Welcome to the Jordan, be Petersen Podcast in this week's compilation episode we explore what happens when the religious instinct gets brushed aside and what feels that void instead and whether that control turning the breakdown of a society founded on the Abraham EC tradition. Nature has his famous God Club, God is dead, God remains dead and we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves the murderers of all murderers. What was holiest and mightiest has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement? What sacred games shall we invent is not the greatness of this deed too great for us. Must we ourselves not be God's, simply to appear worthy of it. The voices in this compilation may be very familiar since some of them, also featured in the conceptualisation of God, Series your back to hear from the whole spectrum through Jonathan Patio and matching Petru sick

to Stephen FRY and Laurens Kraus and more, I hope, you're enjoying these complex You know the number of people that have become Chris. and because of you is hilarious, it's that elected. It's just kind of its kind of this strange think of you, you, you this stand outside, and you look at the you're looking at the door and looking at the church and using it is not so bad. You know look at this. One is going on here like what is this about and and then because of their holy. Do you think you ve got something better: I was talking to a friend of mine the other day when we were walking. Because, as I said, I walk about ten miles a day. Right now turn keep myself under control, and you know he

raised a communist in Poland and is and then an atheist and. He was complaining. I think I think this is what he told me that complaining to his parents at one point about a religious wedding that they were going to, despite not believing then he said ass. He got older. He realized he had nothing to replace that with Like ok, throw it out fine, ok now, where are you well you'd, just as bad, if, as you were before, but you also don't have that beautiful thing like what what But if we dispensed with Christmas, darling it's good. They were waiting to hear us in their new atheists slights. Let's get rid of Christmas or we can say we could make it entirely secular, but then it would just disappear, but you that's what's gonna happen, because really it is inevitable and we'll see. he's coming back in very strange ways it's gonna, be weird woke

to tear in religion which is which is going to come back, that's. Why can limit? As you know, we did part as part of its going to try millions doesn't matter. We can you leave that gas, or is it it's scary thing like that's what you could say that one of the failures of the new agencies that day to do what they partly led to the new woke phenomena, because they didn't realize that you can't get rid of religion, UK get rid of rituals? You can't get rid of the problems and opportunities of identity. All of these things are going to come back. He tried to just if you tried rush them aside, then they're going to come back and varied weird ways and without you real rising. What's going on your head, People kneeling to a shrine of a man who was killed by police and putting a halo on his head and no end in sight, mortifying themselves in doing all kinds of insane things. Are that look to you insane, but that you need

Understand it's just it's just this religious impulse gone gone off the rails, so Yes and then the question is what the right place for it. Try you know I've I've. I thought it might suppose it's a form of comedy that. Catholicism. Mrs Sane, is people get you know. baroque right and end and got a groom its gothic not baroque its gothic. It's dark! It's it's! It's it. It has the same Aesthetic in some senses a horror, film and being I'm not being I'm not saying something denigrating by that I mean its power. Strange mystery and all Strangeness is necessary because people would be much more insane without it than they are with it it's a container for that religious impulse and that impose

as to the to the good and it ended, and the image of the of the crucified Christ and also the act of communion gathers in all the extremes. Together. Right, it's come. If you think of that symbolism of communion you'll notice that it gathers in every extreme from the highest to the most Transgresseth all of it comes together. That's worth hacking that bitch actually cannibalism in the service of God, anybody it's also it's also seen as a as a normal like meal of communion and its, and also seen as a US as sexual union, because there is a relationship there's a notion in which then in the all terrain in that moment of communion, there's the joining of heaven and earth to know the rays of the chalice Is this joining, which is which is this image of this, the sexual of union between God and the sole between God

his church, and so all of it is jammed into this into into this ritual as a kind of sense reality would call it, and so, like you, said, did you get rid of that then you're going to have all kinds of strange factitious versions of it. they're going to pop up and going to try to replace it and its leading to the fragmentation of our world and to the breakdown of the west for sure we make, religious veneer thing on the hierarchy. If we don't give to what is religious, its proper place- and I think the new atheists are beginning to realise. This is like all look at that we didn't eradicate the religious spirit, which is we cannot just images from little somewhere ended ban becomes pathologies by its associated with this is telex critique of IDA ideology. I thought well but of ideology, because I think ideologies a form of ideology. But this is too expertise of ideology, which is precise. We can not- and I thank you

things along this discussion. The point is this: we could not. We could not a ban in our ultimate concern right. That's it that's William S right hand, though we know this isn't a negative discovered. This isn't a negative definition of God either, because due to get back to your negative theology point, I've been concentrating in my thought recently on the positive attributes of God, so like to drive towards unity in the motivational hierarchy. that is so neoplatonic Jordan. I mean oh, my gosh, so neoplatonic data, you know we were all unconscious. Avatars of great philosophies, some less unconscious than others, but it's still there and so, but you can t you can't do away with a drive to unity and in some sense you also count critique it, because when we say the good, we assume that there is a unity between goods I get. This is per kindnesses trans moral notion of the good, and you would Jonathan talked about the transfer of moral notion that that that there is right, when he says, look

any sort of moral or aesthetic goodness is ultimately based on the goodness of being any says one window. When are we attributing being? He says we being the more we find that there is a oneness up, something We understand we are where we are bringing thing, so the then deny which is a is a process of oneness, and what we're doing is we're conforming to the reality which being is a process of wanting and when those are at one. That is when the heart starts to become starts to rest from its suffering, and I think there's something fundamentally right about that. Can I ask you something because I think I'm getting. You know what I heard you say so Let's take the metaphor: the idle the I confused and if there isn't some think beyond them, you can actually pull them apart. It that

