AS273: The Marketplace of Ideas, with Peter Coffin

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking, this is episode 273, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Today is part two of my interview with Peter Coffin, really interesting stuff, I think it got even more interesting in part two, and you'll see why, it was interesting to hear where Peter came down on a few issues that you might not necessarily think he would have come down the way he did if you had prejudged him based on putting him in a certain category based on his video, so it's kind of interesting, you'll see I'm being cryptic, but, but you'll see it's fascinating stuff.

But real quick, before we head over to that, I want to apologize, you may have seen my post on Twitter and Facebook, it turns out that David Smalley had tweeted at me before the episode on Monday, which is terrible timing, I didn't see it, my new phone, I've talked about my new phone on comedy shoeshine. I'm going to switch from iPhone to Android, but that's another story. Anyway, it's not giving me all my notifications for Twitter. I don't know why. So I happened to miss this one that turned out to be very important. So, I responded. However, it has been like a while. It will have been like weeks when you're hearing this, unless you're a patron hearing it early. And so, I decided because of that, I wanted to write a sort of apology for

0:01:49 Thomas: Missing it to Smalley. So I did, I just want to point that out. So he did kind of reach out. Now he hasn't reached out to Andrew. He didn't apologize to Andrew, none of that has happened, but he just tweeted at me like, yeah, we should talk. I heard your episode or something like that.

So obviously super unfortunate that I didn't see that notification because now it probably seems or feels to him like I'm avoiding talking to him and I don't want to do it or something like that, but that's not the case and I've done my best to get his attention and remedy that.

I honestly had no idea if I was on his radar at all, you know, I don't really, I just kind of do these things assuming no one is listening, which, which yeah, that's, that's kind of how I always have to approach these things so that I can just kind talk openly and give my opinions and stuff. And yeah, when I'm critical on somebody, it sucks. And I get that. And I would feel crappy if someone was critical of me. So I hope David realizes it's not a personal thing. It's pretty much entirely that one interaction with Andrew just really, really rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not going to rehash it.

So with that little thing out of the way, I just wanted to definitely acknowledge that I missed that tweet. I am sorry. And he did reach out and I wanted to make sure that you guys knew that he reached out in that, in that small way, because that's, that's important. I need to give him credit for that. So just wanted to say that. And now

0:03:09 Thomas: Part two with

[0:03:11] Peter Coffin.

[0:03:23] I do think it's wrong to pass a law that says you can't do this if it's not something that legitimately, legally speaking, can change a person's life. But at the same time, there will be people that argue, oh, but it can change a person's life. It can scare them. It can shut them up. It can make them not leave their house. It can make them, it can make somebody who's not a very social person into a total recluse. It can make somebody who's not necessarily big into violent resistance. There are people that become violent for justified reasons, and that's one of them I feel like we think about things from

[0:04:04] a perspective, perspective of, oh, should it be legal or shouldn't it be legal? And I don't know that that's the right thing to talk about because I feel like, because truth and best and good and bad and, as I said in my new documentary, cheese are all very subjective words. And cheese, yes, is a subjective word. There's a million types of cheese. When somebody says cheese, that could mean any one of them. Ultimately, when it comes down to it, you're saying, should I legalize something or make it illegal that we can't even really agree on what it is? And I think that that's kind of the biggest

[0:04:44] reason not to try to pass laws on it. Right, right, right, right. It sounds like you're more focused on what we should culturally allow or be okay with versus actually making it. In fact, most of the time, I'm talking about things from a cultural perspective. I'm not an economist. People who think like I do, I'm an unabashed leftist, and I'm often called like a communist or a socialist or something like that. I'm not either of those things. I certainly believe that social democracy or democratic socialism might provide us a better start point with social safety net and stuff. But I also

[0:05:24] believe in the individual. I believe in enterprise, not necessarily as it is today. But I think that the idea of starting something for yourself and being able to keep it and get credit for it isn't really the worst thing that's ever happened. It's interesting that you went to that. I don't know what I said that made you think of that, but I wasn't even talking about politics. I was just talking about culturally acceptable kind of speech, but I'm wondering why you went that direction, like a political direction. I went that direction for quite a specific reason, actually. Oh, okay. Ultimately, when you start to talk about, I like to frame capitalism as a social system, people start talking to you as though you

