Belief in the existence of at least one deity
POPULARITY
6 episodes with theist
24 episodes with theist
4 episodes with theist
10 episodes with theist
3 episodes with theist
4 episodes with theist
3 episodes with theist
2 episodes with theist
2 episodes with theist
Things go a little off the rails in this my first formal debate. The topic was "On The Existence of God". On the atheist side we have Michael Regilio and Jeff4truth on the theist side we have wifigospel and madebyjimbob. Although things get a bit heated, a good time was had by all. enjoy. more at dogmadebate.com
——- Your Daily Portion Sabbath School Lesson with LD “The Anomaly” HarrisL. David Harris- Download companion book that goes with the quarterly: https://yourdailyportion.com@LDisMyCoachThe Backbone of LeadershipBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/your-daily-portion-with-l-david-harris--2912188/support.
In this episode, we chat with John about rules or rulings and how this can support new GMs. I talk about how I am increasing the challenge level of our campaign, and I have a real issue with Theist miracles! Welcome to Mythras Matters Season 1 episode 57—Rules, Rulings, and OP Theists!SHOW Links:Tapatalk Forums: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/designmechanism/Link to the Mythras Discord: https://discord.gg/mythras-469341944888164352A Bird in the Hand: https://thedesignmechanism.com/a-bird-in-the-hand-pdf/If you would like to contact the podcast, then email inwils@gmail.comIntro Music: The Epic Orchestral by AnorMusic☕ Become a RPG supporter (Ko-Fi) ➡➡ https://ko-fi.com/inwils
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
Thank you for supporting Scholastic Answers NEW AQUINAS ACADEMY Link: https://www.christianbwagner.com/newaquinasacademy Discord: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~DePrinNat.C1 Donate: https://www.patreon.com/newaquinasacademy FURTHER RESOURCES To get Tutoring: https://www.christianbwagner.com/book-online Annotated Thomist: https://www.christianbwagner.com/annotated-thomist Scholastic Courses: https://www.christianbwagner.com/courses SPONSOR Use the code “Militant” for 20% off to learn Greek here: https://fluentgreeknt.com/ MUSIC https://youtu.be/ePYe3lqsu-g https://youtu.be/Hi5YgbiNB1U SUPPORT Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ5DQ8zCOmeAqOcKTbSb7fg Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/MilitantThomist Donate: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?business=9XM8FACTLFDW2&no_recurring=0&item_name=Support+my+Apostolate¤cy_code=USD SusbscribeStar: https://www.subscribestar.com/militant-thomist FOLLOW Website: https://www.christianbwagner.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MilitantThomist Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/543689120339579 Twitter: https://twitter.com/MilitantThomist Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/militantthomist/ WATCH https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ5DQ8zCOmeAqOcKTbSb7fg LISTEN Podcast: https://www.christianbwagner.com/podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0exZN1vHDyLuRjnUI3sHXt?si=XHs8risyS1ebLCkWwKLblQ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/militant-thomist/id1603094572 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/militantthomist SHOP Book Store: https://www.christianbwagner.com/shop Merch: https://www.christianbwagner.com/merch
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
If you can please consider supporting the channel Paypal: www.paypal.me/TomJump Patreon: www.pateron.com/TJump Church of the BPW: churchofthebestpossibleworld.org Start your own church today!
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
This Quoircast podcast episode is brought to you by The Seeds OF De(con)struction by Nat Turney. Published by Quoir and Available now.In this episode we talk with Jeff Turner.Jeff Turner is a husband and a father. Jeff is the author of two books – The Atheistic Theist and Saints In The Arms Of A Happy God. Jeff is also the host of the podcast - Religionless.You can follow Jeff on:Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTubeYou can find links to Jeff's book, podcast, as well as other cool stuff on his LinkTreeYou can also find his book The Atheistic Theist on Amazon.comYou can connect with This Is Not Church on:Facebook Instagram Twitter TikTok YouTubeAlso check out our Linktree for all things This Is Not Church relatedPlease like and follow our Quoircast Partners:Heretic Happy Hour Messy Spirituality Apostates Anonymous Second Cup with Keith The Church Needs TherapyIdeas Digest The New Evangelicals Snarky Faith Podcast Wild Olive Deadly FaithJonathan Foster Sacred Thoughts Holy Heretics Reframing Our StoriesEach episode of This Is Not Church Podcast is expertly engineered by our producer The Podcast Doctor Eric Howell. If you're thinking of starting a podcast you need to connect with Eric!
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
In this episode the guys interview an anti theist named Mike. Mike is an individual who is essentially against religion and helps others deconstruct their faith like he has. Tune in to hear all the details.
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/churchofthebpw Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/churchofthebpw Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
In today's episode of the Atheist Experience, Jim Barrows and Secular Rarity take on calls about divorce, single parents, trans women, and technology before Armin Navabi flies in to help.Andrea in FL calls to claim that atheism leads to higher divorce rates and that Christians have more satisfactory sex lives than atheists. How do you explain the Pew Research Center studies that contradict this claim? Is it more important to stay married and be miserable for the children or is it better to teach them about happiness? What is it specifically about being married and not getting a divorce that makes people better?Otari in the nation of Georgia proposes that children of single parent households are more likely to be delinquent. What studies do we have that single parent households are radically problematic? Could the problem be linked to only one income for the household and poverty? Other than income, how are two parents raising a child better than one? Is the real problem divorce, or is it socioeconomic status? Would abortion cut down on single parent households?Nate in CA asks if trans people competing in sports would have a physical advantage, and what the difference is between sex and gender. Some cis women can have naturally higher levels of testosterone than other cis women. In sports, why are we testing women for testosterone levels but not men? People can be born intersexed, and also be born with different gendered brains. We would rather be on the side of inclusivity to give everyone a chance to participate. Corey in TX asks how technology changing our environment affects our evolution, and is it causing it to speed up. We may be able to evolve to handle higher levels of pollution, but how rapidly do the pollution levels change? There can be a new species of hominids that evolves alongside homo sapiens. Theist in the USA claims that theists have better lives than atheists. There is nothing about community building that is better with religion, and there is no link of intelligence to either atheism or religion. There is no data to demonstrate that atheists are more likely to go down a bad path. If an action increases the overall happiness, then it is good. The evangelical stance on LGBTQA increases the number of suicides in that community, and that is a bad thing. Do NOT Google dolphins having sex with blow holes. Mr. Porter from IL asks what the worst evidence for god is. Jim mentions to look at the trees and Armin says it is the argument for chicken. Kathy in IL calls as an atheist attending the Unitarian Universalist Church, and explains how their model is not conversion, but cooperation. Compared to other religions, this may be good, but secular humanism is a better instrument. When a church seems loving and tolerant, but accepts bad ideas, we must oppose that. Thank you for tuning in this week! Question of the week is: What should the Norse have had a god of, but didn't?
In February of 1996 the Kansas University Debate Team sponsored a debate on the existence of God. The lecture hall was packed with 850 students in attendance to hear Pastor Alan Shelby debate with Dr. Gordon Stein. Dr. Stein was one of America's foremost scholars of atheism. He served as the editor of the American Rationalist, a secular humanist journal, as well as Free Inquiry magazine. He was also the librarian of the Center for Inquiry, which houses the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Dr. Stein had written seven books on atheist history and philosophy, including a well known pamphlet titled “How to Argue with a Theist and Win.” At the time, Pastor Shelby, now dean of the Living Faith Bible Institute, was serving as the college and young adults pastor at Kansas City Baptist Temple. This week on the Postscript, we have the privilege of sharing with you a remastered recording of that 1996 debate. DEBATE FORMAT: 20-Minute Opening Statement affirmative 20-Minute Opening Statement negative 10-Minute Rebuttal affirmative 10-Minute Rebuttal negative 5-Minute Closing affirmative 5-Minute Closing negative Q&A Forum Visit https://www.lfbi.org/learnmore
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/churchofthebpw Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
On today's special episode of the Talk Heathen we have three hosts! The amazing trio of Forrest Valkai, Jmike, and Jamie the Blind Limey make this an amazing episode. Kevin in OR is deconstructing his mennonite faith and is unable to shake the fear of going to hell. Religious trauma can be hard to get over, this even happens to people that haven't believed in decades. It fades over time, you'll realize you're thinking about it less and less. It may help to look into the origins of the hell belief, it's fascinating. Krissy in KS participated in a PAID in advance “digital seance” and felt really out of place. A family member paid to try to contact her deceased brother. We're very sorry for your loss and that you had to go through that. Gently talk to your family about your hesitancy with this scheme. Ben in TX is seeking advice after deconverting last week. Build a good epistemology and find or start a community of like minded people. You're also pretty close to us, come visit us on the last Sunday of every month. You're free to learn about and deconstruct every belief that pops up.Seven in GA wants to find a way to circumvent the weak vs hard atheist labels. Really it comes down to Theist or Atheist, Gnostic or Agnostic. Just make it about the belief, not the certainty of that belief. Ed in AL is frustrated by creationist debunks of evolution, like one kind of animal only creates the same kind. Oooh, great call for Forrest! There are examples across the fossil record of transitional “kinds”, actually everything is a transitional form. For the sake of argument, proving evolution wrong doesn't point to creationism or a god. Evolution is the logical conclusion of biology, your offspring is always slightly different. Thank you for tuning in to your community! This week's Talk Heathen To Me prompt is: What is biblical advice that could get you arrested?
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
Dave Brisbin 8.20.23 How do you know you're in love? Can you explain it, define it? Control it? Oh sure, you can talk about effects on your heartrate and attitude…but define, much less control? You just know. The train leaves the station, and you're on it. Great movie exchange between atheist and theist: atheist says she will only accept what she can prove scientifically. Theist thinks for a beat, then asks, do you love your father? Yes. Prove it. Jesus gets this. Said such spiritual processes are like the wind. You can't see it, only hear and see its effects. Can't know where it's going or coming from. Powerful, invisible, mysterious. In his usual enigmatic way as poet, Jesus is saying that love and spirit operate outside of logic and rationality. We can't define or control anything without thinking about it, and if we're thinking about it, we're not in it. The only way to fall into the complete loss of self we call love is to stop thinking, fall out of control. To be in love is to be out of control, out of our minds. Literally. The mind's job is to separate, compare and contrast, storing that information for quick retrieval. Great for survival, but to perceive ourselves as separate from, in competition with everyone and everything else is what creates all the misery we see and experience in our lives. The deeper truth is that we don't even exist independently as separate entities. Our only existence is in being connected to everything else, which is why it feels so good to be in love, to stand outside the mind that creates the illusion of separation. This is basic human nature, and why Jesus' main objective is to shock us out of our minds. Look at his words again. He's a poet, so you won't see it directly, but an ancient Chinese philosopher framed it perfectly, telling of a river, full of its power during a flood, emptying into the ocean and there facing the shock of its own insignificance, dependence on greater waters. Life will deliver such shocks naturally, but our minds resist the conclusion. Jesus is teaching an intentional Way, eliciting experiences that will shock us into a benevolent mental breakdown.
Dave Brisbin 8.20.23 How do you know you're in love? Can you explain it, define it? Control it? Oh sure, you can talk about effects on your heartrate and attitude…but define, much less control? You just know. The train leaves the station, and you're on it. Great movie exchange between atheist and theist: atheist says she will only accept what she can prove scientifically. Theist thinks for a beat, then asks, do you love your father? Yes. Prove it. Jesus gets this. Said such spiritual processes are like the wind. You can't see it, only hear and see its effects. Can't know where it's going or coming from. Powerful, invisible, mysterious. In his usual enigmatic way as poet, Jesus is saying that love and spirit operate outside of logic and rationality. We can't define or control anything without thinking about it, and if we're thinking about it, we're not in it. The only way to fall into the complete loss of self we call love is to stop thinking, fall out of control. To be in love is to be out of control, out of our minds. Literally. The mind's job is to separate, compare and contrast, storing that information for quick retrieval. Great for survival, but to perceive ourselves as separate from, in competition with everyone and everything else is what creates all the misery we see and experience in our lives. The deeper truth is that we don't even exist independently as separate entities. Our only existence is in being connected to everything else, which is why it feels so good to be in love, to stand outside the mind that creates the illusion of separation. This is basic human nature, and why Jesus' main objective is to shock us out of our minds. Look at his words again. He's a poet, so you won't see it directly, but an ancient Chinese philosopher framed it perfectly, telling of a river, full of its power during a flood, emptying into the ocean and there facing the shock of its own insignificance, dependence on greater waters. Life will deliver such shocks naturally, but our minds resist the conclusion. Jesus is teaching an intentional Way, eliciting experiences that will shock us into a benevolent mental breakdown.
