Heaven, Hell, & the Human Condition | Jack Symes | Ep 478

Embrace the search for meaning in an indifferent universe to live authentically.

We call out for meaning from a universe that's indifferent to us. This version of the Absurd threatens to rob us of our sanity. Here be lions and dragons; here be cold and dark and emptiness, and that's uncomfortable. If we're going to tell ourselves the truth, that search for meaning in a world that doesn't obviously present us meaning is the world that we need to embrace if we're going to live honestly and authentically. Well, I can tell you what made itself manifest as evidence for me.

Hello everybody, I'm talking today to Dr. Jack Sims. He's a public philosopher and researcher at Durham University. He's also known as a podcaster for the Pan Cast Philosophy Podcast, which is one of the UK's most popular higher education programs. He's also the editor of the Talking About Philosophy book series. Dr. Sims has written and edited a couple of books on the philosophy of consciousness and books that describe the concept of God and the morality of the god that's being portrayed. That doesn't mean that Dr. Sims is a religious believer, by the way.

In the discussion that we had, we delved into conceptualizations of consciousness and what we have in popular culture now with regards to the arguments between atheists and believers. There's an argument about whether or not God exists, but underneath that is the question of what exactly is meant by God. How is this God characterized, and is that characterization reasonable on the theist or atheist side? Before you can have an argument about belief, you have to specify what it is that you're actually talking about.

One of the things we alluded to in the conversation was the fact that the god criticized by the atheist types, the materialist reductionist atheist types, is somewhat of a straw man and a parody God. That's not helpful because if we want to get to the bottom of things, we have to make sure that we're actually arguing about the right thing rather than reducing it to a kind of foolishness that can be easily dispensed with. That would be fine if you could make that reduction properly, but it's not fine at all if you have to reduce it without knowing what you're talking about. This actually happens to be the case for much of the argumentation put forth by atheists—the God they're dispensing with is not the god portrayed in the relevant work. We walked through that kind of differentiation.

What's happening in the world right now, particularly in the West, is a crisis of belief. What we believe fundamentally is up for grabs. There's an ongoing intellectual conversation about how to respecify that, and this conversation was part of that. To the degree that you're interested in participating in and understanding it, then this is the conversation for you.

Dr. Sims has three books: one on consciousness, two on God—one associated more with existence itself and the other, the newest one, Defeating the Evil God Challenge. Maybe we'll start with consciousness. Tell me a bit, and tell everybody who's watching and listening, how you approach the problem and how you conceptualize it. Let's talk about that. I've done a fair bit of reading on the topic of consciousness, so I'm very curious to hear your take on it.

=> 00:05:19

Consciousness is the core of our existence, shaping every experience and defying scientific explanation.

Dr. Sims responded by referencing an interview I did with Elon Musk recently. Musk expressed a view close to Dr. Sims' own, explaining how in the beginning, 13.8 billion years ago, there was just hydrogen, and all these physical processes evolved over time. Somewhere in that picture, consciousness must come into it. Musk raised the question: Is consciousness everywhere or nowhere? Consciousness is that feeling you get when you see your parents at the school gate or that drop in your stomach when you realize you've said something you shouldn't have. These experiences, such as thinking 1 + 1 equals 2, are all conscious experiences and they make the fabric of our worlds. To understand the value of that, try and imagine your life without Consciousness; it would be a meaningless wasteland, as the philosopher Gregory Miller puts it. There is nothing more valuable to us, and as George Orwell said, it's difficult to see what's on the end of your nose—it's a constant struggle. The person watching this or hearing my voice now is experiencing conscious experiences, which don't seem to be captured in the language of mathematics and geometry, i.e., the language of physics.

Galileo put Consciousness outside of the picture when it comes to physical science in order for science to make all the incredible advances that it has. Our question is, where does Consciousness fit into this scientific picture of the world that people seem to be accepting in Western societies? My view is that you should put Consciousness at the bottom; it has to be there from the beginning. You need some rudimentary Consciousness for evolution by natural selection to play with, in the same way you need some physical properties to make eyes and ears. You need conscious properties or particles to make the kinds of interesting Consciousness that you and I enjoy.

Are you coming at this primarily from a philosophical perspective, and to what degree is your viewpoint informed by biology and neuroscience? I'd say my view is 100% philosophical, but it is based on the things that are missing in neuroscience and biology. Neuroscience and biology are the wrong methods for understanding Consciousness. You can't scan someone's brain and see where the color red is; it's not going to come up. It's a different kind of thing—a private experience that isn't available to third-person observation. Anyone who thinks that neuroscience or biology is going to tell us where Consciousness comes from just doesn't understand what science is. Science can't tell us about the inner nature of what particles are; it tells us what particles do. This is known as the easy problem of Consciousness. The easy problems are the problems of trying to map out what David Chalmers calls the neural correlates of Consciousness. For example, if I give you a sharp punch to the chest and your brain lights up in a certain way, I can say that part of your brain gives rise to these experiences, but it still doesn't tell me where Consciousness itself comes from. That's what's always going to be missing from biology and neuroscience.

The hard problem of Consciousness, as Chalmers formulates it, is to explain Consciousness. Let me ask you a couple of questions about that because I've thought for a long time that the formulators of the hard problem of Consciousness are actually wildly optimistic. I don't really think they are tackling the hard problem of Consciousness. I think the hard problem of Consciousness is distinguishing Consciousness from being itself. I have a hard time distinguishing Consciousness from being, and it's also quite difficult to distinguish Consciousness from intelligence.

=> 00:09:35

Ancient mythology and modern neuroscience both point to consciousness as an inseparable part of existence.

Let me delve into that on the Consciousness side a little bit. I've spent a lot of time studying comparative mythology and binding that analysis with my knowledge of neuroscience. I don't want to generate interpretations of cosmogonic narratives that contradict what I know on the neurobiological side. I like this way of triangulating because it seems to me the probability that ancient mythology and modern Neuroscience will come to the same conclusions by chance is very low, given their disparate mechanisms of generating knowledge.

In the typical cosmogonic myth, which seems to involve Consciousness, you have three fundamental attributes of being and becoming. You have something that's equivalent to a paternal figure, a figure of order, a father, or a figure of light. These are all symbolic associations representing an extent structure of interpretation. Then there's something to be interpreted, like a field of possibility, usually represented as chaos or often as feminine, represented as the night. It has a terrible aspect and a positive aspect because out of potential comes everything good and everything terrible. Finally, you have an active mediary agent, an intermediary. In the Christian conception, this is the logos, the active principle that mediates between the forces of Order and Chaos.

