Joe Rogan Experience #1068 - Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer is a science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic. His new book "Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia" is available now.

Joe RoganhostMichael Shermerguest

Jan 24, 20182h 21mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

150 min read · 30,109 words

0:03 – 0:50
Shermer’s new book: afterlife quests from religion to transhumanism
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Four, three, two, one. Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Shermer. And Heavens on Earth.
2. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia. Did you find-
4. MSMichael Shermer
  L- ... anything? (laughs)
5. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
6. MSMichael Shermer
  No. (laughs) Sorry.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
8. MSMichael Shermer
  Nothing? Well, I found interesting, uh, journeys that people use to try to get there, from both the religious perspective and the scientific perspective. Um, so I do deal with, uh, the monotheism's versions of the afterlife and heaven, you know, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but the core of the book is, you know, the radical life extensionists, the cryonicists, trans-humanists-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
10. MSMichael Shermer
  ... the extropians, the mind uploaders, the people that take all the supplements and all, all the, the whole range there. I find it incredibly interesting. I call it afterlife for atheists, you know?
11. JRJoe Rogan
  It is, right?
12. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah.
0:50 – 2:38
Singularity evangelism and Shermer’s break with religion
1. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, when, when you think about some of the people that are really, like, over the top hope... Did you go to that 2045 thing in New York a few years back? There was a futurist convention with all these people that, for whatever reason, they have this arbitrary date of 2045.
2. MSMichael Shermer
  Yes.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  They decided-
4. MSMichael Shermer
  Like you s- It's been getting pushed back. This is the-
5. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
6. MSMichael Shermer
  ... when the singularity come-
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
8. MSMichael Shermer
  ... is gonna co... Was 2030, then 2040, now 2045, um-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
10. MSMichael Shermer
  Y-
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Kurzweil is a-
12. MSMichael Shermer
  Ray Kurzweil, yeah.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  ... big... He's like the, the Grand Poobah-
14. MSMichael Shermer
  He is. No, a- a- and, uh-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  ... of the download your brain.
16. MSMichael Shermer
  And when he gets on stage, now he's not preternaturally dynamic like a preacher, but he starts talking about, you know, "We're gonna h- You are gonna live forever, you're gonna have your mind uploaded." And people are just like, "Oh my God, we are the generation that's gonna do it."
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
18. MSMichael Shermer
  "This is it, first time." And the moment, you know, I used to be religious when, in my youth, and I thought, "Man, this is like being back in church again."
19. JRJoe Rogan
  When did you stop being religious?
20. MSMichael Shermer
  Uh, I started in high school and stopped in graduate school, so it was-
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Interesting.
22. MSMichael Shermer
  ... about seven years.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  You started being religious in high school?
24. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  So it wasn't something that your family introduced you to?
26. MSMichael Shermer
  No, my, my parents were, um, pretty secular. They, uh, d- they weren't anti-religious, it wa- that wasn't a thing then. Uh, but this is 1971 when I was in high school when the, in the sort of nascent born again movement was starting. And there was no religious affiliation, it was just like, "It's me and Jesus." That's it. It's just-
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
28. MSMichael Shermer
  ... you and, you and the Lord.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  There's a lot of these, um, very charismatic, hip, young preachers that are doing sort of a thing like that, where they, they don't even have their own church, they'll like rent time in a church and-
30. MSMichael Shermer
  Right, right.
2:38 – 4:47
Why “utopias” and cults corrupt: sex, power, and sincere belief
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Did it turn into a sex cult? They usually do.
2. MSMichael Shermer
  No, I was kinda hope-
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Somebody starts banging people. (laughs)
4. MSMichael Shermer
  I w- I was hoping for something like that-
5. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
6. MSMichael Shermer
  ... but no, no. (laughs)
7. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
8. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah, that, that, uh, that is one of the problems with utopia, the, the 19th century utopian experiments, they always turned into this, you know, free sex for the leader.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, it always seems like whenever there's a man that's in a position where people start worshiping him-
10. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  ... you know, and then they s- they start l- hanging on his every word, he's like, "I start, gotta start fucking some of these people." (laughs)
12. MSMichael Shermer
  (laughs) Well, I do, I covered Jim Jones and, uh-
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
14. MSMichael Shermer
  ... you know, the way I, I, I phrase it is that no one joins a cult. They join a group that they think is gonna do good, save the-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
16. MSMichael Shermer
  ... world, gonna help me improve my life, improve the lives of others. And there's pictures online you can see of Jim Jones with Jerry Brown, Governor Jerry Brown-
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
