why hello my fellow apes i hope you're well and that you're not eating like seriously if you're eating pause this video and come back later because things are about to get really uncomfortable really quick you've uh you've been warned draconculiasis which is derived from the latin affliction with little dragons is a parasitic infection caused by the guinea worm a person becomes infected by drinking water that contains microcrustations infected with guinea worm larvae and once one stomach acid dissolves the crustaceans the larvae then penetrate your digestive tract escaping into your body where over the following year they grow up to 80 centimeters or 31 inches in length the worms then mate with the males dying shortly after but the females eventually migrate to your subcutaneous tissue where they cause an extremely painful blister to erupt that compels you to submerge the wound in water then over several days or weeks the worm slowly emerges from the laceration and expels thousands of larvae into the water which in turn infects crustaceans thus continuing the so-called bea beautiful circle of life now as if this absolute nightmare fuel wasn't already traumatic enough the issue of removing the worm is a horror in itself the worm's emergence can disable victims for up to 10 weeks and if the wound is on a joint permanent stiffness and pain is very common what's more the parasite often causes secondary infections which lead to death in about one percent of cases so how does one safely remove these beasts well once the worm emerges medics typically wrap it around a stick to maintain tension and then gently turn the stick until the worm exits the body which takes a month yeah a month since if too much pressure is applied at any one time then the worm breaks and dies causing a whole host of additional issues and unfortunately despite technological advancement there is still no medicine or vaccine against this disease and infection does not create immunity meaning that one can experience this debilitating affliction many times throughout their life now if there is a god and he is as theists tend to insist all powerful and all-loving then for what possible mysterious reason did he create these disgusting fiery serpents as they've been referred to in scripture this is the question that stephen fry posed on the meaning of life when the host said the following suppose it's all true and you walk up to the pearly gates and you are confronted by god what will stephen fry say to him her or it and fry's response ruffled the feathers of many including evidently jordan peterson who in his recent conversation with fry sought to challenge him which without further ado we'll get to now right okay i'm going to read something and forgive me i want to go here you're face to face with god bone cancer in children bone cancer in children what's that about how dare you what's that about how dare you how dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault how dare you create a world where there is such misery that's not our fault it's utterly utterly evil why should i respect a capricious mean-minded stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain that's what i'd say and you think you're going to get in i know that but i wouldn't want to i wouldn't want to get in on his terms they're wrong and then one more because the god who created this universe if it was created by god is quite clearly a maniac because the god who created this universe if it was created by god is quite clearly a maniac utter maniac totally selfish total we have to spend our life on our knees thanking him what kind of god would do that yes the world is very splendid but it also has in it insects whose whole life cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind they eat outwards from the eyes why why did you do that to us you could easily have made a creation in which that didn't exist it is simply not acceptable so the specific parasitic disease that fry was referring to here is called onco-psoriasis but it's more commonly known as river blindness and likewise to the guinea worm it's pure nightmare fuel unlike the guinea worm however you don't need to drink anything to get it rather infected blackflies need to drink you and in doing so deposit larvae into your body a few moons later the adult worms then produce larvae of their own which make their way to your skin where they can affect any black flies that bite you thus continuing again the circle of life symptoms include severe itching bumps under the skin skin rashes depigmentation and indeed blindness i first saw this photo taken by the world health organization when i was a teen which depicts children leading their blind adults and i was then as i am now utterly appalled i mean for the naturalist parasites like these are easy to explain in fact they're expected mother nature is not conscious and so she doesn't care for our plight but for the vast majority of theists who believe that god is all-powerful and all-loving we have to ask why why do these devastating parasites exist and further still why did god create them long before he created humans before the fall are we really to believe really that the perfect plan for the perfect mammal necessitated all this excruciating suffering is this really the best of all possible worlds and know that this isn't an argument from emotion it has an element of emotion granted but make no mistake about it the argument is logical and it was expressed in logical form 2 300 years ago is god willing to prevent evil but not able then he is not omnipotent is he able but not willing then he is malevolent is he both able and willing then whence cometh evil is he neither able nor willing then why call him god well if we wanted to consider the various responses to the problem of evil or theodicies we'd be here for eternity i will in time dedicate an entire series to this in the future but here we're going to focus exclusively on peterson's approach because the god who created this universe if it was created by god is quite clearly a maniac utter maniac ivan in the brothers karamazov yeah right right now it's in okay so what happens in the brothers karamazov is that ivan wins the argument yeah but elotia is the better person completely