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Veganism, Atheism and Morality | Cosmic Skeptic | Modern Wisdom Podcast 103

Alex O'Connor aka Cosmic Skeptic is a YouTuber and Student at Oxford University. How many people go vegan due to a philosophical debate? And how many actively try to get the fans of their YouTube Channel to talk them out of it? Alex is one person on that list. Expect to learn the one philosophical question which Alex has trouble justifying, Alex's reasons for going vegan, whether he thinks that a less religious society has problems with morality and how religions relate to social cohesion. Extra Stuff: Follow Alex on Twitter - https://twitter.com/CosmicSkeptic Subscribe to Alex on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/cosmicskeptic A Meat Eater's Case For Veganism - https://youtu.be/C1vW9iSpLLk Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: modernwisdompodcast@gmail.com

Alex O'Connor (Cosmic Skeptic)guestChris Williamsonhost
Sep 17, 20191h 5mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 15:00

    If I say, like,…

    1. AS

      If I say, like, what is it about an animal, a non-human animal that allows you to kill them and torture them, in fact, and put them through factory farm processes? Like, what- what is the, what is the thing that they have or the thing that they lack that if a human were to have or to lack, you'd be okay with doing it to the human as well? Like, what is it? Is it intelligence? If it's intelligence, then can we throw people with, under a certain IQ into factory farms? Like, probably not. Or maybe it's, maybe it's self-awareness. It's like, well, is a dog self-aware? Probably. Well, well, a pig is just as self-aware as the dog is, so why aren't you this... It's- it's just about consistency, right? If someone turns around and says, "Actually, yeah, I do think it'd be a good idea to throw people with an IQ under a certain amount into factory farms," then I'd be like, "Well, at least you're being consistent."

    2. CW

      (wind blowing) I am joined by Alex O'Connor, otherwise known as Cosmic Skeptic. Alex, welcome to the show.

    3. AS

      Thank you for having me.

    4. CW

      It's a pleasure to have you on. We'll have a lot of your fans tuning in, I'm sure, as well. Uh, been a, a lot of changes recently. We've been talking about booking this appointment in with yourself for a little while, and the topics I've wanted to talk about have moved as the (laughs) as the year's-

    5. AS

      Yeah.

    6. CW

      ... gone on. Um, first thing's first, you've recently become vegan.

    7. AS

      That's right, yeah.

    8. CW

      Can you tell us the story behind that, please?

    9. AS

      Yeah, sure. Uh, well, you say, I mean, you say recently. It's recent in the, in the long scheme of things, but, uh, it- it's been maybe four or five months now. Coming on half a year soon. Um, for- for a very long time I'd been thinking about it, and when you talk about philosophy, and for some reason, atheism, it seems to lend itself, uh, your audience will always kind of say, "What do you think about this?" It, I've always found it very strange. Someone likes what you have to say on one topic and they're desperate to hear on what you have to say on- on Brexit or on veganism or whatever it is. And I've never quite understood that. It's like really enjoying a- a- a footballer's commentary on- on a game or something and say, "Oh, yeah, but what do you think about this political issue?" It's like, well, that's not what I- I- I do, I do philosophy of religion. But people wanted me to talk about veganism, so I did it in the past. And you find yourself kind of jumping through hoops, and if you listen to, um, people like Sam Harris or someone when they're asked about morality, especially because his veganism ... h- his moral, uh, philosophy is based on suffering, someone says, "Why aren't you a vegan?" And he just kind of, he- he just, he answers like a politician, you know. He's like, "Well, we have to, you know, we have to have an honest conversation about the precepts of this stuff." And it's like, man, just- just admit that- that you, you know you should be a vegan.

    10. CW

      (laughs)

    11. AS

      So I was kind of in- in that spot and I was talking to friends and essentially saying, "I'm pretty sure that veganism is- is the moral thing to do, but let me give you some arguments against it and see where we can go." Uh, and it just didn't work. And then eventually, I was like, "You know what? I'm gonna put out a video essentially saying to people, 'Here are the reasons for going vegan. Try and talk me out of it.'" And the main thing that got me thinking about it was Peter Singer's book, Animal Liberation. Peter Singer is probably the most important philosopher in my life in terms of how he's changed the way I think. I mean, there are lots of atheist philosophers who I'd be more closely associated to, because that's what I've spoken about, but they were more people who I listened to and admired, but they didn't really comp- like, like, overhaul the way that I'm living my life.

    12. CW

      (laughs)

    13. AS

      Peter Singer has done that completely with animal rights and also with his, his writings on philanthropy. Uh, so I read that and I thought, "Man, this is, this is, this is big. This is a big problem." And so I made the video. No one talked me out of it, so I went vegan. Um, it just kind of happened one day. I went cold turkey. I was on a bus into work and I saw this cat cross the road-

    14. CW

      (laughs)

    15. AS

      ... and he got scared of the bus, but because I was on the bus, it was like it was looking at me, and I saw this cat, like, backing away in fear and I just looked into its eyes and thought, "What the hell am I doing?" So I went and had a vegan breakfast and then since then, I haven't had any animal products except by accident every now and again. Uh, but that's basically how it happened.

