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Jakub Ferencik
173 Plays5 years ago
Jakub Ferencik is a philosopher and an author. Ferencik's new book 'Up in the Air: Christianity, Atheism & the Global Problems of the 21st Century' formed the basis for our critical discussion.
You will enjoy this deeper dive into philosophy and the inquiry into our present difficulties in connecting humans to productive, up-building discourse. Jakub and I dig into space/time, art, epistemology, argument, rationality, Calvinism, atheism, agnosticism and Christianity and much more . . .
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing, creator and host Ken Volante, editor and producer Peter Bauer. This is Ken Volante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast.
Guest Introduction: Jacob Forensic
00:00:21
Speaker
In this episode, we have Jacob forensic, who I encountered through a book that he's written. The book is called Up in the Year.
00:00:31
Speaker
Christianity, atheism, and the global problems of the 21st century. And with some kind of follow-up conversations with Jacob learned about the book, his philosophical project that I'll allow him to talk about. But really excited to have you on, Jacob.
Jacob's Religious Upbringing
00:00:54
Speaker
And can you let the listeners
00:00:58
Speaker
Know a little bit about yourself about the book and where we're talking to you where you're from where you are right now Yeah, well first of all, thank you so much for having me on it's it's a true pleasure and well, yeah, so about the book To give context perhaps is to say where I'm from and that would also just provide like ground for why I wrote the book so I
00:01:26
Speaker
I'm originally from Slovakia, and I come from a pretty Christian household and upbringing, mostly out of my own position. I was curious about these things growing up, and I was a fundamentalist, so you're from the States, so you probably know about that more than other places. I kind of associated with Calvinist reasoning,
00:01:55
Speaker
And so a lot of American philosophers, theologians, that influenced me early on.
Exploration of Philosophy and Atheism
00:02:03
Speaker
And then later on in my life, towards my early, I guess it was late teens, like early 20s. I'm 24 now, so I'm still quite young. And
00:02:20
Speaker
At about that time, I started kind of realizing that the world is bigger, more grand, and there's just a lot more going on than I expected in my youth, as most people realized. And so I just had kind of a time to reflect. I was living in Oxford at the time.
00:02:44
Speaker
in England. I lived in Portsmouth as well on the South Coast. And at that point, I kind of reflected more in my religion, and started reading philosophy more broadly, and came into association with the new atheists, you know, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Denner, Richard Dawkins. And at that point, I started realizing, okay, so there's a little more here. But then I still didn't know
00:03:10
Speaker
the depth of the intellectual world of atheism, which recently has been called atheism. And so, at that point, I was like, okay, so what else is written about this stuff? And at the time, you know, I'm making a long story short, at the time I was traveling a bunch, I was seeing stuff, I dropped out of unio studying forensic psychology, actually in Portsmouth,
00:03:39
Speaker
And so I traveled to Oxford and then went to Slovakia, went, went to Greece and all these places was living kind of the dropout kind of lifestyle.
Return to Canada and Academic Reflection
00:03:49
Speaker
And, um, and I decided finally to go back to Canada where I'm originally also from. I'm a duo citizen, uh, raised in, in Canada for eight years. And, and so I came back to Canada and I was like, okay, so what am I going to do? Uh, what am I going to study? What am I going to do?
00:04:07
Speaker
And, um, I happened upon a book by Peter Watson, and this is, I credit this book largely to my awakening to the depth of atheism. The book is called the age of atheists. And at that point I realized, okay, so there's a lot going on here and it's the 600 page volume. And yeah, yeah. So at that point I was like, okay,
00:04:37
Speaker
there's a lot here. And that's kind of where I woken. So that's kind of a background of my religious meanings up to that point. Yeah.
Calvinism and Philosophical Concepts
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah. And speaking of philosophy, my knowledge of Calvinism in particular probably has only come through philosophy or its use, if I recall properly in
00:05:07
Speaker
the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism by Max Weber. He uses Calvinism as a basis, as a stand-in for Protestant thinking and kind of an economic analysis. But Calvinism, of course, with a strong piece of predestination and the concept of the calling for work, would that be an accurate, just kind of basic kind of way?
00:05:36
Speaker
I ain't laying it out. Mm hmm. Calvinism is associated with a number of schools. So Augustine, originally, Paul and and also Aquinas were, they wouldn't call themselves Calvinists, of course, that came later after John Calvin.
