Has Stefan Molyneux hooked you?

[Giggan]

Yeah, I got the discount last year. I'll try and put money aside over the summer so I'll be set for LF'10.

[kalmia]

will stephan come personally or will we see his big head displayed on a screen like oz?

I think it will just be a large banner backdrop with a picture of his forehead behind the speakers.  Show up if that excites you.

[Ryan McGuire]

For the most part, I'm a fan of Stefan, I think he gave an excellent talk at Liberty Forum today, introducing his powerful "Against Me" argument.

I recorded it (including Jesse's introduction) for those who could not attend. It's not the best quality, the recorder was around my neck so there is some jostling, but for those interested:

http://www.enigmacurry.com/tmp/Stefan_Molyneux_-_NH_Liberty_Forum_2009.wma

It's 52 MB, so its kind of big if you're on dialup, if that's a problem let me know and I can transcode it for you.

[Jim Johnson]

I've heard mixed reviews, but I thought both Jesse and Stefan did a great job.   

[TackleTheWorld]

Thanks for the link, Ryan.  I passed it on to the freedomainradio.com forum folks.  Hopefully we don't crash your server

[Ryan McGuire]

Thanks for the link, Ryan.  I passed it on to the freedomainradio.com forum folks.  Hopefully we don't crash your server

I doubt it will be a problem, I've never exceeded my server limits before. I'm glad people are finding it useful.

[Barterer]

I recorded it (including Jesse's introduction) for those who could not attend. It's not the best quality, the recorder was around my neck so there is some jostling, but for those interested:

http://www.enigmacurry.com/tmp/Stefan_Molyneux_-_NH_Liberty_Forum_2009.wma

Thank you!! I had to run before the end of the talk, but definitely will download this once I'm back on broadband. 

[tracysaboe]

I like his podcasts, I've been listening to them myself, but there are things I don't agree with.

Like his "proof" of atheism for one thing.  He's not intellectually honest about it -- like most atheists aren't. If you're an atheist it's because you "BELIEVE" concretely that there is no God. Only the agnostic is intellectually honest when he says his position is from pure logic.

I guess I haven't noticed any problems with psychology or whatever.

We even play select podcasts of his on our radio station.

Tracy

[tracysaboe]

Most of the Pacifists I've known where church pacifists.  Loved Jesus more than themselves and where horribly burdened by "I'm white and middle class and therefore evil" guilt.  I could appreciate their passion and courage, but not their unwillingness to defend themselves.  I find that embrace of death disturbing.  I've never had the faith to embrace the philosophy.

That sounds like a weird church to me.

Ephesians tells us to Love our wives and our children. And Love is defined in Ephesians as protecting and providing. I don't understand how you can protect your family if you're unwilling to defend yourself and them from aggression. I don't really understand Christian Pacifism.

Although, I do understand that you should try to deescalate and try to do everything you can to not need to use violence to defend yourself. It should be the last option.

I haven't listened to Stefan's podcasts (well, the 1st three. And I foud myself irritated, that the Lew Rockwell article of it was half a page, and I could have read and understood it in 5 minutes.) but I suspect his point is that -- from a strictly utilitarian perspective, in a free society you make a lot more money from honest work, and there's more honest work to do because there wouldn't be any black markets. (although there might be grey markets) And social presures would be more severe to prevent violent tendencies. Certainly, all else being equal, if the drug war and gun laws were repealed there would be a lot less violence. Right? So, maybe he's just saying that learning self defense is less of a necessity in a free society then now?

I don't know, I'm making stuff up right now, I haven't listened to the podcasts your talking about.

Tracy

[Giggan]

I like his podcasts, I've been listening to them myself, but there are things I don't agree with.

Like his "proof" of atheism for one thing.  He's not intellectually honest about it -- like most atheists aren't. If you're an atheist it's because you "BELIEVE" concretely that there is no God. Only the agnostic is intellectually honest when he says his position is from pure logic.

I guess I haven't noticed any problems with psychology or whatever.

We even play select podcasts of his on our radio station.

Tracy

I also had issues with his proof of atheism youtube vid. He makes some great points and shows the immense probability against the idea of a God, but is cheating to say he has disproven the possibility.

The Dawkins has a great piece in his documentary 'The Root of All Evil?' where he relates atheism to Bertrand Russell's Teapot analogy (I know he also talks about the teapot in 'The God Delusion', but I don't remember specifically if he makes the following point). He admits that scientifically speaking we would all be 'objective agnostics' to the idea of a celestial teapot, but for all intents and purposes, we are teapot atheists. Granted, the teapot analogy does not fill a gap the way a creator does, so it is not the best analogy, but is probably the most well-known. But speaking of gaps, Dawkins never fails to mention that even the God idea fills no gap, because the existence of such a being does not explain its own existence.

[Friday]

The Dawkins has a great piece in his documentary 'The Root of All Evil?' ...

Dawkins made a documentary?!  How did I miss that?

18 years of Catholic school + Sunday school + religion homeschool vs The Selfish Gene... guess who won?   

[tracysaboe]

Well. God is eternal -- meaning that such an entity never had a beginning.

Fred Hoyal, and Robert Jastro were great physicists. Jastro openly stated he was an agnostic. Hoyal was a devout atheist. I say Devout, because in one physics experiemnt he discovered that the probability that life could evolve (a 6 celled protists -- even though empirically no protists are that small today.)was like 1 in 10 to the 10,000 power -- even if the entire UNIVERSE was some great primordial ooze. He said his Atheism was severely shaken when he discovered that. He chose to remain an atheist on faith.

Personally for me, it takes more faith to believe in no god then to believe in a god.

But getting back to my initial sentence. Something has to be eternal. Either God, or the Universe just always was. Well, the universe is only about 16 Billion years old based on current Hubble constant measurements. So, something either started it, or it's been expanding and contracting for eternity. Most physicists though state that each successive expansion would be more chaotic then the last if such a thing were happening. I think Dawkins likes to ignore the law of entropy.

But other then his Atheist proofs I can't say I've had a lot of problems with Molyneux.

TRacy

[Giggan]

Dawkins made a documentary?!  How did I miss that?

I highly recommend it. You can catch it on youtube in 2 5-part episodes, about 90 minutes in total. I think the only place you can get the DVD is Dawkins' website. First part:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_1Gpt6dKFo

Personally for me, it takes more faith to believe in no god then to believe in a god.

The probability of evolution being so low is crazy to think about, but imagine, even if the probability was half of what it is, had it not happened, it isn't like we'd be around to think about it.

As for thinking it takes more faith not to believe in a God than to believe in one, I used to believe this, but now I honestly couldn't understand it if I tried. I think one seems more faith-based than the other based on upbringing. If throughout life, you believed in what you saw and did not create further explanations, creating a third party would seem random, whereas most of us were raised thinking what you see is not real, something mystical out there is 'real-er' and thus, it seems viscerally deviant to not think this way. After all, filling the gaps in knowledge with 'God' does not answer any questions itself, it just passes them off to a being that all evidence suggests does not exist.

The idea of a 'creator', something acting as the prime mover of the universe, I'm an agnostic of leaning towards atheist, but of the gods created by man so far, I'm Hard-A.

[dalebert]

This was posted on Facebook with the following caption:

"YOU HAVE ANGERED THE GREAT GLOWING HEAD OF MOLYNEUX"

Thought you might be amused.

[Pat K]

Run away! Run away!