Austin Petersen: Christianity & Libertarianism (Full Episode!)

All right, guys, welcome back to another episode of Apologia TV, a really fascinating episode of Apologia TV. It's really kind of a first for us. I'm excited. On Apologia TV to have something as unique as this.

Yes. Right? I mean, just in terms of like someone that we really agree with in so many ways and yet not agree with. And so it'll be a lot of fun. We're actually very excited to have him on. So let me introduce real fast.

I'm Jeff, the Common Ninja. That's Luke the Bear. What up? And that is Marcus King Ginger, usually in the ones and twos. Yes. But I wanted to be on this show. I wanted to be here for this show. So kudos to you for getting this guest.

One of my favorite people. Yeah. Really, really interesting. This this last election year has been just absolutely nuts. And I can't imagine it actually even being a possibility in like around 1776 that people would be saying the things that people are saying and doing the things people are doing.

And the fact that the populace would actually be going along with it is absolutely insane. So let me go ahead and make the introduction again. Very excited to have him on. We are going. Let me just let me read it to you.

OK, let me read this to you because it's so cool. This is his it's on the front page of his website. Ready? And something we talk about a lot taking this is a presidential candidate, a libertarian presidential candidate, 2016.

And this is the front page of his website, right? Taking over the government. And you're like, well, that sounds like just about everybody who's running for president right now. Right. Like that. Yeah.

Well, that's what they want. Right. Like. And it says, ready to leave everyone alone. So I'm like, well, that's your job if you're the president of the States. Right. Get in there and now go away. Leave everyone the heck alone and make everyone else leave us the heck alone.

All right. So we have on, believe it or not, Austin Peterson. This is from his website. Austin Peterson is a constitutional libertarian who believes in economic freedom and personal liberty. Peterson's passion for limited government led him to a job at the Libertarian National Committee in 2008 and then eventually to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

After fighting for liberty in our nation's capital, Peterson took a job as an associate producer for Judge Andrew Napolitano's show Freedom Watch on the Fox Business Network. After the show's cancellation, Austin returned to D .C. to work for the Tea Party institution Freedom Works and subsequently started his own business venture Stonegate LLC and a popular national news magazine, Libertarian Republic.

So we have on first time on Apologia TV, Austin Peterson. Thank you so much, sir, for joining us. Thank you for having me. Of course. All right. How unique. And here's let's just go ahead and talk about the elephant in the room.

Let's talk about the elephant. OK, let's do it. We got a libertarian candidate. Yes. We actually like, man, when I listen to this man, I'm like, good. Yes. Right. Like my son and I were like, yeah, my son, my son on the way in, he was like, no, you're not really having Austin Peterson.

I was like, yeah, I mean, he's like no stinking way. He wore a suit today.

Even got dressed up. Right. He has a suit. You know, it was really funny if I can talk about Sage real quick. Jeff actually went to Sage and said, hey, how's Austin? And Sage was like, Austin's like the best candidate out there.

He's like, let me tell you about Austin Peterson. At least you got Sage's approval.

You got Sage's approval. Sage is 16. Here's the elephant in the room, OK, Austin Peterson, amazing stuff that he stands for and that he talks about. And I'm like, good gracious, this guy, where did he come from?

Right. And then you also have to consider the fact that he's an atheist, right? Are you an atheist?

Is that what you would call yourself? So in order for me to be intellectually honest, I have to say the truth is, is that I'm agnostic because an atheist says there definitely is no God. But I don't believe in a higher power to the same way.

I don't believe in any other form of magic or mysticism or spiritualism or anything that's supernatural. I'm very much a materialist. Gotcha.

Gotcha. Good. OK, so so that's what makes it so compelling, right? Right. You got a Christian and an atheist going, yeah, we're seeing things in many ways the same way. That's right. So I want to get to know you, Austin.

Libertarianism, Limited Government, and Social Freedom

So I got to watch a clip that you had. I forget where you had this discussion, but it was great. And you talked about your move to libertarianism. And I'd love for people to hear that.

So can you talk about that? Well, yeah. So when I was a little boy, my mother and father sent me out into the fields to grow chrysanthemums. And then I would take the chrysanthemums and once they bloomed and sell them to the people of my small town.

And so that was how I learned about free market capitalism is, you know, working out of the fields alongside my father. And my father was a Green Beret and special forces. Loved his country, very patriotic, believed in fiscal conservatism.