[0:06:05] want to talk about the economy and you don't want to talk about social issues. Because if you mention capitalism, people automatically think you mean how we do the economy, which I don't. I almost never talk about it in that context. I mean, I do. Do I often talk about marketing? Obviously, because I have a show I do with my wife every week about it. But on Twitter, if you follow me, and I wouldn't recommend it, you'll find that I rant a lot about capitalism because I think that capitalism has socially led us to a place where we are just messed up beyond messed up. I think obviously there are some economic

[0:06:45] things that we could benefit from, from maybe moving away from it, at least a little bit. Universal health care, those types of things. But when I talk about capitalism, I'm almost always talking about it from a social perspective. Right, well, now we're on to the marketplace of ideas video more, which is fine. So is that what you mean, like capitalism of kind of an ideas capitalism? Yeah,

[0:07:06] definitely. Yeah, and and also the way, what I said in the free speech video that I was eventually going to get to, because I am a very long-winded individual and I often say things that have nothing to do with what I'm talking about to get to what I want to talk about. I'm not sure the listeners will know that because of all the editing I will have done. Very good. Very good. They're gonna be like, wow, he was always so on point. Why did he say that about himself? He was always just one right after the other. He was right on point. He was always talking about like a single thing.

0:07:38 Thomas: And this, this episode is only 10 minutes long. Why is that?

[0:07:42] I brought up social capital. I talked about that for a little while in there. And I think that that is a BS system of looking at it. Because I think, again, like the Marketplace of Ideas video, it's kind of a metaphor that we've made for something. We look at friends as what they can bring to the table. We look at family as if they're bringing some sort of benefit to us in some way. And we're reducing feelings to commodities. And I feel like Like, that's a weird thing to do because it seems pretty obvious that that's not how it works. And I don't like the concept of social capital. I don't like the idea that you would look at a person and say, well, what

[0:08:23] kind of social capital do they have? And I know that nobody literally flat out, like, asks themselves what kind of social capital is this person carrying around. But intrinsically, as somebody who's grown up in a very capitalist society, a very societally capitalist society, I believe that somewhere in there you're asking yourself that, what can this person do for me? And I think that that is such a bad way of looking at people. And I think that that leads to a lot of what we're talking about, whether it be in the free speech documentary or the Marketplace of Ideas documentary. I feel like we frame things

[0:09:03] very, very capitalist in things that shouldn't be framed capitalist, even if you think that capitalism is a completely valid system that works as stated. To be clear, I don't, but I'm not trying to criticize it in a manner that I discount it because obviously we're living in it, so it has something to it, but that doesn't mean I agree with it. I think the way that we're looking at each other is really messy. We look at each other, really, I set it in the Marketplace of Ideas to talk about how we actually think it's a clusterfuck, and that's the same way we look at each other, because when we look at each other, we're really just having ideas about what the other person is, and it's a

[0:09:43] clusterfuck. Our brains are a clusterfuck, they work like, who knows, we think we understand them and then we go, oh wait, this whole rest of the brain is there too. Scientists don't understand the brain. They get it on some level, but they flat out will say we have not even vaguely tapped the human brain. And to know that says to me, it's a lot more weird than we think it is. I don't know. Ultimately, we look at everything in such a way that is, it's opportunist. We look at things in such an opportunist way, is it, it's almost like to to use, uh, what is it, Hume, it's like looking at people as, uh, means rather

[0:10:23] than ends, like, is that, is it? Yes, exactly. That's such a, that, I'd be so much better if I had looked into that and had that word on hand, that whole thing. Yeah, we could have avoided it ourselves a lot of time. Yeah, yeah, I could have, uh, gone, my pizza could be a little bit less cold when I finally get to it. You could be, uh, halfway into your next mini doc. Well, maybe not that far, maybe about a quarter of the way in, but yeah, I understand, I mean, that's pretty general social commentary stuff, and and some of this is kind of abstract, but to talk about the Marketplace of Ideas thing, a video, there's a quote that I'm sure you will have heard that I, I think, summarizes how I feel about a lot of this, which is, I recognize all of the pitfalls

[0:11:13] Of the sort of the marketplace of ideas idea, I guess. Yeah, that's the funniest part about the word marketplace of ideas is that it itself is technically an idea, and it's impossible to talk about it without saying idea twice at some point. It's like a set theory. There's like a set can't be in its own set or something like that. I don't know.

