AS205: Listener Tomments

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:31 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 205, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Okay, so today I had more Tom and Terry topics, but you know what? I do every, every single time I do this. I start off in my preparation, I think, here's what I want to talk about, and then I pick out a few listener comments, and I say, here's the listener comments I want to get to. And then I just talk about the things I want talk about forever and run out of time most of the time. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take some recent listener comments that I've been wanting to talk about. We'll see how that goes. Maybe it'll go the other way where I have time for a topic of my own, or maybe we'll just cover some great listener topics and we can go deeper into the issues that have come up recently on the podcast because they've been really good.

0:01:22 Thomas: And I think the chance for you guys to participate is a crucial part of conversation further and making sure we're covering all the appropriate points and everything. I think it's great. I mean, sometimes I'll have a discussion and maybe I miss a point or maybe the guest misses a point. And how will we know unless I hear from you guys in the comments and go back over it? So I think that's really crucial. So that's what I'm going to do. It's not, I guess it's not even really a commentary. So I'm not even going to be doing any music. Let's just go to, it's a listener commentary. It's a bunch of commentary from listeners. So let's just go right into it. This is in no particular order other than I gathered a bunch of comments and I'm just kind of going to go through them. Listener Drew sent me a message saying, here, I'll get to the good parts, I thought I could help shed some light on one issue you mentioned.

0:02:15 Thomas: You contend that legislation should easily pass with 90% popular support barring political corruption. This might be a more valid point if the legislation in question didn't potentially conflict with constitutional protections. A good analogy would be if 90% of people believe that warrantless searches are acceptable to prevent mass violence. Since such legislation would directly conflict with the Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure, if the populace is that unanimous, then the appropriate route would be a constitutional convention to amend the Constitution to allow for such searches. Such a change is intentionally difficult to achieve so as to prevent mob rule from stripping minority rights. The only reason it seems to us different is that the Second Amendment provides a right that has little modern ethical reasoning.

0:03:07 Thomas: However, if you are either a strict constitutionalist in principle or are deeply involved in gun culture, the reasoning behind such difficulty in moving forward legislation makes far more sense and, in fact, appears to be a moral good. I actually thought about this when I was saying, making this very point about how Obama said said 90% of Americans, I think he said, supported the gun legislation they tried to get through, and even 90% of Democrats or something like that. But Republicans blocked it in Congress.

And I thought of that, but I actually don't think that's what's happening here, Drew, because it's funny that you mentioned warrantless search and seizures. Wouldn't you say, maybe I'm missing something, but don't you think the Patriot Act was an example of this exact thing happening, where the public freaked out, and Congress passed a bill very quickly granting all kinds of interesting, you know, abilities to the government, to certain agencies to search and to hold people without cause, etc. Now, I would say that that's the same, that's literally the situation you mentioned as a hypothetical, and it actually happened, and it went through. So I don't actually think that's what's happening, especially since in the case of the NRA, literally the only thing keeping this bill from going through is the NRA spending bazillions of dollars on certain politicians. So I can't really, I don't really think that's like a legitimate constitutional protection that was built in. When the only thing holding it back is the fact that one organization has bought off a bunch of, you know, politicians, it, it may be, I do remember from my, you,

0:04:55 Thomas: Know, limited history education that, and constitutional knowledge that, that is one of the points, is that it's not supposed to be changed easily, but I think, in this case, maybe would it come down to the courts, so, like, if the, I think Congress and, and the, Congress and the executive branch could pass whatever, assuming they got on board with the gun rights thing and Obama didn't veto it. He signs it. Then, eventually, someone could sue saying, look, this gun... What did I say? Gun rights? I guess I meant gun restrictions, gun control. Someone could sue saying this gun control restricts my Second Amendment rights, which I think has happened and is what changed in the, I think, in the 2000s with the assault rifle ban.

