Ep. 424 Stefan Molyneux on His Return to Twitter and Newfound Respect for Christianity
Stefan Molyneux’s Freedomain platform hosts the world’s largest online community devoted to philosophical inquiry and personal liberty. He joins Bob to discuss several topics, including Stefan’s return (after exile) to Twitter, his advice to young men, and his evolving views on Christianity.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- The YouTube version of this conversation.
- The freedomain home page.
- A popular video (reposted after Stefan banned from YT) from Stefan back in the day.
- Bob’s roast of Stefan at Porcfest.
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
Just one question, why inviting him only now when he’s back on X and gained popularity sort of again. He needed a friendly hand when he was fully deplatdormed. This negative mark will remain. We anarchists are not helping each other enough. That’s one of the reasons why we progress so slowly.
I wonder if Stephan’s bemoaning the low quality of his fanbase might ultimately be a symptom of the quality of his content?
I imagine the conversation leading up to this interview went something like, “Hey I’m Stephan and I’m interested in Christianity now, can I come on your podcast? My thesis is ‘The empirical evidence is that there’s a virtue that comes through Christianity that secularism and atheism not only can’t compete with but seems to viruently oppose, which is kinda demonic.'”
Well that sounds really intelligent Stephan except how do you want to justify, document, support that allegation? Oh you never did during the entire interview? Well, that’s an unfortunate habit of yours. But here it’s so blatant it looks like a transparent attempt at grabbing Christian eyeballs and dollars with the lamest of teases.
No, and no thank you.
Someone serious might have done some thinking about whether such assertions are quantifiably supportable or not. But no, Stephan is fine with waving around words like “empirically” that make him sound ‘professorial’.
Such pretentious buffoonery is gall-raising.
And Stephan’s hyperloquatious radio-broadcaster patter ensures that his listeners don’t notice the void of substance. That’s a trick, and a good gig for as long as you can get away with it.
You’re old now, Stephan. The kids aren’t interested in your flavor of hot takes and your motormouthing skills (while an undeniable talent) won’t earn much longstanding respect — or much of a respectable following… As time has proven.
Your condescention upon ‘people who can’t think’ becomes delicous when I recall how David Gordon’s book review showed you to be nothing but a strutting peacock — a cosplay philosopher.
I do wish you well, Stephan and hope you find some thing useful to do. Propagating your lobotomized and censored comprehension of the problem facing us is not such a thing.
I imagine the conversation leading up to this interview went something like, “Hey I’m Stephan and I’m interested in Christianity now, can I come on your podcast?
Not even close. I approached him. You’re batting about 0.085 on your comments.
> I wonder if Stephan’s bemoaning the low quality of his fanbase might ultimately be a symptom of the quality of his content?
He cultivates a shitty fanbase, an atrophied echo chamber, a mob. He immediately bans any good oposition (he has banned me repeatedly, even though I was always respectful, I just disagree *with his evil/NAP-violating positions*, on ~sexuality). He’s so broken around that topic, all his “art of the argument” and “objective morality” stuff goes out the window. (His “art of arguing” with me is muting me, strawmanning me, banning me, THEN slandering me. “Not an argument” pfft.) His main alliance with religious people is cuz they roughly align on anti-sexuality stuff. He turns a blind eye to the far more evil/violent positions that his fellow church-goers support (taxation, war, statism, censorship, prohibition). Very disappointing.
> I imagine the conversation leading up to this interview went something like, “Hey I’m Stephan and I’m interested in Christianity now, can I come on your podcast?
It was literally this, don’t listen to Bob :p. He’s been loudly emitting that message, with dog whistles, and Bob heard them loud and clear. Bob also mostly narrowly cares about his mythology, and turns a blind eye to Stef’s immoral positions. Or maybe Bob agrees with Molyneux that people should be hurt/killed over sharing jpegs, like Molyneux STILL believes?
> My thesis is ‘The empirical evidence is that there’s a virtue that comes through Christianity
;). Like porn/etc censorship which religious nuts love to obsess about. Or how about US Evangelical Scofield Christian “virtues” of Zionism and war ;).
