Latest / Brandon Fogal Evolution / #90 - Christianity Owns The Moral Landscape

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#90 - Christianity Owns The Moral Landscape · Brandon Fogal Evolution

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Is this a Christian world and we're all just living in it?
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Today we're going to take a look at a sit-down. It's not too recent,
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but it was a little while ago, maybe about 11 months ago, 12 months ago,
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with Sam Harris and Alex O'Connor.
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We're just going to take a few clips from their podcast that they had together,
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their conversation, and just kind of break it down.
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And I'm going to give my point of view and what I took from it and how I view
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what they believe and what they're standing on is borrowed from a Christian worldview.
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My name is Brandon Fogel. This is Evolution. Let's get into it.
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All right. So there are a couple of clips, two clips we're going to look at,
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but I wanted to start it off with just listening to their discussion.
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It was very good. I love listening to Sam Harris.
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I love listening to Alex O'Connor. They both bring good perspectives and they are both brilliant men.
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They're very smart, very smart. So I would give them that.
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And they're just amazing at articulating what they believe and what they're arguing for.
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But some of the things that they talk about in this discussion,
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I would say Alex seems a little bit more tethered to his foundation of the moral
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argument as opposed to Sam Harris's view of the moral argument and the moral landscape.
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I think his argument breaks down when you really hash it out and take it to
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its logical conclusion.
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I want to start off with, first of all, just a couple clips.
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We're going to look at the first one first, and then I'll give my opinion,
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my breakdown, and how I viewed it when I was watching it, because I just absorbed
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so much of what they talked about. It was very good.
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The whole sit-down is very good, so I have the link to the video.
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The link to Alex O'Connor's YouTube channel, so you can check that out,
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but we're going to take a look at just this sit down that they had together.
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All right. So this is the very first one. Just to get a little set the scene,
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Sam Harris, he argues for that the atheists have a.
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Moral argument, that there is a actual ought and actual should that is there
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that can even be deduced from an atheist perspective and worldview.
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Sam Harris, on the other hand, continues to kind to challenge him on that and
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saying, where do you get this should from this is that we experience in reality?
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And he continues to compress Sam's.
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In his argument, in his belief. And he comes to the conclusion,
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he says, we're saying a lot of the same things, but we're still disagreeing on a fundamental issue.
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And let's just take a look at this first clip we're going to break down.
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It's weird. I think we almost agree in that me being an emotivist and just thinking
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that all there essentially is, is people's preferences and people acting in accordance with them.
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It almost sounds like you agree with me and this whole thing about tacking on
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the should. Well, but the should is shorthand for a lot that we know about human
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minds and human societies that matter, that deeply matters to us, right?
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We know quite a bit about the difference between the best possible lives and
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the best possible relationships and the worst possible, right?
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And so, and insofar, the shorthand is, if you could push that button,
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you really should do it, right?
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In fact, you should pay, you should be willing to pay a fair amount of money to do it, right?
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Like, you know, you should be
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able to, you should be willing to make some sacrifice personally to do it.
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And if you're, if I'm talking to someone who says, well, I don't see any of
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that, right? I'm, I don't see why I should even just lift a finger to do that, right?
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There's, there may not be, I think there probably are ways to argue that person,
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you know, closer toward pushing the button if they're, you know,
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neurologically intact, right? You could say, oh, did you consider the fact that
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there are people who you know who might be miserable right now,
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whose misery would be reduced?
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And there are people who you might meet tomorrow, who you might fall in love
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with, you know, your future wife who's out there.
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Okay. So they go into this argument about Alex, who was the first one speaking.
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He continues to push that it's really a matter of preference.
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And Sam Harris always comes back and said,
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you're reducing it to not the significance and weight of these issues that you're
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talking about when you just say preference, because preference can mean I like
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I prefer chocolate ice cream as opposed to vanilla.
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I prefer a sunny day as opposed to a cloudy day.
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I prefer going to the beach as opposed to going to the mountains.
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And Alex is really trying to wrap his head around and he's really trying to understand.
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I get what you're saying, and I'm following it out, but it just,
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the things aren't going together. The lines aren't crossing.
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There's no intersection between what you're saying as opposed to when we draw
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it out to its fundamental,
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final conclusion in the matter, and we take all of the points and put them together,
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they don't line up. They don't make sense.