0:11:32 Thomas: Some mathematician will know what the fuck I'm talking about. I think the quote that really sums it up for me in my mind is capitalism is the worst system except for all of the other ones, I think is my favorite quote about it. And I really think it's true, because for all the pitfalls that you're totally right about, like the ideas that survive, aren't

[0:11:51] necessarily the best ones. I don't think they are at all. I think a lot of people. Like I said in the video, Kim Kardashian is a very famous person who gets a lot of money daily. Yeah, yeah.

0:12:02 Thomas: And Similar to that. I mean. I'm on an atheist podcast here. We'll recognize religion has a lot of harmful ideas to it. It survives because, it's a meme that has certain fitness, you know, and, that fitness is not dependent upon its truth necessarily. Although I think there's certain elements, I think if you really

[0:12:21] broke it down, there has to be some element of truth to it. Outrageous things aren't going to survive. I think I can justify it for you. I can't necessarily, I'm not, I'm an atheist. I'm flat out, I don't believe in anything, but I think I understand what compels religion. It's something that you said earlier, it's the idea of at least having a little bit of compassion, and I think that although religion itself does not necessarily purport that, everybody views it that way. Yeah, I was gonna say, so that's the problem, the idea that that religion is you have to have that to have compassion. I suppose that's exactly, that's exactly what they think. And and I'm not saying that people who are religious

[0:13:01] are bad, because I don't think that, and I'm not saying that even being religious is necessarily bad, but I am saying that it's definitely not what it says it is. Yeah, yeah, well, but, and and even to get like less complicated examples, um, alternative medicine, like shitty alternative medicine that you, you know, that I can look at as a skeptic, I guess I won't speak for

[0:13:23] you, maybe you're really into alternative medicine. I love alternative medicine, so good, I eat alternative medicine all day, like, well, you can't, because it doesn't do anything. Thing. Yeah, but that stuff, that shit thrives because it has, it appeals to certain things about us. There's a lot of things, like I love thinking about that, just, just, it's armchair philosophy of course, but I love thinking about the reasons that this shit survives. I think my opinion is part of it is that people love to think they have the secret answer that other people don't have, like, oh no, I know, there's this root that they found in the jungle that if you chop it it up and smoke it, and then just all this weird shit, they like to think, like, no, I found the secret, like, I, I know it. Like that's, whereas really it's like, if, if something works as medicine, doctors will find it. Yeah, exactly, I

[0:14:09] think that there's probably some alternative medicine manufacturers that aren't just horrible profit-grabbing BS, I mean, like they actually buy into it. Yeah, I'm sure, sure, there's some, sure, not necessarily a lot, but some. But let's say that that person is the person who thinks that they found it, and then they market it, the store that picks it up, the herbalist store that says, yeah, hey, I will buy two cases of that to sell, they think that they're the ones that found this amazing thing that somebody else found, and then the consumer comes in and buys it and thinks that they're the ones that found the final answer. Yeah,

[0:14:50] not not necessarily the final solution, but the final answer. Uh, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Who Wants to Be a Nazi, obviously, like, that's a bunch of people patting themselves on the back in a hierarchy, like it's a hierarchy of people. Well, the reason it's okay is because they have a friend who they can tell, like, oh, they that friend doesn't know about this, so, so in their social circle, like, they're the first one to find it. It doesn't really matter what everybody else did, like, as long as in your social circle you can be the one to say, like, no, I, I know this, you know, secret fucking diets, all this stuff, just weird stuff like that. I, my opinion is totally just an amateur opinion, but it really seems, I feel like people, like that, they like to, oh, definitely able to say like, oh, no, I know this little secret that

[0:15:36] you don't know, this pill is ground up monkey toenails, and it's it really helps with my headaches. The best meme about the Olympic cupping was how it was, like, it was a supposedly this

[0:15:48] like ancient Chinese secret type thing, and then it showed the Chinese swimming team, it's like, they don't use it. Yeah, it's like, try to get that stuff to try to sponsor an Olympic team with it. We'll see, we'll see where we go with that. And it's, it's so funny because we think things, humans think things that are far away, or at least Americans do, like things are far away, they have,

[0:16:07] yeah, like the Far East and the, you know, they have the secret medicine. Yeah, we mistakenly call it exotic, whereas over there, they're just like, yeah, we eat scorpions every day.

