we are live i'm here with lina how are you doing hey david nice good to be back thanks for having me see you again and uh as i promised before going live i'm gonna just button my lip i'm gonna let you talk lead the conversation i'll speak when spoken to how's that uh that's fine yeah i mean there's a few different topics we wanted to address i think um there's a few points i wanted to go back to on the last discussion i did get a chance to look at your video on hard solves as i thought that was interesting uh and then i know that you there was talk about abortion that we were having some disagreements on uh and then i think you mentioned you wanted to talk about gender so i didn't mention that you mentioned that when you reached out on the calendar calendly app and uh yeah that would be fun um the abortion thing i think it's like beating a dead horse i don't really want to talk about that again but one of my listeners one of my listeners and guests they're interested maybe in talking to you about different topics including maybe abortion that's up to you he's going to email you okay so let's start so well i i want to let you lead but let's talk about the since you mentioned it let's talk about that silly uh solipsism mantra that i did did you listen to a couple of loops or did you just get bored and stop right away i listened to it once it kind of reminded me of the conversation we had a bit i think like the i mean i didn't watch it enough to be able to word it exactly but you have a certain way in which you connect the concept we were talking about of like direct experience and kind of in your mind that somehow logically follows to like god and i just fail to see the connection there being um and so yeah i mean i just i didn't really feel like you tackled heart catholicism necessarily um yeah is that the one is that the episode where i just say over and over and over again that either i'm god or god is god and if uh if i'm not yeah a lot of topologies um yeah a lot of uh just kind of like loose kind of philosophical sounding but it didn't really like concretely explain to me how you're you're getting from one step to the to the next yeah yeah for clarity i don't think there is a solution to hard solipsism so i don't even try to to solve that okay let's jump right into the gender stuff because a lot of my listeners i've been getting feedback about you and it's funny it's f it really is funny it's amusing to me because i got backlash i got accused of being a satanist a bad catholic and just like an anarchist i'm this i'm that because i had you on the show and i was friendly to you and it's like i completely disagree with all the criticisms i got okay i could take i could take all the criticisms like yeah i'm not a good person i'm not a good catholic whatever but to be kind and loving to any of my guests i don't take that criticism it's just like there's no basis there's no basis in that so i want to talk about this whole thing why people were all upset and what reactions you get and uh my hunch is it's because you're young i think that's the main thing because i've had i've had older i've had old i've had a couple of older uh guys on that were trans and i don't even know if you're identifying as transgender i never asked you because i'm not in my business but there were a couple of older guys all my feedback negative feedback was like this guy's trans whatever it's like who cares none of my business but i had a couple of older trans guys i never got any negative feedback so i think it's because you're young what do you think and are you trans do you identify as trans or what well first of all happy pride month uh second of all i don't know i don't know if i'm trans or not well yeah i didn't i didn't assume i didn't assume i mean i was confused about the name lena i think it wouldn't have been a problem that you had i think i mean when it comes to like assuming people's genders we kind of you know when you first meet someone you you kind of assume based on what they look like and then if you're not sure you ask them and you work from there i mean it's it's not a difficult issue in my opinion which gender do you think i am i don't know i don't really care to be honest you're you're good looking i'll give you that oh i was not fishing i was not fishing for that i was not fishing for that no you got a you got a clean face you got a good uh good features you like my fuzzy hair what color are your eyes are they brown like my fuzzy hair uh they're yellow brown yellowish green greenish brown something like that green sure yeah yeah so i mean i'm just uh not really that interested in the whole gender discussion okay um i mean you you can agree with me like sex and gender are different things right yeah i only really am concerned with sex that makes me sound like a sex maniac but i'm only concerned yeah i mean as far as sex goes i'm male and that's never going to change that's cool unless i like go through hormones therapy don't do it don't do it don't do it don't do it oh why not don't do it don't do it i i heard you why not i just want you to be healthy and have everything your hormones balanced says nature mother nature intended you can do what you want you could do it do whatever you want but uh i mean my advice would be just take as few medical interventions as possible right like if you're wearing laughter now right yeah yeah so how come you're wearing okay like otherwise i can't read the all the vital signs on my screen so your natural eyes are insufficient they're defective well i mean not entirely right like you can still see a little bit without him yeah but if you if you told me look david i have a headache i've got a headache should i take an aspirin i'd be like well try not taking an aspirin but if you really have to okay i think it's okay you can take an aspirin you know like i'm not totally against medical interventions and if you told me i want to chop my dick and balls off and get female hormones i'd be like well i'd recommend you don't but if you want to go ahead do what you want to do but you know where i stand i'd rather you didn't you know i'd rather you didn't take the aspirin when you have a headache i have a headache right now and i'm not taking an aspirin why not i just want i just want people to feed the beast a little bit less less and less and by the beast i mean the pharmaceutical industries you know you have to bear in mind i'm a little bit uh paranoid or whatever about governments and uh big pharma so don't take hormones because i'll be giving money to the pharmaceutical companies that's one reason the other reason is your health i think you should just stay as natural as possible like you know if someone said i'm not feeling well i wouldn't say go to the pharmacy i'd say get plenty of rest and drink water i just want to keep things simple and if i could have a like my wife she told me hey david instead of wearing reading glasses when you're on the computer why don't you like do these exercises where you can improve your muscles in your eyes and you can get your vision back and i said well it sounds cool send me the links whatever but she never sent me links but she bought me can i respond to that because the reality is that if you don't wear your contacts you're actually gonna strain your eyes more is that right yeah no but she said there's a product there's there are these pinhole glasses and i actually bought them on amazon because she told me to buy them they have pin holes in them instead of glass and that helps somehow supposed to help your eyes so i'm going to try it but i mean was it science that figured out the pinholes i don't know it was we tested them right okay you want to talk now you want to talk about science now well it's all related right like we're talking about medical treatment for a condition yeah right do you have a good night or gender dysphoria yeah do you have gender dysphoria well yeah you do you're not happy you're not happy being a guy i mean i'm not happy being a human i guess i feel like okay overall discomfort uh it's a weird experience welcome to that specifically with with my like gender identity and expression uh it's been cause for considerable stress can you talk a little bit about without getting too personal about what kind of like uh peer groups you have around you uh