If you can, please consider donating to my paypal/patreon so I can keep the debates and conversations going https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=8K8M7MDSXVG2E -----------------------------------------CONNECT------------------------------------------ SOCIAL LINKS: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tjump Discord: https://discord.gg/tjump Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TJump_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tom.jump.982 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tjump_/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tjumpschair Tictok: @tjumpschair TJump Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6PnoL9QDYnkiUvykmlLQQ ----------------------------------------CONTACT------------------------------------------- Business email: tejump@comcast.net #atheism #nonbelief #agnosticism #rationalthinking #debunkingmyths #moralitywithoutgod #humanism #freespeech #skepticism #secularism
Listen on: * Spotify* Apple Podcasts* Google PodcastsNote: the core discussion on ethics begins at 7:58 and moves into philosophy of language at ~1:12:19Daniel's stuff:* AI X-risk podcast * The Filan Cabined podcast* Personal website and blogBlurb and bulleted summary from ClongThis wide-ranging conversation between Daniel and Aaron touches on movies, business drama, philosophy of language, ethics and legal theory. The two debate major ethical concepts like utilitarianism and moral realism. Thought experiments around rational beings choosing to undergo suffering feature prominently. meandering tangents explore the semantics of names and references.* Aaron asserts that total utilitarianism does not imply that any amount of suffering can be morally justified by creating more happiness. His argument is that the affirmative case for this offsetting ability has not been clearly made.* He proposes a thought experiment - if offered to experience the suffering of all factory farmed animals in exchange for unlimited happiness, even a perfectly rational being would refuse. This indicates there are some levels of suffering not offsettable.* Aaron links this to experiences like hunger where you realize suffering can be worse than you appreciate normally. This causes his intuition some suffering can't be outweighed.* Daniel disagrees, believing with the right probabilities and magnitudes of suffering versus happiness, rational beings would take that gamble.* For example, Daniel thinks the atomic bombing of Japan could be offset by reducing more suffering. Aaron is less sure given the pain inflicted.* Daniel also proposes offsets for animal farming, but Aaron doesn't think factory farming harm is offsettable by any amount of enjoyment of meat.* They discuss definitions of rationality and whether evolution pressures against suicide impact the rationality of not killing oneself.* Aaron ties his argument to siding with what a perfectly rational being would choose to experience, not necessarily what they would prefer.* They debate whether hypothetical aliens pursuing "schmorality" could point to a concept truly analogous to human morality. Aaron believes not.Transcript(Very imperfect)AARONO'how's, it going it's going all right.DANIELYeah, I just so yesterday I saw Barbie and today I saw Oppenheimer, so it's good to oh, cool. That cultural.AARONNice, nice.DANIELDo you have takes? Yeah, I thought it was all right. It was a decent view of Oppenheimer as a person. It was like a how? I don't know. I feel like the public can tend to be taken in by this physicist figures you get this with quotes, right? Like, the guy was just very good at having fun with journalists, and now we get these amazing nuggets of wisdom from Einstein. I don't know. I think that guy was just having good I don't know. The thing that I'm coming away from is I thought I only watched Barbie because it was coming out on the same day as Oppenheimer, right? Like, otherwise it wouldn't have occurred to me to watch it. I was like, yeah, whatever. Barbie is, like, along for the ride, and Oppenheimer is going to be amazing, but in like, maybe Oppenheimer was a bit better than Barbie, but I'm not even sure of that, actually.AARONYeah, I've been seeing people say that on Twitter. I haven't seen either, but I've been seeing several people say that I'm following, say, like, Barbie was exceptional. And also that kind of makes sense because I'm following all these EA people who are probably care more about the subject matter for the latter one. So it's like, I kind of believe that Barbie is, like, aesthetically better or something. That's my take. Right.DANIELGuess. Well, if you haven't seen them, I guess I don't want to spoil them for you. They're trying to do different things aesthetically. Right. Like, I'm not quite sure I'd want to say one is aesthetically better. Probably in some ways, I think Barbie probably has more aesthetic blunders than Oppenheimer does. Okay. But yeah, I don't know if you haven't seen it, I feel like I don't want to spoil it for you.AARONOkay. No, that's fine. This isn't supposed to be like probably isn't the most important the most interesting thing we could be talking about is that the bar?DANIELOh, jeez.AARONOh, no, that's a terrible bar. That was like an overstatement. That would be a very high bar. It would also be, like, kind of paralyzing. I don't know. Actually know what that would be, honestly. Probably some social juicy gossip thing. Not that we necessarily have any.DANIELYeah, I think your interestingness. Yeah, I think I don't have the know, the closest to gossip thing I saw was like, do you see this bit of Carolyn Elson's diaries and letters to SBF that was leaked to the.AARONNo, I don't. Was this like today or recently? How recently?DANIELThis was like a few days ago.AARONI've been seeing her face on Twitter, but I don't actually think I know anything about this. And no, I would not have.DANIELBackground of who she is and stuff.AARONYeah, hold on. Let the audience know that I am on a beach family vacation against my will. Just kidding. Not against my will. And I have to text my sister back. Okay, there we go. I mean, I broadly know the FTX story. I know that she was wait, I'm like literally blanking on the Alameda.DANIELThat's the name of research.AARONOkay. Yeah. So she was CEO, right? Yeah. Or like some sort of like I think I know the basics.DANIELThe like, she was one of the OG Stanford EA people and was around.AARONYeah, that's like a generation. Not an actual generation, like an EA generation. Which is what, like six years or.DANIELLike the I don't know, I've noticed like, in the there's like I feel like there's this gap between pre COVID people and post COVID people. No one left their house. Partly people moved away, but also you were inside for a while and never saw anyone in person. So it felt like, oh, there's like this crop of new people or something. Whereas in previous years, there'd be some number of new people per year and they'd get gradually integrated in. Anyway, all that is to say that, I don't know, I think SBF's side of the legal battle leaked some documents to The New York Times, which were honestly just like her saying, like, oh, I feel very stressed and I don't like my job, and I'm sort of glad that the thing is blown up now. I don't know. It honestly wasn't that salacious. But I think that's, like, the way I get in the loop on gossip like some of the New York Times.AARONAnd I eventually I love how it's funny that this particular piece of gossip is, like, running through the most famous and prestigious news organization in the world. Or, like, one of them or something. Yeah. Instead of just being like, oh, yeah, these two people are dating, or whatever. Anyway, okay, I will maybe check that out.DANIELYeah, I mean, honestly, it's not even that interesting.AARONThe whole thing is pretty I am pretty. This is maybe bad, but I can't wait to watch the Michael Lewis documentary, pseudo documentary or whatever.DANIELYeah, it'll be good to read the book. Yeah, it's very surreal. I don't know. I was watching Oppenheimer. Right. And I have to admit, part of what I'm thinking is be if humanity survives, there's going to be this style movie about open AI, presumably, right? And I'm like, oh, man, it'll be amazing to see my friend group depicted on film. But that is going to happen. It's just going to be about FTX and about how they're all criminals. So that's not great.AARONYeah, actually, everybody dunks on crypto now, and it's like low status now or whatever. I still think it's really cool. I never had more than maybe $2,000 or whatever, which is not a trivial I mean, it's not a large amount of my money either, but it's not like, nothing. But I don't know, if it wasn't for all the cultural baggage, I feel like I would be a crypto bro or I would be predisposed to being a crypto bro or something.DANIELYeah. I should say I was like joking about the greedy crypto people who want their money to not be stolen. I currently have a Monero sticker on the back of my a big I don't know, I'm a fan of the crypto space. It seems cool. Yeah. I guess especially the bit that is less about running weird scams. The bit that's running weird scams I'm less of a fan of.AARONYeah. Yes. I'm also anti scam. Right, thank you. Okay, so I think that thing that we were talking about last time we talked, which is like the thing I think we actually both know stuff about instead of just like, repeating New York Times articles is my nuanced ethics takes and why you think about talk about that and then we can just also branch off from there.DANIELYeah, we can talk about that.AARONMaybe see where that did. I luckily I have a split screen up, so I can pull up things. Maybe this is kind of like egotistical or something to center my particular view, but you've definitely given me some of the better pushback or whatever that I haven't gotten that much feedback of any kind, I guess, but it's still interesting to hear your take. So basically my ethical position or the thing that I think is true is that which I think is not the default view. I think most people think this is wrong is that total utilitarianism does not imply that for some amount of suffering that could be created there exists some other extremely large arbitrarily, large amount of happiness that could also be created which would morally justify the former. Basically.DANIELSo you think that even under total utilitarianism there can be big amounts of suffering such that there's no way to morally tip the calculus. However much pleasure you can create, it's just not going to outweigh the fact that you inflicted that much suffering on some people.AARONYeah, and I'd highlight the word inflicted if something's already there and you can't do anything about it, that's kind of neither here nor there as it pertains to your actions or something. So it's really about you increasing, you creating suffering that wouldn't have otherwise been created. Yeah. It's also been a couple of months since I've thought about this in extreme detail, although I thought about it quite a bit. Yeah.DANIELMaybe I should say my contrary view, I guess, when you say that, I don't know, does total utilitarianism imply something or not? I'm like, well, presumably it depends on what we mean by total utilitarianism. Right. So setting that aside, I think that thesis is probably false. I think that yeah. You can offset great amounts of suffering with great amounts of pleasure, even for arbitrary amounts of suffering.AARONOkay. I do think that position is like the much more common and even, I'd say default view. Do you agree with that? It's sort of like the implicit position of people who are of self described total utilitarians who haven't thought a ton about this particular question.DANIELYeah, I think it's probably the implicit default. I think it's the implicit default in ethical theory or something. I think that in practice, when you're being a utilitarian, I don't know, normally, if you're trying to be a utilitarian and you see yourself inflicting a large amount of suffering, I don't know. I do think there's some instinct to be like, is there any way we can get around this?AARONYeah, for sure. And to be clear, I don't think this would look like a thought experiment. I think what it looks like in practice and also I will throw in caveats as I see necessary, but I think what it looks like in practice is like, spreading either wild animals or humans or even sentient digital life through the universe. That's in a non as risky way, but that's still just maybe like, say, making the earth, making multiple copies of humanity or something like that. That would be an example that's probably not like an example of what an example of creating suffering would be. For example, just creating another duplicate of earth. Okay.DANIELAnything that would be like so much suffering that we shouldn't even the pleasures of earth outweighs.AARONNot necessarily, which is kind of a cop out. But my inclination is that if you include wild animals, the answer is yes, that creating another earth especially. Yeah, but I'm much more committed to some amount. It's like some amount than this particular time and place in human industry is like that or whatever.DANIELOkay, can I get a feel of some other concrete cases to see?AARONYeah.DANIELSo one example that's on my mind is, like, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right? So the standard case for this is, like, yeah, what? A hundred OD thousand people died? Like, quite terrible, quite awful. And a lot of them died, I guess a lot of them were sort of some people were sort of instantly vaporized, but a lot of people died in extremely painful ways. But the countercase is like, well, the alternative to that would have been like, an incredibly grueling land invasion of Japan, where many more people would have died or know regardless of what the actual alternatives were. If you think about the atomic bombings, do you think that's like the kind of infliction of suffering where there's just not an offsetting amount of pleasure that could make that okay?AARONMy intuition is no, that it is offsettable, but I would also emphasize that given the actual historical contingencies, the alternative, the implicit case for the bombing includes reducing suffering elsewhere rather than merely creating happiness. There can definitely be two bad choices that you have to make or something. And my claim doesn't really pertain to that, at least not directly.DANIELRight. Sorry. But when you said you thought your answer was no, you think you can't offset that with pleasure?AARONMy intuition is that you can, but I know very little about how painful those deaths were and how long they lasted.DANIELYeah, so the non offset so it's like, further out than atomic bombing.AARONThat's my guess, but I'm like.DANIELOkay, sure, that's your guess. You're not super confident. That's fine. I guess another thing would be, like, the animal farming system. So, as you're aware, tons of animals get kept in farms for humans to eat, by many count. Many of them live extremely horrible lives. Is there some amount that humans could enjoy meat such that that would be okay?AARONNo. So the only reason I'm hesitating is because, like, the question is, like, what the actual alternative is here, but, like, if it's like, if it's, like, people enjoy, like, a meat a normal amount and there's no basically the answer is no. Although, like, what I would actually endorse doing depends on what the alternative is.DANIELOkay, but you think that factory farming is so bad that it's not offsettable by pleasure.AARONYeah, that's right. I'm somewhat maybe more confident than the atomic bombing case, but again, I don't know what it's like to be a factory farm pig. I wouldn't say I'm, like, 99% sure. Probably more than 70% or something. Or 70%, like, conditional on me being right about this thesis, I guess something like that, which I'm like. Yeah, okay. I don't know. Some percent, maybe, not probably not 99% sure, but also more than 60. Probably more than 70% sure or something.DANIELAll right. Yeah. So I guess maybe can you tell us a little bit about why you would believe that there's some threshold that you like where you can no longer compensate by permitting pleasure?AARONYes. Let me run through my argument and sort of a motivation, and the motivation actually is sort of more a direct answer to what you just said. So the actual argument that I have and I have a blog post about this that I'll link, it was part of an EA forum post also that you'll also link in the show description is that the affirmative default case doesn't seem to actually be made anywhere. That's not the complete argument, but it's a core piece of it, which is that it seems to be, like, the default received view, which doesn't mean it's wrong, but does mean that we should be skeptical. If you accept that I'm right, that the affirmative case hasn't been made, we can talk about that. Then you should default to some other heuristic. And the heuristic that I assert and sort of argue, but kind of just assert is a good heuristic is. Okay. Is you do the following thought experiment. If I was a maximally or perfectly rational being, would I personally choose to undergo this amount of suffering in compensation or not compensation, exchange for later undergoing or earlier undergoing some arbitrarily large amount of happiness. And I personally have the intuition that there are events or things that certainly conceivable states and almost certainly possible states that I could be in such that even as a rational being, like as a maximum rational being, I would choose to just disappear and not exist rather than undergo both of these things.DANIELOkay.AARONYeah.DANIELWhy do you think that?AARONYeah, so good question. I think the answer comes at a couple of different levels. So there's a question of why I'm saying it and why I'm saying it is because I'm pretty sure this is the answer I would actually give if actually given if Credibly offered this option. But that just pushes the question back. Okay, why do I feel that.DANIELEven what option are we talking about here? There exists a thing such that for.AARONAll pleasures, basically, for example, let's just run with the fact, the assumption that a genie God descends. And I think it's credible, and he offers that I can live the life of every factory, farmed animal in exchange for whatever I want for any amount of time or something like that. Literally, I don't have to give the answer now. It can just be like an arbitrarily good state for an arbitrarily long period of time.DANIELOh, yeah.AARONAnd not only would I say the words no, I don't want to do that, I think that the words no, I don't want