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And he continues to challenge them on that. And Sam Harris, he goes into a lot
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of just, I think, circular arguing in what he's saying, because everything he
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says, he draws it out and he keeps going.
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And I think he's finding a lot of the things as he's discussing it with Alex,
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because a lot of the things he's not really logically making sense when you
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and I because I view Sam Harris as a very logical person.
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But no matter how many times you say something over and over,
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I don't think it's reaching the masses.
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I don't think it's reaching what the argument really entails.
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Because I would argue and say that the atheists are living in borrowed time.
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They're living in a house that is currently not theirs.
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That is currently not theirs. And I would say that the house belongs to the
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Christian worldview. you.
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And Sam is continually borrowing from Christianity and deducing a lot of morality
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from it by just basically the moral law that we all understand is out there. And he's trying to.
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Take his argument and infuse it into that and just say that his argument stands
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up against Christianity,
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as opposed to the Christian argument is,
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we understand that there is a moral law above us, and we're taking that from
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what the moral law says, and we're
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just basically extrapolating it and presenting what we all know is true.
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There are things I would say, and I get it, with atheists, they immediately
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will point to certain things in morality in the Christian Bible,
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the Bible that we have, the corpus that we have in the biblical literature.
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And they would say there are certain things in the Bible that don't match up
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to what we would understand as good morals.
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And I think they always go to, and these are the ones that stand out to me the most,
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is slavery and what happens in the Old Testament with the Israelites going in
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and basically conquering other nations and putting them,
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you know, defeating them and destroying them and just basically taking over
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their land. And I get that.
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Those are very tough things to talk about. And I'm definitely open to talking about.
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I'll actually go into slavery a little bit and how I would, as a Christian,
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because I am coming from it from the perspective of a Christian,
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how I would understand slavery.
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But before we get into that, I want to take also take a look at the next clip, which Alex,
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they fall on this argument where it's basically say you're in a room and your
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family is in another room and they're held by captive captors and they're being
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tortured and they're being tortured.
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And Alex is saying, I can't say that those people that are have my family captive
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or actually do anything wrong, but I would just prefer that they don't.
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And Sam immediately comes back and says, do you understand the gravity of what you're saying?
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You're reducing it to something that doesn't matter at all.
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And I would say that to Sam, if you say that people like, say my family's being
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tortured in another room, I would prefer that they don't.
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But then also the people in the other room that are torturing my family,
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they're in the stance where they prefer that they are torturing them.
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It's just a matter, because when you take it just to its logical outcome,
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the atheist worldview, that there is actually no higher up law that is above
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us. There is actually not. It's not there.
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You couldn't really say that somebody is doing anything wrong.
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There is no wrong. There is no good. There is no right when you really hash it out.
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And then they go into a lot of talking about because Sam,
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he kind of leans toward almost a Buddhism worldview and understanding and just
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removing yourself and getting into meditation and just becoming almost just
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one with the universe in a lot of ways, one with your experience.
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And I think he almost skates by the bigger point that you are arguing moral
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realities that we all know exist,
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but you're just borrowing it from a Christian worldview and this almost just
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hijacking it and then running off with your own belief system.
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Because I would say the Christian worldview is the worldview that we all inhabit.
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And I wanted to talk about just this analogy, and all analogies break down eventually.
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They don't all fully work when you take every bit and piece of it.
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But I would say an analogy we could take is that this world that we live in
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is God's house, is the Christian's house. We're all living in it.
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We have examples that our father is, that this is his house,
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but he's just away. He's not here right now.
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And we have an explanation for why he's not here and why everything is not exactly perfect.
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But we have fingerprints of our father.
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We can go to his room. We can see his closet.
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We can see our father's suits and clothes and all that he has in there, his shoes.
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We can go into our living room and we see pictures on the wall,
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pictures that demonstrate that he is really there and he lives here.
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He's just away right now. He's not here and we can't say he's here.
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He's not in the house, but we are living in the house and everybody is living inside the house.
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And we are all just making our arguments for why we're inside this house.
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And we're just trying to, as much as possible, prove.
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That our belief is stronger than someone else belief.
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And I would say that the atheist is trying to prove the existence that disprove
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the existence of our father that is there saying, he's not really here.
