Atheism is dead: the future of a movement that ISN'T MOVING.

atheism and debates about atheism were one of the most important intellectual cross currents of the 18th century if you were teaching a high school course or university course on the intellectual history of the 18th century you talk a lot about atheism it's one of the most important topics one of the most important flash points for political and philosophical debate in the 19th century then in the 20th century things get violent and things get surreal it's very different than when we talk about atheism in the 20th century as opposed to the 19th century in the 18th century right if you talk about the 18th century you're talking about voltaire when you're talking about the 20th century you're talking about lenin i'm talking about atheism as advocated by the communists who violently took over russia created the soviet union in a civil war et cetera et cetera you get to talk about mao zedong and you know in case you didn't know the relationship of each of these uh despotisms to atheism was much more fraught with contradiction and difficulty than you might at first like to imagine it's not the case that's simply communism i think nobody in their right mind looking back at the last several centuries nobody could claim that communism advanced the cause of atheism of course to a large extent it discredited it but um you know apart from such normative judgments it's not the case that even in a consistent way advocated for atheism throughout the the century or so of communism uh being in vogue being a powerful world embracing ideology now here we are in the 21st century when i first started paying attention to youtube which was coincidentally when i had i was going to say divorced my wife but legally speaking that's when i had separated from my wife and then we started employing lawyers and it took years to get divorced legally but i just uh just dumped my first life and found myself suddenly more time in my hands and found myself thinking about what kind of videos i wanted to make on youtube and how my own daughter might grow up one day to get to know the kind of man i was by seeing my face and seeing my voice on youtube at that moment there was a lot of talk about atheism on this very platform and throughout the whole of the internet now it's important to note that at that time youtube was not the leading medium social media generally things like twitter and so on and tumblr that did exist at that time these were not leading the discussion they were actually catching up with something that had been in vogue many years earlier they were catching up with the old-fashioned printing press and television and radio if you look at the timeline of when the so-called four horsemen of atheism came into vogue of when the books were best sellers of when these things were discussed on radio and tv and broadcast news actually old-fashioned media broadcast media books and so on those were out there first um and then youtube was catching up afterwards but here was this new boisterous uh participatory interactive medium taking the debate about atheism places it had never gone before taking it into people's homes and workplaces and into podcasts and getting in in the same room sometimes literally sometimes via you know internet telephony getting traditional christian preachers together with advocates of atheism and having them meet each other and speak to each other and hear each other's positions this was something new i mean i do not think ever on cnn maybe cnn's a bad example even say public access television i can remember the old religious programs wherever you are sorry if you live in america or canada i actually don't know if europe is like this there used to be this really low budget broadcast you know called cable access television public access television and oh god every uh every two-bit cult and religious group had a program uh and once in a while in some areas there'd be a call-in show for atheists uh to compete with with all that noise but i would say probably nowhere in the world was the the opportunity before that we had here on youtube to bring those people together contrast their views you know and and and for us all to learn from the wisdom and the folly of the ensuing debates so even though youtube and social media actually lagged behind print media lag behind even what was in the newspapers of the time it then brought this new vitality to the discourse about atheism and someone in my position at that time just split up with my first wife and i've just split up with my religion i mean i just turned the corner was like okay me and buddhism are done [Laughter] again if you guys are interested i can talk more about the timeline of my my interaction with buddhism and it was reasonable for me to expect wow so here we are at the start of a new century the 21st century and atheism is once again going to become a major epoch defining area of political discourse this is going to become another century-defining debate atheism and the future of religion in our times and i was wrong the reality is that youtube has become a century defining the subject of social media the format itself would go on to change the century this this what we're doing right now i'm live streaming anyone in my audience hi frieda anyone wants to talk to me talking about this would change the century come this would become a popular permanent aspect of our culture but the interest in atheism would prove to be unbelievably shallow and fleeting now i'm always suspicious of this word uh necessity and necessary these concepts uh in english you know i think it's very easy for anyone to take a step back and look at their own culture and it may be even easier to look at a foreign culture and say okay well this is a necessary change that things must change there's a necessary change to come here now you guys may not know tibetan buddhism the way i know tibetan buddhism traditionally tibetan buddhism included sex rituals what people now call tantric sex rituals but regardless tibetan buddhism included human sacrifice tibetan buddhism included taking the skull from a human sacrifice cutting it fashioning it into a bowl that you could eat from a magical bowl made out of a human skull anyone can take a step back and look at that and say this is the 21st century this has got to change things can't citizen it's necessary what are you going to do to change it now in case you don't know this is a highly hypothetical discussion because what actually happened to tibet was that they were conquered by the communist army of china they were incorporated into communist china and their whole tradition was obliterated and then kind of reconstructed uh thereafter currently there's a bit of a phony revival of buddhism in tibet but as you can imagine some things get revived and not others so the performance of the epic of geshar is being revived it's a traditional uh pseudo-historical narrative of a historical figure sort of like king arthur the equivalent of king arthur and tibet the communist party has allowed that to be revived but i think you can imagine a variety of things from tantric sex rituals to human sacrifice uh nobody is going to tolerate that being revived in the in the 21st century you know okay so that's that's easy it's easy to see this as necessary right what's not easy is looking at your own life and looking at the 20 years you have in front of you the next 20 years in the future saying what are you going to do about it what are you going to do to make it happen really thinking through for whom is it necessary what does it even mean to say that this is this is necessary it's a necessary change that has to come when you walk through the streets of montreal quebec when you walk through the streets of paris france you are surrounded by church architecture on all sides predominantly catholic but if you look carefully there are other forms of christianity competing with the catholic church you are enclosed by the accumulated brickwork of so many centuries of religious history when you watch star trek is that what life looks like when you watch star wars is that what life looks like i i don't know that many current gen science fiction shows when you watch firefly when you watch babylon five you know what i don't know you guys could fill in the blank smear whenever you watch depictions of the future including even some really grim depictions of the post-apocalyptic future you know is life dominated by the christian church by the catholic church is life dominated by islam in this way is that the future we assume for ourselves now you know it may be a little bit more subtle than talking about human sacrifice but it's not that it's not that you know um it's amazing to me that people don't even really think about this do you believe that in the future people should live in celibacy until marriage i think we have a really complex cultural debate to engage in about you know age of consent and when people should start having sex and that's something i think even most parents just avoid thinking about you know are we moving towards a culture where people start having sex at age 14 or are we moving towards a culture where everyone's expected to remain celibate until age 18. in some jurisdictions that's the case we're like it's criminal for anyone to have sex with anyone below age 18. what what is the solution but in any case you know oh does the future involve circumcision does the future involve arranged marriage does the future involve celibacy until marriage does the future involve the church controlling your fate in this way you know when i was on the cambridge when i was on the cambridge when i was on the campus of cambridge university england what freaked me out wasn't the church architecture and it wasn't the singing of church hymns it was the fact that i was surrounded by people who were left-wing secular intellectuals left-wing atheists and even communists there were a lot of communists at cambridge university and they had no problem with this and they were attending the church services i i didn't know any who were literally singing in the choir but they were going to hear these songs being sung and attend these services in these centuries-old cathedrals in cambridge okay well gee it seemed really simple before when you were talking about the demolition of a foreign exotic cultures religious tradition right we were talking about persecuting buddhist monks and saying no no no you can't do these things anymore that have been part of your sacred tradition for for centuries oh no no you have to change you have to be forced you have to be compelled to change and then as soon as you shift it back to a culture that's more familiar to you as soon as you're talking about you know the the cathedrals of cambridge england as soon as you're talking about the church architecture in paris as soon as you're talking about the reality of walking down the street in montreal suddenly you become uncomfortable what is going to change if our if our presumption is that change is necessary what does that necessity really mean one of the chief differences between the 17th century sorry i guess i should say 18th century we could talk about 17th century of them too let's talk about the 18th century and people like the baron de olbach improve my french if you can uh the ol bach the boron de hobart in english um talking about 18th century atheism right these were people witnessing the transformation of society by scientific breakthroughs and by what we would now call industrialization with rapidly improving quality of life rapidly improving standards living for everyone you know the emergence of flowing water through a pipe whether that's a tap to wash your hands eventually you know the invention of the toilet you know they're all these kind of miracles that we now take utterly for granted the first breakthroughs in understanding electricity which would eventually be harnessed to provide us with lights and radios and all these other again things we take out early for granted all these other conveniences of modern life just at the start of that and seeing the transformation of life that was accomplished by things like the mechanization of the production of fabric going from a world imagine yourself living in a world where every pair of socks worn by every man woman and child rich or poor was knitted by hand everyone is wearing hand-knitted socks to a world where they're a factory produced sock it's a big change it's a big difference okay um the transformation of life and you see the peasants who used to be tending goats and sheep now working inside that factory and producing you know those those materials and wearing them themselves and you see wow now with factory production the average urban poor person running out of vocabulary the average worker shall we say the average employed person in the city can now afford clothing better than kings and queens could afford just uh just a century ago the quality of life is improving so rapidly there was a reckless confidence in the 18th century that improving standard of living improving technology and simply uh the carrot and stick of science education would wipe out the superstitions of the dark ages would wipe out religion that religion would either cease to exist or it would be transformed it would be rationalized it would become an unrecognizable modern uh version of itself now in our own times i remember reading the autobiography of i'm sorry this wasn't quite known about clever in a second uh but it was it was a book like an autobiography of a diplomat sent from i think it was from england to saudi arabia so so it was it was really a book about the political history of saudi arabia but it was written by someone who had lived there and worked there and seen the transformation so i'm sorry autobiography is not quite the right term but i remember this guy saying so if you guys don't know there were a lot of british out there you know saudi arabia wasn't always called saudi arabia and iraq wasn't always called iraq and so on but the british empire and the french empire were out there mucking around in arabia broadly defined the arab and iranian part of the world arab and persian semi-continent or whatever um and you know reading someone like that lives that period of time describing you know there was a time when water was precious here there was a time when someone would load up their mule and make a two day journey to get water and carry it back and now they have the oil industry and the oil industry has financed the government building plumbing building pipes that have made water worthless and free and so you turn on the tap and instantly you have an unlimited unmeasured supply of of water water once scarce has become ubiquitous this you know really unimaginable uh transformation of society and you know it's easy to be cynical about this but especially if you take a centuries-long view of it if you're looking over say a 200-year period even though saudi arabia is a country with a very deep division between rich and poor in this sense the material conditions of the poorest people they've been transformed more than the wealthiest people i mean poor people in saudi arabia have shoes made in factories now they have water from a tap they have electricity like things you take for granted in a western first world country well those those technologies they arrived in saudi arabia late and they arrived suddenly you know saudi arabia did not have electricity when benjamin franklin was performing his experiments with electricity in philadelphia they did not participate in the very first um you know mass deployment of plumbing when that was going on in places like edinburgh and london you know the early adopters the innovators of what's now you know modern sanitation modern plumbing technology this stuff arrived there later and they they discovered and harnessed the wealth of oil under the ground quite late it is commonly said that if the british had known how much oil was in saudi arabia that the british empire would have never ended the british would not have given it up it's a purely hypothetical statement it may be uh anachronistic in various ways um and you guys may not know this but before the oil the oil reserves in saudi arabia and iraq were known um many people and certainly people in the british empire and the french empire they assumed that myanmar was going to be economically a much a much more important country than it was because myanmar had known oil reserves where where oil was known to be is very different from where it actually is today the amount of oil in myanmar is not considered very significant but we've gone on to discover and exploit oil and all these other places all around the world um so for a brief time it was presumed that saudi arabia would be locked in poverty forever as this desert wasteland and then all of a sudden everything starts to change religion didn't change the optimism of the 18th century has proven to be totally utterly false right saudi arabia didn't change it didn't adapt the church didn't now i have a great question okay how about switzerland no switzerland is a relatively positive example of a democracy in so many ways if you compare switzerland to saudi arabia hands up who who would rather spend the rest of their lives in switzerland and who would rather spend the rest of their lives in saudi arabia there's no beach food let me tell you if you're in switzerland once in a while you might think you'd rather be in yemen because of the beach you know i hear good things about the beach in yemen snorkeling um i met a guy who worked for the tourism department of yemen believe it or not he told me a lot about how wonderful yemen was in some ways i also hear bad things about young anyway i've known a few different yemenis in my life just people i cross paths doesn't talk to a remarkable country in so many ways um yeah switzerland is a positive example of a western democracy the quality of education the level of direct democracy participatory democracy the institutions of uh how laws are actually voted on and debated we can say we can say some positive things about switzerland okay how much has religion progressed in switzerland so whether you can look at switzerland as a one of the optimal examples of modernization of technology obviously it's what's in the country switzerland is kind of where everyone has access to drinking water and electricity on the internet and you can look at saudi arabia at the opposite extreme but what do they have in common they both remain intensely religious nations both of them in so many ways have failed to emerge from the darkness of the dark