18. MSMichael Shermer
  ... in his first round and, you know, they were manning the soup kitchens, he was very liberal, open to African-Americans being part of the church in San Francisco, they're gays, women. Uh, you know, it was a really cutting edge pioneering thing. A- at the time it seemed like, "Yeah, th- that, that's a cool thing. I'm gonna join this group." N- not me, but you know, the people that did this i- in the, uh, '50s and '60s when he was coming up and then into the '70s. And then, then yeah, he started having sex and then drugs and then the-
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
20. MSMichael Shermer
  ... you know, the feds started kind of poking around at taxes and that's when they went to South America.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Speaking of which, I think this week is the Spike special, it's now the Paramount Network on Waco.
22. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah, Waco.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Right?
24. MSMichael Shermer
  Yes, right.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Isn't that-
26. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah, that's right.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  ... isn't that going on like right now? I think it's like a six-
28. MSMichael Shermer
  I think it start, I think it started Sunday, yeah.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I think it's a six part series or something along those lines.
30. MSMichael Shermer
  See, that's an interesting-
4:47 – 13:33
Mormons and Scientology: when do weird beliefs become a ‘religion’ (and why tax exemptions matter)?
1. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah, same thing with the, the fundamentalist Mormons, um, what's his name that's in jail now? Je- Je- Jeff-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Jeffreys.
3. MSMichael Shermer
  ... Jeff, Jeff.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Jeffreys?
5. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Is that it?
7. MSMichael Shermer
  Jeff, Jeffrey, Jeff, uh-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  It's not Jeffreys?
9. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah, maybe it is Jeffreys.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Maybe I'm thinking of Jim Jeffreys, my friend the comedian.
11. MSMichael Shermer
  (laughs) Uh, but anyway, yeah that's, you know, that's how it gets corrupted. I don't know if you ever read, uh, Jon, um, Jon Krakauer's book, Under the Banner of Heaven. This is the guy, the, the mountain climber that did, uh, Into Thin Air and, and, uh, and the, um, the one about the Alaskan kid. Um, anyway, he wrote this book called Under the Banner of Heaven-
12. JRJoe Rogan
  The Alaskan kid who died?
13. MSMichael Shermer
  Yes, yeah.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Um, the one they made that movie about?
15. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  What was that movie? Uh-
17. MSMichael Shermer
  Into the Wild.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  ... Into the Wild, yeah.
19. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  So he did Into the Wild, Into Thin Air. Krakauer's a great writer. So this book, um, he starts to investigate the murder of this, um, polygamist family in Utah just as a journalist, he's gonna do a story for The New Yorker or something, and then he realizes, this takes him down the path of this incredible world of polygamy which still goes on. Now legally, it's not illegal, but they marry one and then the others are so-called sister wives and they're just there and they live on these, in these border towns along the border between Colorado and Utah, like Colorado City and all that. I've been to some of these places, it's like, uh, it's like a Twilight Zone episode, you go into this town, gas station or whatever, it's like, "Ugh, feels kinda weird here." And, uh, so Krakauer discovered this whole world of, you know, going all the way back to, um, the founding of the religion and, um-
21. MSMichael Shermer
  ... uh, what's his name, Joseph Smith-
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
23. MSMichael Shermer
  ... and you know, he gets this revelation from God that, uh... Well, basically, he's banging the woman down the street. He's married. And so he gets this revelation from God and, and Krakauer has this, this scenario in the book where he, he tells his wife, "Now, honey, I've been talking to God, and you're not gonna believe this, but he says I have to ha- marry this," you know, "so-and-so down the street." And she's like, "Oh, yeah? Well, I, I have to start seeing other guys." "No, no. Uh, G- God was very specific about this. It's just for the guys."
24. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
25. MSMichael Shermer
  And, uh, uh, uh, uh, "How, how do I know you talked to God?" "Well, my buddies, they were there. They heard it also."
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
27. MSMichael Shermer
  A- and this is the, the first page of the Book of Mormon is an affidavit. These are the people that heard the revelation and they're, they all sign it and it's like, "Okay." So this is how it starts.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, when Joseph Smith started it all off in 1820, he was only 14.
29. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah, that's what's so-
30. JRJoe Rogan
  You name me a 14-year-old that's not a liar.
13:33 – 16:56
Near-death experiences: brain chemistry, tunnels, and out-of-body illusions
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Now, in your book, did you go over near-death experiences? What-
2. MSMichael Shermer
  I do, yeah, I have a chapter on that, yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  What do you think is going on? Like, when people, like, the ones that have fascinated me are people in the hospital bed that see their body-
4. MSMichael Shermer
  Mm-hmm. Right.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  ... from above and you're dealing with a bunch of chemicals that are released in the body, right? There's morphine and all sorts of different things-
6. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah. Yeah.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  ... uh, uh, you know, psychedelic chemicals and all the, all these different things that are happening while your brain is-
