't you part of the problem with the way you go about your discourse, not the solution? For example, you described Mr. Obama's State of the Union address in 2012 as fascist mentality in action. Well, you said, Israelis like to build, Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. It seems to me that simply going through and finding lone things that sound bad out of context and then hitting people with them. Okay, there's a good essay here on Ben Shapiro's bullying techniques from thepowermoves.com. So get under your opponent's skin. One of the major reasons Ben Shapiro dominates many debates is that he is really good at getting under people's skin. Now, I'd never see Ben Shapiro debating anyone on the left of substance. I'd never seen debating anyone to the right of him who is a substantial intellect. All right, so these are the things that Ben Shapiro says to get under people's skin. You're standing on the graves of dead children. You're not a real woman, I feel terrible. Why are you mainstreaming delusion? He strikes when his opponents then overreact. So he manipulates people into overreacting. He gets onto their skin, he remains calm as they overreact and he points out to the other party that they are overacting, overreacting that they're acting crazy and aggressive. So the other party does often look wild and over the top and they start to feel crazy. So when he can make his opponent act aggressively, he can appear calm and rational and looks like he's winning the argument. So Ben Shapiro does not usually say his opponents are acting crazy. He gets under their skin and lets them act out and that's much more persuasive. He talks with great confidence, right? Talks from a place of unwavering belief in his values. He talks like he's sharing unquestionable truths and when you talk with unwavering confidence like you're delivering God's scripture, right? That tends to work in real life. Most people have an inborn tendency to follow the person with the most confidence. Now, this helps dictators, psychopaths and snake oil salesmen build a huge following but those are the facts of the world. So Ben is very good at conveying power and authority and confidence and so many of his debating opponents simply give up. Very good at ridiculing his opponents. He's got his smirks, his witty remarks, his voice tonality, his eye rolling, all sorts of indicators of contempt. He will bend facts to inflate his own authority. He loves to drop a copious amounts of statistics that make him sound like the ultimate authority on whatever he's saying. He will play the victim to hide your aggression. So he'll talk about how he was viciously bullied as a kid and he's very good at emotional manipulation, aggression, covert aggression and bullying and he's great at painting himself as some small Jewish guy who's been viciously bullied. He'll accuse the other side of manipulativeness. He will get under their skin when he loses the plot. All right, he'll accuse you of manipulating him. He'll frame interactions in ways that serve him and when it's all over, he'll extend an olive branch so he'll take the opponent's scalp but then extend the olive branch to show that he's the bigger guy. So here's Ben Shapiro's guides to... There's a reason, Mr. Shapiro, and you can smirk at me and you can laugh at me. I'm not smirking. And you can... And you can laugh at me. I'm not smirking. And you can... Is you tend to demonize people who differ from you politically by standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook saying they don't seem to care enough. Standing on the grave of dead children. Wow, that's something very, very heavy to say. Is Ben Shapiro even worth the time spent decoding him? Isn't he just a rank embarrassment on whether you're being given a serious consideration? You're probably right. Ouch. That's Ben Shapiro. Make no mistake, the guy is ruthless and he pulls no punches. As a matter of fact, he has done even worse. Take a look. 25? Yes. Why are we mainstreaming delusion? Is that delusion? Why would you call it delusion? Because I'm out against you and... No, I hate it. We'll call you delusion. I wasn't kidding. Yeah, that's hatred. Okay. This is just somebody that's... I don't hate you. I simply thought it was terrible for you. No, no, you do hate. I don't hate you. I feel terrible for you. Look how aggressive that is, but in a sneaky, manipulative way. He presents itself in a guise of caring. I don't hate you. I've worked like a charm. Let's look. It's being unfeeling about what happened in Sandy Hook. How dare you accuse me of standing on the graves of the children that died there? How dare you? I've seen you do it repeatedly, Pierce. Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire have the most subscribers, probably the most followers, and the most money on the right. Like I say, how dare you? I mean, you can keep saying that, but you've done it repeatedly. What you do, and I've seen you do it on the pro... Genetics and back to the brain scans. You cut that out now, or you'll go home in an ambulance. Make no mistake. Ben Shapiro is good at what he does. He is one of the best debaters I have ever seen. To chop his head. Here are the examples. Caitlyn Jenner, I'll call him Caitlyn Jenner. No, it's her. You're not being polite to the pronoun. Disrespectful. Okay, forget about the disrespect. Facts don't care about your feelings. It turns out that every chroma... Get out now, or you'll go home in an ambulance. Yeah, that seems mildly inappropriate for a political discussion. No, I know. Well, we'll go away to... Making your opponent emotional... ...reactive and then taking advantage of it is a typical technique of abusive man in abusive relationships. In vernacular, it's called gaslighting or crazy making. Here is an example. Are you nuts? Is all you fucking nuts? What's your problem? Yes, I'm nuts. Something's going on. Stop with that already. No, stop with that. No! I'm telling you, I look... Lipped out of him. Look at it. And so, you know, I say this and microaggressions everywhere. And... And just as I say, microaggressions lead to actual aggression. So what happened is I said this in this transgender... Check out my video on dominance archetypes. Because Ben Shapiro embodies the smart alec to a T. So I'm trying to modify the audio levels, but this host here is just ridiculously loud and the clips he plays are just ridiculously low. So I'm rushing to adjust audio levels. And unfortunately, the interaction between OBS Streamlabs and Chrome Browser means that the video picture goes silent when I'm rushing back and forth here, but... And something like, what the fuck are you talking about? Are you retarded or what? Take a look. So, just to get this straight, killing Fluffy the Hamster deeply wrong is saying that the Boy Scouts have a standard. You must be a biological boy to be a Boy Scout. You have to be a boy to be a Boy Scout. In the name Boy Scouts. If all the putting the pencil together requires is basic use of your prefrontal cortex, then yes, your labor is alienable at lower rates than if you are a doctor. Is smart alec a pro? I want to learn from you. I have seen this happening more than once with Ben Shapiro. Here is an example. Not true. It's also... Do you think it doesn't impact their identity at all or their repression? It's interesting that Ben Shapiro mainly wants to debate college students, but he doesn't want to debate any substantial intellects. Do you know how they feel about themselves? I think the idea that you're... Play the victim. Sales. Threatening to lock up journalists... I had... I needed 600 officers to protect me at Berkeley. Yes, it's an elephant and an elephant. Yes, it's an elephant and an elephant. Okay, Joe Biden in 2000... Yes, it's an elephant and an elephant. You have to be careful with the playing the victim technique, Shapiro does it very well. Also, this group of like white people... I'm more than happy to talk to a group of any people who will have me, but usually they protest me. But listen now to what he says. First of all, I'm against bullying of any sort. Okay, the idea that somebody would beat somebody up is terrible, okay? And somebody who's viciously bullied in high school. I'm not a fan of bullying, but the idea... I suspect he... Didn't he... If he went to a religious Jewish school, the idea that he was viciously bullied, I mean, it wouldn't compare to what happens in a secular school. I suspect he was not getting beat up. People probably said some unkind things about him. Powerless guy. Clearly you have great security. I'm glad in the city that has some 4,000 shootings to this date, you have 30 members of security just for a 5'9", 165 Jewish guy. And this is maybe a mild allocation of resources. Of course, that makes no sense. It's not physical size that gives Shapiro power, but the facts that he can say... That's what I call bullying. And the way... This is astonishing. What's astonishing about it is that for weeks now, you have been saying that anybody who disagrees with your position is absurd, idiotic, and doesn't care about the dead kids in Sandy Hook. And then when I say that that's a bully tactic, you turn around and say, I'm bullying you for saying that. It's absurd. It's ridiculous. Explain to me why black kids are shooting each other in rates significantly higher than whites are shooting each other. Explain to me why 13% of the population is responsible for 50% of the murder. Explain to me why the number of black kids in prison, not for... I think that I understand why people would be... situation. I think that we're all born individuals. And if we can start seeing each other that way, we'll all be a lot better off. I agree. Okay. Let's fast-forward. We saw the Ben Shapiro mount down here on Andrew Neil earlier. If you believe in enlightened, mature, and civil political discourse, do you have a record of saying a bunch of really unpleasant, nasty, and bigoted things? And Shapiro's answer to Neil was, as it was to me, I don't know who you are. I'm famous. Goodbye. Shapiro even called Neil a leftist. Why don't you just say that you're on the left? Is this so hard for you? Why can't you just be honest? Which is funny, because Andrew Neil is known in Britain as a rather loathsome right-winger. When tough criticisms come Shapiro's way, Mr. I Love Debate becomes Mr. Sorry, who are you? I have an appointment. I have to leave now. And Shapiro has very carefully avoided face-to-face confrontation with any of the leftists who are really good at debate. Glenn Greenwald, for example, has offered to debate Shapiro on Israel and has been met with silence. So just incidentally, I spent more time and attention on audio levels than any other technical aspect of the show. So I'll pay far more attention to audio levels than what's going on with the screen. So often with OBS and Chrome, they're not working well together. And so you're going to get a blank screen and I have to go to my OBS to try to adjust audio levels. Shapiro offers to have Matt Brunig. For what it's worth on my Streamlabs OBS, I have a gain of eight on desktop audio and a gain of three on my own audio. The People's Policy Project on his show. But presumably, Shapiro then wants some clips of Brunig and realized that Brunig is actually a very smart socialist who knows what he's talking about because Brunig never appeared on the Ben Shapiro show. Now, Ben's daily podcast is just him talking and he usually doesn't have guests on that disagree with him. So I often say that accurate criticism makes us better and I really appreciate the frequent accurate criticism from Autistic Merit that my audio levels are off and it's annoying. You get blasted, you know, one minute and then you can't hear clearly the next minute and I am the host of this show. I am the one in control of audio levels and so when I do a crap job, you know, bring it to my attention and I will try to do better. On his Sunday show, he does have some different kinds of guests but not which side of the political spectrum they almost all come from. Is he having on the really prominent lefty sociologists, political