0:05:46 Thomas: I think that was reversed. It wasn't necessarily national. I think it was within a certain state. I don't, I'm pretty sure that Congress can just pass whatever the hell it wants, I mean, if, if Congress gets on board, and they have a majority, and the President is on board as well, and he doesn't veto, then it, I I mean, it'll go through, obviously it has to go through the Senate and the House of Representatives, all that. But other than that, it's not, I don't think you have to have a constitutional convention for this. I just think that if you don't have a constitution convention, a lawsuit to the Supreme Court could overturn it. So that's my understanding of it. And I think that in this case, in the case of gun control, it really is just one group, the NRA, buying off a bunch of politicians who even gun owners are for this stuff and it still can't get through.

0:06:48 Thomas: I don't think that's part of any intelligent design on the part of the Founding Fathers. I think this is just a bastardization of what's supposed to happen, but let me know if you further disagree on that and if you think I got anything wrong. And speaking of Obama's gun control speech, I can't tell you, this is fun, this great, I cannot tell you how many virtually, like, pretty much angry, unbelievable, just in disbelief people I had, just absolutely bemused, I don't know, maybe that's a good word for it. We'll be right back. People I had commenting about my Obama comments. I really think this is, this is fantastic. I, this, is genuinely interesting to me.

0:07:35 Thomas: Let me see if I can make it interesting to you guys. So, I think, okay, we have Obama making a tear, a tearful speech, a good speech, by the way, I'll even say. I think it was a great speech. Again, my own, my main complaint with Obama is it takes him too long. It just takes him to long to get to what he's trying to say. It's not really my style. I get impatient and I would rather read like a four sentence summary of everything he just said in a half hour. But I understand that's politics that's appealing to the American people. I get it. I really am not even criticizing the fact that he teared up. I'm like absolutely not criticizing. I think it was a good intentional thing. That's like, I think Like, it was an intentional thing he did for good reasons, for genuine reasons, and to good effect.

0:08:25 Thomas: Like, everything about it, I think, is good, except I just don't think it caught him off guard. I think it was very intentional. It's so funny because just that one fact has so many people, like, kind of pissed off at me. And I love it because here's what's happening. We have something that we don't have access to. We have a problem here that we don't have access to. And forgive me if I didn't say any of this the first time or if I didn't, you know, make my thoughts known enough. Nothing is riding on this. I'm not judging Obama for it. I'm Not, I don't mean to, you know, denigrate him or his administration. It's like nothing is riding on this for me. So for people who keep saying, oh, you're just doing mind reading. Yes, like I am doing mind read.

0:09:11 Thomas: I fully and someone even said, you know, you need to make sure to acknowledge this is your personal bias. I'm pretty sure I said that. Like, I actually did say this is my personal, you know, because I'm not, this is not anything I mean as a big argument. Like,I'm not trying to make a philosophical argument about gun control or about speeches or anything. I'm just telling you guys, I thought, I found it so interesting that so many people have a completely different reaction to something. I would say most people have a, like, we were looking at the same thing. We're looking at Obama's speech and him crying. And I see one thing and virtually everyone else in the world sees something else. And I can't help but want to talk about it. And it is mind reading. But you're mind reading too.

0:09:57 Thomas: I mean, we can argue about which is right. And that's totally fine. Like, that's 100% what I want to do is talk about, like, what are the reasons behind my mind reading? What are the reasons behind your mind reading? But we're all mind reading. We don't, I understand that an interpretation that says Obama just happened to count him off guard and he just cried unintentionally, that is a more, I guess people see that as like a more heroic kind of, just a better outcome, come, like, maybe people think I'm insulting him or saying he's being disingenuous, which I mean, I guess technically he is, but I still don't really see it as such because I think he really, I mean, he is, I don't think it's like he's happy that people were shot and then he pretends to be sad.

0:10:45 Thomas: I don't think that's that at all. I think he's very much sad that people are shot and he made an effort to show emotion on that. That's what I think. So it's not I don't mean that it's even dishonest really. It's just he He intentionally showed emotion at a good time for a good cause, that's what I think. Thank you. But here's why I think this is so fascinating, and I hope you agree, otherwise, you're probably bored right now, and, I apologize, but, but I find this fascinating, because, in some way, it's similar to the question of God. It's similar, to, okay, like, when I say, I don't believe that God, that, if there were a God, He would use, He, would waste all the space that there is in the universe. I don't believe that He would intend to create us, and create, instead, and as well create this massive, massive, massive waste of space and, and further create a, an environment where we can't survive anywhere.