    16. CW

      We have a- a co-host on the show, Yousef, who is, uh, from a Islamic background, although he's not a believer anymore, uh, and he refers to it as being stealth porked when there's accidentally some pork-

    17. AS

      Yeah.

    18. CW

      ... products in whatever it is that he's eating, so I'm guessing that you've come-

    19. AS

      Yeah.

    20. CW

      ... come up with stealth meated.

    21. AS

      Well, you know, it's, it's an interesting debate actually what you should do in situations like that, like if- if you accidentally ... if- if a chef accidentally put some cheese on a, on a meal. Um, so for instance, the other day, I had some cheese on chips because, uh, I was with a friend and we ... it was really late at night and we ordered some chips from a, from a kebab place, you know. And, like, we expressly just didn't say cheese. And I even said, "Can I have some chips with some salt and vinegar and nothing else?" No sauce or anything. And he was like, "Yeah, sure." And- and they came just loaded with cheese and we thought, "What the hell do we do here?" If we give that back then it's going in the bin. There was no one else around, it was about to close, um, so it was like we had to eat it or it gets thrown away. So we ate it because, as far as I'm concerned, the suffering's already been wasted. It'd be a waste if it goes in the bin, it's a waste if it's used for my sensory pleasure-

    22. CW

      (laughs)

    23. AS

      ... um, but at least the pleasure's somewhat maximized in that situation as it stands. Some people, like, uh, when I spoke to a guy called Earthling Ed, a friend of mine who makes a lot of, uh, vegan content on YouTube, he ... I- I asked him about this and he said when that happens, he wouldn't, he wouldn't touch it. He- he'd rather it went to waste. He'd rather throw it in the ocean or something just because he doesn't see it as food anymore. It's like being served plastic in your meal or something.

    24. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    25. AS

      You would just, you just wouldn't be able to eat it. Uh, but for me, because it's basically a philosophical position, like you say, like, I don't have an aversion to it. Like, I'm not gonna throw up if you, if you put a steak in front of me.

    26. CW

      (laughs)

    27. AS

      Like I- I see it the same as, uh, I've always seen it, um, just not in the same moral light. So if it were like, "Here's a steak. It's gonna go to waste if you don't eat it," um, I wouldn't have a moral problem with somebody eating it in that circumstance, where some vegans would.

    28. CW

      Do you think that your particular stance, uh, uh, your lineage of entry into veganism is typical? I don't know of many people-

    29. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    30. CW

      ... at least publicly who've taken it from the particular route that you have.

  2. 15:00 – 30:00

    (inhales) (sighs) It is…

    1. AS

      like racism to the treatment of animals. But if anything, like if you quantify suffering, if what you care about is suffering, and I think most atheists at the very least do care about suffering as the basis of their morality, then animals can feel suffering just as we can. It's in different ways. Like they might feel, they might not feel the same kind of fears and anxieties as we do. They don't have anxiety over debt, for instance. That's a very human-specific, uh, suffering. But when it comes to physical pains and things, like these things might be comparable, right? We can't do it in practice, but if you think pain can be quantifiable, which some people do, some people don't, then you might say, "Well, yeah, racism is awful, but with the state of racism at the moment in the United States, like the amount of pain is not as much as the amount of pain in the animal industry." You might agree with that, you might not, but they are comparable at the very least. Like it, they can be analogous. And if you think about the sheer numbers involved, like this is, I mean, Peter got in a lot of trouble years ago for doing this Holocaust On Your Plate campaign where they made a comparison saying like, "12 million people perished in the Holocaust between, you know, the, the years of World War II, between '39 and '45, that 12 million, um, were killed." And then they'd just point out that the s- like the same number of non-human animals are tortured and killed every single hour in the United States alone for food. And people were like, "How the hell could you possibly compare them?" It's like, well, well think about that for a second. Like even if you think that one is way worse than the other, just think about the numbers there. Like 50 billion animals being tortured and killed every year. Not for war, not, not for some social progre- j- just because people think they taste nice. Like that's insane. Right? And so if you begin to, to make people see that animals can feel suffering and you begin to make them see how that's analogous to our own suffering, like evolutionarily speaking, rationally speaking, I have no reason not to be a racist. I mean, I'm never gonna, I'm never gonna suffer from racism. Like in, in a, in a soci- in a, in a society that's dominated by white people, I mean. Um, I'm never gonna suffer, let's say, from, from anti-black racism, right? No, it's, it's not gonna be a problem for me. So why, why would I be against it? It, it's a rational thing. It's a moral thing. It's like I, I tap into my empathy, I tap into societal cohesion, all, all of these kinds of things. And I realize that suffering is bad no matter who's suffering from it. Uh, and if I can do the same thing for them, then I can do the same thing for, for non-human animals as well.