philosophers, think tank fellows and writers? He is not. Is this because he's asked all of them and they all declined? One very much doubts so. I realize that this may sound scandalous but there's good reason to believe that Ben Shapiro doesn't actually care much about having an honest debate. He's known for online videos of him destroying various people but note that these are structured in a way designed to make him look good. He, an experienced lawyer, takes on undergraduate students with them in the audience and him on the stage with the mic. In part, the setup allows him to look like he's owning them when he's... I remember when the Michelle Fields incident went down, right? Michelle Fields was a reporter for Breitbart and she tried to push her way into Donald Trump and she grabbed hold of Donald Trump or went reaching for Donald Trump and Donald Trump's campaign manager, Lewandowski, pushed her aside and Ben Shapiro along with some other hysterics said it was assault what was done to Michelle Fields and then when Breitbart read a satirical article about Ben Shapiro at List... linking to his California State Bar listing which Ben Shapiro is responsible for his home address and phone number and fax number and email address on his own State Bar listing. Well, Ben Shapiro listed his home address on his State Bar listing that was for the public. Ben Shapiro listed his home address then he accused Breitbart of doxing him because they linked to information that he made publicly available. So Ben is very quick to blame others for his own stupid decisions. It's the ongoing character trait of him which is...is tasteful. It's not really making very good points. Consider this well-known clip in which Ben Shapiro argues with the students about whether trans people are the gender they claim to be. And if I call you a moose, are you suddenly a moose? Okay, if I read... Okay, I don't care about the left-wing position on trans. Right. Now, in order to dismiss the left as a bunch of intellectual lightweights who don't have any arguments, Shapiro has to ignore the existence of intelligent leftists. So, for example, the transgender writer Julia Serrano has a PhD in molecular biology and biochemistry from Columbia University and spent nearly two decades studying genetic... Is there any cram down happening? No, there's not. That's not...that's not so serious. It's not. I'm assuming that she thinks chromosomes aren't real or could be wished away with language rather than thinking that it doesn't make sense to use chromosomes as the determinant. And Chad says, why don't you decode the decoders? And I have done that. I have two principal criticisms of the two lefty academics behind decoding the decoders. My number one principal criticism is that they do not make plain their own system, their own standards of what is good and great and beautiful and wonderful and fantastic in the world and what should be anathematized. Right? Everyone has a hero system that contains considerable subjectivity. Make clear your own hero system. My hero system largely comes from orthodox Judaism. That's my hero system. My other main criticism of decoding the gurus is not really a criticism, but the most obvious replicable fact in social sciences is that different groups have different levels of IQ leading to different life results and the two lefties behind decoding the gurus, Chris Cavanaugh and Matt Brown make it very clear that their number one fear in what they're doing is that their deans, their academic supervisors will get complaining emails about them. And so they are not going to go outside of what is comfortable for their careers and even the most blindingly obvious fact in the world. In social sciences you can't get a more replicable fact that different groups have different levels of IQ and this is the likely explanatory factor for most life differences between groups. They don't want public discussion of this. Matt Brown, a psychologist may declare that he wants IQ discussion limited strictly to professionals. He doesn't want this leaking out into the public sphere. So they will deny all sorts of blindingly obvious facts about life because it will make their life and career uncomfortable and could lead to their academic supervisors getting complaining emails. And of which gender pronouns should apply. Now let's have a look at this clip in which Shapiro argues with a student and J.A. says, your video reminds me of why I like Ben Shapiro. So tell me more, why do you like Ben Shapiro? He is very good at giving an audience what it wants. People on the right want to condemn outgroups on the left and he's very good at giving the appearance that he's just absolutely devastating with his critiques of the left. Half Galician says I don't get something. Let me scroll here through Half Galician's comments. What does he say? The left thinks merely deconstructing something makes the argument underpinning it. Deconstructing something is not debunking something. It's not destroying something. It is explaining how something works. So I'm kind of explaining how Ben Shapiro works. Luke is condemning them. You can't look past this. They are disingenuous cowards. They are flawed. That's what I would say. I'm deeply flawed. Ben Shapiro is deeply flawed. Decoding the Guru's host deeply disingenuous cowards. They are flawed. They are flawed. But even with our flaws, I like to think that some of us still produce some interesting content. About socialism and worker cooperatives. I reject state socialism personally. What I'm referring to is specifically, for example, the term given is worker cooperatives. The most prominent example is the Molden corporation in Spain. There are 80,000 workers, some 80,000 employees. It's a wildly successful corporation. Is it a voluntary association? Is there any cram down happening? No, there's not. Good. It's capitalist. That's not socialist. It's not. So Shapiro says that worker-owned enterprises, quote, aren't socialism and treats this student as dumb for not understanding what socialism is despite declaring themselves to be a socialist. In fact, though, it's Shapiro who doesn't assume that socialism is just having the government do things and cram them down your throat rather than the private sector doing things. That's not true. Having workers in control of their workplaces has historically been a major demand made by socialists, especially libertarian socialists. The student is actually expressing a very common position that has existed throughout the socialist tradition. Shapiro assumes that the student is the one confused about socialism when he's actually just showing that he himself is unfamiliar with socialist thought and naively believes that socialism is solely synonymous with centralized state control of the economy. Now, we know that Ben Shapiro's far more concerned with making his opponents look bad than with getting to the truth. And those two things aren't the same thing. I can make you look bad by, say, surprising you with an argument you haven't heard and aren't quite sure how to respond to and causing you to get a little bit confused. Even if my argument turns out to be silly, I then look like the smart debater and you look like the dopey, confused, emotional SJW loser. You should have a look at Ben Shapiro's book which is called How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them. First, just note that it's not called How to Discuss Things with Leftists and figure out which one of you is right and can see good points that they make while trying to show your side of things. No, he just wants to humiliate people. As he says in his book, quote, you should debate a leftist if there's an argument. And the chat says, this guy speaking now, Nathan Robinson, is making me clench my fist. Well, that's entirely to do with you. There's nothing dishonorable here in the arguments that Nathan Robinson is making. He's making solid arguments. Doesn't mean that they are the last word on any topic. He's coming from a left-wing perspective, but he's making solid arguments that somebody on the right can respect his efforts here. Audience, the goal of the debate will not be to win over the leftist or to convince him or her to be friends with him or her. That person already disagrees with you and they're not going to be convinced by your words of wisdom, your sparkling rhetorical flourishes. The goal will be to destroy the leftist in as publicly a way as humanly possible. He then shows you how to use various kinds of strategies which at one point he even calls parlor tricks in order to make the leftist look bad. Things like using the right body language or going on the offensive as quickly as possible, or pretending to be more moderate than you actually are. He says that rational debate with the left is all but impossible and so he shows you kind of how to have an irrational debate with the left instead. When you actually look through Ben Shapiro's body of work, you see that far from being committed to facts and logic. He cares only about the facts that support a conservative worldview and ignores all of the other facts that undermine it. So let's look at a couple of examples. So he has implied that poor people in the United States essentially choose to be poor. Okay, this I think out of all the videos that I watched recently on Ben Shapiro, this is my favorite. It's by a guy I've never heard of before his channel is called genetically modified skeptic. This horror story begins as many often do with the regrettable decision to open Facebook. I use Facebook in such a limited way. So a lot of people are complaining about Nathan Robertson's manner. I think this guy here, genetically modified skeptic, I'd give him a 10 out of 10 for his manner. I think he is friendly without being needy. I think he is empathic. I think he's reasonable. I think he comes across very well. This is a great way to talk to a camera. It had to be my involvement in religious trauma recovery groups or rollerblading groups or maybe being a 28 year old white cis man in Texas that made me a target for Ben Shapiro ads. I think it was probably that last one. The post it showed me was just golden. So let's read it together. Atheism is no longer simply a belief in the absence of God. It is now an active rebuke against his existence fueled by rage and endless invective. The arguments so many employ against God are as rote and dogmatic as any kind of extremism. Ah, yes, the atheists extremists. Now, you might think that the worst thing atheists are known to do is smugly condescend to religious people on the internet, but they do much worse than that. They refuse to vote for any candidate that isn't openly atheistic. So he's actually got something here which I think is important. You get all sorts of proclamations by religious people and conservatives about all the awful qualities of atheism. All atheism is is absent belief in God. That's it. Just like secularism simply means without practicing an organized religion. So you can be an Orthodox Jew in practice and be an atheist. You can go to church every week and be an atheist. An atheist simply means that you don't have a belief in God. But people ascribe all sorts of other beliefs and behaviors just inherent in atheism that aren't there. They constantly cry persecution when minorities gain equal rights to them, the majority. They put references to their atheism on our currency. They've been infiltrating the US government for decades in order to establish atheistic rule and they've even recently tried to overturn a presidential election using violence. Wait, I think I'm thinking of someone else. Religious faith that's a good critique. Faith is maligned to exhaustion online and elsewhere unless it involves crystals and witchcraft. Well, atheism gets endlessly maligned too. So it's not like these negative comments only go away. And then these broad generalizations in this Facebook ad about atheists and atheism are ridiculous. Atheists don't just refuse the light. They now seek to extinguish it. I'll give you the fact that plenty of atheists do malign religious faith online. And