ages and the you know the technology of how government itself is organized the development of modern bureaucracy right this is also you could say it's either failed to uh challenge religion or it has made religion more powerful that we now live in a world where increasingly the organization of church resembles the organization of state uh in france in switzerland in germany you you basically have modern tax collection supporting churches of um i remember talking to a woman with a phd about how she was paying her contributions to the church in germany and so on and this it is now resembles a modern uh collection of taxes and uh indeed so i know there are ongoing controversies in england about the extent to which um the anglican church should now have a fully modern uh you know parliamentary style bureaucracy given that they do not have church the separation of church and state given that for them you know the church is explicitly a branch of the government and for example the government is put upon to pay for the pensions to pay for the retirement benefits and medical benefits of all the employees of the anglican church um so the bureaucratization of religion which i assume has also been ongoing in saudi arabia to be honest i have not read anything about that side of it but the modernization of religion may only be making it worse and not better okay um yeah so there's also a mention here that switzerland only had equal rights for women in 1990. as i recall that happened uh principality by principality and switzerland so that's why it's so late so the last few districts that didn't have the equal right to vote for women caught up in 1990 but it's not that the whole country didn't have women's rights in 1990 as a correct me if i'm wrong but as i recall that's why uh in that sense switzerland lagged behind they didn't have full rights for women everywhere in the country because they believed in this principle of local democracy of letting local debates and votes happen in each in each tiny uh principality costing the whole okay so look you have all seen the title of this video now you tell me guys this is your opportunity to be part of the content of this video what is the future of atheism are we just supposed to shrug our shoulders and carry on with the assumption that oh yeah there was this brief period where atheism was on the news and had best-selling books best-selling books written by complete idiots like sam harris and now if you don't think sam harris is an idiot we have 24 people in the audience right now you can just tell me you can just look in the mirror you can tell me do you personally feel that you are stupider than sam harris i doubt it i think everybody here i think everybody who watches this video i think all of you when you look in the mirror late at night when you when you evaluate your untouched i think you actually do count yourself as more intelligent than sam harris so at a minimum the guy is a mediocre or some mediocre intellect um but if if not if you don't share my view that he's actually a complete imbecile okay people like sam harris had smash hit best-selling books about atheism right and they appeared on the radio and they appeared on tv and those debates and that energy spilled out here onto youtube okay and a lot of money flowed into atheism too there were a lot of donations right and a lot of that money went to people like jacqueline glenn that's the truth right a lot of that support went to supporting people who really shouldn't have been supported and didn't do anything positive with it you can take a look at what jacqueline glenn does today on youtube what she's done over the last 10 years in aggregate you know um but i mean my fundamental question is to ask what next what now so there was that brief moment that came and went all this money flowed in all this attention all this interest flowed in but two big failures one there was a failure to create institutions now this is my opinion some of you may disagree with me some of you might say oh no the church of satan in california is accomplishing really great things i know there were some institutions created by that period of interest in atheism if you guys don't know there's this uh i forget the technical name might be the satanic temple i'm sorry i might be getting the name slightly wrong but there's this group of so-called satanists in california who go around starting amusing legal objections to reinforce separation of church and state so to give an example there was a courthouse in america that had a display of the ten commandments in front of the courthouse this is on government property now many countries in the world england france germany many countries don't enforce separatist christian state at all so if there's a religious monument like this on a courthouse's steps on government property whether you have no legal leverage but the excuse made for this uh judeo-christian display was that it would be acceptable because they would be open to all religions applying and having their own statute having their own monuments so so the activists from the church of satan and their real objective is to promote atheism they sent in this hilarious artist's concept of you know baphomet of this form of satan with goat horns uh directly influencing children sitting on a throne it was baphomet and the throne being kind of worshipped by two children and they're like oh well this is our traditional satanic statue that you know uh you know we want to have parallel to we want to have it next to the statue to moses and the ten commandments and this shows you know vote this you know in a subtle way hilarious uh satirical statement oh this shows the close relationship between satan and children in the next generation and blah blah blah and you know as you can imagine the local city council or whoever it was if it was the city government the state government they suddenly decided to change their tune and just get rid of the monument to the ten commandments rather than stand by their word of opening the door to applicants from from all religions equally uh to have their own display okay so there are some little there are some little examples like this but i i think it is fair to say in the united states of america and kermit i think in all of europe i think in the whole western world i do not believe anywhere on earth certain by the way certainly not in israel talk about a country where you need a really strong atheist political movement show me the atheist movement in israel i do not think that anywhere in the western world there is even one atheist organization as powerful and substantive as people for the ethical treatment of animals peta so what peta is to animal rights i do not think there is an atheist organization at that level and in case you don't know i hate peta and i regard pet as a failure i'm a very harsh critic of peta but like if you give peta a 5 out of 10 in terms of success my point is there are no atheist organizations that even reach that level of being a 5 out of 10. now i could now give more positive examples of organizations that are closer to an 8 or a 9 out of 10 or something more successful or civil society organizations but that's not my point my point is when we're looking at atheism past person future we're looking at institutional failure on such a level that it's we're nowhere near the other failure though is more impalable it's more immaterial but it is just as important it is a fog passing through the 21st century and that is the lack of will the lack of spirit you know i look at my fellow atheists and we all know it's easier to have spirit it's easier to have will it's easier to have self-confidence when you're just sitting in front of a camera and you're not say at the wailing wall in israel you're not actually on the ground talking to a rabbi you're not on the ground talking to a you know traditional christian church pastor you're not dealing with muslim fundamentalists face to face you're not maybe afraid for your life right oh it's easier to talk tough it's easier to have spirit it's easier to have a fierce will when you're on camera but i'm going to tell you something i don't even see it on camera you know i was gonna say the movement has lost its will but as as is stated in the title here i feel that there is no movement but even if you look at the kind of fragments that could be a movement what i see instead is a lot of self-hatred self-deception yes also self-indulgence yes fame whoring yes people just you know pursuing their own monetary success however we want to put it but um you know i have made videos saying seriously and sincerely i want to see churches pulled down i'm not a status quo philosopher here i'm not a status quo player in politics look at the school system in quebec look at the school system in france look at this look at the school system in saudi arabia look at wherever whatever example you want to use do you believe that the future is muslims putting their children into madrasas into muslim religious schools so they have a muslim upbringing so that the science textbook that teaches them about evolution is written by a muslim cleric for true believing muslims that's their science education it's going to a madrassa's going to a muslim school look again it doesn't exist in the world but we could say this about tibetan buddhism you know hypothetically would you want tibetan children being raised by tibetan monks in a traditional tibetan education you know like we can talk about this hypothetically to some extent you know there are some buddhist countries where at least orphans do kind of get a buddhist they're raised by a buddhist temple you can talk about that very very small number of children now their only education is going to a buddhist temple um i mean i knew about sorry i was interested in this as a research interest for me i knew about cases in myanmar where there were orphans and it was you know i mean the good news was they weren't starving there were orphans who were taken care of by buddhist monks it was that was a situation of absolute poverty so you know they were getting food and shelter but no no educational but that's in a country where a lot of people get no education at all so i just say this is not really up i'm just mentioning you you can at least talk about a hypothetical example with buddhism this way my point being it's not just the judeo-christian religions but if the judeo-christian religions are a large percentage of the world's population the largest percentage of the earth's service okay gee so um we've all agreed that some kind of change is necessary what is necessary mean does necessary mean it'd be nice if someone else did it and you don't have to do it be nice if someone else took responsibility but you don't want to take responsibility what does necessary mean okay hmm yeah gee it's really a bad idea that in canada muslim children the children of muslim parents should be sent to be educated in muslim only schools well it's happening right now how about the christians how about the hutterites so if you don't know who the hutterites are they're an especially despicable christian group do you think that hutterites should go to school only with other hutterites do you think that catholics should go to school only with other catholics do you think that sex education and evolution should be taught in the catholic schools whatever example you want to you want to use right oh oh gee and you know when you watch star trek or you watch star wars is that what the future is like you know like guys you know i'm a bit of a pessimist for technological change i think that most of what we use in terms of consumer technology invisibly is limited by the laws of physics i'll give you guys a real brief example it's very easy to fantasize that in the future the uh the battery inside your cell phone will have 10 times as much or 100 times as much energy as the battery does today okay well if you don't know this it's not that it's outright impossible to increase the amount of energy but once you increase the amount of energy and obviously you have to change the materials then you're getting into something that is tremendously hot to the touch see there are other constraints you're getting this one that's a liquid rather than a solid and there are there are some special batteries that are like a vat of looks like lava there's a valve of liquid metal that's carrying all these electrons you get into constraints about what's possible so the laws of physics in that sense limit how much technological progress or change is possible and the other thing is the limits of our biology okay um at a reasonable size like the size of the computer screen i'm looking at now you cannot see the difference between 2k video and 4k video so we can keep improving the density of the image on a on a computer screen or a movie screen you can but you can't behold it we're past the point of diminishing returns in terms of the difference technology can make by the way just brief that question it's true if the image is enormous enough if you're having a screen the size of a wall you have a huge screen in your living room then you can see the difference between 2k and 4k whether or not it's worth thousands of dollars is another question i don't feel it is but whatever i have i have monastic tastes in case you haven't noticed know uh there are these two great constraints about the difference you know technology can make in our lives now really briefly there is another sense in which technology is not constrained right and that's the technology of war killing people is going to get easier and easier it's going to get faster and faster already if you guys don't know this it's terrifying when you look into it there are laser-based weapons that anyone can acquire like terrorists can acquire as well as governments and smugglers i know have made use of this there are laser-based weapons that instantly fire a pulse of laser that's invisible you don't see it in the light and it permanently destroys your vision so it also causes intense pain and to normally get something like bleeding from the eyes but in one moment you have a pulse of light i believe it's outside of the optical spectrum and it destroys the vision of anyone who's looking in that direction and has their eyes open instantly so you can wipe out you know like in a battlefield situation you can wipe out soldiers in an urban situation you can wipe out people in the city and i read in detail about a case where there were smugglers or whatever illegal uh an illegal shipment on a boat of some kind and um they were being approached by a helicopter from something like a coast guard some kind of a police authority of this kind and in order to escape they fired one of these lasers that almost killed the pilot and co-pilot because if you're blinded you know again this is permanent this lifelong injury but in that moment your ability to land the helicopter if you've been blind or continue flying without dying is terrible now this development can continue the further perfection of nuclear arms the further profession of drones uh automated aircraft now one of the reasons for that why i'm saying that can really continue to progress is exactly that it's not constrained by biology in the way that the the 4k screen is the quality of the screen you can make for a computer or for a cinema you know it's constrained by our ability to appreciate it our ability to behold it right we're talking about the technology used to kill people there's no such thing because obviously this is something that goes far beyond our biological limits right you're exactly talking about overwhelming the human body in different ways so our ability no no so likewise by the way so this is an imperfect comparison but it's an instructive one how much can aspirin be improved technologically so aspirin has been around for about a hundred years alexa in what year was aspirin discovered here's something i found on the internet in 1897 felix hoffman invented acetyl salicylic acid alexa stop hundred years more than 100 years so you know this is similar to saying about the battery in your phone like it's not it's not that you couldn't have more energy in that com in a compact place but once you're exceeding the limits of the laws of physics as we have them here you're getting into other trade-offs other disadvantages like okay if you want more energy in the same amount of space in your phone then differences in temperature differences in the consistency solid versus liquid you're starting to get into and by the way differences in reliability you know how often are you willing to put up with them exploding or catching flames you know currently it's one in a million but what if it's 10 in a million what if it's just you know what if they blow up just a little bit more often you know because cell phone batteries do blow up on small case um they are an imperfect technology as it as it stands okay all right you want a pill that can relieve your headache why are we still using a technology that's over 100 years old there are trade-offs okay we have invented pills that will relieve your headache more rapidly and they're addictive and they have side effects okay there are a whole lot of chemicals we've developed that that will have a pleasing effect on you and will alleviate your headache and we don't really want them being sold over the counter the way we sell aspirin right there are trade-offs like you can have a more powerful battery but are you sure you want that when you know the disadvantages you can have a more powerful pill to relieve your neck pain or your headache or whatever it is these kinds of things are you sure you want so we're stuck with a hundred year old technology for headaches and fever in the pill that's asking okay but when you're taking away that biological constraint when you're talking about making a gas that can kill people we're talking about biological and chemical weapons there's no limit right that stuff can all get much deadlier and in case you didn't know we have just been living through what is ostensibly the first global pandemic caused by a laboratory accident you know the first that we know of is it possible that other global pandemics epidemics and diseases were in fact developed in laboratories and released accidentally or intentionally i have read accounts from the soviet union where in russia they were making biological and chemical weapons that were accidentally released from the lab but their impacts were just localized there were like a couple villages in russia and so we were basically everyone died and it's horrifying and you know soviet union they had control of all the newspapers