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Stefan Molyneux
  • 5/20/2025
Sunday Morning Live 18 May 2025

In this episode, I delve into the journey of moral realignment and self-reflection, discussing the challenges of re-evaluating past actions following a moral awakening. I share personal experiences of growth, emphasizing the need to confront shortcomings and societal pressures that shape our moral understanding. The conversation invites listeners to reflect on their own moral evolution and engage in dialogue about reconciling past choices. In the latter half, we explore intimate discussions on personal relationships, fostering a supportive space for sharing moral journeys. Ultimately, this episode encourages listeners to confront their pasts and pursue a virtuous path forward.

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Transcript
00:00Good morning, everybody! I hope you're doing well.
00:03Stephen Molyneux from Freedomain, freedomain.com to help out the show.
00:07Very, very much appreciated.
00:09Tis the 18th of May, 2025,
00:13and we are here for our Sunday morning Philosophy Chat Fest.
00:17And happy to take your questions, issues, challenges, problems,
00:20you know, the general list.
00:22Happy to take your support.
00:24And you can tip on the app, you can tip in the website,
00:28you can tip at freedomain.com. All right.
00:32So, just while I'm waiting for questions to come in,
00:36somebody said,
00:38What should one do when one has a profound moral realignment
00:43that casts one's previous actions and mode of being
00:46in a deeply negative light?
00:51And we'll do the first 45 minutes open,
00:54second 45 minutes will be donor only,
00:57where the super spice can emerge like a sandworm
01:01off the bowels of the desert.
01:04But, and you should check out the Dune Review
01:06that friends of mine and my daughter did.
01:08It was really good.
01:11So, what should one do when one has a profound moral realignment
01:16that casts one's previous actions and mode of living,
01:18mode of being in a deeply negative light?
01:23Now, of course, foundational to moral progress in the world
01:30is realizing you were not great before.
01:37Right? I mean, key to losing weight
01:40is recognizing that you're overweight.
01:42Key to gaining muscles is recognizing that you are flaccid.
01:46Yeah, the show is 5, 4, 4, 5, The Truth About Dune.
01:49Yeah, really, really good.
01:50So, all progress is the uncovering of negativity.
02:01I mean, I don't study how to learn English
02:03because I already speak English,
02:05but if I wanted to speak Japanese,
02:07I would need to study Japanese
02:09because I recognize I don't speak Japanese, right?
02:12So, all progress is the uncovering of a deficiency.
02:17And, of course, moral progress is when you realize
02:25that you are living immorally, amorally, anti-morally,
02:33something, right? Something.
02:39Something.
02:42If you want to share, you can.
02:45You can. You don't have to, obviously.
02:49I would say that for myself,
02:58I was not overly addicted to the respect for property rights
03:00in my early teens.
03:02That was not good.
03:03I mean, I was a boy far more sinned against than sinning,
03:08and I did not recognize any foundational respect
03:12for social norms because society had done nothing to protect me
03:15and, in fact, seemed to be celebrating my lack of protection.
03:20So, I dated around in my teens and early twenties,
03:32and I was not the most considerate of the effects of that on others.
03:39It was not good. It was not good.
03:41Now, how do you deal with that?
03:43And just hit me with a why.
03:45You can share moral progress or moral...
03:51It's worth talking about your mother's formative experiences in Germany.
03:55I need to finish watching the Savage piece,
03:59the documentary on post-war Germany, so I need to do that.
04:04And, of course, I don't know what my mother's experiences were.
04:07She only told me one story about the war,
04:12which is how she, as a child, had to be very affectionate
04:15with a Russian tank commander so he would not destroy the village
04:18that people were taking refuge in.
04:23Satan himself alone knows what that means,
04:28but it's probably not good.
04:32So, yeah, let me do some more research, and then we'll talk about it.
04:39So, yeah, have you had...
04:43I mean, I certainly have had...
04:44Have you had that kind of moral revolution
04:46where you look back and you say,
04:48eee, that was not good. That was not good.
04:53Now, I mean, nothing that I did involved the initiation of the use of force
04:58and have never been a violent person that way.