This conceptualization makes a lot of sense to me phenomenologically, and I think it maps quite well to Neuroscience. The reason I'm giving you this lengthy exposition is that it's relevant to the issue of separating Consciousness from being. I don't see how you can separate Consciousness from being, even in principle, because I don't understand what it would mean for there to be a reality without awareness. This doesn't mean I understand anything about what awareness is, but I don't think it's distinguishable from the problem of being itself.

You're in very good company with this view; Bertrand Russell, Darwin, Philip Goff, Galen Strawson, and Mirela Barari all share the view that you can't separate Consciousness from being. They believe that being as a whole—whether that's Cosmos, existence, God, or the Divine—must have the property of Consciousness. This is slightly separate from intelligence, as you can imagine some large language model being intelligent or some insect responding to its environment intelligently without being conscious. You can pull them apart conceptually, but I don't think that's the case in the world as it is.

=> 00:13:42

Every action and perception needs a unifying ideal, challenging the postmodern skepticism of overarching narratives.

Your view seems to consist of three broad propositions. First, when we perceive the world and act in it, we're making value judgments. For instance, I see you now because I value this conversation rather than seeing some other thing out of the infinite ways I could see the room before me. Second, you think these values exist on a great chain of being or Jacob's Ladder; they emanate from the form of the good or lead to an Anselmian conception of the Divine. Third, you see story, fiction, and scripture as tapping into the Divine, tapping into truth or goodness, whatever that thing is that exists on top of Jacob's Ladder. To link to our discussion on Consciousness and being, the greatest being or the fullness of being, the thing that sits on top of the ladder, must be conscious and must be the totality of being. This idea seems to run through the entire history of Christian philosophy and maybe philosophy more generally. I wonder, did you think that captures it? Am I getting the bits and pieces in the right order there?

I'm taking four of my esteemed colleagues and you across the world. Oh wow, this is amazing to rediscover the ways our ancient ancestors developed the ideas that shaped modern society. It was a monument to Civic greatness to visit the places where history was made. That is ash from the actual fires from the Babylon burn Jerusalem from 2500 years ago. To walk the same roads, we are following the path of the crucifixion and experience the same wonder. We are on the site of a miracle. What kind of resources can human beings bring to a mysterious but knowable universe? Science, art, politics—all that makes life wonderful. And something new about the world is revealed.

Well, I think you've got the bits and pieces in the right order with regard to conceptualizations of the Divine. Let's take that apart a little bit because that's very much worth delving into. In principle, the postmodernists' ethos is defined by so-called skepticism towards meta-narratives. Their proposition, this was Lyotard, but it was shared widely, is that there's no overarching meta-narrative. Skepticism toward meta-narratives is one of the defining characteristics of the postmodern school. I find that a puerile idea, and the reason for that, as far as I can tell, is that every perception and every action requires a unifying ideal.

For example, if I want to lift a glass of water to my mouth, I'm sequencing and unifying a tremendous number of unbelievably complex operations to do that. It seems simple to my consciousness because I'm operating slightly above what I have automatized neurologically. I don't have any conscious idea of the complexity of the molecules, atoms, cells, and muscles that I'm using to move. But I'm unifying all those with regards to a value-oriented purpose, which would be to quench my thirst. That would be nested in a higher order structure of values because I believe it's better not to be thirsty, not to be in pain, and better to be alive than dead.

Even that micro unity of a given action unifies all sorts of things that are subordinate to it but also partakes in a higher unity. What the postmodernists seem to be claiming is that you can just draw some arbitrary upper limit to that unity. Let's go there for a second. There's no overarching meta-narrative, which might imply skepticism about God. If there's no upper unity, what's at the highest level? Disunity? Nothing? Nothing is a stupid answer because if it's nothing, you can't unify. If it's disunity, then you've developed a metaphysics of discord and disunity arbitrarily.

=> 00:18:02

If you don't believe in a uniting narrative, you're left with chaos and nihilism.

You admit to the existence of the uniting narrative that allows you to drink from a glass but not the uniting narrative that enables you to live in harmony with your wife. Where do you draw the line exactly? Exactly is the issue. You don't just get to say there are micro-narratives and meta-narratives and we don't believe in meta-narratives. First of all, there's not a qualitative distinction, so what exactly are you talking about? Second, if there's no uniting meta narrative, then what the hell do you think's at the top? Because it's either Unity or Discord or nothing, I suppose. Then you're in this nihilistic catastrophe that seems to do nothing but demoralize and wreak havoc.

You mentioned Jacob's Ladder. It seems to me that the monotheistic insistence is that all goods unify towards something that brings everything together, which would include but even transcend Consciousness. God would be beyond Consciousness, beyond unconsciousness, but certainly one definition of God is what stands at the highest level of Unity. Let's bandy that about a bit. I wonder, just to ask you, at the top of Jacob's Ladder, do you take God to be there? Do you take God to be the thing on which all values hang on, the thing that grounds all of the values? To be clear, are you happy to say that you believe in the existence of God as the greatest conceivable being?

I think it's, in some ways, a matter of definition. Before we can talk about whether or not God exists, we should have some sense of exactly what it is that we're talking about. At the moment, we're talking about the highest conceivable potential Unity. But then I would also say it stands at the top in a peculiar way, and this is definitely insisted upon in the Judeo-Christian Canon. God is inconceivable and ineffable, so even if you do put Him at the top, as you approach Him, He recedes. That capacity to recede is infinite. It's also not within the scope of conceptualization.

The classic atheists perform a sort of sleight of hand. Their God is always the wise old man in the sky, the superstitious obstacle to the progress of science. But that's not at all how God is conceptualized in the biblical corpus. God is put at the top of Jacob's Ladder, but He is also ineffable and receding.

Let's pick up on a few of those ideas. The first thing worth pointing out is that there are conceptions of God in which God is ineffable. There's a big debate in the philosophy of religion about the extent to which God is ineffable. Some people take God to be completely ineffable; you can't say anything positive about God, only what God is not. For example, God's not a pineapple, God's not an Adam Sandler movie, and thank God for that. God's not this delicious beer to my side or anything like that. You can say negative things about God, but you can't say anything positive because God is beyond your own descriptions.

