Jack Symes

And a lot of my thought here comes from Albert Camus, which everyone should read. He says that we've I wonder if you've had a feeling or experience like this because this is sort of like What got me on my philosophical journey? He says one day the stage set collapses and everything begins in that weariness with a tinge of excitement i.e.

one day you're going about your life, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and you sort of start to think like, what's the point of all this? What's the meaning? It almost seems like it is a tale told by an idiot. And like, maybe it isn't meaningful. I'm not a part of this big plan. And you're sort of at a loss.

But there's an excitement there too, like the openness of being, the gift of meaninglessness. So I think...

the reasonable thing for us to do in the light of those arguments we've spoken about is to suspend and be agnostic about belief in god but then have this honest search for finding meaning and moral value like there's a this isn't the kind of notion of the absurd that physicists keep talking about like again this is when

You know, I won't talk about physics and sometimes the physicists start doing philosophy and you sort of get a little bit frustrated. Like you've probably heard people say things like this, like in comparison to the vast cosmos in which I exist, I feel so small and meaningless. Or comparison to the 13.8 billion years in which I've existed.

Like my 70, if I'm lucky, feels like it doesn't really matter. But like... Imagine if you were really big, like the size of the universe. Imagine you live for 13 billion years. It doesn't seem to have any effect on how more meaningful your life is. Your life still lacks that fundamental purpose. It's like how big you are and how long you last.

Same with Dr. Manhattan. Same with the multiverse or like simulation theory, right? I've just been watching this on the flight over here, the Umbrella Academy. I was watching that on the flight.

Yeah. It sounds like a burn then. No, she loves it. It is good. Anyway, like they're in like a multiverse and their lives, like they're still going about their lives like they matter. Or imagine we're in a simulation. Imagine the fundamental nature of stuff is ones and zeros rather than particles or consciousness. It all still matters.

So I think the project of agnosticism, the thing we need to be doing, isn't just digging down with this new atheism that's flippant and... It doesn't offer us any, like, I can't solve these big problems and lacks answers to the fundamental questions. And it isn't just a gamble on faith and just believe for the sake of it.

But it's to try and, like, create ourselves a patchwork, like, blanket to keep us warm in the void of meaninglessness, right?

We catch them lying. Have you seen the Trump clip when he's asked about his favorite Bible verse? Have you seen that? Yeah, what did he say? Jamie, are we allowed to get the clip? What did he say it was? I don't think he has one. He doesn't have one? No, he didn't come along with a favorite Bible verse. Let's see if he can get it.

Here's just to wrap up the fine meaning part. I think you're right. We can still, even if there's no God and there's no ultimate. Oh, here we go.

It's like a humanist Bible as well, isn't it?

Well, this is what's dangerous, right? And this is what's not just confused, but careless about some of this thinking. When you go, my team thinks this, and I'm just going to double down on it. Even though I've got reasons against this position, I'm still going to be defending the position of my group.

So people like conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro think that eating non-human animals is morally wrong, but they carry on doing it. I think probably because it's part of what their team does. When I spoke to Peterson, he conceded that that problem we spoke about a moment ago, the problem of systemic evil in nature, was a massive problem for the God hypothesis.

And as we said, he thinks you should just crack on and carry on working on it. But there's a sense in which it's okay if your view isn't affecting anybody, right? You can have a false belief and you're entitled to that, that freedom of conscience to think something, as long as it's not bringing about and breaching the harm principle.

But there's a sense in which, like, take Peterson's view, because we spoke about taking that leap of faith. After I had this conversation with him, he tweeted like an hour later. I was arguing that my view is that happiness and pleasure has to correspond to a purposeful life. That if your life is meaningful, it also has to involve a flourishing of happiness and pleasure.

Yeah. Essentially, his view was like that. He tried to pull them apart. And afterwards, he tweeted something like… what use is happiness when we have mountains to move, which is a nice Nietzschean quote, but it's a nice bumper sticker or something or fridge magnet, but I don't think we should live our lives by it. I gave him this example.

I said, suppose God came down to us and said, here's the meaning of life, like create war, spread disease, commit genocide, right? You'd go, that's not the kind of meaning I thought. That's not what I had in mind. I don't want that kind of meaning.

But this idea that only meaning and purpose ultimately matter and they don't need to correspond to happiness and pleasure, that's a recipe for disaster. You can't hold that view and tell people that all that matters is their purpose and meaning.