0:11:43 Thomas: Like we can only survive in one tiny, tiny little speck in this massive sea of just death. Like if we just go into outer space, we just die. I don't believe that. Now here's the thing. I, I've seen that presented as an argument and then people say, well, to God, space is nothing. So it doesn't really matter. I mean, he could create as much space as he wants, Yeah, all true. That's all true You can come up with any explanation It's very easy Just make it up I mean, God is made up, so just make up Make up a thing about him that explains whatever you're talking about That's easy Now, I don't think this Obama issue is as easy as that But I think it's similar in that We can both come up With our explanations explanations, but then the question of whether or not you hold one or the other, it doesn't really, I mean, it's more based on your psychology, which is telling, I think.

It's very telling of me, and I admit that. I am cynical. But, to get a little philosophical, it also has to do with your priors, you know, that's what, that may be what I should have gone into. So, here are my priors. Actually, let me, I said this was going to be a comment section, let, I'll just read a few of the comments, and then I'll go into that.

0:12:59 Thomas: That. Here's a particularly scathing one, but, but I don't mind these comments, by the way, I really don't, so, it's fine, but here's the comment, by Michael: "Dude, that was kind of a regressive, leftish, mind-reader, motive-discerner, bullshit kind of mood, move, I get it, you don't get emotional when it concerns Sandy Hook, wrong, by, by the way, but, but, you were quick to acknowledge the fact that you do cry sometimes, most of us cry when we see Old Yeller, probably not me, we may, but, if, if we're talking about, uh, Muppets Christmas Carol, then, goodbye, I have, immediately, however, if I were making a speech about Muppet's Christmas Carol, I would just, I, it would be up to me whether I'd cry or not, if I wanted to make a point about Mupets Christmas Carol, I could get into my head the part that always brings tears to my eyes, and I could think about it, and, I, I could probably start shedding a few tears to really compel people and to try to convey to them how much I love this movie."

0:13:58 Thomas: Not all of this is completely serious, by the way. Or I could give a speech about it and I could say, I love the movie. It makes me cry every time with a perfectly straight face. Anyway, we may have seen that movie a hundred times and we know when that sad scene is coming, but we still shed a tear. Are those calculated? Are those not so genuine? I also get that you are cynical. It's easy for us to raise an eyebrow at a public official of getting emotional, but you bookended your support for the content of his speech with the not genuine implication of the emotion behind them. That portion of your commentary can be summed up as not genuine blah blah blah, support, good point, not genuine. So I'm supposed to believe that the president's ideas are genuine when he's being disingenuous? How does that work? I'm not sure about this, but I don't think that Obama has shed as many tears as, say, the last speaker of the house.

0:14:50 Thomas: And I'm pretty sure that the two issues, his tears and his ideas are criticized as separate issues. To paraphrase, that guy is full of shit and boy, does he cry a lot. Love the podcast, by the way, it's in my rotation of must listens. Well, I'm really glad to hear that. Thanks so much. I hope I can keep it up and maybe I can shed some light on this. This. For one, I think, okay, imagine two scenarios and I, man, I love, I love talking about this. So I've, I almost want to have people on to talk about this very issue because it's so, it's like kind of funny to me, but it really is. And you know, okay. Tangent again, remember that whole black dress versus purple dress or blue or whatever the hell it was. I don't remember.

0:15:35 Thomas: You know how everyone was going nuts over that. It was because half the people saw one color and half the people saw the other. This is that thing except I feel like I'm the only one seeing orange and everyone else sees a different color and I'm like, guys, come on it's orange. So I don't think it's disingenuous. Let me, okay, two hypothetical scenarios. Let's say there's, well, one's a real scenario. One's the actual president's speech. Imagine that speech exactly how he made it and with the following assumptions. Let's assume Obama was totally genuine in how he was, in what he meant, genuine in his measures for gun control and his ideas. He's genuine in all that.

