We Are Not Saved

There are two reasons to vote. To decide the election and to express a preference. Given that your chances of actually being the deciding vote, particularly in a presidential election are non-existent, you're mostly voting to express your preference, and if one of the third party candidates more closely matches your preference than the two major party candidates you should vote for them.

The Cold War is over and people have largely assumed that the threat of World War III and global thermonuclear war have passed. But I argue that they have not and that there are many reasons to be concerned.

There is a difference between history and politics. We can get so caught up in wanting our team to win that we can completely forget that in the end history is more important. And history is dominated by large negative events, like the Sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258. Preventing these large negative events is what we should really be focused on.

Support for organized religion is as low as it's every been, but in this episode I argue that organized religion does have a place in the world, and that place exists even if you don't believe in the existence of God. Religion is a way of reducing fragility, and increasing antifragility. The example pre-martial sex is used to illustrate the point.

A discussion of the role of morals and religion when approaching science. How the replication crisis illustrates some of the failings of science. The example of science and the opiate epidemic.

Several articles have been written pointing out that there has been an increase in suicides by LGBT youth, and have blamed that increase on the Mormon church. In this episode I examine how complicated it is to determine the causes of suicide and offer some alternative explanations for the phenomenon. 

The lack of some universally recognized logical system of morality means you can rely on God for morality or you can rely on culture for morality, but in both cases you’re relying on religion. You’re just arguing about the source of it. Atheists want to toss religion out the window with God. But it turns out God is hard to get rid of, as we see what happens when atheists actually set about to write.

In this episode I discuss religious objections to a technological singularity, particularly those objections arising from an LDS perspective. And use the metaphor of receiving a driver's license vs. building a car.

"We Are Not Saved" discusses religion, politics, the end of the world, science fiction, artificial intelligence, and most of all the limits of progress and technology.