However, the majority of philosophers of religion agree that you can say some things about God. Dayart gives the example of trying to get your arms around a great mountain. The great mountain is God, but you can't understand God in His entirety. You can pick up a few rocks and describe them, saying, "Hey, this is the property of omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, Consciousness, and being immutable, being unchanging," and the like. So, there are some things we can reasonably say that God must have as part of God's Essence.

=> 00:22:03

God must be the greatest conceivable being, possessing all great qualities like power, goodness, and knowledge.

On this question, let's pause for a moment. There are some things we can say about God's Essence, such as this. Finally, because I know that you know your scripture very well, I don't know my scripture as well as you do. I'm more from the camp of perfect being theology. As you know, there are three major strands of Theology and philosophy, which all try to arrive at a different or the same definition of God. Creation theology examines God's hand in the world, suggesting that God must be powerful enough to create the world, good enough to give it to us, and knowledgeable enough to create a finely tuned universe.

Another perspective is perfect being theology, which posits that God must be the greatest conceivable being. If there is a greater being than God, then what you are referring to is not God. God must possess all great-making properties, such as power, goodness, and knowledge, among others. If God has these attributes, then God is worthy of the name God.

Regarding the argument about ineffability, Mircea Eliade points out the consequences of a God that is too ineffable, meaning a God that cannot be characterized. Eliade has mapped out the death of God phenomenon across many cultures and times. When a culture begins to flourish, there is often a revelation that unites people, offering them a framework of meaning that quells anxiety and provides a goal or destination that imbues them with positive emotion. This unites the culture. However, the pinnacle value of that culture may come under rational assault or conflict with other religions, leading to doubt and the system's decay.

=> 00:26:37

The spirit that calls you forward is like a burning bush, guiding you through life's transformations.

Eliade noted that a God too ineffable tends to lose connection with humanity, floating off into the cosmic ether. Therefore, it is better to think of God in a hierarchical manner. For example, in the story of Exodus, Moses is compelled to take a leadership position due to his encounter with the burning bush, which symbolizes the tree of life and represents that which calls you forward. That's a good way of thinking about it. Now, that takes concrete form in your life. You might be attracted to a particular lover, profession, or a particular book on a shelf when you walk into a library. It's like a light turns on, and you're called forward to it like a moth. As you mature and transform, the way you look at the world changes, and the thing that compels your interest transforms. However, you could imagine something at the bottom of that that's constant across all those transformations. That's like the spirit of calling per se, and it spirals you upwards in a developmental path and recedes as you move towards it.

One characterization of God, particularly in the Old Testament, is God calling. That's reasonably well mappable onto the neurological systems that mediate positive emotion. These positive emotion systems do call you forward, filling you with hope and enthusiasm, which is a word derived from the phrase for being possessed by God. You can understand that behind all the things that call approximately is the spirit that calls transcendentally. You could think of the essence of that spirit as a closer approximation of the Divine. This isn't a full characterization of the Divine because, in the Old Testament, you also have God as the voice of conscience, which is quite different. That's more of a restrictive voice or impulse, so to speak.

This is good because these things in scripture, whether revealing truths or moral truths, whether revealing symbols, reflect the Divine. Schopenhauer's view of aesthetics was that when we're having an aesthetic experience, it taps into the rhythm of what he called the will. You're tapping into the form of aesthetic beauty, which I think your view is sort of similar to in terms of scripture. There are certainly parallels, at least. From a philosophical point of view, what's interesting is whether these events are concrete in the sense that they're historical events and whether or not you take this God to be a perfect being like the God of Anselm, Aquinas, or Augustine—the classical conception of God.

There are a lot of Christians out there at the moment holding you up and saying, "Look, Christianity is back. Here's Jordan Peterson saying he's a Christian and talking about scripture. New atheism is dead, and here we are with the resurrection of Christianity." But I don't think you're the type of Christian they have traditionally had in mind. My colleague at Durham University, Philip Goff, is coming out as a heretical Christian. He thinks you don't have to believe in a perfect God or that the Christ event was a real event to be a Christian. There is a middle way between God and atheism, which is my view as an agnostic as well. There is a middle way, just different from perhaps yours and Philip Goff's. I wonder, would you be happy to be characterized in that middle ground, finding new radical solutions to what's been a very partisan debate between theists and atheists?

=> 00:30:44

Christianity isn't just about belief; it's an all-in existential commitment that guides your actions and growth.

I don't think that characterization is quite accurate, although there are elements of the gist that are accurate. Philosophically, you could say I'm an existential Christian. Maybe that's a reasonable way of putting it. I believe that the Judeo-Christian ethos is not merely an ethos of propositional belief. The propositional belief is a surface, and while necessary, it is only so in accordance with something deeper. Just like your words should align with your actions, your actions are the fundament. The words shouldn't contradict that. I'm not saying that words are trivial because they're not, but the commitment to faith demanded by Christianity is an existential commitment. This means it's an all-in commitment, and Christianity actually outlines such a commitment.

Regarding the concept of God being perfect, for me, that's somewhat of a moot point. With the Jacob's Ladder conception, it's enough to know that no matter how high I climb, there won't be an upper limit. Hell is characterized as a bottomless pit, and existentially, no matter how bad things get, you can always make them worse. Conversely, on the positive side, if you follow your calling and abide by your conscience, there's no limit to the upward trek.

I believe we've conceptualized belief improperly in our culture, leading to a dilemma between the Enlightenment rationalists and the Christians, resulting in a propositional dispute.

Let's talk about calling for a minute. There are three fascinating points here. First, you mentioned climbing Jacob's Ladder forever without reaching an end. There are two ways to interpret this: one is that individuals like you and me can climb towards intrinsic goods but never reach perfection, always striving. The second claim, which I think is harder to make, is that the ladder itself goes on forever because you need something to ground those values, an intrinsic good at the end.

Secondly, regarding the idea of God as Perfection, Eugene Nagasawa and Katherine Rogers, two brilliant philosophers of religion, have claimed that there has never been a philosopher of religion who argued for anything less than a perfectly good God. This is phenomenal and changing, as some now consider a God with limited powers or a God constrained by the laws of physics.

=> 00:34:46

Believing in God can mean trusting in a higher power or asserting God's existence; the distinction shapes our faith and understanding.