00:05:56
Speaker
But John Calvin wouldn't call himself a Calvinist either, that were his followers. Actually, Calvinism came in response to the Arminian school of thought, which was kind of in juxtaposition to the predestination, as you were saying, teaching of Augustine and most of Christendom actually up until that point.
00:06:19
Speaker
And yeah, so Calvin is basically just sat down and said, OK, so what do we believe in? And they just said that they believe in the juxtaposition of the Armenian school. And so they came up with the five points of Calvinism, which are the tulip, which is total depravity, unconditional love, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. And so all of those kind of came in
00:06:48
Speaker
as a response to the Armenian school. And so, yeah, as you said, predestination based on Romans 9 and a bunch of other verses, Ephesians 2.8, verses in the Bible, passages in the Bible that kind of stress this God's electing of his chosen people of Israel, of, you know, of pagans later on as Paul was witnessing to pagans.
00:07:17
Speaker
and just kind of, yeah, so the doctrines appealed to me and yeah, total depravity as well. It seemed that all of the teachings were in connection to scripture and they were scripturally supported and then also there was
00:07:34
Speaker
more of an intellectual inclination with the Calvinists, especially the neo Calvinists of today. So those would include R.C. Sproul, Albert Mohler, Steve Lawson, Matt Chandler, Mark Driscoll, and John Piper, you know, more known ones than American evangelicalism. A number of which have passed away, actually, R.C. Sproul, Rabbi Zacharias,
00:08:00
Speaker
J.I. Packer, big Calvinist Christian names have passed away recently. So there was also that. But yeah, so that is kind of the theological backbone of my youth. Yeah. Yeah. And thank you.
Intellectual Journey and Book Insights
00:08:21
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And I want to build a little bit on there, too, on what you mentioned about your youth and
00:08:30
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You know, as far as for purposes of discussion, Jacob, it's really helpful for me to understand kind of like the narrative form of kind of like your intellectual journey, right? And what you try, what you're doing with your book. And I think a lot of philosophers or theologians and others can understand like living as that journey of learning.
00:08:53
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But you mentioned a little bit about when you were younger. We asked about what you were like when you were younger, and I know you made a couple of comments related to that. But how did you view, I don't know, things like intellectual matters or philosophy or questioning or creating things?
Influence of C.S. Lewis and Creative Pursuits
00:09:16
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What was your relationship back then? I mean, did you think about writing a book? Did you think about creating?
00:09:24
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Yeah, actually, well, I was always, I had a number of inspirations when I was young, and people I looked up to, among which were C.S. Lewis, Clive Staple Lewis, the famous Christian writer who wrote Mere Christianity, which was a kind of defense of the faith collection of BBC talk radio.
00:09:45
Speaker
during the span of World War II, which was then collected into a book, and of course, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Screwtape Letters, and a number of other influential works. He was the friend of Tolkien, the author of Lord of the Rings.
00:10:04
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and influenced him actually into writing Lord of the Rings. And this man, I was obsessed with him as a young person in my teens. I love the Narnia series. I just loved the idea of as a young person reading about someone who is from a non-orthodox background who was Irish and to go to Oxford from that background unlikely
00:10:33
Speaker
circumstances, getting into boarding school, not being good at mathematics, being extremely well versed in philosophy and English literature. Actually, he went to school to originally as a philosophy student and also taught philosophy at the beginning. And then later on, he just became an English Dom and just an expert in
00:11:02
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the 17th century English literature, which you can see from his writing. He's so well versed and has references, one of the most well-read people. So I read about C.S. Lewis quite a bit in my youth, and that was also one of the reasons why I moved to Oxford when I was living in Portsmouth, because I was reading a biography on Lewis, and I just told myself, you know what? I'm in England, and why not?
00:11:30
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go to this beautiful, lovely place that I'm reading about. And, and yeah, so so as as, as a young man, you know, you aspire to create and I was creating stuff at the time I was doing blogging, and that became quite a big, quite big of a habit. When I started university, I've published now 350 blog posts, something over that.
