Stefan and Jordan Peterson

I've made no secret that I'm a huge fan of Stefan Molyneux and his philosophy podcasts / videocasts. The various "truth about" series have been thoroughly documented, especially the ones about Trump, and his interviews have been fantastic. An athiest, he has nevertheless, as Vox Day put it, given some of the best Christian sermons one can hear.

This is a long conversation - and well worth every single minute. It delves into myth, mindset, self talk, the need for the ineffable and the subjective, and that's just getting started.

Heresy

The Didact takes a look at one of the heresies that nearly tore apart the church and western civilization. One that bears more than a few similarities to today.

It came to a very sobering end:

The Cathar Heresy ended with the massacre of thousands of followers of their pseudo-religion and the burning alive of over 200 Cathar prefects. It resulted in the establishment of the Inquisition, a deeply maligned and thoroughly misunderstood organisation that nonetheless has gone down in history as one of the most infamous and feared defenders of the Faith ever seen.

The Growing Realization of the Necessity of Christianity

Vox Day takes a look at Tom Howard's journey from religion, and back, adding this tidbit:

And it occurs to me that one of the keys to the success of the Alt-West is going to be a) Christians realizing that Churchianity is not Christianity and driving it out of their institutions and places of worship combined with b) non-Christians realizing that Christianity is, far from being a societal negative, a societal necessity for any Western civilization.

I had never thought of it as necessary before, but damn if it doesn't make sense.

First, one of the reasons why, despite Hoyt's huns, and Eric Raymond, and Larry all having a hands-off attitude toward Vox, I'd gravitated towards the vox populi blog was because independent thoughts, often from separate directions (especially in Eric Raymond's case), all were converging on a shared set of truths.

Eric, for one, had begun coming to uncomfortable conclusions about whether or not the western civilization we cherished was at all sustainable with the ideals of feminism per se. He still has a hard spot against christianity in line with his atheist/wiccan leanings, though he had also remarked that "white" in victorian-era literature was often about behavior than skin color, and could show the text to demonstrate the truth of the assertion. It's relevant because it's one of many factors that points out that the past isn't the totalitarian theocratic straightjacket progressives teach it to be. He also has come to several uncomfortable conclusions about race, and statistical behavior norms, that, alongside his articles on guns, drive some of his more liberal commenters batshit insane.

Another is Stefan Moleneux - who in several videos now has not only pointed out systemic problems with atheism that drive him to the conclusion that he'd rather live in a society of Christians than one run by atheists, but has also done a video on what evidence or arguments exist that there may be a god, and how the Catholic church built western civilization. Yes, he's still an atheist, but...

Also see the interview he did with Scott Adams, where they both discuss how their attitude toward Christianity changed, even if Scott particularly is still fervently Atheist.

It's not specifically about whether or not God exists, or Christianity is true, but that person after person who puts time and thought into these issues is coming to the conclusion that the tenets of the alt-right have merit (Eric) and that regardless of what one believes, that Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, are not only good things, but necessary for the attitudes that built our civilization, and for it to flourish.

And they're making these conclusions against their own personal interests.

Evidence for the Existence of God

One of the things I admire about Stefan Molyneux is his ability to face things he doesn't like. One of these areas has been his recent set of videos discussing religion in a positive light (something he incidentally shares with Scott Adams). In this one, he discusses what evidence exists to point toward the existence of the divine.

To refer back at first to Scott Adams, I'm not one for the meat-robot theory. I fully acknowledge we are not rational, often are run by our subconscious, and at a very low level are affected hour to hour by our hormones, our hunger, and our moods. That rationality is something we fight for between bouts of rationalization.

And yet, and yet, it is something we fight for. It is something that we can develop systems to affect, distance ourselves, develop new habits.

One quote jumped out at me: That there were times he'd rather be taking orders than be the one making decisions. He clarifies this - that there are times it would be nice to say "it is as god wills it" and leave it at that, to have the humility to say he wasn't worthy or capable, and needed help.

One, I find it interesting in light of recently reading Marc Miller's Agent of the Imperium -Jonathan Bland's entire purpose is to be the decider, to not only have the authority, but to assume the guilt for the hard decisions.

I don't think it's being fair. He makes a good point, but he also forgets that not all is within our grasp and control. We can control how we react to things, but so much is beyond the ability of our decisions to affect in any meaningful way. Whether you say "God wills it" or "It's Fate" - it is a path to accepting that which cannot be changed, so we can face the rest. Of course, it's possible to go too far, into fatalism, and forget the ha-ha only serious Christian saying that god helps those who help themselves.

Also, it's worth remembering as Vox Day has pointed out (in the Irrational Atheist), and as many others have, that science rose out of the Christian faith in part as a way to explore that which God has left us, to better understand it, and through it, his works.  It's been pointed out elsewhere in the alt-right that those who get into it to discover truth, no matter whether they start out as hedonists, or for whatever reason, end up on or headed towards a religious path as part of their travels.

As the lady Stefan is talking to mentioned, written on a science building, a stark reminder of what she never consiously learned in the religious upbringing of her childhood, but was there all the time in the religion she'd left behind - and the truth shall set you free.

Stefan Molyneux and Scott Adams on Youtube

It's been a long time on this rock, and I'm sure in five or ten years, I'll think I'm even wiser. Or at least learned a few more lessons the hard way. Nevertheless, I was watching an interview with Scott Adams and Stefan Molyneux, and I was floored by the number of threads that came together for me that I'd been mulling a while.

First - background - I've been through most of the political spectrum at one time or another, in search of truth. I've left most of it as well for the same damn reason. One truth I hold close is this: life is not perfect, there is no perfect choice, there is no ideal, failure modes are a constant, and that people are emotional. All of that has to be factored into whatever decision that one tries to make.

The "people are not rational one" was perhaps the hardest to suss out for me, and "failure is constant, good enough is good enough" the most difficult one for me to accept.

So I found the interview fascinating - especially Scott's discussion of systems vs goals - and my immediate thoughts of how that ties into antifragility, especially given his stated position that we are not rational (in many ways he's right). I also found fascinating his recent articles on persuasion in the light of Aristotelean Dialectic vs Rhetoric, and the greater importance in most cases of addressing the emotional state.

While it is often a broken and incomplete rationality – see again the observation that people are generally irrational – you find more of it, more often, in engineering disciplines because those require yes or no answers that are either true or false no matter how you feel. Of course, those people then can sometimes be more, compensatingly, irrational in completely different areas. Often in the belief that people are just as programmable and malleable as electronics. This last has been around since the industrial revolution.

It's interesting that Scott Adams, Eric Raymond, and yes, even Stefan Molyneux in discussions on atheist versus religious people, have now made similar points. Namely: religion in general having a self-governing set of precepts that restricts both the amount of human evil and its scope, as well offering a higher standard to live up to and judge by than "law".

I'll also be commenting more, later, on "systems", and other factors, later. In the meantime, go watch the video.