hearing, you say yes collapse into one another, look what happened with deification of stolen and marks and Lenin and MAO. That's not. Accidental its inevitable and we have to do we have we had the deification of celebrities, we have the difficult task of products and we have the deification of ideologies. Part of what makes it predicted was that the death of God, what the death of God meant, what he described and predicted, was that the death of God. the collapse of the highest unifying value? Ok, so it's become pretty evident to me that we literally perceive them. World through a hierarchy of value and we I organise our social communities. inside a hierarchy of value, and there has to be something at the top to unite No, it isn't obvious what should be at the top. In fact, it's so not obvious that we probably can only think about that in images. We're not fill us. quickly astute enough to actually conceptualize it and a lot of them

religious enterprise is the attempt to conceptualize that thing at the top. Now let's say it eyes, because it's God and he got too abstract Vercelli added. The historian of religions said that that happened many times in our history, that the top value got so abstract this embodied in people didn't but it was anymore how to act it out and what it meant, and so it floated away and then collapsing competing compete. claims about what should be the highest value. Well, let's say diversity, equity, compassion, well, why shouldn't compassion be the highest value? Well, you know: that's reasonable thing to argue about it. I think there's some credibility the claim that love should be the highest value. Perhaps there's too, and beauty many other issues, okay, so the highest, are you collapse? We're not united anymore well, then, were motivated to argue about what the highest value should be and since its about them I value now now I

I have an idea: saving the environment doubts the highest value. Well, when you attack that then, you attack my claim to embody the highest ideal and so use threatened me psychologically cause that's where I found some refuge and some ethical guidance, and so not going to listen to your practical solutions either, and then I haven't examined what other motivations I might have like. While this anti capitalist miss you, that's a terrible contamination for the Environmentalist Movement J how about the continual disappearance, God, because he looked at natures. Pronouncement said well, God has vanished into the stratosphere of abstraction many times throughout history. This isn't it time only the Danes of an abstract god that can't be represented is that he becomes so detached from human affairs that it's as if these there, and so the catholic Church, we produce a saints as intermediaries and priests to sort of linked the absolute to the to the proximity, but

under two is what happened with. Sit in the? U K, reunited that in some senses, a tower of Babel phenomenon is that people felt that there representation in Europe was so abstract. They were no longer connected to their land, to their town to their community, and so the disks between them and this central authority became too great and there was a longing for return to something like the concrete, which I have some sympathy for, but it begs Jan two is like, maybe there a rank order of identity, and so you are a true to your land, but that's nested under under The to something that's absolute, that isn't associated with nationalism. In our time What Stephen fry a little bit, for example, about the quality of having a monarch, it sort of India and now again took out is that the Them Work is an abstract figure, but but but exists and

you can have affiliation to hurt, like the Prime minister does, and he'll be in charge of the state and its it's like there is a hierarchy of identities in the hierarchy has to be structured properly or the parts start to contain. The whole in a way that pathological? Yes, yes, I'm at night I was just thinking, as you were speaking that certainly the way a lot of the arguments for thinking of one's love, country as a form of of piety envy this moral theology, from the most intimate and the most immediate. So it's love, love, love, apparent you'll, you'll, your biological parents, you didn't, choose your parents, it says it while you were into this relationship within, but it's the most intimate relationship. There is Similarly, the thought is that you, oh your loyalty. You love your factions to your community, so on and so on in in in ever expanding concentric circles. But I think

the quietness and somebody very different. Somebody, like David Tomb later on in the in the eighteen, century stress that bears as it were, gonna be but there are diminishing returns as the concentric circles, move move outward and then suddenly it is not it is it where maybe not an ideal limit, but simply a function of our fine achieved. Of rigidity and and and in the christian traditional foreignness that we can't as it were, love every single human being? We cannot love humanity in the abstract, and nor can we love every some single human being with the same sort of intensity so that there might be positive way of thinking about why we ought to oh what Augustine calls are common objects of love, we treat our common objective Lubbers as broadly proximate, but organ play by the horizon, other transcendence orientation towards tool.

The source of love which opposing the christian tradition is, is God himself dogma, but I fully agree with you that we will have it. Arrange identities, someone go somewhere, regional, national global, religious and each Indirectly, each thing we identify with give sudden meaning to our lives sunset insignificance just wondering, in terms of you encounter with young younger people, at what point does religious identification begin to gain traction. While I think there's a there's? A variety of answers to that one? Is that. one pathway in his is the diagnose, Is that the desire for deep meaning and also the responsibility is air and valid and in every one and two.