    2. CW

      (inhales) (sighs) It is a compelling argument. It is a, it is a compelling argument. I think speciesism is definitely what most people are drawing that line at. It's an extension of us just being tribal.

    3. AS

      Yeah.

    4. CW

      The same way that it would've, it would've protected us a long time ago. Um, does consciousness and suffering, are they, do they go hand in hand?

    5. AS

      Uh, I think, uh, it depends how you're defining consciousness. Like the only thing that I care about when it comes to morality is the ability to feel pain, uh, and the ability to feel pleasure, which someone like Singer would point out, uh, is kind of predicated on or is the basis for preference. Like if, if a creature has such thing as preference, then they, then they have moral worth, at least some minuscule level of mora- moral worth. So if you have some creature that's somehow conscious but doesn't feel pleasure and pain, then I'd, wouldn't consider them as part of the moral framework. Uh, because if you didn't feel pleasures and pains, like you'd essentially just be a vegetable. It's, it's preferences that motivate action. You only do things because you want to do them. Like that, that's what motivates action. Desire motivates action. And in order to have desire, you need to have some conception of pleasure and pain because desire is predicated upon pleasure itself. So without pleasure and pain, I don't know if consciousness can even make sense, but if it can, then that's not the important thing for me. It's just the pleasure and pain.

    6. CW

      I'm sitting down with Nir Eyal, uh, on Monday to discuss his new book, Indistractable. And in that, he cites a couple of studies that, uh, he suggests show that there isn't such a thing as pleasure chasing, there is only pain avoidance?

    7. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    8. CW

      Um, and that was an interesting eye-opener for me, just thinking about the way that we live our lives and what it is that we go towards, and applies even more pressure to avoiding discomfort, avoiding suffering-

    9. AS

      Yeah.

    10. CW

      ... as you're, as you're saying here. So there must be a spectrum of suffering and of consciousness, and there must be a bottom end. There must be a line where animals no longer are animals and become vegetables. There's some animals that are more responsive to stimuli, uh, some, some plants that are more responsive to stimuli than animals are, like coral or limpets. How, where do we, how do you draw the line there?

    11. AS

      Yeah.

    12. CW

      Where does the rubber meet the road with that?

    13. AS

      So it, it's all about the maximization of pleasure, or I'd rather frame it, actually, uh, as, as your guest would in, uh, in a, in the terms of minimization of suffering because, um, a lot of philosophical pessimists, uh, so for instance, Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out, um, in his most famous essay, he, he essentially said, "Look, all these philosophers have it totally wrong. Everyone thinks that pleasure is, like, the affirmative thing and pain is, like, the absence of pleasure," or something along that lines. It's like, no, the, the most real thing, the most active thing is, is pain, and all pleasure is just some kind of negation of pain. It's all about avoiding pain. Um, or, uh, or whether that be physical pain or, like, philosophical pain and then, and not, not being able to understand the world and absurdism, Camus said that all of the meaning of life is, is essentially just finding excuses not to kill yourself. Like, that's all that life-

    14. CW

      (laughs)

    15. AS

      That's all that life is, you know. Um, I think it, it makes sense to view the world in that way and if we do, then we have to, we have to figure out the calculation that's most going to minimize suffering. A way to think about it, how, how you would frame the world, like, where you would draw the line, whether you'd, whether you'd be okay with us killing plants and trees or whatever, is to apply John Rawls' principle, um, the, the veil of ignorance. John, John Rawls should've been a vegan, um, because he quite famously came up with this analogy that if you didn't know if you were going to be born Black or white or, uh, lower class or upper class, whatever it was, like, you didn't know what social characteristics you had, um, but you're about to be born into the world and you have no idea where you're gonna be, where you're gonna be born, let's say, like, in the United States, for instance. Design society before you get into that society. So design society before you know where you're going to be in it. So he concluded you probably wanna have, uh, a, a capitalist economy so that if you have an opportunity to make money, you can do so and you can be free to, to, to make as much money as you can, but with some kind of social safety net so that if you're born into, into areas with no economic opportunity, you'll have some help. It's like that would be fair because you realize that that's, that's gonna better your chances. Now, do, just do the same thing, but apply it to you don't know what thing you're going to be. You could be a tree, you could be a bush, you could be a chair, um, you could be a pig, you could be a, a human, and design society. The question is would you have an agricultural industry in that society? Of course you bloody wouldn't. Like, uh, chickens outnumber humans three to one. You've got three times more chance of being a chicken.