Half Galician says atheism is a distinction without a difference from nihilism. No, it's not. Your primary sense of meaning and purpose in life should come from your family. Right? If you are invested in your family if you like or love your family your extended family, even say parts of your community and friends and your pursuits, your hobbies, your work, any of those things, that's where you should be getting your meaning and that's not going to be terribly affected if you believe in God or not. Right? An atheist who has a family that he has some positive feelings toward, that should provide most of the meaning and purpose in life that he needs even absent belief in God. On the other hand a religious person who does not have a family like me, a 57 year old bachelor right? Religious people without a family I would suspect in real life, empirical, practical terms will struggle with all the struggles that you'd expect from someone who lacks purpose and meaning in life will be much more vulnerable to those struggles than an atheist with a family and kids. My life experience, atheists who are married with kids are far more psychologically stable pro-social and moral than religious people like me who are a bachelor's and have no kids so that's just my life experience. What I have seen and experienced in the world is that atheists married with kids have far more purpose far more meaning are more pro-social and generally behave at a higher ethical level than religious people who do not have family I think the primary determinant of someone having meaning and purpose in their life or not is do they have a family they connect it to their family, do they like their family? Sometimes they provide valid criticism but sometimes it's just tribalistic, religious Okay Jordan wants to jump on so yes absolutely it'd be great to have you here's a link so send me a link and I will send you an invite calculation says atheism is in the backdrop of official atheism any strong will person will assert will that will lead to evil there's no official atheism beyond just absolute belief in God atheism rightly has a bad connotation yeah in that I guess there are historical social reasons to believe that people who believe in God are going to be more decent in their behavior I'm not speaking about the individual conscience of an atheist I'm talking about atheism of social policy I'm not really aware of atheism as social policy I'm aware of secularism as a social policy that in a liberal society we're not going to agree ultimately on what's right and wrong therefore we're going to set public policy and law on a secular basis rather than a religious basis oh Jordan has a link I sent great so I will look for you I'll keep an eye out for you joining the stream yard and glad to have you on when that happens illiterate nonsense I'm intrigued by this elsewhere though where exactly is that like can you think of even one real life place where anti-theism which makes exceptions for witchcraft dominates the culture like even one place and J.A. says I like the Ben Shapiro points out crime statistics in the mainstream media won't yes good for Ben for doing that I like that he explains the logic of the pronoun police yes I like that too I like that Ben Shapiro makes many conservative arguments in an entertaining way I like that too so I agree with you there if only this was backed up by facts and logic or like one good example what really gets me here is that last half collision says conflating punditry with demagoguery is sloppy I like to think I draw a pretty big distinction between punditry being a guru and being demagogic so being a demagogic means using dishonest arguments there's nothing inherent in being a pundit that you must use dishonest arguments the difference between a pundit and a guru is that the guru will tend to make life pronouncements about you know broad swathes of life that he doesn't know very much about and will try to establish a virtual relationship with you pundits are not trying to establish a virtual relationship with you they're not trying to develop a parasocial relationship with you and generally speaking they are only making pronouncements on areas of their expertise such as politics or economics Cation atheists they're not just content to disbelieve anymore now they're coming for you get people nice and scared and then sell them a sense of security classic sales tactic I respect that actually no I don't like saying that join me on the following episode of debunked as I break down the many fallacies and falsehoods atheists attempt to employ against the existence of God alright you know where this is going I checked out the video and I'm going to give you my thoughts Horatious says the left seems to be against religion or at least public religion in the public square Christianity in the public square they've taken their liberalism in a way that they behave like the most fervent religious zealot yes that's true so what's happened is that the Protestant reforming impulse has on the liberal left being transmuted into this disengaged disembodied reflexive buffered self identity so that place great reliance on the powers of reason for people to you know figure out their own way of life and it tries to inculcate a certain type of discipline in people so that they think about the implications of everything that they say and how that could affect all the different sectors of the society around them and so cause for a level of self-discipline and self-awareness that is very different from traditional conceptions of every man's home is his castle and he has the right to share his opinions in his own even if they're unpopular so it's kind of the difference between the night who has his own castle he's lord of the manner in his particular domain he feels free to to laugh to get excited to cry to share his opinions freely as opposed to when the national political system changes so for the night to retain any power and status and prestige he must go to court and then at court he can't laugh and cry and act and proclaim opinions as he wants to he has to adjust his behavior so that it is acceptable even seen as praiseworthy to all the different elements of the court and so he has to take into mind the consideration of everything that he says it does and how it affects everyone around him and who's rising in power, who's dropping in power so the left liberal perspective on life and the type of self-discipline it wants to inculcate is much more like a courtier morality where you take into consideration the effect of everything you say and do on everyone else while traditional morality is much more kind of a lord of the manner morality where a person's home is his castle and he gets to speak freely in his castle that's on it one point at a time hey Taylor I just bought something from Ben Shapiro so you're saying you wanted a horse? haha so telling his wife I just bought something from Ben Shapiro and she says okay you're saying that you want a you want just a horse but come on genetically modified skeptic doesn't he have a winning manner here I mean this is the way to talk to a camera listen there's no way to blame people who don't believe in God they've experienced enormous amounts of personal pain God is apart from human beings and if we understood the mind of God then we would be like God in his totality which we are not so right out of the gate he propagates the stereotype that atheism is an emotional reaction to hardship or that atheists are actually theists who hate God because they've experienced suffering this is wrong countries which are consistently rated as the happiest in the world are also some of the most atheistic countries and consistently unhappiest countries in the world are often some of the most religious this doesn't mean that atheism makes people happy but it disconfirms the idea that atheism is a result of unhappiness in fact religiosity not atheism is more common among those who experience financial hardship and political instability countries affected by war often see an increase in religiosity I'll link a video about this in the description so that you can learn more what does a more often arises in stable prosperous societies where people don't feel they need religion to get by yeah I think that's an important point you get very different politics you get a very different attitude towards life when life is relatively stable and prosperous what's the old saying there are no atheists in foxholes when life gets tough people develop a stronger in-group identity and feel that they need for the divine or the transcendent in a much more intense manner CBC article below that covers some of the data which suggests this so you don't have to just take my word for it suffice to say Ben's opening statement is informed by the in-group protecting rhetoric of his religious community not actual evidence you know I get this feeling that this kind of thing might happen so right here there's a dangerous heat wave going on across the United States let me see so the temperature in Santa Monica it's not going to be that hot right probably about 75 right now it's 72 where I am so we're hitting highs of 85 yesterday but again it's going to be about 85 few miles inland probably at the beach you're going to hit a high of about 80 degrees like scarcely a punishing heat wave in West L.A. anyway often so let's keep track of it as we go I got something I can use as a kind of green screen to you know hold up and then put a graphic on so we're going to tear one out of this which oh my god this takes up so much room on camera okay I'm going to have to cut it down I think oh no okay that should work so that's one instance of reliance on okay let's get back to the bench that does not mean that you're not feeling the pain that you're feeling it doesn't mean you don't have a right to feel angry at God and understand that the struggle with God is a part and half Galicia makes a good point just because you have arrived at something doesn't mean that you shouldn't recognize that it's not good for most people to believe that way so Voltaire said if you're going to talk about atheism send the servants out of the room because Belief in God helps many people to be more honest more trustworthy more law abiding more pro-social religion itself being a religious believer is the consistent struggle with the logic of the universe and that seems to me a deeper and more fulfilling struggle than simply pretending the universe has no meaning at all right you can be an atheist and have you know perfectly fine position in a church or a synagogue or some religious community as long as you don't try to spread your atheism and you're not mocking other people for their religious beliefs not every belief we have should we be trying to share as widely as possible if that struggle gives you a sense of meaning cool go ahead and pursue that as long as you don't hurt others in the process meaning is not some objective thing different things are meaningful to different people just because your religion is meaningful to you does not mean that you have an exclusive claim on meaning wrestling with theological questions is not very meaningful to me but I recognize that doesn't mean it can't be meaningful to someone else also that line pretending life has no meaning is just a baseless insult atheists don't believe in God-given meaning but there are other kinds which atheists both believe in and experience also Ben's use of pretending once again implies that self-described atheists are actually discontented theists I've got to ask though why would someone who believes in exclusively God-given meaning pretend there is no meaning in life at all especially as a response to hardship this narrative makes no sense if you think about it but then again it's not really supposed to all this baseless claim about atheists is meant to do is reinforce Ben's in-groups narrative that insiders good, outsiders stupid, miserable and bad let's call that smearing the outgroup God according to atheists isn't unnecessary there's no way to develop a following as a pundit to