be encouraged and recognised. So there's that and then then there is a serious discussion about, I would say about love and truth and the end magic utility of both and in both expressions of faith. You know, because you can't say. While there is evidence that love in the broadest sense, is the most effective manner in which to work yourself in the world, you could make a counter case. Its power, for example- and you can't prove that speaking that it is for the best and partly that's because people get into trouble for speaking the truth all the time, but can't say you can stick your life on those two things and see what happened an inventor and not an end that appeal to adventure that that's really attractive to your especially the young man, but to young people in general, and then there's one other element which is part of it, has to be the removal of rational objections. It's like when I did my

biblical lecture series. I said I was going to stay psychological about it, except when I had to become metaphysical because of my the limitations of my knowledge and so on, was trying to make sense of its like. How can you you have a relationship with this book. That makes sense so that you not you're not crucifying your reason, but using it alongside of you and so that its not mirror, let's say, superstitious, foolishness with regard, your axiomatic presuppositions of the form that the rational atheists criticise so well, let's say so effectively. so I you know, I said well. I brought reference to the two genesis said this books being around a long time in theirs possible. There is the possibility that something in it did Did I dont understand? That's appealed to people across the history and let's approach it from perspective and see what we can make of it and that that seems to have proved extremely popular

sort of unbelievably our popular and so you mentioned this desire for deep desire for since, before or since being irresponsible, yeah foreseen in than the truth with both of those cannot to me, as it were, something that is given an objective to which we are accountable reminds me of what your compatriot Charles Taylor once wrote in his the shortest four hundred to say the ethics, water visiting he said. acting on authenticity, this being the kind of You know so popular values. recognize he said It only makes sense when there's a wide and given a rise in the gives. Its significance So choice on these incidents with complex and gives it significance, otherwise, choices, caprices its whimsy it. It doesn't matter at all So I suppose they

the same thing this through christianize as I do What we have here is the recognition of the need for, if you like it, given moral order within which we are. We have freedom and freedom is what makes us responsible and and makes all our decisions and choices really heavy with significance. but the result is given and we didn't created and and launch footnote. They only put a launch folded, the affirmation of the big one. God is not just a physical barents, to created reality but also a balance, and I wanted to make another comment to about truth. Doktor Kayser. You mentioned that. I engage in oral reading of scripture shape, read it a literalist reading and maybe we have a talk about that, because it isn't

easy to read a book like the Bible, literally because it's full of of literal contradictions. and it whatever it is, especially the really archaic stories, and in general, whatever it is: it's not it's not, history, the way we think of history, and so that's hard for people at hard for me but to see how that might still be true, it's not literal. How can it be true, and this is a disk in that. I tried to have with SAM Harris a lot because the eighth types- the rationalists types there's something they miss and they, MRS that fiction, isn't funny. Yes, it's not a lie right, it's not literal. But it's not a lie and great fiction is true, but it never happened. So how can it be true? An answer to that is something like well, there are

patterns in things deep patterns, deep regret, ring patterns in all human. Nature, the fact that were human, that that that humanity itself This is a recurring pattern. It has characteristic shape and great fiction. Describes, the shape of that pattern in the greatest of fiction, the greater fiction comes the more it is religious and each and that's not even a claim about the nature of truth, it's more a claim about the nature of experience when we say something is profound what we me is that it's moving and that it has a broad influence, its capers of having a broad influence on the way we think can see it act. So if you re a profound book like one of Dusty skis books, you could say of that book and people often do that it changed. My life when I read the book and us

worry that can change your life has a power that is best described does religious and so religious is a kind of sperience in some sense, rather, in addition to a claim about what constitutes truth, Then those stories in Genesis Kane Enable, I think, and the story of Adam and Eve, because those stories are so deep that it's almost unfathomable they get added at the most profound of patterns and so to say that there are literally true is, we too massively underestimate how true they are cast. You could tell me what you did this morning now it be literally true, but I could cares. where, if you read the story of Adam and Eve it so true that it applies to everyone, always and mere literal truth can't do that, and we don't have a good land which, as scientists, let's say a psychologist or even this

citizens, we don't have a language for that kind of truth and so well. But I guess I'd like your thoughts about that idea. yeah, so the literal sense of scripture is sometimes misunderstood by people, and I think that the right way to think of it, the literal sense of scriptures, what the original acumen author intended to convey to the original human audience. And so we are looking at it, So I think that we need to put is back in its context. You rejected this as if it is a contemporary textbook on science. I think what you are doing is wrenching it out of its original context and therefore you're bound to it and that's true of just Genesis is really to have any work that to understand that we need to understand its genre and we need understand context so. What is the original context of degenerative story or the original content? it was written in terms of rights, if all stories of creation other stuff

is, there were circulating in the ancient world and it was meant to be an answer to those and it uses, poetry uses major, and that was what all those stories did and between the imagery, I would not say that, against truth, If, on the one hand you have truth and the other had yet poetry, imagery and story, I think that one kind of truth is scientific truth. Empirically vera viable, but I think it's too narrow to say, while the only kind of truth is the empirical verifiable, I think truth actually is broader and in fact that claim that the only the truth is imperative. Verifiable, that's the only kind of truth that is itself a self defeating statement right. There's no empirical evidence that the only way to get the truth is through the empirical method. So if we put genesis backing context. What do we see? What we see is essential telling us about. In contrast, The other stories, the other stories in ancient world. Where story in which there were multiple gods. They engage

in a warfare and violence, so you think if the greek mists were like this were right: Zeus, overthrows his father and his eldest violence and genesis better answer these Their ancient met Senate saying things like there's only one God does not more to me that creation is not a matter of violence, but the creation is reasonable, and this was something you talked about near lecture which really struck me because I have as yet that story before, but I never really thought of it that creation arrived. I got says: let there be light and there was light and what is reasonable speech tenable speech is orderly right. The difference between a random sounds bake, unreasonable speeches that there is a kind of order to it so creation arises from reasonable speech. An increase itself is ordered its intelligible and make sense, and there