05:02Passionate? Passionate, yes.
05:05Violent? Never.
05:10So I did what I did before love came to town,
05:15but I did what I did with the willing and voluntary participation of others,
05:20except for the lack of respect for property rights,
05:22which was not participatory.
05:25But, I mean, nothing terrible.
05:30So what do you do?
05:31You can tell me the details if you want about what's changed for you morally,
05:35what you've recognized or realized,
05:38or you can just tell me a way in which you handled it.
05:46And I'm curious how people deal with a moral revolution.
05:54Of course, there are some that are theoretical and some that are more practical.
05:57So a theoretical one for me would be something like,
06:01when I was an objectivist, I supported statism.
06:06I mean, obviously, it was supposed to be statism involved around the military,
06:13the police, law courts, maybe prisons.
06:18So it was like that.
06:19But it was a break in principle of the non-aggression principle.
06:25It was a theoretical break.
06:27Did it have any particular effect on the world?
06:30Not really.
06:31Was it a theoretical break with the universal validity of the non-aggression principle?
06:36Yes, it was.
06:37Yes, it was.
06:39But the dating around?
06:44Yeah, I mean, the women like to date.
06:45I like to date.
06:46And again, it wasn't anything particularly terrible,
06:50but it also wasn't ideal behavior and was not great either for the women or for myself.
06:56But I would say that it was probably worse,
06:58slightly worse for the women than it was for me,
07:00just because of female nature versus male nature.
07:04When it comes to dating, women tend to be a little bit more case-selected.
07:11Men tend to be a little bit more R-selected for the simple sperm-to-egg ratio.
07:18Men had to be nimble with regards to reproductive opportunities
07:22because throughout a lot of human evolution,
07:25relatively few males got to reproduce relative to females.
07:31So we had to be kind of nimble and responsive.
07:36So I'll tell you my sort of thoughts and experience with regards to moral change,
07:44moral revolution, and so on, and how I've handled it.
07:50And perhaps it would be better for you to find out, or good for you to, or helpful for you,
07:56to find out how at least one person, i.e., myself, has handled it.
08:06So it is an unrealistic standard to say that you must know something before you know it.
08:21There's limitations and there's caveats.
08:23The general principle is you cannot be held responsible for not knowing something before you know it,
08:30with the exception that you have to have not been exposed to it or actively avoiding the knowledge.
08:39So let's say there's a medical treatment that causes harm,
08:49but you don't know it as a doctor, so you keep doing this medical treatment.
08:52It turns out it has little benefit but causes harm.
08:57The benefits are vastly less than the costs.
09:02Now, if this has been talked about, but you've actively avoided reading about it,
09:07or you've actively avoided learning about it, but the knowledge is out there, and so on,
09:11then you are responsible for the avoidance of knowledge.
09:17However, if you're in the position of the goose bump, oh, my God,
09:22the first researcher to figure out this stuff, Dr. Naomi Wolf might be,
09:30or at least her crew might be in this category.
09:35So if you are the first person to figure it out, well, you couldn't know before you knew,
09:43and then, of course, there is a debate factor, right?
09:48So all medical treatments profit certain people,
09:51and so they will resist any intimations that that medical treatment is negative
09:58or difficult or bad or whatever, right?
10:04So those people would be morally responsible for fighting back if they're doing it
10:09in a dishonorable or dishonest fashion, right?
10:12If they're just doing it using the usual tools of slander and ridicule
10:17and all other kinds of nonsense, right?
10:19Dangerous nonsense.
10:23So if you've never heard, as a doctor, you've not been avoiding the knowledge,
10:28and you've never heard that a particular treatment is far more costly than it is beneficial.
10:34In other words, it's not really a treatment, it's a harm, right?
10:40If you've never heard of it and everyone tells you it's fine,
10:44the data tells you it's fine, your school told you it was fine,
10:47the best practices tell you it's fine,
10:49your college or your governing body tells you it's good, okay.
10:55I mean, we do have to make decisions in this life,
10:58and we try to make decisions based upon reasonably complete information, right?
