Behind the BastardsPart Two: God's Debris, by Scott Adams (with Matt Lieb)
Robert sits down with Matt Lieb to discuss Scott Adams's worst novel, God's Debris.
Uh, I'm finishing my many taco from Trader Joe's OJS.
You know, sponsor us, dude, I wish.
That we could get sponsor protruders. I've never even seen them like nod.
Because they gave all that money to the LAPD when the LAPD opened fire wildly into one of their stores, murdering an employee. Why can't we get some of that cash? Oh yeah, Trader Joe's.
Was that in la Uh huh I remember that?
Yeah, there was like a criminal on the loose, and the LAPD decided, you know what will help this situation, emptying our ar fifteens into a glass storefront. And then Trader Joe said, thanks guys, here's a donation. Matt Leeb, what's the hull, Matt? This is part two. I don't know if it'll be airing the same week or months later. We'll probably slot this in around Thanksgiving or some ship when we've got some anyway, there we're doing a little.
Pinhitmry to be filler, put me down podcast sweeps week. I don't want anyone to hear this shit.
We're reading some books because I need a little bit of a break. Well, actually, I just need to get ahead up on production. I'm still writing episodes this week, but this helps out. So I'm going to be reading you a story, another little book, a canticle for Matt Lebowitz, Matt Libowitz, I'm do you get my canticle for Lebelwitz, Joe.
It's not bad.
That's a pretty good little referenced.
There we go, thank you. I don't have the jar Jr. Soundboard. Uh, it's just I got a new thing and now it's just all kind of boring ones. So I won't be doing it, you know what, because this is the in between.
Thetweens, and people are still people are still going to be pedants. Someone's going to be like, actually, a canticle is like a hymn or a psalm or something like that, it's not a book, And to which I would say, we're reading another Scott Adams book, and his prose is both musical and holy, like the text of a psalm.
You know exactly. Yeah, what I was there to say, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt what So.
I was just out in between recording the first episode on Scott's Terrible Novels in the second checking on my goats because I castrated one of them the other day, which I.
Wanted to hear more. I wanted to hear more about why did you do that?
Well, you can't have too many bulls or whatever rams with the testicles hanging out, like you don't really want to have more than one because they'll like hurt each other, right, And we're not going to breed this one. So he's going to live a long, happy life, but he just is not going to have testicles. It's like your cat, right or you know, Like I had somebody get get all unrey at me online about this. I'm like, I don't know, man, like you do it to your animals, Like if you have a pet, it's just like it's not going to breed, it's going to get hurt, hurt anyway.
Whatever.
I don't care what people feel about it. What's interesting to me about it is that the way we do it is with rubber bands. Right, there's like a whole setup, yeah where and you basically just kind of you know, there's a little pain for an hour or so, and then the nerves kind of deaden and then eventually the test Like.
When BuzzFeed they'll do a live stream where they put a bunch of rubber bands on a watermelon and they keep putting it on until it explodes.
No, that would be a crime, I believe use we use a specific device and specific rubber bands meant for castration. But what's interesting to me about this, Matt, is that the first real powerful moment that I had as a young child on the internet. I think this occurred around ninety nine, might have been his late as two thousand and two thousand and one is I'm hanging out. I'm sure I found it through something awful, and I wind up on this web forum for gay men who are in a very specific kind of I think you would say, like pro like dom sub relationship oka. And it was a subset of these guys talking about auto castration, which is how to castrate yourself. And they also used rubber bands on themselves to kill their testicles and then eventually remove them. And anyway, isn't it beautiful that as a little boy I learned that about the world I read. I spent hours. I didn't know why, but I spent hours reading all of these detailed discussions about the best way because these guys, there's not like there was like a book how to castrate yourself right, like there was I think people had back in the Catholic Church days when you'd had to do it to like sing better. People had learned a lot of this stuff, but I think it was like an oral tradition.
No, and also were probably in Latin too, so it's like you got to learn Latin to learn how a couple of round balls off? What is I thought this was America.
Much like in a canticle for Lebowitz. These people had to rediscover, you know, the knowledge of the past. And I spent hours and this is like I can remember one time like reading just like I'm going through this and stuff. It's like early on a Sunday morning, I've gotten up early to check read the Internet. Before my dad takes the dial up. We've got to like go to church, and so I go to church. Just like thinking about these descriptions of how men castrated themselves using reb bands, which I love about the Internet. I credit that with a lot of the you know, just learning the vast had a lot.
Of sense that that is like an early memory for you. Powerful. It's weird how much that probably dictated where you're at right now.
Yeah, absolutely, it had no impact on me castrating a goat. I did that because my neighbors who are more experienced with this sort of thing do it that way.
Oh, I thought it was because it's just love of the game.