so and without faith yeah it's a book it's very i would urge everyone to read the brothers karamazov because i do think it's a work of genius due in part to peterson and frye's shared knowledge of the brothers karasimoth they don't really flesh out why precisely ilocia is a better person than ivan and they move on quickly but for what it's worth i'll give a bit of context ailocia is the hero of the book he's young handsome selfless gentle easy going and loving and his christian faith defines his character but he's not an intellectual powerhouse he's a bit of a c.s lewis if you will whereas ivan is as peterson has said many times before more of a nietzsche he's extremely intelligent eloquent and brave but he's also nihilistic and finds human suffering and especially the suffering of children to render the existence of an all-powerful or loving god to be absurd and the crux of the debate between the two as peterson has put it elsewhere is well here's how he puts it and elosha eliot can't address a single one of ivan's criticisms and and he doesn't have the intellect for it and and and ivan has a devastating intellect it's devastating to him himself as well but what happens in the brothers karamazov essentially is that the aliologia continues to act out his commitment to the good let's say and in that manner he's triumphant it doesn't matter that he loses the arguments because the arguments aren't exactly the point or to give another perspective here's how sparks notes person ailosha's way of life seems superior to that of other characters he is the moral center of the novel because he represents a model of attitude and behavior that dostoevsky considers the right one the one most conducive to human happiness and peace instead of trauma and conflict that afflict most of the novel's other major characters and the reason why peterson levied this against fry it seems is because he found fry's sentiment to be reminiscent of ivan's since both focus on the problem of evil so in a nutshell and if i've understood peterson correctly he was implying that fry's attitude is destructive and counterproductive that he might well win the intellectual argument but at the cost of happiness i mean i was answering a question that i was asking i know and i'm not trying i'm not clearly not trying to put you on the spot my point is i don't believe there is such a being but if there were and he were the kind of being that has been worshipped and described by various religions around the world of monotheistic religions then i would have many bones to pick with him um but of course i don't believe there is such a thing but the the argument from evil as it's known is a is a very old one and it goes back through through the through you know medieval religious figures as well as later humanists that this idea that uh it is it is very hard to square this loving god who has knowledge of every hair on our head and adores us and um and adores little kittens but he also as i say bone cancer in in in children but also life cycles of insects that whose whole aim is to burrow into the eyes of children in africa and and lay their eggs there and cause blindness for those children i mean you could quite easily picture a universe in which there weren't such an animal and in which children were not sent blind with pain and horror by the various bugs and fungus fungi and insects and viruses in the world there's a worm in africa that burrows under the skin and it's long worm and if you you can pull it out with a pencil and wrap it but it breaks it's fragile and then it gets infected it's a terrible thing yeah i'm sorry peterson but we're not going to talk about the guinea worm again we're done with that anyhow as fry said the argument from evil which is more commonly known as the problem of evil has existed for thousands of years and there are multiple variations with some having at least as far as i'm convinced decent theological responses for instance more often than not and given the opportunity apologists are quick to frame the problem of evil in terms of specifically human action such as one's ability to harm others and they then explain this away in virtue of libertarian free will the reason we can harm others so they argue is because this is a necessary consequence of the freedom that god has given us and although i don't believe in libertarian free will and so for me this defense is unsound i can still appreciate that those who do believe in libertarian free will are likely to find this defense compelling fair enough however the variation of the problem of evil that fry touches upon cannot be neutralized by this defense since it doesn't refer to human action at all we homo sapiens emerged around 300 000 years ago and yeah and to give just one example 65 million years before us 75 percent of species on earth including billions of sentient beings were vanquished in an extinction that god either deliberately conducted or was powerless to prevent think of the suffering inflicted upon so many the is blackened with rubble as billions of gods petrified children are starved of sustenance and for what reason again i say this is no problem for the naturalist nature doesn't care but an omnibenevolent god cares by definition and so the followers of the triony lord have to maintain that all this suffering all this harm is somehow for the best that the world that we inhabit where children die from cancer rabbits are ripped apart by wolves and raging fires annihilate forest creatures millions of years before the dawn of humanity is somehow the absolute best world that an all-powerful all-loving god could create i mean as far as i'm convinced a faith of this magnitude is a greater parasite than a thousand fiery serpents and i would say so let's take the argument you made there and there's a there's a direction that goes in that's nihilistic and resentful and vengeful and angry and all understandable but to me counter it doesn't look to me like there's anything good in it it looks like it's entirely counterproductive it it makes the problem it purports to uh have been generated by worse so then the question is what's the appropriate attitude given that the argument you make is actually an extraordinarily powerful argument and