smear outgroups and if you can do it within socially acceptable boundaries and you have some talent at what you're doing then you're on your road to success so this is not Ben Shapiro saying something off the top of the head this is a prepared video with a prepared script that he's making here and it's called the atheist delusion to suggest that there is some higher power that bridges the gap from what is to how things ought to be okay we've got Jordan here Jordan you need to unmute and then bring you onto the stream so when you're ready speak up young man okay Jordan what's going on hello hello so yeah oh god how are you so I jumped on pretty late I was just trying to close up YouTube I didn't have any interference so I did jump on late so we're going on about Ben Shapiro and Ben Shapiro's view on atheism or what's the topic oh just a general video on Ben Shapiro though I'm happy to talk about anything that you would like to talk about but I'm just making the point that Ben Shapiro is apparently successful as a pundit because he's giving people what they want which is basically cheap put downs on the other side but is there anything that you've heard that you want to comment on well I mean I've watched a lot of it Luke first of all thank you for having me on I've been listening to you since your analysis on the blood sports days anything from JF Garepi when you did the we have spoke on the phone actually so you might remember me but you did your dissecting Mark Collette which I thought was brilliant you said and I've heard one of my favourite screams of yours was you and Eric Stryker I thought that was brilliant oh yeah that was fun it was brilliant I mean look I'm Jewish as you know as to the atheism so there's a couple of things so yes I've been listening to Ben Shapiro just destroy everyone that comes in six foot two feet of him he's just that good he has ridiculed the whole gender issue and he's doing it in a nice way he's doing it in a polite way so listen what you do is what you do but don't expect me to call you she or this that and the other which I can understand from his point of view as to atheism I'm very on the fence with that because I've seen and I'm getting more and more more inclined to think that religion is good for people Luke especially I'm not saying ours particularly I'm just saying religion in general just that I see that people are lost without it and I've even heard atheists say that religion is good for some people because they didn't have it they probably kill themselves or go completely off the rails so I'm getting more and more inclined to see how religious people in general bring up the children you know you don't expect religious girls going out drinking taking drugs which is obviously a good thing I can see how structured the life is and yeah what do you think? No I agree that religion works well for many people that belief in God seems to work well for many people on the other hand I've met plenty of atheists who who are married who have kids who are leading from all appearances thriving lives so I think it depends on the individual like some people are particularly suited for a traditional religious way of life other people are not suited for a traditional religious way of life and some people seem to do quite well leading a secular even an atheist life and other people seem to thrive in traditional forms of religion so I think it's very dependent on the individual what type of life is going to work best for him. Oh that's true I agree with that as well I've spoken to one of my friends in England recently and he said an East Jewish also and he said you know what I've had better experience with religious Jews than I do from secular Jews he said that the rudeness I'm not saying this as a slum dunk because like you say everyone is different and I'm correct but he has better experience because of the politeness I suppose of the warmth of a religious Jew rather than someone secular who has you're right in what you're saying some atheists do leave a good structured life and you know they bring their children up absolutely but this is a common thing I'm hearing now Luke is when we're when we're pointed out for doing wrong things Epstein or Weinstein it's normally normally I'm not saying all the time it's normally secular Judaism like my sector Judaism where the ones seem to be giving us all a bad name and I just wondered what you thought I mean look I've said that I've debated anti-Semite suffice and my argument is people are just people who you know you can say it's the Jews I just say well that's ridiculous because some people people in the elites especially are not the nicest people and you're going to get Christians, Catholics, Protestants well which is part of Christianity Muslims, Hindus you know once you're in the elite you have a different you know there is probably a different view and these people aren't the nicest people but it's people it's not Jews it's not specifically Muslims it's not specifically Christians it's just people are people so we can go on so I suppose we can back up and go on to the culture of critiques COCOs you like to call it and it's been debunked and the reason I think it's a load of nonsense is because McDonald is looking at it it's like we're born he thinks we're born we've inherent gene to act a certain way it's not it's learnt behaviour like everybody in life learns how to behave whether you're Jewish or not do you agree or? Yeah I mean we do have certain predispositions so I was born with an above average verbal IQ but I was not born with athletic ability so at best I'm a mediocre athlete you know other people are born with extraordinary athletic skills such as they can run very fast but they're never going to be mathematicians true true yeah no you've got a point there but what I'm saying is we're not born to want to rule the world I mean someone said to me they made a very salient point listen to this one this is good as Jews we're supposed to work for the nations and what I mean by that is we're supposed to work not rule to work for to show our potential so please forgive me guys whoever's listening this is not meant to show our potentials but we're on earth we're the chosen people just to show how to live I suppose a structured fruit for life if that makes sense that's what we were chosen it's not like we're the best people we were chosen to do a certain job which is work maybe for Christianity work for other religions that aren't Jewish and try and show the light not saying that Muslims don't have the ability to do Christians do also you know it's that's what I was told and it seems a lot more plausible and a lot less intrusive to say okay we're here as Jews to guide not to control yeah now you from our various interactions over the years you have quite an interest in the alt-right how did that develop how did that develop well if I was born with a deep position so to speak disposition sorry I was obsessed with Nazis from my grandma came over from us and the kinder transport and it was ingrained ingrained ingrained in Ashkenazim society I think Luke I think we can't avoid it you know we're brought up everyone hates us, they want to get us you know this paranoia and I was just obsessed with Nazis from a very early age just obsessed I don't know why I don't know what drew me to it I saw my grandma silent suffering I suppose because her parents were my great-grandfather was apparently Gaston Auschwitz my great-grandmother was no record of and it was just something I was drawn towards but I try you but I try Luke I try to be placid like you are with Shrike and like you are with my keynote I think it's better to to talk and discuss rather than attack I'll only attack if someone's just blatantly stupid and just blaming you know just vile and no I'll put you know I spoke to a lot especially in the UK I spoke to a lot of alt writers who are perfect gentlemen really I know that sounds contradictory in terms but these people are nice people they know I'm Jewish they've been they've shown me the utmost respect you know they've had a few jokes but I'm you know I'm not going to cry about it and so it's just I want to understand for me it's a fascination I just want to understand why people hate us and I've asked myself though Luke I've said is our behaviour questionable you know is it something that we do are we bringing this on ourselves because many religious Jews have said that also there was one online you should watch with Joseph Cohen good friend of mine he's Israeli advocate and yeah and there was a religious guy called Rafi pretty you should watch it I'll try and get the link I'll send you the link it's a bit like Doovid a bit like Doovid where Doovid says look we have we behave a certain way and we've sort of brought this on ourselves sort of thing which people have the right to think and I used to get quite upset when people ran from Doovid so much because it's like Doovid originated this this point of view and it's nice quite a few Jews have had that that that believe that yes the way we behave you know has brought attention not necessarily positive attention but it's it's caused us issues and more than Doovid isn't the only one saying that so I was a bit upset that people were ragging on him I spoke to Doovid lovely I love him to bits I think he's mad as toast but I think he's brilliant I mean he's extremely clever we don't agree on certain things but I'm a big fan I'm a big fan of you I mean it's also a biblical position that for our sins we suffer and so that is a common thread in the Jewish tradition that we look to our own behavior as the source of our suffering and see what can we learn from where we might have gone wrong that have brought troubles upon us well they say don't they there was Rabbi saying that someone said this so I want you to you'll probably know this guy Luke he's an extreme rabbi in America and he said that Hitler hated us not because we're Jews this is a this is a classic he hated us because we we left the Torah we we weren't abiding to the Torah and he said that was a problem for Hitler I think that's probably one of the funniest things I've heard but then I thought about it and I thought well anything's possible I mean people have said we were warned people have said Luke that we were warned that you know if we don't abide to Torah I mean someone said to me you don't keep Shabbos you go into hell yeah he did because I went to do Yischa for my mother and he said to me Jordan you know you can't just do Yischa you can't just do Kaddish and think that's okay you've got to you've got to keep Shabbos and if you're ignorant this is what he said as well Luke he said if you're ignorant it's okay meaning if you know no better it's okay well how many Jews do you think Luke know no better than to keep Shabbos yeah and there are many different ways of knowing I mean I think you have to have experienced the glories of Shabbat like Shabbat at its best is spent with family, community and friends so it's one thing like knowing intellectually that the Ten Commandments say you should keep the Sabbath but if you haven't experienced the glories of Shabbat and the connections that you build and the fun that you can have on Shabbat then you don't really know Shabbat until you've lived healthy, fun Shabbat just knowing in theory that God said in Ten Commandments keep the Sabbath day is not necessarily knowing the holiness of Shabbat right I want to actually get back onto the art right with you because that's when I first noticed you and I first noticed you speaking to all you're speaking to big faces in the art right back in the day weren't you Luke you had some very high profile art writers and for me it's an obsession I wanted to ask you what's the resurgence why is there a resurgence in anti-Semitism I mean look from what people say and this is very interesting Duvyd said this and there is some there is some truth to this on paper we are the most popular religion in the UK and in America when it comes to surveys this is what I've been told with the most lights I don't know how true that is but the