so they were able to present it to the public in a certain kind of way but you know that's it's not totally unprecedented in that sense right okay so you know so there are some forms of technological progress people that are going to continue to increase exponentially alexa in what year was the toilet invented here's something i found on the web according to vizio.com the first flushing toilet was invented in 1596 by sir john harrington 1596 okay well all right that's okay that's not thomas crapper's toilet okay well somebody made an early model back in the 16th century but anyway look we're definitely at more than 100 years okay let's look it up year thomas crapper invented the toilet yeah getting a laugh out of melissa thomas crapper [Music] thomas crapper's water closet looks around 1880 this gets rolling my grandmother still used an owl house in the 1920s yep well that's just what i was going to talk about right now so look my own engagement with ecology went through various phases you know there's one way you can look at ecology and be optimistic about what we're going to invent something better than this toilet we've had for 150 years let's say roughly a tech like moving forward with technologies and then the other way you can look at it is going backward so you know melissa was mentioning her her mother had an outhouse i used to live in cambodia did you know this about me that's probably the first time i've ever mentioned it i've probably never been i used to live in cambodia i used to live in laos i have some experience with other kinds of toilets and before i ever went out to cambodian laos there were some ecologists who were really optimistic about the so-called the sawdust toilet about returning to a non-flushing um compost based toilet you know these these kinds of things exist right okay well i've got something i'm a complete pessimist in this respect all right i think technology is going to continue to give us more addictive video games it's going to continue to give us more addictive street drugs do you think fentanyl is going to be the final invention this way do you think there's not something coming next after fentanyl no you think oxycontin and oxycodone are the end of the development of addictive painkillers right after i'm okay so what originally there was heroin then there was uh uh what's the god look at my name sorry we had a series of opiates you had heroin you had oxycontin oxycodone now you've got fentanyl what's next all right you think it's going to get better then it's going to get worse i think we're going to forget how to make addictive chemicals right there's more addictive stuff is coming you know we invented lsd we invented uh what people call ecstasy mdma we invented these what's next you know and these things are going to keep progressing destructive drugs are going to keep progressing i'm a real pessimist when you talk about things that are actually useful things that are actually going to improve you know human life i think we're very limited by the ways oh have you been reading the news lately have you heard this have you heard this there is no cure for the common cold there is never going to be a cure for the common cold there is never going to be a cure for herpes simplex which i think is like the most widely transmitted disease on planet earth if not it's in like the top five it's never going to be a cure for the gum cold in case you didn't know in case you didn't know the common cold one of the most common forms is called coronavirus we've we've been coming up against the limits of our ability scientifically to create vaccines for coronaviruses which include the common cold like there are some limits we're up against here right but in terms of the destructive potential of technology oh look guys we can use this in all kinds of different examples um our technology our ability to cut down trees is getting better and better our ability to grow trees how much do you think that's going to improve how much do you think our ability to create forests as opposed to ability to destroy ports and in the last two centuries you see all that progress oh we can get faster at cutting down trees we can't get faster growing them right um you know there is more technological change to come and some of it is so [ __ ] obvious i keep saying this in the videos about steroids and i say it also in the videos talking about antidepressants like look i mean the the public addiction to drugs like haldol that don't work drugs like prozac that don't work that's one problem but you know what else is creeping up on us is the addiction to performance enhancing drugs including even testosterone testosterone works it's much more threatening it's a mind-altering drug as well as a body alternate drug okay do you think that's the end of the pro you think what's next you know we invented anavar we invented sarms right we invented this whole variety of performance dancing drugs and various ways of transfusing more testosterone into people okay you think that's the end of that development and you think if we don't prepare for this culturally intellectually philosophically do you think we're going to be better prepared or worse prepared for the next wave of mind-altering body altering habit-forming performance enhancing drugs because they do they have a certain kind of height of them even testosterone itself does by the way it boosts you up right um what we were so well prepared for fentanyl right like our culture having been through the experience with heroin addiction and oxycodone addiction oh we were really prepared to deal with fentanyl addiction right are you prepared for what comes next culturally legally like as a democracy organ are you ready are you ready for what comes next think about how we dealt with any of these things religion you know our cure for drug addiction is people going to find jesus that's the only [ __ ] cure we've got and like in thailand it's people going to a buddhist monastery which i think works better i mean there's a question let's compare the efficacy of people uh people you know converting to christianity versus converting to buddhism devoting themselves the buddhist devotion versus christian devotion uh vis-a-vis sobriety and drug addiction but but look it's all [ __ ] i mean buddhism is also built on oh yeah right this is this book i've wanted to read this book for years if if my ex-wife were watching that shooting i wanted to buy this and i was too poor i wanted to buy this years and years ago well maybe she wouldn't remember but when i was with maxwell i finally bought it coming i still don't have to still enough time to uh to read it um probably cause i'm busy writing my own book i'm trying to get the final manuscript but you know we are still as a society limping along on this crutch relying on christian charity and guess what it says in the bible it says why was wine put on this earth if not to make men happy you know what the bible isn't pro-sobriety it's not you know what i mean it's not and you know a lot of a lot of devout christians smoke marijuana and drink alcohol and uh you know and so on and so forth all right i'm gonna take a moment now to to look at your to read your comments it looks like there's some some uh uh some intelligent comments here maybe i'm wrong it was all stupidity babe if you want to jump in sorry my girlfriend melissa is off camera she she also counts as a member of the audience but i normally if you wanted to you could you could type your comments i mean if you wanted to instead of giving has seen the title them i actually have not seen the title of your video all right there you go let's look it up the title of the video is atheism is dead colon of the future of a movement that isn't moving yeah okay so it does look like there's some intelligent comments here yeah i really appreciate what you said about something being necessary but does that mean that you don't have to do anything right if it's necessary then it means you have to do something personal but once it gets to the point where people actually have to do something or refuse to do something right they fold they don't do it well you may not know but that's part of the reason why marxists are so lazy is that marxists believe that their future utopia is inevitable uh it's the doctrine of historical inevitability yeah no no but in their utopia but that's you know that's the future history that will no matter what so why not just smoke marijuana why not just you know why not just feel morally superior to others and sit on your ass and live a comfortable life why get out on the vanguard and actually risk your neck or do something daring or positive so yeah it's actually interesting that's a source of passivity even for a a kind of secular religion or godless religion like marxism and communism now nevertheless there are some communists who are who have quite a work ethic shall we say um you know uh for whatever reason noel keane says quote i would love you to do a talk or debate with sam harris would you agree to it if you were to agree so noel i don't know if you are connected i don't know if you were a big donor who can push sam harris around but it is incredibly unlikely that sam harris would ever talk to me it is incredibly likely that sam harris would acknowledge my existence and i do think i remember seeing some people on reddit saying that they were quite sure that sam harris had seen my videos um and they they knew this on the basis of so i don't know if sam harris uses discord or just his twitter or something but they they said look you know normally a video like this that's reached just a few thousand views criticizing he does see those like they heard him mention enough like obscure youtube videos that and again that's possibly because his fans sent him the link it's possible because he googles his own name like you know however i'm not faulting him for that uh it is quite likely and based on what his fans told me it was just people who had really been following him they were like oh no no he'll be aware of this guy's critique of him by now he will have heard this uh back when i made a series of videos criticizing him so obviously that's not gonna happen all right so henry gann says quote the god whole exists he has god whole in quotation marks what do you replace religion with okay henry i think that is a profoundly misleading question okay um male circumcision exists what do you replace circumcision with there is no workplace there is no substitution all right millions and millions of men will just not have 60 of the nerve endings in their penis cut off okay female circumcision exists what are you gonna replace it with there is no replacement there's nothing like what do you what do you think you think people are walking around mourning the fact they didn't undergo female circumcision like oh there's just this emptiness in my life there's something i'm lacking there's a hole you know i know this this god-shaped whole concept because they didn't undergo circumcision okay arranged marriage exists do you think people are going to be walking around feeling they lack something they lack religion because they don't have arranged marriage all right and look you know i don't know anyone who isn't busy you know i i just don't believe there are people who are going to be walking around saying they have nothing to do on sunday if there was no more church service i just don't believe it you know in none of these senses it's it's not credible to me so what i'm saying to you is you may want to discuss this further if you're still in the audience you can say further it's one thing to say you don't believe in god it's another thing to say you don't believe in the god-shaped whole i don't believe that the deletion of god leaves anything lacking that people i don't believe it um yeah and now again if you actually go and see these people face to face or you sit in the classroom it might be different for you if you actually go to a mormon school if you actually go to a muslim madrasa you know do you think these children will be impoverished or their lives will be worse if instead they're integrated into a government secular school i don't believe it and so where i grew up in toronto there were jewish orthodox schools there were muslim-only schools there were catholic-only schools i just do not believe there's a god-shaped hole in people's lives if they give that up and then are integrated into a you know what do you think they've lost oh they've lost out on homophobia they've lost they've missed out on being told uh that you know evolution is just a theory you know what i mean like all this all this horseshit they get laden down with in their youth by going to religious school they've lost out on guilt and all this you know they've lost out on prayer or being taught to pray before they they write a test and [ __ ] like this before they do a sports competition i i just don't buy it so i'm sorry anyway thanks for the donation someone just uh chipped in uh 10 pounds guys we have 32 people in the audience if you guys want to hit thumbs up this is saturday so most of my followers are out getting drunk or something um i do have a smaller audience on weekends than than weekdays but if you guys want to hit thumbs up it'll help people this more people discover the video both while we're live and uh and after do you ever understand that i think the promise of eternal life is something yes okay so again i i have to put on a human skill i have to put on a face to face scale i don't believe that i don't believe that um i you know i i don't think now if you talk to someone who used to have that delusion i mean look first i'll do something with there's a human face on it talk to someone who used to sit by their bed and pray and they genuinely believed that there was a supernatural person who heard their prayer and who responded and maybe they even heard the voice of god talking to them and then they hit a point in their life where they don't believe in that anymore the same way you know you don't believe in santa claus anymore and where they look back on that with scorn and derision and really see it as something quite dangerous you know uh hearing the voice of god or speaking to god i don't believe there is a hole in people's lives when they stop talking to god when they stop listening to god or hearing the voice of god i don't believe it i don't believe there's any sense of which they're poorer or they feel there's something they need to replace with i do not buy it now look sorry i'll come back to your example in a second but all right i knew a lot of first nations people first nations american indian korea ojibwe mohawk these these types of people den you know so these are the native tribes most of them had some history of ambivalent engagement with the traditional religion of their tribe right and some sense of sort of national pride in that religion the non-christian animist religion okay even for them and this is very different from talking about christianity because we're not really talking about an oppressive religion in the same way all right i don't think any of them could say that they felt their lives were worse when they stopped being afraid of ghosts when they stop being afraid of curses when they stop being afraid of miscellaneous magical superstitious things that their grandmothers believed in stereotypically again each one of these people has a different story some of them their grandmother was a communist whatever each family was different but if they were kind of typical family where the grandmother really had these traditions of believing in sacred and superstitious and invisible things and then as the next generations go there's less and less patience for that increasingly the old religion is just regarded as literature in the same way you and i regard shakespeare there's nothing supernatural about it just like you value culturally or participate in without belief you know no i i don't buy it now you know the promise of life after death eternal okay and of course it's a promise that's false comes at a price you can't have sex at a wedlock you can't have sex for marriage i i don't even have to give you ten other examples i mean you know of course there's this long look at uh abby shapiro ben shapiro's sister her whole [ __ ] life is trying to keep this checklist she's trying to maintain every principle in the old testament and some of them she doesn't even try i don't see her doing animal sacrifice i don't see her you know if you actually get into the list of what rituals are required of you you know every meal begins and ends with prayers and superstitions and candles and how the food is prepared and how it's served there are a million things but she ostensibly so the only thing she has going for is that people think she's beautiful she either actually is a beautiful woman or a woman or people perceive her as a beautiful woman she's a much celebrated beauty jesus have you heard her sing terrible taste she's an imbecile and just unbelievably poor taste in everything but art music etc she trained to be an opera singer it's torture to listen to that woman saying but people perceive her as beautiful people perceive her as sexy she's had sex with one man that's all she's ever had it's not even if we just stick on the sexuality you know in reality so every element of her life is infested with superstition and ritual just for that promise of eternal life and but even if we just looked at the issue of sexuality of that sacrifice i don't buy it i don't buy that that's a hole in your life that you're left hankering for you know after after you lose it you know and that's what we're talking about we're talking about a before and after that now you live without the belief in the soul you live without the belief in reincarnation or heaven or hell or whatever it may be you know so uh noel says quote it was reading sam harris and dawkins that deprogrammed him from religion so he does have respect for their work close quote so noel i gotta say this for those of you who've been watching my channel you will have heard me say this 10 years ago so sorry eight years ago a long long time ago okay no people driving down the road see a car crash and they think i'm gonna quit drinking don't have respect for the car crash okay real example i've known people who said this i'm not deeply personally okay you're driving on the road and you see a slaughterhouse most often people just see the cows lined up to be slaughtered they don't actually see the slaughter right i've also heard stories of people saw a train crash or a truck turnover truck that was full of pigs or something and the animals some of them are killed and