    16. CW

      (laughs)

    17. AS

      Are you gonna be okay with those odds? Or are you gonna say, "No, no, let's not have KFC in this society." And I say to you, "Well, well, no, you don't understand because you could be born a human and you'll get so much pleasure from eating chicken, and if you are born a chicken, like, chickens have so much less intelligence and, and you, you won't be smart, you won't, you won't, you won't feel the pain as much." Like, you'll be, and you'd be like, "No, that's, that's insane. I'm not gonna run that risk." I, I would rather have the chance of being a human and have to not eat chicken than run the risk of being a chicken in, in the animal industry, right? So now the question would be would you be okay being a tree or a plant? It's like, well, as far as I'm concerned, they, they don't feel pain, so I probably wouldn't have a problem with that. But the thing is, let's say that plants can feel pain. This is an important thing because people often bring it up as a bit of a meme. It's like, um, it's like when an atheist, someone asks an atheist, like, uh, "But, but where do you find your meaning?" Or something. And every atheist just rolls their eyes like, "How have you not... Like, this is just ridiculous." Uh, it's the same thing with the plants thing. People always bring it up. It's like, "But, but plants can feel pain." And the vegans go, "Oh, for God's sake."

    18. CW

      (laughs)

    19. AS

      And what most of them say is they go, "No, they can't feel pain. That's ridiculous. Shut up." What I say is, "Okay, let's say they can feel pain. You understand that the vast majority of plants that are, that are destroyed are not fed to humans, they're fed to livestock, right?" Like, where do you think your protein gets its protein from?

    20. CW

      (laughs)

    21. AS

      They're eating plants as well. If you think, if you think plants can, can suffer, then the best way to minimize plants being killed is to go vegan because then we won't be feeding them to the livestock. So even if plants can feel pain, the way to minimize that pain is to go vegan. Like, veganism doesn't eliminate suffering. You're still killing animals. You're still, you're still, uh, destroying land to grow crops on and things like that. It's just about minimizing it because that's already happening right now in order to grow crops that we then feed to cows, which we then kill and eat. Like, just cut out the middleman and we'll reduce the suffering even, even more. So you're never gonna be able to eliminate suffering. So if plants can feel pain, then that would just be a sorry fact of existence, but it would be one that we could manage by still going vegan.

    22. CW

      Yeah. Would you say that moving forward, if you were able to create the equivalent of a philosophical zombie animal, some meat that's being grown in a chess- test tube or whatever it might be, what would your stance be on that?

    23. AS

      If it can't feel suffering, then no problem. That's it. No suffering, no problem.

    24. CW

      Do you think that most vegans hold that view?

    25. AS

      Uh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't know. I mean, uh, a lot of vegans I've spoken to, most vegans I've spoken to who didn't go vegan at the same time as me for the same reasons, uh, h- give a, give a lot of weight to, uh, to preference. So I was speaking to someone in London recently. I, I do some events sometimes and it's always nice because, uh, people will come who've seen your channel. So you know you get an opportunity to meet people. And I'm, I'm very used to people coming up and saying, you know, um, "I like the videos you did on atheism. I like this moral. Can we talk about the, the, the nature of morality or something?" But I-... I, I kind of forgot that I'd done the veganism thing so recently-

    26. CW

      (laughs)

    27. AS

      ... and someone ca- someone comes up to me, uh, the, these people come up to me and say, "Hi, we're, we're some of your, your vegan viewers." And I was like, "Wow, this is the first time. This has, this has ever ha- I've never had this before." So I was, I was talking to them about it, and they were talking about preference. Um, the idea being that, uh, because animals want to live, they have a preference to live, we should respect that just intrinsically. Like, if you were to go and kill an animal, uh, behind its back with no suffering, would that be a problem? And I'm of the opinion that it's all about pleasure and pain. So I would say, like, the preference alone isn't enough to say that you shouldn't kill that animal. Um, and, and they had a problem with that. They were like, no, there, there is some moral worth to, to preference. You're, you're getting rid of potential pleasure, that kind of thing.

    28. CW

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    29. AS

      Um, I reject that because, for instance, if you're talking about potential pleasure having worth, then you get into a whole, uh, problem with, like, abortion. And I'm not just talking about the normal debates surrounding abortion. I'm talking, like, the idea that you, you doing this podcast instead of going and having sex right now-

    30. CW

      (laughs)

  3. 30:00 – 45:00

    Mm-hmm. …

    1. AS

      still hold ourselves morally responsible for trying to hit them.