8. MSMichael Shermer
  Mm-hmm.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  ... is basically on the edge of death.
10. MSMichael Shermer
  Right. So it's important to remember that they're, they're near-death experiences. You're not actually dead.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
12. MSMichael Shermer
  So there's, there's a liminal transitional, uh, stage there where you're sliding into some other state of consciousness, an altered state of consciousness. And we know that if you inject or you d- take hallucinogens, you know, those are molec- those are molecules that operate on a, a lock and key mechanism with the synapses in your brain, in your neurons. So if they, these external drugs work, uh, in this molecular lock and key mechanism, there must be natural, uh, chemicals similar molecularly to that in the brain already, just in smaller doses. So one theory about near-death experiences is that, uh, is that this is a way of transitioning from living to dead without feeling anxious and falling apart and upset and depressed or whatever. It's kind of a smooth, feel-good, you know, better than a morphine drip kind of-
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
14. MSMichael Shermer
  ... way of making the transition. And, uh, but we know, f- f- for example, that, um, this, uh, scientist, uh, named Dr. James Whinnery worked for the United States Air Force working with pilots, accelerating them in a centrifuge and they would black out. It was part of their training. You know, 2Gs, 3Gs, 4Gs, boom, out you go at, at some point, like, 10Gs. And most of them have these little dreamlet states that he called them, which are kind of like, "I s- I, I, I saw a tunnel, a white light at the end of the tunnel. I felt myself floating out of the seat," and having these sort of weird experiences. And we kn- know exactly what that is. You know, the, the, the blood is being compressed to the center of the body, including the center of the brain. The last thing to go is your brain stem, of course, to keep you alive. So the cortex is shutting down from the outside in. That would create this kind of tunneling effect on the back of your skull where your visual cortex is. That would create some of that. Uh, open brain surgeries, these are on, um, epileptic patients where they cut them open, uh, and they poke around to see where the seizures are starting, um, and, and so they could, you know, zap those neurons instead of some big crude, uh, attack. A- and anyway, so while they're doing that, they get permission from the patient to wake them up while they're under, uh, and the brain is open and they tap around with electrodes. So, this is one way to map what the brain is doing if, you know, "So what do you report when I tap here?" "Oh, I just had a vision of my tenth birthday," or whatever, and it's like, "Okay, that's where that, that's stored, right there." (laughs) Well, there's another spot right on the, um, the temporal lobes just above your ears where you can tap it and the person says, "Oh, I'm floating out of my body. I'm up by the ceiling now." And you tap a little to the left, "Oh, my left leg is up. My right leg is up. My, my left arm is floating. My right arm is floating. I'm way up here now. Now I'm coming back down," just by, you know, with a rheostat just controlling how much electricity is going into the neurons in that one particular spot. So, we know for sure that the near-death experiences are in the brain. You know, the experiences that the people report are real. They have an experience. Um, but we know it's neurologically based. Now, the counterargument is yes, of
16:56 – 23:43
Mystical experience vs. evidence: ayahuasca, Eben Alexander, and ‘What is truth?’
1. MSMichael Shermer
  course you have to have your brain to have experiences, but it's kind of like a doors of perception opening into this other realm-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
3. MSMichael Shermer
  ... that these chemicals allow you to do. It's like, it was... A- and by the way, I've been talking with Graham Hancock about ayahuasca.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
5. MSMichael Shermer
  He's invited me to come join him in, uh, Arrhythmia in Costa Rica to try this. You know, I've never tried this and I'm tempted to go do this, to say, "Okay, let's, if I'm gonna write about these things, I should, you know, experience it." And, but there's a debate amongst people who do this that, you know, is it strictly just in your head and you're not actually going anywhere, or does it open some door to some other dimension? Okay, that's kind of the... And, um, a- and so the near-death experience believers counter that, "Well, yes, it's in your brain, but it still is taking you somewhere else." The problem is is that how you tell the difference between I had a personal experience that the only way you can share it is if you actually go through it yourself. For a sci- scientific community that studies it, well, there has to be some way to test it somehow or tell the difference between that. So for example-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Isn't that the limitations of the scientific method, though?
7. MSMichael Shermer
  Yes, yes, it is.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Because when you're dealing with consciousness and you're dealing with memories and dreams and ideas, like, you can't measure those either.
9. MSMichael Shermer
  That's right. So, um, I, I quote, uh, two other sources. Uh, so first of all, I discuss the most famous example is Eben Alexander's, uh, Trip to Heaven. He wrote a book called Proof of Heaven. Now, this is a Harvard-trained neurologist. He knows more about the brain than I do, and so he knows all the research I'm talking to you about, and there's a lot more. So, but for him, it was so powerful and, okay, what's it like? So he talks about it in his book. You know, he was in a coma in, in a hospital. Okay, so he takes this trip and the colors were unbelievably intense and rich and I felt just deep...... personal love for the people I saw and, and oneness with the cosmos, and all... You know, he goes on and on about this. So then I quote from Oliver Sacks's memoir when he talks about in the '60s when he was dropping acid and, you know, the colors were incredibly intense and I had this incredible feeling of love and connect and... And I quote from Sam Harris's, the opening pages of Waking Up. You know, I took ecstasy and I'm sitting there on the couch with my buddy and all of a sudden I feel this intense love for my friend. In other words, you know, the narratives are indistinguishable to an outsider.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