with your age group maybe the younger people the older people what kind of feedback are you getting are people bullying you what what's it like well i'm not in high school uh i don't have like a stable social uh network really at this point you said you're a loner right a loner yeah i've always been like i've always had friends but i've always been kind of an on my own sort of person so i've just had like you know a few close friends at different points in time um but i genuinely try to you know keep the people who are supportive around me and and you know let go of the the ones who aren't so sadly i haven't really uh spent a lot of time with my parents but um yeah i mean it's again like i said it's not really that big of an issue for me uh i don't make friends based off of gender i don't but two people yell at you in the street gender do people yell at you do people yell insults at you on the street i had a kid on the other bike say something like work a girl or something like i don't remember what he said but that's not that's not an insult that's encouragement you go again i'll take it like a compliment even if it is an insult but i want to share a little i told you i'm not going to talk too much but i can't help myself i'm going to tell you a little bit about my uh beautiful wife she was harassed from an early age because she developed breasts early and she was tall and good looking and she was like the miss miss greek of her town in ontario and stuff like that so she's like a beauty queen and people were like bullying her because of that and then uh you know as she developed she's got a sort of a manly beauty about her and certain male characteristics and so she's been accused of being a drag queen a transsexual transvestite like whatever her whole life like just by different ignorant people like even rand i've seen it myself like when we've traveled around europe people like yelling at her in the street random strangers like saying hey you're a drag queen you're this you're that you're and uh i'm sorry that you had to deal with that hatred yeah i it's a roger i know that i love and support her and uh i'm happy that she has a loving and supporting husband so she's got a thick skin because of that and she's also a little bit disappointed in the younger generation that they're not a little bit tougher because she had to grow to be she had to get tough and she's very tough and um so she's a little doesn't stop this mean that they didn't have to go through that i huh like if you're if you're all tough it's because the world made you tough right yeah you're all soft it's because you didn't really you weren't really pushed a lot in life right yeah so is it really bad to be soft or is it really just a good thing because it means that you didn't yeah like it's kind of like it's bravery of virtue right if we didn't have fear if we didn't have struggle yeah these things would be virtues yeah i see what you're saying i see what you're saying but there's this sort of uh tendency i think now to say oh you he used the wrong pronoun and it's a microaggression or that's maybe that's a macro aggression i don't know but it's clear like the persecution against lgbt is increasing i mean it's it's it might not be like worse off in general but like it's it's getting worse in certain areas much worse than in others do you are you are you attracted to men like you your sexual preference is men or what if you don't mind my eyes if you don't mind my asking well just just to finish the point about your your wife thank you for sharing uh she seems like a lovely person and uh i'm sorry that she goes through that i'm glad that she has tough skin she's specialized switching to to sexual orientation now uh is this podcast like pg-13 or i don't know you can say whatever you want and if i get flagged to get flagged but i think they've heard it all before if you're like guys i think they're gonna they're gonna be okay with that yeah i mean so like i want to say i'm straight but my sexuality like my different sexual kinks and desires like they all play into the way in which i express myself and the way in which i want to have relationships so i don't fit nicely into you know category of like oh just girls are just guys uh i'm not really attracted to like the masculine but like this is this is gonna sound weird but like the masculine energy i feel goes with the female energy well and that's a good pair and so if i'm expressing the feminine side of a relationship i would want that masculine energy from someone else well yeah i'm in the same situation i'm a biological man but i'm a little bit feminine and my wife's a biological woman but she's a little bit masculine and i wouldn't have it any other way i don't want to be a jock and i don't want a princess feminine woman period period yeah and that doesn't make you a woman yeah i'm not a woman i i mean yeah i can fantasize about all the power i would have as a woman like that would be so much fun but i mean uh well so like are you a femme boy then or are you just more of a kind of like you said a more effeminate male 1 i'm just not ultra masculine ultra macho like i mean it's uh it's all relative i definitely don't have an idea you're right i don't have an identity there's no like there's no check box on the lgbtq plus whatever thing where i would ever ever ever check the box it's just i think there there are men who are a little bit more sensitive and passive and feminine and receptive and they're women who are more pushy and aggressive like um i have to admit that i'm sort of attracted to lesbians like certain lesbians not the not the pretty lesbians but like the the rough edgy ones i'm kind of attracted to them sometimes you know like tabitha the hairdresser if you remember her from reality tv tablet to take over no but i was gonna say i fell in love with an olympic weightlifter she uh well she didn't look all but like she didn't look like like don't think of the villain from deadpool think of like she was just like a sweet she was like five foot four you know she just looked like a cute girl in a dress and then she'd get to the gym and uh yeah i left more than it was uh i'll admit my my crush was on uh that polish mma fighter in the ufc uh joanna chic or whatever her name was oh yes do you remember her she was tough that's the kind of woman i like a tough raunchy potty-mouth woman that's just take no nonsense i love that but if i see if i see like a six-pack of muscles on a woman i'm immediately turned off 100 turned off don't like it yeah so it sounds like we're uh sounds like we're both on all the same pages when it comes to yeah agenda so i mean like you would equally condemn the sorts of um backlash that we're seeing from the right when it comes to i think there's like you know 300 plus anti-lgbtq bills that have been written up in just like the past year well i'm my position as a catholic position my position is the catholic position which is that i love the sinner hate the sin like i think it is uh it's not good for the individual or for the society to be for example exposing children to all the lgbtq stuff and the drag stuff and all that even though you know i've watched pretty much every episode of drag race um but um and i you know i have a certain uh preference for some of the guys versus other of the guys and i was frankly i was a bit revolted when they had a woman on there like a woman pretending to be a man doing drag i thought that was a bit weird um got mech remember gottmick don't know if you know i don't i mean so drag is just performative right it's like yeah but there's a whole transition trail a man or a woman or a or an elf or a you know whatever a demon matter i like doing demons yeah i mean well maybe don't be demons around kids but uh but they're teaching i mean i don't know don't like let's let's get back to the whole it's a sim thing because i that's where i would push back on i would agree with you that it's a sin like leviticus what is it like 17 30 something uh you know if i'm if a man wear a woman's clothes he should be put to death or something so what's your take on that like where does morality come into the picture i i personally i don't i don't mind uh if people want to dress flamboyantly because it also says in the bible that women should not be like wearing makeup and have