You love the game. That's why I got that ABC tattoo. Baby always be castraighting.
Yeah yeah, man, No, Like I was also like, I feel like goatsy had a huge influence. Oh, absolutely, yeah. It just it showed me that humans are capable of remarkable feats.
Humans are capable of remarkable feats. It also taught me a lot about storytelling. If you go back to and if you're not, if you're if you're young right, or you just weren't terminally online goat See was like one of the very first online memes, and it was really the most influential early online meme. And the basics of it is that it's a photo some fellow took with a prolapsed rectum of himself bending over and spreading his ass cheeks so that you can see what his prolapsed rectum looks like. And it is biologically a fascinating photo. And because it was just kind of like one of the more horrifying I thin guess how most people found it things being passed around the early Internet, it became like a shorthand. For I am a very online person. The way you would express this shorthand is you would trick people into looking at the picture of this man's rectum by being like, Wow, there's a fire at the power plant nearby. Check out this photo of it or something like.
That, this hyperlink, you know, and then it would just be goatsy guy stretching out his asshole hello wide, yeah, and you'd be like, oh no, not again.
All of these different bits of Internet culture when they come down to normies, right, they get sort of softened. Like the softening of Goatsy was rickrolling right, yeah, you know, it's just a video this bad song, right, instead of this man's like confounding anus.
Yeah. Well, to be fair, the guy doing Goatsy was Rick Astley.
Yeah.
That's why he's got the ass right in there right there.
The name.
That's good. That's good stuff.
Well, it's also fun because I think Goatsy taught me everything that you really need to know about good storytelling right open obviously you want to grab them right away, and that prolapsed rectum is like a great intro paragraph. Right, you're immediately in the story, but you also want to you want to set up like mysteries, you want to set up aspects of the plot they're going to be relevant later, because that's just kind of satisfying as a reader. And the goats Sy version of that is this dude's got a wedding ring right now, Like we don't know much of.
It, but we know there's we know there's.
A story going on with right, Yeah, somewhere behind the scenes, right and maybe you know, maybe one day we'll find the answer to that mystery.
We know that he took a valve before God, and we know that you know, he's got shiny hands, so you know that he's also safe when he's tearing his asshole aside.
Absolutely, absolutely, he's careful, he cares. There's a whole world implied in Goatsy. Speaking of people who created a whole world, I want to talk about the peerless fictional crafting of Scott Adams.
Now, oh yes, the Goatsy of the comic book, the Coatsy of the comic book world right, the prolapsed anus of modern discourse.
Yeah, I did one of my favorites. So there's this thing in Vegas, the the Madison Square Garden sphere, which is you've seen pictures of it all people are doing it as like my favorite post about it is like, you know, somebody posts like a picture of it looking like an eyeball and was like, can't wait till someone hacks this and we get to watch mister Hans die on it. And again, if you're not an old internet had, Mister Hands is a man who was part of a gang of Zoo files who would regularly meet up in Washington, I believe, and like molest a horse, and one day the horse fucked him and he died as a result of it. For reasons I shouldn't need to explain.
Biological and we can all put that together, and I think you can anyway put it together.
It wound up. He was like a congressional aid or some shit. He had some job in government. It was like a weird or he was like a contractor. I think he was like a so he he was. It was like a whole black thing.
Yeah, it was. It was wild.
There's a documentary about it called Zoo that is very uncomfortable to watch, but we'll give you the whole story.
There's also a movie semi about it called The Death of Dick Long and you must watch it that I haven't seen. But my god, I wish I hadn't said anything in fact, but now you should see this movie. It's one of the greatest movies ever.
Now I have decided that if I ever get to set up like my canticle for Lebowitz style, like like hidden you know, a reservoir of human knowledge for people after the apocalypse to rebuild society, you know, my version of the foundation. Actually it's just gonna be Zoo and that other movie. That's all they need.
That's all they'll need to know. What was this culture about guy's getting fucked up by the guys were getting fucked up by horses? To hard I guess you know, hey, to each their own is.
Said, we're delaying the start of God's Debris. Now we read The Religion War last time, which is actually the sequel to God's Debris, but God's Debris takes place after the Religion War. I didn't do this for any artistic reason. I did it because if Scott has any sort of pride at all as a writer, then he was very intentional in having these books set the way they are, and I don't like Scott or respect him, so fuck him.
Yeah yeah, now, welcome to death, like that horse did to mister.
Hands, like that hosted to mister Hands. Now I feel like I should start with noting that on the inside of this book we get the author's websites, So we get Dilbert dot com. Fine, dil burrito dot com, which is the burrito that he made that was an instant failure because it made people shit themselves half to death and tasted horrible.