some were running around scared they see that they think okay i'm gonna become vegan i'm not gonna eat me anymore you know okay don't respect the car crash don't respect the slaughterhouse okay i know it's kind of unnatural for human beings but do not make a god out of the impetus that led you to make that decision to make that breakthrough to have that will uh there's a parable of the stone robe monk in buddhism okay and that is a monk who was cold and so instead of lighting a fire he got a heavy stone got some kind of boulder and he would lift the stone and he would walk back and forth in his cell in his monastic hut so naturally he became one of the most muscular and impressive monks amongst the buddhist monks because this was his method of heating himself was instead of using a instead of using a fire to use a stone okay it's not the stone it's the man that matters okay it's not sam harris it's not dawkins it's not the book and if you don't believe me if you go back today and read those books i think you will laugh at them with scorn all right and you look at it and think this is just a stone i am reading through your comments now guys just catching up with what you said over the last hour or so so the compliment from uh alexandru perrida for donated 10 pounds sterling was quote i found your channel a few months ago you have an interesting approach to life why are so many atheists using intoxicants shouldn't they be purely logical and reasonable in theory so look you know um [Music] it's much harder to be a vegan than it is to be an atheist veganism requires a certain level of commitment to self-discipline and of strong will you can't be a pushover i mean just even the ease with which you can go to restaurants and bars and you know enjoy yourself in society everything surrounding you is made of meat and cheese and eggs just the availability of processed food the convenience of eating non-vegan food you know if you're a vegan you have this level of self-discipline where you say no i'm not going to do what's easy i'm not gonna do what's expedient i'm gonna do what's right you know even if it pisses off my boss at work even if it pisses off my co-workers even pisses off my mom and dad you know um you know you have that commitment you have that self-discipline that's what you've decided to do it's what you want you're going to do it what percentage of vegans are silver huge percentage of vegans drink alcohol huge percentage of vegan smoke marijuana huge percent of vegans use even harder mind-altering drugs like uh ayahuasca [Music] what's called ecstasy mdma you know i don't i i don't want to know the percentage you know like sober vegans are a shockingly small minority of vegans you know so that this is the reality of the world we live in now you know what percentage of vegans are addicted to video games you can get into some other categories it's what percentage vegans are atheists as opposed to holding uh superstitious or supernatural views you know so that is a much much higher barrier to entry now what is the barrier to entry to becoming an atheist it's almost nothing like i would a very large percentage of people who call themselves an atheist they just don't care you know you can be by the way i'm not against this people would say well you know my grandmother believed in that stuff and my parents kind of tried to make me look bad you know i just decided it just doesn't do anything to me it's not really a philosophical or political commitment for them but just like yeah you know it's it's not appealing to them they're not enthusiastic about it well that's all it is it's a passive rejection of religion with no clear commitment to transforming society you know uh now you know i'd say this also um [Music] if you live in switzerland being pro-democracy you can be a completely gormless conformist it can just be you're someone who goes with the flow of society as it already exists living in denmark being someone who's pro-democracy in some kind of challenge right living in beijing china you are risking your life by being pro-democracy even if all you do is talk about it all right it's really even if all you do not even on the internet even if you are just verbally open with your friends about what your views under marcia you just talk about the fact that you think china should have elections you're risking your life okay really you'll be tracked and you'll be spoken to you know the government will sooner or later have a word with you to let you know you know that that's what you're doing you're risking being imprisoned uh so on and so forth now likewise today uh in denmark actually i think the ultimate example probably sweden sweden and norway these are some of the most atheistic sweden norway and i looked at everything the czech republic these are some of the most atheistic countries in the world you are risking nothing by rejecting religion or calling yourself an atheist okay in texas you're risking something you know there's risk there's negative consequence in saudi arabia you're risking something in malaysia you're you're risking something right you're you're to some extent putting your life on the line you're risking really negative uh consequences but you know with all that having been noted um [Music] okay look okay here's what an idiot would say and now here's what i have to say an idiot would say well there's no intelligence test before you get your atheist card there's no iq test there's no exam to get in okay here's what i have to say i've been to oxford university england i've been to cambridge university england and there is an intelligence test to get in people have to study for and write a whole series of exams to get into oxford and cambridge and they're all idiots every single person i met who either had a phd from oxford and cambridge or was in the process of getting a phd phd candidates elite level students at oxford and cambridge i'm not telling you some of them are stupid i'm telling you all of them are stupid and some of them are a combination of stupid and insane but people who were really [ __ ] crazy any of you there could be some people watching this who knew me in those days some of those guys went on to become professionals yeah i'm saying you are a [ __ ] [ __ ] you and you and you all you guys i knew face to face one of those guys he's now a professor here at uh uh university of british columbia i think you're [ __ ] [ __ ] bro i think you're that stupid you know for real okay so you know like i'm just saying when you see it in this context when you see it in the context of even when there is an intelligence test even when there is an exam to write the vast majority of people in elite educational institutes are imbeciles okay well yeah there's no entrance exam for becoming an atheist there's no entrance to example so you know there's no example becoming a vegan either you know uh it's it's a really really tough comparison to me now look you guys might know me i signed up to join the army i did not end up doing military service for stupid circumstances but just a couple years ago when the war was against isis i signed up to to fight i i don't know every guy i've met who's been in the army yes they like to complain that they had to work with stupid people in the army okay but i i really i really don't know i doubt it i think if you're in the army if you're an active service i don't think you work with stupider people than you meet in vegan activism or animal rights activism or atheism activism and i don't think you work with stupider people than you meet in cambridge university england on campus i don't believe that and i'll tell you why because it's about self-discipline now i'm not saying there are no stupid people near me i'm saying like the level of stupidity that's normal stupidity and malice that's normal in these supposedly elite settings right i think everyone wants to everyone has a if you haven't you haven't really dealt with the face-to-face you know you want to imagine that these places are full of intelligent well-intentioned people what why do you think i signed up to do humanitarian work in cambodia and laos i thought i was going to be working with wonderful people imagine the intelligent well-intentioned people you're going to meet doing humanitarian work in cambodia unless it's not who i'm at okay so look that's the answer to your question and and the next question is what now what next so what are we going to do in the next 20 years yeah you know what i have just one friend who's really gone to atheist conferences these atheist activists i only have one but i remember talking to her i was talking about problems amongst so-called atheist activists and she was just agreeing with me and she said look when you go to those conferences a lot of the people there are getting drunk and sleeping with prostitutes a lot of them are like these people who had some kind of repressive christian upbringing and now they want to use drugs use alcohol sleep with prostitutes have the pleasures of the senses the pleasures of the flesh that were denied before like that's real and you see it face to face you know okay so so so a lot of atheists are drunks a lot of atheists are drug acts a lot of atheists are hormones use a real 18th century term oh there's a famous quotation you don't have to tell the whole story behind us where a man is accused of being a hormone and he defends himself by saying if you go into a man's house and finds that he owns only a single piece of cheese i do not think you could very well call him a cheese monger therefore i do not think you can call me a whoremonger because i have only one more it's hilarious terms of the terms of the bizarre history of that term yeah okay so a lot of atheists are whoremongers they're overcome by the pleasures this is okay what now what next what are we gonna do you know and i mean that's what all my critiques come come down to you know again whether we're talking about something like the vegan movement we're talking about ecology i mean right now you [ __ ] tell me what just happened in glasgow scotland what did extinction rebellion and anaerobic animal rebellion and all these donation collecting parasites on the ecological movement accomplish in the last two weeks they well it's about a month last four weeks really right they were all featured on the news they were all given all the support a level of support my youtube channel has never had is never going to have right all this encouragement support the world's most popular cause and they accomplished nothing and there's no indication they are ever going to accomplish there's no positive direction forward they're taking or ever gonna take okay well what now what next i mean i'm i'm sitting here saying again the title of this video i'm saying to you you know the the atheist movement is a failure um you know the atheist movement is dead and now i'm asking you what is the future of the movement going to be and it's going to be what you and you and you decide to do with it after watching this video all of these things all this initiative it comes from unique individuals small numbers of unique individuals that's who will make the difference around the world um and you know if if not you then who look just put this in perspective do you think you are less talented than jacqueline glenn do you think you are less talented than a nissian he originally came on the scene as an atheist activist if you guys cameras a long time ago do you think you are less intelligent than sam harris if if you say yes i don't believe you i don't think anyone in this audience some people haven't seen this video yet i don't think any one of you believes you're stupider than sam harris and if if you don't know what i'm talking about watch my playlist of videos i have a playlist of the videos criticizing sam harris that will show you just how stupid that guy is where i quote him and show what's wrong with his way of reasoning and things okay guys you know every single one of you has more potential to make this change to lead some aspect of this movement and change the world than sam harris or jacqueline glenn what the [ __ ] did jaclyn glenn start off with you know think about her starting position 10 years ago you know what i mean every single one of you in this respect in relation to and what does it take again there is risk you know it does take nerve it does take backbone you know there are some it does take steadfastness you know but look at the losers who've been leading the movement in the last 20 years now look at the next 20 years and think about what's think about what's possible you know um again sorry i mean let's already do attention to it it's easy to say that something is necessary it's even easier to say it's inevitable and i'm saying look ahead to the next 20 years and you tell me what what difference we're going to make you know what's inevitable [ __ ] isis all right i mean the islam and that can happen again there's no reason to think that's the last time muslims are going to try to re-inaugurate the caliphate to go back in time and start caliphate-based government again have you heard the taliban is the government of afghanistan again things can go backward anytime bro look at turkey turkey the one distinguishing thing about turkey was so-called camalism whatever you want to call it but the secular modernizing movement in turkey well you know what's happened in the last 20 years in turkey look at israel you think israel is going to go forward it's going to go backward oh yeah israel could become more secular and more democratic but it could not could get worse you know how about how about texas you know any part of texas georgia you know you tell me again i've drawn attention to this in many videos people like to praise so-called blm black lives matter when you look at the reality on the ground of what's happening there is no black lives matter what there are black church groups almost all of the activism almost all the legal cases the actual leaders the actual organizations making things happen were black christian religious groups uh i didn't hear about any that were muslim just the last couple years obviously if you go back to the 1960s there have been times when muslim black muslim groups were also a major source of of activism and you know agitating for social and political change so you know there is nothing inevitable about the movement forward towards atheism moving forward towards democracy right it's gonna happen if people like you and me make it happen now look sorry this is this is an aside but it's probably the single most important part of this video um there are two moments in history where secularism could have taken over the government of a major western democracy and changed history forever one was the french revolution and one was the american revolution okay and in both cases it didn't happen okay why didn't it happen in france because one man named napoleon decided to sell out the atheist sell out the secularists and to reestablish catholicism in france one man made that decision period there's nothing democracy there was no you want to say that yeah there was something that i had wanted to say but then i forgot so i was just gonna say we in america growing up in america i lived in a country that was supposedly had separation of church and state right right but anytime something some tragedy happened all the news reporting would say yes prayers you know yes god be with us you know that is sorry no no the extent of which religion is just ingrained in the public discourse it does really depend on one person it depends on sure editorial policy at that time the president in case you didn't know took his vows on a stack of bibles every courtroom in the united states every president there are religious ceremonies every day that they they start congress house of congress both of the state level and the federal level they have prayers they have religious ceremonies and invoking god and there were polls of americans saying huge percentage of americans one second but saying they would never vote for someone who was an atheist you know thus we get completely phony christians like uh bill clinton you know pretending anyway you did you did unfortunately derail what i was saying remember what i was where i was right okay so look uh napoleon was one man and he single-handedly completely sold out and undermined and undercut and reversed the movement towards atheism that was decisively created and briefly pursued by the french revolution so if you don't know that involved taking away the land owned by the church the land and the buildings owned by the church yes like including things like monasteries those including things like farms you know actually taking that away and saying you don't own that anymore and in some cases they were just auctioned off to the highest bidder in other cases they were made into hospitals or something the government needed i think in some cases there were many military facilities too because there was a lot of war at that time but actually taking away the possessions the wealth of the church and even though it was only for a few years they coercively forced priests and nuns to get married they said no that's over you now have to be married and have to be a normal merced you are not allowed to live in celibacy now they didn't actually force them to marry a particular person you can imagine but there were it's like well if you're a priest you can marry one of these nuns there was a kind of dating game that went over there was a government sponsored dating game of coercively for they were actually trying to eradicate their religion okay one man sold it out now you tell me what were you bunch of men that's what i was going yeah that's they're saying next okay do you think benjamin franklin believed in god i don't i've read his autobiography he's polite about it but i think it is fair to say benjamin franklin was basically an atheist okay and if you don't know you can look into his sex life okay how about thomas jefferson certainly in today's parlance thomas jefferson would be considered an atheist i think at his own time you might have described him as some kind of deist having some kind of nuanced anti-clerical views but yeah um i notice we have 32 thumbs up oh it's changing we have 32 thumbs up with 31 people in the audience so some some people gave the thumbs up and left we have more thumbs up but guys if you just joined the audience uh hit thumbs up it'll help more people discover the video okay so look obviously we could list off all of the people who participated in the america how about governor morris how about all these like all these people were kind of on