0:16:21 Thomas: And don't forget about the crying part for now, but he did cry. We won't make a judgment about that. That's scenario A. Scenario B is he was genuine in All His Ideas, in all his, same thing, same thing. Then we get to the crying point. Crying part, and he just doesn't cry. Eye. Now, would you say that that that he was disingenuous? Would you say he's being disingenuous one versus the other? For me, it's the same thing. It's just he tried to be more compelling in one. That's all like people I think. And I understand you're used to if anyone says anything critical of Obama, it's because they're some insane Obama hater, right wing person like that's not what's happening. AndI think that maybe some people I'm not going to mind read, but I think sometimes that That could be what's going on with some commenters.

0:17:09 Thomas: They think I'm being super critical. I'm not. I would go so far as to say it's possible I could see doing the same thing in his case. I could almost see doing it just because he's the president. He's got, he wants to make a good speech. He wants, look, when you're trying to make good speech, you do things like this. It makes sense. Anyway, so I don't, it has nothing to do with him being disingenuous. It has nothing to do with that. Here are my prior assumptions.

0:17:40 Thomas: Let's, okay, never mind, I'm just going to read more of the comments just to make sure I cover them. Here's one by David: "I think a well-adjusted empathetic human being would potentially shed a tear given the facts of the circumstances of the speech. Obama was referring to a specific shooting involving the death of first graders. Some of the parents of the children in Newtown Massacre were present, standing behind him. Mr. Obama has children himself. Self. Empathy would likely lead him to imagine if his or her children were victims of such a massacre. The very thought that the death of first graders due to gun violence still results in apathy from a large segment of pro-gun advocates and a large section of Congress who refuses to act. I know the temptation is to be jaded about politics, but the factors are there where I could imagine myself reacting with a tear, with or without a political agenda."

0:18:28 Thomas: Five and six-year-olds being gunned down. I don't even have kids and the thought of that is pretty horrific. Yeah, no, all that's true. That's all true. Let's see. I think there's one more. Oh man, there's actually a lot more. Okay. I Don't Know How Many I Should Read. All right, one more short one to illustrate something, Dave in NoCal, I don't have a reason to doubt the genuineness of Obama's tears, so why are we so cynical about it? The evidence you presented is cynicism and personal incredulity. At least, at at least three points in your narrative, you argued against yourself as well. I understand this represents your intuition, but understand that your intuition is likely born of a lot of preconceptions and social-cultural programming. Men cry, I cry at things like this. Thank you As a parent of young children, I get angrier at the Sandy Hook massacre every time I think about it. You mentioned that he had already processed it. Okay, consider this, my father died in 1998 of cancer, I processed that, but are there times when I still get misty-eyed when I look at pictures of him?

0:19:27 Thomas: Is that calculated? If you find it so implausible that President Obama was being calculated, I think you mean plausible? If you find it plausible that President was being calculated, fine, you should understand your own bias that might have led you to that conclusion. Okay, so I'll stop it at there on comments wise, but this illustrates something interesting. Notice how many things, Dave, and thank you for the comment, but you brought a ton of things into that that weren't there. And actually, you weren't the only one to do that. A lot of people said, hey, men can cry, men, can cry. Nowhere in my entire commentary, I said a lot of things. Not one time did I refer to Obama being a male and that being any sort of reason why he wouldn't cry. I, I, haven't even gone back and listened, I'm 100% sure.

0:20:13 Thomas: If someone can show me a clip where I said, also, he's a man, men never cry, you know, like, that wasn't, that, wasn't even part of my thinking. I just am talking about Obama, like personally. I don't even, that didn't even enter into my mind. I'm just putting myself in his place. What would I do? And also, the fact that you said, if I get misty-eyed when I look at pictures of my father, is that calculated? Well, you're not the president. You're not making a political speech about your father. That doesn't make any sense. I mean, no. So the answer is no, not even close. It's just a completely different thing. So again, I can't believe how much time I've spent on this, but let me sum up what is happening interesting. I have some priors. We all have priors, and not the legal kind, not the criminal kind.