00:11:59
Speaker
And so yeah, so but originally, that was my influence for sure. C.S. Lewis, among the other ones, of course, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, John Piper, those really influenced me for my Christian leaning. But then, of course, I abandoned that. Wilst, I was in Oxford, actually. So it was an interesting kind of, I moved there because of that. But then in the end, I left it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:12:30
Speaker
uh yeah understood uh and then thank you for that on on C.S. Lewis too um in in that that connection you have to uh have you know you always have that connection uh to his work um we're gonna dig uh in a little bit Jacob on uh a couple other the philosophical um uh
00:12:54
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you know, points and questions we started to get into. But I wanted to ask, I thought now might be a decent opportunity to ask what, you know, a question I ask in each episode and in particular about your creative process. And you discussed, you know, some great writers, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, et cetera. Just so make sure we get it in here on the big philosophical question is, Jacob, do you have a theory of art or can you tell us what is art?
00:13:25
Speaker
Yeah, I've actually thought about this question quite a lot as a guitarist, a drummer, a bass player, a writer as well. And I've always tried to pursue that avenue of life from early on, playing in worship bands and playing in all sorts of high school bands. And even more recently, trying to release music and trying to go to studios on my own and do solo projects.
00:13:53
Speaker
And just as a person who appreciates art in general, all sorts of music from, you know, the John Mayer to Dave Matthews, to the snarky puppy. And even to other metal and all this stuff, I really do appreciate most genres of music, apart from perhaps classical, which I haven't gotten into. But but yeah, so as as art, a definition, a strict definition, I don't know if I would be able to provide but
00:14:21
Speaker
I think that art can be quite literally anything that resonates with people, that something that is just that you're unable to describe verbally what it is that you
00:14:39
Speaker
resonate with. So a lot of people, especially now in music, for example, there's a big genre of just music that isn't well recorded and that isn't trying to be professional and isn't trying to sound really good. And you see, for example, artists such as King Krule, who aren't really, they're really good singers, of course,
00:15:05
Speaker
but they try to sing in a different way, not the well-versed way, not by the book. That really resonates with people, and some people wouldn't call that art. Hip-hop wasn't called art. People like Ben Shapiro, for example, would say that hip-hop is in music. For me, I wouldn't be so quick to discredit something that I personally don't identify with.
00:15:32
Speaker
that gets into some epistemic axis philosophy. But with art specifically, I mean, it is really interesting to be able to appreciate music that isn't produced well. And I personally have really liked music that isn't produced well, and that doesn't have a lot of voices or influences on it, and just has like, just one person kind of producing or
00:15:59
Speaker
And with with it, I think that could get more difficult with something like paintings and the fine arts, you know, because at that point, it is sometimes perhaps with postmodern art and post postmodern art, you know, there's there's almost you don't know where the where the boundary is of is this good or is this not. But for myself, we do live in
00:16:27
Speaker
you know, a beautiful time where beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And if art does resonate with certain people, it's always about seeing where exactly, where's the appreciation coming from. And I think that each era has, you know, the classicists and the Renaissance and the neoclassicists and the romanticists. Each era of art really has
00:16:53
Speaker
a something that they dislike about those who preceded them and something that they somehow they discredit their work and say that it's not really art and this is more complicated or anything or something like that. But I think that I personally do appreciate the simplicity and one of my favorite drummers who played with everyone from, you know, he's played on David Letterman show for four years, Steve Jordan. He's played with pretty much every musician.
00:17:24
Speaker
Even for John Mayer, his trio, for example, he said, simplicity is not stupidity. And in music, I mean, that is completely true. Well, thank you for that answer, Jacob. And it's great, great to hear about some of your background in music, in music as well. And I appreciate your thoughts, your philosophical thoughts on art and, you know, in applying it to the work
00:17:53
Speaker
that you do in music. One of the things about your book that I'd love for you to go into a bit more is that obviously with the subject matter in your own personal journey, as far as answering questions, you know, metaphysical questions, you know, is there God?
Facilitating Conversations Between Beliefs
00:18:18
Speaker
You know, and that's, of course, relates to something rather than nothing question relates to it.
00:18:23
Speaker
But you talk about the influence for you in growing up and your thought around Christianity, Calvinism, and some of the writing and fiction and C.S. Lewis that you listen to. And on the other side, you have atheism. And when people think about atheism in the sense of that there isn't a God and for our casual listeners, agnosticism,
00:18:53
Speaker
doubting the existence of God. It's obvious to a lot of folks that a lot of the political culture, at least the political culture that's been around in the United States recently over the last few months, and some of the kind of pitched political or ideological conflicts that have arisen, what about your book and the way that you structure it?
00:19:21
Speaker
do you think can help in discussion, in philosophical discussion about what might be perceived to be opposites, Christianity, atheism, various belief systems, and what others view to be a contradictory belief system? What do you think your book does to help folks chat and philosophize and maybe chat like you or I might right now?