And then the yeah, oh you didn't know about the Delta. We talked about it in the episode.
Yeah, he made a vitamin pill that was a burrito and it was horrible.
Oh my god, God bless him, God bless aurial spirit.
And then he started a restaurant called Stacy's Cafe, which is the name of the cafe the super Genius works at. Yeah, he's got that rep that website on here too good to see how all of Scott's projects worked. So introduction. This is not a Dilbert book. It contains no humor. Those two are not exclusive Scott. I call it one hundred and thirty two page thought experiment wrapped in a fictional story. I'll explain the thought experiment part later. God's Debris doesn't fit into normal publishing cubby holes. There's here's the bit I was telling you about last time. There's even disagreement about whether the material is fiction or nonfiction. I contend that it's fiction because the characters don't exist. Some people contend that it's nonfiction because the opinions and philosophies of the characters might have lasting impact on the reader. Again, like eighty percent definition.
Not the definition of fiction and nonfiction.
So many of the most influential tech weirdos in the country's entire version like vision of reality is based on misinterpreting Doune Like yeah, like that's like what fiction is for. But okay, okay, Scott kind of shitting on the entire craft of fiction.
But fine.
The target audience for God's Debris people who enjoy having their brains spun around inside their skulls. After a certain age, most people are uncomfortable with new ideas, like, for example, the existence of turkey. That certain age varies by person, but if you're over fifty five, mentally you.
Won't enjoy this. Get your brain spun Wait to hear about Sunnis and Shia's yeah, good, Yes, dude, that's gonna fuck you up.
That certain age varies by person, but if you're over fifty five minute, you probably won't enjoy this thought experiment. If you're eighty going on thirty five, you might like it. If you're twenty three, your odds of liking it are very good.
Yeah, this is how you sell to this demographic. By the way, he's got it down to a t. Yeah, you got it right at the beginning of your book. Hey, if you're young, this is cool, and for you it's want to smoke cigarettes. And then you say, if you're old, you're not gonna get this. Parents just don't understand why, my shit, that guy gets it. Man. That's why Dilbert is a big hit with the kids these days. God.
There's so much in here too, just about like his belief system because he's like so the story central characters of you about God that you've probably never heard before. If you think you'd be offended by a fictional characters on traditional view of God, please don't read this. The opinions in philosophy here's the best part. The opinions in philosophies expressed by the characters are not my own except by coincidence, and a few spots not worth mentioning. Pease, please don't write me with passionate explanations of why my views they're wrong. You won't discover my opinions by reading my fiction. I beg to differ, Scott. I think I think we might have picked out a couple of opinions.
We made it pretty clear that you are very It's you know you can read him like a book, which is ironic here. I love this. I love the idea every single book so far that you've read, uh starts out with the sales pitch to the demographic and or the publisher, and.
Which is I do love the idea of like, if every author did this, if Tolkien's like you might not think a little guy who lives in a hole is very interesting.
But let me tell you about this habit he learned. Tell you about it. If you're just an old fogy, you're not really going to understand this. But if you're a kid, holy shit, hold on your brains because it's about to get spun around.
If you or if you're over fifty five, you probably think it's okay to craft a series of magical rings that allow you to dominate the minds of entire races.
But let me tell you something, it's not. Yeah, oh man, I love it too, because it's not fiction, because the ideas of crafting the magical ring have been like thought about in a nonfiction world. It is you know what I mean? Is that not what Hitler was trying to do.
I want to give Frank Herbert's version of this. I bet you guys think that fears good. No, no, no, let me tell you it's the mind killer. You know, it's like, does me a little bit to be honest? Yeah, okay. The central character in God's Debris, that's the avatar, knows everything, literally everything. This presented a challenge to me as a writer when you consider all of the things that can be known. I don't know much. My solution was to create smart sounding answers using the skeptics creed. The simplest explanation is usually right.
You know, why is he doing this? Why is he explaining literally every aspect of this? He knows.
The key to good writing is tell, and it no point show. Don't even write a novel, just tell people what.
They should tell. Yeah, Oh my god, so funny.
Like Also, so, the simplest explanation in that last book was that you can stop people from believing in all of their faiths with a single joke.
With a with a heart joke that goes viral.
That's the simplest explanation. You might be getting Okham's Razor wrong.
Yeah, I don't think he understand Sokham's Razor, but it's you know, for him. I'm glad he's like almost humble because he's just like, you know, listen, I'll admit that I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I get around that fallacy. I get around that by like saying smart things like fart joke can save people by making them not believing God yeah, fart joke, brain big. Yeah, fart joke, brain big.
That's that is. I'm gonna get on good Reads and review this.
Brain big joke.
Now, man, So this does the chapter one for this has the same name as if you were to do a book about mister Hands the package.