0:20:59 Thomas: We have prior assumptions, right? So when you say, I have no reason to doubt the genuineness of Obama's tears. Well, I do. Okay, here are my prior assumptions. I think virtually every politician lies at all times. And we can talk about it, but that is a prior assumption. Of mine, born of a lot of evidence, born of a ton of evidence slash knowing people and knowing the kind of sales person type personality that most politicians have. They lie constantly about everything. Here's another prior though. I'll give you a prior the other way. Obama tends to be pretty truthful. He's, in my opinion, one of the more truthful, less deceptive politicians by far.

0:21:45 Thomas: So I'll gives you that as a prior in your favor. However, some For me, the prior assumption that politicians want to make a good speech and, And More than anything, are sort of in a performance mode at all times. That, that's the biggest thing for me. Is it dishonest? I wouldn't say dishonest. I would say it's dishonest if they are pretending to do something that is completely the opposite of what they actually think, and that's not what I think.

I, I, again, I'll say it again, I think Obama 100% believes that has that emotion or had that emotion at some time. I just think he intentionally dwelled on it there, got himself to cry to make a good speech. I mean, to And I very much said, this is my personal bias, so this is totally it, you guys can feel free, I, I really think, too, if you have different prior assumptions, Which it sounds like most of you do. Most of your are saying, well, I just, well I don't have any reason to doubt it, yeah, if I had no reason to doubt it, I would agree with you, I would just think, yeah, oh man, he was in the middle of a speech, and all of a sudden he accidentally started crying, and then he tried to get through it, sort of, you know, that's what I would think, but it's just not the case.

I mean, for me, I literally just can't believe that. So that's why this is fascinating to me. So we almost would have to argue prior assumptions, but even then, our prior assumptions I think as humans are at such an emotional level that it's difficult to even say if we can argue those.

It really gets into psychology, which is depressing, because I think the truth is that humans can't really change their minds that well and we don't really know why we believe things and we come up with reasons why we believe things after the fact,

0:23:30 Thomas: And so I don't hold it against any of you for your belief on this. I really don't. If there's not a clear logical argument for it, which I don't think there is, there's just different plausible stories about something we can't really know for sure unless we opened up Obama's brain, you know, there's just different possible stories and we have different reasons for believing them. So it, and it's kind of funny, like when someone says, "Look, this is, you know, Newtown kids were shot." That's, yeah, that's a story, you can keep telling me reasons why he would have been crying, and for me it's just like, yeah, all those things were true back when Newtown happened and he's a politician making a speech. In the middle of making a speech, for me, here's my prior that's so powerful. And it's okay if you don't agree with this.

0:24:17 Thomas: It's 100% okay. Because you might just have a different prior assumptions. When someone's making a speech, when they've studied, when they are being intentional with their words, whenthey've got the teleprompter going, they're not going to just accidentally start crying. It's just not unless they're talking about, like, unless they're at a funeral giving the a eulogy for someone they personally knew or loved, like a family member, I just don't think it's going to happen. That's my prior. I don't like it's gonna happen. You know, I, okay, so you can continue to give me plausible stories for why this would happen. That's fine. I, it's weird. I can't accept them. So maybe if you want to argue priors more, we can, but I think for the most part, this may be what happens in life.

0:25:03 Thomas: I mean, this maybe what happens between humans. We're just like, yeah, I think this, you think that. I don't know how to argue anymore. I'm happy to try to argue more about it. I think everyone's tired of it by now, but I don't know how to argue anymore about it. All right, you have my sincere pledge that I will not talk any more about this, because I'm feeling like this is a lot on nothing. But I think it's profound, as you can tell. I actually think it has profound implications. But in general, when we're arguing about things about which we literally cannot know, then... Let me put it to you this way. Nothing's writing on this for me. I'm not taking... This would be bad of me if I was taking this and then, like, judging Obama for it or making a... I'm really not.