the atheist spectrum there will be some exceptions by the way sorry i can't say everybody who was a an elite level leader in the american revolution around the american constitution was was an atheist i know you you tell me do you think john adams actually believed in god holy [ __ ] what a weird guy john adams was um okay so there was this moment in history where a group of secular republican people who were of varying degrees of atheism took over the government and wrote their own constitution and you know i mean the main missed opportunity people like to talk about has to do with slavery like well you guys were all kind of sort of opposed to slavery but you weren't really opposed to slavery enough to make a commitment at that moment when you were the constitution well they were all kind of sort of opposed to christianity but they weren't opposed enough to to make it happen so instead you know look at what we got you know with with the united states of america and by the way you can repeat that for each of the 13 colonies i mean you know i think the most secular group of legislators was the group of legislators who um you know who actually wrote the constitution at the federal level but state by state some will be more secular than others but no america people behave as if they have separation nutrition state if you actually read the constitution it's a whole other story uh looks right i'm just going to say i'm sorry this is the recurring leap motif let me do the video okay what now what next okay guess what nobody made it easy on you nobody did this for you okay napoleon didn't make it easy for you charles the goal didn't make it easy for you okay benjamin franklin didn't make it easy for you okay it's our struggle now in the next 20 years we've got to make it happen now and you tell me if not now then when this is 2021. we're still locked in the [ __ ] dark ages we are still dealing with this medieval [ __ ] people are still shocked atheists are shocked when i say i want to abolish christmas okay they're shocked they can't even debate or discuss it with me not one ever has they reject me as an extremist atheists are shocked when i talk about actually shutting down religious schools actually coercively ending religious education actually coercively integrating people like the mennonites people like the amish people like the hutterites and yes crazy muslim groups orthodox jewish groups so on down the line saying oh no no i actually don't believe those people should be allowed to brainwash their children and i don't believe they should be able to circumcise their children male or female i also know that they should be allowed to tattoo their faces for [ __ ] sake okay oh i'm an extremist so that's where we're at in terms of the overton window in terms of what's considered mainstream i'm way outside the mainstream because i'm willing to say out loud these things that are so obvious that they're written into every [ __ ] science fiction vision of the future of planet earth we've got right there is no science fiction that views it the other way somebody mentioned dune several people mentioned dune right but dune is a future dystopia okay dune is a future where there is no democracy dune is a future where basically the muslims won were basically you know muslim jihadists rule the whole universe and it's horrible and in case you know in the first two novels they also got rid of computers where drug addicted muslim fundamentalists took over the universe people who are addicted to this you know mind-altering hallucinogenic drugs spice and they're crazy fun that's that's the view of the world in dune and in case you don't know it's just a few senses here and there i've heard interviews the author where any possibility of democracy is completely dismissed it's just a world where the only form of government is despotism that's it there's only despotism nothing else and everyone's ruled by this crazy religion and you get to see the consequences so i mean it is a it is a dark hopeless future that way okay it's interesting counter example whatever you can talk about but you know i'm just pointing out all of our visions of the future you know generally speaking i don't know johnny mnemonic even get into this kind of thing any anybody they do not show you a future that's dominated by religions okay now who's gonna make it happen and i'm just be honest i think when the founders of the american constitution when people like uh benjamin franklin were in the constitution they assumed they assumed there would be this tremendous progress in religion i i would not go so far to say they assumed we would have an atheist society but they had lived through about a century and a half since the english civil war where they'd seen tremendous innovation diversity and change in religion just that 150 years leading up to the uh american revolution i think they thought there was going to be more progress you know that that just as the puritans were very different from the catholicism of the dark ages and the puritans were a very diverse and fractious bunch you know that things were going to keep on innovating and no that's not what happened you had a period of innovation and then that ossified and it became an authoritarian patriarchal religion that continues to this day you know we still have so the mennonites haven't changed guys they haven't changed none of those are the you know sorry the the amish haven't changed and you know to a shocking extent we haven't changed oh sorry there are some comments here i'm not reading because i just agree with them oliver says oliver has his own youtube channel by the way oliver d shields if you want to go check out his youtube channel i promote it here pretty frequently uh quote there is just so much to do to exterpate religious notions especially those that have a connection with uh medieval religion you know the thing is too right the nature of this work is if you talk to someone who was raised in an orthodox religious context until they're 20 years old it's a lot of work to deprogram them right like you have someone whether it's islam judaism christian what have you you know someone who went to a madrasa someone was raised you know you know being inculcated with religion then they're 20 years old and they step into the light of day and they're blinking and looking around trying to face up to the reality of martin luther that's hard and by the way that goes on with trying to deprogram terroristic program fundamentalists you know because some people they go a certain ways down the road to fundamentalism and terrorism and extremism and someone has to try to educate them no look this is how life on earth works guess what you are a monkey we all are okay guess what you know um and it's very hard to deal with but the flip side of that is when people just grow up without that again this is why i don't believe there is a god-shaped hole to fill when people just grow up without that [ __ ] all this stuff is a five-minute conversation two-minute conversation oh yeah in the past people used to cut part of their dick off people used to cut part of their penis off for really incoherent reasons in the old testament it's never even really explained in the old testament but you know it symbolically represented the deal made between abraham and god you know you are not going to have a problem talking someone out of circumcision who was born and raised atheists and you're going to have a huge problem when you have a civilization of millions of people who are willing to fight and die to protect their right to engage in circumcision and they're still willing to fight and die over the headscarf in order to conceal women's hair in public that is those are fighting words those are those people so you know i'm just saying like there's this in terms of when you're looking at the generational change you know when are we gonna when we're gonna make this difference the reality is uh europe and america they're becoming more and more muslim not less and less so primarily through immigration but to some extent through conversion and to a large extent through the delusion of multiculturalism that we're enriching our society by making it more muslim no we make we enrich our society by making it less christian you know bringing in foreign cultures was only useful and positive in as much as it challenged our overly comfortable assumptions about our own religious tradition like having more chinese people move into your community is good if it creates atheism if it makes you look at your own cultural traditions and think wow this is crap then it's that it's positive you know if if 10 million chinese people immigrated to afghanistan that could improve afghanistan because it would make it less muslim and probably result in a lot of muslims reflect and again it doesn't have to be chinese could be 10 million japanese people or something people from a more modern more secular more atheistic society and a society that has radically different cultural traditions oh gee you guys do this moon cake festival huh well that's kind of stupid but arbitrations are stupid too things could change right but it's not because more superstition is good it's not because more religion or more diversity of religion is good multiculturalism is only good in as much as it eliminates the host culture and the host culture is you know based on superstitious nonsense uh from the dark ages catching up with your comments guys so guys sorry i i appreciate you you're saying these comments all right because i'm going to give you my real so so i don't know if you're still on it some of these come from a long time ago a guy named matt made this comment matt and gional so i'm just going to highlight you in case you're still there i'm going to reply to your comment now matt um you mentioned some other youtuber podcaster and i think i've seen this name before and you say oh he's currently doing lots of interviews okay matt nobody is going to help me nobody okay not jacqueline glenn not onision not richard dawkins nobody get it through your [ __ ] skull i'm on this microphone alone for a [ __ ] reason okay you think i wanted this format you think i wouldn't rather have a round table you think i wouldn't rather have a show like the young turks with 20 people collaborating cooperating you think when i started doing youtube i expected to be working alone no matt nobody is going to help me not even you all right so whatever let's see you mentioned this [ __ ] podcast or youtube or whatever you think is going to help me out no matt no either you are or [ __ ] nobody is going to do it and [ __ ] you for taking your duty your obligation your opportunity and putting it up on this on this guy john okay and if any of you said the same thing i mean it's ridiculous nobody would say it nobody would say oh hey you can do a podcast with richard dawkins or you could do a podcast with jacqueline nobody is going to say that in this audience the people i have are too at too high a level of very edition and cynicism to suggest this thing but i will say the same thing to you i'll say oh no oh no what about you what about your podcast what about your political organization what about why didn't you why haven't you incorporated a charity why haven't you created an activist organization whatever it's going to be why don't you create the atheist equivalent to the ymca where the [ __ ] is that where is a militant atheist nihilist anti-religious organization that has a gym i can go to and where you say no [ __ ] the ymca [ __ ] christianity we are the opposite of the ymca right where i was in toronto there was a jewish competitor to the ymca and it was from the old days back you know the all these institutions they all used to be anti-semitic they always do anti-semitic and they'll use to be racist you know it makes sense if you have a catholic organization it's only for catholics you have a christian organization you know like you know i don't i don't really begrudge them being anti-semitic it excludes jews because it says christian on the side that's all it is but from the old days you know in toronto there was a jewish country and i forget it wasn't called the young jewish associate but it was a jewish health club with a gym okay and i was like a little kid when i was learning about this and i remember thinking this through and like at first you think oh wow that's great so like judaism is challenging christianity no it's not it's bad and evil and wrong i don't want to live in a world where in one city in downtown toronto there's a jewish gym and a christian gym and a muslim gym and a hindu gym and a chinese gym i don't want to live in a society based on religious bigotry okay do you that sound good to you you know oh how what's the [ __ ] improvement compared to black versus white segregation i don't want to live in a world built on religious integration no i want to live in a world where atheists get organized where nihilistic atheists get organized and they're really willing to [ __ ] live by their values and say no we are the gym that's not going to put up christmas decorations and it's not going to [ __ ] food about we're going to openly say we exist to destroy christianity we don't want to live in the dark ages anymore this is a gym for people who don't live in the dark ages i'm just being real with you i don't think that exists anywhere in the [ __ ] world all right i don't i don't think it exists in los angeles i don't think it exists in the czech republic i don't think it exists in sweden okay i think the nearest you're going to find there was uh there was a group of positivists the followers of augusta compt who briefly tried to do that and fizzled out like 20 years uh this is a century ago there was a positivist group that tried to challenge religion that would be having this kind of anti-religious organization that was illegally it was a religion unto itself and the only thing you're going to find are going to be some of the communist and socialist organizations which i'm also opposed to i'm an anti-communist and i'm an anti-socialist but you know maybe you can find this okay so i'm just saying you know [ __ ] you nobody is going to do this [ __ ] for you napoleon didn't do it for you benjamin franklin didn't do it for you but also these other [ __ ] social media influencers aren't going to do it for you you know and and guys you think it's easy for me so how long have i been on youtube is it eight years now it's approximately eight years i've been on youtube do you think i ever [ __ ] imagined i'd be sitting here alone after eight years all right so i live in a small city a hundred thousand people in this city okay i am not bragging i'm one of the most famous people in this city okay it's a small city i don't have a lot of competition i really don't who is a more famous youtuber from victoria canada this city than me okay and now within a given category i think i am the most famous atheist youtuber from victoria i mean look sorry i may be the most famous author like author of books on the most famous political author the most famous person writing books about politics inventory if i have any competition it'll be because somebody retired here we have a lot of elderly people like it could be someone who's successful and they're retired right like it's what do you want me to [ __ ] say it's a small town full of [ __ ] losers with no ambition okay i'm the most famous vegan here i'm the most famous like there are some things okay yeah what i've created here is a crossroads and i've been in and out of this town for [ __ ] eight years and i've been at the university so on do you think i ever imagined i'd be isolated this way you don't think it was reasonable for you to imagine i would meet ambitious people on the university campus who would want to do podcasts with me you want to do roundtable discussions or want to do videos or want to get organized or want to create a foundation even just stick with that example create an alternative to the ymca create the atheist institution everyone okay bro it doesn't exist it has never happened for me it is never going to happen for me and it's partly your fault it's people like you right you guys remember a couple months ago i made the video talking about global warming and this same kind of thing came up where at some point i've got to point the finger on my audience and say look guys not even one of you is going to send me an email trying to get organized trying to get involved trying to talk to me about something positive you want to do no but no nobody's actually going to do jack [ __ ] you're going to listen to this video while you're where you're [ __ ] washing the dishes you're going to put the dishes away you're going to say oh that was a good video and you're going to go back to your life of [ __ ] i don't know cocaine and blow jobs whatever the [ __ ] you're into man you're all gonna go back to watching uh touch football on tv what the [ __ ] you're into i don't know um you know that that is the reality okay so look you know i know look i know i know how reassuring would be dude when i first started this channel so it was getting back to a narrative loop that started over an hour ago when i first started this channel i just separated from my wife i was alone i had more time and the whole atheist subcategory on youtube was kind of popping there's a lot of interest a lot of activity okay i phoned up and i emailed and i got in touch with back then people used facebook groups of like facebook messaging for a special page i got in touch with the atheist podcast the atheist radio shows some of them were literally on radio but a lot of them were like a radio show that was broadcast on youtube and as a pocket i got in touch with those guys partly because i said look i have a background as a scholar of buddhism i wasn't just a normal buddhist i was a scholar of buddhism and now i'm an ex-buddhist and i want to talk about loss of faith and religion in relation to buddhism and like many schools i was able to write them and say look i see you've done 300 episodes of your show you've never had one talking about buddhism they've like all been about christianity or like ninety percent of them are christianity and five percent of judaism and five percent of islam or some of that you know what i mean so i was writing in saying look i can really offer something valuable can i collab with you can i do an interview with you okay not even one positive response ever all right you guys know i did a series of videos and there's going to be more because there's no november i've done a series of videos talking about abolishing christmas and replacing christmas with something better