> that secularism and atheism not only can’t compete with but seems to viruently oppose, which is kinda demonic.’”
> Well that sounds really intelligent Stephan except how do you want to justify, document, support that allegation? Oh you never did during the entire interview? Well, that’s an unfortunate habit of yours. But here it’s so blatant it looks like a transparent attempt at grabbing Christian eyeballs and dollars with the lamest of teases.
He did explain this – Christians opposed the lockdowns/”vaccines” more, they support smaller governments, etc.
> Your condescention upon ‘people who can’t think’ becomes delicous when I recall how David Gordon’s book review showed you to be nothing but a strutting peacock — a cosplay philosopher.
Dude, what are you talking about, Molyneux ripped apart Gordon’s strawmanning. (Gordon mostly ad-hominem’ed.) A proposed universal law supporting theft cannot be logically sustained (universalized), for example. Do you think Gordon disproved this, as he struttingly arrogantly claimed in that cringe jew attack-essay?
> I do wish you well, Stephan and hope you find some thing useful to do. Propagating your lobotomized and censored comprehension of the problem facing us is not such a thing.
He censors sooooo much. Especially about jews and sexuality. Like, recently he tried bashing “atheists” for this ancient tradition called “bacha bazi”. Except soviet-atheists did brutally criminalize it, and it probably wasn’t as bad as pervy-Stef wants to believe. His main obsession is his kinky early-sex fantasies. It’s frustrating that I wasn’t able to correct him about this (and other stuff), cuz he banned me. (Even though I was polite to him, I told him I was a huge fan, etc.) Nutty echo chamber, of a broken old boy.
Without getting too much into the proclivities you favor…
The discussion about bounded rationality and consent has come-up short in libertarian ethics.
I believe Denis’ pedophilia issue highlights the fact that libertarian ethics is based on a conception of fully responsible agents interacting, yet we have no clear cutoff, no logically derivable criterion for determining ‘adulthood’ and inclusion into the libertarian ethical framework.
I submit that libertarian ethics do not apply to entities outside of the ethical framework: These are seperable into two functionally distinct categories.
1) The feebleminded
2) The enemy
The feebleminded are to be considered wards of the most appropriate responsible entities. That set consists of relatives, family and lacking those, acquaintences. Redistribution of wealth by the State to ‘care’ for such wards, or other coercive interventions ostensibly to improve their fates, remains an absurd proposition in this model.
The enemy is not to be considered a trading partner, but something to be destroyed. Voluntary trade with the enemy is thus acceptable only insofar as it is based on deception, with the purpose of engineering their destruction.
Dennis, if you guys want to do your frenemy-fiction where you speculate about how I invited Stefan on the show, and why I’m such a hypocrite etc etc, that’s fine. But if I see another “cringe Jew David Gordon” type of comment, I’m kicking you out of these comments. (And then you can add me to the list of hypocrite censors.)
I was genuinely confused why David was so harsh and insulting of Stef, he went after him hard in that ridiculous review of his, mostly ad-hominem as I said. And his genetics/tribe is the only explanation I have for it. (I don’t think it’s merely professional jealousy, phd-Hoppe didn’t go after him so cruelly.) Why didn’t he reply to Molyneux’s corrections of his sloppy review? (Obviously cuz his intention wasn’t the ideas, it was “something else”. ie. genes. It’s very possible he himself wasn’t aware of his motivations.) Why can’t I point out his tribal affiliations?? AWKWARD.
Be that as it may, I’m giving you fair warning that any future comments containing “asides” like that are going to be zapped.
Bob, did you know that Stef supports caging/killing (imprisoning) even kids, over the sharing of pictures (without explicit permission)? Maybe focus more on morality, on actual evil, more than these harmless aesthetic things? If you two ever talk again, please address this – shame evil.
> He did explain this – Christians opposed the lockdowns/”vaccines” more, they support smaller governments, etc.
