someone once asked you whether you thought Jesus was literally resurrected and you said "It would take me 40 hours to answer that question. " Okay that's that's the kind of thing I'm responding to here you don't need to do that if you have a clear-cut answer to that question i don't have a clear answer and if you don't And if you don't how's this for an answer almost certainly not [Music] okay so here's here's an exercise you can try so what you do is is is you sit on the edge of your bed and you say "Okay what I did was wrong. " And and you have to really believe this right so you've thought about it it's killing you it's killing you so now you're penitent and you're confessing let's say and you're confessing to yourself as much as to anyone and you say "I really want to know what I did wrong.
" and I really want to know what I could do to put it right and I'm willing to accept any answer that will manifest itself to me try that see what happens that's a prayer that will be answered and it won't be answered in the way that you want it to be answered i can bloody well tell you that okay but but that Well what are you communicating with what are you communicating with when you do that no no no that that is something that that is a process that I'm familiar with it doesn't require any supernatural explanation and it certainly it certainly doesn't require that we imagine that any of our books were dictated by the creator of the universe i didn't say that it required any supernatural or that it required the I was asked to provide an instance of prayer that worked and that's what I did i didn't do anything other than that that's that's fully understandable in terms of human psychology and it's not understandable because we don't know where the answer comes from well we don't know where anything comes from that's true yeah okay so so yeah but that doesn't that doesn't open the door we one one thing we can know with absolute certainty is that that whoever wrote the Bible didn't know either and there's many other things he or she didn't know like everything else we know scientifically right it's not it's not so obvious what people know no one even knew the brain was involved in any of this right so yeah but they probably knew about as much as we do about how the brain was involved in it what in that so in what sense do you mean what is the god that you act as though he she it exists and what is the god what what is the god-shaped thing I must have in my life to prevent me from being a quote real atheist okay well I'm I'm I'm going to read some things that I wrote because it's so complicated that I'm not sure that I can just spin it off the top of my head and so you'll have to excuse me okay so here's here's some propositions and they're complicated and they need to be unpacked so I'm just going to read them and you're that'll have to do for the time being so God is how we imaginatively and collectively represent the existence and action of consciousness across time as the most real aspects of existence manifest themselves across the longest of time frames but are not necessarily apprehensible as objects in the here and now so what that means in some sense is that you have conceptions of reality built into your biological and metaphysical structure that a consequence of processes of evolution that that occurred over unbelievably vast expanses of time and that structure your perception of reality in ways that it wouldn't be structured if you only lived for the amount of time that you're going to live and that's also part of the problem of deriving values from facts because you're eancent and and you can't derive the right values from the facts that portray themselves to you in your lifespan which is why you have a biological structure that's like 3. 5 billion years old so God is that which eternally dies and is reborn in the pursuit of higher being and truth that's a fundamental element of hero mythology god is the highest value in the hierarchy of values that's another way of looking at it god is what calls and what responds in the eternal call to adventure god is the voice of conscience god is the source of judgment and mercy and guilt god is the future to which we make sacrifices and something akin to the transcendental repository of reputation here's a cool one if you're an evolutionary biologist God God is that which selects among men in the eternal hierarchy of men so you know men arrange themselves into hierarchies and then men rise in the hierarchy and there's principles that are important that determine the probability of their rise and those principles aren't tyrannical power there's something like the ability to articulate truth and the ability to be competent and the ability to make appropriate moral judgments and if you can do that in a given situation then all the other men will vote you up the hierarchy so to speak and that will radically increase your reproductive fitness and the operation of that process across long expanses of time looks to me like it's codified in something like the notion of God the Father it's also the same thing that makes women men attractive to women because men women peel off the top of the male hierarchy and the question is what should be at the top of the hierarchy and the answer right now is tyranny as part of the patriarchy that the real answer is something more like the ability to use truthful speech in the service of let's say well-being and so that's that's something that operates across tremendous expanses of time and it plays a role in the selection for survival itself which makes it a fundamental reality Jordan if I can I just cut in here with one question stop with that for now [Music] what so I I was not hearing in that list of attributes a god who could care if anyone masturbated uh I was not hearing a god who depends on what else is stopping you from doing Sam well sorry I missed that wait I said it depends on what else it's stopping you from doing well okay so it's it's important to live it's important to do something other than masturbate yes yes which is which which actually constitutes a problem for many which is harder than it sounds the fact that it takes you 20 minutes to admit that there that a lot of the Bible is filled with barbaric nonsense i don't think it took me 20 minutes to admit that well yeah we'll go to the tape on that these things matter these things matter and I'm just saying it's like you only if you're if you're in a parish of one or in a parish of 1,000 or a parish of a 100,000 but not in the parish that has anything in common with the with the Bible thumpers in my country who think that Jesus is very likely coming back in their lifetime because he never died and he's going to judge the living and the dead and there will be a resurrection and hellfire and all the rest if that's not the game you're playing at all own [Applause] it why why are Why are you Why are you all applauding about that it's like what what do you mean own it it's like I already made my claim it's like I'm not playing a religious fundamentalist game so what's all the applause about so I don't understand that and own it it's like I was as listen I was as clear as I possibly could be when I delineated my answer to the question people say "Well what do you mean by God? " Someone someone once asked you if Jesus was a one second answer but no well forget it man jordan wait a minute wait a minute hold on i think we can actually This is a complicated One second no I mean I don't want to end on I don't want to end on a note of acrimony but someone once asked you whether you thought Jesus was literally resurrected and you said it would take me 40 hours to answer that question okay that's that's the that's the kind of thing I'm responding to here you don't need to do that if you have a clearcut answer to that question i don't have a clear answer and if you don't and if you don't that that connects with many other things that we still have to talk about yes definitely yeah i think because that it isn't obvious in the biblical account that Christ was literally resurrected so it's not simple this is not simple no no but if the question is do you think he Well let's let's put it probabilistically i mean anything's possible i'll tell you that it's possible that he was physically resurrected i mean it's it's not it's even possible wait a second i didn't With respect to quantum mechanics the point is I said it would take me 40 hours to answer the question i didn't say that he was go how's this for an answer almost certainly not i'm wondering what percentage of religious people who who would say "Oh yeah i believe in God and it's the most important thing in my life.
" Uh what percentage of those religious people do you think have in mind a god of the sort you just described i don't know Sam it's a good question because when I go talk to people when I when I talk to people online and use exactly this terminology millions of people listen so it's not so obvious which what percentage of people see it this way it's it may be that they have the intuitions but they haven't been articulated well i mean this is this is the problem this is what worries me about this so you I mean you you you could do the same thing with the idea of a of ghosts right so so people traditionally have believed in ghosts it's a it's an archetype you might say the ghost survival of death is certainly an archetype and and we know what most people most of the time mean when they say they believe in ghosts and I say "I don't believe in ghosts. " And you say "No no you you do believe in ghosts.