11:10So can you be held responsible for, when the information is universal and consistent,
11:22can you be held responsible for problems or failures or a lack of information
11:27when everything is kind of consistent as a whole and there's no particular doubt?
11:33Well, there's a tipping point, right? There's a tipping point.
11:36Before, I think, the mid to late 19th century,
11:40it was considered foolish or unnecessary to wash your hands
11:44before clawing your way into people's guts as a surgeon.
11:51Now, if you don't wash your hands, I assume that would be pretty bad.
11:55As a surgeon, you've got to wash your hands.
11:57I always remember the guys had mash scrubbing like crazy, scrubbing their hands, right?
12:02So, you've got to wash your hands now.
12:07Back in the day, were you responsible for not washing your hands?
12:09And then there was a tipping point, right? There was a tipping point.
12:12I've mentioned this before, but the guy who suggested washing your hands
12:15ended up being drummed out of the profession
12:18and ended up being locked in an insane asylum where he was beaten to death by an orderly.
12:24Bit of a price to pay.
12:26It'd be nice if society could stop punishing its innovators,
12:29but there are too many entrenched interests for that to happen,
12:34at least for now.
12:36So, you are not responsible for knowledge that doesn't exist.
12:43You're not responsible for knowledge that has only started to exist.
12:47And then there's a debate and a tipping point.
12:51And at some point, you become responsible.
12:59And of course, propaganda is there to give you a uniformity of opinion
13:04that prevents you from knowing or understanding right behavior.
13:09I mean, so when I was a kid, there were all of these teen comedies.
13:15I mean, they've obviously been going on since then.
13:18All of these teen comedies, and they all pointed towards the value of absolute degeneracy,
13:27of drugs, of drinking, of sleeping around, of girls getting beaten up on boys,
13:35that all excellence was terrible, and all sports guys wore,
13:43is it Ted McGinley style?
13:44All the sports guys wore their sweaters tied around their necks
13:49and were total a-holes and mean and abusive.
13:53All the good-looking people tended to be mean,
13:55and all of the nerds tended to be morally great.
13:58So, just pushing anti-athleticism, anti-beauty, anti-integrity, anti-virtue,
14:06anti-self-restraint, and it was all pretty monstrous.
14:14And of course, all the parents were foolish, and all of the teachers were idiots,
14:21and just pushing a vanity and narcissism and a hatred of the high, the athletic,
14:27the beautiful, the handsome, the excellent, and so on, right?
14:32All of the kids who were really good at school were losers and conformists
14:37and apple polishers and teacher's pets and all of that, right?
14:40And it was really cool to be a pointless rebel with no future.
14:45Absolute degeneracy, almost exclusively, almost universally with regards to that.
14:52And it was all about getting drunk, getting high, getting stoned, getting laid,
14:57and all jobs were terrible, and all bosses were terrible,
15:02and you were just dying to claw off your fast-food apron
15:09and go out and cruise the streets and look to get drunk or high.
15:16It was all just terrible, just absolutely wretched, horrible, negative programming.
15:22I mean, not quite as bad as the absolute mind-fracking programming
15:32of something like Lethal Weapon 2, but that's a story for another time.
15:37Tale for another time.
15:41So, given that that was universally promoted, am I responsible?
15:58Now, I never really got into drinking.
16:00I drank for a couple of weekends, and then the cost-benefit was pretty obvious
16:04and pretty terrible.
16:06Thank you for the tip, my guardian angel.
16:09I appreciate that.
16:12And thank you also to R42 and, well, R42 twice.
16:21So we will get, I will get to your questions.
16:24So when you're subject to massive amounts of propaganda,
16:30are you really responsible?
16:31Can we call someone a communist if they grew up in 1950s Stalinist Russia under the USSR?
16:41Can we call them a communist?
16:43Not really.
16:44I mean, they were given relentless propaganda, subjected to endless threats and bullying,
16:49and I'm sure they saw people who questioned the system getting broken
16:57on endless wheels of gulags and struggle sessions and so on, right?