it gives rise centuries and centuries later that belief, that creation is orderly and make sense gives rise centuries later to science, but Reed Genesis, as if its failed science makes as much as to Genesis as if it's in a for or against. I phones, I'm in a magazine remaining genesis? No, I clauses should have an Iphone or not unreasonably Genesis to determine this will clearly the original author Genesis wasn't addressing that in the original author jets, this wasn't addressing for or against devolution. So I think that his readers, you want to make it for again devolution artist, utterly misreading and taking the story out of its original context and therefore, necessarily providing a really bowed reading of Genesis there, also really important theological point to make here is as well and and that's that could put it philosophically. What the condition for the possibility of something be literal in the first place. What's that condemn

for the possibility, both of it being recognised, spoken and then apprehended a certain court of orderliness, that's necessarily presupposed in the act of knowing and in the act of communicating that knowledge itself, as Chris said, can't be empirically verified. So when we as Catholic say that that recognise the new testament that Jesus is the truth that wording collude in a literal, historical sense, but also the condition for the possibility of anything being in. Eligible and literally understood and communicated at all. So I think One of the frustrations I found it and find a contemporary debates on these questions. Is that secularism oftentimes? isolates and identifies the literal. The empirical as if this is it's a free standing, epistemic plan, that belongs to them, and everybody has to compete,

in order to to be on their territory- and I just don't think, that's philosophically the case- it presupposes a lot of things that that they can give an account for yeah I mean children. So when I was little, please go ahead and justice, Add one thing so imagine somebody was reading Shakespeare, Sonnet, eighteen right compare the two assemblers day: Thou art, more lovely and more temperate rough wins, do shake the dark bites of May in summers lease hath all too short to date, so imagine nobody reads that no, like ok, Shakespeare's a meteorologist she's, a whether man and I look up in the almanac, see, if may have of wines and interests there's no reference in May o Shakespeare about it. You know telling us about the weather. Well, I think that there are busy right the radical misunderstanding of Shakespeare. He's not trying to tell us whether and then failing to tell us whether, and so I think generous, This is not trying and failing to give us scientific truth. It just doing something totally there. And that's brothers. Nice appreciate,

pictures is that you highlighted the reality that the US Genesis is trying not to try to communicate important truths but not truce, that are in the scientific discourse their true, but not scientifically, is the problem with the empirical appeal. the problem with totalling. It is that the empirical approach tends to be mostly just Christians of things in the way they interact and the way they can be manipulated and- and that's fine, but doesn't tell you, doesn't provided real insight into how to live, how to act. How to take your next step powder produce a hierarchy of values and how to determine what most people then what's least important, and all of that is also so difficult that we actually dont know how to do it completely explicitly, which is why

We need poetry and drama in literature. We need that whole domain, so we could call that the literary domain, and then I think you could consider it. This might be an empirical proposition is that. The religious domain is at the base the literary domain and as literature gets deeper, becomes more and more like religious writing and so that by phoenician in some sense and I've swiped isn't park. I would say from you is almost by definition that the sense of profound engagement that most profound literature produces is what constitutes the religious and that's a domain experience you know when you're captivated in a movie theater when you're captivated by story when you're taken outside yourself. None of that has anything to do with logical argumentation. It's a whole different issue in it to me, it's tied very, very deeply

To our ability to image eight and mimic, and so on. Really good at that way better than any other animal. We met like languages, mimicry We use the same words. And so were mimicking each other, and but I can't mimic every per send separately. I have to extract out from each person some essence of being that's admirable and I do that's personnel, your person and I try to imitate that and then that core thing admirable that I imitate that's as far as I'm concerned. That's collage equivalent to Christ whatever else Christ is. Christ is that's. Why sometimes described as the king of kings Psych. If the king is the thing, that's it top of the hierarchy. And then you look at all hierarchies and you take the thing. That's at the top of all hierarchies are value, then that say when you see reflections of that figure anywhere it.

deuces on respect, and that's because that pattern constitutes the approach wait act, just as when you see the opposite of that pattern, which might be in its most fundamental. Since attack or demonic, it's something that's ultimately evil that produces revulsion and terror, and that's that's all instinct jewel. It's it's not in the domain of rationality, precisely its way way deeper than that and the late. The the eighty And then there is another problem that the atheists have never come to terms with, I believe in you guys we. What you think of this is that if. If what is rendered it with what is properly rendered. Unto God is entered, unto Caesar. Then Caesar becomes inflated to God and when that happens, all hell breaks loose that

the genesis of totalitarianism, that's subs, servants to an idle, and so this is a case. I think the church needs to make particularly the catholic church. The most strenuous of ways is that if we don't say Greg, it off the religious instinct and give it its proper attend and do which, I suppose you do in part with ritual and church attendance and so forth. And every single thing we do starts to become an appropriately contaminated with religious longing, and that's why see the rise of extremely powerful political ideologies and the division of people in a fortress legal reasons into moral camps. It's that religious, staked, isn't hasn't, got a grounding in it. It's search for something to attach itself to in it. It picks up second rate substitutes. You know the people like Dawkins. They seem to think that if we all just abandoned our religious superstitions we'd all become you know, rash

lists like while, like like Isaac Newton, Who is an alchemist not rationalist, by the way that great genius? And so one of the things? I think that the catholic Church, particular, isn't doing a very good job of his warning people. How danger yes, it is to lose the proper theatre, of expression for our religious instincts they dont, go away. They just get perverted and and the shore up all sorts of places they shouldn't. That's that's terrible at good to hear that thirteen when did a talks about in the city of God? He talks to buy two loves. talks about the love of God and creates certain the city is certain organization, and if you don't let go