Oh, here we go. That's pretty good. That's not bad, not bad.
Put that joke in our canticle for Lebowitz Storehouse of Human Achievement. Yeah, the rain made everything sound different. The engine of my delivery van. The traffic is it rolled by in a film of fallen clouds, the occasional dull honk. I didn't have a great job, but it wasn't bad either. I knew the city so well that I could lose myself in thought and still do the work, still get paid, still have plenty of time for myself. So he's a delivery man. That's our character. He's about to go meet the avatar. He's gonna drop a package off. YadA YadA, YadA, YadA YadA.
Oh wow.
There is a fun bit about driving in San Francisco here where he's like, if you think too hard, you ever shoot your target and end up at the pier the tinderloind. If you relax and let the city help, the destination does all the work for you. I don't know, man, I've driven a lot in San Francisco. It's actually pretty hard to accidentally wind up at the pier.
No. Yeah, you definitely will not accidentally get to the will You will get to the pier because you mistakenly thought it would be easier to do that than take an uber or take like the mass transit, And then you'll realize you.
Have to park at the pier, which is a fucking nightmare. Yeah, you'll hate yourself. Stay away from the pier, avoid the peer at all costs.
Yeah.
Anyway, tinder Loin's fine. He gets to the delivery. Yeah, he knocks on the door, and he's going to meet the avatar, the old man.
That's chapter two.
I figured I would leave the package inside the door and sign the customer's name I had signed for customers to before.
No one had complained yet.
It was a firing offense, but that only happened if you got caught inside. I could see a long, dark hallway with red faux textured walls lined with huge illuminated paintings. At the end was a half open door to a room that hosted a flickery. Yet at god, okay.
Uh, if he's so smart, i'l come. His door is already opened.
Yeah, come, his doors already well, because he's been expecting. This guy was startling. Yeah, yeah, the avatars, like I've been expecting. You you know one of those things.
Uh they're naked with a towel around them, just like yeah.
Okay, So he tells the avatar's get a package that this guy needs to sign for and then the guy does a mysterious genius old man stuff and asks him, if you toss a coin a thousand times, how often will it come up heads. The elderly are spooky when they degenerate into reflections of their younger selves. They say things that make sense. It's some grammatical level, but it's not always connected to reality. I remember my grandfather in his declining years, how we spoken non sequiturs. It was best to play along about fifty percent of the time, I answered, before changing the subject. I need a signature for this package. Why, well, I said, measuring how much information to include in my response. The person who sent the package wants a signature. He needs confirmation that it got delivered. I meant, why does the package come up heads fifty percent of the time?
Oh my god.
So, first off, don't ever do this to a delivery boy. Look, I don't care if you have all of the secrets of the universe to pass on. He is getting paid, you know, hourly. He's got like a fucking more than that. He's got like a car full of shit to deliver. He's getting like penalized if he's not making his deliveries fast enough.
To deal with dogs too. He's got to deal with fucking traffic. He's done. These guys are overworked as it is. If you got a fucking little brain puzzle, like if you do flippies on coins, how many time it go? Ahead? Just then fucking keep it to yourself. Just yeah.
So he the avatar is like, you can just sign for me, and he looks up the name on the package slip and it's avatar. So he signs for him. Uh, and he's like, it's for you, what's for me? The package? I just delivered the packages, I said, My job is to bring them to you. It's your package. No, it's yours. Uh okay, I said. Planning my exit strategy, I figured I could leave the package in the hallway on the way out. The old man's caretaker would find it. What's in the package? I asked, hoping to get past an awkward moment. It's the answer to your question. I wasn't expecting to be exactly yeah, it's this. So like the gist is that the avatar is doing this like very frustrating faux smart like, oh, did you deliver the package or did the package deliver you because you wouldn't have come here if not. Well, actually, like I came here because it's my job and I have to make rent. But whatever, we went through over this in the episodes, it's very frustrating.
Let's mind jiu jitsu, we like to call it. In smart guy circles.
The delivery man's mind has been tickled by the avatars brilliant who delivered the package? Used the baggage?
Who's on first? And I'm thinking that she's saying who, But it's our guy? Is our guy? Name who? It's just it's spoilers.
This whole thing is a Socratic dialogue, so the whole plot is just the two of them talking in a room, which is why this will be shorter than our than the epic about the religion war.
But let's uh, I just want to I just want to come back.
I was muted, but like a minute and a half ago, Matt made Matt made a funny and I want to acknowledge that.
What was it? I went, I gave you like a.
And you didn't get to hear it because I was muted, So.
I wanted to come back to give it to you. I don't know what I said, but smart guys, and I was like, hell yeah, man, hell yeah for you, Yeah, for you. I like when people I just love it. I appreciate it.