17:09And even now, even now, if you were to put out a story or a movie,
17:14like, I mean, obviously, I try to put out really wholesome stories in my novels,
17:20and I wrote like 30 plays, they're pretty wholesome promoting.
17:25So this is not the reason why in the arts it's very tough to do anything wholesome or positive.
17:36And, yeah, the propaganda is relentless, relentless, endless, relentless, right?
17:42All the way from The Simpsons to Modern Family, where the boys are fools
17:48and the girls are endlessly wise and just promoting vanity.
17:53It's just gross.
17:54Just gross.
17:58Just gross.
18:03So when you realize that you need to elevate yourself to a higher moral state,
18:08what is your relationship to the prior moral state?
18:10I mean, I tell you, my relationship to the prior moral state was I was pretty angry
18:14at having been lied to so consistently over the course of my life.
18:17You know, I spent, I don't know, I'm trying to think, how much time did I spend in church?
18:29Well, when I was in boarding school, I spent a lot of time in church, obviously.
18:35I mean, we would go two or more times a week.
18:38Whenever I would visit my aunts, and I spent quite some time both in Ireland
18:44and in the west of England with aunts, they were very religious, and we went to church.
18:54And maybe this is just me, maybe this is just me, I remember nothing.
19:05I remember nothing of value.
19:10I do remember one pretty funny young priest talking about God casting Satan into a lake
19:16and sticking up a sign saying no fishing.
19:18I remember that was funny.
19:20Didn't really do anything to help me.
19:22But it didn't provide any powerful or foundational moral virtues or values.
19:29I don't remember any.
19:30Like, not one.
19:32Not one.
19:35Just a bunch of, yeah, I mean, I liked the music, I liked the singing.
19:38That was nice.
19:42I think what I got, and I am in version 3.0 of re-evaluating my relationship to Christianity,
19:51which I'll get to another time.
19:53But what I remember from church was a generalized feeling that I was bad and wrong
20:06and there was a certain amount of contempt from the priests towards the congregation.
20:15A certain weariness, a certain hopelessness, a sinner beyond redemption, and that kind of stuff.
20:25I mean, I think I would have loved it if I had been able to get moral instruction from church.
20:31I would have absolutely loved that, to be able to get moral instruction,
20:35something memorable, something powerful, something virtuous.
20:38Like, if church had named the enemy, it's kind of what they're supposed to do, right?
20:44If church had named the enemy, you know, like there's this, I mean, they did in America, secular humanism, right?
20:54But if church in England in particular, I went to church in Africa, I went to church in Ireland, Canada,
21:03I think I was past all that by then.
21:06But if they'd said, look, they're coming for your souls, they're going to teach you this, that, and the other,
21:10don't listen to them, don't date around, work is good, make friends with your bosses,
21:17a lot of bosses can be very helpful and a lot of bosses can help further your career,
21:21and you're going to be, they're going to be pushing degeneracy,
21:26they're going to be pushing drugs and drinking and sleeping around and anti-work,
21:32and they're going to be programming you to be a useless loser so that you don't reproduce, right?
21:42I mean, if you look at the fall of the percentage of the world, of the white population over the last 100 years,
21:48that's 125 years, I guess, yeah, it's not tiny.
21:54And I think a lot of this has to do with, if you program males in particular to be cynical and morally dissolute,
22:01then they don't really tend to form families, or at least not stable families.
22:08And tell me if you guys, do you guys remember any really sort of deep or important or powerful moral lessons from church from growing up?
22:25Stuff that, you know, when I was a kid I had a set of binoculars and my father gave them to me.
22:35And, you know, you take the focus back and forth until things pop into focus.
22:43You go a little bit fast, a little bit back, a little bit fast, and then everything's clear, right?
22:48So isn't that the purpose of moral instruction?
22:53And that is, of course, the purpose of the church.
22:56Have you received the moral instruction that identify the enemies of your potential?
23:08It's the ditty party thing.
23:10Let me stroll around a little bit in our topics, right?
23:17So the ditty party thing, you know, there ain't no party like a ditty party thing, right?
23:23The ditty party thing is come and be loosed from all moral restraints, you know, kind of live like an animal and it'll be great.