fancy hairdos right oh show me your outfit again i missed that the bible is you know explicitly uh homophobic explicitly you know anti a very patriarchal gender roles yeah and that makes sense within like the context of of first century goat herders right but as far as like a divine commandment goes it seems a bit lacking uh you know murdering someone's wrong how does wearing a dress hurt other people well where where is the societal collapse coming in yeah i mean i when it comes to uh homosexual acts um it's intrinsically disordered and i'm getting i'm gonna get to your answer to answer your question okay but it's like things like homosexual acts i would place in the same category as adultery sleeping with someone that's not your wife or you know masturbation like that's intrinsically disordered it's wrong okay um looking at pornography i guess i was wrong adultery on there too as a as a polyamorous person myself uh i i see uh adultery as just as bad as wearing a dress worse worse i think it's worse i think it's much worse because if you're just wearing a dress i mean that's a lot less um i mean well my point is that neither of them are harmful so so maybe why do you think adultery is horrible well i i completely subscribe to the natural law to the extent that i'm able to as a flood fallible human being i i'm striving to conform to the natural law which is the natural law which is that humans have in nature and men are men and women are women okay yes some men are more feminine some women are more masculine whatever but uh there's a human nature and that mirror marriage marriage is both natural and supernatural and it's order to procreation and self-mutual self-giving and these sorts of things permanent commitment to each other lifelong and not closely related so i'm against i'm against incest i'm against uh you know gay sex i'm against masturbation i'm against adultery i'm against all these things because that's what the natural law teaches as explained in particular by the catholic church and the catholic church does a good job of of teaching us why sexual morality is so important and why it's so narrowly defined and i buy into it 100 without any doubt and i'm not awkward or embarrassed about any of this catholic teachings on sexuality because it's it's uh it's true it's it's obvious to me it's completely obvious to me that masturbation is wrong gay sex is wrong group sex is wrong adultery is wrong pornography is wrong abortion's wrong all these things are wrong right consciousness i'm not wrong i'm hearing a reason why i'm hearing you say that you believe it well it's because like i'm trying to explain to you the i i have a conception of this universe as well ordered and everything has a role everything has not just one role everything has multiple roles like this is a magnifying glass and its primary purpose is to so i can zoom in because my eyes are defective and i can look at stuff more closely so if i try to use this as a dildo i might feel good but it's wrong it's just wrong it's because that's not what it's made for and that's not what my butthole was made for okay so that's basic examination of the reality of the nature of the world that god created and if you're not a theist if you're not a monotheist you have absolutely no reason to respect this opinion of mine you just think whatever you do you and i'll do me in your world view you probably just think well if it feels good it's good and if i'm not harming other people then that's fine and i don't have an argument against that other than please become a monotheist as soon as possible so that you can limit yeah you can make your morality more narrow like mine because that's where the freedom lies even if because even if we agreed on the god proposition it still wouldn't convince me that wearing a dress is wrong so let's assume that i'm a monotheist again what's wrong with wearing a dress yeah i mean i've it's just introducing confusion i guess it's like if i see you and you're all feminine and sexy i might be attracted to you and try to like take you home and then whoops you know i'm suddenly in an awkward situation so like i mean this is this is not gonna happen as a good catholic uh man because i'm married i'm not looking elsewhere i'm not gonna go home with any woman much less someone that's just tricking me into thinking they're a woman but there is that danger generally in society that we could confuse people about what's what is human nature what is a woman what is a man what is a family what is intimacy what is sex like uh it's it's all yeah typically um typically deeply misogynistic uh muslims or like uh middle eastern people will will say you know you women can't wear you know you gotta cover up completely in a in a burka or whatever because if i see even a little bit of skin i can't control myself so it kind of sounds like it's similar to what you're saying like you can't have people looking like women because then you you won't then you'll commit adultery in your heart or something yeah well it's all i mean it's you know at the end of the day it's uh you're free to do what you want you can wear a dress all you want whatever i'm not going to lose any sleep over that well the bible says otherwise right god commands the death penalty for it so don't just say that it's like you can do whatever because that's no but you can you can choose to do whatever you want to do you can even murder babies or whatever you can do right but it's wrong you agree with leviticus that it's like an abomination i think it's wrong for a man to dress up like a woman um even when i see it done for fiction just to be funny it still bothers me like i i watched yeah like you might not prescribe the death penalty but it's deserving of the death penalty it's the same moral egregious nature that's not what the uh that's not what my religion teaches my religion and this is where i'm gonna um sort of correct a misconception about old testament verses new testament okay as a catholic i don't just stone everyone that the old testament says to stone why not because i'm weak and effeminate but because the catholic church uh understands that the teachings of the old testament a lot of them were concessions to the stiffneck people the jews like jesus himself says in the new testament he says what does moses teach about divorce and they say well moses allowed divorce and jesus said yes but that was a concession because you're a stiff-necked people so we need to understand that the the fullness of the jewish faith is catholicism and catholicism has a very well uh delineated sexual morality and it also has a code of canon law which i've just read in its com in its entirety and it's very moderate it's very um you know forgiving and very um you know uh kind and generous i would say and there's no stoning whatsoever there's no death penalty prescribed for for anything the the worst penalty we see in the civil courts uh sorry in the ecclesiastical courts is excommunication where you're denied communion you're excluded from the church until you repent like what happened to nancy pelosi recently what would be the um transgression for that for what for that punishment there are many there are many like for example if europe just give me one just if you're promoting abortion as uh as a politician okay so like and then it would be like a would be like a sin that's not deserving of excommunication masturbating so masturbating everyone would be excommunicated can you imagine like everyone's ex communicated suddenly at least all the men i don't know what the women get up to uh so well everyone masturbates uh so masturbation isn't as bad as uh abortion it's not as morally egregious as abortion yeah for sure because they have different punishments right yeah they're all kinds of grades and they're they're um yeah so some some sins are worse than others we can agree on that uh so where does uh where it is wearing a dress fallen where on the where on the spectrum of sim does that fall the cross dressing yeah it's very minor for me it's way less aggressive not as bad as masturbating or no it's not as bad as masturbating as far as i'm concerned what is it worse then what is the worst sin no what is it worse than not maybe what's the word i mean that's probably harder to do than saying at least one thing that's worse