0:16:16 Thomas: But, yeah, so the point of all this is that I think you're totally right in, the different ways you identify how, the free marketplace of ideas, it doesn't lead you to the correct conclusion. I don't think that's, I don't even know if that's what it's purporting to do. I think I think your video assumes that, but I, maybe I'm wrong, but I think that it's just the way it has to be. Like, it's, it's the only way that doesn't just force views upon people really. I mean, at least in a way that's like, a 1984 kind of Orwellian way, you know, like, I don't, I Don't know if there's an alternative, you

[0:16:54] know what I mean? Like, it's not, it's a shit system, but, I think the alternative is nothing. I think just not trying to look at people talking to each other as a market situation, I think that's my ideal thing. Just not saying, because it's a metaphor, it's an abstract, it's not an actual market. Oh, so you actually think just the metaphor is the problem. Yeah. You actually are arguing against the metaphor itself. Yeah, I'm arguing against framing the exchange of information and ideas and ideals and all of the things that we talk about and discuss and quote unquote the discourse as

[0:17:34] not a metaphor for a market. That's what I'm advocating for. Now I have no idea whether or not I'm on the same page with you, because I don't, like, yeah, well, okay, it doesn't matter what we call it, there's still, like, if we call it anything, if we call it George, like, it's still gonna, Kim Kardashian is still gonna be Kim Kardashian. Oh, I definitely understand that.

Yeah, I, I definitely understand that, but I think that partially, I think partially the reason why it acts to the extreme that it acts is we look at it in a manner where we excuse it, we look at it like the stock market, the stock market, the goal is to make as much money as possible, so if we look at, um, ideas as a market then

[0:18:15] the goal is to get as much attention as possible. I think that looking at it in that way is what makes us act a certain way. Of course attention is going to be the thing that essentially functions as to how things are. If you look at, like, a TV program, if they give attention to one narrative over another narrative, it doesn't matter whether you look at that as a a market situation, that narrative is going to do better. That's just how it works. Right. But I disagree with framing it as a market. I disagree with saying, I have a great idea, I need to figure out some way to get it into the marketplace of ideas. I disagree with using a metaphor that

[0:18:55] we don't necessarily entirely agree on what it actually means, even in court decisions. I disagree with just basically saying the marketplace of ideas is as an excuse for basically anything that happens at a university. I'm trying to get it more tangible now, like, what, what your actual claim is, because I'm terribly unclear on, like, how this would affect me in my real life. Say if somebody says a safe space is a bad thing, and really, I think that that is an argument that I don't, I don't care to have, I don't really, I'm not in a university, I'm not, I don't think about it. Well, that was a debate that uh Eli Bosnick and James Lindsay had on my show. So listeners are familiar with

[0:19:35] the debate. It's a cluster. I just wish that - Are you saying that you don't think people should be able to look at safe spaces and say they're bad, because we need a marketplace of ideas? Yes. I think that provides too simple and too structurally unsound of an argument against it. And I think that if you remove that idea, if you remove this idea that everything is a market, and everything is about exchange of currency or monetary exchanges or whatever we want to look at it as, I think if we just actually had to sit down and talk about it from the frame of, hey, here's the merits of it, here's

[0:20:16] The not merits, whatever the opposite of merits is. Pros and cons, I could have used those words and it would have sounded much less stupid. I feel like we frame everything in a manner that muddies the water automatically. We, we say this is, is a market, this is. But the fact of the matter is a market has process, a market has regulations, a market has, um, just, that's a good point, a constant flow of, like, okay, you want to trade on the stock market, you have to, uh, I, I don't remember the exact requirements right now, but there, there's a certain amount of money that you have to

[0:20:56] be investing, you have to be certified to do it, you have to be, like, there's, and then in order to do it, you have to follow a certain process, you have to make calls to certain people, or you have to be in a certain place, or you have to, uh, there's a broker, does all that crap for you, but sure, but yeah, exactly, you or I probably would not do those things, we would call up a broker, but I'm talking about in terms of the broker themselves.

Sure, there's a process to it, whereas with the marketplace of ideas, is not a process to it, it's just, it's just a thing that we say, it's a thing that we go, hey, this is, everything is an idea market, and the truth is found by, by

[0:21:36] the best idea survives or something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, my point is that we have a metaphor, we say, I'm saying that we're calling things a marketplace of ideas, but we're not actually enacting a marketplace of ideas. We're saying this is a, a market. And then we're doing nothing that actually resembles having a market. We're not doing the regulations.