23:30And I think we're generally tempted by that as a whole.
23:35Go and indulge your senses, live like an animal, get high, have a lot of sex, you know, get an STD or whatever happens, right?
23:45And it's tempting.
23:48In the same way, you know, things like the welfare state, it's pretty tempting to say,
23:55well, I'm going to just let other people go and deal with or handle the poor.
23:58I'm not going to have to get my hands dirty.
23:59I'm not going to have to go down and figure it out.
24:01And I'm not going to figure out who can be saved and who's dedicated that are on self-destruction.
24:18Well, it's tempting.
24:21It's tempting to outsource your conscience and outsource your happiness, right?
24:27To outsource your conscience means other people come along and say, we're going to take care of this bad thing.
24:31This bad thing, we're just going to take care of it.
24:33And all you need to do is surrender your property rights and your independence and your own desire to help things.
24:41And when you go to promiscuity, you go to pornography, you go to drinking, you go to drugs, you go to video games and, you know, dissolution in general.
25:03And I mean, video games is obviously more complex because they can be fun and they can be social, right?
25:09But when it becomes a primary, then you're outsourcing your happiness, your dopamine to external things, not your own virtue, not your own success, not your own gritty determination to thwart evil and promote virtue.
25:27And the idea that we can be happy through the stimulation of external things rather than the generation of internal virtues is the great temptation.
25:35It's the devilish temptation.
25:39It's so tempting that even paradise is overthrown by the desire for more.
25:51I mean, I try, I try, you know, I have complexities like everyone, but I generally try to resist putting my happiness in things outside of my control.
26:07I mean, what can I control?
26:08I can control sitting down to do a show.
26:10I can control, you know, how well I communicate and how clear my communication is as a whole.
26:18And there's a couple other things that I can control.
26:21I can't control directly, you know, how many people watch, how many people listen, how many people donate.
26:26I can encourage it, but I can't control it, right?
26:27I can only control what it is that I'm doing.
26:29And I really do try to put my focus on happiness as a whole, being that which is generated from within and within my control.
26:39So, I became a philosopher because the priests provided almost nothing for me.
27:05Again, this could be different for other people.
27:07Maybe I just had a series of bad luck with regards to the various churches I went to and priests that I encountered.
27:19But I knew quite a few.
27:21I knew quite a few.
27:22And even other things, like I was in the Boy Scouts for a couple of years and quite enjoyed that.
27:28Got no moral instruction there either.
27:30I learned how to build fires in the wilderness.
27:33I learned how to look for water.
27:35I learned how to pitch a tent.
27:39But as far as moral instruction, not.
27:46I don't remember anything.
27:48Nothing.
27:50Why is that?
27:53Well, as somebody who's tried to put a smidgen of moral instruction out there in the world, I assume that one of the reasons for that is a hopelessness and despair.
28:04Which is, if you are actually effective at putting forth moral instruction, well, you'll be attacked, lied about, slandered, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
28:15Deplatformed and whatever, right?
28:18They'll go after your reputation and your income.
28:25I don't know why there is not a clear...
28:28I mean, there's lecturers, you know, like you're a sinner and you need to do this, that, the other.
28:33But there's not, here are the institutions that are leading you astray, and here's how they do it.
28:41There's no breakdown of the propaganda.
28:43There's no nothing.
28:45I don't really get that.
28:47I don't get why that's not a thing.
28:50Why that's not something that the Church would really focus on.
29:02I don't know.
29:04But I think it's the biggest fault at the moment.
29:08I think it's the biggest fault in the Church at the moment.
29:11I mean, if I were a priest or if I were in charge of the Church, I would say our absolute focus needs to be on revealing and encouraging people to understand the propaganda that is being used against them and the temptations that are constantly flowing their way.
29:30The temptations to be less, to minimize their potential, to gain temporary happiness from external sources and so on.
29:45Why is it not?
29:48Why is it not happening?
29:51Why don't you walk out of there, you know, floating on air because the world has like the binoculars.
29:59Come into focus.
30:01Why?
30:07I mean, there are really only a few logical possibilities for this.