Lastly, the statement "I believe in God" can be taken in two ways. For me, that can be taken in two ways, with the focus being on "believe." Either I believe in God like I believe in humanity. When I say that, I don't mean there's a thing called humanity; I mean there's something in which I'm putting my hope, something that I trust, i.e., humanity. But obviously, there's a second way of taking that statement, which is I believe that this thing exists, like the concept of humanity or God.

When you say you're an existentialist believer in God, I think you probably fall into that first category. You take the leap of faith towards God, you trust God, and you put your belief in God in that way, rather than making the propositional claim that there is some concrete entity that is satisfied and is true and described in the proposition. This proposition states there is a perfect being who is conscious, powerful, good, and the like. Do you think that's a fair characterization?

Well, I have a hard time understanding exactly how to get to the second without thoroughly dispensing with the first or thoroughly arranging the first properly. Let me respond to that in a way that also addresses another issue that you brought up. You said with regards to Jacob's ladder, and I described this infinite upward climb, at least of human beings. You said, "Well, there has to be something at the top." Let me describe for a moment how I think that's dealt with, at least in part, in the combined Old Testament and New Testament canons. I'll make reference primarily to the concept of the Logos.

There's an insistence in Christianity that, and Christ himself makes this claim, that he's the embodiment of the prophet and the laws. This is a very interesting claim technically because what you have in the Old Testament, and you already alluded to this, is a series of characterizations of God. It's not all the Old Testament is, but the narrative part of it is a sequence of characterizations of God. It's sort of like there's a human being in this situation, and this is what God appears like to him or her. Then there's a human being in this situation, and this is how God appears to him or her. So, the God of the Tower of Babel is characterized in a different manner than the God in the story of the flood. There's an underlying insistence that these are all manifestations of the same transcendent reality, but the characterizations differ. There's a pattern across those characterizations.

Christ's claim is that he's the physical embodiment of that pattern, and it's an extremely interesting claim. I have a very difficult time dispensing with it on rational grounds. This is an answer to the definition of what's at the pinnacle, at least insofar as that might be comprehensible by human beings. Christ, like Job, is the mortal man who says yes to existence in the most radical possible manner. To understand that, you have to take apart, in some sense, what that radical acceptance would mean if it was truly radical. What it would mean is something like what was initially outlined in the story of Job.

Job is a good man by God's own testimony, and God essentially turns him over to the powers of evil so that they can have their way with him. There's historical precedent for that idea because Cain invites in Lucifer to have his way with him. This is something that happens in the Old Testament canon. But in the case of Job, Job doesn't invite Satan in; God basically sicks Satan on him. Then everything that can possibly happen that's terrible to a person happens to Job—not everything, but it's a close approximation.

=> 00:39:10

Job's story teaches us that unwavering faith in oneself and the divine, even amidst life's harshest trials, can lead to profound personal growth and strength.

Job's response is twofold. He's so tortured that his wife says to him, "There's nothing left for you to do except shake your fist at the sky, curse God, and die." She has reason, viewing his misery, to make that claim. This would be relevant to the discussion we will have about notions of the evil God. Job is pushed past what you might regard as reasonable moral limits, but he does two things that are extremely interesting. Under great duress, he refuses to lose faith in the essential nature of his being. He says to his friends and to God, "I'm not a perfect man; I have the imperfections of a good man, but that doesn't mean that I'm deserving of the existential catastrophe that has visited me. It isn't a mere cause and effect consequence; there's an arbitrariness about it." Despite this, he does not lose faith in himself as a being, no matter what happens to him. Simultaneously, he does not lose faith in the Divine itself, even though all the evidence in front of him at the moment suggests that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and perhaps even unforgivable and evil.

In the Christian story, particularly in the Passion, the story of Job is magnified across virtually all conceivable dimensions. Christ is the archetypal figure who faces the worst life has to offer by definition but also throws himself fully open to that. This can be seen as taking the sins of the world unto himself. Imagine that the proper pattern of being for a human is radical, open-armed acceptance of fate—not just acceptance, but welcoming it. The insistence here is that the more radical you are in that willingness, the more what the Old Testament thinkers characterized as the spirit of God is likely to dwell within you and walk with you through your trials. As a clinician, I can't see a flaw in that argument. In the clinical realm, we've learned that if you encourage people to face the terrible things they're tempted to avoid, their character develops radically, and they become much stronger. This has been discovered across all fields of clinical endeavor.

This might be the point where we find some interesting disagreement. We've been getting along like brothers so far, but those brothers might turn out to be Cain and Abel when I give some clarifications. It seems like your argument is one of putting faith in the Divine, in believing in the sense I gave a moment ago—to trust and place your hope in something, in God in this example, despite evidence to the contrary or despite punishment from a God who claims they are perfectly good. That seems like an existential claim, and I believe it is an existential claim.

You put them the other way around a moment ago. You said, "I can't imagine the first idea of belief I gave you without the second." I think it's the other way around. I think you need to know that this thing exists before you put your belief or hope in it. For example, I believe in Santa Claus, i.e., I believe that Santa Claus will punish naughty children and be good to the good children on his nice list. You might think that's a reasonable belief, but it's not that there is such a thing called Santa Claus that exists. So, it seems like you do need the latter.

There is certainly a dance if you take them both to be true, but I don't think you want to commit to the second one. I don't think you can dance the dance that you want to. I think there's one person tangoing in that scenario. There's only "I believe in God" and make the jump. There's no "and the proposition that God exists is true." You don't say that one, so I don't think you're welcome on God's dance floor, let's say.

=> 00:43:24

Questioning God's existence isn't about proving it, but understanding what "exist" truly means.

I have a hard time with people who ask that question. People ask that question as if the statement "exist" is self-evident. It's weird because when you're putting together a statement and one of the objects or subjects of the statement is the ineffable Unity of all things, you just can't cram another word in there like "exists" without introducing an equal mystery. You're trying to make an equation. Does God have the properties of something that exists? You already have an implicit notion of what existence constitutes. It's part and parcel of the structure that's enabling you to ask that question. I don't know what your theology of existence means. So, when you say to me, I don't mean you specifically, but I could mean you too, it's like "does God exist?" It's like, well, what's your conception of "exist"? I mean, that's what we're bandying about to some degree, right? It's the thing that's at the top of Jacob's Ladder. Well, that's not the same thing as a table, right? It's a different kind of existence.