than cross-dressing like if someone uh if someone stole a pencil from work or if someone put on a dress like a man put on a dress which one is worse like stealing that pencil from work uh i've worn dresses and i've stolen pencils from work so i've done both and i don't really feel too bad about it either so you're putting it really low you're saying like it's like pretty much like like god's mildly annoyed if you like find out about it but like yeah i mean i don't know i it depends what your agenda is if your agenda is to take down western civilization destroy the family destroy the church and to make a mockery of god and marriage and intimacy then yeah you're in deep trouble but i don't think that's your particular agenda you just like the dress right you just like enjoy wearing the dress not a big deal i don't think it's a big deal i think that's a great transition point uh to talk about my agenda and like what i what i'm looking out of conversations with people why i'm looking for the truth why i care about this stuff so i'm a socialist so i believe like my highest virtue is individual freedom right above all else i want to maximize freedom for people uh and i see a few byproducts as a result of that goal or like of achieving that goal uh namely equality but also a few other good things that aren't necessarily the goal in and of themselves right like my goal is not to make everyone equal my goal is to provide everyone with as much freedom as possible and then if everyone has maximal freedom then that would make us all equal so i am for the enlightenment values um i stand with um lock and hume and the logical positivists um i you know stand for signs in general as people have already grasped from my last uh interview and i believe in non-violence i believe that violence should only ever be used for self-defense uh that that's the proper use of violence and that we all have a moral obligation to defend liberty to defend freedom uh to defend the the highest team in virtue sounds good to me i mean uh it just the only thing that we really differ on i guess would be um deciding what's harmful and what's not harmful and what what's the difference between freedom and license like i've willingly placed myself under you know in slavery to god who's freedom itself so i place myself in slavery i can't do this thou shalt do this thou shalt not do that and this and that the other thing and they're all these dogmas and i have to believe all these things that don't make sense to me because they transcend my intellect they're not irrational per se but they go beyond my reason i'll give you a little anecdote this um week i just sort of stumbled upon two contra to what i thought were apparently contradictory dogmas and i've always said i'll leave christianity if i find two dogmas that contradict each other and i was really perplexed and trying to understand like how can these be reconciled these two dogmas let's hear them you want to hear it okay so one of them is and i've known about both since i entered the church but i hadn't really thought about it okay so one of the dogmas is that uh only the second person of the trinity incarnated or took on flesh jesus christ the son of god so you got god the father god the son god the holy spirit but the father did not take on flesh this the the sun did and the holy ghost did not and the other dogma is that and these are defeated dogmas they're the highest grade of dogma okay because there's a hierarchy of grades of dogma the highest grade of dogma the only the second person of the trinity incarnated but there's this other dogma that's also de fite that says that every activity that happens outside of the godhead like in creation for example every ad extra that's a technical latin term every ad extra activity is common to all three persons so the incarnation is add extra so it has to be the work of all three persons so how can we have a dogma that says only the second person incarnated so i was trying to wrestle with this all week and i finally found the solution by digging back in the history books like i emailed about 10 catholics that seemed pretty sharp about theology and they didn't get back to me i got one uh reply that wasn't really uh that was just sort of a colloquial catholic friend that wasn't really well versed in theology doesn't really care about theology and he just uh he gave me his point of view but i was looking for something more technical to really convince me that there's not a contradiction but i finally found in my own research uh historical document that uh that explains it i you know i'm a little bit uncomfortable with it i haven't quite understood it but i've got the document i'm going to read it i'm going to study it but all of this to say that i'm in an awkward situation where there are things that don't necessarily make sense but i have to accept them and my faith was not shaken by this apparent contradiction this week that i was dealing with i was just curious what does the church teach because the church obviously has confronted this same apparent contradiction and they must have an answer what's the answer and none of my catholic friends could tell me i had to go and dig it up myself and i'm going to read it i haven't read the document but yet but i'm going to read it and i start reading it tonight so just to let you know that i'm in a situation where i've got constraints on what i can do what i can think what i can say and there are some things that i don't want to think say or do that i have to do because otherwise it's a sin of omission so um it seems like i've put myself in a situation where it's a very narrow path that i have to walk whereas when i was an atheist i could do whatever i wanted to do and everything was okay and you know i smiled on all my gay friends activities because you could do literally do whatever you want doesn't really matter you see so if i might jump in yeah of course yeah so you're conflating definitions you're confusing personal freedoms with uh like world views or like beliefs right like i'm talking about like actual human rights as far as legal like legality goes and you're talking about you know different doctrines uh which i'm curious i mean like we can have that conversation i was going to throw in the fact that uh like the oldest uh conception of like the the three-headed godhead uh would be like the trimierty from hindu religion right you've got brahma and you've got shiva and you've got vishnu right and they form the the creator the sustainer and the destroyer right and then you know the first criticism of that is well if those three things are the same thing then how to isn't that like internally contradictory and yeah it is there's there's no like solving that uh and that's kind of like the whole problem with the god hypothesis it's like okay god exists now explain reality and and none of reality makes any sense when you have an omniscient omni benevolent being right it's just that's the whole problem of suffering that's the whole problem of of non-omniscience right like if god exists and i'm not him then i've got the cosmic short end of the stick and so does every other being that is in god and so you know what's going on here um i agree with and i'm sure there's all sorts of of ad-hoc rationalizations that the theists have come up with to try and rectify that i'm not really curious whether they work or not because they haven't substantiated the claim in the first place can i say something um because i i i really want to talk but i don't i also want to try to be a good boy like i said i was going to be a good boy so um you know the fact is that it all comes down to that existential um discovery that i am and that i can't deny my own existence and i know you're not too comfortable with this because you think it's just flaky but um you know i am and either i'm god or i'm not god and if i'm not god then i agree with you it's completely absurd how can how can god exist and at the same time not god like i'm not god and i exist that doesn't make any sense it does not make any sense whatsoever it's absurd and i'm fully aware of the absurdity of the fact that i exist but i'm not god like that doesn't make any sense whatsoever here's one post hoc rationalization uh you know god is an extra dimensional being and so the realities that