30:13One, the Church no longer recognizes temptation and sin and who pushes it, which I don't really, I mean, that would be like doctors not recognizing illness or what might cause it.
30:24To me, that would not really be a doctor at all.
30:27Or two, they know about it but don't want to talk about it because either they don't think it's too serious or they think it's very dangerous or blah, blah, blah, whatever, whatever, right?
30:36Or they don't want to get targeted, in which case, okay.
30:38Okay, so if you don't want to get targeted for thwarting evildoers and promoting virtue, that's fine.
30:49It's not an absolute requirement.
30:53But then, don't lecture people.
30:57Don't lecture people about all of this.
31:00So.
31:04Thank you, Endergein, for your support.
31:08I really appreciate that.
31:10freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
31:14All right, let me get to your comments here.
31:18Let's do another 15 minutes and then we'll go to donor only.
31:22And the donor only, of course, will be available if you're not a donor at fdrurl.com slash locals or subscribestore.com slash freedomain.
31:36All right, so let me get, you've got, I got a bunch of comments here, so let me get to them.
31:44Serpanta, I went on another date last night with a different woman than the last one I mentioned.
31:51She seems a lot more promising.
31:53I do have concerns.
31:55However, that being said, I do have concerns.
31:58However, that being said, she's liking RTR and some other podcasts I've shared with her, including a call in did some years back.
32:06She loves the idea of peaceful parenting, too.
32:08Sorry.
32:11I'm sorry.
32:14You went on a date and you're burying her with RTR.
32:18Philosophy.
32:20Call in interactions and peaceful parenting, bro.
32:28That's a lot.
32:32That's a lot.
32:33Why?
32:34Why would you?
32:35I mean, it seems like a tsunami.
32:37And that's four major things.
32:41RTR, philosophy, call in shows, peaceful parenting.
32:50That's almost like a job interview or an audition.
32:53And let me ask you this.
32:55Is it reciprocal, right?
32:57Is it reciprocal?
32:58Is she giving you stuff that's making your mind stretch to new dimensions and all of that, right?
33:02So, that might be a bit of a tsunami, right?
33:07Drink from the fire hose.
33:09All right.
33:10Somebody says, if somebody lies to their current partner, is it guaranteed they will lie to you, too?
33:18What do you mean guaranteed?
33:20Like there's no free will?
33:21It's all determinism?
33:22People can change and grow.
33:24My ex dated three years apart for seven.
33:27My ex dated three years apart for seven.
33:32Dated three years apart for seven.
33:34So, you dated ten years ago, started dating ten years ago.
33:37You dated for three years.
33:38You've been apart for seven.
33:39Invited me out to a birthday dinner last night and then told me that he has a woman living with him that he's been dating for a year.
33:47He said he wants to break up with her and try again with me.
33:50I told him that even though there was nothing physical between us, it's still betrayal for him to take me to dinner without telling her.
33:57What's the best way to handle this?
34:01What do you mean handle it?
34:04So, he's cheating, or he wants to cheat with you, or he wants to get together with you while he's living with a woman he hasn't told about any of this.
34:15And I assume he hasn't told the woman he's living with that he's going out for a birthday dinner with his ex that he's dying to get back together with.
34:24I don't know what you mean by handle this.
34:27Thank you, Kevin.
34:28I don't know what you mean by handle this.
34:31I mean, surely typing this out has answered the question.
34:36You don't need me to say anything here.
34:42I mean, the guy's a lying scambag.
34:48Yeah, he's a liar.
34:50He's a liar.
34:51He's a liar.
34:55Ah, getting back together with exes.
34:58I mean, when does it ever work?
35:02It usually takes about a week or two for you to realize, oh, that's why we broke up.
35:07Especially if you've been apart for seven years.
35:09Why are you still hanging out with someone you broke up with seven years ago?
35:14I don't understand.
35:16It's just preventing you from pair bonding or connecting with somebody new.
35:23So, yeah, it's bad in my view.
35:26Obviously, do what you want.
35:27You couldn't pay me enough to maintain a relationship with somebody who is a lying scambag, that kind of way.