    2. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    3. AS

      In the same way, we don't hold animals morally responsible for, for raping each other or for killing each other or eating each other. But that doesn't mean we can do it to them as well. I mean, are we okay to have sex with animals? Are w- are w- some people would say yes. That's an interest- that's another interesting discussion actually, because, like, 'cause, like, you know, I, I would, I would argue that... And I don't have to take this route because I'm a vegan, but if you're okay with putting animals in factory farms, then I don't understand how you could be against people having sex with them because then at least there's a chance they might enjoy it. And even if they don't enjoy it-

    4. CW

      (laughs)

    5. AS

      ... it can't be much worse than being put through a factory farm. So, like-

    6. CW

      (laughs)

    7. AS

      ... that's a whole nother discussion-

    8. CW

      Wow.

    9. AS

      ... you know what I mean? But to, to, to keep to the question-

    10. CW

      Yeah.

    11. AS

      ... the answer, uh, th- the answer that I would give is my moral system is based on what I consider to be rational thought processes, not trying to mirror the animal kingdom. There, there's no might makes right. There's no-... a- appeal to nature or anything like that. It's just about minimization of suffering.

    12. CW

      I think that difference between the animals for eating and animals for sex-

    13. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    14. CW

      ... that you've come up with there probably, uh, strikes a chord with what most people, w- what the reason that most people choose to go vegan. It's that much more visceral, emotive response, right? Because when you think about the killing, you're somehow removed. It's not you that's doing it, you're just doing the eating.

    15. AS

      Yeah.

    16. CW

      Whereas with the sex, like, you're there.

    17. AS

      Yeah. (laughs) Yeah.

    18. CW

      Like anyone, anyone who's watched Black Mirror, like ...

    19. AS

      (laughs) Yeah.

    20. CW

      There's-

    21. AS

      It's really strange though, isn't it? I- it's like people have this, people have this weird aversion. Like if, if, if it came out in the newspaper that, um, that some farmer had been serially raping his pigs, people would be like, "That's disgusting." It's like, okay, so-

    22. CW

      (laughs)

    23. AS

      ... you're okay with this person, like, torturing them, skinning them, putting a bolt through their brain. But as soon as they put their dick in it, like, "Oh, no."

    24. CW

      (laughs)

    25. AS

      "That's a step too far." Like, like, come on. Like, what are you doing here? It's the same thing when people, um, I, it's like what Chris Hitchens said in, in his, in his memoir. Uh, he, he was so ex- uh, so Chris, Chris Hitchens wrote a memoire, uh, or wrote a, or wrote a book, a biography of, uh, Thomas Jefferson, who famously owned very many slaves, including Sally Hemmings, who he's believed to have sexually assaulted and having a child with. And, and he pointed out that historians, uh, are quick to kind of defend Jefferson and say, "No, no, no. He didn't, he didn't sexually assault Sally Hemmings." And they, and they get kind of upset by the idea that this, this hero of American history turns out that he just as sexually assaulted some woman. And Hitchens is like, "Oh, but they were okay with the whole owning her, like they were, they were okay with h- with, with him owning this woman as property." But the, the moment it's suggested that he tries to have sex with them, like, it suddenly becomes this horrible thing and they can't believe their hero has been stained in this way. It's like, come on, give me a break here. Uh, and I think it's kind of, that, that's analogous to, to the same thing with, with having sex with animals. It's like, if you think it's bad to have sex with a horse or a pig, then maybe you are giving pigs moral worth. Maybe you do care about their suffering, and if you do care about their suffering, then my God, stop buying McDonald's.

    26. CW

      It's people taking their moral virtues piecemeal again, isn't it? It's picking what they want from, from different areas. So what do you think? Uh, th- what strikes me and the thing that I've thought when I watched your, your first video, uh, A Meat Eater's Case for Veganism, which will be linked in the show notes below, if you just wanna see what Alex is talking about. Really cool video. Um, what struck me with that was the fact that you then decided, on the basis of quite a cerebral approach to veganism, that you would commit because you wanted to live in line, you wanted your life to live in line with your moral, your moral standing.

    27. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    28. CW

      I think that, to me, that friction in the system or that slippage in the system is probably why people don't make the jump. They think, "Well, okay, compelling argument, Alex. Like, you know, yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe you're right about that, but I just can't be arsed."

    29. AS

      Yeah. Then essentially the question is, is why be moral? And that's a difficult question to answer. That's a whole different ballgame. It's like people will tell me, it's the, it's the one question that I can't really answer very well. It's the one kind of impenetrable, uh, impenetrable boundary, is when people say, "Yeah, okay. I accept that it's the moral thing to do, but I'm just an immoral person." It's like, all I can really do is tell you how to be moral. Like, all, all, the w- that (laughs) that sounds incredibly, uh-

    30. CW

      (laughs)

  4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

    Does it feel very…

    1. AS

      like ironic or funny that an atheist studies theology, and I think at this point, probably more atheists are studying theology than religious people. And you find that when a religious person is studying theology, at least in my experience, a lot of the time they're very devout and they're doing it because they want to go into the priesthood or because they want to develop their theology, like, for their, for their personal benefit, um, whereas when an atheist studies it, they're doing it in a more kind of academic framework. Um, but again, that's fine because you can do both of those things. You can tailor it. You can do the reading you want to do, you can answer the questions you want to answer. So it's, it's actually not like ... You may as well ask what, what it's like to be a- an atheist studying history. It's like, yeah, there's a lot of religion in history, but i- i- it, it's the same as studying it for, for anybody else. I think the same thing is kind of happening with theology.