11. MSMichael Shermer
  So how do you know that you're actually going to heaven or you're just having a fantastic trip?
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, it's entirely possible it's both.
13. MSMichael Shermer
  Well, so how do we know? So this is-
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, we don't know. The... I think the real problem is people saying that they know.
15. MSMichael Shermer
  Right. Right.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Saying that "I know that I was in another dimension."
17. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  You know? I mean, it's entirely possible that your consciousness is capable of going through these chemical doorways that are created by these molecules and that it, it, it experiences some frequency on the s- on the dial, like if there's a radio dial. Maybe we're at 95.5-
19. MSMichael Shermer
  (laughs)
20. JRJoe Rogan
  ... but you can get to 97 if you take, you know, X amount of-
21. MSMichael Shermer
  Right. Right.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  ... milligrams of dimethyltryptamine, and then you go to this new place. You know-
23. MSMichael Shermer
  But this is a-
24. JRJoe Rogan
  ... but you're still physically here.
25. MSMichael Shermer
  You know, Aldous Huxley's book, The Doors of Perception-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
27. MSMichael Shermer
  ... which supposedly is where the doors got their name but no. It's a-
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, really?
29. MSMichael Shermer
  Somebody told me that, that's, that, that's a meme, that that's not true, but I don't know. Anyway, but that's the idea. Yeah.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Sounds good.
23:43 – 34:05
Psychedelics and scripture: DMT, Moses’ burning bush, and mushroom-based religion theories
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Are you aware of the correlation between this and Moses' burning bush?
2. MSMichael Shermer
  (laughs) Well, I've heard ideas about that, yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Jerusalem scholars believe now that the burning bush may very well have been the acacia bush.
4. MSMichael Shermer
  Right. Right. Oh, yes, yes.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  The acacia bush is a tree-
6. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  ... that's rich in dimethyltryptamine.
8. MSMichael Shermer
  Right. So he was tripping-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  So the... This is... Well, it's sort- he's tripping but I think we're getting... We have to realize when we're translating things from the Bible, you're translating from ancient Hebrew which is an incredibly unusual language where letters also double as numbers.
10. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  And like the letter A is also the number one and there's numerical value to words and it's, it's a very weird language to translate to Latin then to Greek-
12. MSMichael Shermer
  Greek and then-
13. JRJoe Rogan
  ... into English.
14. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  So when we're hearing that Moses experienced a burning bush and that this burning bush was God and God gave him these commandments on how to live your life, it's entirely possible that Moses was tripping on DMT and that this burning bush-... what we're getting is an interpretation of somehow-
16. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  ... they had a DMT experience from smoking this bush.
18. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Smoking some aspects of it, they figured out how to extract it or how to, you know, isolate it, and they had-
20. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  ... a dimethyltryptamine experience.
22. MSMichael Shermer
  I love that.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Which pretty much makes sense.
24. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah, that totally makes sense. I mean, we get, uh, we get articles submitted all the time at Skeptic, uh, Magazine, uh, of people that attempt to make natural explanations for Biblical phenomena.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
26. MSMichael Shermer
  You know, the- the Red Sea parted 'cause there was this giant earthquake or, you know, the meteor strike caused the- the skies to turn red, and that's what, you know, the- the plagues-
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Sure.
28. MSMichael Shermer
  ... of frogs, you know, that-
29. JRJoe Rogan
  (coughs)
30. MSMichael Shermer
  ... kind of thing. Okay, I- I like all those.
34:05 – 40:08
Making sense of the Bible historically: Bart Ehrman, mythic structure, and whether Jesus existed
1. MSMichael Shermer
  Right. Well, my favorite biblical scholar to read is Bart Ehrman. Do you know Bart Ehrman?
2. JRJoe Rogan
  No.
3. MSMichael Shermer
  He, he does all the... Well, he started off as a Bi- as a Bible scholar because he was a believer. He went to the Moody Bible College. He was gonna be a preacher and an evangelical and the whole thing. And then he went to, I think it was Princeton Theological, and he found out how the book was really written. You know, it's a wiki. It was, you know, it's an edited volume with lots and lots of people coming in later and modifying this and, and, and debunking some previous Old Testament, you know, per- you know, story or whatever. And, uh, then he ended up being a, he's an atheist or agnostic or something, whatever he is. He- he does not believe. So, this is sort of, um, the atheist favorite biblical scholar, 'cause he doesn't come at it with a religious belief. But he- he's got a bunch of Teaching Company courses where he deconstructs, you know, how Jesus be- how Jesus became the Messiah or God or whatever, and you know, the Old Testament, the New Testament, what these books mean. And it's a little bit like, uh, you know, again, Jordan Peterson, you know, "I'm gonna talk for two hours about Genesis 1:1."