If, God is not your ultimate love? Well, you know have something, so it could be power, it could be pleasure, it could be, money could be status, Augustine thought that if you love say power the most well, what that's going to do is it's going to shape you and ultimately distort none of you, but also your relationships in your society. So the christian view is Ultimately, God is perfect. Truth love in beauty, and so not only case that worshipping anything other than that is going to fail to give God what to do to God and that's Religion. Descent senses about is a binding of oneself to guide giving to God which do but also it ends up making the person, ultimately unhappy. So you can't think about this, from the psychological perspective that people, Martin, Seligman, would say things like love at the core of human flourishing and and if we don't have

if I love money or power more than I love God and more, they loved my friends in more than let my family. Well, that's going to deprive me source of my my lurching, I'm gonna end up harming myself in a characteristically so harming others when it power money or whatever too much and so forgets to. At least this is a perennial temptation to replace God is something else. That's perhaps the warning at the end of genesis with the story of Noah and also the story of the Tower of Babel in because the tower of Babel is people get together and they try to build an edifice that that's absolute in some sense right. It's it's! It's a building that that under the control them- edifice that of human manufacture, and it it becomes law, your larger larger in, and then it devolves into account

if chaos, and so with the flood story with no and the flood. That's that's one form of danger: That emerges as a consequence of deviation from the proper path, let's say orientation towards whatever the highest good is the tower of Babel, secondary one that has more to do with the danger of of ego. article human construction, and it is something like the worship of these idle. So imagine we can think about this technically, and ecologically in some sense. Is that in our to act you have to presume that that to which your moving is more important than where you are right, so you make a value judgment moving in direction is appropriate and then you have to move lotta directions over the course of your life and- and you know, maybe search for fur friendship and you search for love and you search for money and you search for power and and so forth, and if there's

thing. Integrating all that, then your pulled in all sorts of directions. Right. It's like devils pulling you apart, because you know no what's more important than than then what very very confusing and off putting. And if the wrong thing takes control. Then you get demanded and bent, and so what you see in Deanna D is this? This struggle over thousands of is to specify the thing that should be at the top of the hierarchy and one of the things that really open my eyes to the depth of these works. Was this strange acclamation that the word that existed at the beginning of the type of time brought creation into being, was, the same as Christ, which isn't unbelievably bizarre proposition. We are not speaking about prison, silly, religiously, I'm thinking about it more conceptually. It's like the people who had

revelation or intuition are making presupposition that there's something about the emergence of reality into conscious being like because reality without consciousness, doesn't really seemed exist right. So when we talk about reality, we always presupposes conscious viewer and that the conscious viewer that make order out of chaos is most appropriately, the perfect being that's manifested in the figure of Christ. Tint And so that we participate in that process in some sense to the degree that were. attempting to embody that mode of being so, I know ass, you know that's going out there some sense, but it struck me as such. A ban.

the idea that it was hard to account, for I don't know if I made myself clear with that- think it cuts in many different ways. At the same time, it also cuts directly to the previous question that you asked about the the right domain of religious expression and, in a sense It solves that problem. Why well, if Jesus, first is the logos. On the one hand, there means that means that there is a logos. There is a truth. There is a way of existence that is real, which gives us a standard to be able to. I don't false ways of being both individually but also important politically, so it establishes a groundwork for there to be an intrinsic many principle, politically speaking and morally speaking to life, and that is there is a truth of the matter and if you're not a living, into the truth. You're you're deviating from it so that a stable, she's a kind of of ground and ceiling for the proper expression of of what

Philip, morally individually and also political power as well. You only have right political power in so far as it conforms to the truth, but the logos, his dulcet cry, that means crisis also of the person they starck person that, as as Catholics, we believe it is literally literally real and early rays from the dead and that is that the political life is not the sum totality of life. The moral life isn't, even though some totality of life to some so tallied life is love in relationship with God, who is made himself incarnate. On the one hand, you have the foundation of truth to to structure and limit human life and then its amid transcendent a la server purpose. Taking apart, Genesis like that was really revelatory to me because, but I am I differ from the eighth is because I had text I protest

extra, reverence and ignorance and humility, believing that I was nothing in comparison to what it contained. You thought that they were truce available through transformation, not just through information. Only stupid are we stupid. We were guided by this book for so many thousands of years and preserved. It is because, worse stupid I don't think so yeah. Maybe that means there's something I don't know about it. It's all stupid stupid where which is hardly problem warm or stupid, which is not so highly probable. I think well, as I said, I think, One of my deepest criticisms of the new areas is precisely the fact that I I have a lot of criticism of theism too, because of the way it has found itself. I be current these, is bound itself too. artesian section of modernity and reality and that lie that go into that

well, I want to talk to you but dogmas spirit, a beer, even though into what you just said. Okay, so I gotta put it I gotta see thing I will put a punitive we're still trying to do the four piece of knowing what the new atheist loses: the three other peas and they lose their day date. They did look for scientific knowledge in the Bible. Not pay, tat. You do well cultivates wisdom in fact, right and not knowing that there is any difference between ethically knowledge and wisdom of this is when I talked about what Stephen fry recently, because Stephen, who is aligned with the atheists, knows that there is such a thing as waste which is why he pursues and embodies myth, but he's annoyed the church because of its dogma, and he confuses the church with its dogma, exaggerating you know, and I am also going to say a few positive things about dogma. Dogma is the map. I think I