And I as I grew older and I evolved, I came in contact with the world and I started to have a more liberal social view. Right. Not in the sense that I want to force people, force association, but I I believe in things like gay marriage.

I do believe in things that things like ending the war on drugs, for example, that would be a little less of a conservative worldview. So when I realized that there was something that was fiscally conservative and socially liberal, then I discovered what libertarianism was.

And you don't have to be socially liberal to be a libertarian, by the way. All you have to do is believe in that maxim that I that I posted on my website, which is leave everyone alone as long as you're not harming anyone.

Right. As long as it doesn't spook the cows, it should be allowed. And so government shouldn't be in the business of condoning someone's lifestyle or licensing someone's lifestyle or regulating someone's lifestyle as long as they're not harming anyone else.

And that's really what a libertarian is.

Interesting. Very good. All right. So I think what I like to do is I want to talk about some of the things that you talk about. You know, it is my actually surprise you, Austin. We are we're pretty like Orthodox, you know, like historic Christians.

We're in we're actually we're like you might you might really like us, Austin, because we're in the stream of the Puritans in many ways and the Puritan thought and like the New England pulpit, what gave us 1776, like the the kind of worldview that that led into all that we have.

We're also against the war on drugs. And that's what I was going to get to. Yeah, that might surprise you. We are very against the war on drugs. We think that how we handle that in our nation today is unjust.

It's definitely not something that you would see in biblical law, a war on drugs like a government war on drugs. And so those kinds of freedoms, you know, where we're at today is just completely unjust.

So we fully agree with you there on that. And so here's what I think would be good to do. Let's let's do it this way. We got about a minute left here. And when we come back, we're actually going to play through some of the highlights from when Austin Peterson was on the Fox Business Libertarian Debate.

And in that debate, he went against Gary Johnson and oh, McCaffey. What's his first name again? John McAfee. John McAfee. OK, which was interesting. I couldn't believe like, what's this guy doing there?

Right. So I'm still trying to figure out what Gary Johnson was doing there. But that's right. That's right. No, I think we're all trying to figure that out. Yeah. So what we'll do is we'll come back. We're going to play through some of this stuff because some of the stuff that Austin says is just awesome.

And then let's have a good talk about it. So what we're going to do right now is come back. I want to point everybody to ApologiaRadio .com, A-P-O-L-O-G-I-A-Radio .com. You can go there, you can get all the podcasts, download those.

We did cover a wide spectrum of issues there from law, government, theology. We talk about current movies and films and just we have a lot of fun. You can also get the TV show at ApologiaRadio .com and the after show, including Apologia Academy.

You can get that as well. All that's up right now, ApologiaRadio .com. You just partner with us and you get all that content. You support all the work that we're doing. We'll be right back with Libertarian candidate Austin Peterson.

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The Libertarian Debate, Freedom, and the Role of Government

With Apologia TV, Luke the Bear, Marcus King Ginger and on with former presidential Libertarian presidential candidate Austin Peterson. And what I want to do is actually run through a few things that Austin said in the Fox Business Libertarian debate.

Here's some highlights. Yeah. First off, thank you very much. Can I say real fast, just before we start this, how annoying was that buzzer? I thought it was like a fire alarm going off. When I first heard it, I was like, was a fire alarm going off?

Someone fix that. And it's just completely like annoying and inappropriate. Like they couldn't find a better way to do that. OK, here we are. I'm sorry. That's my two cents.

OK, John, and thank you to Fox Business for hosting this forum. I was born in Independence, Missouri. I was raised on a horse farm in Peculiar, just a short drive from a town called Liberty. Coincidence?

I'll let you guys be the judge. I learned about economic liberty when my parents sent me out into the fields to plant chrysanthemums and sell them to the people of my small town. I learned about personal liberty from those who taught me about the golden rule.

I believe that people are inherently good and that they can be trusted with freedom and that that freedom should be as expansive as possible. The role of government is to protect our liberty, not our security.

That's what the Second Amendment is for. I'm the grassroots candidate with a real national campaign. I have an army of freedom ninjas at my back who have been volunteering for me and financing me the entire way.

I'm the fiscally conservative candidate with zero dollars of campaign debt, and I've budgeted my funds in the same manner that I would govern. I am proving that you can do more with less. I may be the youngest candidate in this race, but I'm the oldest in libertarian years.