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
5. MSMichael Shermer
  You know, how can you talk for so long about just a, you know, a- a single chapter in a book, you know? And, well, there's- there's a lot of historical interpretations. So, I do know art historians will look at those halos or the thing in the sky that the ufologists... "Well, that's a UFO." "No, no, actually, at that time, that artists were putting those things in the sky for this other reason." Like, "Okay, I didn't know that." So-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
7. MSMichael Shermer
  ... so it's good to have some historical background to the text or the... Again, I- I don't read Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, or Latin, so I'm trusting the King James Bible, which I really shouldn't. So I rely on people like Bart who can read it in the oldest version we have. And, "No, no, that word actually means this." "Oh, okay."
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. I would be... I mean, if- if you could get into a time machine and go to any time in history and just see what it was like, how people behaved-
9. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  ... I would be real tempted to go to ancient Egypt, but I'd also really be tempted to go to around the time of Christ. I mean, I don't- don't necessarily even know if Christ was a real human, but I would love to see what life was like back then.
11. MSMichael Shermer
  Bart- Bart thinks he probably did exist, obviously not the Messiah, not the supernatural stuff, but that somebody like that or by that name... Yeshua, it's not that unusual a name, probably did a lot of the stuff he did, just as an itinerant preacher and so on. So I'm on board with that. I'm not par- part of the group, the atheists that say you never even existed. It's a completely made-up story. I don't think so. Uh, and I actually, in Heavens on Earth, I- I conclude, probably erroneously or- or in the minority position, that when he said, "The kingdom is within," or a more famous passage that, um, that, "There- my disciple standing here now will not die before they see the Son of Man return," and th- these kinds of th- things in the Gospels, I think his message was w-... there is no place that you're going to when you, after you die. Th- that heaven is here, this is it.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Mmm.
13. MSMichael Shermer
  We have to make the most of it. And it's, it's a message that you would give to a people that are suppressed, oppressed by the Romans.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Mmm.
15. MSMichael Shermer
  So I call this the oppression redemption myth, you know, that, that it's a story of a, of, it's like the Native American Ghost Dance in 1890, you know, when they're like an oppressed people, they're about to be wiped out and a messiah comes and says, you know, "It's all gonna be great." You know, it's, "We're gonna change everything, the buffalo are coming back, if you wear this, this sweater y- y- it'll be impervious to white man's bullets." And it was a very Christ-like, uh, story. Uh, and, uh, and when you start looking at it you see, oh, this, this story comes up a lot in history among oppressed peoples as a way of saying, "We gotta circle the wagons and take care of our own against these oppressors and make a better life here."
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, it just makes sense that there'd be so many parallels when you think about history and how many people were impr- oppressed, and how often these narratives repeated themselves over and over again when people got into power and then invaded others, and...
17. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah, it's brutal history. I was just, I'm just reading, uh, um, Niall Ferguson's new book, The Tower and the Square. It's about the, the tension throughout all of human history, uh, civilization, uh, between hierarchical top-down power structures and horizontal network, uh, power structures, and that they're always in tension. But mostly throughout history it's the top-down power, whoever's ... And so his, his one chapter opens with that scene from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly when, um, when Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood are facing off each other in the cemetery and, uh, and Clint Eastwood shoots the other guy, the real, the bad guy. And then Eli Wall- Wallach tries to shoot his gun and it's empty, and so Clint Eastwood walks over to him and he says, "There are two kinds of men in this world: those who have loaded revolvers and those who dig. You're going to dig." (laughs)
18. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
19. MSMichael Shermer
  And Ferguson uses this story to say basically that's the history of civilization. Somebody's got the loaded gun-
20. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
21. MSMichael Shermer
  ... and everyone else is gonna dig.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, it's amazing that we made it this far, uh, I mean, we live in such a, I mean, I know that there's troubles today and I know we have issues in our, in our own society, and forget about other parts of the world which there's horrific things happening right now. But in comparison to just a few thousand years ago...
23. MSMichael Shermer
  Oh, you would not wanna live back then. It'd be fun to go, to visit-
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, yeah.
25. MSMichael Shermer
  ... if you could come back.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  I would wanna go in a giant bulletproof hamster bubble.
27. MSMichael Shermer
  (laughs) Yeah.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Like one of those-
29. MSMichael Shermer
  Roll around and watch.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, one of those, well, just like maybe the, where you c- they couldn't see you. I just wanna be there-
40:08 – 42:10
Mortality, the Big Bang, and ‘Alvy’s error’: why the afterlife debate may miss the point
1. MSMichael Shermer
  You know, I s- I start off early in the book about, you know, who were the first people to figure out we're gonna die?
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