Except he never offered any actual measurements of this. You can’t just say Christians were more *visible* about it. There are way more Christians than atheists, and they are more likely to have an organizational structure through which to display their opposition. All of my atheist friends opposed the lockdowns and vaccines.
Bob,
you that have the possibility to talk to Stefan at will, I would like you to consider one important idea to discuss with him. First of all, let me say that I am one of the atheists that appreciate significantly Stefan’s work on UPB, but I think there’s one thing much more important than both god-based ethics and secular ethics. Neither are gravity forces, so anyone can reject them anytime. I know there are consequences, like when rejecting math laws, but even they can be rejected. So, what is more important than trying to prove that 2+2=4 or that certain ethic is correct? The fact that people negotiate, and I took this from Patrick Smith, the Anarchast host and from Larken Rose. They advocate the approach that people agree at individual level, and rights are whatever reciprocal agreement between 2 individuals establish, regardless of its content, either it is true ethic or not. Then, by pure aggregation, individuals negotiate within groups and groups between larger groups, so the law is negotiated from bottom up. Ideally, the result would be something close enough to God or UPB ethics. If we propagate this more, instead of convincing the entire world about the truest and purest possible ethic, we involve people in becoming their own masters and taking life into their hands instead of relying on external authority. Stefan spent significant amount of his time trying to convince the masses about the ideal, but I would like, if possible a discussion where you talk about this aspect, which means, keep the high ideal somewhere in your mind, but focus on what you can obtain concretely in your life, and slowly, but surely, the people would get used to decide by themselves and not get their lives “ordered” by someone else. I think Stefan has still significant influence in this world, and his work will remain on Internet for looong time, so if we nudge Stefan a bit towards this approach towards etchics, would not hurt. Stefan already did by himself this with his peaceful parenting. But, may be he should push a bit more ‘agree the ethic from the bottom’ a bit more. DROs are nice, but again, if they are not product of personal negotiations, they also seem kind of of external authority. DROs should be the result of bottom up culture, not holly towers of ethics proposed from above. Bob, you have very non confrontational character, and Stefan is very confrontational but has enormous value. May be you can organize several of the talks like you did with your gambler friend. May be you as a pair can do much good. I know you are focused on his opening towards Christianity. OK, but there are other things to consider as well.
> DROs should be the result of bottom up culture, not holy towers of ethics proposed from above
They are, aren’t they? His whole point, his UPB stuff, is that any lowly peasant can figure out right from wrong on his own, without priests. The power of logic is just as accessible and powerful to the lowest people, as it is to those at the top.
To be more adequately precise: My choice of ‘quantitatively’ is perhaps misleading and should be amended. I mean to refer to a quantity of examples in history which the proponent of the thesis must present, to begin to support the allegation that Christianity is associated with some ‘unique virtue’.
I’m happy to hear Stefan’s pushing back on the war of the sexes nonsense.
Though, I’m wondering what his definition of an agnostic is. He said he’s open to religion, but as an empiricist, he needs to see some evidence or have an experience or something to believe. I feel like I’m in the same boat (though I don’t call myself an empiricist) and I call myself agnostic. What’s the difference between the agnosticism that he maligned and how he describes himself now?
Good question, Tyler. I’m guessing he would say that in his book, he was railing against people who had a “principled” agnosticism, like they knew they were going to be agnostic on the question of God in 20 years too. But, I haven’t read the book so I’m not sure.
He’s being deliberately deceptive/provocative/clickbaity/tease-y, to get Christian dollars. He’s tricking them, he hasn’t actually changed any of his positions. He’d still say that scaring kids with threats of eternal firey torture is ~abusive, he’d still say that an all-knowing + all-powerful god + free will are logically impossible, etc. He’d still say there is no evidence for any of the supernatural claims (despite Bob’s tease about his college-age reformation). “Nobody. Ever. Changes.” He ran out of philosophy to discuss, so he’s going all-in on rhetoric/entertainment/personal agendas (eg. his delusion that he’s responsible for less child abuse, for more (white) breeding, and his personal favorite: sexual puritanism :p)