35:32All right.
35:33All right.
35:40Sapanta says, oh, with regards to looking back negatively at your own moral decisions.
35:45For me, it would be justifying anything I wanted and twisting any interaction and choice as moral.
35:50This could be my previous weed, alcohol use, thousands of hours in video games and not doing a good job at work,
35:55pretending to love women I was seeing, pretending people in my life were good, amongst a few other things.
36:01The realization I ran from for a decade has caused an intense amount of dissociation and depersonalization.
36:08Anger, rage, humiliation, shame have been feelings I've become quite familiar with.
36:14I still struggle with this.
36:15However, having gone to therapy, working out, dream analysis, being the most valuable employee I can be
36:20and doing regular journal entries after writing 1,000 pages in a huge dump has helped a lot.
36:24The biggest thing, though, has been rereading and listening to old free-domain podcasts and books
36:28while dedicating myself to understanding them and putting them into practice.
36:31Good.
36:32Good.
36:33Well, congratulations.
36:34That's great.
36:35Somebody says, I regret enabling abortion over 10 years ago.
36:38I was an emotionless leftist.
36:40Now I've come to a new realization, felt a huge emotion.
36:42How do I move forward?
36:49Anger at the people who lied to you and forgiveness for yourself for not knowing something that you didn't know.
36:59All right.
37:00Thanks for the points about propaganda, says someone.
37:04Especially female vanity.
37:05I would suggest watching Myron Gaines as his style includes some of these elements but is very engaging.
37:12I think some cerebral and intellectual podcasts struggle with audience-balancing discussions,
37:16like those which are very clear logically but also reaching out to a wider audience with,
37:21and apologies for the lack of precision, the engagement factor.
37:25Okay, that sentence seemed to break apart like a meteor in the atmosphere,
37:29but I think I've seen Myron Gaines on X.
37:34He seems to be a pretty direct and brave fellow.
37:36All right.
37:38Somebody says, oh, Joe says, I don't remember anything of value from church either.
37:40Just blah, blah, blah.
37:43Somebody says, the greatest thing I got from church and that game, the Catholic one,
37:48is the constant reinforcement death is coming and time is limited.
37:53Well, but death is coming and time is limited could as easily push you to hedonism as it could to virtue.
37:59That's a great summary of modern indoctrination.
38:02Somebody says, I am a Latter-day Saint.
38:04Prophets, apostles, continuing revelation and authority is still a thing.
38:08Oh, and there is no such thing as original sin.
38:10Transgression, yes.
38:12All right.
38:19Somebody says, I was raised without religion.
38:20I currently go to a Baptist church.
38:22Can't say I've ever experienced any mind-bending ideas there.
38:24Plenty of cliche stuff, though.
38:28Yeah, yeah.
38:32I mean, a lot of church seems to have devolved into a kind of soupy,
38:39slightly narcissistic self-help, chanty stuff.
38:46All right.
38:51Somebody says, church was very ineffective for me as I went to a wealthy one.
38:55But now that I'm in a larger city and there's greater struggle to keep audiences as well as the church being involved in the culture wars,
39:01we do get practical advice frequently around grit and determination.
39:07You should have grit and determination.
39:08I'm sure it's more than that.
39:09Somebody says, I recently advised an Orthodox friend on his marriage.
39:20He is devoutly religious, but the idea that love is related to virtue was alien to him.
39:25Really?
39:27I went through scripture to support the idea that love is a response to virtue, and I think I have.
39:32OK.
39:33Good for you.
39:34Good for you.
39:36I mean, doesn't God love virtue and hate sin?
39:41I mean, hate the sin, not the sinner.
39:43I get all of that.
39:48All right.
39:51Walkism is trying to worm its way into the church, but we fight it.
39:55Yeah, but it comes through.
39:59It comes through the women as a whole, right?
40:02As a whole.
40:03Tons of exceptions.
40:04It comes through women as a whole, and the church should know that, right?
40:15The desire for the unearned often comes through the women, women's greed, right?
40:21I mean, makeup is women desiring to be desired more than they naturally would be.