to do that, are selfishly in a non pejorative sense. Correct. And then there's a question of why do I have that intuition? And now I'm introspecting, which is maybe not super reliable. I think part of my intuition that I can kind of maybe sort of access via introspection just comes from basically, I'm very fortunate to not have had a mostly relatively comfortable life, like as a Westerner with access to painkillers, living in the 21st century. Even still, there have definitely been times when I've been suffered, at least not in a relative sense, but just like, in an absolute sense to me, in a pretty bad way. And one example I can give was just like, I was on a backpacking trip, and this is the example I give in another blog post I can link. I was on a backpacking trip, and we didn't have enough food, and I was basically very hungry for like five days. And I actually think that this is a good and I'm rambling on, but I'll finish up. I think it's illustrative. I think there's some level of suffering where you're still able to do at least for me, I'm still able to do something like reasoning and intentionally storing memories. One of the memories I tried to intentionally codify via language or something was like, yeah, this is really bad, this really sucks, or something like, that what.DANIELSucked about it, you were just like, really hungry yeah.AARONFor five days.DANIELOkay. And you codified the thought, like, feeling of this hunger I'm feeling, this really sucks.AARONSomething like that. Right. I could probably explicate it more, but that's basically okay. Actually, hold on. All right. Let me add so not just it really sucks, but it sucks in a way that I can't normally appreciate, so I don't normally have access to how bad it sucks. I don't want to forget about this later or something.DANIELYeah. The fact that there are pains that are really bad where you don't normally appreciate how bad they are, it's not clear how that implies non offset ability.AARONRight, I agree. It doesn't.DANIELOkay.AARONI do think that's causally responsible for my intuition that I lend link to a heuristic that I then argue does constitute an argument in the absence of other arguments for offset ability.DANIELYeah. Okay. So that causes this intuition, and then you give some arguments, and the argument is like, you think that if a genie offered you to live liable factory farmed animals in exchange for whatever you wanted, you wouldn't go for that.AARONYes. And furthermore, I also wouldn't go for it if I was much more rational.DANIELIf you were rational, yeah. Okay. Yeah. What do I think about this? One thing I think is that the I think the case of live experience this suffering and then experience this pleasure, to me, I think that this is kind of the wrong way to go about this. Because the thing about experiencing suffering is that it's not just we don't live in this totally dualistic world where suffering just affects only your immaterial mind or something in a way where afterwards you could just be the same. In the real world, suffering actually affects you. Right. Perhaps indelibly. I think instead, maybe the thing I'd want to say is suppose you're offered a gamble, right, where there's like a 1% chance that you're going to have to undergo excruciating suffering and a 99% chance that you get extremely awesome pleasures or something.AARONYeah.DANIELAnd this is meant to model a situation in which you do some action in which one person is going to undergo really bad suffering and 99 other people are going to undergo really great pleasure. And to me, I guess my intuition is that for any bad thing, you could make the probability small enough and you can make the rest of the probability mass good enough that I want to do that. I feel like that's worth it for me. And now it feels a little bit unsatisfying that we're just going that we're both drilling down to, like, well, this is the choice I would make, and then maybe you can disagree that it's the choice you would make. But yeah, I guess about the gambling case, what do you think about that? Let's say it's literally a one in a million chance that you would have to undergo, let's say, the life of one factory farmed animal.AARONYeah.DANIELOr is that not enough? Do you want it to be like, more?AARONWell, I guess it would have to be like one of the worst factory farmed animals. Life, I think would make that like.DANIELYeah, okay, let's say it's like, maybe literally one in a billion chance.AARONFirst of all, I do agree that these are basically isomorphic or morally equivalent, or if anything, time ordering in my example does mess things up a little bit, I'll be happy to reverse them or say that instead compare one person to 1000 people. So, yeah, you can make the probability small enough that my intuition changes. Yeah. So in fact, 1%, I'm very like, no, definitely not doing that. One in a million. I'm like, I don't know, kind of 50 50. I don't have a strong intuition either way. 100 trillion. I have the intuition. You know what? That's just not going to happen. That's my first order intuition. I do think that considering the case where you live, one being lives both lives, or you have, say, one being undergoing the suffering and then like 100 trillion undergoing the pleasure makes small probabilities more if you agree that they're sort of isomorphic makes them more complete or something like that, or complete more real in some. Not tangible is not the right word, but more right.DANIELYou're less tempted to round it to zero.AARONYeah. And so I tend to think that I trust my intuitions more about reasoning. Okay, there's one person undergoing suffering and like 100 trillion undergoing happiness as it pertains to the question of offset ability more than I trust my intuitions about small probabilities.DANIELI guess that's strange because that strikes me as strange because I feel like you're regularly in situations where you make choices that have some probability of causing you quite bad suffering, but a large probability of being fun. Like going to the beach. There could be a shark there. I guess this is maybe against your will, but you can go to a restaurant, maybe get food poisoning, but how often are you like, oh man, if I flip this switch, one person will be poisoned, but 99 people will?AARONWell, then you'd have to think that, okay, staying home would actually be safer for some reason, which I don't affirmatively think is true, but this actually does work out for the question of whether you should kill yourself. And there hopefully this doesn't get censored by Apple or whatever, so nobody do that. But there I just think that my lizard brain or there's enough evolutionary pressure to not trust that I would be rational when it comes to the question of whether to avoid a small chance of suffering by unaliving myself, as they say on TikTok.DANIELHang on, evolution is pressured. So there's some evolutionary pressure to make sure you really don't want to kill yourself, but you think that's like, irrational.AARONI haven't actually given this a ton of thought. It gets hard when you loop in altruism and yeah, the question also there's like some chance that of sentient's after death, there's not literally zero or something like that. Yeah, I guess those are kind of cop outs. So I don't know, I feel like it certainly could be. And I agree this is sort of like a strike against my argument or something. I can set up a situation you have no potential to improve the lives of others, and you can be absolutely sure that you're not going to experience any sentience after death. And then I feel like my argument does kind of imply that, yeah, that's like the rational thing to do. I wouldn't do it. Right. So I agree. This is like a strike against me.DANIELYeah. I guess I just want to make two points. So the first point I want to make is just methodologically. If we're talking about which are you likely to be more rational about gambles of small risks, small probabilities of risk versus large rewards as opposed to situations where you can do a thing that affects a large number of people one way and a small number of people another way? I think the gambles are more like decisions that you make a bunch and you should be rational about and then just the second thing in terms of like, I don't know, I took you to be making some sort of argument along the lines of there's evolutionary pressure to want to not kill yourself. Therefore, that's like a debunking explanation. The fact that there was evolutionary pressure to not kill ourselves means that our instinct that we shouldn't kill ourselves is irrational. Whereas I would tend to look at it and say the fact that there was very strong evolutionary pressure to not kill ourselves is an explanation of why I don't want to kill myself. And I see that as affirming the choice to not kill myself, actually.AARONWell, I just want to say I don't think it's an affirmative argument that it is irrational. I think it opens up the question. I think it means it's more plausible that for other I guess not even necessarily for other reasons, but it just makes it more plausible that it is irrational. Well.DANIELYeah, I take exactly the opposite view. Okay. I think that if I'm thinking about, like, oh, what do I really want? If I consider my true preferences, do I really want to kill myself or something? And then I learn that, oh, evolution has shaped me to not kill myself, I think the inference I should make is like, oh, I guess probably the way evolution did that is that it made it such that my true desires are to not kill myself.AARONYeah. So one thing is I just don't think preferences have any intrinsic value. So I don't know, we might just like I guess I should ask, do you agree with that or disagree with.DANIELThat do I think preferences have intrinsic value? No, but so no, but I think like, the whole game here is like, what do I prefer? Or like, what would I prefer if I understood things really clearly?AARONYes. And this is something I didn't really highlight or maybe I didn't say it at all, is that I forget if I really argue it or kind of just assert it, but I at least assert that the answer to hedonic utilitarian. What you should do under hedonic utilitarianism is maybe not identical to, but exactly the same as what a rational agent would do or what a rational agent would prefer if they were to experience everything that this agent would cause. Or something like that. And so these should give you the exact same answers is something I believe sure. Because I do think preferences are like we're built to understand or sort of intuit and reason about our own preferences.DANIELKind of, yeah. But broadly, I guess the point I'm making at a high level is just like if we're talking about what's ethical or what's good or whatever, I take this to ultimately be a question about what should I understand myself as preferring? Or to the extent that it's not a question of that, then it's like, I don't know, then I'm a bit less interested in the exercise.AARONYeah. It's not ideal that I appeal to this fake and that fake ideally rational being or something. But here's a reason you might think it's more worth thinking about this. Maybe you've heard about I think Tomasic makes an argument about yeah. At least in principle, you can have a pig that's in extreme pain but really doesn't want to be killed still or doesn't want to be taken out of its suffering or whatever, true ultimate preference or whatever. And so at least I think this is pretty convincing evidence that you can have where that's just like, wrong about what would be good for it, you know what I mean?DANIELYeah, sorry, I'm not talking about preference versus hedonic utilitarianism or anything. I'm talking about what do I want or what do I want for living things or something. That's what I'm talking about.AARONYeah. That language elicits preferences to me and I guess the analogous but the idea.DANIELIs that the answer to what I want for living things could be like hedonic utilitarianism, if you see what I mean.AARONOr it could be by that do you mean what hedonic utilitarianism prescribes?DANIELYeah, it could be that what I want is that just whatever maximizes beings pleasure no matter what they want.AARONYeah. Okay. Yeah, so I agree with that.DANIELYeah. So anyway, heading back just to the suicide case right. If I learn that evolution has shaped me to not want to kill myself, then that makes me think that I'm being rational in my choice to not kill myself.AARONWhy?DANIELBecause being rational is something like optimally achieving your goals. And I'm a little bit like I sort of roughly know the results of killing myself, right? There might be some question about like, but what are my goals? And if I learned that evolution has shaped my goals such that I would hate killing myself right, then I'm like, oh, I guess killing myself probably ranks really low on the list of states ordered by how much I like them.AARONYeah, I guess then it seems like you have two mutually incompatible goals. Like, one is staying alive and one is hedonic utilitarianism and then you have to choose which of these predominates or whatever.DANIELYeah, well, I think that to the extent that evolution is shaping me to not want to commit suicide, it looks like the not killing myself one is winning. I think it's evidence. I don't think it's conclusive. Right. Because there could be multiple things going on. But I take evolutionary explanations for why somebody would want X. I think that's evidence that they are rational in pursuing X rather than evidence that they are irrational in pursuing X.AARONSometimes that's true, but not always. Yeah, there's a lot in general it is. Yeah. But I feel like moral anti realistic, we can also get into that. Are going to not think this is like woo or Joe Carl Smith says when he's like making fun of moralists I don't know, in a tongue in cheek way. In one of his posts arguing for explicating his stance on antirealism basically says moral realists want to say that evolution is not sensitive to moral reasons and therefore evolutionary arguments. Actually, I don't want to quote him from memory. I'll just assert that evolution is sensitive to a lot of things, but one of them is not moral reasons and therefore evolutionary arguments are not a good evidence or are not good evidence when it comes to purely, maybe not even purely, but philosophical claims or object level moral claims, I guess, yeah, they can be evidenced by something, but not that.DANIELYeah, I think that's wrong because I think that evolution why do I think it's wrong? I think it's wrong because what are we talking about when we talk about morality? We're talking about some logical object that's like the completion of a bunch of intuitions we have. Right. And those I haven't thought about intuitions are the product of evolution. The reason we care about morality at all is because of evolution under the standard theory that evolution is the reason our brains are the way they are.AARONYeah, I think this is a very strange coincidence and I am kind of weirded out by this, but yes, I.DANIELDon'T think it's a coincidence or like not a coincidence.AARONSo it's not a coincidence like conditional honor, evolutionary history. It is like no extremely lucky or something that we like, of course we'd find it earthlings wound up with morality and stuff. Well, of course you would.DANIELWait. Have you read the metafic sequence by Elizar? Yudkowski.AARONI don't think so. And I respect Elias a ton, except I think he's really wrong about ethics and meta ethics in a lot of like I don't even know if I but I have not, so I'm not really giving them full time.DANIELOkay. I don't know. I basically take this from my understanding of the meta ethics sequence, which I recommend people read, but I don't think it's a coincidence. I don't think we got lucky. I think it's a coincidence. There are some species that get evolved, right, and they end up caring about schmorality, right?AARONYeah.DANIELAnd there are some species that get evolved, right? And they end up caring about the prime numbers or whatever, and we evolved and we ended up caring about morality. And it's not like a total so, okay, partly I'm just like, yeah, each one of them is really glad they didn't turn out to be the other things. The ones that care about two of.AARONThem are wrong, but two of them are wrong.DANIELWell, they're morally wrong. Two of them do morally wrong things all the time. Right?AARONI want to say that I hate when people say that. Sorry. So what I am saying is that you can call those by different names, but if I'm understanding this argument right, they all think that they're getting at the same core concept, which is like, no, what should we do in some okay, so does schmorality have any sort of normativity?DANIELNo, it has schmormativity.AARONOkay, well, I don't know what schmormativity is.DANIELYou know how normativity I feel like that's good. Schmormativity is about promoting the schmud.AARONOkay, so it sounds like that's just normativity, except it's normativity about different propositions. That's what it sounds like.DANIELWell, basically, I don't know, instead of these schmalians wait, no, they're aliens. They're not shmalians. They're aliens. They just do a bunch of schmud things, right? They engage in projects, they try and figure out what the schmud is. They pursue a schmud and then they look at humans, they're like, oh, these humans are doing morally good things. That's horrible. I'm so glad that we pursue the schmood instead.AARONYeah, I don't know if it's incoherent. I don't think they're being incoherent. Your description of a hypothetical let's just take for granted whatever in the thought experiment is in fact happening. I think your description is not correct. And the reason it's not correct is because there is like, what's a good analogy? So when it comes to abstract concepts in general, it is very possible for okay, I feel like it's hard to explain directly, but here an analogy, is you can have two different people who have very different conceptions of justice, but fundamentally are earnestly trying to get at the same thing. Maybe justice isn't well defined or isn't like, actually, I should probably have come up with a good example here. But you know what? I'm happy to change the word for what I use as morality or whatever, but it has the same core meaning, which is like, okay, really, what should you do at the end of the day?DANIELYeah.AARONWhat should you do?DANIELWhereas they care about morality, which is what they should do, which is a different thing. They have strong desires to do what they should do.AARONI don't think it is coherent to say that there are multiple meanings of the word should