creating new holidays new literature new poetry new children's fables to challenge the culture of christmas i have not had one positive response not one interview invitation to collab any at any level from any other social media influencer any other author of books anything any publisher i've been talking about publishing books for years do you think one [ __ ] person attached to any publisher anywhere in the world has ever gotten touched me positively whether about atheism veganism children's story books like all these projects think about one person ever cooperating with me or supporting me not one so homie i am alone on this mic for a [ __ ] reason okay talent is scarce i'll say this guys i don't need the money but i think you should support me on patreon i think you should precisely for this reason precisely because it is so [ __ ] scarce if i were you i would get on patreon and support a bellatio just for that reason because hey look around jacqueline glenn where is she now make a [ __ ] long list of examples where is she now what do you think she's going to do in the next five years nothing oh hey this is one guy who's hungry this is one guy who's ambitious and i don't know what he's going to do in the next five years okay that alone is a [ __ ] reason for you to support me on patreon your five bucks probably will not make any [ __ ] difference to me okay but i'm just being real with you i if i were in the audience i would want to support me and you know and if you're supporting jacqueline any of these [ __ ] guys where do you think your money is going when you support sam harris when you pay for his [ __ ] guided meditation podcast when you donate money to support him doing a long-form monologue about his hallucinatory experiences using mind-altering drugs using magic mushrooms lsd this kind of what do you think you're [ __ ] supporting when you support saint mary's what do you think sam harris can accomplish in the next five years okay jack [ __ ] all right i just say this if any of you are connected to a publisher just that just something as simple as that do you know a publisher who would handle dissident literature who would publish my works on politics do you know a publisher who published my work children's story books i had this story book about socrates it's a replacement for christmas fables they're fables about socrates illustrated poems for children i have a storybook about veganism or whatever but i mean some of my stuff is you know saleable in that sense that some of my stuff is really disturbing hard-hitting uh political commentary and analysis you you [ __ ] tell me guys all right and look do you want me to make another bet the last time we did this when i did the live stream on on global warming i said not one person is going to write to me about this and instead i'm only going to get email from people who want to have sex with me or want to talk to me about my sex i want to gossip about my sex life what would you you think i lost that [ __ ] bed what you know okay so uh there are some other interesting comments here carl grimes says quote i think isil is at a disadvantage here in that he wasn't raised religious um the experience most ex-christians have is that of having a whole god-shaped point of something something lacking carl so i i disagree because i think i grew up with all the disadvantages of judaism all the disadvantages of christianity all the disadvantages of watching mainstream television you know reading batman comic books all that mainstream uh cultural stuff plus communism you know i was raised by devout extremist communists but you know communism doesn't exclude christianity and judaism the majority of communists continue to have uh religious views and religious rituals and so on and i grew up with uh baruch and i i grew up with hebrew prayer and the hebrew god and i have all those disadvantages so no i'm carl like i totally understand them tonight why assume that about me no um it's just that you know me in a time of my life where i'm atheist i'm openly nihilistic and i'm mad as hell so you don't get that vibe from me but i understand it all i understand it all too well um you know i look if i'm wrong i'm wrong right i mean like if i if i'm wrong what a wonderful [ __ ] world we'd live in but i think all of you are here you don't really believe i'm wrong like does anyone believe these problems just gonna go away by themselves you know um yeah so comment from rasmus um i mentioned sinnoh an hour ago or something people who pray and actually hear the voice of god in response to their prayer and he says quote it's funny how biased psychiatry is because hearing a voice would be considered schizophrenia or schizophrenic disorder unless it's the judeo-christian god unless it's in this context of prayer yeah well take a look at research on [ __ ] buddhist meditation all the stuff that's all the transcendental experiences uh reported from buddhist and modern hindu meditation all of that stuff would be considered insanity but it has this religious context and so people even praise it as if it's science as if it's a therapeutic form of scientifically valid experience a valid praxis okay i guess i guess i didn't realize just how many comments i've got here to catch up with thanks thanks to you guys for for contributing the conversation thanks for the thumbs up we know 46 people in the audience have 40 48 thumbs up i mean one of the reasons why i appreciate the thumbs up is that i just say you know i am aware that i am a minority within a minority within a minority here i'm aware that my views um are unpopular amongst atheists my views about veganism are unpopular amongst vegans like i get that so when i when i say i appreciate you guys giving me the thumbs up it's because i really think that is and you know if you know someone to share the link with share the link i think there's no point you know sharing the link with people who don't want to hear it but if you have a friend where you know oh hey my friend james he's going to appreciate this or something by all means you know uh okay so uh guys there were a lot of interesting comments i appreciate i was i was afraid i have nothing so i thought this would be a 30 minute live stream carl grimes says quote one assumption isil has is that talent is of primary importance whereas he thinks time and place is what allows people to change the world tal so this is this is carl speaking not me carl says talent is ever present the opportunity for change is not voltaire why and how did voltaire change the world i've i've read voltaire's first book which is not have none of his books are well written no it's talent that's scarce it's talent that changes the world you know [ __ ] carl now carl so i don't know how old you are but i assume you're i assume you're older than 20. okay if you look back at the last 20 years we've had everything we needed to change the world everything we've had the opportunity of a century but i want to say the opportunity of a millennium okay there's nothing like and we've had tools at our disposal to get organized and meet like-minded people including youtube here we've had these amazing opportunities the last 20 years i mean the the difficulty of printing and sharing a pamphlet in the 18th century that's how voltaire's ideas spread people would physically print pamphlets and share them in coffee shops in coffee houses in paris that was how information had to travel you know it was crazy and live theater you'd write a script and perform it live and take it on the road like it was unbelievably hard work to spread ideas okay no we've had every opportunity in the last 20 years we could have changed life in america we could could have changed life in europe we could have changed life in afghanistan okay and we didn't all right now you want to get into communist china it's even more depressing look at the opportunity um presumably no okay carl i i the topic of today's discussion is even more telling there is no time for atheism there is no place for atheism okay there is no adventitious opportunity for atheism all right exactly what scarce is is talent you know um [Music] you know sorry when when do you think there's going to be a better opportunity to spread atheism in afghanistan when do you think there's going to be a better opportunity to spread atheism in central asia when do you think there's going to be a better opportunity to spread atheism in syria okay how about north africa you know we can extend this to the area generally speaking where the so-called uh oh [ __ ] i forget the name of the uprisings now uh the 2011 uh uprisings took place um the arab spring that's what they call it so-called arab spring uprising okay when oh really do you think there's ever been a better time than the last 20 years to promote atheism in egypt any of these examples you know libya libya i think you're gonna get a better chance really okay but but being honest united states of america i mean again we saw that briefly whatever 2015 or something uh maybe 2013 on youtube we saw the way in which just the existence of internet technology could amplify and share and energize atheism as a movement and why did it stop why didn't it go further like you can look at what happened in atheism from the year 2000 to the year 2012. let's say right so sam harris has a hit book all this stuff the four horsemen oprah winfrey features okay maybe i'm lying i actually don't know if hopefully feature those books i shouldn't say that but anyway mainstream television new york times bestseller list uh richard dawkins and all that explodes around this time you know the da vinci codes is a hit pokemon there's a particular you know you know why didn't it go further okay my answer is precisely lack of talent okay yeah and sure that apply i could now get into an analysis of what happened in buddhism okay you what do you think's going to be better in the next 20 years that was lacking in the last 20 years so you know you're damn right what scarce is exactly uh talent okay so i'm interesting another comment from saying that carl grimes says quote the fact that religion is a cultural universal should tell you something about how fundamental it is to the human experience okay carl how about murder is murder universal how about tooth decay how about rape how about war how about holding animals in captivity and killing them to eat their flesh or to eat their eggs like do you know how weak the argument is that something is universal you know how about revenge you know what i mean um and let me just give you the world's simplest counter argument you say religion is a cultural universal that's universally true of all cultures in plain english okay i think that the struggle of atheism against religion is a cultural universal i don't think there's any counter argument to that it has occurred in all cultures at all times including within islam so you know murder has always existed and the opposition to murder is rape has always existed the opposition of rape is always tooth decay has always existed and dentistry and the opposition to tooth decay at least for the last century has existed it's a relatively recent discovery yeah we live with with the balances okay and tell me something if you go to iran today who are the atheists all right do you think they're the stupidest people okay i think they're the best people i think the people in iran today who are atheists they are either the people who are the most brilliant or the people who are just the most strong willed right go back in time one century two centuries three centuries same question same answer okay so i'm asking you which side are you on now i don't know where you even learned this language of talking about cultural universals facts that are universal about all cultures okay slavery existed in all cultures until we eradicated it all right gender inequality i mean as a very vague term but women not having the right to vote women not having the right to work without their husband owning and controlling them like a slave was universal to all cultures take a look at the status of women in 15th century china 15th century western europe 15th century arabia 15th century india 15th century south america okay so you can say oppression of women i mean it's a little bit vague but gathering together many phenomena into one you know and it's and really it's we're talking about there are people who will tell you seriously that the status of women in china was worse than it was under islam at that time because things like breaking their feet you know um the broken feet of women being foot you know it's yeah it's difficult i know i'm using more clear terms most people haven't heard of foot binding let's just use the academic term foot binding by breaking breaking women's feet with a metal rod and folding them over and forcing them into bandages so they grow in this deformed state there were some really uniquely terrible things with the status of women in pre-modern china oh okay what happened we made it [ __ ] illegal we made foot binding illegal china made opium illegal at least 25 of the adult population of china had become opium addicts okay they had a 25 addiction rate okay and they made it illegal and today a tiny percentage of the chinese are addicted to opium it's not even one percent there's a trace number of people how many people in china have broken feet foot binding zero okay oh gee how much slavery is there in the united states of america today so what the [ __ ] do you think it means what the [ __ ] does it mean in your mind when you say something is a cultural universal guess what we can overcome tooth decay [ __ ] we can overcome slavery you know we can go from having a society where rape is the norm where it's universal where virtually every good-looking woman has lived through being raped repeatedly to being something incredibly marginal and rare in society something extraordinary you know do i think we can ever totally eliminate it i i don't even think we can totally eliminate slavery i mean slavery i think will never be zero on planet earth but it can go from being the predominant system of social organization to being something you know incredibly rare okay and that is what can happen to religion too right and it's gonna be coercive sure it's partly gonna happen through public education and outreach through enlightenment if you want to use those those terms you know but um sure it's partly going to be coercive and that's what was true with china getting rid of opium and china getting rid of foot binding and a lot of these a lot of these things a lot of these transformations you know but i just say when you say something is fundamental to the human experience what does that mean to you because it doesn't mean the same thing to me all right when i was a child i thought about revenge like eight years old like i'm being real with you already at age 11 revenge didn't really make sense to me anymore but like seven years old eight years old revenge you know that makes sense to a child i've always said communism i think is really appealing to children and people who are have childish ways of thinking you know okay like you know i'm in my 40s now nothing could seem more laughable or contemptible than revenge the desire for revenge that revenge be be gratified there are some cultures that still have the vendetta the belief in revenge afghanistan is one of them they're they're very powerful vendetta culture revenge culture you know and sometimes this is glossed as honor killing in muslim culture and there are cultures where the the consensus opinion of mature adults is that revenge is something really very childish and contemptible that or something medieval something to be looked down upon okay change is possible all right and that has come about through coercion i mean it has come about through real legal and government change not just through education or or cultural change of eradicating the culture of one man challenging another to a duel and so on of of honor killings vendettas and revenge and so you know but you know when you say something is fundamental to the human experience i do not know why or how in your mind that that justifies anything at all but that that must mean to you something it doesn't mean to me um you know like stupidity is fundamental to the human experience but you can overcome it ignorance is fundamental to the human experience you can overcome it if you are telling me that people talking to their imaginary friend is fundamental team experience people taking a lamb and strapping it down to an altar and cutting its throat so the blood spurts and flows and seeing that they're killing the lamb so that their imaginary friend will do a favor for them if you're saying that's fundamental to human experience it doesn't just exist in ancient judaism and thus carries on in some forms judaism christianity and islam today ancient china look at animal sacrifice in ancient china ancient india too although they're less comfortable with it okay ancient india did you know this hinduism had a ritual of raping a horse okay the celts in europe had something not really similar but they also had a ritualized form of raping horse you think that's fundamental to the human experience we talked about human sacrifice before that existed in tibet it existed in in mesoamerica what are you saying is fundamental to the human experience ignorance is fundamental to human experience stupidity is fundamental to the human experience you can get over it you know i was seven years old once i was eight years old once i got over it you know most i never believed in talking to my imaginary friend i never did a lot of people did a lot of people small children had that kind of experience or that kind of imagination okay you get over it you know what i'm sorry like you know when you look at when you look at rapists or something too i think you know part of their problem is that they have a fundamentally childish and irresponsible view of the world you know they're not sophisticated enough intellectually to realize hey i don't want to live in a society that's full of rapists you know what i mean like like this is something you know damaging and hurtful and evil and the short-term thinking you know they personally may feel this desire and want to gratify it but like there are these sophisticated adult reasons not to do this right you know so i'm sorry but you know anything you're going to say is fundamental to human experience anything you say that's going to you know you're going to say that's universal the cultures right it's just stupidity now sorry but again in case you guys don't know i am vegan wearing leather is universal to the human