we're experiencing it only seems like it's going through the formality of happening but in like god's perspective it's only like a potential reality that doesn't actually actuate within the actualization of the godhead like this is only storyboard none of it makes any sense obviously it's a storyboard it's like a storyboard in the great director in the sky has got this sketch but you know yeah i mean i don't know if these just want to say that like everything happens and so you know we'll draw the circle around all the best things or all like the infinitely good things and we'll call that god but then we'll we'll draw another circle around all the things and we'll also call that god you know and then we'll draw a circle around consciousness and we'll call that god so i mean there's just there's different usages of the term uh that get conflated in different ways um and i think that has to do with the origins of these kinds of ideas which really do come from i don't know how much we got into this before but um shamanism being the origins of religion we can we can say with pretty good certainty which drugs which peoples were doing and how that affected their uh you know their cosmology and their their metaphysics um you know if you're one of the religions that's that's incorporating acacia wood which has dmt in it uh into your your ritual ceremonies um that's what the ark was made of you're gonna have the gnostic hallucination you're going to have these these really intense different experiences of what feels like divine intellect or like you know super intelligent entities and stuff and then you're going to like try and create some some sort of coherent worldview around it yeah as an atheist i took mushrooms and i felt the unity and i felt you know my perspective on my place in the cosmos and i was just very small and so was that god i mean you could say like maybe that was a part of god right like maybe that the peak of that experience is makes up is is a finite part of the infinite whole it is god or something right um yeah i want to i want to but there's a lot of experiences you can have all sorts of different unifying or like cosmic consciousness sorts of experiences on drugs or otherwise i mean meditation is like the the other extremely reliable method that's what the buddhists are doing you know yeah if you told me you're gonna try either some nasty drugs or meditating i would recommend meditating as more natural not to say it's not dangerous too but i do want to i do want to let you know and my listeners know and i've talked about this before that i'm very very very very sympathetic to monism where there's only god and everything else is is nothing you know like i am nothing god god is everything i am nothing but everything is god well it's like i came from pantheism to begin with i was a pantheist when i was an agnostic like not i was not a hardcore atheist in my 20s and thirties i was more of a pantheist and agnostic clarified pantheism is that every like every fundamental piece of reality like the smallest things are each god and like individually yeah is that right yeah it's divine it's all divine but you can pick an electron and like that's that's a god and then like a cell is god and then like yeah all the parts are a group of spells about and like a person is god and like a society is god like it's all god like the eastern religions say this idea of separation like you're over there i'm over here this is on one level it's sort of it's sort of got some level of reality but at a higher level or a more fundamental deeper level it's illusion because the the only reality is the unity of god and so i'm very sympathetic to the eastern philosophies because of that and there's there's a compatibility there's a certain compatibility with christianity with judaism with islam that's why we have mystical judaism mystical islam mystical christianity because guess what god is the only reality he's the ultimate reality and to a certain extent everything that we experience here in this finite world is less real it's just less real period right so i have a lot of sympathy for the east and all the mystical traditions of monotheism you know because of my acid trip i'm technically an eastern um theologian ah really i definitely yeah because they say if you've had the the gnostic experience then you're a theologian that's what they mean by by theology is like it's it's that mystical direct connection sort of divine revelation so i'm a little bit i'm a little bit out there on a limb um like a little bit in crazy town if i were to talk to a regular catholic in the pews they'd think i was completely crazy but because of the mystical experiences i've had and because of the direct existential experiences i've had i'm very comfortable with some of these wacky ideas because you just you just have to experience it to see the oneness and to see the itself is contradictory that's the crazy thing about it you know it's like these different concepts seem contradictory when you think about it certainly when you're sober but when you're high when you're in these these altered states of consciousness you can have these contradictory experiences that just that just are and it's just really really bizarre yeah what's like and so again as a naturalist i i look at the mystical experience and i say okay let's drop all of the assumptions and and pretenses and let's try to come up with like an actual system of information around this uh and then like the best we've been able to do with that is is to recognize a few truths one it's happening all in your head um that there is you're not leaving your body when you might think that you are um that you're you're in fact lying in the ground and convulsing like an idiot you know and the rest of the tribe is watching over you so uh like putting putting the religious experience within a naturalist context not only makes more sense but is like infinitely more useful because like now we can actually like say something about it we can like look at the person's brain state we can we can actually do science whereas if you have a bunch of religious assumptions about the the sort of mental experiences that we can have you're j i mean you're you're never going to be able to tell what's brain chemistry and what is demons you're just you're gonna be and that's the same sort of problem that a lot of schizophrenic people have right um schizophrenia is a lot easier to deal with if you're a rational skeptical science-minded person who is able to listen to the people around them who are telling them that what they're seeing isn't real right and and to be able to so to like separate the the delusions from when they're more clear-headed that's a lot harder when you're religious because when you're religious you have no idea if it's all in your head or if you're actually getting attacked by spiritual entities of some sort well i disagree i disagree because the church has very solid foundation in philosophy which is a higher science than the natural sciences and he may disagree about that but that's my particular opinion um but also you know there's this thing about the natural sciences they are good the the universe is well ordered because because it was made by god and all good god and there's nothing in there's nothing in nature that's not well ordered everything is well ordered and when i spill my drink that that chaos what seems like chaos happens in a very well ordered way and so all very well ordered so um you know we can throw things we can jam a stick into the wheels of the cart and we can say this goes against nature or the flow or whatever but it's still part of nature it's just like if the worm eats the apple it's still a good apple and the worm is good and i like this distinction you're making because a lot of times people who believe in the supernatural will create two different worlds right they'll say that there's this world and then there's the other supernatural realm and like yeah the two will interact in different ways at different times depending on whether god allows it but like these are two different things and that's kind of how you get the philosophy of not of this world right i think that's like its own little logo like it's a t-shirt brand now right um but when you when you recognize that you can draw a circle