40:28Thirst traps on the Internet are women trying to be desired more than they would be in real life.
40:36Filters, hair dye, you name it, right?
40:40Spanx, Ozempic, all of that.
40:45And if you look at the Garden of Eden, the story of the Garden of Eden, Satan said,
40:50well, you can gain knowledge of good and evil.
40:57You don't have to work at it.
40:58You don't have to understand it.
40:59You don't have to study God and his thoughts and theology and philosophy and morality.
41:03Just eat a fruit, eat a fruit, eat a fruit, eat a fruit, and you'll get knowledge.
41:09Oh, I want that.
41:10Now, what that is is something that has grown external to yourself.
41:15You swallow it, and you gain moral knowledge.
41:18Well, that is propaganda, right?
41:20That is wookism.
41:22That is that somebody else has grown this fruit.
41:26You eat it, and you gain knowledge of good and evil.
41:29You're just swallowing propaganda, right?
41:36An apple a day keeps the reason away, right?
41:39So you're just swallowing what other people have grown, which is absorbing propaganda
41:43and thinking you have the knowledge of good and evil, and then you move from paradise to suffering, right?
41:48Adam gets the curse of work, and Eve gets the curse of childbirth.
42:00And this is nothing negative towards women.
42:02Female nature is wonderful and beautiful, but female nature plus the state plus government education, that's terrible.
42:10All right, somebody says, I had some peers my age at a church my mother took us to briefly.
42:15They stole my Game Boy and taught it and bullied me like a classic schoolyard bully.
42:19They tossed it around from person to person as I ran after it, laughing at my misery.
42:23The girls eventually ran to the girls' room, which I couldn't follow.
42:26It's not a positive moral lesson, but the whole scene made me very skeptical of Christianity at a young age.
42:33Well, why did you bring the Game Boy to church?
42:49And being bullied is not always the end of the world.
42:52It can toughen you up.
42:58Somebody says, I remember being impacted by the idea that God was good and expected us to be good too,
43:03that he gave us the world and all he asked for was us to abide by the commandments.
43:08It gave me a sense that being good was about maintaining a fair relationship with God.
43:11Later, I questioned God's existence and progressed into philosophy,
43:15but I think that moral archetype gave me an effective tool for discerning right from wrong before I had logical reason for it.
43:21Well, then it is just obeying rules, right?
43:24And this is the problem I have with religion.
43:25One of the problems I have with religion is you can avoid the moral rule simply by no longer believing in God,
43:34whereas UPB, you cannot escape the moral rule at all.
43:38And this is why people fight.
43:39See, UPB is religion for atheists, right?
43:43So if you're religious, you can't escape the moral rule.
43:45If you're an atheist, you can escape religious moral rules by not believing in religion,
43:49but UPB is religion, objective morality or universal morality or absolute morality for atheists.
43:57And since so many atheists have fled religion in order to avoid moral rules,
44:03in other words, to program other people with emotion-based propaganda,
44:09they do not like that they have fled God and I resurrected God for atheists in the form of UPB.
44:17We shall meet the new boss.
44:22Same as the old boss.
44:24That's why they fight so hard.
44:28All right, let's do another minute or two.
44:31And, of course, if you want to join the donor only,
44:34fdru.com.local
44:37or subscribestr.com.demain
44:41or you can sign up, of course, at freedom.com.donate.
44:46So, we've got a bunch of other questions.
44:49We'll continue this conversation on the other side of the donor-only podcast.
44:55Thank you so much.
44:57Happy Sunday.
44:58Happy May.
45:00Happy life.
45:01Hope you're doing well.
45:02FreedomAid.com.
45:03If you find this helpful later, I really would appreciate it.
45:05Don't forget to check out the free books, FreedomAid.com books, free documentaries,
45:09FreedomAid.com documentaries, all the other kinds of good stuff on the website, but I'll
45:13stop here for the non-donor section, we'll go to the donor section, and then maybe later
45:21I'll do a little doom, a little doomstream.
45:23All right.
45:24Thanks everyone so much.
45:25We'll talk to you in a sec.