There is something in the world, physical or non-physical, that fits that description. You might have a Wittgensteinian idea from the Tractatus, although it's outdated, that my language literally maps onto something that exists in reality. It doesn't need to be a physical entity. I can speak of conceptual entities like sets and numbers and the like. I can speak of things that I can conceive of existing non-physically, like souls and angels and God. So, there are discussions to be had there, an interesting one perhaps, in terms of what we mean by "exist". Why do we say that Harry Potter does not exist but that God does exist if we don't know what the word "exists" means? There is something though, call it "exist" or call it, I don't know, "the gist". Give it whatever label you want. There is something that separates Harry Potter from God in the view of the Christian. They're not the same sorts of things and I think that's important. Now, we can have a discussion about what that thing is, but I don't think we need to examine every tree to make our way out of the forest. We know generally what we mean by "exist".

I've said that God is the perfect being and we both have a broad idea of what that might be. To believe, we've pulled apart together two types of belief: to believe in and to believe that proposition is true. So, on believing in God, trust and faith, Job's leap of faith and yours as well perhaps, it doesn't seem like that's consistent with an authentic existence in which one accepts the truth. I believe that one of your rules in your successful book is to tell the truth and at least don't lie. Perhaps that starts with getting your own house in order first. When you look in the mirror, you should tell yourself what's true and not believe in things that you don't know are true. If you don't know they're true, then you should suspend judgment on those things. That's strongly my view.

I'm an agnostic about being agnostic and I'm almost sure of it because I think there are very strong arguments for traditional theism. I think there are very strong arguments for atheism as well. But ultimately, because I don't have enough evidence for one side or the other, I think the authentic and perhaps cold, dark, and empty Universe I find myself in is one where I'm striving to find that meaning, find responsibility, and find value. That's a difficult task psychologically. Certainly, with the Christian view you developed a moment ago, you get certainty, right? You get the ultimate Cosmic purpose, you get strong objective moral values, you get this story of the world in which you sit neatly in place.

=> 00:47:35

The search for meaning in an indifferent universe is the key to living honestly and authentically.

This is an interesting point, especially for those who are agnostic or atheists like myself. Often, we say things like, "Oh, I feel so small in comparison to the rest of the cosmos; my life seems so insignificant and meaningless." But if you were as big as the world, the sun, or the universe, would that make your life more meaningful? The answer seems to be no; size doesn't seem to matter. Then you might think, "Maybe it's because I only live for 80 years if I'm lucky, compared to the 4.2 billion years of our world and the 13.8 billion years of the universe." Again, imagine you lived for 800,000 years or 8 million years—does that give your life more meaning? It seems like it doesn't.

Despite what my ex-girlfriend might tell you, it seems that size and how long you last isn't what's valuable in the context of meaning and purpose. The thing that's meaningful and what we cryo us. As the philosopher Michael Hauskeller tells us, this version of the Absurd threatenso rob us of our sanity. Here be lions and dragons, here be cold and dark and empty. That's uncomfortable, right? It doesn't obviously seem that yo

Now, I can tell you what made itself manifest as evidence for me. In the Christian passion, Christ faces youthful, unjust death at the hands of his own people under the thumb of a tyrant. That's not the sum of the injustice of his death, but in some ways, that's the essence. That's a pretty rough account of mortal limitation, but thatout for as agnostics or atheists is what Albert Camus referred to as the Absurd. We call out for meaning from a universe that's indifferent t It might be the case that theism increases well-being, helps people flourish, or that society needs some kind of religion to get along. f the Christian passion is the harrowing of hell. This is a more mythologized account but has equal existential significance. The essence of the Christian passion is the transcendent story of the eternal serpent. Christ is encountering not only the limitations of mortality but the actuality of evil.

=> 00:51:52

To truly live a grounded and upward-striving life, one must confront the reality of evil, not just mortality.

You might say, from a clinical perspective, that it's not possible to live in the world and be complete, grounded, and upward striving in the best possible manner without contending with the issue of evil. You have to contend with your mortality, but that's not enough. It might be that contending with the problem of evil is a deeper problem than contending with the problem of mortality, which is saying a lot because the former is no joke.

When I started my investigations 40 years ago or more, I was obsessed particularly with the problem of evil, mostly from a psychological perspective. The question for me, in a nutshell, was what's it like to be an Auschwitz camp guard who enjoys his work? That's not a question people usually ask because they don't conceive of themselves as the sorts of beings who could do that, much less enjoy it. That always struck me as dangerously naive. The consequence of investigating that question was that I became, for whatever it's worth, unshakably convinced that evil was a reality—maybe in some ways an undeniable fundamental reality, something akin to the reality of pain.

What that realization did for me was highlight something that was the reverse of that by implication. If you can imagine hell and its darkest reaches, you can posit the existence of something antithetical to that. It's always been more difficult for me to conceptualize what might be the essence of good than it is to conceptualize the essence of evil. I actually think it's easier in some ways to put your finger on evil. But once you do that, there's an implication that immediately emerges: well, there's some pathway to hell, obviously, since we can create it on Earth and have done that repeatedly in our own private lives, sociologically, and politically. That strongly implies that there's a pathway in the other direction towards something that's the opposite. It's been much more difficult to flesh out, but for me, that was the existential grounding of my belief in something approximating a Transcendent good—at least the Transcendent good is the pathway away from the worst excesses of Auschwitz.

This is good because I’m with you on this, and I think the majority of philosophers think that there is something called evil, though they may use different ways of describing it. It's interesting you described evil as pain, but at the same time, we can cash out pain in terms of higher-order goods that pain gives rise to. For example, I take the injection, so I'm immune from X, Y, and Z, and the pain was worth it; it wasn't gratuitous or unnecessary. So, it's not evil in that sense.

Likewise, when it comes to Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, the pain and suffering of the individuals who died at the hands of these weapons or regimes were themselves the victims of what they might conceive to be evil or gratuitous suffering. The Christian perspective has long maintained that there are theodicies and defenses one can give on behalf of God to get God off the hook. They argue it's greater to have free will and do these things than not. People like Richard Swinburne, the popular philosopher of religion defending Christianity, defend things like the Holocaust and the dropping of the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. That's a real bitter pill for a lot of atheists and agnostics to swallow.

=> 00:56:09

Debating the existence of a perfectly good God alongside evolution's inherent suffering challenges both theists and atheists to reconcile their beliefs with the reality of pain.