0:25:49 Thomas: Like, I honestly think any politician would do this at any time, and I will be equally wary of every politician crying, depending on the issue. I mean, if they start crying about something that seems more disingenuous, I'm sure there's different levels of it. But I just don't trust politicians. That's my main thing, especially giving speeches, especially knowing how many people are going to be snapping photos of it. I just don't trust it. So there you go. All right, done. Sorry, done! I deeply apologize if anyone was really disinterested in that, but we're done for now.

0:26:35 Thomas: Okay, so totally changing the subject, Obama, no, not really, got another interesting comment here on Facebook. Hello, Thomas. I'm a big fan of Atheistically Speaking, and you really get me thinking about things that I suppose I've never been incredibly critical about. Thank you. I'm really happy to hear that. That is a fantastic thing to hear, and that's the goal of the show. I hope I do whatever kind of job at it I can, who knows? Maybe with things like Obama crying, it's not... anyway, uh, are you going to address in a later podcast what you meant about humans not having rights? I was a bit surprised when you said it, and I have a bit of a problem wrapping my mind around it. I'd really love you to hear, to hear you go deeper into your thoughts on that. I haven't listened to your commentary this week, so I apologize in advance if you mentioned it in greater detail.

0:27:23 Thomas: Thanks again for all you do. Well, no, I didn't. Um, yeah, and so I told this person, who I guess I'll err on the side of not naming people in case they don't want to be named. First name Sapphire, I'll say. Sapphire. Yeah, no, I haven't gone into this. I told Sapphire that I would go into it a little bit. And I mean, it has to do with moral philosophy. I'm not an expert, but I've done a lot of reading and I find it to be a very interesting issue. I had Ryan Born on to talk about the moral landscape, because I think Sam Harris, I think he more or less has it right. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I do think it all comes down to consequences and I don't find deontology to be fully satisfactory to me.

0:28:10 Thomas: Basically, to try to sum it up in a not very long way, which is impossible, I'll try to do my best. I think, my view is that rights are a shorthand for what we think are good consequences. This is my view. I think that the view expressed by Ryan Born and others who think deontology, well, I don't know if they think deontology solves everything. Well, here's the thing, everyone, this is why I'm convinced by Sam Harris who thinks that ultimately consequences is what grounds everything, because Because people will say, no, here's some problems and there's like trolley problems or whatever. And it's like, what does consequentialism say about that? Or what does it say about, you know, if a man commits a crime and no one is around to see it, did he really make a sound? Something like that.

0:28:55 Thomas: Those kind of things are, yeah, those are, those poke little holes in it. But I can think of a billion instances where rights cause bad consequences and no one would like it. I mean, what if you're like rights trumping other rights? How would you ever decide that if not for the consequences? If consequentialism, without an appeal to consequences, how do you decide which right trumps what? Specifically, we just were talking about abortion. How do you decided the right to bodily autonomy versus the fetus's right to life if you grant personhood? How do we possibly decide that? How doyou decide the, okay, someone's dying on the street and so you break into a nearby by business, the only business available to break into or that's around, it's closed, but you break in to get to a phone or something, some 80s reference where you don't have a cell phone, something like that.

0:29:51 Thomas: They have the right to their property not being broken. They have the right to their business not being broken into, but how do you decide I'm going to go against that in order to help this person to live? And I find those, because I can think of a billion examples of that. That's easy. I could think of examples of that all day. I mean, self-defense versus, you know, someone else's right to life, saving one person versus five, you Know, like if someone has the right to life, how do you balance saving one person with five? I mean they all have rights. You can't kill the one person. Don't you have a right to not kill someone? All these kinds of questions. I can think of a million of them. But when it comes to poking holes in consequentialism, I think there's only a few.

0:30:38 Thomas: You. Like there's certain little examples that people think poke a hole in the whole thing. And all those examples usually, in my mind, have to do with not taking the consequences to their logical conclusion. Simple example, there's a, I think one of the famous problems is a hospital where the doctor sees that we've got a healthy patient who's just getting a tonsillectomy, and then we got five patients who are all going to die for different reasons. One's heart's failing, one's kidney is failing, ones lungs are failing, if that can happen. I don't know. I'm not a doctor. One, something else is failing. And so the doctor, the surgeon sees, well, I got this one guy here and I got these five people over over here. Let me just take all his organs.