dogma- is you know it single detection theory, I think dogma is the in the inescapable me to set the criterion at some point you can't make. It has signalled the technical you have to set the criterion and all you do to set the criteria. The sounds like Pascal is you assess the relevance of the risks, because if you all gathered more information, but then you have to set the criterion for that as he has examined again and at some point starts ruddy, that's your identity, but you know the criterion. The criterion we're talking about is the worship of that ultimate spirit. While setting of the criteria and there's a dogma, there's an element in which dogma serves thou do so we can't just discuss thrice as well. I like the Spirit, but not the dog months like no, because you know because you have to make it decision. That's your point. Ok, that's right in every there's a decision so that every octaves, the worship of the dogma, because you set the criterion right, but you set the criterion but that

the same thing is making the connection. Don't forget that credo is later and I ice age. always be in service to Religio Religio, but which, needs to bind. That's connected and ass, we ve been talking about throughout and the point about setting the criterion, and this is I got. You know this is like a William James thing to say the point of setting the criterion is to get as reliable continuity of Religio as you possibly can, and when Creta goes from giving your heart too assert we stop making creed we stopped conceiving of Quito in a way that sees it in wriggly in service overly view. This episode was brought in by shop a fine selling or providing an online service can be a hassle if you think about in terms of actual physically moving in setting up shop,

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you feel the more you need. This gotta heads based on com, flush, J, BP and try a free month of their entire library. A recent study showed had space can reduce stress by fourteen percent in just two weeks, which is amazing but even better news. There are at least four weeks in that free month. That's waiting at heads based on conflict, J, BP, again heads they stop last J Bp, One of the things that I've been so delighted by is my observation that there's a tremendous hunger for serious conversation, yeah it public hunger for it when I, when I have enough, aged in my lectures, I'm all is extending my myself to my limits of thought, but that's what the lecture is its and it's an attempt to go past what I think and theirs Thirdly, no doubt that that everyone in the audience, is on board with that, and then it was the case when I

Baited, SAM Harris, for example, that discussion, which was as technical, complex a salmon I could make it and you know, and that might not B as philosophically complex as the absolute ideal, but it was it wasn't dumb down by any stretch of the imagination and there there's just there was there's no reason that that is if used- bone feed that material. It catches, no one and I can tell you this- those new of Asia, so salmon ended the agency dark and those guys they were good. enjoy your semi for their position I do believe they did all out. Either they didn't dump down, they neither two things. I talk about their intelligent and they repaired we committed to it, but every on the internet. When I go to these compromises, I hear the phraseology from kitchens and darkened and SAM airs a lotta. Young people read them. They did

hung them into areas and they argue them and atheists I'm so I've been telling our people we got us trying to hug people back in the faith. We have to argue back in the face. We have to make it compelling and the problem with Atheists is that they don't have it best they can offer, is something like a materialistic utopian. I've got nothing against that. I've been talking to people like Bjorn, lumber, again and hoo, who I hold lay out this vision. an increasingly wealthy world, where AB Poverty is a thing of the past and where people can take, the levels of Hell, a fitter, more or less taken for granted in the west for granted. Everywhere in the world, through a process of incremental economic improvement- and we know more power to that. I think that I also know that that that a sufficient story is that there is a kind of despair that goes along with the material security, because

adventure is drained out of it and dostoevsky touches on this, and this is where I really learned this. When I first encounter this idea, you know Dostoevsky and notes from under the ground. Underground says: look. this is something you have to understand. If you gave people- everything they need so that they have not. to do but eat cakes and busy themselves with the continuation of this species, if they were so happy that nothing but bubbles of bliss would appear on the surface of the water that they wherein they would. Smash it all to pieces just so that something adventurous and unique could happen and so like there has to be a call to a higher order of spiritual being, let's say or psychological being that accompanies that materialism or its or we won't even Samuel. Absolutely toil smother us. It's gotta, be the called the sanctity and the collar sanctity is a call to love and Dostoevsky. You know lovers.

Harsh and dreadful. It's not a cute, little emotion or saga is a sentiment, real is harsh and dreadful because it means going into the place where people are suffering and becoming other Christ and bearing the burdens of the World That's serious business lovers something awful about it. You know, but When you someone son, was also something awful about the judgment, you know, if you love someone, you also hold them to a standard out. You will there good right and let me turn to a standard. I see The border figure you you ve, got, on foot in the rationalists human rationalist, humanist, atheist, empiricist world firmly planted, but then there's the artist in you, which is a major part of your personality and and and and obviously apart, debts in did we productive and very well received, and it has an intellectual and in his well the.