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah, really good question. Well, I think that well, this is particularly what I wanted to achieve in this book is I noticed people were talking past one another, especially when it came to religion, but it happens in all fields, politics, most notably of late. And especially with your guys's election coming up. But with with religion,
00:20:14
Speaker
I noticed this with the new atheists, you know, with the already mentioned Harris, for example, which I adore one of my favorite intellectuals, you know, the way he spoke about religion, to overuse a term, straw manning would describe it quite well. And then when you came to the side of the very intelligent Christian thinkers of today,
00:20:36
Speaker
of John Lennox, an extra mathematician, Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, and, and more, of course, Ravi Zacharias, very intelligent, William Lane Craig, very intelligent people, you, you have that, you know, this kind of misrepresentation of what is really going on. And, you know, scientists, the cognitive psychologists have been showing us that
00:21:04
Speaker
research on motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, things that people should know and people actually, I think, relatively are aware of. But then when they come when they come into contact with opposing views, they don't really put the knowledge they have into into effect. So you have people like Harris, you know, was completely aware he's, I think, friendly with Daniel Kahneman, a behavioral economist winning the Nobel Prize. And
00:21:33
Speaker
in economics in 2002 for his work on fast and slow thinking, system A, system B thinking, I think is what he calls it, specifically.
Accurate Representation in Religious Debates
00:21:46
Speaker
This is on confirmation bias, and yet, even despite being so close to someone like Kahneman, he will misrepresent and misunderstand the true
00:21:59
Speaker
relationship religion has to society or even the reasons people are religious in the first place, which often, you know, are we really responsible for for those inclinations? I don't know if we are. I think research suggests that, you know, our biases are quite entrenched and that it's really difficult to know, you know, if our views are, you know, some some result of genetics or upbringing, which roughly they're half and half I've heard.
00:22:28
Speaker
So, but with my book, I chose to write, and with that in mind, I chose to write knowing that people misrepresent, and they don't take this into consideration. And so I chose to divide the book into four and against arguments. So the first chapter, Christianity and the Age of Unreason, which Susan Jacoby, an incredible writer, spoke of,
00:22:57
Speaker
And then kind of represent the argument for Christians dealing with the age of unreason, you know, have this mass society believing in fake news and misrepresenting and being quite uneducated. What is that phenomenon? Is it a problem? And do Christians have a really good answer for it? And can Christians urge people to reason well and use evidence and arguments and reason and logic?
00:23:26
Speaker
and are there limits to reasoning, which I believe there are crucial limits to reasoning. But I represent that argument, and I propose the strongest argument. This is something that Donald Davidson, an American philosopher, proposed. Infamously, John Stuart Mill talked about it, and others have talked about it. It is the way John Stuart Mill said in On Liberty that we are to represent the argument of the opposition in the best possible way.
00:23:56
Speaker
and then deal with it and see whether they agree in a way that the opposition would agree with. And so that's something I hoped to do in my book. And it's up to my Christian friends, which I have quite a lot of to give me feedback on. But thus far, it's been pretty positive. And even in writing the book, I made sure to send manuscripts, rough drafts of the manuscript to people who
00:24:26
Speaker
who are learning about these things or people who have been Christians for most of their lives and are more intellectually minded. Yeah, and I love your project, and if I could, I relate to it myself, and I think everybody relates to it if they're interested in taking a look at these larger
Theoretical vs. Behavioral Conflicts
00:24:51
Speaker
questions. You relate to it in your own way.
00:24:57
Speaker
you know, I've been thinking about these questions for a long time. I studied, you know, philosophy at the University of Rhode Island, and then masters in philosophy at Marquette University. But you know, I've been away from the academic setting, you know, more or less for about 20 years after teaching philosophy at the University of Rhode Island for a year. Now, one of the things that I really like about the questions that you bring up is because
00:25:26
Speaker
I think about the conflicts that people have, and I think some of those are theoretical, right? And I think some of those are behavioral, right? And both of these things interact. And so on the theoretical, you kind of lay out the general conflict and thought around that.
00:25:54
Speaker
One thing, one story that always really, really hit me around discussions, theological or large metaphysical discussions was there was this group of Buddhists and a group of Christians.
00:26:11
Speaker
The more heady intellectual types had been arguing about, you know, is there one God, right? And in the Christianity, there'd be a monotheist, a monotheistic God. And in Buddhism, there's no self, no ego, ultimately no sin, no other entity.