people have said that and I've heard that numerous times but for me what do you think are the reasons for the resurgence of anti-Semitism why is it becoming so it's like getting worse instead of better and from the left you know people always say oh well when it's from the right it's expected but when it's from the left and Ben said this Ben Shapiro said this as well he said I think he said it swept under the carpet or someone else said it swept under the carpet I don't know what to talk about here well my favorite analogy for anti-Semitism is the eucalyptus question so I live in California and California about 180 years ago imported some eucalyptus eucalyptus from Australia and they planted the eucalyptus and the eucalyptus outcompeted native vegetation and so the eucalyptus emit certain compounds that destroy competing forms of life underneath and beside them and they also often outcompete native forms of life for water and the eucalyptus have you know good points there are advantages for planting eucalyptus but there are also bad points and they suck up a tremendous amount of water they outcompete native vegetation and they're filled with oil and so when they catch a light they really burn intensely and so when you import something that outcompetes the natives in certain areas and changes the balance of life in a particular ecology then it would make sense that say people who love things the way they were would not be very happy with the importation of eucalyptus and so you can simply substitute eucalyptus for Jews for Asians, for Chinese for Mexicans, for Africans whatever it makes sense every form of life intrinsically rebels against any other form of life that messes with it I think it's just inherent in an organism and whatever you say about Jews you can't say that they're particularly quiet and quiescent and passive oh yes we are, we keep our heads well down what you mean and so Jews tend to have above average verbal IQs they tend to be very articulate and so I remember in the 18 I remember because I was at now I remember reading about how in the 1880s in Germany there'd be all sorts of political cultural questions where one side of the argument would primarily be articulated by one group of Jews and the other side of the argument would primarily be articulated by another set of Jews I can understand how a German would be reading the newspaper and saying what the hell is going on here no matter where I look even though Jews are less than 1% of the German population they're the ones arguing most important cultural and political issues in my country I feel like I've been dispossessed from my own country and so I can understand why a non-Jew just sitting back watching the news and you've got a Jew arguing the right wing side and then you've got a Jew arguing the left wing side and they might be thinking hey why is it that I see so many Jews on TV why is it that I see so many Jews making TV and I don't particularly like what's on TV I feel like my own way of life is being denigrated and I feel like they're constantly critiquing me but if I were at work to ever say offer some critiques of Jews and Judaism like I would be castigated if not fired how come Jews get you know unlimited freedom to critique me and my religion and my way of life and everything that I hold sacred but if anyone from my team attempts to do the same thing against Jews they are just driven out of polite society I can understand why a lot of non-Jews would resent that so I don't think I don't think... It doesn't happen though Lucas it's a myth though isn't it it's like you can't criticize Jews and it's like Halsey said Halsey used to say you say you can't criticize Jews you can't criticize them do you know what I mean? nothing happened to Ilan Omar nothing happened to Mel Gibson nothing happened to Kanye West blew it okay we can all acknowledge that he blew it but he went off the rails anyway he blessed him as the nutcase but what I'm saying is plenty of people have made comments and nothing's happened to them really they've had a bit of badgering and nothing for me well I could be wrong I could be wrong on this but it's funny as well Luke there's a term called the armchair anti-seemite so one of my greatest heroes bless him was Christopher Hitchens who you're probably aware of and he was talking about his friend Martin Arnes his father called him an armchair anti-seemite so Martin would say to his dad what's it like to be an armchair anti-seemite he said well it's quite good you just look at the end credits of a film you say oh there's another one oh there's another one not necessarily out to kill anyone because there are anti-seemites out there who aren't psychotic murdering you know arts and this is what when I'm talking to them I try and ascertain who am I talking to how likely are they to go blow up a synagogue yeah so I think you find with the people who go out and try to blow up a synagogue these are not people generally speaking who are married with kids these are people on the margins of society who feel a desperate need for meaning and they you know seize on this magic key for understanding the world around them it just so happens to be Jews and so this is what gives meaning and purpose and a possibility of heroism like how often do we get to you know commit you know transcendent history defining acts of heroism to find those opportunities it's a lot easier to find them in doing something that most people would regard as evil but if you are sufficiently far away from reality you might seize on something that gives you a life meaning and purpose sure but would you be would you agree me that some anti-seemites are you can converse with them like you did with Shraika and like you did with my they were pleasant to you yeah there are plenty that you can talk to and plenty of them are situational anti-seemites they may have had experiences like if you had five negative interactions in a row with a particular group you would in all likelihood develop some negative feelings about that group and so we do anyway though Lou it's inherent it's inherent I mean psychologically and my friend said this he's married he's married an Ethiopian guy both Jewish and she said everyone's inherently racist and she has a point you are you are wary of what's different I mean look I will say to you I'm not a racist I don't believe in it but I I would be like you I am sympathetic to the Europeans wanting to remain European without having people thrown out or hurt because I'm not I'm up for that but I get it I try and take the Judas Maccabees approach and I was also a friend of yours as well a good friend of mine yeah I was walking down a street near Beverly Hills the other day with a fellow Orthodox Jew and he starts yelling out death to the Arabs I was not very happy about that I'm sure you were that's not a good idea now I understand the sentiment that this guy came from Israel and so he may very well have had friends or family who'd been murdered by Arab terrorists so I understand why any strongly identifying in group that is in a life and their struggle with an out group wishes ill even death on an out group it seems like the most normal even healthy reaction in the world but to publicly announce that in or by Beverly Hills I think is a bad bad idea well I mean it's also psychotic but what can you do I don't know the guy you know the guy I mean he could have he could have PTSD and that sort of thing does happen I completely agree with you he could have seen some horrific things that mean you couldn't even contemplate but yeah well I mean I am sorry I'm sorry Luke do you think that my sympathetic view towards European I don't know if I could say white nationalism because can we be sympathetic because they hate us and I don't particularly hate blacks at all I don't hate Muslims I just I like good people who are nice people but again I will say I really understand and sympathise that they want to keep Britain British they want to you know the Germany-German I'm talking even Germans going into the UK you should keep Britain British German-German that sort of thing I would certainly would never ever support throwing out innocent people who are ethnic I'm just saying I do sympathise that the majority should be those who have the forefathers and the indigenous to the land what do you think yeah I broadly agree with that I wouldn't you know announce that in every setting it could really rub people the wrong way but I think what you're talking about is a sympathy for reality and reality is that we get along better with people who are similar to us whether it's similar genetically or similar religiously or similar ideologically or culturally or via habit or profession so yeah I think having sympathy for reality is a good idea doesn't mean that we need to announce it publicly in all settings but yeah it makes sense I mean we can recognise in other people their own desire for self-determination well I do Luke I have I've spoke to an Arab friend of mine who identifies funny enough as Palestinian and he's a lovely lovely boy, lovely guy and I don't feel any malice or racism towards him either you know I don't have those feelings I don't have racist connotation for what I will say racist views but what I will say is when you say don't broadcast that well I'm not going to stand on the street and say Britain should remain white that's not what I mean I'm certainly not a Nazi God forbid but what I'm saying is I do have that sympathetic feeling for people European people who are afraid who do think they're being, I don't know how rightly it is I mean look I've heard you say 60 years or unless there'll be a minority I don't think that's even plausible they're like 70-80 I think they're over 70% now European so take a bit longer than that you know and I get it, all I'm saying is I get it I'm not saying I would vote BMP God forbid like I say I'm not a Nazi but I'm sympathetic we have Israel Luke, we have Israel I know we need Israel we do need Israel it's not just we have it because we're Jews it's because we need it and there's been good reason but I think is that such a bad thing for Europeans to once have their own safe space are Palestinians like you can have sympathy for Palestinians desire for an independent Palestinian state you can have sympathy for Arabs and Muslims who don't want to see a thriving Jewish state in their midst which they find humiliating I can understand why they don't like it I think having sympathy for other groups and other points of view we should have some sympathy for people crossing the Mediterranean to try to build a better life in Europe it doesn't mean that we don't want immigration laws enforced in Europe or in the United States but we can understand why people from difficult or desperate circumstances want to create a better life we should have sympathy for the people who respond to incentives absolutely agree you're absolutely right 100% it's just I think that sometimes the indigenous think that there's opening the gate and then there's opening the footleg so to speak I don't know again it's a lot of hysteria as well behind it obviously but you're absolutely right I mean why shouldn't someone seek a better life that's what we did that's what our people did we had to escape persecution quick anecdote on that I've never had any Muslim friends honestly but I've developed an online friendship with a Muslim woman who just so happens to be beautiful and charming I'm a little more sympathetic now to the Muslim point of view because I've established exactly and also I'm friends with people who are in the United States illegally I'm friends with them so I have more sympathy I have more sympathy and empathy because they are concrete friends of mine and that you know that does open you up to you know forms of empathy that you didn't have previously well absolutely and like I say my friend he identifies as Palestinian and I'm okay with that well I shouldn't say he's not anti-Semitic he's a very as I say he's a very nice boy why should I dislike him because he's Palestinian because he's Arab because he's Muslim no