We're not telling you the listener what the joke was that made her laugh? Yeah, nobody know what he's saying.
Ship. Yeah it made you laugh.
Yeah, let us let us know which joke you think Sophie was laughing at.
I need a Sophie in my life, man. I need someone who's just like be like, hey, by the way, a few minutes ago, you fucking killed that. H Yeah.
Sometimes I do that to people and I'm just lying, you know, and then they wonder for the rest of their lives, like what it was they said that was smart or funny, and they think I'm being nice so they like me, but I'm really just gaslighting, Like I'm actually just trying to damage their brains?
Are you? Are you? The avatar is you? And the avatar is a fun can prick.
It's time for ads, I think.
Sophie, you know what is the avatar of capitalism is the sponsors of behind the Bastards.
You know, unless you have cooler zone media then ha haha, No.
Then you get it free, no ads, haah paying.
Us money to listen to this ad free on cooler Zone Media is equivalent to being chosen by the avatar during your delivery drive.
Couldn't agree more.
To inherit his wisdom. So yeah, you know packages for you.
If you subscribe to cooler Zone Media, you can pretend that Matt Leeb and I invited you into our home that we share together in order to teach you our wisdom in front of a crackling fire. You're allowed to do that.
And our wisdom is just doing Abbot and Costello bits. Yeah, well, you do them smart.
I do them badly because I can only kind of remember who's on first, and I think the Mummy movie they were in, that's all.
I got. The Mommy movie. That's the real smart guy movie.
Yeah, yeah, I watched part of that one morning when I got up early to watch the the CGI Starship Troopers show that was only on on like six am back in the Yeah. Anyway, great, great show, both of them, both of them, and we're back, Matt. Did you ever watch the CGI Starship Troopers show?
No?
I didn't even really know nobody saw. Yeah what was Was it also a satire? Or were they like?
No, it was like pretty close to the aspects of the book. It was closer to the book than the show, but also did its own thing. I haven't watched it in twenty five years, but I remember it being pretty cool. That said, it was easier to impress me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is before you saw Gotzi and mister Hands.
This was right around when I saw gots This was probably before mister Hans though, Okay it is. I do wonder what it did to me and so many other members of my generation. Just like watching a video where a man gets fucked to death by a horse as a little kid, it did something to me, and because like somebody tricked me into watching it, right, because yeah, just like huh.
Yeah, no, definitely for me, I was just like, all right, so avoid horses, so avoid horses. Yeah.
Well it was also this thing where like it was the first thing I can remember where I was like, well, I probably can't talk to my parents about this, Like if I if I ask them about this video, I'm not going to be allowed on the internet anymore.
Right exactly, I'm just keeping this one from them, right, Yeah, yeah, it was. In fact, I think I did the exact same thing and I'm not sure, but I low key blamed that for my eventual drug addiction, because eventually I started keeping more secrets like first mister Hands than it was Tobgirl. Then it was delauded. You know, That's how it goes.
Can you imagine dying to ask your parents about Tubgirl.
Or Lemon Party?
Holy shit, I don't even know. I don't even know how to describe that to the listener. Well, Lemon Party is a bunch of old people, Evan's energy. I'm not going to try to describe Tubgirl. You don't need that in your head if you haven't already seen it. If you have, then you just the minute I said the words, Even if you don't have a visual memory, a perfectly clear photo of it popped up in your head, like if you're driving, you just veered off the fucking road right now.
Yes, yes, and we're sorry about that, Barl apologizable for it. Legally, it's not our fault. We are safe from legal Who was it?
What was it that made used to make web forums? What was the PHP or something like that. I forget the name of the online underlying software? Whatever, fuck it, it doesn't matter. Chapter two after this, uh, this delivery boys decided to stay and talk to the Avatar. Is your free will? Do you believe in God? The old man asked, as if we had known each other forever but had somehow neglected to discuss that one time topic.
I'm sorry, but this is like everything. It's like he saw the Matrix. Yeah, they really only like the scene where they're sitting on the leather couches, and he was like that whole Let's make that the whole book. Yeah.
It's also like, you know, this is I'm actually the way I'm doing it it is more earned than the fucking way he wrote it. Because this is the first book in the series. We know nothing about the Avatar. There's no like when you get that scene. Exposition dumps are always kind of a dicey thing in fiction, right, it's an easy to make that kind of like shitty writing. Like you have to be very careful with it, and that's why we remember stuff like that scene in The Matrix because it's earned pretty well. But like a, you are as hungry for Neo for answers to those questions as as he is when we get to that point. This is just like, none of this is earned. I don't care what this old man has to say. He's done nothing to impress me. He has not set up that he knows. Again, even a slightly better version of this would have, like their be a conflict that he's solved, maybe like the one that we get in the religion war, and then you know we but even then, I'm not that interested in this old man but either.