3. MSMichael Shermer
  And become aware of our own mortality in a way that, well, maybe I can conceive of being somewhere else, I don't actually die? So we, we know f- uh, you know, an- elephants grieve and mammals grieve and, you know, the cetaceans, dolphins, whales and so on and, and chimps they, you know, they feel, y- these mothers are just, just depressed and, and almost suicidal when their infants die. But that's different from, you know, conceiving of like, "Well I know I'm going to die 'cause I see people around me gonna die, but I c- conceive of maybe some other place to go." So, uh, I start off with something of a paradox that, you know, if I ask you to imagine yourself dead you can't do it, because to imagine anything you have to be alive. So i- it's not gonna be like falling asleep and waking up the next morning because you have dreams or whatever, it's gonna be more like general anesthesia where it's, you know, ten, nine, eight, boom, boom, lights out and y- and, but you just never wake up, so. A- and we, and so we talk about things like, "Well, there's no thing after death," but, but even the word no thing implies there's a thing, or you know, you're going to this place, this nother, there's, there's nothing. Well, no thing or no where, it implies that there's a where that you're not going to, but there's not even a where that you're not going to. And it's like, you know, with Lawrence Krauss and some of these cosmologists, you know, w- what was there before the Big Bang? So when you say, "Well, imagine no universe, you know, no stars or planets or galaxies, no light," but there's not even any space or time a- and at some point you just, we don't have the words to even say what it is we're trying to talk about. There's n- there's nothing before the Big Bang, you can't even ac- actually talk about it.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, don't they think now though that it's entir- it's entirely possible that the Big Bang is like a cycle? I mean-
5. MSMichael Shermer
  Yes, well I think that-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
7. MSMichael Shermer
  ... it's something like that. I think that-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Expands and contracts infinitely forever.
9. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah, that, th- that's a preferable th- well, again we have to come up with some way to talk about it, so.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Don't we also have this weird biological idea based on our own limitations that there's a birth and a death of everything?
42:10 – 53:58
Deepak Chopra, Buddhism, and what ‘works’: measurable benefits vs. quantum mysticism
1. MSMichael Shermer
  Right, so I actually have a chapter devoted to Deepak Chopra and the Eastern wisdom traditions.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, my friend.
3. MSMichael Shermer
  (laughs)
4. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
5. MSMichael Shermer
  Uh, uh, we're, we're kinda buddies now, and-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Really?
7. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah, I went to his center down in Carlsbad and spent some time there and...
8. JRJoe Rogan
  You think he's all right?
9. MSMichael Shermer
  He's a good guy, yeah, no, he's totally a good guy. I mean he-
10. JRJoe Rogan
  He's, do you, he's been and at times in the past, uh, either misleading or misled.
11. MSMichael Shermer
  Yes, sometimes that's right, um, you know some of his recommendations for dietary things or whatever, perhaps. But I know for sure 'cause I've gotten to know him pretty well, that he totally believes the stuff he says. Uh, it sounds like woo-woo as I used to call it.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
13. MSMichael Shermer
  Uh, but a lot of it if you interpret it from a, a kind of a Buddhist, Western Buddhist position, you know, when he says, uh, you know, "Consciousness is the ground of all being, it's the ontological primitive," these things that sound nonsensical, um, but if you think about it 'um, uh, it s- sort of from a simple perspective the, the entire universe is in your brain and when you cease to exist the universe ceases to exist, for you.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
15. MSMichael Shermer
  ... but you're in your brain.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
17. MSMichael Shermer
  You know, and I, I call that the weak consciousness principle. It's just sort of true by definition. Now, he goes a little bit further and says, you know, that consciousness is everything and that we bring into existence material stuff by thinking about it or observing it or whatever, and here's some quantum physics experiments that are really spooky. And it's like, okay, timeout. You know, quantum physics is weird and spooky. Consciousness is weird and spooky. That doesn't mean they're connected. Now, he thinks they are, so, uh, it's a debatable point, okay? Uh, but still, um, the, the experience of going and, and so we'd ... I did the meditation thing and all the massages and the teas and the food and all that stuff, and it's, uh, you know, it's this beachside resort in Carlsbad. You can't help but feeling better. Like, "Yeah, this stuff works."
18. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) Where, where is Carlsbad?
19. MSMichael Shermer
  It's down by Encinitas.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, okay.
21. MSMichael Shermer
  North of San Diego.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, okay.
23. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  That's a beautiful area. (laughs)
25. MSMichael Shermer
  Totally beautiful, yeah. He's got a ... Deepak's not done. I mean, he's got a good thing going. Uh, s-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
27. MSMichael Shermer