    2. CW

      Does it feel very voyeuristic in a way, the fact that you have this detachment from, from the, the, the belief and ... Obviously you had a, a fairly strong existing understanding of theology going into ... Uh, or at least based on your YouTube channel it seemed like you did. Um, were there any significant changes? You've just completed your first year. Have you found yourself looking at your worldview significantly differently in any areas after 12 months?

    3. AS

      Well, so, so far in, um, on the theology side of things ... On, on philosophy we had to do moral philosophy and general philosophy, which doesn't really touch religion, but that, like, the moral philosophy changed a lot what I think about moral philosophy. But with reference to, to theology, um, nothing much changed, but the papers weren't really about that. Like next year we're doing philosophy of religion, so the thing that I talk about on my channel mostly is arguments for the existence of God and things. I don't talk so much about the nature of scripture or, or about the prac- the pragmatism of, of certain religious traditions and things. That's not really my area. I'm more about the philosophy.

    4. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    5. AS

      Um, so if, if my views were gonna change on the things I talk about, it will probably happen next, next year.

    6. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    7. AS

      Uh, but y- you kind of ... I don't know. Let me think. It's ... I guess you, you realize it's much less unified than you thought. You realize that, um ... One of the things that really strikes me is that these people who are, who are heralded as, as philosophical giants in the theological history, people like, uh, Aquinas or Augustine or whatever, or Athanasius, uh, and you read their texts and, and you, you begin to kind of realize, this is just some guy. Right? This is just a, this is just a person writing stuff. Like, he might be pretty good at writing or whatever, but, but, like, it's just a person just, just writing something. Like, they're not ... They're, they're easy to engage with. You can engage with them in the same way that you can engage with a modern philosopher. Like, it's not this kind of untouchable, um, ancient wisdom. It's, it's just, it's just writing. It's just philosophical argumentation, it can be engaged with in the same way.

    8. CW

      Mm.

    9. AS

      But nothing, nothing's really changed on that front.

    10. CW

      Good.

    11. AS

      No, I don't think so.

    12. CW

      I think so. I had a, I, I asked for some questions, uh, from, uh, friends and, uh, some listeners to the channel, and one of them that came up was really, really good, so I wanted to, I wanted to put this one to you as a, a nice way to bookend this podcast.

    13. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    14. CW

      What do you think of the claim that an increase in secularism in recent history has resulted in a decrease in moral virtue?

    15. AS

      I don't think, I don't think that's true. I think implicit in the question might be i- if that's true, then, then if the question's being asked in a kind of challenging way, it would be like, "If you get rid of religion, then you get rid of moral virtue." Well, secularism isn't getting rid of religion, it's getting rid of religious influence over government. So-

    16. CW

      Mm. Okay. I think it's probably-

    17. AS

      ... it-

    18. CW

      ... probably related towards, uh, less religious following or people increasingly becoming nonreligious or areligious, I suppose.

    19. AS

      Yeah. Well, so, so those are two, those are two different questions. I think that if, if by getting rid of religion we're getting rid of kind of religious morality, then I think that's probably a good thing. Like, if you understand what religious morality often entails, then it's probably a good thing that we're getting rid of it. Um, I don't, I don't believe ... Like, if you meet an atheist, uh, I don't ... Uh, and, and this isn't just me talking, I think this is probably just an intui- just an intuition that most thinking people would have, you wouldn't assume that they're less moral.Now, you might assume that they have less of a grounding for it if you're somebody who believes ... if you're, like, a- an ethical subjectivist or you don't think morality can exist without God, you- you might think that, uh, they- they can't ground their morality. But if you speak to Christians who make the moral argument, they say, "If you're an atheist, you have no basis for morality." And people always criticize them and say ... and Hitchens uses it. He- he'd go, "How dare you say that we need moral permission to be good? How dare you say that we can't be moral without God?" It's, like, that's not what they're saying. They- they're saying that you are being moral, but that you have no grounding for it and that you're actually secretly kind of using the- the Christian worldview to- to buttress your moral views. Um, I don't think that's true. So when I make moral arguments, uh, I- I base them on, uh, I- I base them on secular principles, and I think that they hold up. Like, if you need religion to be moral, then let's investigate why that's the case. Like, why is it the case that if God says you have to do something, that becomes the moral thing to do? I mean, what is it about that? Uh, uh, y- why should you do what God pro- pl- pro- proclaims to be good? Like, is it because you want to avoid hell? Well, then it's just down to suffering again. Like, why should you want to avoid hell? What's wrong with going to hell? Well, it would, it would hurt. Okay. Like, then your argument is the same as mine. Do you think that God is just speaking ontological truths with his morality? Well, commands can't have truth value. You can't say, "Go over there. Is that true or false?" That's a command. That's not ... th- that can't be true or false. Like, the same problems that you get with trying to ground morality without God, you- you get the same problems trying to do it in God. Like, it- it's just a kind of different... i- it's a different ballgame, but the problems still arise. So I don't think it's true, and- and if it is the case that if you get rid of religion, uh, moral virtue declines, then that isn't a problem with atheism. That's probably just a problem with the way that atheism's being branded, and the only people who are really going there, going around convincing people that if you're an atheist you can get away with immorality, and that if you're an atheist you don't need to have moral virtue, and if you're an atheist you don't have to have moral principles, the only people who are, who are advocating that view are the religious.