around all that there is and just call that the natural right then whatever supernatural has to fall into to the natural so yeah you can just have one worldview and within that worldview try to make things make sense right and if things don't make sense don't assume answers just say you don't know yet and you'll get back to it you're a hard determinist right i don't know i thought you said that in our first interview i thought you said that uh i mean i think we did discuss determinism at a point i think i was trying to say that like we we don't have a good understanding of cause and effect yet like um we don't know if everything is deterministic or if there are random events at like the quantum level right like we just don't know if if there is some level of randomness but there's enough order as you say right like the universe is orderly enough to where we can make predictions right and like predictions well that's so that's one of the big four operational criteria to get back to that right so like prediction making is the most important and that's why science is better than religion um but then beyond that there's also the internal consistency of the model right whether there's any like paradoxes that need to get worked out and there's always paradoxes doesn't matter what what worldview you come up with it's not gonna unless you're god you're not gonna know everything and so every model of reality not only is going to be incomplete but it's not ever going to be able to ground itself on anything because in order to ground yourself on like the truth you would have to know everything you would have to be god and so i recognize that all world views are ultimately ungrounded and so the best thing we can hope for instead of truth is the most useful model right this is what pragmatism is it's it's rejection of truth in favor of whatever helps us survive the best and when we look at the history of life on this planet um that's kind of what all beings have been doing we've all been trying to come up with an understanding of the world that best helps us you know find that piece of food or shelter find our mates you know and uh have kids and that's kind of it right now that determines the entire evolutionary process so um yeah it's a natural philosophy because the the principles by which i evaluate different models uh whether it be monotheism whether it be catholicism specifically or or you know some very specific sect of of catholicism whatever it is i'm always going to judge my worldview based on the big four operational criteria what are you most certain of right now uh hmm that's a good question like one plus one equals two you're pretty certain well so like that's just a tautology though yeah right but logical positivism says that there are only two classes there's tautology and nonsense so [Music] that's what logical positions yeah well yeah so like yeah i'm i'm maximally certain that one plus one equals two thank god because some some scientists today think it's a social construct yeah i mean i i don't even want to say i have a level of certainty because it just is it that's just what it is two plus two is one one and one together is two and there's no there's no getting around that yeah and the fact that you disagree with that you don't understand what's being said and the fact that you exist or have experience or however you want to phrase it you are certain of that you have to be certain of that yes i agree with that and what i'm not certain of is that therefore some supernatural entity or something like so so help me get to the next step and and not now because i mean we've we've tried last time this is something that i like i i feel like that should be your main project yeah it's like figuring out convert lena no not me i mean if you if you come up with a logical uh deductive argument right that logically follows from the the a priori direct experience of consciousness right then anyone who who looks at that and understands logic would have to be compelled by it right like that's the beauty of logic so you know when i was a christian i wanted to prove god uh as a as an atheist i still want to prove god uh because you know if i'm a scientist so let's if we can do it let's do it uh and if we can do it then let's put on the shelf and work on other things this is a bit of a long one but i'd like to bounce a proof off you that i've never shared with you and haven't really shared too often on the podcast okay let's do it yeah uh so i've got a keyboard in front of me and i press a key as i type with you an email okay like press the letter e as part of the word whatever word and so as i am typing i'm thinking about what i'm going to say to you and i press that particular letter as part of that particular word in that sentence in that paragraph whatever okay so as i'm pressing the button there's a connection made and five volts goes over here and affects these transistors and then the magic happens and it sends an email to you eventually so um in this chain of causality we've got my will whether my will is free or not doesn't really matter i could just be completely hard determined to do it doesn't matter but my will says hey write to lena so i press the button and my arm and my finger are part of that you know but they're a lower part like my my mind and my will are higher than my physical body they command my body and my body moves and then the keyboard moves and the keyboard is lower being than my body and my body's the lower being then my mind and my will and in this hierarchical uh chain of cause and effect it's uh efficient uh causality that's taking place here that we're examining and as i'm pressing the button there are all kinds of things happening at one time and it's a simultaneous um connection between my will my body my finger my keyboard and the electronic stuff that's happening and if we isolate that and we can conceptually isolate that from all my past all my future all year past all your future all the keyboards past and future we can isolate it from all of that and the technical term for all of those temporal causality chains are accidental causes and accidentally ordered causes we can dismiss those we can isolate this vertical simultaneous chain of cause and effect right here right now what's happening right now we can and it's called the essentially ordered causal series and so the fact that it's happening the fact that it's manifest the effect is manifest that letter e does get typed and the whole email gets typed and it gets sent this is a manifest reality so we start with a manifest reality and we work up that essentially ordered chain of cause and effect and we know there is a first cause in that essentially ordered series which is not caused by another uh cause further up the chain we know there's one and only one first cause in that essentially ordered series because otherwise we would have to say there's something missing something essential that's missing from each and every one of those causes and effects in the final result and but the final result is manifest so that's uh so we know there's nothing missing so it there is a one and only one first cause in that essentially ordered series of causality and the fact that we are able to conceptually isolate it from the accidental causes and the accidentally ordered causes means that it is formally possible that it that that first cause in the essentially ordered series is a temporal not temporal and so it's a necessary truth that it's possible and because nothing can bring into or out of existence and a temporal cause we know with absolute certainty that it's necessarily the case that there is an a temporal first efficient cause and this is what we call god so this is blessed john done scotus's modal proof for the existence of god what do you think there is so much wrong with all that wow i okay let's let's break it apart so uh you're you're taking a slice of time yep right you're you're you're putting arbitrary starting and ending points on it right yep right so you're just taking the slice of the timeline yep and you're looking at the first you're looking at the edge of that timeline right like if we if that timeline's a ruler you're looking at one end of the ruler yeah and you're saying this is the this is the where the ruler starts right well there it has