  And not just Deepak, you know, there's other people like Sam Harris, uh, uh, Bob Wright has a new book out called Why Buddhism is True. Uh, okay, so it works. So we're back to does it work? What do you mean by does it work? Not just for me. I had an experience and I felt better. We gotta do better than that for science, so what Deepak and Bob Wright are talking about is that, is that the Western version of Buddhism may actually work medically. It may, you know, lower stress hormones in your body, lower blood pressure, these kinds of things that are measurable, 'cause that's what we wanna know from a Western scientific perspective, not just do I feel better. But 67% of the people who did this particular treatment, they got better by these measurable criteria. Okay. That's, that seems fair enough to me. I'm open to that.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm. Now, this idea that there's nothing or no thing, that we can't even, we can't even wrap our head around nothing because we would think of a thing-
29. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  ... that there's no thing, but there's never a thing.
53:58 – 58:11
Identity puzzles: resurrection age, memory edits, and why mind uploading becomes ‘a copy’
1. MSMichael Shermer
  And then I also quote from, uh, Julia Sweeney's, uh, Letting Go of God monologue. She opens this monologue ... Well, you know, Julia from Saturday Night Live?
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Sure. Yeah.
3. MSMichael Shermer
  ... uh, with the Mormon boys coming by her, her house in, in Hollywood, and they're pitching their story. Like, "Okay, come on in. Pitch me your story like it's a Hollywood, you know, movie script, you know? What do you got?" So they tell her the whole thing. "Oh, it's gonna be great." You know, "The blind shall see again. The deaf shall hear again, and your body will be whole again." And so she says, "Well, now see, um, I had uterine cancer, so I had my uterus taken out. Do I get my uterus back when I go to heaven?" They said, "Yeah." She goes, "I don't want it back." (laughs)
4. JRJoe Rogan
  S-
5. MSMichael Shermer
  And she says, "What if you got a nose job and you liked it? Do I have to get my old nose back?"
6. JRJoe Rogan
  That's true, right?
7. MSMichael Shermer
  And so I opened this, uh ... A little funny story because it gets to the problem of, of identity. Who are you? So if you're resurrected, uh, with Jesus ... See, early, earlier, um, Christian cult- uh, sects before Descartes introduced dualism, they believe that you are ... When you're resurrected at the, you know, after your death, you are physically there in heaven. Physically, and your soul, the whole thing. It's just one thing. So the question is, well how old are you when you're there? You know, so you're brought up and there you are sitting next to Jesus and God and, and whatever. You know, so they, okay, 30. 30 seems like a good year. It's the h- year Jesus was, you know, was crucified. Okay, 30. Like, but wait a minute, I'm 63 now, so what happens to all the memories of my life for the last 33 years? Oh no, you get all those memories. Okay, but the mem- uh, the memory of my being 30 now is different from the memory I had when I was 50 of being 30, and 40 being 30, and even when I was in my 30s being 30. You know, the, the memories are always changing and edited and, and, and, um, and- and forgotten or modified, uh, particularly based on life experiences that happen afterwards. So in your 20s you go to this college or you marry this person or you take this job or whatever. You don't really know-... what the influ- the impact of those decisions are until much later in life, which is why I always think it's ridiculous for people to write memoirs in their 20s or 30s, 'cause they're celebrities. Like, you have no idea-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
9. MSMichael Shermer
  ... what, what those things actually mean until much later. So, this is the problem of who you are. So first of all, w- we already know that n- none of your body is the same material it was, say, a decade ago. Your cells are all recycled. The molecules and atoms are gone. There's new ones that replace it. It's the pattern, it's the pattern of information that represents you, Joe Rogan. This is what you look like. These are your memories. So, somehow th- this has to be copied. So, in the Ray Kurzweil scenario of the singularity, we're gonna upload the mind. They're gonna copy your connectome, all your memories in your synapses. Okay, so right away, there's the problem of, "Well, which memories?" Well, all of them. No, there, there are no fixed set of memories that are you. Your memories are always changing, so the moment you take a snapshot of it, that's just a fixed point. That's not you really. You are this whole, you know, long continuum, uh, that's always kind of flexible and changing. So, there's that, and then there's the problem with the up- mind uploading scenario is, there's two kinds of selves. There's the, uh, memory self, mem-self, of all your memories, and then there's the point-of-view self, the POV self. So, when you go to sleep tonight, you wake up tomorrow, you're still looking at the world through your eyes, and there's a, a continuity of point of view from one day to the next. Same thing with general anesthesia. So, like, in the Johnny Depp movie, Transcendence, where he's poisoned by these terrorists and he's dying, he's got, like, a week to go, he copies his mind's connectome, equivalent of the genome, and puts it in a computer and then he dies, and they turn the computer on and he's in the computer looking out through the little camera hole. I don't see how this could happen. That is, if we copied you, your connectome, everything, all your memories, so we had a Joe Rogan number two copy ready to go, but instead of you dying, let's say we had a sophisticated fMRI brain scan machine, slid you into it, copied your connectome, uploaded it into the cloud or whatever, and you're, and then we slide you back out and you're standing there, you, you're still looking at the world through your eyes. That's just Joe Rogan number two, a copy. And no more do you look at that than a twin looks at its sibling and says, "Well, there I am." No, no, no. You're still standing there going, "No, no, I'm here. That's just a copy of me." And so this, to me, seems a- a- a central problem with the mind uploading scenario. It's just a copy.
58:11 – 1:05:20
From cloned monkeys to brain chips: transhuman steps and everyday ‘magic’ like Siri
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Did you see the thing in National Geographic today about the cloned monkeys?
2. MSMichael Shermer
  No.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Th- they've, they've m- managed to actually clone monkeys.