00:26:30
Speaker
you know, beyond humans. And all this debate's going on, and meanwhile, the practitioners of the faith, in this case they're a monastery, Christians and Buddhists, started to compare their day, and they're like, well, what are you doing in the morning? Well, we check on the bees, and what do you do after that? Well, we prepare some breakfast, and then we take a walk, and they've compared their days, and they were the same.
00:26:53
Speaker
Their schedule is the same. It didn't matter. So that always intrigued me so deeply because I had found myself so entrenched on the intellectual or the ideological, metaphysical opposition. And then some of the practitioners of the faith saying, well, not a whole lot separating my day from yours. And obviously, that's not a solution.
00:27:20
Speaker
Um, but um a very intriguing thought in kind of a way that I try to see how can you bridge? The the differences how different are we when we go about the day and some of us are going to be very different, right? Um But there might be more overlap than we'll we'll admit intellectually or behaviorally Yeah, no, actually that's that's a really good point. I mean
00:27:44
Speaker
I personally, one of the reasons why I dislike my own field of philosophy, your field, is because we do get boggled down in these metaphysical, ontological, epistemological questions. When really you look outside and you just see people finding ways to behave morally, you know, and finding ways to be decent to one another without even knowing what utilitarianism, deontology or the virtue ethics are.
00:28:14
Speaker
And, and you have that within religion. And, you know, as you said, that's a really good example with Buddhist monks and, you know, the various different Eastern religions. And you had it 2000 years ago with the pre-Socratics and the Socratics and the all these various different schools of thought. And so, yeah, I think that that is a, there's, there's large research. Eric Schwitz Gebel, I think his name is,
00:28:42
Speaker
actually show that moral philosophers are not more likely with a number of studies. He showed that they're not more likely to clean after themselves, after conferences, respond to emails to students, and a number of other than other professors, and they're not more like other philosophy professors, and they're not more likely to do it
00:29:06
Speaker
than other professors in general. So the moral philosophers are not behaving better than philosophers, which could have been okay, I guess, because they're also introduced to moral philosophy, but they're not even better behaved than physicists and, you know, biologists who have basically no, except maybe for some electives early on in their undergraduate degrees, you know, they didn't really have access to moral philosophy.
00:29:30
Speaker
at least not in the academic setting. So that is also interesting stuff. Yeah, but yeah, that's that's a good point. Well, yeah, and I think I really enjoyed in really latched on to what you had said, as far as I think it might have come out of mill of presenting the argument, presenting the argument and presenting in a way that is is fear that uses common or proper terms to calibrate and to, you know, show what you're saying. The other
00:29:59
Speaker
Argument that we see many of the times is of course you portray your opponent's argument in the most silliest of fashions and the most ridiculous and then just wipe it right out of the way and and people using kind of ad hominem attacks to attack saying what and so You get right after this too, and it's it's part of one of the questions we had talked about Jacob
00:30:24
Speaker
You're talking Christianity and atheism in this battle,
Moral Frameworks in Society
00:30:30
Speaker
or the way that we think about it, maybe the theoretical conflict in a very, we think of the 21st century, we think of the year 2020, and various fractures that can be observed around the world in stresses due to a pandemic.
00:30:47
Speaker
But the age-old question sits back, I think, in your study and back behind your thoughts is the question of morality that you just brought up or how people behave. And the common criticism of atheism is what is the moral
00:31:05
Speaker
What is the moral framework? How do we evaluate behavior without a larger arbiter or standard? And I know you have some thoughts on that. Do you want to talk about atheists? Can they be moral and morality? Yeah, it's actually one of the more common questions of atheists.