0:21:57 Thomas: We're not, there's lots of things that are in the real market. Yeah, there's no process. I get it. It makes sense, actually. And I would be interested to hear, I guess, how your experiences... You know, you've talked about the harassment and that kind of thing and how that has impacted how you view the safe space kind of arguments. Like, like, my personal view is that people are oftentimes misusing free speech, the term free speech. Because I am very much a staunch free speech supporter. But

[0:22:28] having a classroom where people can, like, sort of receive, like, therapeutic kind of treatment in college, or at least a place where they don't have to be harassed

[0:22:41] or something, like, that doesn't violate free speech. Like, it has nothing to do with it, you know? I think that people are misusing the term safe space a lot in order to just say that people should have no privacy at all. You shouldn't have a safe space. In their head, they're just saying you should have no privacy. Because I think what a lot of people are asking for when they say safe space is privacy. I don't know that that's the entirety of it. Because, again, I, I'm, I, like, I don't like people that argue against safe spaces, but I also don't necessarily feel all the merit myself in the idea because I'm not

[0:23:21] because you don't need it. Well, then again, you might have been someone who needed, yeah, you might have been, like I said, I'm talking about privacy, I just, like, if I ask for privacy, I would think that somebody else would be like, all right, man, you, you take whatever time you need. I think people get worried that it's like an an exclusive club. I think, I think there are, there are a lot of people who get worried when they're, okay, there's an LGBT safe space, we don't want straight people in it, like, oh, well that sucks, like, why don't I get to go in there, you

[0:23:50] know, and I, I understand that, like, people apparently view life as it is the Little Rascals. It's true, I'm telling you. I think it's true. I think that's what's happening. I really do. Like, and I don't know. And the same thing. I think you're actually right about that. Is, is, is feeling like you're not being included in the cool kids. Yeah, yeah, and the fact of the matter is, like, there's some people who are not thinking about it from the framing of the cool kids. I'm certainly not, whenever I'm trying to not be bothered by people, I'm certainly not thinking about who's cool and who's not, I frame it as privacy,

[0:24:30] if I ask for privacy, that's pretty much what I'm, right, and and the thing I would say, and the thing that I agree with Eli on, he's he's made made these arguments, is that if someone said a campus was a safe space, I'd actually say I disagree with that. I mean, you got to be able to have classes where, classes need to, certain curriculum needs to be taught. Like you can't be protected from certain words in a class, but to have a safe space on campus, totally uncontroversial to me. Like it doesn't, I think people are misunderstanding Yeah.

[0:24:58] It seems like people don't understand the idea of closing a door. Like that seems to literally be, like, what people are against. Like, you guys can meet, it's fine, but if you try to close that door, they're gonna be, marketplace of ideas. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting, like, I, I don't, I don't get how people are that into the idea of arguing against that topic. It's just like if they want to go do something on their, their own, let them. Yeah, I think it's a, it's a lot of misinformation personally, and I would say that I, I hate just agreeing on my show. It's not really what I like. I don't like to agree. You and I talk shit about a position that's not represented here. I do. I kind of, I try to avoid that, but I, I'm just going, as long as I acknowledge that's what's happening, I think that there's misinformation going on, like, I think that people are, I think people think that the purpose of a safe space is to close themselves off to certain ideas, when I just don't think,

[0:26:02] I mean, that you could find, maybe, like, cherry pick some bad examples, but really it's, it's, it's a room with a door, like you said, yeah, exactly, they're still gonna have to go to class, it's literally just some people who want not to be bothered for a while. Yeah, that's, that's what it is, at least it seems like it's that to me. I may misunderstand, I'm not, I'm not going to pretend that I, uh, have ever been to a university. I went to community college, and I didn't finish it, so I don't know. Community college is basically the same thing as high school. I think it's changed a lot. I'm a couple years younger than you. I went to university, and there was no

[0:26:42] talk of this that I ever heard, and I think, it's I mean I know they've been around for a little while, but I think the popularity has kind of

[0:26:51] exploded. I think it may be just the fact that they're using a certain word to say we'd like some time. Yeah, I think that, and also the fact that people feel entitled to have somebody else's time. Like, they feel like, if they have, I have something to say to this group of LGBT people, um, I really liked all you guys, like, even if it's just that, well, it's usually not. So let me, let me tell you, I did an episode quite a while ago. Are you familiar with Mariam Namazi at all? Not particularly. That's okay. She's actually an ex-Muslim.