experience it's universal to all cultures okay think about this okay hercules killed a lion and he used his sword to cut off its skin to pull out its organs once you visualize yourself doing that pulling the organs out of the corpse of a lion and cutting away the muscle tissue and the sinew and you take out the rib cage and you take out the the spine okay and he made the lion's skin into a cape and he made its its head into a hat do you think he looked cool can you imagine a dorky little kid going around wearing a [ __ ] the skull of a of a lion like a taxidermist's preserved lion skull on its head and a k oh look at me you know it's barbaric it's childish you think he looked tough do you think it looked oh wow he's he's he killed a lion that guy any anyone can kill a lion anyone with a bow and arrow can kill a lion or it's not a test of skill or test of strength you [ __ ] yeah okay you killed a lion and then you're you're wearing its skin over your skin you know yeah sure that's that's universal all cultures people used to think it was cool to kill a cow and then walk around with its skin on their body kill a kill a deer all right we got over it vegans gonna we're willing to see as absurd and barbaric things that other people don't see the absurdity and barbarism of all right yeah what you say is universal to to human experience with universal level cultures so rasmus a welcome back to the crowd i think i saw you here months and months ago but it's been a long time since i seen erasmus uh erasmus a says quote atheism has nothing to do with certainty it's simply not subscribing to any religious beliefs um so he's basically talking about being agnostic as opposed to being a gnostic atheist um okay erasmus so i have two things to say to you one is descriptively this further establishes why it's so hard to organize atheists to be positively motivated and form foundations and change the world they may have nothing in common except that they don't care for religion so it's even less than what you're describing they may not even reject the existence of god they just don't like it they're just not into it you know like it's a really low level of rejection they don't go to church they don't like the song and dance whatever they may have never really even thought about it they may not take any position on these no it's true so it's hard to form a movement that's defined negatively and it's hard to form a movement of people who have very little in common positive okay and the second thing i have to say to you is so the [ __ ] what how [ __ ] stupid are you to point at the dictionary definition of atheism is that going to be the limit of your ambitions in life like oh well technically atheists dude how many million people are gonna have half their dick cut off this year due to [ __ ] circumcision oh well when you look up the definition of atheism it's not actually opposed to circumcision that's true and it's shocking to me how stupid people are i've spoken to atheists who are pro-circumcision it blows my mind okay you can talk to atheists who believe in yoga you can talk to atheists who believe in meditation you can talk to atheists who believe in prayer you can talk to atheists who still believe in praying to a higher power that they call the universe blah blah blah blah okay [ __ ] you all right dictionary definition of atheism all you're demonstrating here is that the word atheism is not remotely sufficient to describe the ambition to have a secular society to have a truly atheistic world right okay so get rid of the word we can use nihilism you know so what we can use more words that have more ambition you know what i'm talking about in this whole video is actually destroying the church it's actually destroying religious education i think the saddest thing of all about atheism is really probably called atheist solipsism which is the attitudes of most atheists most atheists simply have the attitude of oh well it's so it's okay for you to send your children to a madrasa it's okay for you to send your children to a catholic school as long as i personally get to live my enlightened life as an atheist this is a kind of solipsism and that you're treating yourself as the only thing that matters i know this is not true of dictionary definition solipsism or university chalkboard definition of solidism but there was a great deal of fatuous self-indulgence in atheism but you know like what do you think do you think the dictionary definition of atheism is gonna define the remit limit or you know the the upper peak of what your ambitions will reach toward i'm pointing back to the french revolution and saying hey that's what the french revolution accomplished can't we do better than that so the other guy who talked about talent versus opportunity what do you think the opportunity was in 1789 that we don't have now in 2021 are you [ __ ] kidding me do you have any idea how hard it was to create an atheist society in 1789 1790 1791 around there you know it took a few years to get rolling do you think they had an advantage they had a better opportunity a better situation than we have today you're [ __ ] dreaming we uh they couldn't imagine being in an opportunity as having the opportunities we have today they were in a situation where literally you know all of the neighboring countries were willing to go to war with them to re-establish the power of the catholic church it's very understandable their neighboring countries included italy in case you know they were surrounded by pious christian countries mostly catholics some some protestant protestant reformation it's already a factor at that time you know who were really willing to snuff out the french revolution in the name of the the one true god or the one true church you're we're not in that situation today um okay so i i'll just say this briefly someone in the audience called little water uh little water said quote that he is mostly agnostic but humanity makes him an atheist in the worst of times close quarter okay water [ __ ] your agnosticism okay if i ask you hey you know i i have a son uh do you think i should circumcise him yes or no are you agnostic okay oh i have a son do you think i should send him to a madrassa to have a muslim fundamentalist education are you agnostic oh hey i'm gonna go on vacation this year i have three options i can go to afghanistan saudi arabia or thailand where do you think i should go are you agnostic oh hey i got bad news for you you have no choice you either have to spend the rest of your life in denmark or malaysia are you agnostic you're not agnostic you're living a [ __ ] lie okay you are an atheist the choices you make in your own life for yourself and others you're just a lazy self-centered self-indulgent atheist you won't commit to true atheism or i may say nihilism and true atheism is destructive it's not passive and self-indulgent it makes you want to actually go in the world and close down the madrassas close down the muslim schools and the catholic schools that are creating a new generation of fundamentalists you know sort of that's that's that's the reality of what atheism is and i mean you know whether we talk about male circumcision female circumcision oh hey a little water so you say you're just you're just an agnostic oh okay my next-door neighbors are devout hindus and they're raising their daughter to live in celibacy until she has an arranged marriage are you agnostic you know how about you actually participate in any of these rituals like even the simplest of magical rituals not even getting into human sacrifice or animal sacrifice you know oh do you believe in this do you believe in this magical ritual but no you don't you believe in ghosts you're not agnostic all right you are a gnostic atheist or even a gnostic nihilist because it goes way beyond refusing to believe in god you don't believe in any of this stuff do you believe in yetis do you believe in the abominable snowman do you believe in bigfoot do you believe in leprechauns all right it goes way beyond atheism your actual position within buddhism we have all that [ __ ] still we have we have many magical creatures not just you know it's it's not based on the existence of one god you know so that's not the reality of your position but the question is what are you willing to [ __ ] do about it and what i know about you is you're not even willing to say that you're an atheist so [ __ ] you so you're a coward so you're a person with no backbone or no will or no self-discipline right or no ambition to change the world no ambition even take that risk yourself to stick your neck out there and say yeah you're an atheist or yeah you're a nihilist or yeah you think the world would be better if there were not catholic schools where children were educated by nuns look i just mentioned on that specific topic a really interesting example is uh kevin smith you know kevin smith he was raised by catholic nuns he did go to catholic school and he is now an atheist after many years of being religious so he actually made films about religion back when he still believed in religion you know but i notice even though he is now an atheist he still has this very strange fondness for catholic schools and nuns and catholic institutions still kind of supports them you know and i think that's just because of his own kind of happy childhood memory that particular nuns were caring and loving to him or or what have you it comes up from from time to time uh so you know i just say there are people in that kind of strange conflicted situation i don't know you little water i don't know this commenter but i don't think that's you i don't think you're someone who is agnostic and is perfectly comfortable with millions of children being raised in the catholic church system of schools being raised in schools where they are indoctrinated with catholic beliefs and only live live their whole life surrounded by catholic children and catholic teachers and catholic nuns where that's the context they're raised in and that they're told evolution is only a theory etc where they're basically however politely given anti-science anti-religion views and of course with islam it's worse and there are various forms of christianity that are that are worse to get into particular sex and they're definitely forms of uh whatever you say fundamentalist judaism orthodox judaism that are worse this is a whole spectrum of views that go way beyond kevin smith's experience as joe okay so matt uh matt angiono says quote if there's an alternative to religion that offers the same benefits it's much more likely to become widespread and get people to drop the false beliefs [ __ ] [ __ ] so matt why didn't you open an atheist alternative to the ymca and again this is not something that's tacitly or quietly atheist soon that declares that it's atheist or declares that it's nihilist young nihilist association okay and they got a swimming pool and they got a gym if you did who joins the nihilist gym who joins the atheist jim people who are already atheists people are already dialist nobody nobody converts to atheism nobody converts to nihilism so that they can go to the gym [ __ ] and i think on some [ __ ] level you know it all right now the actual percentage of atheists in the united states is small alexa what percentage of americans are atheists here's something i found on the web according to speaking tree got in according to the pew research center atheists make up a very small portion of the american population around three percent alexa stop uh three percent according to my robot companion here um okay let's let's pretend the pew research group knows what they're talking about let's pretend three percent of americans are atheist what percentage of famous people on television are atheist it's a huge percentage like even for me growing up someone like jerry seinfeld is the representative of judaism you know like you get the impression that jerry seinfeld is a normal jewish person not ben shapiro graham this is true the type of people who become hollywood entertainers stand-up comedians news broadcasters what have you you are dealing with a much more secular distorted world on television the whole world of celebrities now you're also dealing with a higher percentage of people who are drug addicts different kinds of uh reckless self-destructive behaviors are also represented over represent amongst these kinds of public figures right um do you think anyone becomes an atheist because they watched jerry sanford on tv any do you think anyone becomes an atheist because they watch beverly hills 90210 you know like so much of mainstream media is already in effect militating for a more secular atheist world i mean comedy movies whatever you know stand up comedians i mean and i think that's because of the philosophical significance of nihilism i think a lot of comedy think about what you're doing as a stand-up comic you're challenging the status quo from the perspective of someone who is more nihilistic than it even if you believe like chris rock believes in something but when chris rock talks about black power movements when chris rock talks about the black panthers right he's doing it from a nihilistic perspective he's doing it from the perspective of a black guy who thinks this is all [ __ ] you know what i mean he's poking fun out of that way in the same way most of the norms of our society are challenged in comedy they're challenged in narrative fiction all right so the most exclusive club in the world that is simultaneously the most promoted okay what what percentage of people in porn do you think are atheists what percentage people making any kind of erotic cinema you name it okay it doesn't work all right now look you know guys i'm still down for making a gym a gymnasium for atheists to go to but i have no delusion nobody is gonna convert to atheism because you open the gym you know and what drive do human beings have that's more powerful than sexuality like so you have a situation where people can either live in celibacy or become an atheist and have sex with anyone they want that's a pretty powerful reason to become atheist and three percent of people took that deal okay so you want to talk about you just said to me if there's an alternative to religion that offers the same benefits are you [ __ ] kidding me how about the benefit of having gay sex if you're homosexual atheism doesn't have to offer the same benefits as religion we have better benefits so you're homosexual so you can live a self-hating life of celibacy or you can come over to our team become an atheist and have all the gay sex you want okay you're a normal vanilla heterosexual male you can live in misery and celibacy and have no sex outside of marriage or you can come over to our team become an atheist have all the sex you want this is not the only example okay no i i just do not believe you nobody is going to sign up for atheism or to create a a better world you know for that reason and again i don't even believe i remember reading studies about this in england i don't believe it's the case that you get a better quality of education by going to religious schools than secular schools even within england that's what i've seen the studies done they really say no the quality of the quality of education is not better not even an english catholic school or english you know a protestant school so you know obviously within canada or anywhere else in the world you know it's it's even more extreme so no you're not missing out it's not that you have to provide something but sure you you tell me you guys do you guys know anywhere in the world you know atheist private school system nihilist privately you know anyone raising money for that you know we're getting organized to provide aggressively militantly atheist pro-science anti-religion education um so someone named raf i assume short for raphael says benjamin quote benjamin franklin's biography does not sound like an atheist in this way that we understand today close quote raph i don't think you've read the book or maybe you read it 20 years ago and you forget um i really described read it recently no i mean very clearly benjamin franklin is an atheist in that book and again i hate to tell you this but um take a look at his sex life oh tcat asks a great question he says quote do you think that a lot of science fiction that shows extreme progress is informed by the time and place in history where the the authors were writing the science fiction uh for example the the rapid technological progress from 1945 to 1975 uh close quote okay so tcat i think the irony about science fiction is this in the year 1920 you could make a lot of money writing science fiction fast so it was actually the technological limitations of the printing press it's mind-blowing i was doing some reading recently but a successful author he was successful in 1920s 30s 40s and even when you hear george rr martin talk about his youth when he was first writing search i believe his 1960s 1970s maybe just early 1970s he starts writing there was money in writing short stories just short stories that appeared in a magazine you know so i think what's ironic about the history of science fiction is that we're actually talking about an art form that was destroyed by technological progress because today there is no money in writing at all and in that sense science fiction has disappeared no it still exists in television what have you but you know you go out you go and pick up a copy of asimov magazine or whatever you know you go look at the pulp and paper world and there's no there's no money in mainstream journalism there's no money in the printed the printed word anymore so yeah there is a sense in which science fiction was inspired by uh technological uh progress but you know i also think you know science fiction was just another way of packaging whimsy and making a living out of it and you know so much of science fiction just relies on magic um you know john carter hero of mars instead of mars it could have been he was traveling to the ancient past and many of those stories could have been you know it really wouldn't have been much different if it were a fairy world as opposed to another planet um there are many ways in which science fiction is not distinguishable from other kinds of fantasy fable and whimsy uh where you know like the fact that this takes place on mars as opposed to a fairy kingdom or something or traveling back in time instead of forward in time it doesn't fundamentally change that much i'm still catching up with your comments guys thanks lots of uh you know substantive comments here i can't reply to all of them it's it's certainly nice to have more intelligent comments