00:31:26
Speaker
scared, because that is, I mean, I remember when I turned to if he's in 1920, and that was my first thought was among my first thoughts that I remember is like, okay, so so what do I, what can I get to do now? And what do I do? You know, there was kind of this ambivalence or, you know, the unknown. And, and so but with with morality, I think if you have as good a job, if not better,
00:31:56
Speaker
at providing a consolable moral world. So, first of all, much of our moral understanding has to do with our genes and, you know, kin altruism early on developing hunter-gatherer societies. And you see this not only in
00:32:15
Speaker
with early homo sapiens, et cetera. You see it with other species, non-human animals as well. You see cooperation in species that are separate from our animal tree, elephants and dolphins who have completely developed separately from us and they have no evolutionary lineage to us. And so kin altruism is a perfectly relevant standard to
00:32:44
Speaker
translate, or to look at it to see whether there is any moral understanding. And we see that there is some morality and you see it in animals, of course, it's not as developed because of cognitive capabilities that are completely different, and linguistic capabilities. And we've developed culture and society and writing. And this really helped us, you know,
00:33:09
Speaker
in providing kind of expanding on one another. And I talked about that in my book that, you know, the development of writing in ancient civilizations helped people critique and expand and develop early texts on morality, basic, you know,
00:33:30
Speaker
eye for an eye tooth for tooth kind of morality but that later on developed into human rights and people wanting to have some some fairness in society not being taxed inappropriately and eventually that led to
00:33:47
Speaker
you know, revolutions and the French Revolution. You know, David Hume talking against absolutist monarchy and people declaring independence from monarchs as Americans had. And yeah, so so the the origins were, of course, a week and it took us forever to develop kind of a strict moral sense
00:34:15
Speaker
but the kind of basic morality we have entrenched within us from early kin stages. And so I don't think that, and that is something that is just, you know, it's not a matter of Timothy Keller talks about this and making sense of God, his book, that we atheists have this arbitrary morality. No, we have as good of a morality as the Christians have. And furthermore, there's also just problems within
00:34:43
Speaker
the Christian narrative of what exactly the morality is, you know, is it really something that they're getting from the Bible or is it something they're getting societally? And I think that the evidence is really for the latter case that societally they're much more prone to be less critical of, for example, gay rights or trans rights even, you know, of late
00:35:09
Speaker
apart from fundamentalists. But in the 1600s, you wouldn't have that you would have, you know, the morality of Aquinas, Augustine, Luther and Calvin are complete contradictions to what we think of as moral today. So, you know, together with other authors, I ask, you know, where is this transcendental metaphysical reality?
00:35:32
Speaker
morality that Christians speak of, and I can't see it. So within that question that Christians ask atheists, how can you guys be moral? Really, they're supposing that they've been moral for two millennia. And if you look at the historical records, Christians were not really acting in any morally significant way. If anything, in the Hellenic world of Socrates, Aristotle, Plato,
00:36:00
Speaker
You'd have a lot of schools developing that were just really stressing moral conduct and virtuous lives. People thinking that that was pretty much all there was to life. Aristotle's saying that that is the happiest life. Plato's stressing that only the rational should rule, for example, which today we think of as anti-democratic.
00:36:23
Speaker
So I think that we really do have a good sense of morality, and primarily that is because of genes, but then also social obligations, laws, customs, these things have changed through the centuries. And, you know, a lot of our morality comes from the 1960s, from the rights revolution, you know, pre rights revolution, women often were still considered inferior. And obviously, there are ethnic problems with a lot of
00:36:54
Speaker
A lot of states were experiencing, and today we still haven't, we still do not have a developed kind of moral sense. A lot of us, you know, a lot of people aren't sensitive to racial issues, for example. A lot of people aren't even sensitive to domestic abuse problems in the world. Russia, for example, not having laws against it within marriage. So I don't think we have a developed sense of morality. We're still figuring it out.
00:37:20
Speaker
but we do have the guilt and we have the social ostracization. And those are perfectly good, reasonable ramifications for immoral behavior. And you know, so everyone has that. I mean, if you do not have sociopathic tendencies, you do have
00:37:41
Speaker
just something within you. And then Christians, of course, can talk about conscience and where that's implanted from. But I think Patricia Churchland has perfectly explained in her book, Conscience, and others have done this as well, that that really all everything I think Patricia, Patricia Churchland said this, that it all comes down to caring and bonding and early bonding. Yeah, so I think that's a good way to think about it.
00:38:08
Speaker
Yeah, and I appreciate you mentioning that. I mean, I think there's a bounty of areas to explore about how human beings, on a basic level, can cohabitate, act morally, or what the basis is for that.
Guilt, Shame, and Music
00:38:24
Speaker
And certainly the exit, the
00:38:28
Speaker
you know, the ethics of cure is one. And I also think underneath the things that you're saying, I heard a lot of this because I've studied kind of the role of shame in guilt, right? And, you know, the general idea of guilt being more internally driven, shame, when you're looking at a more public setting, and where that would work to modify behavior one way or another, not talking about the quality or why or whether that behavior should be modified.