I mean, so far, all that he has done is irritate. Yeah, he's irritated cost a young man is job. Yeah, he's basically going to get this man fired all to do like a thing where he's like, oh, thanks for the package, here, I give it to you now. And now he's trying to convince him that he's smart, and it's, uh, I don't know. It's like he's missing the whole part of the matrix where there was like fucking thirty minutes of movie before that.
Yeah, so they start this very irritating conversation where the avatar asks do you believe in God? And the delivery guy says, yeah, I believe in a god. Of course there must be a god. Not because he believes in a god, but because he thinks that he's an old man and he wants reassurance about the afterlife. So the avatar then is like, do you think God is omnipotent and you know he has free will and that people have free will? And the guy's like, yeah, sure, And then the avatar says the question that I don't know. Most people ask themselves when they're thirteen. If God knows what the future holds, then all our choices are already made, aren't they. Free will must be an illusion, he was clever, But I wasn't going to fall into that trap. God lets us determine the future ourselves using our free will, I explained. Then you believe God doesn't know the future, I guess not, I admitted, But he must prefer not knowing. I mean, that's not necessarily the case. Like again, I don't believe in an omniscient God. But if God is omniscient, he can let people make their own choices while also knowing the instant they make them where those choices go. Those are not actually in conflict.
Right.
Here's a good example of that. If you watch a baby, as many of us have, touch a hot burner on a stove. You know the baby's gonna hurt themselves, right, But they are still exercising their free will and touching that burner.
That's right, and God is letting it happen. God, is that's the reason why my baby keeps burning herself. Yeah, I tell her it's not me, it's God as I put her hand on the just kidding everyone, my baby. Don't hurt a baby.
But I will say I can't not whenever I listen to these atheist arguments because I was raised Robert, don't.
Hurt a baby, But no, I want to hear the butt. I'm here with it.
I'm saying if you, if you are trying to make like an argument for the existence of God, and someone's counter argument is like, well, God can't be both all powerful and all knowing and give us free will? Like, well, yeah, free will doesn't. Like your free will is not impacted by the fact that God knows what you're going to do.
Right.
That doesn't mean you don't have free will. It just means he knows what you're going to do, just like I know the kid reaching for the stove is about to touch it and get hurt, right, I haven't. I'm not impacting his free will by the fact that I know where this ends.
You know also trying to figure out like the fucking like intricacies of the rules of God is some nerd.
It's always it's always there. But this is like, I've had a lot of arguments with religious people over the years. This is a bad one from an atheist point of view. This does not make the point that you want it to make. Yeah, so, but this dude, the delivery man just folds and is like, Oh, I guess God can't know everything if people have free will, and I believe that people have free will. So the avatar asks for whose benefit does God withhold his power to determine the future? Well, it must be for his own benefit in ours too, I reasoned, he wouldn't have to settle for less. The old man pressed on, couldn't God just give humans the illusion of free will? We'd be just as happy if we had actual free will, and God would retain his ability to see the future. Isn't that a better solution for God than the one you suggested? Why would God want to mislead us? If God exists, his motives are certainly unfathomable. No one knows why he igrants free will, or why he cares about human souls or why pain and suffering are necessary parts of life. Actually, again, I hate that I'm ind the deficient decision now of like defending Christianity, But like libraries have been written of guys like this is a huge, huge part of apologetics is like the problem of like, you know, paying an evil and whatnot in the world. And again, Scott, if you wanted to make the smart argument to this, and you want to make this character seem smart, you could do fifteen seconds of googling to find like, what did you know?
What did like C.
S Lewis say about the problem of evil? Right? You don't even have to go to like a religious scholar, find another fucking hack writer. Sorry, guys, if you see s Lewis fans I loved him too as a kid.
But find a C.
S Lewis argument on this quote from that, and then your character seems smarter and you have something to bounce off of that's not a straw man, right, Like.
I'm pretty sure that Dilbert guy is not like a big reader of other guys. He wills guys who I think is just like, why would I need to read when all the smartest things are already written in my brain?
If you were to tell him. Actually, a massive amount of like Catholic literature over the course of the last thousand years has like been people positing answers to those questions. Yeah, he would just get angry you.
Right, yeah, yeah, you would yell at you and then say, oh, I guess you're trying to be woke.
And then then you would tell him Turkey exists, and he was His brain would catch on fire.
So fast in a skull. Once you learned about the existence of Turkey, this guy is gonna have a wow.
And here's if you're If you're frustrated with me defending Christians, don't worry, I'm about to get to defend brain surgeons.
So uh.