I'm the anti-establishment candidate in this anti-establishment party. I'm here to shake things up and inspire a generational liberty movement now and into the future. I believe that I'm the only candidate on this stage who can inspire a coalition of libertarians, conservatives, reasonable Democrats and independents to win.

I'm pro-life, pro-constitution and pro-freedom. My plan is to take over the government so I can leave everyone alone. Thank you. The revolution continues.

Oh, that was that was a really cool opening. And so and what I really appreciated when I first heard it was you called them freedom ninjas. And I thought it just how wonderful is that to have a guy that's running for president using the word ninja in his speech.

You're probably the first person in the history of presidential debates, Austin, that actually used the word ninja. So yeah, you were the first there. Yeah, that's right. Ninjas. What's up with ninjas?

OK, so here's the thing. I want to hear you talk to this issue. You say so many things, Austin, that resonate with us. Like you talk about the golden rule and you talk about being pro-life and you talk about all these things that just did just draw us right into that conversation with you.

And so what it sounds like is that we're saying so many of the same things. And I'm here's what I want. Here's what I want to happen. I want people to follow the things that you're saying to get into the revolution and to start loving liberty again and to hate injustice and the things that have happened.

But how do you think that that will take place? What has to happen for that to take place from your perspective?

Well, it's going to take evangelicals like yourself and myself to spread the message. And that's going to mean that we have to use the tools that you're using right now to do an end run around things like the mainstream media that don't want to let an unfiltered, unvarnished version of liberty get out to the masses.

Because for a lot of these people, and I'm not really a conspiracy theorist, but it goes against their interests when somebody is out there advocating against subsidies for the dairy business, for example.

Did you know that the government is buying something like like 12 million dollars worth of cheese from dairy farmers? I mean, the federal government is buying cheese in order to keep dairy farmers in business.

And if you watch a lot of these television segments frequently at the bottom, you'll see that they're sponsored by the Summit Association or whatever. So you're going to have a problem when there's an intersection of the fact that a lot of these big sponsors don't want to talk about limited government solutions.

Also, there's a problem on that's that's outside of us and the liberty movement. But what's internally the problem, I think, is that we are sometimes are not very good listeners because we have all the solutions.

We have all the answers. We're nerds and we've read all the lit. Right. But the problem is, is that the American people haven't done all the research, but they have all these problems that could potentially be solved with libertarian solutions.

However, they can't get a word in edgewise because we filibuster and we just tell them their status. And we're not very good evangelicals because we're more interested in purging the world of vice and sin rather than going in and healing our friends wound.

So we've got to we've got to be better good Samaritans. And I use these biblical terminologies because I was raised very religious and in a Christian home. So and I've read the Bible about six times the way through.

And so I think it's important for us who believe in the golden rule to not only expose be expository about our beliefs, but we also need to practice what we preach. Yeah. So we've got to be good listeners and good Samaritans.

You know what I love about you, Austin?

I love that you have not been able to shake your Christianity. You haven't been able to shake it loose.

It's it's it's philosophy. It's literature. I mean, the Bible has parts of philosophy. And I think there are stories right there. To me, they're parables. And the idea is that you're supposed to learn a lesson from the parable.

I don't take the Bible literally. I just think that there there are lessons to be learned from that. And and I mean, even Muslims take lessons from the Bible. And stick lessons from the Bible. And so there's there's all there's there's a very universal.

There are universal themes in the Bible that if you don't know the Bible, you don't understand Western civilization because that's right. Western civilization is based on.

Austin, you need to come to Jesus, man. You do. You do. I'm just going to say you need that. You need to come to Jesus and we will fight this fight. So here's from our perspective, like here's and you tell me, tell me what you think.

So the reason people like today will hear someone like you and you sound so foreign, like the fact that you talk about like welfare state and it being a problem and like really needing to handle that issue and then get people off of that and the government shouldn't be involved in that level they are right now.

You have these conversations and people in today's culture, Austin, they're like, but I want like, but I need that and I don't want to have to work. And so here's the thing. I would say the answer to the problem is people have larceny in their hearts.

They they love to take from others. And that's a deep seated issue where they don't respect the property and rights and money of other people. And they say, well, I want what you have. And so I think that the problem is deep seated.

Obviously, as a Christian, we say that's a that's a problem of sin. We love we love other people's stuff. And so that's why we have that problem largely in society today. And I love what you just said, man.

Like and I love that you do have an innate sense of entitlement. If you give a mouse a cookie, they're going to ask for a glass of milk. And I have that book. I have that book. I've read that book, too.