or multiple kinds. Yeah.DANIELNo, there aren't.AARONSorry. There aren't multiple meanings of the word should. Fine.DANIELThere's just a different word, which is schmood, which means something different, and that's what their desires are pegged to.AARONI don't think it's coherent, given what you've already the entire picture, I think, is incoherent. Given everything else besides the word schmoud, it is incoherent to assert that there is something broadly not analogous, like maybe isomorphic to normativity or, like, the word should. Yeah. There is only what's yeah. I feel like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be able to verbalize it super well. I do. Yeah. Can you take something can you pick.DANIELA sentence that I said that was wrong or that was incoherent?AARONWell, it's all wrong because these aliens don't exist.DANIELThe aliens existed.AARONOkay, well, then we're debating, like, I actually don't know. It depends. You're asserting something about their culture and psychology, and then the question is, like, are you right or wrong about that? If we just take for granted that you're right, then you're right. All right. I'm saying no, you can't be sure. So conditional on being right, you're right. Then there's a question of, like, okay, what is the probability? So, like, conditional on aliens with something broad, are you willing to accept this phrase, like, something broadly analogous to morality? Is that okay?DANIELYeah, sure.AARONOkay. So if we accept that there's aliens with something broadly analogous to morality, then you want to say that they can have not only a different word, but truly a pointer to a different concept. And I think that's false.DANIELSo you think that in conceptual space, there's morality and that there's, like, nothing near it for miles.AARONThe study, like yeah, basically. At least when we're talking about, like, the like, at the at the pre conclusion stage. So, like, before you get to the point where you're like, oh, yeah, I'm certain that, like, the answer is just that we need, like, we need to make as many tennis balls as possible or whatever the general thing of, like, okay, broadly, what is the right thing to do? What should I do? Would it be good for me to do this cluster of things yeah. Is, like, miles from everything else.DANIELOkay. I think there's something true to that. I think I agree with that in some ways and on others, my other response is I think it's not a total coincidence that humans ended up caring about morality. I think if you look at these evolutionary arguments for why humans would be motivated to pursue morality. They rely on very high level facts. Like, there are a bunch of humans around. There's not one human who's, like, a billion times more powerful than everyone else. We have language. We talk through things. We reason. We need to make decisions. We need to cooperate in certain ways to produce stuff. And it's not about the fact that we're bipedal or something. So in that sense, I think it's not a total coincidence that we ended up caring about morality. And so in some sense, I think because that's true, you could maybe say you couldn't slightly tweak our species that it cared about something other than morality, which is kind of like saying that there's nothing that close to morality in concept space.AARONBut I think I misspoke earlier what I should have said is that it's very weird that we care about that most people at least partially care about suffering and happiness. I think that's just a true statement. Sorry, that is the weird thing. Why is it weird? The weird thing is that it happens to be correct, even though I only.DANIELHave what do you mean it's correct?AARONNow we have to get okay, so this is going into moral realism. I think moral realism is true, at least.DANIELSorry, what do you mean by moral realism? Wait, different by moral realism?AARONYes. So I actually have sort of a weak version of moral realism, which is, like, not that normative statements are true, but that there is, like, an objective. So if you can rank hypothetical states of the world in an ordinal way such that one is objectively better than another.DANIELYes. Okay. I agree with that, by the way. I think that's true. Okay.AARONIt sounds like you're a moral realist.DANIELYeah, I am.AARONOkay. Oh, really? Okay. I don't know. I thought you weren't. Okay, cool.DANIELLots of people in my reference class aren't. I think most Bay Area rationalists are not moral realists, but I am.AARONOkay. Maybe I was confused. Okay, that's weird. Okay. Sorry about that. Wait, so what do I mean by it happens to be true? It's like it happens to coincide with yeah, sorry, go ahead.DANIELYou said it happens to be correct that we care about morality or that we care about suffering and pleasure and something and stuff.AARONMaybe that wasn't the ideal terminology it happens to so, like, it's not morally correct? The caring about it isn't the morally correct thing. It seems sort of like the caring is instrumentally useful in promoting what happens to be legitimately good or something. Or, like legitimately good or something like that.DANIELBut but I think, like so the aliens could say a similar thing, right? They could say, like, oh, hey, we've noticed that we all care about schmurality. We all really care about promoting Schmeasure and avoiding Schmuffering. Right? And they'd say, like, they'd say, like, yeah, what's? What's wrong?AARONI feel like it's not maybe I'm just missing something, but at least to me, it's like, only adding to the confusion to talk about two different concepts of morality rather than just like, okay, this alien thinks that you should tile the universe paperclips, or something like that, or even that more reasonably, more plausibly. Justice is like that. Yeah. I guess this gets back to there's only one concept anywhere near that vicinity in concept space or something. Maybe we disagree about that. Yeah.DANIELOkay. If I said paperclips instead of schmorality, would you be happy?AARONYes.DANIELI mean, cool, okay, for doing the.AARONMorally correct thing and making me happy.DANIELI strive to. But take the paperclipper species, right? What they do is they notice, like, hey, we really care about making paperclips, right? And, hey, the fact that we care about making paperclips, that's instrumentally useful in making sure that we end up making a bunch of paperclips, right? Isn't that an amazing coincidence that we ended up caring our desires were structured in this correct way that ends up with us making a bunch of paperclips. Is that like, oh, no, total coincidence. That's just what you cared about.AARONYou left at the part where they assert that they're correct about this. That's the weird thing.DANIELWhat proposition are they correct about?AARONOr sorry, I don't think they're correct implicitly.DANIELWhat proposition do they claim they're correct about?AARONThey claim that the world in which there is many paperclips is better than the world in which there is fewer paperclips.DANIELOh, no, they just think it's more paperclipy. They don't think it's better. They don't care about goodness. They care about paperclips.AARONSo it sounds like we're not talking about anything remotely like morality, then, because I could say, yeah, morality, morality. It's pretty airy. It's a lot of air in here. I don't know, maybe I'm just confused.DANIELNo, what I'm saying is, so you're like, oh, it's like this total coincidence that humans we got so lucky. It's so weird that humans ended up caring about morality, and it's like, well, we had to care about something, right? Like anything we don't care about.AARONOh, wow, sorry, I misspoke earlier. And I think that's generating some confusion. I think it's a weird coincidence that we care about happiness and suffering.DANIELHappiness and suffering, sorry. Yeah, but mutatus mutantus, I think you want to say that's like a weird coincidence. And I'm like, well, we had to care about something.AARONYeah, but it could have been like, I don't know, could it have been otherwise, right? At least conceivably it could have been otherwise.DANIELYeah, the paperclip guys, they're like, conceivably, we could have ended up caring about pleasure and suffering. I'm so glad we avoided that.AARONYeah, but they're wrong and we're right.DANIELRight about what?AARONAnd then maybe I don't agree. Maybe this isn't the point you're making. I'm sort of saying that in a blunt way to emphasize it. I feel like people should be skeptical when I say, like okay, I have good reason to think that even though we're in a very similar epistemic position, I have reason to believe that we're right and not the aliens. Right. That's like a hard case to make, but I do think it's true.DANIELThere's no proposition that the aliens and us disagree on yes.AARONThe intrinsic value of pleasure and happiness.DANIELYeah, no, they don't care about value. They care about schmalu, which is just.AARONLike, how much paperclips there is. I don't think that's coherent. I don't think they can care about value.DANIELOkay.AARONThey can, but only insofar as it's a pointer to the exact same not exact, but like, basically the same concept as our value.DANIELSo do you reject the orthogonality thesis?AARONNo.DANIELOkay. I think that is super intelligent.AARONYeah.DANIELSo I take the orthogonality thesis to mean that really smart agents can be motivated by approximately any desires. Does that sound right to you?AARONYeah.DANIELSo what if the desire is like, produce a ton of paperclips?AARONYeah, it can do that descriptively. It's not morally good.DANIELOh, no, it's not morally good at all. They're not trying to be morally good. They're just trying to produce a bunch of paperclips.AARONOkay, in that case, we don't disagree. Yeah, I agree. This is like a conceivable state of the world.DANIELYeah. But what I'm trying to say is when you say it's weird that we got lucky the reason you think it's weird is that you're one of the humans who cares about pleasure and suffering. Whereas if you were one of the aliens who cared about paperclips. The analogous shmarin instead of Aaron would be saying, like, oh, it's crazy that we care about paperclips, because that actually causes us to make a ton of paperclips.AARONDo they intrinsically care about paperclips or is it a means of cement?DANIELIntrinsically, like, same as in the Orphogonality thesis.AARONDo they experience happiness because of the paperclips or is it more of a functional intrinsic value?DANIELI think they probably experience happiness when they create paperclips, but they're not motivated by the happiness. They're motivated by like, they're happy because they succeeded at their goal of making tons of paperclips. If they can make tons of paperclips but not be happy about it, they'd be like, yeah, we should do that. Sorry. No, they wouldn't. They'd say, like, we should do that and then they would do it.AARONWould your case still work if we just pretended that they're not sentient?DANIELYeah, sure.AARONOkay. I think this makes it cleaner for both sides. Yeah, in that case, yes. So I think the thing that I reject is that there's an analog term that's anything like morality in their universe. They can use a different word, but it's pointing to the same concept.DANIELWhen you say anything like morality. So the shared concepts sorry, the shared properties between morality and paperclip promotion is just that you have a species that is dedicated to promoting it.AARONI disagree. I think morality is about goodness and badness.DANIELYes, that's right.AARONOkay. And I think it is totally conceivable. Not even conceivable. So humans wait, what's a good example? In some sense I intrinsically seem to value about regular. I don't know if this is a good example. Let's run with it intrinsically value like regulating my heartbeat. It happens to be true that this is conducive to my happiness and at least local non suffering. But even if it weren't, my brain stem would still try really hard to keep my heart beating or something like that. I reject that there's any way in which promoting heart beatingness is an intrinsic moral or schmoral value or even that could be it could be hypothesized as one but it is not in fact one or something like that.DANIELOkay.AARONLikewise, these aliens could claim that making paperclips is intrinsically good. They could also just make them and not make that claim. And those are two very different things.DANIELThey don't claim it's good. They don't think it's good.AARONThey think it's claim it schmud.DANIELWhich they prefer. Yeah, they prefer.AARONDon't. I think that is also incoherent. I think there is like one concept in that space because wait, I feel like also this is just like at some point it has to cash out in the real world. Right? Unless we're talking about really speculative not even physics.DANIELWhat I mean is they just spend all of their time promoting paperclips and then you send them a copy of Jeremy Bentham's collected writings, they read it and they're like all right, cool. And then they just keep on making paperclips because that's what they want to do.AARONYeah. So descriptively.DANIELSure.AARONBut they never claim that. It's like we haven't even introduced objectivity to this example. So did they ever claim that it's objectively the right thing to do?DANIELNo, they claim that it's objectively the paperclipy thing to do.AARONI agree with that. It is the paperclippy thing to do.DANIELYeah, they're right about stuff. Yeah.AARONSo they're right about that. They're just not a right. So I do think this all comes back down to the question of whether there's analogous concepts in near ish morality that an alien species might point at. Because if there's not, then the paperclippiness is just like a totally radically different type of thing.DANIELBut why does it like when did I say that they were closely analogous? This is what I don't understand.AARONSo it seems to be insinuated by the closeness of the word semantic.DANIELOh yeah, whatever. When I was making it a similar sounding word, all I meant to say is that they talk about it plays a similar role in their culture as morality plays in our culture. Sorry. In terms of their motivations, I should say. Oh, yeah.AARONI think there's plenty of human cultures that are getting at morality. Yeah. So I think especially historically, plenty of human cultures that are getting at the same core concept of morality but just are wrong about it.DANIELYeah, I think that's right.AARONFundamentalist religious communities or whatever, you can't just appeal to like, oh, we're like they have some sort of weird it's kind of similar but very different thing called morality.DANIELAlthough, I don't know, I actually think that okay, backing up. All I'm saying is that beings have to care about something, and we ended up caring about morality. And I don't think, like I don't know, I don't think that's super surprising or coincidental or whatever. A side point I want to make is that I think if you get super into being religious, you might actually start referring to a different concept by morality. How familiar are you with classical theism?AARONThat's not a term that I recognize, although I took a couple of theology classes, so maybe more of them if I hadn't done that.DANIELYeah, so classical theism, it's a view about the nature of God, which is that I'm going to do a bad job of describing it. Yeah, I'm not a classical theist, so you shouldn't take classical theist doctrine from me. But it's basically that God is like sort of God's the being whose attributes are like his existence or something like that. It's weird. But anyway, there's like some school of philosophical where they're like, yeah, there's this transcendent thing called God. We can know God exists from first principles and in particular their account of goodness. So how do you get around the Euphyro dilemma, right? Instead of something like divine command theory, what they say is that when we talk about things being good, good just refers to the nature of God. And if you really internalize that, then I think you might end up referring to something different than actual goodness. Although I think it's probably there's no such being as God in the article. Theist sense.AARONYeah. So they argue what we mean by good is this other.DANIELConcept. They would say that when everyone talks about good, what they actually mean is pertaining to the divine nature, but we just didn't really know that we meant that the same way that when we talked about water, we always meant H 20, but we didn't used to know that.AARONI'm actually not sure if this is I'm very unconfident, but I kind of want to bite the bullet and say, like, okay, fine, in that case, yeah, I'm talking about the divine nature, but we just have radically different understandings of what the divine nature is.DANIELYou think you're talking about the divine nature.AARONRight?DANIELWhy do you think that?AARONSorry, I think I very slightly was not quite pedantic enough. Sorry, bad cell phone or whatever. Once again, not very confident at all.DANIELBut.AARONThink think that I'm willing to I'm so I think that I'm referring to the divine nature, but what I mean by the divine nature is that which these fundamentalist people are referring to. So I want to get around the term and say like, okay, whatever these fundamentalists are referring to, I am also referring to them.DANIELYeah, I should say classical theism is not slightly a different when people say fundamentalists, they often mean like a different corner of Christian space than classical theists. Classical. Theists think like Ed Fesser esoteric Catholics or something. Yeah, they're super into it.AARONOkay, anyway yes, just to put it all together, I think that when I say morality, I am referring to the same thing that these people are referring to by the divine nature. That's what it took me like five minutes to actually say.DANIELOh yeah, so I don't think you are. So when they refer to the divine nature, what they at least think they mean is they think that the divine is sort of defined by the fact that its existence is logically necessary. Its existence is in some sense attributes it couldn't conceivably not have its various attributes. The fact that it is like the primary cause of the world and sustainer of all things. And I just really doubt that the nature of that thing is what you mean by morality.AARONNo, those are properties that they assert, but I feel like tell me if I'm wrong. But my guess is that if one such person were to just suddenly come to believe that actually all of that's right. Except it's not actually logically necessary that the divine nature exists. It happens to be true, but it's not logically necessary. They would still