absolutely not if you're a good person I agree with you if you're a good person you deserve the respect you definitely deserve the respect but yeah look if you met someone and she's beautiful and she's kind and something happens between you go for it my man why not she could convert if you wanted to too but you know for me there's no rules in life it's like people always say to me but you talk about conversion and I know you're very well well you've got a lot of knowledge on this obviously but I say to them it doesn't take a rabbi to tell you you're Jewish if you feel Jewish you're bloody Jewish that's how I see it I know that's mad I know that's not according to Halakian laws or biblical laws but if you feel Jewish then you're Jewish that's how I see it if you want to be part of our group you have to convert to be recognized but there's no who am I or who's anyone else to say well you're not Jewish yeah I mean that there is one rule that I subscribe to and that is you want to have the best possible relations with everybody that you can and so that might mean one neighbor the best possible relations you can have with that one neighbor is to completely ignore him right sometimes that's the best way you can have relations with some people but you want to get along with everyone that you encounter to the greatest you know possible ability without selling yourself out you know without compromising your own values so yeah if you have you know people at work who are of a you know completely different from you but you enjoy their company then yeah you want to have the best possible relations you don't want to be going through life just needlessly antagonizing and hating on people well it just affects your life doesn't it if you're angry and you're hateful it's you who's going to be miserable and you're religious you're religious you know that's not part of our religion to be you know we're supposed to be peace loving kind forgiving like most religions most like if you find a Muslim who a good store Muslim they're normally peaceful loving like Christians you know it's only the small and we have them in ours as well we do have a few nutters in our camp who take it to the extreme but that's life people are going to be nutcases are going to pervert the Talmud they're going to pervert the Torah they're going to pervert the Quran they're going to pervert the Old Testament you're just going to get people like that and that's the way life is now you must have your own ambivalent relationship with the orthodox Judaism I'm sure there have been times that you've been closer and times that you've been further away from traditional ways of doing things yeah I mean yeah you're absolutely right I mean look when I put the feeling on you know you're right you can't say you don't feel a sense of power not power in a bad way like a sense of oh it just feels good to put the feeling on or to go to shul and because I can I can read Hebrew I don't understand it so my davening is pretty poor but yeah you're right it does and I do get attracted to elements of orthodox Judaism because I mean I was brought up on orthodox Jew so yes I mean I've had my problems with Judaism but I've also had my love affair with Judaism you know I'm a Jew and I agree with you that there's parts that are wonderful like you said the family, the gathering Shabbos dinner, Yom Tiff dinner the spiritual the spiritual and that's it fasting which I'm not the best at doing Luke I apologise fasting on Yom Kippo which I shouldn't do better that's a spiritual journey as well so yeah you're absolutely right and you've also spent time in the Jewish state which is quite different than life in the United Kingdom well I live there so yeah I do live there we have spoke I've seen me oh you do okay yeah I know you're thinking of what I want people to know and what people are yeah absolutely and I appreciate that no I do live in Israel and look we are on a verge of something which I'm trying to get my head around this whole judicial reform I've got to go but I would love to come back and talk about that I would love to talk more about the judicial reform but thank you so much for having me on big fan of your show goodbye everybody and everyone keep safe God bless okay cheers mate bye bye there's a God I say can you prove that you say no I say I don't believe you then atheism is more than mere agnosticism which suggests that it is impossible to know whether God exists by that definition of agnosticism many religious people are agnostic atheism however adamantly opposes the idea of a God who stands behind nature no atheism doesn't adamantly oppose the idea of a God standing behind nature it is simply absent that belief right I am absent all the unique beliefs of Christianity and Islam I'm not adamantly opposed to them I simply don't hold them I am absent beliefs in the unique perspectives of Hinduism or of every other religion in the world aside from my own but I'm not devoting a lot of my emotional and intellectual energy trying to debunk the case for Hinduism I'm simply absent those beliefs atheism simply means a absent belief in God I'll clarify for those who don't already know that in philosophical terms I'm agnostic I don't know if any gods exist and I don't think it's possible to know if there are any gods in existence that said I'm happy to call myself an atheist much of the time because I live as if gods don't exist and when I describe myself as agnostic in certain situations here in the southern US people don't understand my position a lot of the time they'll think I'm okay this guy just seems doesn't this guy seem like he'd be a good friend a good neighbor he just seems like a really decent bloke and he seems you know very open and forthright I'm a fent sitting potential Christian or have no substantial opinions on religion and its role in politics here most self-described atheists I've ever met are the same way actually this is why I'd argue that the label atheist here in the US is sometimes more of a political identifier so most atheists I know or have known they're not burning with fover against belief in God or religion many of them perhaps most of them even pro-religion so atheism simply means absolute belief in God it's not usually the most important thing about the atheists I know there then just a description of philosophical position I'll say all of this because I want us to remember that this subject is complex involving political identities and efforts just as much as philosophical ideas after this point in the video Ben yeah I think that's important because most religious disputes are really the tenors of religion covering up racial differences so the Catholic Protestant dispute in Ireland is primarily a dispute between two somewhat distinct peoples right it's not a dispute about theology or the role of the Pope and the Virgin Mary the Arab-Israeli dispute is primarily a dispute between two distinct peoples it's not primarily a debate or an argument or a fight about theology and uses the term atheist and atheism rather vaguely and interchangeably so one of my favorite jokes is a Jews walking through Belfast and he feels a gun on a Friday night like pointed into his back and the gunman says you know what are you are you Protestant or are you Catholic and the Jew suddenly relaxes and he says I'm Jewish and the gunman says I must be the luckiest Palestinian in Belfast tonight we'll have to look out for that atheism often claims that religion corrupts mankind if you want to make good people atheism doesn't claim anything except absence of belief in God some atheists have criticisms of religion but plenty of atheists have positive things to say about religion too people do wicked things you'll need religion at the notion of a God blinds men to the truths around them that science is directly opposed to the idea of a creator you give them an A at least for trying to reconcile faith and reason I don't think they're reconciling none of these things are true that atheism claims any of these things atheism is a singular philosophical position atheists might claim these things and I've heard many of them do so but it's strange to say that atheism does any of this if you weren't familiar with many atheists and you heard Ben say this you might get the impression that atheism entails certain attitude so if you wanted to become a pundit or an influencer or a YouTube personality I think this guy's presentation is a terrific guide but this is the way to come across online thoughtful reasonable getting your facts and arguments in line open empathic foods and behaviors self-described atheists are diverse though they're atheists who think that religion on the whole is a good thing they're atheists who think the opposite and they're atheists who are somewhere in between when talking about groups outside of our own as Ben is doing it's important that we don't succumb to outgroup homogeneity bias this is the tendency to assume that the members of other groups are very similar to each other particularly in contrast to the assumed diversity of the membership of one's own group groupish thinking like this is very easy to sell it keeps things extremely conveniently simple making quick content creation easy for the creator it also often creates feelings of righteous superiority in those consuming the content so long as they belong to the content creator's own group regularly creating or consuming content like this well people who consume the product of genetically modified skeptic right get all these same benefits right they feel superior they feel better about themselves that they're in group and they have more negative feelings about outgroups so genetically modified skeptic also subscribes to his own faith based hero system just not a faith based in God but it's a faith based in the powers of reason can make you see things in an overly simplistic way and escalate feelings of resentment for the outgroup be on the lookout for more of this rhetoric as we continue now resentment against the outgroup is adaptive in some circumstances overall I think a normal healthy life has an in group identity at a level of two or three out of ten in intensity and with any in group identity comes resentment and negative feelings against outgroups so mild to moderate feeling of resentment against outgroups is probably quite functional even healthy how about we add conflation of terms here you know speaking of staying aware of groupish thinking let me tell you about this video sponsor ground okay let's not hear about your sponsor to survival personally I think being able to collectively reason or believe that two predators plus two predators equals four predators or that two pieces of free okay that's good I need to rewind things we might have to decide on one way or another in order to use various forms of logic I don't think I can agree with the rest though when Ben says oh man I really blew it here but we don't believe that we think two plus two equals four because it's evolutionarily beneficial we believe two plus two equals four always and everywhere because it's true yeah you have to guys you have to believe in god to believe that two plus two objectively equals four that speaks of truth beyond the merely material in stating that all human logic is based on assumptions Ben is right all forms of logic require axioms things assumed self evidently true without demonstration there's no way around so this is where Dennis Prager got me he said that to believe in objective good and evil you have to believe in a transcendent source of good and evil such as the Torah you have to believe in a transcendent source of good and evil such as God who expresses himself in some sort of written document to then have an objective basis for belief in good and evil but that still requires all sorts of subjectivity such as subjectivity involved in making a leap of faith to both belief in God and belief that God is the author of the Torah and then understanding the Torah requires collective reasoning and a great deal of subjectivity in understanding what exactly the Torah is saying and how it applies