Yeah, it's true. It's true. So people will behave that way. However, if you give them an option, if they if they choose to take something that's available, that's free, then next to something that belongs to someone else, they're going to do the right thing.

They're going to take the thing that they know they can take versus what they think they shouldn't. But the problem is, is that because we have taken away the bounty we've taken out, we have taken away the the horn of plenty, because now everybody is just scratching to scrabbling to survive.

So if you give someone a decision between stealing a loaf of bread or starving, they're going to steal the loaf of bread every time. Capitalism creates the horn of plenty. It creates the cornucopia. It creates the excess that allowed the pilgrims to have the turkey and the Thanksgiving feast.

That's where the holiday comes from. It was because they had a bounty, because they were allowed to own their own private property. And then once they were allowed to own their own private property, rather than living under a communal system, when they lived under a private property system, there was so much overflow that they had a Thanksgiving feast.

And so everybody on Thanksgiving, everybody who wants to eat turkey on Thanksgiving, if you live in the United States, nobody goes hungry on Thanksgiving that doesn't want to. Food kitchens are open. Everyone is opening up the generosity and the gratitude of their hearts.

And that's because we as Americans innately have that very generous spirit. But when you take from labor of the mouth, the bread that it's earned, then you're going to have people doing desperate things and they're going to behave when they when they feel desperate or when they're put in desperate situations, they will act desperately.

When the Titanic starts to go down, it's not every it's not, you know, it's not women for when children first anymore. It's every man for himself. And so we see society degrading because we have an every man for himself attitude because government has destroyed our economy.

And because public schools are teaching your worldview. Right. Here's what I'm saying in Austin, this is I love you. And so I mean, this is a playful kind of gracious way. I want to receive it that way.

If you think about it for a second, you sound so Christian. It's it's like mind boggling. And you don't sound like the materialist that you say you are. I am. I am.

The thing is, is that I use metaphors and analogies and parables to tell the stories because I think that that's a more powerful way to express a message. And because most people in Western civilization identify with things like the Bible and the golden rule, I think those are useful tools.

Yeah. If I was if I was preaching to a Muslim audience, I would. I want to hear what you say to the Muslim. Come out to break. This is fantastic.

Austin Peterson, this is a blessing. Be right back. Apology or radio dot com.

The goal for New St. Andrews College as it trains its students is not to make people who will be able to go out and get jobs, people who will just be bricks in the wall of our society. The goal for New St. Andrews College is to make students into men and women who will really impact culture.

If so, what is a philosophically devastating critique of your worldview? It is not a worldview you should hold on to any longer.

Virginia Tech, 2007. So what? Thirty two children, kids, students are killed. So what? Andrea Yates, 2001, killed her four children. So what?

No, we're not baby eaters. So what? All right, back with Austin Peterson, former libertarian presidential candidate, 2016. Really a fascinating discussion. You know, I loved to I kept catching it in a lot of the things that I was watching from you, Austin.

I kept catching, you know, your history. And that's what this is what's fascinating to me. My son loves the things that you talk about. And he's he's just a history ninja. He loves particularly American history, loves to talk about the worldview and the things that were happening, the things that were being preached from the pulpits.

And that's why they all believed what they believed. And he just loves it. That's why he loves what you talk about. But you have you seem to have a pretty good, decent grasp on the history of our nation and its origins in a way that it's clear to me the current people who are running for this position and you got Trump, you got Clinton.

They don't have that understanding that you have. So can you talk about that for a second? You have a grasp of it seems the history, the worldview of this nation, which gave it its its rise. And that's that feeds in a lot to your positions.

Remember, it's all about crafting the narrative. So if you are trying to win public office as president of the United States, you're going to want to try and lift up the people who are of your ideological lineage.

And you're going to try and create them as heroes. And you're going to vilify all of the people who were heroes to the other side. So Hillary Clinton is going to want to vilify people like Dale Carnegie or JPMorgan Chase or any of the they call them robber barons back in the during the oil boom of the late 1880s.

But that was one of the most libertarian periods of American history, Grover Cleveland. But but now history has been rewritten by the progressives and they call it the instead of calling it the Gilded Age, they call it the age of robber barons because they said it was free markets and unfettered free market capitalism that was the problem.