He starts talking about love, and the delivery boy says, the one thing I know about God's motives that he must is he must love us, right, The avatar responds, love. Do you mean love and the way you understand it as a human? Well, not exactly, but basically the same thing I mean love is love. A brain surgeon would tell you that a specific part of the brain controls the ability to love. If it's damaged, people are incapable of love and capable of carrying about others.
I don't.
I think a brain surgeon would say that the brain is pretty plastic and that people have suffered very traumatic brain injuries and retain their ability to love.
Also they sometimes their personality shift.
But like, I don't know, I don't think they'd phrase it that way if they were a good surgeon.
This is like a guy who literally knows absolutely nothing about the human brain. But it's just like, no, brain is exactly like computer, you get rid of love program and then no more love. It's like not how a brain works.
No, it's also like again, this is the dumb version of it, because he just did he doesn't even look up like what science there is chemically on what goes on when we experience what we call love. Again, the slightly smarter version of this is you like have some sort of little rant about how well the release of oxytocin in the brain is what causes what we call love and if you damage that then like people can't like. And that's not entirely accurate either, but it's at least slightly smarter than just the region of the brain. Yes, whatever, fuck you, Scott, Google something this isn't this isn't complicate We're not talking about jar or Tolkien writing a billion words of backstory in his fucking like Oxford office. We're talking like I'm talking about a region's probably Google for the name of that region of the brain. I want this guy to sound smart, right, let me let me look this up. Oh it turns out out anyway.
Whatever, No fucking way that he is doing any research for this a book that he wrote in a conversation by himself, painting him as the smartest man in the world.
I mean again, let's be real. You want to punch this up to be better. We're talking forty five minutes of extra research, not a lot. Do all Muslims believe the same thing? Oh, there's actually differences, but.
Like, yeah, no, but they have to get into and stuff. It's just trying to prepare propel a story forward and as a story about smart guy who uses fart joke to kill God.
Smart guys fart joke kill God.
Good stuff.
So yeah, So isn't it arrogant to think that love is generated by our little in our little brains? Is the same thing in omnipotent being experiences. If you were omnipotent, why would you limit yourself to something that could be reproduced by a little clump of neurons. I shifted my opinion to better defend it. We must feel something similar to God's type of love, but not the same way God feels it. What does it mean to feel similar to the way God feels Is that like saying a pepple is similar to the son because both are around Again, I don't want to be a pedant here, but there are different shapes of pebbles.
Scott, pebbles are all over the map. They're all over the map. I've seen a lot.
I saw a rectangular prism pebble the other day. You know, come on, Scott, Adam. Sorry, I am now being a pedant, but I hate him. He's irritating me. So maybe God designed our brains to feel love the same way he feels it. He could do that if he wanted to. So you believe God wants things and he loves things similar to the way humans do. Do you also believe God experiences anger and forgiveness. That's part of the package. I said, So God has a personality according to you, and is similar to what humans experience. I guess part of what's frustrating to me about this argument is that Scott repeatedly lets us know this delivery driver doesn't particularly believe what he's saying.
He's just giving the answers.
He thinks this guy wants to try to end the conversation, which means I have no investment in him being proved wrong.
Right.
We have not established this character. We haven't established that he believes things in a certain way. So like the fact that it is he specifically notes like I just said this because I thought it was the right thing to say. I thought this would comfort him. I thought he would stop talking. That means like, I don't I get the slightly better version about this. If you want to do this whole religion plot line, have this avatar get fucking captured or something by a religious terrorist, or have him be you know, he's living in some sort of like dystopian world and he gets arrested by the religious police, and he asked like if he maybe if he could like convince you want to do this socratic dialogue. I'm not saying this is a good book, but it's a better one. You want to do this fucking socratic dialogue, Have him talk things out with this like, you know, religious extremist who's supposed to be torturing him over the course of a book and gradually change this guy's mind. And then this guy, you know, he can write out how he influences everyone else to change things, as opposed to like, well, this delivery driver has just told me he doesn't believe anything he's arguing. I am not invested in him having his mind changed because he doesn't believe any of these things.
He's just like, yeah, he thinks he's doing a fucking dust Ievski here. That's the thing is he does think he'sky. He does he's doing a It's like a fucking Dilbert version of Dustaevsky, and it's it's incredibly hard to watch or to hear you read, because all I'm imagining is like like a wife looking over at Scott Adams. I don't know if he was married at this time.
I think it was, yeah, because he hadn't gone, he hadn't had his spasmic dysphony or whatever.
Yeah, So like I mean, essentially just watching her Dilbert ass husband writing something that is a thousand times scarier to see as a wife. Then all work and no play makes Jack a dog like this is fucking.