    20. CW

      (laughs)

    21. AS

      So if it is the case that, that, uh, getting rid of religion is getting rid of morality, then that's because of the way that the religious have painted atheists' morality. If you speak to atheists, if we, if we allow atheists to speak about their morality and have discussions that are popular, uh, about grounding morality in a godless universe, then we wouldn't have that problem, because people would realize that we can ground morality just as easily, if not better, than, than we can ground, uh, religion. And if it does take a leap of faith, if it really is just- just a total, total bullshit to, uh, to try and ground morality without God, then my argument would be, then maybe it does take a bit of intellectual acrobatics or a bit of intellectual ignorance to- to base your morality in a godless universe. But it takes less intellectual acrobatics than it takes to convince yourself that a loving God exists, I think.

    22. CW

      I think s- certainly speaking to people about analogous topics, I don't understand... I'm a g- a good avatar for the layperson when it comes to these sorts of discussions, but it's almost tropey now and very cliché for people to have this sort of wistful days-gone-by view of when things were better and families-

    23. AS

      Yeah. Yeah, that's another, that's another thing, yeah.

    24. CW

      ... families stuck together and you had the support of the Church and you had this, that, and the other. I think that certainly seems to me to be a- an argument that is put forward for this, that there was- there was just more social cohesion and- and- and, um, the golden da- golden days of when people actually used to look out for each o- all of these kind of very wishy-washy, nebulous, tropey, ephemeral- ephemeral sort of claims-

    25. AS

      Yeah.

    26. CW

      ... and statuses that get used, that, I think, is what a lot of people think they're referring to.

    27. AS

      Yeah. And, look, I mean, that's- that's rose-tinted glasses. It wasn't all as good as you think it was, and if you were to be dropped back in that society, maybe it would be okay depending on who you are, but if you're a gay person, you'd probably have a pretty horrible time. Now, why is it that if you went back to this golden age of morality and social cohesion, that as a gay person you'd have a pretty bad time? Is it because of creeping secularism ruining your life, or is it because of religious tyranny saying that you're not allowed to love the person that you love?

    28. CW

      (laughs)

    29. AS

      I think that's probably the answer. Like, it- it's- it's- it's not... I mean, uh, uh, name a society that has been worsened by throwing off religious influence o- over government. Like, it- it can't be done. Like, the- the- all of the social progression that you can think of has- has coincided with secularism. Uh, every- every social progression has gone forward. Like, there's nothing that's gotten, there's nothing that's gotten- gotten worse i- in that- in that sense. Like, I- the... I: don't know. I mean, it- it really depends on what the person means specifically when they're- when they're- when they're answering- when they're asking the question, because if they do actually mean secularism, like on a governmental scale, well, moral virtue shouldn't derive from the government. Like, you shouldn't be being good because the government says so or because the Church says so. Moral virtue should be a private thing.

    30. CW

      Mm-hmm.

  5. 1:00:00 – 1:05:27

    (laughs) …

    1. AS

      your views. The problem is that we don't think those views are correct. Like if your views are correct, then of course you should be trying to, to influence the government. Of course you should be trying to, to convince other people and, and be shouting it in the streets and stuff like that. That's what I'm doing with veganism and that's the, and that's the criticism that will come. It's like, "Well, you're being religious about it." No, I'm not being religious about it.

    2. CW

      (laughs)

    3. AS

      I'm being steadfast about it. I think I'm correct and therefore I'm, I'm trying to argue that that's the case. And they're doing the same thing. It's like, I understand why you're doing that. Like if, if, if I thought that Christianity was true, I'd be doing everything (laughs) I could to make sure that my friends didn't burn in hell. I totally understand your position.

    4. CW

      Yeah.