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These things that you're, that just that, that watch on the dresser,
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that it's not really, it's not really his, it's just something that appears to be his.
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It's something that just seems like it was his, but it's really not.
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And there's, there's an, an explanation why that watch somehow got put together
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and is perfectly intact and looks like a man that lived there.
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It looks like there is a reason why it is there, you know, and I'm,
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and just use all this reasoning and argument and a lot of flowery language to
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disprove that our father's there, but they're just borrowing it.
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They're just borrowing from everything because they can't step outside the house.
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So they're inside of it making arguments about the house and saying that,
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no, this father that you're talking about, who's away on business, he's really not there.
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You just think he is. You're the one that's deluded.
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You're the one that is crazy and thanking all this, as opposed to the Christian
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is like, we're all inside this house.
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We all have this evidence that he's here, whether it's the evidence of just the.
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And you can bring it home to this world is so intricately put together and you
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can see the fingerprints of an intelligent designer and everything to how everything
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works together, to how we orbit around the sun,
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to how we're just flying through space and not just incinerated or just imploding at every moment.
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But we are all somehow, all these molecules are being held intact,
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there is evidentiary explanation for everything.
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So I would just, I would start with that, but we're going to take a quick look
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at the, what I was talking about where Sam and Alex, they discuss the,
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the matter of preference.
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And Sam is just saying it's a matter you're saying it's preference.
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And that's not, that's diminishing the significance and weight of every moral
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issue that we know is there and Alex is saying no.
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It really is just a matter of preference. How could I say that I'm standing
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in the right and someone else is standing in the wrong when we are following
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out this atheistic worldview that we have?
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There is no intelligent designer. There is no being that is above us.
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We're all just evolutionary species that have just come together and we're molecules
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in motion and that's all we are.
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All right, but let's take a quick look at this second video.
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It seems natural for me to say of the worst possible misery that I prefer it not to be the case.
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It just seems so much more unnatural. Doesn't it sound psychotic to say that?
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Like, psychotic or psychopathic, like either you're not under,
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either you're not tracking.
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I mean, just imagine, you know, you're held by your captors in a room away from
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your family and, you know, but you can hear the screams of your family in the next room.
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And they say to you, you want us to stop torturing your family because you just
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give us the information that we know you have.
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And you say, well, you know, I would, I obviously have a preference that you
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not torture my family as you're doing right now.
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But I mean, like, like that, that aloofness from the details of what I don't
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think I would, I would, I would put it so.
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But it doesn't actually track the way you would feel and would be right to feel
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given the kind of being you are.
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I would feel like I would really
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really really prefer for that not to happen even more like
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how much ice cream could could they counterweight
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that preference well i suppose okay so right
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there i would say sam and alex almost they got both sides of the coin and they're
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arguing it from both sides as atheists but they're coming to it to a different
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conclusion on both sides so if almost if you combine what they are saying,
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you would almost land at the Christian worldview.
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Because Sam, if he really believes what he is saying,
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that there is an, and I sometimes struggle when I listen to Sam Harris talk,
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if he really believes what he is saying, because whenever he talks it all through
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and he keeps going and going and arguing for, there is a actual moral high ground.
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And it's really just the ultimate, the person's ultimate well-being that they are concerned with.
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And we just know things are right. We just know things are wrong.
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And we can have this degree of this is more wrong than that.
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This is more right than that.
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Whereas if you actually followed it to its full conclusion, it's arguing for
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that we know there's a moral law.
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We know there is a moral law.
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And Alex, he is borrowing from the Christian worldview as well because he understands
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that certain things are right.
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But his disconnect is that he
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has followed it to its full conclusion because he
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just is sitting in his atheistic perspective
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and these two they're not crossing it's
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like the the hairs like the the lines are not crossing both
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of them are coming from different perspectives both are disagreeing but
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i would i i almost respect alex's position more because he has followed it to
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its full conclusion he's logically played out all of it with if we stand in
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our atheistic perspective that we're going to see that nothing really matters.
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Nothing really has weight or significance and no person's viewpoint is better than another person's.
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I almost respect that more, but Sam, I think, is almost closer to the target
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because he sees that there is true weight in saying that something is wrong.
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We all understand that something, there's good, there is something that is evil.
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Those words are meaningless if we don't take into account a moral law.