than you can reply to than than less so another interesting comment from rasmus rasmus says quote that he used to live in a die-hard religious country where even saying things like god doesn't exist would have put his life in danger that's why he moved to estonia one of the most secular countries in the world school so congratulations erasmus but you know the question is what now what next right like you said look i'm not going to say estonia is paradise i've never lived there i had one estonian friend for like one year of my life wasn't a long friendship um he could have stayed in touch with me maybe he watched the youtube channel today but he he didn't um [Music] so i i just probably if i went to estonia i would probably still feel it's too religious it's too christian for my tape probably but you know with that have been said if you treat estonia as a success story how do you take estonia and push push the border forward so to speak i don't mean actually conquering other countries but how do you actually expand the realm of secular space on planet earth now you know hypothetically maybe downtown los angeles is quite a secular or nihilistic place i bet i think if you go there you're going to be shocked at how many people are are really religious but you know even if you were to say that okay so there's a little bubble of secular atheist people here maybe in downtown new york city how do you push that how do you extend that to include texas and georgia you know and i'm just being honest with you rasmus i'm not saying this to hate on you i don't know anyone who's asked themselves that question anywhere in the world no institution newfound no foundation no broadcaster no youtube channel like really there are these dedicated youtube channels that get a lot of money that our atheist call-in shows they're not planning for that they're not trying to make that happen they're not trying to take the little nugget of secularism you've got in los angeles and expanded to texas or estonia and expanded elsewhere or the czech republic right like no one is trying to push forward in this way to my knowledge anywhere in the world so again this is also the sense in which the the debate about agnosticism is [ __ ] you're not agnostic you know this is a kind of insincere form of agnosticism do you think the world would be a better place if you could expand that realm of sophisticated secular scientific atheism do you think the better world would be a better place or do you think the world would be a better place if the islamic state expanded if the taliban expanded right you're not agnostic look at no you really believe the world is going to be a worse place if the taliban keep expanding you know or for that matter if the catholic church weren't a similar if the vatican vatican city were expanding it's not going to happen but you know if there were an equivalent a christian fundamentalist realm that was expanding what you think will be good for the world is expanding the scope and depth obviously atheism you're not agnostic about that so now what so now what are you going to do to make it happen what are any of us going to do to make it happen and i'm sorry but for so many of us you know the the true answer is is nothing we have a funny little joke here from someone named christoph so kristoff we got to tell you if you're a real atheist you've got to change your first name [Laughter] kristoff says catholic gyms are the best carry the cross for 20 miles i don't think it was it was 20 miles that jesus carried the cross though um alexa for how many miles did jesus carry the cross it wasn't that far you can walk it in israel here's something i found on the left according to blurted.com it would appear that jesus carried his cross for a distance of one half mile thank you so alexis is half a mile but yeah i i would be willing to go up to one mile or something but what's not that far so anyway but yeah sure great workout carrying a wooden cross maybe we can do that at the at the nihilist gym we can mock other religions with our forms of exercise come up with one for islam some physical feat of strength that muhammad did or something i i i don't know of anybody yeah sure uh i don't know you could you could make something up for moses too parting the red sea or something that's a gym exercise yeah right right right something like that okay so a totally reasonable comment from a long time follower of the channel who call is called do you want to give me lucas i'll call you kiss or i don't know if you're male or female i don't know i'm just saying mister kiss or miss kiss um but do you want me to kiss says quote eisel all these authors didn't do it for you they didn't do the work for you but most of them have at least one constructive thought to add to the discussion okay so kiss not to my [ __ ] knowledge i do not know one thought jaclyn glenn has to add to this discussion i do not know one thought matt dillahunty has to add to this discussion okay if you don't think matt delahunty is an idiot all of you actually do you think you're smarter than matt delahanty i think you are i don't think any of you really believe you're stupider than matt delante okay so look i would love to live in a parallel universe or what you're saying is true but it's not true um and again none of those people have ever sent me one email not even when i've written them first not positively i've gotten emails from someone saying no we're not addressed we don't care [ __ ] off and i've gotten hate mail about christmas and about the notre dame cathedral the other specific issues i've taken in atheism but so no i'm just telling you i don't believe you i don't believe any of those people have even won constructive thought to add to the discussion and i can't say like today i can't say like within this 24-hour period if they had something constructed that they would be here today but over the last eight years sure again but i'm i'm being real with you i don't think there's even one um you know what do you what do you think richard dawkins knows that you don't know let's keep it all the way what do you think richard dawkins knows that you don't know what do you think sam harris knows that you don't know jack [ __ ] man it's not what they know is not worth knowing and it has nothing to contribute to the discussion nothing so uh there were some further responses there's now half an hour ago or an hour ago but uh matt engino says um that he could start his own youtube channel or he could start his own platform of some kind but he says so he says quote you're right i could start a youtube channel but would anyone listen this is my 100 honest response to that okay if they don't if it fails wouldn't that motivate you to do something more and something next like like taking a first step doesn't preclude taking a next step i think it's going to inform and motivate you taking the next step right like you know if the first step you take is wildly successful then maybe you don't take any next steps but like most of this kind of development in one's own life on a small scale if you have one person or like a salon a group of 10 people who work together five people work together right like you take one step it fails you take another step it fails you take another step it fails now obviously i don't just mean here within social media i mean any kind of political activism any kind of advocacy uh religious secularism but like a lot of people don't know this uh jank wieger who is the impresario behind the young turks youtube channel he had a series of projects before that that failed right including a paper uh sorry public access tv show he had a show broadcast on tv he had he took a step and he failed it's like okay that doesn't work take a next step failed he did a radio show on uh digital radio you know i'm not sure exactly what the server is sirius fm or something okay it failed right and like his first attempt at doing youtube show fails right but he adapted and he innovated and did something else now again in this case i'm not limiting it to youtube or social media but whatever you do like what i don't get is the people who fail and then they just continue believing in the method like these [ __ ] street protesters for extinction rebellion so you fail and fail and fail and you keep doing the same [ __ ] you're not able to look at the situation analytically and be like okay well we tried this now we've got to do something different now we're going to do something like okay so we tried standing in the street and chanting and that didn't work but there are people that do it for 20 years do it for four years their whole lives the same method again and again and they never take a step back and analyze okay what's the effort we're making what are we putting into this and what are the outcomes now what we've got what have we got to do differently what we've got to change uh to get the new outcomes but look you know matt um [Music] you know so you you ask a fun question so i challenged matt before saying hey why don't you do it instead of telling this other youtuber to do it you know what i mean okay matt so you're asking in effect what difference would it make just slightly rewarding okay okay matt it would make a difference to me maybe i'm not the only person but maybe i am okay it would make a difference to me right i think that's all the [ __ ] answer you need and i've reached out to and done interviews with and done collabs with and support people have this much in common with people who aren't vegan and people you know i've been reaching out positively for years who the [ __ ] has been reaching out to support me man like that's why i'm asking you in this really confrontational way but like think about it so like if this matters to you and if you want to make a difference in the next five years or 10 years or something right you know now you know again maybe i'm not the only one but maybe i am maybe you look back on that and be like well that really meant something to isil that there was one other person who stepped up and said yeah this really matters you know well sorry i guess i didn't realize how many comments are coming in here okay guys look um veganism exists it is a movement even if it's a really crappy terrible failure of movement even it's a waste of your time you have to waste your money i've been coming to the internet for years and asking about veganism look are you a leader or are you a joiner you know are you going to be a follower are you going to join somebody else's movement or are you going to lead your own thing are you going to innovate your own solution to these problems you know is this are you going to take on some kind of new direction in talking about atheism in this video i'm really saying to you there is no movement there is nothing for you to join there's nothing sam harris is doing that you can sign up for you know there is no atheist society of america worth even [ __ ] talking about worth even dignifying with a critique in this video you know there is no way to be a follower there's no way to be a joiner either you are gonna lead either you are gonna make something happen or else nothing is going to happen at all i say again there was no positive opportunity in the year 1789 in the year 1791 okay the positive opportunity we had in the last 20 years was squandered due to lack of talent lack of will the opportunity was there we had a much better opportunity between the year 2000 year 2020 than anyone had in france in 1789 and none of us had to die none of us had to risk starvation death by disease or fighting just for our own lives you know it's really really tough uh conditions sorry if you guys ever it's tough it's just physically tough to endure and you know there were people out to kill you kill you in your sleep and shoot you straight to your face in the in the light of day it was rough and that's i mean people tend to only remember the violence of the revolutionaries against the christians well guess what there were groups like the brotherhood of jesus and so on there were you know there were christian brotherhood groups that were out killing the atheists too there were royalist groups and traditions there were pro-aristocrat groups and you know but a lot of them were pro-church groups they were fighting for their the church they were fighting for their immortal souls who were out there killing people on the on the other side so there was there was violence on all sides it was really tough nobody if you look back at the last 20 years nobody was facing those kinds of conditions nobody was facing those those kinds of obstacles right but before 1789 in the century before we had voltaire in the century before we had holbach and helvetius right we had these books it's hard to say did they have a greater or lesser impact than a [ __ ] like sam harris in our time did like really how many people actually read helvetius or or voltaire even how many people actually read these books compared to any of the atheist hit authors or daniel dashad or where the [ __ ] is these people the the audience reached by the the four horsemen and so on and so forth you know what what really was the social impact of as i said before pamphlets that were printed and shared at coffee shops in paris compared to youtube in our day compared to the internet today compared to broadcast media television books today right probably very limited okay what they had it wasn't the right time it wasn't the right place there wasn't anything that made it easy for anyone right but they had talent all right there were people like voltaire who wrote things that inspired others into thinking that a better world was possible a better life was possible and that ultimately it was worth struggling for i don't have a big audience okay i don't even those of you who say you're agnostic or even those you have some people minded who might say you're some kind of spiritualist like you're not an absolute atheist you have some kind of hippie spiritually every single one of you believes that a better world is possible every single one of you at least looks at the mediocrity of america today the mediocrity of switzerland today the mediocrity of denmark today the mediocrity of paris today wherever you're living the mediocrity of australia today boy does australia ever get off easy in these discussions you know every single one of you looks at the mediocrity of the education system in your country and the role of religion within it and you think we can do better something better is possible you know a better society is possible the problem is what are you willing to do to get it nobody's going to do it for you sam harris is not coming to save you jesus is not coming to save you there is no atheist christ coming to save you and there's no atheist pope and there's no atheist church either as i said earlier we don't even have an atheist peta we're not the atheist equivalent of the people for ethical agreement of animals there's no organization you can you can donate to all right like when you look ahead to the next 20 years and you see what's happening you see what's happening our period of moral relativism and whatever the hell we're going to call post-neo-liberal globalization refugee welcoming multiculturalism you know this ridiculous pretense that everyone is equal you know and the way in which you know organized religions take advantage of that you know you see what's happening in our society and i i don't if you listen to this whole video i don't single out the muslims like put it this way i do not think there was anything wrong with islam that wasn't already wrong with christianity and judaism before islam you know what i mean but however conversely the same things that are wrong in christianity and judaism are wrong in islam right so look guys um there is no way i can do a fundraiser for an already existing cause there's no way i can point a finger at an organization and say sign up now there's no way i can point to any intellectual rival i have any author of any book any leader of any just it's not just jacqueline glenn okay there's nobody where i could say hey go support what this guy's doing put it this way there is no bernie sanders for atheism like as flawed a figure as bernie sanders is if you don't know i have all kinds of criticism of bernie sanders a lot of things wrong with bernie sanders but if what you want is a 15 an hour minimum wage and better health care for poor people and cheaper tuition university i can point to bernie sanders and say that's the guy that's the organization to give but those those are the things you want that's the guy who's going to do it for you okay what i'm saying to you about atheism and the future of religion is nobody is gonna do it for you and nobody is gonna do it for me either nobody is gonna help me i'm not expecting one email to come after this video i'm not expecting one offer of a collaboration from a publisher think about it in your own town google right now how many [ __ ] hippie publishers are publishing poetry at a loss books of poetry books of self-indulgent memoir [ __ ] all kinds of [ __ ] is getting published inc is getting poured on the page for all kinds of [ __ ] that's going to reach a audience of 50 people or mostly friends friends and family of the author whenever i look up these small independent presses they're all they're all publishing horse [ __ ] okay i've been doing this for eight years i've reached whatever almost six million views now if it's 5.7 million or so on that okay i have no publisher for any of my projects not children's story books not books about atheism not books about socrates not books about political philosophy there is there is no public i'm not going to get one email from a publisher i'm not going to get one email from a podcast i'm not going to make i'm not going to get one offer from another youtube channel for a collaboration nothing is going so even at that level nobody's going to help let alone creating an organization like the ymca an atheist nihilist organization really has bricks and mortar or something not one okay i begin this broadcast alone and i end this broadcast alone nobody is going to make it easy on you and nobody is going to make it easy on me look ahead to the next 20 years of life on planet earth okay you tell me what can you do and what can we do to make that change because the most [ __ ] depressing thing on earth to admit to yourself that in terms of the progress of atheism and the progress of religion in 2021 the world is a worse place not a better one than it was in 2001 and you tell me where we're going to be in 2041 because i have no reason to think that things are going to get better rather than worse