Joe Rogan Experience #2193 - Jack Symes

Jack Symes argues that 'new atheism' has failed because, after critiquing religion, it offers no answers to the deepest questions of meaning, ethics, and why anything exists. He and Rogan explore the fine-tuning and cosmological arguments for God, the problem of evil (especially the suffering baked into evolution), and pantheist/panpsychist views that the universe itself may be conscious or God-like. A long stretch covers animal ethics: factory farming, hunting, and the morality of killing. They close on consciousness, the multiverse, the negative side of psychedelics, and the limits of free speech.

• Symes argues new atheism is declining because it can criticize religion but cannot answer questions of meaning, ethics, and purpose.
  00:05:10
• Symes frames the 'systemic problem of evil', that a perfectly good God would not create evolution by natural selection requiring billions of years of suffering.
  00:16:07
• Rogan states his personal philosophy: 'I am not married to my ideas,' and suggests the universe itself might be God.
  00:13:30
• Rogan argues any death by a hunter is more humane than how animals die in the wild from starvation, freezing, or predators.
  00:42:24
• Both agree humans, despite cities and morals, are still beasts inside the natural world.
  01:09:59
• Symes claims if the multiverse is real, agnostics should be deeply worried given uncountable universes of suffering.
  02:02:20
• Symes raises the under-reported negative effects of psychedelics, a third of affected people report effects lasting over a year.
  02:18:24
• Symes argues free speech is subject to higher values like life and flourishing, citing Mill's harm principle.
  02:36:04

• Roger Penrose calculated the universe's initial low-entropy state at odds of 1 in 10^10^123.
  00:10:54
• Roughly 98-99% of chickens, turkeys, and pigs are kept in factory farms despite most people calling caging cruel.
  00:26:57
• About 77% of global soy production goes to feeding farmed animals; only ~7% is consumed directly by humans.
  00:51:46
• Dan Flores theorized the massive Buffalo herds of the Great Plains were a population explosion caused by plague killing 90% of Native Americans.
  00:55:25
• Hitler was on oxycodone and the Nazis used methamphetamines, per Norman Ohler's research.
  00:53:50
• In 2001 the UK had 70% identifying as Christian; now it is less than half, with the US trailing about 23 years behind.
  01:25:27
• In a survey of ~700 people with negative psychedelic experiences, ~90% still agreed the insights were worth the risks.
  02:22:34
• Some scholars argue the Bible's burning bush was an acacia bush rich in DMT (dimethyltryptamine).
  02:16:20
• Symes cites Elon Musk endorsing a panpsychist view that consciousness is either nowhere or everywhere.
  01:53:36
• Dairy cows are typically sent to slaughter after about five years once milk production drops.
  00:30:34