you know from a divine perspective in 2023 in the United States of America so you can make all sorts of leaps of faith and then arrive at an objective standard of right and wrong and you can make these subjective leaps of faith in a theistic direction a Jewish direction Christian Muslim or a secular direction they all require subjective leaps of faith like all intellectual discussions as this guy points out depend upon axioms right some perspective that is accepted as true that becomes the basis for an inference that we must assume certain things to be true in order to reason at all our opposites equal is reality intelligible does reality even exist these are all things we might have to decide on one way or another in order to use various forms of logic so whether I really hear or whether the law of gravity is really true or whether I'm looking out at a tree life as I experience it it seems to work when I accept the self-evident notion that water is wet that the law of gravity applies that that which looks like concrete usually tends to have all the properties of concrete so I tend not to get lost in the philosophical weeds of you know am I really here is concrete really you know hard is gravity really working everywhere I don't think I can agree with the rest though when Ben says we don't believe that we think 2 plus 2 equals 4 because it's evolutionarily beneficial we believe 2 plus 2 equals 4 always and everywhere because it's true is he claiming that having the ability to do math or even regard something as true is not beneficial to survival personally I think being able to collectively reason or believe that 2 predators plus 2 predators equals 4 predators or that 2 pieces of fruit plus 2 pieces of fruit equals 4 pieces of fruit might have been helpful to survival I think genetically modified skeptic is so much stronger in his argumentation than Ben Shapiro here even though I sided with Ben Shapiro in that I believe in God I believe in God who gave the Torah I believe in the traditional Orthodox Jewish approach to life but on just the plain facts of argumentation the logic involved the rhetoric involved and the way he goes about talking about things I think genetically modified skeptic here is just light years superior to Ben Shapiro I don't understand why math or logic isn't believed to be useful enough for survival to have developed for that purpose Ben claims that we don't believe in truth because of our evolution but he presents no argument or evidence for this claim because he says nothing to refute the idea that evolution gave rise to human logic he could have skipped all the preamble and just said we believe in objective truth therefore objective truth must exist and made the same point this amounts to nothing but a simple appeal to human intuition human intuition can be wrong though so this isn't a good argument if you can call it an argument at all appeal to intuition has a good ring to it let's add that I don't think Ben is trying to prove God's existence here but is instead trying to show that human logic depends on the assumption of God's existence as the assumption of God's existence supposedly provides ultimate justification for logic to that I ask why? why tack on the assumption that God provides justification for the assumptions necessary for logic rather than just admit those assumptions are made for practical reasons atheists philosophers do it all the time is it simply too uncomfortable to admit that logic might just be a tool we created rather than some transcendent reality? I'm trying to remember something Ben said about facts or feelings what was that? second we make claims with regard to morality but what is morality without a baseline assumption that human beings have inherent worth even utilitarian philosophies the attempt to ignore moral right and wrong in favor of consequentialist outcomes the greatest good for the greatest number for example has to assume something about what makes an outcome good or bad the needs of the many so the big world is confusing and very few of us can effectively rebut or refute the arguments of outgroups so it probably serves an evolutionarily adaptive purpose for most people to have an unfairly derogatory view of outgroups and their arguments and so Ben Shapiro is meeting this human need to dismiss conflicting perspectives away the needs of the few you can't determine the greatest good for the greatest number without determining the greatest good and that has moral premises that have to be assumed the belief in any moral odds require us to believe unprovable truths that must descend from outside ourselves so this argument when Dennis Prager articulated was very strong for me in my 20s I tried to change my life kind of get rid of my unwanted pre-judaism self remake myself according to Judaism but my compulsive self-seeking selfish manipulative egotistical sexually voracious and the attention of voracious appetizers got the best of me and transcended my transcendent commitment to God and to Judaism and the only way I was able to get myself back under control is through years of psychotherapy, years of Alexander Technique years of 12 step programs for me a frontal assault of trying to inculcate transcendent morality into my life did not work that's just my experience it may work for you a lot of people have sufficient psychological or addictive baggage that it perverts any good thing that they then try to bring into their life whether it's self-help converting to a new religion going back to their old religion following a guru if you're as sufficiently screwed up as I have been all these methods of self-help God's help, religious help, just don't cut it again, I agree that moral systems require base assumptions but I don't agree with the rest the chat says Japanese people are not secular they are overwhelmingly secular people I don't know on what basis you say that even if their government structure is something forced on them by the United States after World War II that doesn't determine how they spend their spare time whether or not they observe a religion Japanese are overwhelmingly secular that's just a fact before getting into the argument I want to draw attention to this phrasing even utilitarian philosophies the attempt to ignore moral right and wrong in favor of consequentialist outcomes this paints a picture of people who utilize utilitarian moral systems as knowing right and wrong exist objectively and transcendently and purposely ignoring that fact this fits right in with Ben's repeated characterizations of self-described atheists as dishonest, discontented theists so my life experience is that atheists are no more or less likely to be honest or dishonest to be nice or not nice than religious people with similar levels of IQ now my primary experience of atheists is that they have way above average levels of IQ but on average the atheists I've known have been at least as smart as I am if not smarter so therefore people with a higher IQ tend to see the future more clearly they tend to be more amenable more predisposed to win-win solutions so overall the atheists I've known lead far higher quality lives than on average the religious people I've known because the atheists I've known on average have had probably two standard deviations of IQ on average above the religious people I've known but when I compare religious people and atheists with similar levels of IQ then I don't see any noticeable difference in their levels of honesty, decency and ethical behavior may seem like an unnecessary nitpick but he phrases things like this so often that I think it's purposeful in case anyone forgot Ben thinks the out-group is bad that's another point for reliance on stereotypes I could now it's usually adaptive for most people to have some negative feelings about out-groups count this under smearing the out-group too I guess but we'll just keep it simple okay let's talk about constructing moral frameworks Shapiro's moral system defines God as objectively good and therefore derives all its edicts from the authority of and the chat says people use anything including religion to virtue signal yes and virtue signaling is good right you want people to signal that they're virtuous you don't want people out there signaling that they're bad right everything in nature signals we are part of nature we should be signaling too it's important to virtue signal now there are more and less effective ways of virtue signaling there are more elevated and more base ways of virtue signaling but signaling that you're a fundamentally decent good pro-social person is a very good thing to do even if it's not 100% honest even if you don't always live up to what you're signaling but overall we want people to virtue signal virtue signaling is good God this system assumes God is good as that idea can't be anything but an assumption after all as Ben said God is apart from human beings and if we understood the mind of God then we would be like God in his totality which we are not determining what is right and wrong for him then is largely a process of determining what God has seen this is one of the major ways that I have changed my thinking so in my 20s 30s into my 40s I was convinced that the best way to make good people was to give them a detailed step by step moral code such as that which is presented in the Torah or in some forms of Christianity now that I'm in my 50s I've come to see just based on my life experience combined with my thinking that the best way to get people to behave decently is to connect them with other people such as family in particular I overwhelmingly find that people who have positive feelings towards their family including towards their parents, siblings, their children their spouse they are far more likely to behave in a decent pro-social manner than religious people who are disconnected from other people who are isolated who don't get on well with a family or don't have a family so I've come to see the primary basis for ethical behavior from my empirical experience and also thinking about it logically rationally and empirically is to encourage people to form connections and bonds with other people that seems to overwhelmingly produce more pro-social behavior so when I'm bonded to other people I'm thinking about the people I love when I'm alone, when I get up at 2am in the morning to write on my blog or to plot out a future show because I've got certain people who are particularly important to me or who I want to impress or I want to enter their lives and so I want to do this good work the tiny tiny chance that they might stumble upon it and I want to impress them those ties, those bonds or those fetishized bonds with other people inspire me or give me strength or direct me or guide me it's those bonds that I carry with me even when I'm walking all over Sydney alone, right? I may walk for 8 hours, 20 miles through the eastern suburbs of Sydney alone but I'm carrying with me the people that I love most in the world because what makes my journey through Sydney meaningful is that I then get to talk about it with people that love me and that I love so these ties to other people I think the most profound source of whether someone becomes a decent or generally accent in a pro-social manner, right? People who don't feel accountable connected that loved and loving of others they are the most dangerous whether they are religious or secular said is right and wrong a utilitarian moral system assumes that some outcomes are more desirable than others an individual or more likely a group of individuals decides what these outcomes are then it evaluates based on observation what actions lead to desired outcomes in which lead to undesirable outcomes actions that lead to desired outcomes might be considered good and actions that lead to undesirable outcomes bad so yes, utilitarian moral systems do have to determine what good is in some sense but they don't attempt to establish right and wrong in the same transcendent God-derived sense that Shapiro believes in even without an appeal to divine authority though, they can still work they're