That domain. That second domain, that you occupied. Isn't formalised the investigation of that isn't formalised as well by the atheists community around they lose what's there and they don't value. properly and they and that's it. That's a problem like with darkens, for example, I get letters from lots of people, lots and lots of people. and lots of them are nihilistic and because there I was take their suicidal. had a friend, I went for a walk with him the other week and he was a communist atheist when he was a kid. I grew up in Poland and he had criticised his family for celebrating Christmas because it was irrational and then he realized at one point. He said I could kill Christmas and weed to have another week weekend that wouldn't actually right right, because There's a magic there that rationalism can destroy and- and

and I have exactly that problem politically with row family- which, on the face of it, is of course preposterous, more preposterous even than Christmas and religion is the idea that we still have a royal family Bart you haven't ceremony and ritual in symbolism is, I looked America and I think, if only Donald Trump and a now Biden, if every week they have walk up the hill and go into a mention in Washington, and there was Uncle SAM in a top hat and striped trousers. Living embodiment of their nation more important then they were that's the key he Uncle SAM is America. The didn't is a fly by night politician voted for by less than half the population and he has a bow. front of this personification of his country every week and that innovation Uncle SAM can't tell him what to do. Uncle SAM

can't say no pasties act and don't pass that act and free these people give them apart and all you can do. Is they tell me young feller what you done this week and you bow and say: well, unconcerned. Oh you think that the right thing for my country- well, that's a constitutional monarchy is and, of course, its observe thought. The fact that Churchill, in that I had a bow every week in front of this, something they something and also empirically look happy as countries in the world, that's all you need do and thick happened to becomes deduced molecules. Norway, Sweden, Benelux up its Japan. There always right up there on the list night. Maybe that we can. find a causal link between their constitutional monarchy, but it might just be something to do with that an end and that

It's a way. Launching your question in this has really it is that I can see the absurdities of of the claims of many religions, and I can see the history the wickedness and depression and suppression, particularly my an instance of being gay, growing up gay and I as a long history of religion in particular, being intolerant and to this day even this Pope, France's whom I had some hopes for his seems to be beginning to add two to an ancient slander and and nonsensical attitude toward sexuality, which is extremely annoyed and upsetting but term either I'd like a kind of b. That doesn't mean night through the whole baby out with the bathwater. I can see in the same way that I dont believe in in in greek mythology. In actual fact, I don't believe that, Olympus Zeus lived there with his wife here, but I do believe if Hermes and here and Zeus live with an ass theirs

Hermes inside me there is, there is a trickster Lyra, Joe Kara acute funny side, as well as a harmonic apollonian under bestial Dinah dynasty inside with these appetitive and addictive, and and and friends it and and- and I see the value and the truth in India as religious manifestations, those principles as elements of my car I, the catch of the human family, so you might say that in a place where there is no fourth branch of government, the president, the executive to to take on the symbolic weight of the king, yeah. Ok, we agree now, that's possible. Anyways appetising is one of the problems of a mere mercuric baltics. Yeah. Ok now I would say that's also related to the problem of the separation of church and state, and one of them things the west seems to have got right is the eye that we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and render unto God what is God's

Well, written analogous idea. That's ok! You don't do it all just continue when I knew then be described more, but ok, yeah yeah the up. We have well imagine as a practical necessity for this operation of the religious impulse from the political impulse, but imagine that there's a psychological necessity for that to cocoa and that its, if there aren't domain specified out for the different domains of of of practical thought, it'll economic religious there contaminate each other and what happens. Is you don't get rid the rigid rid of the religion? You contaminate the poor, critics with it can do so I now I've been watching what's been happening to Richard Dawkins, for example. Right now Writ Richards idea and and and I'm an admirer of darkens that he can think you know. I mean his brilliant and I've read, books. I understand what he's doing and why get his argument. I think it's incomplete for reasons we could get into and probably will, but I think

something missing there and then is playing out. Is that when you? you remove the religious sphere and an U confused, with superstition or failed to discriminate between the valid elements of it and the superstitious elements you dont get of the religious impulse. Go somewhere out. Oh yeah, I think we're You're saying is always a secular religiosity. Now I well, what do you think? I agree? I mean. What does it look like to you know? That's why I said I've written a peep average. Not- and I would add that was my argument is that is that we're seeing many of the US of religion being manifest in in secular arguments. And point out the only difference being in many, unlike at least the christian there is no possibility of absolution which, that's not funny. I would seriously not for me. I know I know I agree with you. I know it serious, not funny. Believe me, I know it very well. I know you do I know, but but that also points out

but a remarkable achievement. The idea of absolution is because it's like the presumption of innocence. Those two things are: those are miraculous yeah. Well, I regulations on active slacked constructs of thought. I agree, and I you know I would argue, that religion The whole has not been a good thing for people because first argument, but but in order to, but we shouldn't realize We have to realise that, in order that it does serve evolutionary purpose, if you want to call purpose, it's there, because it in his it is Sir it is survived all societies because it does it meets human needs in one way. other, and therefore we have to ask what needs. Does it satisfy and realized what they are, and how can we prevent? How can we provide them without the fairy tales.

so I guess we definitely do have to ask that question is that the problem with a new atheists is not so much better atheists. Amidst the a priori commitment to the doctrine of metaphysical naturalism, which is roughly the idea that all trades, scientific trades or reducible to scientific trays and its and started the far more interesting golden thread that you talked about earlier, the sometimes known as the any philosophy has examined it? Is it is the two, but that being capital be being is? Is the the fundamental metaphysical, question. I once you start approaching deep philosophical problems and in that way then do start to see a remarkable convergence between April. Monotheism the dancer, and punish adds the question of whether Brahman an admin, a one that is still being and on my

in the a one we see it, though those sorts of questions are also not particular to religious system. So think of somebody like Heidegger, you know, Heidegger is supposed to of sport and the kind of the great atheists

the tendency in twenty centrics, essentially supernova logical velocity. He says the fundamental question is: why is there something rather than nuff Absalom? Why be lately? So? Ok, so so there's the metaphysical so part of what this hinges on is the metaphysical status of consciousness and and- and you can make a case that that equivalent to two, this question is well what may David Chalmers, whose maybe the most the most well known cognitive scientist studied consciousness? You know he's hee, hee hee has one set of the hard question. You know the hard question about consciousness, but for me the hard question is the question of being itself, because I can't distinguish between being an awareness. You can think what others and objective world without subjectivity. It's like we'll try to think that thorough and see how far you get it. Just didn t just run into problem after problem with it, and- and I mean there's technical problems at the level.