be sort of pointing to the same concept. And I just think, yeah, it's like that, except all those lists of properties are wrong.DANIELI think if that were true, then classical theism would be false.AARONOkay.DANIELSo maybe in fact you're referring to the same thing that they actually mean by the divine nature, but what they think they mean is this classical theistic thing. Right. And it seems plausible to me that some people get into it enough that what they actually are trying to get at when they say good is different than what normal people are trying to get at when they say good.AARONYeah, I don't think that's true. Okay, let's set aside the word morality because especially I feel like in circles that we're in, it has a strong connotation with a sort of like modern ish analytics philosophy, maybe like some other things that are in that category.DANIELYour video is worsen, but your sound is back.AARONOkay, well, okay, I'll just keep talking. All right, so you have the divine nature and morality and maybe other things that are like those two things but still apart from them. So in that class of things and then there's the question of like, okay, maybe everybody necessarily anybody who thinks that there's any true statements about something broadly in their vicinity of goodness in the idea space is pointing to the meta level of that or whichever one of those is truly correct or something. This is pretty speculative. I have not thought about this. I'm not super confident.DANIELYeah, I think I broadly believe this, but I think this is right about most people when they talk. But you could imagine even with utilitarianism, right? Imagine somebody getting super into the weeds of utilitarianism. They lived utilitarianism twenty four, seven. And then maybe at some point they just substitute in utilitarianism for morality. Now when they say morality, they actually just mean utilitarianism and they're just discarding the latter of the broad concepts and intuitions behind them. Such a person might just I don't know, I think that's the kind of thing that can happen. And then you might just want a.AARONDifferent thing by the word. I don't know if it's a bad thing, but I feel like I do this when I say, oh, x is moral to do or morally good to do. It's like, what's the real semantic relationship between that and it's correct on utilitarianism to do? I feel like they're not defined as the same, but they happen to be the same or something. Now we're just talking about how people use words.DANIELYeah, they're definitely going to happen to be the same in the case that utilitarianism is like the right theory of morality. But you could imagine that. You could imagine even in the case where utilitarianism was the wrong theory, you might still just mean utilitarianism by the word good because you just forgot the intuitions from which you were building theory of morality and you're just like, okay, look, I'm just going to talk about utilitarianism now.AARONYeah, I think this is like, yeah, this could happen. I feel like this is a cop out and like a non answer, but I feel like getting into the weeds of the philosophy of language and what people mean by concepts and words and true the true nature of concepts. It's just not actually that useful. Or maybe it's just not as interesting to me as I'm glad that somebody thought about that ever.DANIELI think this can happen, though. I think this is actually a practical concern. Right. Okay. Utilitarianism might be wrong, right? Does that strike you as right? Yeah, I think it's possible for you to use language in such a way that if utilitarianism were wrong, what that would mean is that in ordinary language, goodness, the good thing to do is not always the utilitarian thing to do, right? Yes, but I think it's possible to get down an ideological rabbit hole. This is not specific to utilitarianism. Right. I think this can happen to tons of things where when you say goodness, you just mean utilitarianism and you don't have a word for what everyone else meant by goodness, then I think that's really hard to recover from. And I think that's the kind of thing that can conceivably happen and maybe sometimes actually happens.AARONYeah, I guess as an empirical matter and like an empirical psychological matter and yes. Do people's brains ever operate this way? Yes. I don't really know where that leaves that leaves us. Maybe we should move on to a different topic or whatever.DANIELCan I just say one more thing?AARONYeah, totally.DANIELFirst, I should just give this broad disclaimer that I'm not a philosopher and I don't really know what I'm talking about. But the second thing is that particular final point. I was sort of inspired by a paper I read. I think it's called, like, do Christians and Muslims worship the same god? Which is actually a paper about the philosophy of naming and what it means for proper names to refer to the same thing. And it's pretty interesting, and it has a footnote about why you would want to discourage blasphemy, which is sort of about this. Anyway.AARONNo, I personally don't find this super interesting. I can sort of see how somebody would and I also think it's potentially important, but I think it's maybe yeah.DANIELActually it's actually kind of funny. Can I tell you a thing that I'm a little bit confused about?AARONYeah, sure.DANIELSo philosophers just there's this branch of philosophy that's the philosophy of language, and in particular the philosophy of right. Like, what does it mean when we say a word refers to something in the real world? And some subsection of this is the philosophy of proper names. Right. So when I say Aaron is going to the like, what do I mean by know who is like, if it turned out that these interactions that I'd been having with an online like, all of them were faked, but there was a real human named Bergman, would that count as making that send is true or whatever? Anyway, there's some philosophy on this topic, and apparently we didn't need it to build a really smart AI. No AI person has studied this. Essentially, these theories are not really baked into the way we do AI these days.AARONWhat do you think that implies or suggests?DANIELI think it's a bit confusing. I think naively, you might have thought that AIS would have to refer to things, and naively, you might have thought that in order for us to make that happen, we would have had to understand the philosophy of reference or of naming, at least on some sort of basic level. But apparently we just didn't have to. Apparently we could just like I don't have that.AARONIn fact, just hearing your description, my initial intuition is like, man, this does not matter for anything.DANIELOkay. Can I try and convince you that it should matter? Yeah, tell me how I fail to convince you.AARONYeah, all right.DANIELHumans are pretty smart, right? We're like the prototypical smart thing. How are humans smart? I think one of the main ingredients of that is that we have language. Right?AARONYes. Oh, and by the way, this gets to the unpublished episode with Nathan Barnard.DANIELComing out an UN I think I've seen an episode with him.AARONOh, yeah. This is the second one because he's.DANIELBeen very oh, exciting. All right, well well, maybe all this will be superseded by this unpublished episode.AARONI don't think so. We'll see.DANIELBut okay, we have language, right. Why is language useful? Well, I think it's probably useful in part because it refers to stuff. When I say stuff, I'm talking about the real world, right?AARONYes.DANIELNow, you might think that in order to build a machine that was smart and wielded the language usefully, it would also have to have language. We would have to build it such that its language referred to the real world. Right. And you might further think that in order to build something that use languages that actually succeeds at doing reference, we would have to understand what reference was.AARONYes. I don't think that's right. Because insofar as we can get what we call useful is language in, language out without any direct interaction, without the AIS directly manipulating the world, or maybe not directly, but without using language understanders or beings that do have this reference property, that's what their language means to them, then this would be right. But because we have Chat GPT, what the use comes from is like giving language to humans, and the humans have reference to the real world. But if the humans you need some connection to your reference, but it doesn't have to be at every level or something like that.DANIELOkay, so do you think that suppose we had something that was like Chat GPT, but we gave it access to some robot limbs and it could pick up mice. Maybe it could pick up apples and throw the apples into the power furnace powering its data center. We give it these limbs and these actuators sort of analogous to how humans interact with the world. Do you think in order to make a thing like that that worked, we would need to understand the philosophy of reference?AARONNo. I'm not sure why.DANIELI also don't know why.AARONOkay, well, evolution didn't understand the philosophy of reference. I don't know what that tells us.DANIELI actually think this is, like, my lead answer of, like, we're just making AIS by just randomly tweaking them until they work. That's my rough summary of Scastic gradient descent. In some sense, this does not require you to have a strong sense of how to implement your AIS. Maybe that's why we don't need to.AARONUnderstand philosophy or the SDD process is doing the philosophy. In some sense, that's kind of how I think about it or how I think about it now. I guess during the SDD process, you're, like, tweaking basically the algorithm, and at the end of the day, probably in order to, say, pick up marbles or something, reference to a particular marble or the concept of marble, not only the concept, but both the concept
“This yearning for justice -- justice for all -- is something Jesus promoted and practiced. The Jesus way has got me to see that if we are going to live meaningful and ethical lives, we must reject the notion that we have to look out only for ourselves and our kind. Jesus taught that everyone counts, that the only "group" we're part of is the human group, and that if one segment of our global neighborhood bears the weight of suffering and injustice, so do we all.” --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/antonio-myers4/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/antonio-myers4/support
CGM Radio Manager, Ryan Holland introduces Bob to Brian Nicholson, a theist. In this respectful interesting conversation, they discuss the existence of God and the nature of God. (Repeat program: First podcast 3-23-21) Click on your podcasting platform below to subscribe to The Bob Siegel Show: Apple | Google | Spotify | TuneIn | Blubrry | Deezer | Android | RSS Feed […]
We continue with our deep dive into scripture to show how Jesus is God. The Christian ought to be able to share why they are Christian and ought to be able to show in scripture how this is so. Can you show in scripture why Christians believe in a Triune God? Don't feel down on yourself. Grab a notebook and pen. We're looking through the pages of Scripture to show how Jesus' deity isn't an invention of 1st century Christians but is something that is deeply ingrained in Jewish Theology. We can know that God dwells in tri-unity by looking at our Old testament. Follow along with our Episode notes:Jesus is God NotesHere is a podcast from two Jews that discusses the Trinity:Jewish Defense of the TrinityFull Video of Whadda You Meme regarding Brandon Tatum:WatchSupport the showPlease Rate & Comment!Hosts: Brandon and Daren SmithWebsite: www.blackandblurred.comPatreon: www.patreon.com/blackandblurredYouTube: Black and Blurred PodcastIG: @BlackandBlurredPodcastTwitter: @Blurred_Podcast
Joining me on the show today is my friend Aish of @theist.aish. She's a Christian creator that has a focus on intellectual pro-life arguments. She's a breath of fresh air on a platform that is filled with misinformation.Check out Aish's Stuff!: https://linktr.ee/aish4christCovenant Eyes [Use promo code: "M4J" for 30 Days FREE]: https://covenanteyes.sjv.io/P0AgqN----------------------------------------------------------I'm working on an animation for M4J!GOFUNDME LINK: https://gofund.me/84c84f1b----------------------------------------------------------EMAIL ME: memelordmonday@gmail.comGet The BEST audio & video editor - DESCRIPT: https://www.descript.com/?lmref=0hGw7QGet AMAZING 4K video & audio recording that's superior to Zoom - RIVERSIDE: https://riverside.fm/?utm_campaign=ca...---------------------------------------------
Did Christianity lead to the weakness in society perceived of by Friedrich Nietzsche, or is it the way to get out of our current state into something greater than what came before? SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE ️ BREAKTHERULES.TV FOR MORE!====================================================Classical Theisthttps://twitter.com/ClassicalTheishttps://www.youtube.com/@UC-n7Qt8EREiJntmrnBjbB4w Uberboyohttps://twitter.com/uberboyohttps://www.youtube.com/@UCrk8Y2fsR5i_5c1iTR9tZpg https://uberboyo.com/program/Gnostic Informanthttps://www.youtube.com/@UCtdweFMJ5DGj7_q5IcpQhPQ Lev Polyakovhttps://twitter.com/Levpohttp://youtube.com/levpolyakov====================================================FOLLOW BTR:Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/breaktherulesDISCORD: https://discord.gg/hHTNg3MTwitter - http://twitter.com/breakth3rulesInstagram - http://instagram.com/breakth3rulesFacebook - http://facebook.com/breakth3rulesMinds - https://www.minds.com/breaktherulesOdysee - https://odysee.com/@breaktherules:f/liveTwitch - https://www.twitch.tv/breakth3rules/DLive - https://dlive.tv/breakth3rulesBitchute - https://www.bitchute.com/channel/JfUzQfuQpWc0/Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0yovF9Vo8n1fF1DGlMuWBhApple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/break-the-rules/id1543233584
“Circle jerk: Group masturbation among men, usually sitting in somewhat of a circle formation. Daisy chain: A group of participants performs cunnilingus or fellatio on each other in a circular formation, permitting each participant to both give and receive oral sex simultaneously. Gang bang: A number of people are performing sex acts on one person, either in turn or at the same time. Threesome or three-way: Three people all having sexual relations, not necessarily simultaneously. Not to be confused with ménage à trois (literally, "household of three"). Foursome or four-way: Sex between four people. Not to be confused with ménage à quatre (literally, "household of four"). Double penetration: When a person is entered or penetrated in the vagina and/or anus by two people at the same time. This is usually when one person enters the anus while another enters the vagina; however, it also refers to two simultaneous penetrations in the same orifice. Spintrian: A term used by Suetonius to describe sexual group practices indulged in by the emperor Tiberius on Capri.[4] Monogamous group sex or same room sex (a.k.a. soft swapping): Couples engaging in sexual activity in the same room but in separate pairs, without any swapping of partners or other major sexual activity between couples. A sex party is a gathering at which sexual activity takes place. Sex parties may be organized to enable people to engage in casual sexual activity or for swinging couples or people interested in group sex to meet, but any gathering where sexual activity is anticipated can be called a sex party. There are a number of types of sex parties: Swinger party/gathering: A swinger party or partner-swapping party is a gathering at which individuals or couples in a committed relationship can engage in sexual activities with others as a recreational or social activity.[5] Swinger parties may involve various group sex activities. Partners can engage in penetrative sex, known as "full swap", or choose to "soft swap" in which they engage only in non-penetrative sex. New swinging couples often choose a soft swap before they are comfortable with a full swap, although many couples stay soft swap for personal reasons.[6] "Soft swinging" is when a couple engages in sexual activities with only each other while other couples perform sex acts in the immediate vicinity.[7] Technically this is a form of exhibitionism rather than "group sex" per se. Orgy: An orgy is a gathering where guests freely engage in open and unrestrained sexual activity or group sex; and a bunga bunga orgy is an orgy in which participants have sex underwater, such as in a swimming pool or a hot tub.[8]” Christ means inner beauty of all good people regardless of whether you believe or disbelieve; I don't use Christ in the Religious Right way. Al of the organized crime syndicates that I referred to in this episode are: Italian Mafia, Mexican drug cartels, D.C. street crews, D.C. street gangs, the prison gangs, and the motorcycle gangs. The saying in organized crime was: “Your life's clock is ticking.” The criminals would express their view of not being in the mood to keep certain people alive and asking if people want to be killed or not. My last detail about organized crime was that I was feared because I was considered good at war of words, public and private beat downs, and my physical prowess when it came to protecting oppressed persons. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/antonio-myers4/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/antonio-myers4/support
Pastor Dale continued our advent series on the holy longing, the fiery energy of God that burns inside each of us. This morning we looked at the difference between a “Theist” and an "Incarnate Jesus Follower.” A theist believes in a God in heaven. An “Incarnate Jesus Follower” believes in a God in heaven who is also physically present on this earth inside of human beings. The theist believes God is transcendent and present only as some vague being. The “Incarnate Jesus Follower” believes God is also transcendent and has a physical body on earth that can be seen, heard, felt, tasted, and smelled. What this means for us in our daily lives is that as incarnate followers of Jesus, we have an active role to play in following Jesus. It is partnering with God in prayer and taking action, to bring his presence to those around us. When we do this, when we let Jesus tend the fire within us, when we shape our lives and our bodies in the way Jesus shaped his, we do our part to carry the incarnation forward.We invite you to spend time with the Father and seek his revelation on one question: Father, how can I carry the incarnation forward this week?