But it was the same problem back then with with government licensing and regulation that that was blocking that was creating the types of monopolies that we see, such as like the EpiPen, for example. So this is the huge problem is, is that there is just one person who many or the one company that manufactures this EpiPen and they say, oh, this is the problem is that the free market capitalists have cornered the market.

No, actually, anybody can create that. It's just the government through FDA regulations and through all of the years of study and testing that they force other companies to go through, that that's how they get protected.

So this one company essentially has a monopoly because they're protected by the FDA and the regulations. But when you look at history, history has been one long march of tyranny and of loss of liberty.

It's only been with the American experiment that we've had a tiny, tiny experiment with with human liberty in representative government. But as we've seen, sometimes even representative government can be very tyrannical.

And it's not really a democratic government because we have a constitutional republic. That's right. People people talk about, oh, you have a right to vote, right? You have a right to vote. Well, do you have a right to vote to take away my free speech?

Right. You have a right to vote to take away my my freedom of religion. Actually, no, you don't have a vote on that. So that's right. Sometimes tyranny can sometimes be systemic. But sometimes tyranny in itself, it can be outside of the system as well.

It can be something that that people yearn for, because like you said earlier, like larceny in people's hearts, there is kind of a desire to subjugate your your neighbor, because if they use a vape, for example, well, this is undesirable.

So what are we going to do? We're going to pass a tax or a regulation on vaping. And maybe the people who are lobbying to get rid of vapes, maybe the people who actually do it are concerned moms against vaping.

But who's funding them? Because people like it's right, right. But it's people like it's people of big tobacco. They're going to spend money in the coffers so that the moms can come out and cry. Well, what about the children?

And right now, OK, so here's here's the thing. You you said something that I think because I listen, Austin, I want you, someone like you and the things that you say to be heard by others. But it's interesting because like you say, people are inherently good.

Now, I think it's interesting hearing a materialist say something like that, because if we're all matter in motion and stardust, there's no absolute standard of good, I would say. And I want to have a conversation with you maybe over dinner.

But what's interesting is that the former the framers of the Constitution Bill of Rights, they had a different perspective, though. They said that men are not angels. And because men are not angels, a constitution is necessary.

They understood like this inherently. People are that's tyranny exists because people are ultimately fallen. We're sinners. And that and I want to communicate this to you as a friend. And again, I would love to sit down, have dinner with you and just talk with these things, because I think what you say is wonderful.

That the perspective is and this is the perspective of the founders. And even if you weren't a Christian, this was in the air is that people are fallen. We're sinners. We're corrupt. And we would go off into tyranny.

And that's the glory of the gospel. But that's another reason why I reject Christianity is because it does see man as fallen and then I see man as inherently good. Right. I mean, I would take Satan's side in the battle of good and evil on that one.

But when it comes to when it comes to people being inherently good, I mean, most people aren't murderers. When you say we need a government because people are inherently bad. Well, not all people are inherently bad.

And so we need a limited government because a limited amount of people are very bad. And so if you have a limited government that can restrain the people who are who are committing acts of larceny or murder.

So murder happens every single day. But in terms per capita, most people don't get murdered. Most people aren't involved in a murder. Most people are not involved in a robbery, for example. Most people aren't thieves.

Most people choose to buy things rather than to steal them. So the great majority of people are good because if they weren't, then the free market would never work because everybody would just steal from each other and we would return to an anarchic state of nature where it was every man for himself.

Strongest, strongest may survive. Well, that's because let's say people are good. The civilization has arisen.

Well, let's go to that. That's a good that's a good thing is I want to get to the core of this to see how does this revolution begin? What's good from a materialist perspective? Why is it wrong to murder?

Why do we tell people in society don't murder? Don't don't steal. Why from a materialist perspective? Because, see, I think that's where the wheels sort of come off where we can't get traction, because if people fundamentally disagree with you on origins and absolutes, they you know, you're I'm with you and everything you're saying, but if they'll say, well, like, why shouldn't I want to take someone else's stuff?

Well, what's what's you know, why? Why should you care if I murder? Who made you who made you authority over me or a leader over me to tell me that I can't do such and such because the things that you're appealing to seem to be absolute standards that don't really fit with the materialism that you you have deep down.

And so that well, I don't want the last thing I want to do, though, is just say that I'm being good because somebody is watching over my shoulder, that somebody is the only reason why I'm not committing a crime is because some all knowing, all powerful God is going to punish me in an afterlife.

That's not virtue. Just yeah, we don't believe that either. You don't get credit for doing it and for doing the right thing just because you're being watched. You get credit for doing the right thing when no one's watching.