0:31:23 Thomas: And then we've killed one guy, but we've saved five lives. The consequences are great. And that's sometimes touted as an example of consequentialism failing. When in my mind, it couldn't be further from the truth. I mean, when you think of that situation, what disgusts you the most? Well, I don't want me or a loved one to go into a hospital for some operation and then be killed. Okay, that's a bad consequence, isn't it? That's a consequence I would like to avoid. So is the, it's all consequences. It's all balancing consequences. And if you took that to its logical conclusion in would we live in a world where it's okay if a surgeon just decides to kill a guy and to save five others willy-nilly, it's up to him to do that.

0:32:12 Thomas: That's not a world we want to live in. If we look at those consequences, the consequences are everyone's horrified by that. And this is all loosely speaking, of course, because I'm trying to go quickly. But to my mind, those are the issues. People just don't take consequences to the logical conclusion. Now, here's the argument I think is okay. And I haven't even gotten to the human rights part. Crap. Okay. I think it makes sense to talk about rights as a shorthand for consequences, because there are a lot of times when we don't, we can't know the consequences. They're just too difficult. They're too far out. That, that's, I grant that. But when we're trying to decide on these things, we're still making our best guess as to what the consequences will be. So that's where I think rights do have some application.

0:33:00 Thomas: I think that it's safer to grant, I think everybody benefits, all humans benefit when we know in a society like the United States, where we have a bill of rights, we have the Constitution. We have certain inalienable rights that we all know we have. That provides a tremendous amount of well-being because we all rely on that. We all know that we're not going to be killed by that doctor to save five people. I think the right, again, I think it's justified by consequences, but I think a good shorthand and it's a fantastic safety net to not lead to to terrible consequences. So now we're getting to the point of talking about rights. I don't think rights exist, really. I think they exist if we grant them as a society.

0:33:48 Thomas: And furthermore, I think that's obvious. I mean, I don't know that anyone's really argued with me, actually. So I think maybe this is an obvious thing that most... Sorry, I mean obvious, but not controversial to atheists. So religious people are horrified at this. Thank you No matter what I can, I can definitely rely on, if I talk to any of my Christian friends about this, the first thing out of their mouths, it happened with Tyler Vela. It'll happen every single time. Well, if it's just what you say, well, then the Nazis weren't really wrong, blah, blah. Every time. Inevitably, it's the Nazis or it's slavery. One of the two. Well if you, if, if we don't really have rights, well we don' have them, then it's, if you decide that it's okay, then yeah, exactly.

0:34:34 Thomas: That is true. If society decides to rescind the rights of a certain group, that group is in a lot of trouble. I mean, it's almost A tautology. This is what amazes me and why I want to talk to Tyler more about moral philosophy, maybe, because there's always this like, well, it's almost like saying if we're all just atoms, then we're made of atoms, and everything in our brain, love, that all comes down to just chemicals. And it's like, yes, true. You just solved it. That is true. True. But in the case of morals, we grant rights, and we've granted rights currently based on our best picture as a society, based on Our best efforts of philosophy, of moral progress, we have decided over the years.

0:35:25 Thomas: Now, this is where it gets a little interesting to me for a different reason, complete side note, because I think the creators of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, all that, I think they, I mean, they did say we've been granted by God inalienable rights. And so it's interesting to me that in America, we were, a lot of the progress and a lot of the freedom we have, and it's a very good thing, it was based on what I think is a false premise. I don't, we're not granted by our creator any rights. I really don't think we are. However, it doesn't end up really mattering because I think the shorthand works to say, hey, we've all agreed people have these rights. Here's our society. Guess what? Here's the society we're founding. Every person born gets these rights."