The post From Deist to Theist appeared first on Nelson Christian Church.
The post From Theist to Christian appeared first on Nelson Christian Church.
Welcome back to the show! In today's episode of the Atheist Experience, Jim Barrows is joined by Johnny P. Angel!First up is Kevin from Canada who claims that there are other dimensions, among many other claims. So. Many. Claims.Next up is Sarah from Belgium who is beginning to question their faith, and asks out hosts if there is any truth to Judaism. Historically speaking regarding the Israelites, definitely. With regards to the religious beliefs and stories, likely less so.Connor, TX from the audience asks our hosts what their opinion is on having nuanced rules for taxing churches based on size (i.e. Megachuches versus small community congregations.) The answer may surprise you.Max from TX was a theist, but after listening to the show they are starting to question whether they are still a Theist.William, TX from the audience continues the conversation started by Connor by asking if the hosts are concerned that gauging the tax status of churches based on how much they benefit their community opens the door to excessive proselytizing?Patrick from FL is an agnostic who disagrees with the definition of agnostic on google and wants the hosts to convince them to be an Atheist.Allen from Jamaica is calling to ask why God decided to hold off on creating a woman, Eve, rather than just create her with Adam. Just another thing to add to the nonsense list of the story I guess.Bill from TX is calling to ask why there aren't atheist churches, and why doesn't the ACA create one. Bill sees the growth of the “Nones” as an example of a group of people who need accessible groups that mirror the community-building aspects of religious organizations but are secular. This way these individuals don't come out of religion into an unfamiliar social void.Jon from Canada is calling to tell us that removing God from the United States is causing the moral decay of society. Which society? All of it presumably.
Misunderstanding My View on the Magisterium: A Response to Classical Theist Michael Lofton responds to a video by Classical Theist who fundamentally misunderstands his position on the magisterium. The original video called “Responding to Michael Lofton on the Magisterium” by Classical Theist may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBvsTIKO2Ec&t=4039s
In today's episode of the Atheist Experience, Matt Dillahunty is joined by JMike!First up is John from CA who says that there are multiple pathways to reaching the truth about God's existence, and that a pathway available to one person might not be accessible to another.Next up is Dean from CA who believes that science doesn't require methodological naturalism, but does require philosophical naturalism. So scientists get to use unmeasurable supernatural phenomenon to create new theories? Seems legit.Questioning Theist from WA finds the host's arguements for God relatively convincing, but doesn't think their credible due to the caller's disagreements with the host's other positions. So if we both agree that the sun causes skin cancer, but you don't like my position on a women's rights to bodily autonomy, therefore you won't be a pro-sunscreener like me? Wut?Next up is Brandon from WA who claims that the time doesn't exist in the subconscious, and uses the perceived time before death as evidence of this.Serge from Australia is calling to ask why Atheists are asking for evidence and why Theists would want to present any. Why do beliefs require evidence?Next is Jonah from TN who is wondering if our host's think that this show and other like it have opened the floodgates for the online platforming of evangelicals or presups like Darth Dawkins?Next up is Mike from WA asks if naturalists have proven the natural origin of life. As the caller doesn't believe in naturalism, they conclude that Theists must have proven it by default.Next is David from TX is calling to argue that differences in epistemology allow for different standards of acceptable evidence and arguement. I mean sure, but that doesn't mean they should be accepted or be convincing.Tom from the UK is calling to present an arguement that can somehow disprove every God, Theist or Deist, regardless of their respective properties.Seth from CA from is calling to say that porn has perpetuated a bad perception of women, and therefore God exists? How did we get here?
From Heaven's Gate, to Sandy Hook, to the WTC, to the OJ Simpson Trial, to Auschwitz Dr. Randy Bell has seen the face of evil at all of these places. How is he able to have a Faith in God? On the latest episode of Mormon Book Reviews I am excited to welcome to the program Randy Bell. Born and raised LDS, Randy had a faith crisis after reading the Gospel Topics Essays. In this interview we discuss the many books and writings that he engaged to discover what is true. He studied many topics and different worldviews including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism, Christianity, Critical Thinking, Physics, and Science . In the final segment Randy relates some powerful thoughts and experiences he had that led him back to faith in God and into Christianity.PayPalPatreonChannel Merch StoreMiniature Guide to Critical ThinkingThe Physics of God
Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com S3E23 TRANSCRIPT: ----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca, and this episode, we're doing something new and kind of exciting that we've never done before. This is our mail bag episode. So we've gotten a lot of responses and questions from all of you on the email. And we wanted to talk about some of these. Mark: Yeah. We love it when we hear from our listeners. It's really helpful for us to know what you're enjoying what you'd like to hear more about all that kind of stuff. And we've, we've recently received some messages with some topics that probably aren't big enough for a whole episode by themselves, but they're important questions and we want to address them. So, yeah, this is, this is the mail bag and I imagine, going forward, we'll probably do more of them as we get more, more messages from listeners. Yucca: Yeah from you. That's right. So let's start, we've got a few from Paul and I've just cut out the, the bits from the emails, right? I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but this first one is if you guys felt like commenting on any pointers, other podcast books, webpages, etcetera, that could help a nube in the beginning of this journey. That'd be great. So I think mark, this is one that might be great for you to take. Cause I think you have a little bit more exposure to some of the, the blog world and all of that. Mark: I mean, I can certainly, there's a, a group of there's a resources and links page on the atheopagan blog@atheopagan.org. And I would recommend checking out a bunch of those links. Natural pagans.com is a is a an aggregation site that pulls writing on naturalistic paganism from a bunch of different sources and puts them together in one place where you can find them. So that's one thing to look at the naturalistic paganism website is another great source for information. Yucca: right, Mark: if you just want kind of overviews on what Ethiopia paganism is and the principles, and just sort of, broad descriptions about, what it is that we're practicing and what our values are. The website of the Ethiopia society is a good one to go to. And that is V AP society.org. Yucca: mm-hmm Mark: Uh, so that once Yucca: AP as in atheopagan mm-hmm Mark: Yes. So it's V AP society.org. That's another place where you can find quite a bit of information and you can legally Orain Yucca: right, of course. Your Mark: Just like at the universal life church, it's perfectly legal. You can perform weddings, all that kind of stuff. Because we are a registered religious nonprofit in the United States. So that's something that's cool and exciting. In terms of, Yucca: own book, right? Mark has an excellent book Mark: Oh yes. My book Ethiopia, paganism and earth honoring path rooted in science. You can order it from any bookstore. I recommend your local independent bookstore because they are great and we support them. And I'm working on another one, which there will be hopefully news about sometime soon. But it'll be a while before it's done. So. In other books, I really recommend rating Sweetgrass by Robin wall Kimmer, which is it's more of a worldview book. It's not really a, here's how to do rituals book, but it's, she is both a botanist an academic botanist and a registered member of the citizen. Patua Tommy Native indigenous tribe. And so she comes at her perspective about the human relationship with nature from both of those perspectives and weaves them together in this very beautiful and illuminating kind of way. So that's once against braiding sweet grass by Robin wall Kimmer Yucca: mm-hmm Mark: I know that she's written other steps that's out there on the web. You can search for her name and you'll find good stuff that she's published. Yucca: Right. Mark: It's not nontheistic, but I do recommend the earth path by Starhawk, which I think is. Yucca: It was very influential for me as a teenager. Like it's an excellent book. Mark: It's a really good book. And, I suspect she's always very circumspect about this, but I suspect that Starhawk is not a very woo woo person. My conjecture and this is just apropo of reading and observation and stuff is that, she may not subscribe to supernaturalism. But she's very careful not to come out explicitly and say that because a lot of people around her do, and she doesn't want to be off putting to them. And she's such luminary in the community that that would really make waves, Yucca: right. Well, it's, what, what is one's goal, right? What is, yeah. And that's, that's my take with my interactions with her as well, but of course, neither of us are her and can speak for her, Mark: course, and, and I'm not trying Yucca: Yeah. Mark: The reason that I say that is that the book is not a heavily theistic book Yucca: yeah, yeah. Mark: or, or magical, and in terms of supernaturalism kind of book it's really about living life with a relationship with the natural world and in seeking to be a healing presence on the planet towards the natural world. Yucca: And there is a component in that that you can do or skip, but I really advise doing it there's activities that she gives. I don't remember if it's the beginning or the end of each chapter, but she talks about the concept. She gives examples from real life and then gives you things to do. And if you do those actual activities and those practices, they're really well designed and they, they tie into a lot of the stuff that we talk about here with the being present and observing and noticing. So, a good, a good one to get into. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. I, I really agree with that. And similarly her book circle round Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: with Anne hill which is a book for families and with activities for children, Yucca: That's a great one. That's a little bit more on the theistic side. There's like stories with like deities and stuff, but we've read some of those in, in my family, but we're just really clear with the kids. These are stories. These are not, the, these, these figures exist in the way that Santa Claus exist. That it's a figure in our minds and it means something to us, but they're not like people walking around. They're not, there's not a person. And boy, we'd be in for a shock if there, if we were wrong about that Mark: It would definitely reframe the art cosmology a whole lot. But so both of those books, I, I really recommend in terms of practice building for a family or with young children. And then just generally, between braiding sweet grass and the earth path, I think you get a pretty good window into the sort of approach that you and I Yucca take to our paganism. And, and with my book, thrown in there as well that it is, it's a mindset and a worldview and a way of carrying ourselves in the world. Yucca: Right. Mark: More than it is about, worshiping deities or doing, even doing rituals. I mean, even though that is a part of it celebrating the holidays, but at a really deep level, what our paganism is about is how we Yucca: There's there's another side to this that we can add in which is the wow and wonder part. And that's all the science books, the science books, the science podcast I've been binging planetary radio, that's the planetary societies podcast. And they have, they have a lovely host whose whose voice is just a pleasure to listen to. Right? And then they bring on just these amazing guests who talk about the incredible things that we're exploring about our world. And there are podcasts that you can listen to that are about, the microscopic world and the, this and the, that, and the books that just all the pop science books, or if you're in a specific field, you can dig really deep in and, and that's, that can be part of your paganism too. Mark: Sure sure. Because part of the, the wow factor that the sense of wonder in awe about being here at all and. Everything else that's here as well is being informed about it. And so, the, the more you, the more you unravel the universe, the more you, kind of pull on that thread to unravel the sweater, the more you, that stuff you discover, that's just amazing and, and thrilling in a, in a deep spiritual kind of way. It's just so exciting. When I first learned about complexity theory and emergence, I mean, I read two pages and then I would sort of skip around the room and then I, read two more pages and would do that again. Because these are amazing, amazing things and they answer deep questions about why complexity emerges from simpler systems. Right. So, definitely, all that science stuff is right up there with, with our paganism. And I think, I think I would, I'm gonna kind of stop there. There's, I mean, I'm sure that there are tons of books that I'm missing and but my, my encouragement would be less to go in the sort of mainstream paganism direction with your reading at least to start with, because a lot of that stuff is really focused on magical correspondences and relationship with theos and, do this kind of spell to get that kind of result. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: And. We just come at this from a different angle. Yucca: Right. Wonderful. Mark: question. Yucca: So our next question, this is the second part from Paul and there's a lot of questions wrapped up in this. So I'm gonna, I'm just gonna read the whole piece here. I know you are both involved in environmental conservation and activism, as I suspect many athe pagans would be. I wonder if you would have enough material to discuss what kinds of things in your personal life and practice aimed at planetary protection, what organizations might you be involved in? What experiences have you had with them? Do you organize events like cleanups or fundraising stuff along that line? So there's Mark: very multipart question. Yucca: Right. So yes, both of us have been professionally involved in these areas for, for many years. Mark, do you wanna start with your half on that? Mark: I was gonna invite you to start first. Yucca: all right, well, I'll Mark: why don't Yucca: start on my side. So my background is I am an ecologist. I'm a restoration oncologist, actually. So I would say that I have not been involved in conservation rather in restoration. And currently a lot of my work has been moving in the direction of the education and science communication, but I still do work. There's several several projects that I'm working on in which I work with local land owners in working on respirating their ecosystem. So we're monitoring, looking at management strategies and I'm arranged land specialist. So we're looking at grasslands, Juniper shrub lands. And I mean, this is really amazing rewarding stuff because we can. We can make very small little changes in the way that the land is being managed, because let me, let me step back for this for just a moment we manage land, whether we do it purposefully or not, there's, you're not there isn't land. There isn't anywhere where humans are not involved and not influencing. And there's this, this myth of the wild wilderness where, humans, if you just let it go, it'll do its thing. Every single thing we do is a choice that impacts our land. And I'm from a part of the world, which is a very brittle environment, which is a very fragile environment. And is in fact, this was, is the case for the whole half of the continent is very wounded. Right. And it's been, the ecosystems have been really, really struggling for hundreds, actually thousands of years, but especially within the last few hundred years when the last of the, of the megafauna were purposefully wiped out. And so a lot of what I do is we as waterway restoration, but also bringing animals back in very purposefully, bringing back the grazers in a way that matches what would be happening. If humans hadn't gotten rid of the grazers and hadn't divided everything up with Barb wire and doing all of this. So I work in this, this. Kind of intersection between the ranching world, which is the world I come from. And some of the, the science world in the, bringing that science in, into the restoration for the people who are the stewards of this land and, and really understand it and are part of the land. So that's a incredibly rewarding and kind of beautiful thing to, to get, to, to be honored, to be in involved with that. Mark: Yeah, that's really important work. I'm I'm really glad you do that. Thank you. Yeah. I have, well, let