working right now in workplaces, schools, secular countries or any place people don't appeal to divine authority or to something like harm or the yeah, just on an empirical basis it seems like everybody has a hero system and we can reach general agreements with particularly people who are like us about what is good and bad wishes of the group how is this possible most humans are actually really good at determining what desirable outcomes are and coming to agreement on that with others yeah, particularly if people are bonded particularly if people are connected genetically and then it also helps if people are connected culturally religiously ideologically, politically the closer people are bonded the easier it is for them to arrive at collective moral codes so many of us are so inherently good at this that it's almost like this trait has propagated among humans because it's been beneficial to our survival or something all moral systems require assumptions but these assumptions do not have to as Ben suggested yeah, so this is one area where I've grown I didn't quite realize that all moral systems including my own including that of traditional Judaism depends upon certain assumptions but it's also true for secular moral systems justifiably puts it descend from outside of humanity moral cooperation can still happen without invoking God because people are capable of coming to a consensus on desired outcomes without an assumption of God's authority third, we live as though we believe in choice as though we are capable of making decisions in some way based on our own will what in materialism would allow for such choice how would such choice come about if we're just balls of meat wandering around in space how exactly do we make choices I agree that we live as though we have choices I'm also a determinist someone who thinks that all events in the universe including human decisions and actions are causally inevitable I don't think humans have some special ability to generate thoughts or decisions randomly or in a way that's detached from the rest of the universe we have to live like we believe in free will just like we have to live as though we believe in objective good and evil right even the most secular the most atheist person effectively operates as though people have free will and there are objective standards for good and evil it's just how we are wired but that our psychological activity is totally dependent on prior causes the output and even construction of our brains are dependent on input not some abstract supernatural part of the self still I like all other determinists live as though I have choices how do I do this I think a better question is how could I not do this what does it look like to live as if you have no choices if upon the realization that you have no choices in terms of libertarian free will you go about your life as before or do absolutely nothing for the rest of your life or even end your life is any of that acting as if you have no choices more so than any other way of acting no I submit that acting as though we have no choices is literally impossible regardless of your philosophical beliefs if that's the case then why worry about it if we can still live normal lives while accepting determinism then why do we need God to justify a belief in free will does accepting right if you love your family and have some friends you appreciate your your profession you have some hobbies right for most people that meet their their meaning needs now it's usually easier in in a very transitory migratory country like the united states or Australia to build a family with the help of a religious community right generally speaking people choose what kind of sex life they want to have and then choose their religion based on that if you just want to bang you're likely to choose a secular life you want to get married and raise kids right you're very likely going to choose in a particular religious community because it's just easier to raise kids generally speaking in a religious community than lacking that determinism make people's lives demonstrably worse somehow if so Ben should present some data to back that up is accepting determinism simply uncomfortable to Ben if so he can discard it I suppose but he should clarify that's what he's doing for the sake of his emotional comfort not out of some other necessity God is necessary for these thoughts or at least the possibility of God trash God altogether and you can't explain why you would believe in objective truth or morality or even your own ability to choose no you can't believe in the same kind of objective transcendent truth morality or choice as Ben if you don't assume God's existence but as I've shown one can still utilize logic as a practical tool construct and participate in moral systems which foster cooperation and go about their life as though they have choices yes we must assume God's existence or the possibility of God's existence to think the way Ben does but why must we think the way Ben does there's no argument for that presented here at least so far what I worry is that his regular viewers will take these arguments as evidence that atheists have no access to truth or morality at all even in a practical sense even though that's not what these arguments demonstrate but there's no need to worry about Ben Shapiro anyone who's a deep thinker it's not going to be spending much time with Ben Shapiro the only practical reason that I can see anyone tuning into Ben Shapiro is because they don't want to put much thought much effort into a topic and they just want to hear that the outgroup is wrong so no need in my estimation to have any concern about how much of a concern about Ben Shapiro to the extent that people consume Ben Shapiro I think they'll have in many ways a less clear understanding of reality and it'll have a negative effect on their ability to distinguish what is true from what is false but he does do some good work he is funny he is insightful at times he provides a good corrective to many mainstream media perspectives so yeah overall I think that Ben Shapiro has a negative effect but I don't think it's that dramatic let's run Ben Shapiro through the garrometer the guru according to the decoding the gurus someone who is potentially exploitive who produces wisdom meaning a corrupt epistemic appearance of useful knowledge but has none of the substance I think that's pretty accurate assessment of Ben Shapiro Galaxy brainness someone who presents ideas that appear to be too profound for an average mind to comprehend but are in truth reasonably trivial if not nonsensical someone who presents himself as a font of wisdom and someone who possesses an all-encompassing knowledge that spans multiple disciplines and topics yeah that's Ben Shapiro his arguments often link together disparate concepts such as quantum mechanics logic the nature of consciousness the guru presents himself as a polymath who claims to offer novel insights with reference to many fields someone who eludes their own accomplishments and exaggerate them to a shameless degree I'm not sure I've ever heard Ben Shapiro exaggerate his own accomplishment someone who confidently offers hot takes on technical topics and dismisses the perspectives of genuine experts yeah that's Ben Shapiro so I think it's largely a confidence trick that relies on his recipients being convinced of his unique intellectual powers that's true so if people or his recipients are expected not to dig too deeply to fully understand the references that he makes so he's most effective when the recipient does not understand them at all so that's that's fair being a guru is a social role of gurus only a guru there are people who regard them as such so key characteristic of course is the establishment of clear in-group and out-group identities in-group is good out-groups are bad yeah that's Ben Shapiro so gurus tend to act in a manipulative fashion with their followers and potential allies this will take the form of excessive flattery such as saying that their followers are more perceptive more morally worthy and more interested in the pursuit of truth than outsiders yeah that's Ben Shapiro guru will often put effort into signaling a close and personal relationship with their followers encouraging the development of delusional or parasocial ideation I am not sure what's going on there anti-establishment is necessary that the orthodox the establishment the mainstream media and the expert consensus is largely wrong release blinkered and limited and generally incapable of grappling with the real issues so yeah I'd give Shapiro a 5 out of 5 on that so if a guru is merely agreeing with expert consensus on a topic such as COVID then there's no reason to listen to the guru you'd want to listen to the relevant experts so there's a trade-off the more the gurus followers distrust standard sources of knowledge such as that coming from government agencies or universities the greater the perceived value that the guru provides so gurus are strongly incentivized to move in the direction of bogus conspiracy theories grievance mongering the feelings of frustration and oppression being excluded and disregarded deprived of one's manifest rights and recognitions these are a potent set of negative emotions that gurus tend to tap into I'd give Ben Shapiro a 5 out of 5 in this area self-aggrandizement and narcissism it's impossible to be a guru without a sense of grandiosity and an inflated idea of one's self-importance I'd give Ben Shapiro a 5 out of 5 here Cassandra complex gurus like to claim prescience among their many talents so this seems to be something Ben Shapiro is into revolutionary theories does he claim revolutionary theories I'm not sure pseudo profound bull that seems to be Ben Shapiro's stock in trade conspiracy mongering I'm I think he tends towards that profiteering I'm unsure about that for now we'll reserve judgment on whether or not that's what Shapiro was aiming for if he gives us reason to think that's the point he's actually trying to make we'll consider it foreshadowing there are those atheists who claim that logic ought to forbid God that belief in God is not merely unevidence but actually irrational I was suggesting that somebody as intelligent as Jesus would have been an atheist if he had known what we know today in the words of Adam Gopnik writing for The New Yorker those who are atheists have quote a monopoly on legitimate forms of knowledge about the natural world and that isn't true it's good to hear Ben finally refer to a subset of atheists when that's who he's discussing rather than speaking about atheism as if it's a monolith that said I am not one of the atheists he's referring to here I don't think logic forbids or disproves the existence of God or God's logical arguments for God can be internally consistent or in other words logically valid in order to show the truth of its conclusion though such an argument must also have premises which are true the reason I have never found any logical argument for God's existence convincing is that I've never found one which is both logically valid and contains only true premises so I'll give my thoughts on the argument to follow but mainly because I think you guys would find it entertaining not because I think logic necessarily forbids or disproves God as it turns out there are a bevy of logically consistent arguments offered on behalf of God take for example the first cause proof advanced by Aristotle as refined by Thomas Aquinas Edward Fazer lays out the argument in his book five proofs of the existence of God the argument goes something like this first change exists in the world but all change is the actualization of a potential for that change so if something is changing it's because there was a potential for that change in the thing no potential can be actualized unless something already actual actualizes it so that means that all change is caused by something already actual this means either there is an infinite regress of actualizers or there is a purely actual actualizer this is sort of like the old joke about the philosopher and the