4. MSMichael Shermer
  No.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  And, yeah. S- Jamie, I, uh, I tweeted it earlier today. It's crazy. And they're-
6. MSMichael Shermer
  Well-
7. JRJoe Rogan
  ... speculating that if they can do that to monkeys, they're going to be able to be able-
8. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  ... to do that to humans.
10. MSMichael Shermer
  Yes. But again, so who is-
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Right, who is-
12. MSMichael Shermer
  ... who is that? Yeah.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Like, if there's a Michael Shermer, is it your twin?
14. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, like, when you meet twins, they- it's very weird. Like, I used to date a girl who was a twin. She had a sister who looked exactly like her, but, like, a little o- just a something-
16. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah, right.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  ... just a feel, like-
18. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  ... "Oh, you're not her."
20. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  "You're her s- sister. Uh."
22. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Super, super confusing.
24. MSMichael Shermer
  (laughs)
25. JRJoe Rogan
  So, they weren't the same person, but they pretty much were. Yeah, here's the, here's the article. Scroll up there. Cloned monkeys created in a lab. Now what? Yeah.
26. MSMichael Shermer
  Okay. Well, so you're making copies. Okay.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, so it's a copy, but it's not the same person because they have-
28. MSMichael Shermer
  Now-
29. JRJoe Rogan
  ... their own individual life experiences and-
30. MSMichael Shermer
  Y- the, the moment you and your copy start diverging away and l- leading different lives, you're gonna have different memories.
1:05:20 – 1:45:57
Longevity dreams vs. quality of life: Kurzweil’s motivations, entropy, euthanasia, and fear of death
1. JRJoe Rogan
  I interviewed Kurzweil and, uh, I had a really interesting conversation with him for this sci-fi show that I was doing a few years back, and, uh, I find him to be very interesting. He's a fascinating, incredibly intelligent guy that has ... I think he has more than 100 different patents, something-
2. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  ... different things that he's invented.
4. MSMichael Shermer
  Yeah, he's, he's a genius.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  He's a bona fide genius. But, but I also found it incredibly, uh, sad, his motivation, like what he's trying to do. You know he's trying to recreate his father-
6. MSMichael Shermer
  His father, yeah. Yeah.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, his father-
8. MSMichael Shermer
  Did you see that, uh, the documentary about him?
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes. Yeah, Transcendent Man.
10. MSMichael Shermer
  It was kinda sad.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
12. MSMichael Shermer
  You know, it was dark.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, it was very dark.
14. MSMichael Shermer
  And he's got all ... His basement is filled with all his dad's stuff and-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
16. MSMichael Shermer
  ... um, you know, he's, he's always talking about life, life, life, but he's just really kind of obsessed with death.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
18. MSMichael Shermer
  This is what I worry about, is that, again, back to the Alves era. You know, we don't live in, uh, in the next life, whatever that is, or the far future. We live now and don't miss it.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
20. MSMichael Shermer
  You know, if you're so focused on death and, and how we can solve these problems, okay, I'm glad somebody's working on it, and he's head of engineering for all of Google now, and they have that company, Calico.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
22. MSMichael Shermer
  So a couple hundred million dollars working on aging problems. Great. Again, if you can solve Alzheimer's or these things-
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Sure.
24. MSMichael Shermer
  ... that's great, but, you know, don't be so focused on the next life you miss out.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, I don't necessarily know if he is so focused that he's missing out. I don't think he's missing out, uh, and I think he has extraordinary vision in terms of, like, what is possible with the exponential increase of technology. So-
26. MSMichael Shermer
  Right.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  ... I think having a guy like that around is ... It's helpful, it's ... I think it's beneficial to everybody. It's incredibly-
28. MSMichael Shermer
  Totally.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  ... fascinating to hear him talk about those things.
30. MSMichael Shermer
  Yep.

Episode duration: 2:21:57

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode x2qwRJT4WGY

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

iOS

Android

Claude

Chrome

Shermer’s new book: afterlife quests from religion to transhumanism

Singularity evangelism and Shermer’s break with religion

Why “utopias” and cults corrupt: sex, power, and sincere belief

Mormons and Scientology: when do weird beliefs become a ‘religion’ (and why tax exemptions matter)?

Near-death experiences: brain chemistry, tunnels, and out-of-body illusions

Mystical experience vs. evidence: ayahuasca, Eben Alexander, and ‘What is truth?’

Psychedelics and scripture: DMT, Moses’ burning bush, and mushroom-based religion theories

Making sense of the Bible historically: Bart Ehrman, mythic structure, and whether Jesus existed

Mortality, the Big Bang, and ‘Alvy’s error’: why the afterlife debate may miss the point

Deepak Chopra, Buddhism, and what ‘works’: measurable benefits vs. quantum mysticism

Identity puzzles: resurrection age, memory edits, and why mind uploading becomes ‘a copy’

From cloned monkeys to brain chips: transhuman steps and everyday ‘magic’ like Siri

Longevity dreams vs. quality of life: Kurzweil’s motivations, entropy, euthanasia, and fear of death

Get more out of YouTube videos.