0:27:29 Thomas: And there, is an abuse of safe space that does happen, and I think this is what happens, where people look at the bad examples and then throw out the entire thing. But what happened was she's an ex -Muslim. And when she goes to try to speak at a college campus, and by that I mean a campus secular group invited her to give a speech in a tiny little classroom that, you know, it wasn't like a commencement speech or anything like that. The Muslim Student Association protested, you know, threw stuff, stopped her from talking, did all this crap. And then the campus groups actually unite, like the feminist group united behind the Muslim group and said, look, our safe space policy you know, forbids you from inviting a speaker that is you know, hateful or something, or they view her as Islamophobic

[0:28:26] because she speaks out about Islam. And that's where I think people are really worried.

0:28:32 Thomas: Like, I would also strongly disagree with that, too. I don't think there should be such thing as a safe space policy that applies to every student group who wants to invite a speaker. I think it should apply to a room, you know, literally like if this is your safe, – if the, Muslim Student Association, whatever the group was called, if they wanted to have a safe space, that's totally fine. Go have a room where you don't allow, you know, non-Muslims for a little an hour to, you know, argue with you or something like that, but yeah, or you

[0:29:04] know, all day, take it the whole day if you need it, the whole day, whatever. Yeah, I do have to say, I think that's, I do definitely think that is bullshit that they, they went after somebody. Like, here's the thing, I obviously, just, I'm an atheist, I obviously disagree with Islam, uh, I would say I probably wouldn't go after anybody who's Islamic, I wouldn't, uh, I would criticize a lot of what Islam is, uh, but ultimately when it comes down to it, I can't understand that, like, that situation is just so, because it's literally a marginalized person being marginalized further by another marginalized

[0:29:44] group. Yeah, and it's like, Muslims have a tough time because, I, there's a weird intersection happening where people are very, very sensitive to Muslims, right

[0:29:54] now, like anti-Muslim bigotry and that kind of thing, which I get it. I mean, there is a lot of it. There's plenty of that out there. I mean, I don't have to use the internet for very long without trying to find it to come across it. Yeah, but there's a dangerous intersection because what is unfortunately a fact about Islam is they are also really shitty to ex-Muslims, like a lot of them. It's not looked kindly in the religion. You can ask even mainstream Muslims, just your everyday average Muslims, and they will often have terrible things to say about anyone who leaves the religion. And you can look at poll numbers. That's just a reality of the situation. So what happens is people who want to be sensitive to Muslims see Muslims calling ex-Muslims bigots and calling them names because they don't – they think they're apostates. They think they, – honestly, sometimes they think they deserve the death penalty. And their tendency is to side with the Muslim

[0:30:50] on that. And I think that is a dangerous thing that happens. Yeah, I think essentially what a lot of people are looking at to bring up social capital again. At the moment, people are giving social capital or rather, yeah, I would say people are showering social capital on specific things about marginalized groups. They're not necessarily giving people like the full, like, I'm treating you like a human and all of your ideas are to be engaged with like that treatment. I think that they're giving them like a, to bring up white feminism,

[0:31:30] white feminists are very parental or paternal, rather, on people of color. Like, and white feminism is a pejorative. It's not feminism that is white. It's people who are white, and their whiteness, they have not considered it at all when they talk about other people in the feminism space. And I'm not going to try to act like I am Captain Feminist. I understand everything about it. I, I am not going to do that. Okay, I'm not familiar with white feminism. Feminism is a pejorative talking about feminists that can't really see through their whiteness. And

[0:32:11] that's, in my opinion, what is happening in that situation that you described to me. Because they're probably looking at it from the perspective of a sort of a paternalism in that they can take care of the Muslims. They can fight for the Muslims' rights. And not really think about these things on an actual intellectual level, but rather on an emotional level where they understand that things are great if you fight for marginalized people. And that's the extent of the thought they put into it. And the fact is a marginalized person is