i don't know the answer to that but i but i do know i think that resentment and anger and even the motive that would make you want to say that to god himself i think that's probably not helpful even though it's so well it i came to that with great difficulty i mean i've had my reasons to be resentful and angry especially recently and because i'm suffering a lot of pain and it makes me resentful and angry and wanting to shake my fist but i found upon intense consideration that there was nothing in that that didn't make it worse and that therefore that must be wrong even though it's justifiable right i completely understand and you must remember that my response was to a question i didn't see coming and it was amused it was because i don't believe in this god it's not an issue i'm not really resentful and angry about the fact that there's evil in the world i'm sorrowful very often and i'm united in my admiration for the fact and the real belief i have that most people fundamentally are given this dysfunction or this deep trauma most people are so good are so anxious to be good are deontically good have a sense of obligation and and drive in them to be better than they are i think that's that's one of the key things that i love about humanity is not just that we are dissatisfied with things that are wrong and can be improved but with ourselves we are dissatisfied and that most of us want to be better so the primary topic at hand here is the observation that atheists are angry which peterson believes is not helpful since this mentality leads to much of the issues that ivan suffers in the brothers kerasimov it compounds the issue as fryputter and i too can understand peterson's concern as many atheists including myself and just a moment ago no less often express what appears to be anger at god but to ensure that the stance is understood let's put another example on the table hell the notion of an atheist being charged with an infinite punishment hell for the finite crime of using the brain that god gave them is something i find not only utterly illogical and pathetic but straight up evil what a tyrant hill we would be beneath if such a ghastly entity existed a god that creates his children sick and then forsakes them for not being well is a divine prick but likewise to fry i don't believe that such a god exists and so i'm not really angry at god just as i'm not angry at thanos i find the overwhelming suffering in this world to be incredibly sad but i'm no more angry at it than i am the wind for both are without intent i i know that's true of me all the time every time i go off to sleep i think how did i screw up tonight today how can i be better tomorrow why am i so bad at this if only i could manage that in in moral terms genuine moral terms yes i think that's an extraordinarily common experience and very much under notice yeah and part of the reason as far as i can tell that the talks that i've been giving let's say have had the effect that they've had is because i do point out that that's an extraordinarily common experience yeah that that that self torture by conscience and it does indicate um this striving towards a higher mode of being the other question i have when i look at the the the response that that i just read is that the amount of the world's evil that's a consequence of our voluntary moral insufficiencies is indeterminate you know so you might say hypothetically speaking that as part of god's creation we actually have important work to do and if we shirk it the consequences are real and you might say well that's just an apology for god and perhaps that's the case and perhaps there's no god at all and so what the hell are we talking about yes i would say that's just an apology for god and that it presupposes and is predicated upon libertarian free will what possible work i ask could we do to neutralize the incredibly cruel and brutal mass extinctions that occurred millions or hundreds of millions of years before our dawn but to adequately address peterson's apology here we'd need more on the table and we don't for understandable reason anyhow from here fry pressures peterson on what he means by a higher mode of being but we have to address this if at all in another video all right let's recap and wrap up this is the second video i've made in response to peterson and fry's conversation which once again i highly recommend and the primary contention we focused on here revolves around the notion that atheists are angry at god if i'm correct in my assessment peterson saw the dark of ivan in fry believing his anger to be destructive and counterproductive but fry clarified that he's not actually angry at god since he doesn't believe that god exists but if it turned out that god did exist the god that's been described by most theists then fry would have a few bones to pick with him and he's not alone peterson then loosely offered an apology for the problem of evil which pertains to libertarian free will but this doesn't as i hope i've made clear even remotely address the variation of the problem of evil that fry finds compelling now if you'd like me to make a third video in this series which would likely focus on peterson's use of the term higher mode of being then please do let me know i have so many projects on the back burner at the moment and i just don't know which one to put in the oven anyhow i'll leave you with two quotes from the man whose shadow we all sit within but before doing so i just want to plug the mug if you're able and willing to support the channel then please do check out patreon and youtube members which offer an array of unique goodies including this tan card of truth in 1856 charles darwin wrote the following what a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy wasteful blunderingly low and horridly cruel works of nature which he bolstered in his autobiography by saying a being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a god who could create the universe is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbound for what advantage can there be in the suffering of millions of the lower animals for our almost endless time this very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent first cause seems to me a strong one
2021-10-13