    5. AS

      My problem isn't that you're, isn't that you're arguing your case, or that you're being proselytizing about it, or that you're, that you're being religious about it. My problem is I think you're wrong. That's all.

    6. CW

      (laughs) .

    7. AS

      Like, the, the, the idea that it, it, it's, there's some kind of problem with, with, uh, shouting your views from the rooftop. Like, no. If, if they're correct, then that's what you should be doing.

    8. CW

      (sniffs) It's interesting, that first mover advantage thing and what you're talking about there, that people now with a lot of things, uh, criticism as you've identified there, you're being religious about your veganism. It's that-

    9. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    10. CW

      ... that first mover advantage and the pervasiveness of religion as a, this meta existence, this, this thing which is the first thing of all of its kind of things, requires us to use everything in relation to that again. That it's just-

    11. AS

      Yeah.

    12. CW

      It's just a word that gets used and people use religious when they actually mean something that's a little bit different, doesn't necessarily mean religious.

    13. AS

      Yeah.

    14. CW

      I mean-

    15. AS

      But also, I mean even if, even if that is what they mean, then w-Why do you think, if, let's say that is the case, which I don't know if it is, but let's say it is the case that people are trying to kind of fill that God-shaped hole. Like, why is that the case? Do you think that might have something to do with the fact that these people grew up in societies and governments and families who told them that they're nothing without the religion that they were born into? That without God, they're worthless. That they can't have... That there's no basis for their moral worth if there's no God. Like, if you, if you grow up in a society that tells you that your meaning comes from religion, that your moral worth, that the fact that you are valuable as a human being comes from God, then when you give up that belief, of course you're gonna be looking for something to fill that gap. Because you've grown up your entire life believing that there needs to be something there. Like, if it is the case that people, when they give up God, are desperate to find something to fill that gap, it's just a testament to how evil people have been in convincing people that they can't find moral virtue within themselves. That they can't realize that they have worth of their own accord, that they have worth because they can experience pleasures and pain and because they have preference and because they can be rational creatures. And it has to be grounded in some metaphysical nonsense and that they have to go and make up some, some football team that doesn't actually exist, but is just an imagined structure, or they have to paint a flag and, and, and, and, uh, in- invoke some kind of meaning into the flag or something. If that is the case, it's only because people have been told from the day that they're born that if they don't do that, then they're nothing. Well, my whole point is that, no, you don't need that. You can, you can find moral value, you can find moral worth without needing to, to make things up. You can ground it in what's real. And if you have a morality and a worth that's grounded in what's real, like, there's nothing better than that. There, there's no, there's no criticism that can, that can floor you. There's nobody who can come along and tell you that you're not worth something or that you're going to hell, because it isn't just a difference in opinion. It's not just your made-up story versus his made-up story. It's like, "This is grounded in what I believe to be true." It's not just a social fact. It's, it's, it's a fact of nature, you know? I, I don't know. I, I enjoy talking to people like that, uh, because I, I want to see what they mean. 'Cause e- e- it doesn't really work when you relay a question like that to me, because I'd have to s- I'd have to really get to the, to the base of, what do you mean by religion? What do you mean by religious? What do you mean by God? What do you mean by... Uh, wh- what kinds of activities are you talking about? What do you include? What do you not include? Um, but, I think, I think it's a false criticism. And even if it is a criticism, it's not a criticism of the truth or falsity of politics. It has nothing to do with whether religion's true or not. That's just a commentary on whether, uh, whether human beings need it or not. Like, even if it's the case that every human being really did need religion to be happy, doesn't mean it's true.

    16. CW

      You should get Zuby on the podcast. He's been invited out. He's flying out to L.A. this week. He's on Rogan, uh, next week. He's on, um, Dave Rubin show the week after that. Uh, but when he gets back, I'll, I'll link you two guys in an email. I think it'd be a really-

    17. AS

      Sure thing.

    18. CW

      It'd be a fascinating discussion. I'd love to see you guys go on. I think you'd really get on with him well. Um, but, Alex, today's been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, man. Can you tell the listeners if they want to find out more, where should they head?

    19. AS

      Of course. Uh, so, Cosmic Skeptic is the name and it's quite specific, so pretty much anywhere slash Cosmic Skeptic. So, like, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all of that, if you just hit the forward slash Cosmic Skeptic, I've got all the URLs, so that's, uh, that's where to find me. But Twitter is probably the main place to keep up with what I'm doing.

    20. CW

      Fantastic. Alex, thank you so much for your time. Guys, if you've enjoyed this, make sure that you check Alex's YouTube channel out. It is fantastic. It's one of my favorites. As always, any comments, feedback that you have, feel free to get at me @ChrisWillX wherever you follow me. Like, share, subscribe, all that good stuff. But for now, Alex, thank you so much for your time.

    21. AS

      Of course.

    22. NA

      (music)

Episode duration: 1:05:27

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