a history the ruler has a history but we can isolate that ruler from its history for the sake right by the arbitrary line that we're drawing yeah we're just drawing a line wherever and then we're saying before this forget about it and then everything after that so then that where we're drawing the line that's the first moment right it's yeah it's a it's a logical order it's not a temporal order because it's all simultaneous there we've isolated it from before and after we're just looking at the now and this is a logical priority but not a temporal priority because i'm willing to press the button as my finger is pressing on the button and as the button is pressing on that transistor or whatever it is the electronics it's all happening simultaneously no it's all happening simultaneously like the example the example that scotus gives is a man pushing a stone with a stick like he's poking the stick and uh if we freeze time and we look at that we see the man's will or decision whatever to push the stick we see his arm moving and we see the stick and we see the stone and we see that they're all connected to that but it's not happening at the same time well select select freeze time and look at what is happening exactly at that moment if you freeze time then there's nothing moving yeah there's nothing moving right you freeze time you just see you just see like if i'm uh punching someone in the face you just see this and the pressure is there like the pressure is hasn't been relieved yet because i'm about the guy hasn't bounced off my fist yet so we're just looking at the like the vectors like in physics when we do uh these examination of uh vectors like if you put a weight on a scale or something like that you've got the equal and opposing force newton's laws and all sorts of things so we've got these steps you're taking you're taking a an infinitely small line segment you're taking one one line segment out of the timeline so you're doing it it's like calculus right you just got an infinitely small section of the timeline right and you're saying and then you're trying to ask like what's the first point in that time like there is no first point it's just one it's just t equals one or whatever you want to call it but if we have a stack of books sitting on a scale there's a top there's a top book okay so this is just an analogy like the the scale is registering a certain amount of mass or weight or whatever you want to call it and it's because all these books have a certain mass and gravity is affecting them to push them down or pull them down or whatever it works and it's a static image even if we look at it as time is flowing they're just sitting there and the scale on the needle on the scale is sitting at its at its accurate weight and uh we look at the first book second word third book and fourth book and we see how these uh these force vectors are adding up and we we know that there's a first one a second one and third one fourth one and we know the relationship to the scale and we know that the scale is sitting on the floor and the floor sitting on the earth and whatever we could do this analysis when you say first when you say first one second one you mean like like in the stack at p equals one we put one book on and then at t equals two we put another book they're sitting there they're sitting the stack is sitting there okay you're just arbitrarily saying this is the first book but like you could count from the bottom up and then the bottom one would be the first one yeah but the the bottom the scale has four books on it the first the bottom book has three books on top of it the second book right there's two books on top of it the second from the top only has one book on top of it and the top book doesn't have any books on top of it it just got air molecules bouncing off of it so they have a logical order there's a logical order and when we do a new newtonian analysis of the force vectors we're going to assign them according to their logical place and we can dismiss the question of time we can dismiss we can isolate it from time we could just look at this is what is causing this needle to be at this position well it's caused by this book in that book and the other book in the fourth book and there's a logical uh relationship that they have and they have different relations based on their position in that logical order same thing with me and my stick and the rock i'm poking it there's a logical order and there's a hierarchy and it's the same thing with anything now you're completing the word causality because now you're using now you're using causality in different in different contexts right like like saying that the books are causing the needle to to read whatever it reads you don't agree isn't the same causality as when i push the ball it rolls down the hill right like those are different kinds of causality no not really it's different effects like everything every every event can be seen as an effect because there's no effect there's no event that's not an effect right i agree they're both causes and effects it's just that one describes like the interaction of of newtonian physics right when you when you roll the ball down the hill yeah right and the other one describes the effect of mass it's still all you can deal with at all using the same newtonian mechanics i'm just pointing out it's just there's there's different ways of talking about different kinds of causality and cause and effect but the point my point here is and scotus's point here is is that that causality is always simultaneous immediate immediate causality is always simultaneous and causality properly so called is immediate causality so yeah sure when my parents got together and procreated and then i was born uh it's the same thing with my grandparents like if you can go back through the family tree and it's like yeah there's an accidental accidentally ordered chain of cause and effect from my ancestors all the way down to me okay but um there's not that essentially ordered series where for example if my grandfather was involved or you know much less my great-grandfather being involved in the procreative marriage act of my parents because he'd already passed on he'd already died so he can't be involved in the essentially ordered sequence that uh we can still say that your grandparent was the cause of you yeah anything in the past yeah we could look you could honestly look at any piece of the timeline and say like oh well that caused that i mean we try and be like a little bit more like empirical when it comes to claims of cause and effect right everything you have to demonstrate you have to demonstrate uh the actual mechanism there right and then again that's what i'm getting to when i say that there's different kinds of causality there's different mechanisms by which cause and effect happens and so let me let's just try and get back to the the exam like the argument you were making so in this example of cause and effect let's go back to the timeline and and drawing an arbitrary first first point in time it's not temporal it's logical that's the thing that's the that's what you're getting tripped up on with this proof because when we okay so when we cause value time what do you mean by logical causality i'm talking about a logical order right a logical order like my stack of books on the scale there is a significance to being one of the books at the top of the stack or one of the books at the bottom of the stack our our newtonian mechanics analysis will be different what does that have to do with causality there's a logical ordering and there's a significance to the placement and so one is superior to if i order the books differently would it cause the scale to read differently well the vectors assigned to that particular book would be different yeah the vector the force vectors will be different you'd have to because one the one at the bottom is getting crushed by all the ones on the top but the one on the top isn't being crushed like if you've ever been part of a sports thing where everyone jumps on each other at the end because they won you want to be the guy on top sorry this is probably a bad choice but a choice okay so like but to get back to talking about causality uh what what's the cause and what's the effect in this example well if you want to say uh