I do think that these defenses and theodicies collectively can respond to the argument from evil, particularly the evidential version. However, there are several new versions of the problem of evil emerging recently. The most dangerous of all, as described by Eugen Nagasawa, a Christian himself, is the systemic problem of evil. He argues that a perfectly good God would not design a system like evolution by natura=> 01:00:22

#on by natural selection, which necessitates the pain and suffering of countless sentient creatures. According to Nagasawa, ## The world is full of suffering, but the intrinsic value of existence still makes life worth bringing into being.

out in discussions with Musk. He pointed to a form of agnosticism initially and then dismissed anti-natalism by saying it’s ridiculous to think the world is just suffering. To paraphrase the late great Dan Dennett, we should only begin to criticize our opponents after expressing their ideas in such a way that they go, "Oh, I wish I put it like that."

Anti-natalists don't claim everything is suffering; they argue the world has more suffering than happiness, with all happiness and pleasure bracketed in suffering and pain. This idea is rooted in Buddhist philosophy, the views of Schopenhauer, and the perspectives of David Benatar and David Pearce, negative utilitarians who aim to eliminate suffering. When asked why he doesn't just blow up the world or give us drugs to feel nothing, David Pearce, a transhumanist, humorously admitted he wouldn't get voted in with such an agenda, but he would like to eliminate suffering.

The problem with trying to quantify the amount of good and evil in the world is a hopeless project. This ties into the popular challenge in the philosophy of religion that questions whether God is good or evil based on the world's good and evil. It's hard to quantify these aspects, especially when considering the ultimate outcomes of goods and bads.

However, the anti-anti-natalist argument posits that existence itself is intrinsically good. Existence and being sit at the top of Jacob's Ladder. John Rawls's thought experiment, where one must decide whether to bring life and conscious beings into existence without knowing how much happiness or suffering they will experience, often leads to the conclusion that existence is preferable. Even David Benatar, a prominent anti-natalist, doesn't believe life is intrinsically bad but argues that suffering and pain override the intrinsic goodness of the world. This perspective supports the anti-anti-natalist view.

=> 01:04:04

Now, addressing the question of happiness and suffering, it isn't obvious to me that the axis of happiness and suffering is the right axis of evaluation. We seem to believe that it's self-evident, something approximating pleasure versus pain, but those aren't the only interpretive frameworks accessible. For example, a Biblical example that deals with this point extremely well is the story of Abraham. Abraham is the expression of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. After the battle between Cain and Abel, Abel dies, and Seth is his replacement. If you were searching for e spirit of Seth, it would be Abraham. ing a blessing, he will make his name validly renowned among his fellows, he will establish a dynasty of permanence, and he will be a blessing to everyone else.

Imagine for a second, children have to move beyond the zone of comfort provided by their parents and out into the terrible world. There's an instinct that compels them forward, which encouraging parents admire and foster. Parents know their children will be hurt by the world but want to make them competent. What God offers in the Abrahamic story isn't pleasure and certainly not the absence of pain.

=> 01:08:33

A meaningful life is about noble adventure, not just pleasure.

Fellows, you will do that in a manner that enables you to establish a dynasty of permanence, and you'll do it in a way that's a blessing to everyone else. Now, imagine for a second, tell me what you think about this because there's a real technical claim here. You know, children have to move beyond the zone of comfort provided to them by their parents. They have to move out into the terrible world. There's an instinct that compels them forward, which encouraging parents admire and foster. Parents know that their children are going to be hurt by the world, but they want to make them competent.

What God offers in the Abrahamic story isn't pleasure and it's certainly not the absence of pain. It's something like noble romantic adventure, and that's a way different vision. It's an interesting vision even if you think about fiction and entertainment because the entertainment forms that people prefer aren't representations of the absence of pain or of hedonic gratification. They are almost always representations of romantic adventure.

I'll just add one more thing to that because it also addresses something else you pointed out, and this is the idea that God wouldn't produce a world where evil could reign in the manner that it does. But I would say I'm not so sure about that because there's a serious insistence in the biblical text, for example, that what human beings have to do is vital and real. It's not some sideshow. What that implies is that if you do things correctly, there will be spectacularly positive consequences—maybe unimaginably spectacular consequences. But if you do things wrong, there's no bottom to the abyss.

That's a very demanding world. Think about your own kids: you want to set a challenge in front of them. If you wanted to challenge someone to be everything they could be, then would the challenge have those archetypal poles of hell and heaven? That is how the world appears to be constituted.

Ultimately, though, all of those points are sound within a theistic framework, which we already need to have. If God exists or if it's reasonable to take the leap of faith and believe in God, then it's reasonable to think that God has a plan for you and that your life is meaningful despite the pain and suffering you experience. There is value to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life in consequence, not despite even.

It seems like a meaningful and fulfilling life is probably more important than having hedonistic measures for the Abrahamic believer. I believe that's completely the right way of thinking about it. But it's a very different thing for the agnostic or the secular philosopher who can't appeal to cosmic meaning. You have the benefit of cashing out all of these other things in God's ultimate plan and your ultimate destiny, but the agnostic doesn't get that.

You can have things that are like that, right? You can have an Aristotelian view where fulfilling your natural end is what's good. Martha Nussbaum defends a version of this in her book "Justice for Animals," which I've just finished. She says there are creatures all over the world that want to reproduce, play, and grow. Thwarting those ends would be bad, even if you snuck up and gave them a bullet in the back of the head and they didn't know you were about to kill them and didn't suffer. It would still be bad because the dog buried his bone yesterday and can't get it tomorrow. You're taking that thing away from that entity, which can't be understood within a framework of hedonistic utilitarianism such as that defended by Peter Singer.

The hedonistic utilitarian wants to say that the things that I am fulfilled in doing, the purpose that I reach, has to create more happiness and pleasure for entities as a whole than it does pain and suffering. It has to cash out at that. So, I think within this Abrahamic view that you've developed, and which seems to be your view, is that meaning and purpose are more important than hedonistic pleasure and happiness. But for the agnostic and the atheist, I think we've got a bit more of a challenge on our hands. We need to find a ground for that morality.

Well, the thing is, I actually think that that's not only possible but inevitable in a sense.

=> 01:12:47

Finding purpose and meaning is more fulfilling than just seeking pleasure and happiness.