[0:32:51] different than a group of marginalized people, and a religion is different than both of those things. And, and when we, we try to act like a religion is specific, like, most of the time, believe it or not, I don't think people are actual, I think people are using Islam as the excuse to be Islamophobic, what we're calling Islamophobic anyway, um, it's just racism, I think, uh, but they use Islam, which is looked at as a violent, um, ideology specifically because of 9-11 and a lot of other things throughout the last several thousand years, um, that are not unique to Islam, they're present

[0:33:32] in Christianity, they're present in pretty much any, I'm not going to rattle off a bunch of religions, but they're present in, in a great deal of religions. Well, I don't know if I can just let that false equivalence slide. I mean, there's definitely differing levels of violence in in islam now versus I mean you could compare Islam now to Christianity some years ago, certainly,

[0:33:54] I'm saying historically speaking, I'm not necessarily saying today, I'm saying if you go back a ways, yeah, like it's, it's all, all religions started, elements are all, yeah, exactly, these elements exist within the, the, the makeup of every religion, and that's part of the reason why you and I are atheists probably, um, we recognize those things, and, and not everybody has to recognize those things, but it's something that the, the type of people that get paternal with that type of person are not engaging with intellectually. They're

[0:34:34] not looking at that group as people that have thoughts that may or may not be right. They're not looking at it in that way at all. They're looking at it like, these are marginalized people. It's my responsibility to protect them. That's interesting. I think that's a criticism that a lot of you hear about the far, I guess, progressive kind of left side. I don't think I would have expected to hear that from you, based on, well, here's the thing, I don't think that that's very far left, I think that that is people who think that they are quote-unquote liberal, where I use, I, I

[0:35:14] don't really think that the mainstream quote-unquote liberal is particularly

[0:35:22] leftist. I, I don't like using the word liberal because in my head it means neoliberal, it means classical liberal, etc, and white liberal. I don't know if you've ever heard the term white liberal. No? That is similar to white feminist, is basically somebody who, thinks they're have you heard the term woke? I've heard the term woke, sure, I'm sure you've heard the term woke, it's essentially what white people stole from black people to attempt to sound much more cool, now substitute cool for or progressive, or liberal. That's basically what a white liberal or a white feminist is. They're people who are kind of cherry picking little bits and

[0:36:02] pieces of ideologies, but not really going too far into it, and they think they're enlightened, and they're not, they're not enlightened, they're, they're regular people who don't know everything and think they know everything, and that's kind of the problem I think with something like that, because if you have somebody saying, I want to speak about what I find wrong about Islam because I was formerly in Islam and I am now an atheist, and I've seen a lot of things that I disagree with, you're talking about somebody with experience on the issue, you're talking about somebody who is absolutely

[0:36:43] entitled to their opinion on what Islam is. Yeah, and you're talking to somebody who has probably a small amount of people who want to hear it, and yeah, they deserve that privacy as much as anyone deserves it. Right? And And if you think that somehow you're protecting the big group of people instead of this single person, you're probably wrong. Because, like, tell me what's more powerful, a mob or an individual? And I'm not talking in the ability to lead or anything like that. I mean, like, if you're standing in a hallway, who's

[0:37:23] going to win? It's not going to be the individual. You're not protecting the, like, a group of people from an individual, it's just, it, it's, it's silly, they're talking, they're talking to people who want to hear them, they're not, they're not changing anything about that group, that's interesting, because I think the same argument, argument could be made if you had like, you know, a white supremacist who is harassing black people, like, it'd be like, uh, there's one of

[0:37:49] them and the mob of, of the other, you know, does that, but that is, that is very different than saying, I'm an atheist, I was formerly Islamic, and I have problems with Islam. Mm-hmm. Very different. Because the white person probably didn't used to be black. Most likely. Unless they're Michael Jackson. I mean, yeah, there's a couple of documented incidents. Yeah. Not many. Yeah, like SNL skits and Dave Chappelle skits or something. Yeah, pretty much restricted to that. Yeah. That's it. We're, you know, we're plum out of time, actually. We're well over time, but it was really interesting. You're welcome to take anything out that you want.