00:38:58
Speaker
But they're powerful drivers, societally. And I think you're right in saying that, you know, an atheist is not operating outside of the context of the conditions in the world that they live in. Right. It isn't like, let me let me import the manual of behavior from outside of all this. It's inside because you're still in those parameters and
00:39:23
Speaker
I think there's a lot of fertile ground and some good indications that you give of places of where to look, you know, of where to look and where to think about morality for, you know, an atheist morality or a modern morality in having those discussions.
00:39:47
Speaker
Jacob, I wanted to ask you a little bit just to make sure I got it as far as with your connection with music. You want to lay that out a little bit more as far as you mentioned a few instruments that you played in other projects as far as your expression.
00:40:07
Speaker
Yeah, well, yeah, as being raised as a Christian, you know, you're exposed to music and, you know, every church needs a bass player needs a guitarist needs a drummer, or any other musician. So yeah, we were we were exposed to music and I was taught how to play basic chords on bass. And, you know, that developed into me really wanting to learn how to play on drums. And me and some close friends would just play on drums.
00:40:33
Speaker
at Infinitum, you know, on the weekends at our church. And that was really great. And, and then I just got more inclined to, to pursue guitar. And I was really influenced by John Mayer, you know, his, his acoustic stuff and, you know, Ben Howard and others. And, and recently I've been, I've been, I've recorded last year and I've been wanting to record here in Slovakia while I'm here.
00:41:01
Speaker
And so I will be releasing something on Spotify under a name I do not know yet, so I can't. But it would probably be something like my name. But I would want to have music officially on Spotify. And it would probably just be acoustic, no singing, just kind of layered acoustic music with some background.
00:41:25
Speaker
stuff on kind of like study music, even or just kind of thinking meditative music. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that, Jacob. And I think one of the things that I try to do, and the reason why I asked again for a little bit more on the program is, you know, looking at at the at your creative endeavors, obviously writing a book, getting into these very difficult, heady questions is one thing. But, you know, I find a lot of times we
00:41:55
Speaker
We're up to a lot of different things as far as creating things, and I really appreciate your additional, and look forward to seeing you get to your goal of releasing music. Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very much so.
Philosophical Questions of Existence
00:42:13
Speaker
Jacob, why is there something rather than nothing? Yeah, so it's a loaded question. I think that-
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah. Well, first of all, I think that philosophers have been too preoccupied with this question. And I think that, you know, arguments from causation, I'll read them dozens of times, and I still don't understand really what Aristotle is saying. And, and so, yeah, but you know, so that that's,
00:42:43
Speaker
My understanding of this question is that up until John Locke and Newton, all of the discussion about the question for why is there something rather than nothing was pretty much pointless, the epistemic ideal of Plato and Aristotle of focusing on the primary cause.
00:43:04
Speaker
was kind of a waste of time, I would say. And I think that philosophers would crucify me for this, especially, you know, in metaphysics and all these. Very legitimate. Yeah, absolutely, though. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, as someone you're from metaphysics, your background. I mean, I will read these explanations and
00:43:25
Speaker
I really don't understand how they have any bearing on the world. But I mean, that is also a kudos to them for their intelligence really getting at why. But then the problem with those explanations, I think, is that, and John Locke kind of talked about this, and Newton talked about this, and Galileo specifically, you know, scientists, they were saying that we needn't know the primary cause
00:43:54
Speaker
We don't have to know, you know, the things that are, to them, they explained it as the unexplainable. We need to explain basic natural phenomena. And so with this question, I look to evidence of basic natural phenomena. And, you know, some scientists have been talking about empty, empty space and really that there wasn't such a thing as
00:44:16
Speaker
complete nothingness, that there was something. And I think that, you know, maybe I, for myself, as not a trained scientist, and, and I only dabble in the popular science, I don't even look at the scientific literature, I would, I would, I find that a completely justified position. I don't really know why there has to be nothing, strictly speaking, you know, as a no thing. I can imagine all sorts of, you know, different
00:44:44
Speaker
type of matter or a type of empty space, which isn't really nothing for my understanding of it. It's it's it's it's atoms and it's some some sort of antimatter or dark energy or something like that. Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah. So so that's that that would be kind of my explanation is that I don't think we need a primary cause I don't I don't think we need and and then also it
00:45:09
Speaker
you're, you're really quickly jumping into the God of the gaps argument if you jump to monotheism, you know, and, and you're jumping into all sorts of conclusions. I don't think that there's any, any satisfactory position for someone who is a, you know, strict logician, you know, there's no logical explanation. I think that even while physicists will disagree about this ad infinitum,
00:45:35
Speaker
you'll have physicists who say that there's no possibility of this happening. And you'll have physicists like Lawrence Krauss saying that it's completely reasonable. And for myself as a layperson, it's really difficult to make sense of it. And I don't know if we really need, and that's kind of my own quote unquote philosophy of science, is that a lot of our scientific explanations
00:46:03
Speaker
we don't have the answers, at least as lay people, other people have the answers. And we have more collective intelligence versus individualistic intelligence individually, we really don't know that much. But collectively, when we get together, we come up with solutions. And with my personal life, you know, this question, particularly, it doesn't really keep me up at night, because I really do explain, I explained it as
00:46:32
Speaker
I don't really know if there had to be nothing. And I don't know if that, I really haven't even come across that position. It's almost like the same argument as we were talking earlier about morality. People propose a binary position between objective and relativistic morality as if it's only the two. Either we have objective or no. And I think that is the same with the nothing or something. It's like, well, maybe there was something all the time. Why do we have to have a primary cause?