physics as well, but there certainly metaphysical problems, and so so then the question is well: what is the? What is the cause of a logical significance of consciousness and and that that's a central question right? Maybe that's the central question and when I look at the inside of a christian Cathedral and I see the logos spread out against the sky, because that's what the dome is affiliated with the sun. There's this proposition that consciousnesses what in Japan there's reality itself and that we partaken out and Let's say we abandoned that notion. It's like ok! Well, then, do you have any dignity as an individual and then we get into the post. Modern question is what are there is an individual is or at all or you just this is part of the the issue. Are you just one of immutable physiological characteristics right, your sex, your gender. You raise that's matter, man and there's no the soul there? What? Why can't? I just reduce you do that

Are you gonna use as an argument? Well adjusted just a break Quick sorted by mad, I dont want to add to the keep putting into too much, but I very good line Dawkins and others to remember, and you should remind him that if he comes on your part, past is metaphysics, always berries, its undertakings, that is to say, Every time there is an attempt to say we can all of that mumbo jumbo that was being talked about by those clever philosophers, all those stupid religionists, that's all that's all done now. That's that's a warning, sign it's a sign that does actually total total confusion and all sorts of a kind of gonna fragmentation the quest for meaning in the quest for the answer to that the meaning of Billina indictment of the perennial philosophy. I it's an attempt, certainly too to rejected, and

If you look in say pedantic systems, you don't look an indian philosophy, there were materialists there. Was a school of materialism, but it was, but it was. It was a relatively small and short lived, a belief system. see materialism in the Greek Rehman. Well, you Satan Democritus Democritus his optimism, you see as an epoch, cure Of course, but it is is. It is a minority report that there is Quintus. It's a strange superstition in an ancient thought, but let me just take it apart, a bit James because you mentioned earlier that among I think it was cognitive scientists that you are discussing, that discussion of pan psyche is amiss, become non heretical, because there's notion that there is a mystery in matter. She meant it isn't materialism exactly! That's the fault! It's me. Perhaps perhaps it's it's deterministic clockwork!

materialism, that's essentially newtonian and right, and we know that right? I mean it's proximately right, but but but but beyond that, it's not matter, is very deep mystery and I can't see how you can get rid of the problem of consciousness by positive materialist substrate, when there's no way that you can get rid of the metaphysics of matter. Very quick you mention David Chalmers. As you say, he is brilliant young philosopher who had ninety ninety four publishes Phd pieces, the conscious mind, which brought back in onto the table that what he called the hard problem of consciousness and he paused, sat in different ways that there's something slightly irreducible about qualitative experience, but the problem that opens up that heat that then I think leads him towards take pan psyches and very very seriously. This is just really in the last ten years. I think is the idea will? Okay, we ve got

just as it's a whole problem, we just can't get rid of it, and yet we can't get rid of matters that we can't get rid of the tree. The physical science is a week, but we can't how on earth these bit together, they couldn't be laws of nature wouldn't be psycho analytical psychological laws. The laws of thought are fundamentally different from the laws of nature, so how do we fit these two together and pan cycles? And at that point, might seem crazy to the person on the street suddenly stopped to seem I can attract an attractive. I counted the nature of ultimate reality and I spoke just it just as a quick footnote to that once you all their materialism, doc, indian materialism is is, is dickensian, long gone and the dialogue between the perennial philosophy and pan

bluefin philosophy pan cyclists, is back on. You saw average. On that, that's what stop me exact, because now I'm trying to figure out well with there's this. We should define pants, Ike ISM again for the audience, but then ok. So what sort of dialogue is that open up? As far as you are concerned, well, in my view, is that an cyclists it's it's early days and he's in its modern contemporary adoration. I think you can say that our Stockholm and if you read the Diana embarrassed autos treaties on the sole as sole all over the place of the plants, have a nutritive salt animals have a perceptual, so and human animals have both of those the rational no cells, as it were, all of organic life is minded. If you move to the basic free, work of Abraham monotheism, then look if it follows very naturally that if you ve got an axiomatic commitment to

mind at the bottom of the universe, as it were, my at the creators minded being is ideal is not material and everything all reality distinct from God is created and including, as it were space time, then the idea that it's the though universes we discover it as we come upon. It is shot through with mind, is legible, just to mind to turn to the minded inquiry that happens. When commented, scientists are trying to rather the mystery of the brain itself you got an isomorphism? I think the breakdown of Christianity is is going to continue I'm not. I don't have short term hope, for that say the situation But I do believe that they are that there are seeds which are a kind of being planted, and there are people who are

getting ready and and and will bear fruit. So so it's been just it's been amazing. I have to say, and thanks for that by the way, hope. I guess you welcome to the that I had something to do with it