pushing a stone with a stick that's a simple example to get you know the books like we're talking about the books okay like the books what's the cause and what's the effect the cause is the mass of the books and the effect is the needle being displaced to a certain location on that scale on the on the scale you're asking what was the first cause yeah the first efficient cause for the needle being moved yeah for the how is that not temporal how is this not a temporal question because i mean just imagine in your mind's eye that this pile of books has always been sitting on this scale and the scale has never been defective yeah i mean i can't accurately i don't think i could just solve it i don't think i could ascribe any cause or effect there would be no causality to describe like really yeah really yeah i don't unless we're talking about like a different concept of of causality that i don't understand but like the way i understand it it's cause and effect is a temporal process if a child came up to you and said hey why is this needle on the 100 pound mark you would say because of there's a hundred pounds books sitting on there because there's a hundred pounds of books because because right right so it doesn't affect the books cause the effect right putting the books on the scale caused the effects of the needle moving right but those the the cause of putting like the act of putting the books on preceded the needle moving that's like necessarily temporal yeah that that part is temporal all the theater and all the history that's all temporal but we're going to ignore all of that and we're just going to look at the current state of affairs the current state of affairs is we don't know how how these books got stacked on here but it's a manifest fact it's a manifest fact that they are stacked on here that's a matter of fact so one sliver of time then there's no nothing's happening there's no change there's no dynamics in the system right and cause and effect is the description of of dynamic change like it's you're trying to like create a situation in which there would be no cause and effect at all no but and then you're saying but there's still cause and effect have you are you aware that there are two kinds of friction there's the static friction and the the dynamic friction or whatever they call it the one okay so i could be i could be pushing on some heavy thing on the ice and i push and i push and i push and suddenly as soon as you see how fortunate they're applied yeah they're applied over time i know but i'm pushing i'm pushing over time i'm pushing and pushing and pushing nothing's happening but for whatever reason the forces tip over that just that that threshold mark maybe i got a boost of adrenaline or testosterone and then suddenly it starts moving i've overcome that static friction and it starts moving on the ice and then it's easy okay it's easy but if i were to just lean a heavy block of stone against this block of ice that i'm trying to move on the ice or whatever it is if i just delete this thing onto it it's it's still applying force to it but not enough to make it move the force is constant it's there and it's it's a reality and it's causing an effect it's causing an equal and opposite reaction from the block of light the pressure the pressure would cause the effect of friction and deformation and all kinds of things sure that is a temporal process right but the the fact that at any given time it remains a fact that at any given time all these force vectors i know if you did if you did this newtonian analysis the force vectors remain but the sequence of cause and effect stops like you you there is no cause and effect in a single moment of time no but if i'm leaning this heavy object against my ice there's a right there's a deformation it's not enough to make it or you lean it up before they touch there there was no no uh friction right and the moment they come into contact you get friction yeah and there's an equal nut reaction and all these sort of things like all these all these things come into effect because of the configuration if you freeze framed at any moment where those two objects are are in contact and creating friction if you freeze frame then there's no effect happening right there's no there's always there is no change it's only until time starts moving that you see what friction is that like the friction means anything let's use a simpler example let's use a simple example of a pendulum swinging okay so it's at its peak up here it's stopped okay because obviously it's going this way and then that way in between it has to stop for a moment right we freeze frame the pendulum at that exact moment where it's stopped at the peak of its height and we do a newtonian analysis of the forces at work there ignoring error and all that sort of thing but if we want to simplify but it remains what's your cause and effect in this analogy well it's it's always the same thing there's potential there's potential energy that uh actualizes that's cause and effect right you have well you have to identify what the effect is so what motion what exactly should be the effect motion okay if we're freeze framing the pendulum is it in motion well it's in motion but we're we're using our mind's eye to isolate it it's not in motion if time is frozen nothing is in motion but we can't freeze time we're just we're just conceptually this is your hypothetical we're not hitting a stop we're not hitting a stop button or a pause button on the universe the universe is rolling on but in our mind's eye we can conceptually isolate now from before and after we can isolate now from before and after but i can't hit the pause button i can't hit the pause button and literally i can't make it you can't drive it no you you can't do either david you can't do the first you can't uh you can't say when now is now that wasn't it you you were off by like just a just a few milliseconds you were off there you do you like zeno's paradox i do i do i'm a family i knew it i like better the the old chinese one the uh you can't step in a river twice more than that it's not that you can't step into a rehearsal place it's that you can't even step into a river once right because the act of you putting your foot into the water well one the water's moving right so it's like a different river as you're putting your foot in but then also your foot's changing right like cells are growing and dying on your leg as you're putting it in and so everything is changing everything's in motion yeah yes we talked about this last time briefly and we had a bit of a so can we identify a first cause then is is like the big question absolutely i don't think so i'm 100 convinced that there are essentially ordered series of causality and the reason i know it with certainty is because to say otherwise is to say that oh yeah this effect has a cause but it's not an immediate cause it's a cause that's mediated through time like it's not it's not it's not possible every effect has to be immediately caused now there can also be these accidental causes and accidentally ordered causes like i'm not denying my father's existence or my grandfather's existence i'm just saying when i press the letter e when i send my email they're not in that essentially ordered chain of cause and effect so we have to make a distinction we can make that distinction we must make that distinction and it's all important to understanding the first efficient cause and uh we'll talk about this i do have to go unfortunately i have to leave you i would love to keep talking i'd love to keep talking let's just identify the the disagreement which was that um i'm not convinced that there is a first cause yeah or that you could identify or sorry no no um i'm i'm not convinced that cause is simultaneous with its effect that we'll discuss that next time but yeah that we can think about it think about it think about it yeah no i will very nice to talk to you it's a pleasure you're you're a really uh sweet young guy and uh i appreciate uh playing with ideas and you're playful and fun and nice and it's really nice to talk to you and i'll have you back next time we'll talk about all the things that uh that interest you most about what we talked about today okay sounds good thank you so much god bless you have a great day we'll talk soon