me see. My part of the reason that I invited you to go first is so that I could sort of put this together in my mind, how to, how to do this. I used to be much more involved in the policy advocacy side of of environmental protection and restoration than I am now. I was the founding executive director of an organization in my local county, which I built over the 10 years that I was their ed into the largest environmental group of any kind on the north coast of California, even larger than Sierra club. And We used grassroots organizing to mobilize thousands of letters and postcards to elected officials on targeted issues, working specifically on local stuff. So municipal stuff, county scale stuff where that kind of outpouring of voter input is unheard of. And it scares the living hell out of elected officials. So we were able to accomplish some really amazing things. We prevented the subregional wastewater system in our area from going to our local river as the discharge point for their tertiary treated wastewater. So instead that water goes up to a natural geothermal field for geothermal energy generation, Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: um, we we got. Planning ordinances in place approved by voters that drew growth boundaries around each of the cities in our county, so that they would stop sprawling into agricultural and habitat lands. So that now the growth that they do is in density and up rather which facilitates public transportation. It facilitates walkable neighborhoods, all of those good urban planning principles. We really put on the map here where I am in Sonoma county. And I'm, I'm proud to say that we, we are really on the cutting edge of what's happening in environmental planning in many ways here in Sonoma county. The organization is called Sonoma county conservation action. And though I left it more than 20 years ago. It's still going and still doing good stuff. And and I'm, I'm very, very proud of that work. Subsequent to that, I worked for seven years a, after being an executive director of a couple of organizations, I focused my attention on fundraising specifically because the public interest missions that I really care about get advanced by nonprofit organizations whose capacities are entirely limited by how much funding they have. Yucca: Right, right. Mark: So it's just, it's about fuel for the engine. And if you, if you don't have it, then however, great your mission is it's very harder to make anything substantive take place. So, I really focused on developing skills in grant writing, major donor fundraising, direct mail event production planned giving. Organizing all that kind of stuff. And that's what I've mostly done since I left conservation action. I did spend seven years at a wetlands Conservancy, which did the kind of restoration work that you're talking about except in a California Oak Chaparral wetlands kind of context. So we restored linear miles of riparian habitat within the Laguna to Santa Rosa, which is the largest tributary of the Russian river. And had a science program as well and an education program for grade school kids. And that I was the second staff person hired there after an executive director. They'd been around as a volunteer group for years, but he and I built the organization's programs to be a really, sustainable and impactful organization. And I'm very proud of that work as well. And they're still around as well, doing the things that they're doing. In recent years, I've worked more on social services and kind of, social impact organizations than environmental organizations. To some degree, I feel like the 60 hour weeks that I worked during my 10 years at conservation action were kind of like my tour of duty. And after 10 years I was thoroughly burned out and I feel like, I got my medals, I got my, congressional resolution of appreciation and state legislature things. And I was named environmentalist of the year for the county and all that stuff. And I kind of took my medals and went home. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: So now the stuff that I do is much less around the public impact of stuff. And it's more just kind of how I personally conduct my life. I drive an electric car. I I'm really focused on energy consumption and carbon a lot in just how I live my personal life. I'm not much of a consumer. Buying new stuff is just not really a big thrill for me. And and I try to live. A simple but comfortable life within the context that I'm in, which is a kind of suburban city. And of course, to vote the right way and to stay plugged into understanding what that right way is. And and that's, that's kind of it for where I am right now, but I've, I've spent many, many years in the trenches really working to make things better for the environment around here. Yucca: Right. Sounds like you've got a lot of diverse experience. Mark: Well, I'm old or I'm getting old. And so that's, that's what that'll give you. It's yeah, it's been a pretty, pretty amazing ride. I'm I'm very happy with my career, although currently I'm unemployed. Hoping that that's gonna end soon and I can dive into some new mission that that I'm passionate about and that I can do some good with in terms of organizations that we can support. My focus has generally been twofold. I have focused on policy organizations and on land conservancies. So the nature Conservancy conservation international the conservation fund, these, those are organizations that are doing stuff like acquiring large swaves of theier Delta, which is one of the biggest bird bird hatchery, Rory estuary places in the world so that they are not developed in ways that are destructive to those creatures. I, and, and going along with what you said, Yucca they are actively managing those lands. They're not just throwing them behind a fence they're they have actual, land stewards whose job it is to restore and manage those lands. Yucca: Cause certainly if you do that in a brittle environment, you will starve the land. Right? If you just put a fence around it, say nothing, touch it, it, it gets worse and worse and worse. Yeah. Because it's kind of like, here's that, here's an analogy. You find a dog on the side of the road who's been hit and, and her leg is broken. If you just leave the leg alone, right. I mean, it was humans who hit the dog. Right. But if you leave the, the leg alone, it, the, the bones, if they survived, the bones gonna heal wrong, right. They're gonna have a, they're gonna have a, a messed up leg their whole life. But if you take them into the vet and you set the bone and, give them the, the care that they need, then they have a chance to recover, even though it was human's fault in the first place that the dog got hit. Right. So, or a land's kind of like that Mark: yeah. Human intervention is, is required in the vast majority of kind of habitat management. And habitat bio biological systems biological services, as some people call it because they wanna kind of monetarily quantify the value that's provided to humans. Yucca: I mean, that might be coming a little bit from the terminology of ecosystem services, right? That's an old, an old term that is talking about the, the, the service of, of the water, what the things that it provides. So that would be, that might be one of the directions that is came in from Mark: Right. But some of the, some of the values that we have around conservation are. They're values that don't necessarily directly benefit humans, or if they do, you have to follow a chain in order to find out how they do like biodiversity. For example, I mean, to me, biodiversity is just a core value. I think it's a good thing, period. Whether it benefits humans or not, Yucca: Yeah, well, so I think that biodiversity is one of the most important things. It takes a little bit of explaining to help people understand why, but biodiversity is absolutely key to the survival. Everything that we need, the air that we breathe, the food that we eat, the everything is dependent upon that biodiversity. And when we have areas with low biodiversity, those systems fail, they fall apart, right? Biodiversity is perhaps one of the most important, important things there is for this, this planet, right. Biodiversity is a healthy biosphere. Mark: mm-hmm yeah. Yeah. I agree. The, the level of diversity prior to humans developing the kinds of capacities that we have now to really impact the environment in a really dramatic way. Yucca: Monoculture being the, the really big yeah. For all your P protein. Mark: right. The level of complexity that existed on the earth at that time prior to the ad, the advent of those technologies is something that we can't even imagine today. And some of it, some of it was relatively recent. I mean, in the 19th century flock of passenger pigeons that took three days to pass over, would go over in migration in migration season. And the passenger pigeon is now extinct. And that's because they, their tail feathers were desired for hats. Yucca: yeah, Mark: And that's what we did. Yucca: and if you've ever visited someplace like yellow, The entire continent was like double that, Mark: Mm-hmm Yucca: Just in terms of the life that was everywhere. Now it's gonna be different life depending on the particular bio region. Right. Although some of those things were across the entire continent, right. Wolves or things like that. Speaking of Yellowstone just a mention to everybody. My, my brother lives there and he was sending us photographs of his neighbor's houses, like literally floating away. It's a, Mark: I was gonna ask you when we were done recording. If he was okay. Yucca: Yeah. He's just high enough up. But a lot of the they're tough Montanans are, are tough. They're a tough bunch, but but there's a lot of tourists who are stuck there too, that are in kind of a panic Mark: that's in Wyoming, right? Yucca: No Montana. Mark: Yellowstone. Yucca: Yeah. Well it's a big area, but he's in Gardner Montana. Mark: Huh Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I've I've been to Yellowstone and I could have sworn that it was in Wyoming relatively close to the border, Yucca: but maybe it goes into, but no it's Montana. Mark: Oh, wait a Yucca: of it that are, that are in Mark: are in Wyoming and also Idaho. Yucca: Yeah. It's a big, it's a big area. Yeah, he's in gardener. So that's the, and there are multiple different entrances to the park. But it's, it's, I mean, there's flooding happening in that whole area. Yeah. Mark: boy, we could sure. Use some of that water here. Yucca: well, basically all the rain that the Southwest hasn't been getting and the surrounding areas has just been dumping right there. They got like a whole bunch of inches on top of their snow pack and then that's what came down. But anyways, so, yeah, that's just our hearts go out to, to everybody with that. And there are, you could just go fund me if you're interested. There are just type in type in, Montana floods Yellowstone floods, and there's, there's definitely some support that people can, can get. It's gonna be a quite a while before some of those roads and, and things are rebuilt. But it is a good lesson to not build your roads at the bottom of valleys. Mark: Yeah. Run building your road right along the waterway is a, it's a bad, I it's bad for the waterway for one thing. But it's a really bad idea. If you are in a flashy valley that gets really big storm events periodically because it's gonna take the road out. Yucca: Yeah. Now this is the highest it's been ever in recorded history. This is the, but it's still, it's something that I think we're gonna have to be really mindful. We should have been over the last, century, but we're gonna have to be really mindful about that moving forward. And I think we'll see a lot more of this in communities having to redesign and those roadways that's where a lot of with the work I do, a lot of the erosion that we deal with was just. Roads that made sense why they were built that way, because it was the least expensive EC. I mean, if you've ever , if you've ever graded a road, you understand why you're trying to do it the easiest possible, because it's hard to do. But a lot of the erosion is caused by just poorly placed roads where we weren't paying attention. And we didn't realize on my own land, we have an Arroyo that cuts through that is 30 feet deep. So it's a cut gash 30 feet. And looking at it, I know that that, that erosion feature is can't be more than 80 or 90 years old to get 30 feet. Right. And that's the case across the whole, whole west Mark: the whole American west. Absolutely. Yucca: So, but coming back to our question, other, you were talking about organizations Mark: And then the, the other question was about organizing cleanups or other sort of volunteer activities. Yucca: Right. Mark: in my professional capacity, I have organized those kinds of things, for the organizations I've worked for. It is my hope that some of the affinity groups, the atheopagan local, geographically focused affinity groups may at some point do something like that, or at least, go to a cleanup event of some kind wearing atheopagan t-shirts or something like that to kind of represent the. The, the, the movement of non Theus paganism and show that we are putting our, our labor where our mouths are. But that's a new program that just started this year and it's early days yet. In fact, I'm going to an in-person summer solstice celebration to S celebration tomorrow with other folks from Northern California that are, on the atheopagan Facebook group and we have a discord and we're gonna do a summer solstice ritual and have a Noche and it'll be good. Yucca: when this goes live, I should be meeting up with another atheopagan family. So I'm very excited about that and our kids are gonna get to get to play. So, Mark: so cool. I, I just, I, I love the idea of Well, it's not even the idea. I love the fact that our community is starting to knit a little bit, even though we're we're geographically far flung. And there aren't that many of us we're starting to make connections in, and I think the sun tree retreat that we went to was a big factor for that. I know that a lot of people really wanted to stay in touch with the people that went to the retreat with them. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So Yucca: So before we jump to our next one, I wanted to mention organizations that we're involved with. So I'm involved with and give money every month. We don't have a lot, but every little bit helps. The savory Institute is one that we have really, really value and have seen. And I'm speaking, we, as in my, my family and I seen incredible results with and also my husband is a student of Elaine Ingram. So we are, starting up our own soil, food web, and those are kind of the, the big organizations that we're involved with. That'd, invite people to check out in terms of like cleanups. We live pretty rural. So if we were in an urban environment, that would be kind of more of a thing. But we do go to the county meetings and and call, know the, the commissioners and call 'em up. And they, they, they know us. Right. And since it is a rural community, there is people like their privacy, but we also help each other out. So we don't really have barns around here, but the equivalent of barn raising type of things. And that's where a lot of our, our energy goes into is the, the small communities cuz we're, very rural and kind of everybody's their own little ranch homestead out in this area. Mark: Sure. Yeah. That really contrasts with where I am. I mean, California is obviously very heavily populated, but you know, I'm here on the coast and one of the most attractive things to a human is an area where there's water moving around. People love to go to the beach and so beach cleanups and river cleanups and that kind of thing are, are phenomenon where I am just because there's enough people to make a mess. Yucca: Well, and even if you didn't have people going to the beach, you'd probably have stuff washing up all the time anyways. So there's just always gonna be stuff to, to go and, and help out with. And you have some amazing, Mark: Yes Yucca: Marine ecosystems right off your coast. Mark: we do. We do. Yeah. They are endangered the, the kelp forests are being replaced by a sort of gelatinous slime on the bottom of the ocean. And many of the many of the creatures are being replaced by sea urchins. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: But, Yucca: Kiddos are huge Octa, not fans, if there's any other parents out there, you know what I'm talking about? And their favorite character is Shellington the sea Otter. Who's allergic to sea urchins, but all his other friends eat up the the urchins. They have a whole episode about how important the sea otters are to keeping those urchins in balance. Mark: yes. And that's another species which was haunted nearly to extinction and is now rebounded quite well along the California coast. Yucca: I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. It's, they're so adorable. It's great Yucca: They're oh my goodness. So. Mark: so. Yucca: yeah, our our next question, and this actually ties back to what we're talking about, about the, the community. This is coming from Savannah who did a, a much longer email, really love the email, but I'm just gonna pull this last bit out. Talking about community with the larger pagan community, which may not necessarily be non theist or athe pagans. So they write, I've been pondering, whether I should start attending local pagan events, which in this area seem to be skewed, more viewed, more theistic, and based in the supernatural, is it worth it? Are there ways to get along? Would I simply have to turn my brain off at a, at certain points, bite my tongue and swallow my allergy to woo. Or is there a way to be part of mainstream pagan community in a way that's authentic to me. So some good stuff in here. Mark: Yeah. Great question. And it's one that I think is really pertinent for everyone that's practicing in the non theist pagan realm. There, there is, as, as rare as pagans are, and the best estimate that I've seen for north America is that there's probably about a million of us in in the United States. And then more in Canada and Mexico. So that that's not very much in a country of 330 odd million people. Yucca: yeah. Mark: But there is a community and there are events, there are festivals and there are conferences and there are opportunities to get in their local groups that are opportunities to get together. And unfortunately there is no way to broadly characterize those. It really depends on the personalities and the culture of what's going on in your local area. So not knowing who those people are. I can't really say whether it's possible for you to be out as atheist pagan with other pagans and have them welcome you. Some places do some places don't, Yucca: And it's so personal too. Right? We can give advice, but what's gonna, even if, if you, there were two atheopagan in the same place who didn't know each other, we're having the same question. It's gonna be different for each of those people based on their personalities and their comfort zone. All of that stuff. so we can certainly give the advice, but, but know that it's gonna be different for absolutely everyone. And there's not a right answer. Mark: Right. My rule of thumb for this sort of thing is that when I'm a guest, I obey the hosts rules. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: So if I'm invited to a ritual and they're doing all this theistic stuff, I just translate it in my mind, understanding that they may not know that they're talking to air and that that's, that that they're just talking to themselves or not. But that doesn't really matter. I know that. And I understand what they're trying to get at in terms of the characteristics, the qualities, the nature of the figure that they're invoking, right? Like if they're invoking Zeus, there are particular qualities and characteristics that that figure of myth has, and that's what they're, that's what they're invoking into the ritual that you're working to do. So I don't necessarily, I mean, I'm not going to pipe up in the middle of somebody's ritual and say, I don't believe that Yucca: Yeah, Mark: but so it, it is rude, right. If we get into a theological discussion, I'm going to, I'm gonna be public about my atheopagan, but you don't have to be, if you're not comfortable, Yucca: right. Mark: You can say, my, my personal cosmology is really private to me. Or you can say I look at things somewhat differently, but that doesn't really matter. I'm glad to be here. And, enjoying being with you folks, Yucca: Or you can steer the conversation away and not actually ask, answer the question that they asked. Right. When they ask a direct question, you just talk about whatever you wanna talk about and just run with the conversation in a different direction, Mark: I mean, Yucca: that's. Yeah. Mark: I mean, talk about your passion for nature, talk about your, your sense of awe and wonder at, what's happening with the James web telescope. There, there are a lot of different things that you can do that will resonate with the vast majority of practicing pagans that don't have to do with God's and magic. If somebody, is sort of grilling you about, well, what kind of spells do you really like to do? Yada yada? Well, I'm not much of a spellcaster I've been known. I've been known to use that line a lot. And the vast majority of pagans, at least in the United States are solitary. They are not people who work in groups or coves or circles. So. That understanding. That means that by definition, it's a very idiosyncratic community of people. Everybody's got their own way of approaching things. So there is a lot of tolerance in the pagan community for difference of many kinds. The problem is that when you, when you explain that you don't believe in deities or supernatural beings of any kind, people can take that as a criticism of their belief. And you want to kind of avoid that implication if at all possible. Everybody has to draw their own cosmological conclusions. We've done that based on evidence and science, others do it based on experiences that they've had. Right. Believing what their, what their sensorium developed as an experience for them believing that that is an actual physical thing that happened in the world. So if they heard the voice of a God talking to them, they don't think that it was their brain. They think that it was the voice of a God talking to them. And, we, we need to respect that they as humans, they have the right to do that. They have the right to their own spiritual path and the right to their own Conclusions about the nature of the world. But we don't have to say, oh yes, I see. I, I know how that is. We can, we can divert the conversation or just be, really Franken, but in a vague way. Right. I, I have kind of a different way of understanding that stuff, but that sounds really powerful to me, Yucca: Yeah. Cause that's, that's another strategy is to just let them talk about themselves and their. Turn it back to them getting to talk about themselves because not everybody, but most pagans are really excited to get to talk about their thing with somebody. Right. You're gonna listen to me. Go on. Right. So like asking a D and D player about their characters, you Mark: Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, let me just tell you, Yucca: yeah. Now the other thing that we of course need to put a plug in for is and this is kind of a place that, that atheopagan is right now. One of the stages is that we are growing and starting to build a lot of community. So it might be an opportunity for you to. To start building a community, right. If there isn't already an atheopagan affinity group in your area, maybe you could start one, right. Or maybe there might be, for me, there's just not enough of us in New Mexico. So I'm chilling with the Coloradans, right? Like, okay, that's close enough. I'll go hang out with you. You're, you're only a few hours away, so maybe there's something like that. So Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And community is a really good thing. And it's an important function of, of religion of spirituality. It's. Well, okay. I, I don't want to get into the difference between religion and spirituality and there are no universally agreed definitions for those terms anyway, but. To me, religion is a communal activity. It's something that, that, a community builds itself up around, and it's good for us. It's good for us not to be siloed all the time and to be connected with other people of like mind. So what Yucca says is really a, an important point that you know, I, there was this reporter in the bay area many years ago, scoop NICAR who used to say, if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own. And similarly with pagan community, if you don't like what they're doing, make some of your own, announce a announce, a Sabba holiday celebration and invite people that you think. Might fit might, might celebrate that, you can have a nice, a nice feast dinner and meet some new people. Meetup.com is actually a really useful thing for that because people who are looking for things to do, looking for ways to connect with others are they're there. That's where they are. So it's a, it's a useful tool. Yucca: Yeah. Okay. So let's take this last one for now. And again, if you wanna, if you wanna send in your questions or topics please do, but this last one is from Cheryl. And this is kind of a, kind of a fun one, a little bit of a tricky one. So two parts to it. Okay. What positive stereotypes do you hope athe pagans become known for? And on the flip side, what are some possible negative stereotypes you worry about? And you would like to steer the community away. Yeah. Mark: Okay. Okay. Yucca: I mean, I could, some of the positive ones immediately, I could say. I hope that we've become known for being compassionate. Interesting. Open-minded very critical, but in like a Socratic kind of loving of education way, those are some, I mean, basically I'm just taking out my personal values that I like and saying, I want the whole community to be like that. Right. But yeah. Mark: Yeah. I think I would like, for us to know, for, to be known for being kind. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And also critical thinkers and for our genuine love for nature, our, our, our deep passion for this world and our capacity to inspire that in others. I would also like for us to be known as really effective ritualists, people that can really change you psychologically really, transform the hurts within us so that we heal and really put on a great celebration. That's filled with joy and happiness and connection. So those, those pieces I think are really important to me as well. On the other side on the negative side, what I would like to do is divert our reputation away from the new atheists. Yucca: mm-hmm Mark: I don't want to be, I don't want to be perceived in the same bucket as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and all those guys, Lauren Krause. Yucca: I mean, for me, for many years, I shied away from using the term atheist because of that association. Right. I think actually there was a, a video like years back at this point that I had made that I had mentioned that. And you had commented in the, the comments section about that. Right. And it was a really nice kind of eye opener, but because you hear a lot of people, you hear the word atheist and the, what comes to mind is the person like shooting down and tearing apart and, and just being very like, Mark: Being being antithetic Yucca: and yeah, and just shutting everybody down. Right. Mark: right, right. In, in, in with, with the, with the key goal, being this sort of egotistical, Yucca: Superiority. Mark: the, and Desi desire to be right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And I mean, everybody, everybody thinks their cosmology is right. It's true that people who base their cosmologies on evidence are more likely to be. Right. But being right is cold comfort. It's not. It doesn't, you can't build community around being right. Which is why atheism doesn't really have communities. There's. I mean, there are a couple of organizations where people belong to them and get together to talk about how right they are. And I've been to a few of those, Yucca: Yeah. Well at its core, though, atheism is just not. Theist. Right. And then there's so many different then. I mean, that's only just a tiny part of culture. Right. And then there's so much. And so that's, I mean, what, what we've done is we've taken and brought together the, okay. We don't deal with that God thing, but we are pagans. We, we appreciate science. We use that as a framework for understanding the world, but we also have all of these other values that we are adding to this. You can be atheist and have values, Mark: Yes. Yes. And paganism by its very nature is culture building rather than being handed culture from a book or from an existing tradition, that's already got all of its own rules. We are in the process of creating culture for ourselves that meets our values and works to help us to be really happy and effective in the world. And those are things that don't really fit very well in the, in the new atheist schema of things, because they involve a lot of. Kind of soft, cushy stuff that isn't the bright, hard steel of science, right? They involve rituals and psychology and myth and symbols and all the, the artistic impulse, the creative impulse all of those things that are so, so intrinsic to who we are as humans, but not about the thinky part of being humans. They're about the other parts to being humans and valuing those other parts and feeding them and building community around them. Yucca: Right. And what I really hope for us is that we continue to grow and cultivate an appreciation for both of those sides. Right? Because the, the pagan community at large is really good at those feeling squishy stuff. But one of the things that we're doing is atheopagan is also bringing in the, yeah, let's bring in this logic, let's bring in this critical thinking and we're and we're bettered for it. We feel it improves our life. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And, and there's a, I guess I would say there is a, a satiety to the worldview of non-US paganism. There's, there's a way that it fills us up because the world is enough, right. Nature, all the way out to the gala. Super clusters and, macro structures in the universe all the way down, down below the quirks to, the, the, the tiny boons and microparticles. It, it's so amazing and so enormous to try to get your mind around even a little bit, that we, we are able to be satisfied with it. Somehow we don't need to populate it with human-like figures that are probably pretty unlikely to exist based on the available evidence. And so one of the things that I've said about Ethiopia paganism quite a bit is that we're the spirituality of verifiable reality. Yucca: like that. Will you say that one again? Mark: we're the spirituality of verifiable reality. You, you don't need for there to be a supernatural dimension to the universe in order to be filled with a spiritual sense of awe and joy and purpose and finding meaning in this life. And and so that's what we're about and what I would hope people would take away from encountering us is this feeling of, wow, that's a really cool person. I really liked them. They were warm and they were thoughtful and they were interesting and they were creative. And I wanna spend more time with those kinds of people. Yucca: Yeah. And welcoming. Mark: Yes. And, and welcoming. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Not proselytizing to be clear, not you should be one of us, but just welcoming, if you're, if you're curious about the stuff that I'm into, here's where you can find it. Yeah. As the, as the, the founder of the particular path of athe paganism within the broader category of non-US paganism, my goal has always been from the very beginning to try to do it. All right. And I'm human. So that means that there's gonna be, places where it doesn't get done. Right. But with a community, I think you can correct for any one person's errors in order to become more and more kind, more and more consistent with your expressed values, more and more mutually accountable and transparent, more and more affirming of the value of every person who's in the community and every person in the world. And so that really is my hope that we are on this evolutionary journey where as a movement, among the many movements of humans here we're gaining some traction for those kinds of values and way of being in the world with one another. Yucca: Yeah, I've been very encouraged and impressed by the community. And there's been so many people stepping forward and taking leadership roles and people are certainly not afraid to correct you or anyone else. And you have been you've received that very well in the situations that I've seen and just, just a very mature group of, of really passionate and kind people that are just excited to grow this and create, create this community that, that we're cultivating together. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've really found that too. I mean, when I first entered the pagan community back in the eighties what struck me was how incredibly cool the people were. The, they were heartfelt. They were. Open. They were interesting. They were creative. Now a lot of them believed some stuff that I was kind of like, well, I, I'm not sure how that all, I I'm, I'm not sure how that all squares with the evidence, but okay. In this community, I'm finding all of those same qualities along with a real sort of intellectual sharpness a, a very thoughtful, analytical capacity. And it's just a joy to be a part of I've. I, I so enjoy, the online interactions, the, the, the in person interactions. It's just really been an amazing thing. Yucca: Yeah, and I am really grateful to share this time with you and all of you listening that, you take a, take a part of your week aside to hang out with us and, and be part of this, this amazing community and this amazing movement and whatever it is that we are. So thank you. Thank all of you. Mark: Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you for wanting to be the kind of person we're all working to be. Cuz the world needs it. The world, the world needs kind thoughtful, critically thinking inclusive people who care about things like justice and, and nature, right? Yeah. Yucca: Yeah. And thank you for the, the questions. And we will do another one of these episodes when we get some more questions. This was a lot of fun. I liked having the kind of a lot of the, the smaller topics. I mean, any of these, actually we could have really fleshed out into a full episode actually, but it was nice to get, to get to go through and, and kind of jump from topic to topic and, and go to some very different places in the same hour. Mark: Yeah, yeah. I really enjoyed it too. Remember you could contact us at the wonder podcast queues, gmail.com. That's the wonder podcast, QS, gmail.com. And we always welcome your, your feedback, your questions, all that kind of stuff. So thank you so much, Yucca. See you next week.
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