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And if there is a moral law, if there is law, because they both can get on board
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with the laws of physics, but they can't get on board with the moral law and agreeance on that.
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And so I would say that their disagreement is just, they're not seeing the full
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picture and they're not really understanding the full weight of the Christian worldview.
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They're not truly understanding. And if they just took that,
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maybe they threw out all those things that they immediately have a distaste
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for, you know, because slavery, you know, that is very, very tough.
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That is a very tough thing to argue, especially from an American perspective.
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And I would just briefly, and
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I'll end it on this, briefly talk about my viewpoint on slavery and how—.
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We can see from a biblical perspective why slavery is talked about the way it is in the Bible.
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In the Old Testament, there is slaves.
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Israel has slaves of people that are other nations, but they also have slaves of their own people.
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And it's more of an indentured servitude. It's that people can't pay their debt.
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They can't live. So they sell themselves to somebody and work out their debt.
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And even in the New Testament, I'm not going to just say, oh,
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Paul was just, he was being politically correct and he didn't want to disrupt
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the Roman system of slaves.
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And that he was just being, I don't think Paul was really concerned about not
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disrupting the Roman system of having slaves and just the worldview of having slaves.
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It's a fallen world that we're in.
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You know, prisons aren't ideal, but it's a fallen world that we're living in,
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and prisons are necessary.
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And in that culture, in that time period, slavery was acceptable. It was acceptable.
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Stealing someone and making someone a slave by their ethnicity was never acceptable.
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And even as in a Christian worldview, Christians would claim,
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and I would proudly say, I am a slave of Jesus Christ. And that's what all the
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apostles said. We are slaves.
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The same word of Jesus Christ.
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We don't play that down. We don't try to skate past that.
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But it's the most precious thing in the world that we are owned by God.
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And there's all these analogies. He's our father, but he also,
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he owns us. He purchased us. He died for us.
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He bled and died for us. That was the currency that paid for our lives.
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Life with him and our forgiveness. So I don't think, I think Christians,
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you know, because especially coming from this American version that we have
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in this history, we have, we have a blemish on American history,
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you know, because we enslaved a certain ethnicity, but that was never a part of the Bible.
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And that was always immoral and wrong.
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And people can take any Bible passage and take it out of context and use it
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for their own political gain, but we can't just discount it and say,
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oh, and try to re, just reread what was meant there.
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No, slaves was acceptable. It was a part of this world that we were in.
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The ownership of someone, it's someone sell what they have.
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They didn't, they couldn't afford to live and they needed to be taken care of.
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So they sold themselves to somebody, but this isn't all there is.
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You know, we, we, we think that, oh my gosh, that's the worst thing imaginable.
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But that is just, we are living in a mist, like just a vapor that is just here
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for a second. And we're about to step into eternity.
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Selling yourself in, it's the necessary, I guess you could say the necessary
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evil for living in a fallen world that people had to be taken care of.
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You know, it's not to say that we need to have slaves now, but it's not to say
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that it wouldn't be the worst thing.
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If someone willingly submits themselves and they wanted to give themselves to
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somebody, and that's how they needed to live.
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The Bible had prescriptions for that. The Bible had prescriptions for that.
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So I just know that all these Christians in our day and age want to just kind
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of whitewash what it says in the Old Testament, what it says in the New Testament,
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and just say, well, we've come to a higher level understanding.
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Whereas, let's take the Bible at what it meant. It's maybe not the best scenario,
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but it was what life was about.
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And it's not the most evil because we are all slaves of God.
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We are all slaves of Jesus Christ when we surrender to him.
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So there's that picture that we are well taken care of as Christians.
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So I wanted to just look at both of those perspectives, Sam Harris,
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Alex O'Connor. I madly respect both of them.
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And I want to make that clear. I madly respect both of them.
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I love listening to both of them.
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And I think that they both bring a lot to the table, but their arguments,
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their arguments would make a lot more sense if they just bowed the knee to what they know is true.
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Because we can't just skate past that and say, we all, the Bible presents that
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we all know that this is true, that God is out there. He's out there.
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But it's, we have to suppress the truth because we want to live in our own sin.
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We want to live our own way.
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We don't want to surrender to our maker.
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So I'll leave that with you. And I wanted to just say always keep evolving to the best version of you.