The concept of hedonistic utilitarianism, as defended by Peter Singer, posits that actions should create more happiness and pleasure for entities as a whole than pain and suffering. Within this framework, the hedonistic utilitarian believes that fulfillment and purpose must ultimately result in greater overall happiness. However, contrasting this with an Abrahamic view, meaning and purpose are considered more important than mere hedonistic pleasure and happiness. For agnostics and atheists, finding a ground for morality presents a greater challenge.

One perspective suggests that finding this moral ground is not only possible but inevitable. The biblical quote, "I am the way and the truth and the life," can be dissected to reveal that the way is a pathway forward, leading to the best possible destination. Humans perceive pathways, tools, obstacles, friends, and foes, essentially seeing life as a journey. The question then becomes, what is the best pathway? This can be conceptualized through the story of Jacob's ladder.

For atheists and agnostics, the pathway to truth involves telling the truth in relation to an upward aim. This realization is not out of reach unless they explicitly reject the idea of a higher transcendent reality. The biblical promise suggests that pursuing the truth leads to the revelation of the fundamental structure of reality, as seen in the story of Moses. Moses' willingness to pursue what compels him forward transforms his life from being just a shepherd to encountering the burning bush. Similarly, Jacob starts as a liar, coward, and cheat but decides to aim upward and make necessary sacrifices, leading to his transformation.

The problem for atheists and agnostics is that without a purpose, actions lack motivation. Micro purposes, though they may suffice temporarily, are fragmented and not very motivating, leading to an unstable solution. This ties back to the initial problem discussed. In a debate with Sue Blackmore, it was argued that even those who claim not to believe in a system of values still follow a ladder of values or chain of motivations to perform daily actions. This challenges the Humean view of moral motivation, which suggests that actions are driven by desires with reason serving those desires. Non-Humean views, which were not fully explored in the discussion, offer alternative explanations for motivation and action.

=> 01:17:04

Even without a formal belief system, our motivations often hide an implicit guiding principle.

I raised this topic with a friend recently, discussing motivations for actions. My friend mentioned that they have been getting up and getting dressed every day since 1998, despite not believing in the system of values. When you push them further, you realize that they are not following what we might call a Humean track of moral motivation. A Humean view suggests that we act in accordance with our desires, with reason being the slave to these desires. This might provide micro-motivations in one's environment, such as the desire to be good, leading to charitable actions.

However, there are non-Humean views where individuals are motivated by reasons. This perspective suggests that in striving towards the Divine or the realization of intrinsic good, there needs to be an end to those reasons, a truth with a capital T. Both frameworks might be true simultaneously, indicating that we are guided by both reason and desire.

In the absence of a formal structure of integrated belief, such as monotheism, people are still motivated. These motivations can take instinctual forms, much like the pagan gods representing the instincts that drive motivation and perception. Thus, even if someone has a propositional framework that dispenses with Divine Unity, there is an implicit God hidden inside their motivational structure. This structure exists whether they acknowledge it or not.

One can act purely on the basis of desires without a further end, driven by instrumental reasons. However, if motivated by reasons, there needs to be an ultimate end. Neurodevelopmentally, a two-year-old's motivational situation consists of short-term perceptual frames driven by instinct, seeking immediate self-serving satisfaction. These frames are not capable of integrated social behavior, leading to a chaotic motivational structure that can produce suffering despite moments of gratification.

As a child develops, these fragmentary motivations, such as lust and hunger, begin to merge into an integrated structure across time and people. This developmental impulse is akin to movement towards a monotheistic unity, motivating maturity. For example, as a two-year-old turns into a three-year-old, they start to integrate their desires and emotions with those of a friend or play partner, indicating that underlying motivations are not inhibited by society but merge into a more cohesive structure.

=> 01:21:19

Integrating our fragmented desires and motivations can lead to a unified sense of purpose and maturity, reducing internal conflict and anxiety.

By its own, it causes pain, but there's another interesting aspect to consider. You can take these fragmentary motivations—let's say lust, hunger, and desire for status, for example. These are very primordial interactions that produce a developmental impulse, akin to movement towards a monotheistic unity. This is what motivates maturity. For instance, as a two-year-old turns into a three-year-old, the child starts to integrate his motivational desires and emotions with those of a friend or play partner. These underlying motivations are not inhibited by society; instead, they merge into something integrated across time and people, moving towards something like a monotheistic unity. Even people who are fractionated in their motivation and pursuing a fragmentary hedonism still have a unifying force attempting to spiral them up Jacob's Ladder, as long as they are social or future-oriented at all.

There are a few interesting points here that I want to pick up on. Firstly, to piggyback off the point you raised, I think that's generally a sensible view and I can see it working out in the broader scheme of things. However, I think there's still a problem: why Jacob's Ladder or something similar? If we have multiple things that we value intrinsically, I don't see why that would have to end in a monotheistic belief rather than something like Plato's Realm of the Forms, where you've got a form for justice, a form for order, a form of the good, and a form of power. Why not say that we have several of these entities rather than the god of classical theism?

This brings us to an interesting point of agreement. The agnostic, although uncertain about the existence of God or several gods (theism or atheism), can still be non-agnostic about other things. For example, you can be non-agnostic about how many corners a triangle has, whether kicking dogs and children is bad, or whether Jonah Hill should direct more films. The answers to these questions are pretty clear even for the agnostic. This means we can perhaps form a patchwork blanket to keep us warm in the cold indifference of the universe. I can draw from Plato's forms and have this view, which aligns with the chain of reasons and actions in the world, and see it as completely compatible with agnosticism.

So, my question to you is: why your view rather than agnosticism, beyond the leap of faith? This seems to map perfectly onto how we started the conversation regarding skepticism of uniting meta-narratives. You're making an argument analogous to the patchwork quilt argument. There are two technical reasons for this. One is that if you have a plethora of competing values, the competition itself engenders anxiety, which is well-mapped neurophysiologically. Anxiety can be seen as an index of disunity. The price you pay for the patchwork is the consequence of the multitude of competing values. They will compete, leading to stressful conflicts of duty, even between two goods. This can be very existentially demanding.

On the positive emotion side, the more union there is behind the aim that unites, the more positive value there is in movement towards that aim. The price you pay for the patchwork is that you're not as formidable as you would be if that patchwork were arranged into a hierarchy with something uniting all those values across your being, the social world, and time. I'm not saying that living this way is impossible; people do live that way. Perhaps the world is constituted that way, but the price for that is disunity to a certain degree.