00:47:02
Speaker
So that's kind of briefly my position. Well, no, and I appreciate that, too. I found that, you know, as a backdrop backdrop and prompt around creativity. But of course, the large metaphysical question I've been very influenced by the science that I've studied and read showing that the the the the way that
00:47:26
Speaker
this question and other questions are framed, you know, might just be outmoded, right? It might just be outmoded on the something and nothing and reframed maybe Kraus or others in that circle, as I mentioned before, saying why is there something, right? Like move away from the nothingness and kind of get away from larger questions that there needed to be, you know, the void and pointing to the void as in kind of
00:47:56
Speaker
outmoded concept, you know, pre-scientific almost. So definitely a lot of ways to engage around this question and I appreciate your thoughts.
Conclusion and Future Engagements
00:48:08
Speaker
Jacob, I want to, there's plenty for us to talk about. I assume this is probably
00:48:14
Speaker
the first time that we'll chat on something rather than nothing podcast. But prior to us departing, I wanted to give you the opportunity. I'd love for folks to be able to come into contact.
00:48:28
Speaker
You know, uh, you know, whatever hints you can give around, whether it's your writing, uh, music, uh, you mentioned some of your blog posts, anything related to that, that you want to share with, uh, listeners, just as far as to, you know, kind of come in contact with you and maybe, uh, you know, these debates. Yeah. Um, I, well, my book is on Amazon and I guess I have an Instagram devoted to my guitar.
00:48:54
Speaker
And I have an Instagram that's much more active devoted to travel and book reviews. So I published around 200 book reviews on that Instagram account. And now I just primarily focus on travel stuff. So I'm a history nerd. And so I like to post about some historical stuff going on in Europe.
00:49:16
Speaker
and even in the last. And so if people want to get in touch, that's jcub.forensics.official and it's j-a-k-u-b.f-e-r-e-n-c-i-k. And I guess there's going to be links of some sort.
00:49:33
Speaker
it's going to be written down somewhere. But but yeah, so that's kind of primarily and my blog is on medium. And that's mainly on philosophy, religion and politics. I'm actually strongly in the about to switch to a political science major. So it's something that I've really been more in tune with. And even for my masters, I'm strongly considering continuing with political science,
00:50:01
Speaker
And so, yeah, 300 plus blog posts there. And apart from that, it's just the average Twitter and Facebook stuff. Yeah. Well, and thanks for sharing that, too. Actually, I'm looking forward to taking a look at your book reviews. I love to read book reviews. There's a way of coming to contact with some of the thoughts that are out there and seeing how intellectuals engage them. Look forward to that. But I wanted to thank you, Jacob,
00:50:31
Speaker
I really enjoyed, you know, come in contact with your work. And like I said, there's obviously a ton of
00:50:40
Speaker
Ton of stuff to develop from our conversation and talk about further. I hope we have that opportunity. I just wanted to thank you for your time because some great, some great, bigger philosophical questions and discussions that the show gets into, although it's a philosophy in our podcast. And I just wanted to thank you for your contribution to the show.
00:51:03
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real pleasure. Even the questions have been amazing. I hope to be back. Alright. Thank you so much, Jacob. And I hope you'll talk to me again very soon. Thank you. Bye now.