[0:38:30] Well, I, that is very interesting to hear you say that. I think that we're coming from like vastly different sort of like architectures of how we're understanding

[0:38:42] these concepts. And it's kind of like we're translating them to each other in a weird way. Yeah, I feel like that's kind of exactly what's going on. Because, like, I don't, it's not that I don't understand what you're saying, it's that I know for a fact my brain is working completely different. Yeah, it's not even that I necessarily disagree with you entirely, because I don't, I don't think that either of us are really on a different place as far as, no, I don't think we are, that issue. I mean, it, it would be, it would be interesting to see if there's other, like, issues or specific instances where we would disagree. Agree, I don't, so that, that's, but I think that's the importance of actually talking about it instead of leaving a fucking angry YouTube comment. You know, it's like I

[0:39:26] think if, if a lot of people were able to talk to you about your views, I don't think you would end up being that far apart. Sometimes, you know, I mean, there's gonna be, that's probably a big societal problem that we should probably try to fix and not be able to, never will. Yeah, all right, well, we did our part here, we did our part, tried. All right, well, on that kumbaya note, I think I'll have to uh leave it for tonight. But thank you so much for coming on, Peter Coffin. Tell people where you want them to go

[0:39:57] To find your work, find your stuff. Uh, well, you can hit me up at youtube.com/Peter Coffin or petercoffin.com. Either of them go to the same place, but one's easier to remember for some people. One's easier to remember for others. There you go. You got both types of people covered. Um All right, thanks for joining me. Thank you Well, there you have it. That's the end of the interview with Peter Coffin. Very nice guy. We've been in touch a little bit after that. I'm a big fan. I think he's a super nice, super thoughtful guy. A little weird, as he bills himself. And a little a bit of ADD in the interview, but hopefully I edited that all out. But really fun. I, I think that... Thank you.

He's a good example of someone who a lot of people demonized for the, you know, alleged fake girlfriend, made-up girlfriend thing that I really wasn't there at the time, I don't know, who knows, but it strikes me as something where someone who probably has some pretty reasonable opinions, you heard him say that he thought the thing with Maryam Namazi was ridiculous, and he talked about how he thinks certain feminists. Now, it's a little weird to me that it's called white feminism or whatever. I think there was another white something. That's a little weird to me. I didn't know that terminology. But I do think that is an interesting problem to discuss and something that maybe I wouldn't have thought that he would have told me. I would have thought that if we're just putting people in boxes, simple boxes, which we shouldn't do, but I'm saying if

0:42:03 Thomas: We did that and we put Peter Coffin in the social justice warrior box, we put, oh, he's just the SJW, blah, blah. I wouldn't have expected him. And this is why we shouldn't put people in a box. That Because I wouldn't have expected him to talk about the fact that we're sort of fetishizing or, or the, the left who are going after Maryam Namazi and calling her an Islamophobe, they're sort of feteshizing the certain aspects of the, of Muslims. They're not really protecting an individual Muslim. They're saying, Ooh, we're going to, we are going to protect you as a group and all this. And I thought that was an interesting some interesting points he made.

And it's funny. The thing I said about us coming from different brain structures and architectures of how we're thinking of this, it's really interesting because I would have put things in the usual like, oh, the regressive left does this. And, you know, they would be the ones who are against Miriam Namazi speaking at Goldsmiths or whatever it is. And he has his own terms for it. And despite the fact that I think a lot of anti-social justice people would have just labeled Peter Coffin as like a regressive leftist, he actually didn't come out that way. And that was fascinating to me. So we were sort of converting what we thought and

0:43:23 Thomas: Our positions into this common language, which was a cool experience. And just to repeat it one more time, I mean, if Peter had come out and said, we need a law restricting hate speech in this country, I would have been the first one arguing against him. I had all this stuff prepared as to why that wasn't going to work, why his YouTube video didn't support that premise, because I couldn't really tell. And he admitted he was a little vague in his video, but it turns out, I don't know. He was expressing some thoughts that were good thoughts that weren't necessarily like a proposal for a law.

They were thoughts about what hate speech does, how it functions, interesting thoughts. And so if you take his videos as that and not as like some, just categorizing it as some SJW restrict free speech kind of thing, they're fascinating. They're well done. And I'm glad to have talked to him. So good stuff. Well, that's enough out of me. Check out Opening Arguments, check out Thomas and the Bible, check out Comedy Shoeshine. I've got too many podcasts to plug. I admit it. I will see you on Thursday for, believe it or not, yet another episode of Atheistically Speaking. I don't know how they keep happening. Alright, see you guys then.