=> 01:25:39

In life's toughest moments, having a deep, unifying belief can be the anchor that prevents you from falling into chaos and despair.

When you find yourself trapped in a place where you can't make a decision, it can be very existentially demanding. The same applies to positive emotions: the more unity there is behind the aim that unites, the more positive value there is in movement towards that aim. The price you pay for a patchwork of values is that you're not as formidable as you would be if that patchwork was arranged into a hierarchy with something uniting all those values across your own being, across the social world, and across time.

I'm not saying that living in a patchwork manner is impossible; people do live that way, and perhaps the world is constituted that way. However, the price for that is disunity, a certain degree of hopelessness, and complexity. This doesn't prove that things resolve into a union; I'm just pointing out what the price is.

One of the things that the Christian passion does as a story is provide that framework of unity. You might ask why you would prefer it. The reason you prefer it is because it's deeper. When you're in the most existentially demanding situations in your life, making decisions of mortal import or decisions between good and evil, you need something deep on your side. Otherwise, you'll face the consequences of your disunity and foolishness. It isn't exactly a hedonistic argument; it's more about needing something highest walking with you in challenging situations to avoid immense suffering, degeneration, or becoming a passive or active agent of evil.

There are two things to consider here. Firstly, there's going to be conflict in the agnostics' patchwork blanket, where the competing values of different systems might end up competing. Secondly, there's a pragmatic benefit to believing in a God in terms of flourishing. If you're an agnostic and an existentialist, you might experience existential dread. For example, every morning, you might check in with yourself as the sun comes in and think about whether you're happy and pleased to be alive or if you feel that dread. Some days are good, and some days you feel the emptiness of the ultimate purpose of things.

Simone de Beauvoir, in "Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter," describes a moment in Paris where she felt terrified that her life would come to an end, and even more scared that this feeling would arise again. Many people who don't believe in God experience that, but we should believe things because they're true, not because they make us feel good.

=> 01:29:49

True faith isn't about evidence; it's about courageously facing the future, no matter what.

out for as agnostics or atheists is what Albert Camus referred to as the Absurd. We call out for meaning from a universe that's indifferent t It might be the case that theism increases well-being, helps people flourish, or that society needs some kind of religion to get along. Maybe those things are true, and maybe truth isn't the thing we should be guided by. However, as an agnostic, I find myself guided more by truth than by feeling good about things. I suppose you would like the truth to correspond to the religion as well, but I think it's missing that extra bit of reason. Think about that word: rational, proportionate. Are my reasons proportionate to my belief? You mentioned earlier that you need to take that extra step without reason, like Job. By definition, Job's faith is irrational; he takes the leap despite the lack of evidence.

You need a stance within which your rationality makes itself manifest. The stance itself is bounded, and the mythological response to your query, including the aspect that brought in the issue of existential dread, is this: it's not the stance of a prey animal or someone paralyzed by anxiety. You made reference to waking up in the morning and balancing happiness with pain. I think that's the wrong framework. The problem can't be solved within that framework; it has to be solved within the framework of an infinitely painful and rewarding adventure. In this sense, the hedonistic and the painful become irrelevant—not meaningless, but not the right frame.

The right frame is the frame that Job takes, which is morally incumbent upon you to manifest a courageous faith. This is a pre-rational decision. Both you and I admitted that you can't weigh up the evidence because you don't have the evidence at hand, which is something that God tells Job and Job admits. So, what stance do you take? The stance that Job takes is to be a faithful scout of the formidable future, no matter what hell comes his way. Job's claim is not to lose faith in himself or the ultimate spirit of reality, no matter what happens. This stance maximizes flourishing, but that's not the justification for it.

You pointed out correctly that this isn't an argument from hedonism. Any alternative pathway tends to degenerate into the most abysmal suffering imaginable. This is a bit of a hedonistic argument, but it's only one element of the argument. The suffering, happiness, pleasure, and pain are still relevant even if we have meaning and purpose. Suppose God decided that our purpose and meaning was to ensure the process of evolution continued with all its blood and glory, stuffing animals into factory farms and torturing them forever. You'd think that's not the kind of meaning you were considering. You thought your meaning would correspond to your happiness and pleasure, and they can't be completely separated.

=> 01:33:55

True fulfillment comes from embracing both pleasure and pain, not just seeking happiness.

I think the Abrahamic vision is more existentially accurate and also more desirable. Dostoevsky kind of knew this. When he laid out his objection to reductionist rationalism in Notes from Underground, one of the things he pointed out about human beings—this was his fundamental critique of socialist utopianism, and it's kind of an Abrahamic critique—he said, "Look, if you gave people the opportunity to live a life devoid of, let's say, anxiety and pain so that they had nothing to do but eat cakes, sit in bubbling pools of hot water, and busy themselves with the continuity of the species, human beings were constituted such that the first thing they would do is take a mallet to the Utopia and destroy it just so that something interesting and adventurous would happen."

Smash the Utopia, exactly, because the hypothesis is, and this is the Abrahamic hypothesis, that we're not built for hedonistic infantilism. Whatever the world's about, it's not about pain and pleasure. Not that they're irrelevant, because that's not a reasonable thing to propose, but that's not the issue. That higher unity is something like the intermingling of pleasure and pain. Think about it this way: when you think about your life and you wake up in the morning trying to justify your miserable existence to yourself, and your memory wanders down the pathways of your life, you remember some event where you disciplined yourself, strove against remarkable odds, suffered along the way, but accomplished the aim. You take refuge in that memory, and that isn't a memory of the absence of pain—quite the contrary. It might be that the antithesis of pain is the willingness to undergo it voluntarily. This is certainly what's represented by the crucifixion—an embrace even of what's negative. It's certainly not a replacement of suffering with hedonic gratification, and certainly not the eradication of suffering.

Maybe you don't like that world, but there's a problem there too. This is the problem Job faces. You can not like the world, but that doesn't mean you have the capability or the right to stand in opposition to its moral order. You can debate that, obviously, but this concept of an evil God comes up in philosophical discussion. Trying to run this parody argument against the existence of a good God is quite common in the literature.

So, I'm going to hang on one sec. We have to do something here because we're running out of time. What I would recommend is this: I wanted to get to the meat of your new book. Now, we have another half an hour on the Daily Wire. Let's delve into the issue of the good versus evil God that's come up in philosophical discussion, if that's okay. That'll be a great thing for us to do for half an hour. You can walk us through that.