0:36:13 Thomas: That's great. I mean, to me, that's just as powerful. Does that lose any value to you? Okay, if we change the Constitution right now, now I know I'm talking to atheists, but we change it to, granted by our Creator, you know, from granted by by our creator, inalienable rights to this constitution has decided, like we, this society, we've been granted rights by this document, which this part of the document can't be changed. We always have these rights. We've decided this is our society we want to live in. So until you overthrow it by, you know, some sort of mutiny, some kind of, you know, revolution, as long as this document is, is, uh, you know, providing the basis for civilization, uh... for this civilization, you've got these rights. Does that take anything away from it?

0:36:59 Thomas: It really doesn't. I mean, because even if you think the rights were granted by God, people can, they're still the Nazis. I means, you still, if you're Tyler and you think rights are granted by god, there's something that we're all born with, does that, slavery still happened. That didn't prevent it. That did nothing. That's the problem. The saying we have rights doesn't actually accomplish anything. If you say, so commenter, Maybe this is just something you haven't thought about or read about, which is awesome. I hope I've provided some insight. I'd consider, you know, reading moral philosophy to have it explained in maybe a more rigorous manner. I mean, I'm speaking very loosely. But if you tell me, Sapphire, if you say, I believe we have rights granted by God, and then I say, okay, which ones?

0:37:51 Thomas: What do you do? Where do you get those rights? Where do yo get that information? Do you talk to God? Does, and I'm not picking on you. I'm just saying for hypothetically, if you're someone who wants to come from, argue this point of view, what's the next step there? And then maybe you say, well, I've reasoned, maybe I'll ask Tyler this actually, possibly. Unless he has some secret source, unless he has Some gold, you know, plaques from that someone buried in his backyard that have all these rights we've been granted by God, the only way you can get to them is by thinking about it. And once you start thinking about It, God curiously becomes irrelevant.

0:38:38 Thomas: Once it becomes, okay, here's what I think what rights we have because they're the best rights for us to have, you know, and then you say, well, it's what God would have wanted if He could talk to us. What function has God performed? I could appeal, heel, I could say, okay, somewhere in the galaxy, there's an all-knowing robot that someone made. It's a computer. It's an All-Knowing Computer. And according to that All-Knowing Computer, we have certain rights. Now, that's as far as the message went. It didn't tell us exactly what rights. Unfortunately, it cut off mid-transmission. But from that basis, you'd still have to argue you about what the rights are. It doesn't really help you at all. And you can't appeal to this computer. It hasn't given you any more information.

0:39:26 Thomas: That's all it's given you. Same with God. God hasn't, God hasn't giving you any information. Even if you pretend he exists, he hasn't told you anything. And if he has, what, what happens when he tells me something else? So what if he tells me, well, I, you know, according to God, I just talked to him, I radioed to God. He says, I can take as many wives as I want and they don't have to be willing. Okay, so who's right about God, you know?

It really doesn't get you anywhere. The only, there's no rights that are so basic that you can get to them without thinking and philosophizing about it. I mean, we have to do philosophy to figure that out. So I don't think rights exist except as a good shorthand for good consequences and for building a good society. Society and for well-being. So that's my view on that. Bring the episode to a close. Thank you so much for all the comments. There were many more I couldn't get to as usual, but I appreciate them and I hope that the listeners enjoy hearing from other listeners. So thanks. Let me know if you enjoy the segment where I briefly discuss comments and then go off on long tangents and talk about them. No, but But I hope I addressed them. And thank you guys so much.

Thank you for listening. Thank you far for participating in the show, commenting back and forth, that sort of thing. OK, Thursday and Monday, we got another great two parter. It is me speaking with two listeners who commented on the abortion episodes with Tyler Vela.

0:41:01 Thomas: As you may recall, there was a bit of some, some accusations of perhaps not considering women enough and potentially talking in a way, mansplaining, basically. It was, I read the comments a while ago and they were a little bit harsh and I decided to have the commenters on to just talk about it and see if we could come to a resolution on that. So, we did that and I think it'll be very interesting for you to hear. So that's going to be Thursday and Monday, and of course the patrons will get Monday's episode right away. So if you'd like to become a patron, go to patreon.com/atheist, and I appreciate your support. All right, all that being said, have a great however many days until the next time I talk to you. Who knows? All right. See ya.