So to me, if you're trying to explain to someone in terms of absolute standards, you're not going to find an absolute standard. I mean, I mean, even the absolute standards that religious people agree on.

I mean, there's quite a few denominations of Christianity. So there's so so even Christianity doesn't agree completely on absolute standards, other than the fact that Christ is the son of God and that by accepting him, you will be redeemed.

But again, that's only the that's only the the heretics that split off of the Catholic Church. But again, when it comes to my version of morality or virtue, I believe that virtue exists because life in it in itself is virtuous and that the protecting and the advancement of human life is what I believe to be the ultimate virtue and that the spreading and that the dividing of ourselves and that the continuation of human life is a positive force in the universe.

So if I can say at least that something is a positive, then I might also say that thing is a good. So if something contributes more to human flourishing and thriving, then I think that's going to be a good if something comes along like abortion, which I believe is the opposite of human thriving is the ending of human life.

I'm going to say that that's going to be a negative towards life. That's going to be a bad and that's going to be the opposite of virtuous. So I take a pro-life stance as a secular humanist, because I believe that life in itself is a good as a positive.

And so that which advances human life is should be encouraged and that which detracts from it should be should be shunned.

The Christian Basis for Human Dignity, Sin, and Objective Morality

Yeah. And I know I appreciate that. And I love your pro-life position. And I think, you know, you and Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, one of my favorite atheists in history, really take the same position on the pro-life issue, which I really, really appreciate.

I see just a lot of consistency in your thinking there. But like this is, I think, again, like where the inconsistency comes in, where I think like, OK, like we're not attacking the right issue is again, if if we have a view that I mean, let's let's be honest.

Granted, I mean, this is the view of origins that our children, our public schools are getting on a daily basis. If all of us came from the soup, if we're all stardust, as Carl Sagan says, if if our ancestors were bacteria and we've evolved in an unpurposed and ungoverned universe to get to where we're at today, then there really is no use speaking about things like are good or oughts or life is valuable at all, because it's really an arbitrary distinction to say this is valuable and that is not.

I mean, I'm with you on life being valuable and needing to be protected. And I think you're consistent there in the area of pro-life and stuff. But I think your your your perspective doesn't allow the have the force necessary to really draw people.

So here's what I would say. And I want to I want you to respond to that. I want you to know Jesus. And the issue is, I think, sin and Jesus is God. And he was perfect and he died and rose again. And I think if we come to him and know him, our hearts are changed and then we love the things that you're talking about.

Here's what I'm saying. When you talk, Austin, I'm like literally shouting. I was like shouting last night. I was like, preach, Austin, preach. But that's because my heart's been changed and I long for the things that you talk about.

I so I reject the concept of sin. I don't you know, again, I reject the concept of man has fallen. And and the problem is, is that that since I don't believe that there is a higher power and because I don't believe that you that that you can use like the Bible necessarily as authority, then then you you're forcing me to be a nihilist.

In essence, you're like you must be a nihilist if you or you must not believe that there is any point to all of this. And the thing is, is that just because I don't know doesn't mean that, you know, the problem is, is that it's that it's not a black or white issue.

And the the problem is, is that I can't prove that there is no God, but you can't prove that there is a God in essence. We both have to be agnostic in order to be intellectually honest. I can say I don't believe that there's a God the same way.

I don't believe that there's any other magical forces out there. But again, you're the one who makes the the claims, the positive claim. And I can't prove a negative. I can't disprove a negative. But when it comes to my question, the question of whether or not I believe in some form of positive morality and what I base that in, again, it's a life positive viewpoint.

And if all we have is life, because that's what I believe all we have, that's that we are here is the way to you for the universe to know itself. Then being that those observational beings to me is courageous, like being alive and choosing to live as an act of courage.

Otherwise, what would we choose to stay here if we had any pain or any suffering coming along? We would just end it. But I think that there is a human yearning for something. That's probably where I think religion comes from, is that there is a yearning to reach out beyond our meager lives, beyond the lifespan of the meager lifespan of humanity.

Everybody has that urge. But just because there's an urge for it doesn't necessarily mean that there's something there. Humans have all sorts of instincts that lead us wrong. Humans, actually, we can only see certain types of light.

There's all sorts of spectrums of light that exist that humans can't even see. But that doesn't mean that there's a supernatural reason for it. Well, that's a good natural.