I would much rather walk in on my spouse like designing a truck bomb than to hear like I've decided to write a novel that's a Socratic dialogue that'll explain to everybody why religions not real.
Just make a bomb, man, just make a bomb. Money. Yeah, I'll get some bottles and we'll do some Molotov cocktails.
Just seeing then you've titled the word document God's Debris. I'm ready to die. Let's just go out. You know, fuck it, we have not.
Given I think, sufficient attention to how fucking terrible of the title God's Debris is.
Wait till you hear why that's the title. So I'm moving us ahead quite a while to God's Motivation, which is a few chapters ahead. If you were God, the avatar said, what would you want?
I don't know.
I barely know what I want, much less what God wants. Imagine that you are omnipotent. You could do anything, create anything, be anything. As soon as you decide you want something, it becomes reality. I waited, knowing there was more. He continued, does it makes it? You don't need to do that, Just give us the whole fucking line. We don't need that anyway. Whatever, Fuck you, Scott, Fuck you learn how to write, He continued, Does it make sense to think of God as wanting anything? God would have no motions, no fears, no desires, no curiosity, no hunger. Those are human shortcomings, not something that would be found in an omnipotent God. What would then motivate God? Maybe it's the challenge, the intellectual stimulation of creating things. Omnipotence doesn't mean nothing is or means that nothing is a challenge? And what could stimulate the mind of something one who knows everything. You make it sound almost boring to be God. But I guess you'll say boring is a human feeling. Everything that motivates living creatures is based on some weakness or flaw. Hunger motivates animals, Lust motivates. That tells us a lot that he's like. Lust motivates is a flaw in a weakness.
H Scott. H Scott, No, like his wife reads that. He's just like, oh really, okay, all right, So that's why you won't fucking go down on me.
Look, obviously there are some people, you know. Not everyone's motivation is sexual, But for people who are lust is like one of the you know, there's people can take it negative ways, but like being attracted to someone and following for them is nice. Most of us don't see that as like, ah my weakness.
Yeah yeah, no, it's a natural and you know, if you want to be weird about it serves a purpose. But yeah, fucking mostly just like natural and fune.
Yeah, it's fun, it's it's this is it is like low key again as much of an as an atheist influencers as that's extremely catholic, right, Well, of course when we're lustful, that that's a weakness. Are weak human bodies making us hard?
Yeah exactly, Yeah, very catholicarly catholic. It's just like an atheist though he's like, yeah, I'm a guy who doesn't believe in God who still punches his boner every time.
One. Fear and pain motivate animals, and again that's also fun, Like I raise animals and like a lot of my you know, chickens are not smart animals, but it's not just fear and pain. For example, they they are capable of taking like comfort in each other's presence and like the warmth that they generate. You certainly see that with animals like goats, with like sheep, you know they are there's a degree of like tenderness that they have towards their young. They play like other animals play. It's been proven in fact that like cows, they produce more milk. They're generally healthier when they have not just other cows, but specific I'd like cows pick out other cows that they bond with, like it's described and yeah, it's like they're friends, like that is how it's described in like the literature studying this, that like cows just kind of have buds, and I think a lot of animals actually do that sort of thing, just like how basically every animal actually likes getting pet like many different animals surprising kinds of them if they get to experience getting scritched behind the ears or like this is pretty dope. That's not fear and pain, that's just like comfort, Like it's nice, it feels good.
I don't know. I'm very much enjoying the idea that like, don't tell Scott yeah this because much like Turkey, it will explode his fucking mind when he finds out that there are cows with more friends than him.
Yeah.
Oh, at way more friends.
And by the way, having lived with cows for a chunk of my youth, I would much cows are a much nobler creature than the Scott Adams. But yeah, someone's going to show Scott that video of like a coyote and a badger hunting, and he's again his brain is going to spin out of his head.
What if all that would have like stopped this degeneration of his brain was like some someone sends him some videos of animal best friends, like he could have we could have stopped you know, Dilbert from turning into the guy he did.
Yeah.
Fun, So it's tragic. If I had a time machine, I'd go back in time. I wouldn't kill Hitler. I would show him a duck being a best friend with a pig.
Yeah, a duck and a pig hanging out. Yeah, or like yeah, one of those birds that like chills out on like the back of a crocodile's neck. Yeah, cleans it off. Like, no, it's not just fear and pain. Sometimes you're motivated by another thing that makes you feel good. Yeah yeah, yeah, anyway, it's because it's also like I don't know, I do actually reject what Scott is kind of in co compoinitely doing the idea that like, human beings and animals have like fundamentally wildly different motivations. Right, there's there's every now and then you get some asshole on like Twitter who will be like, oh, your cat and your dog don't love you. They just know that you provide like shelter and comfort and security, And it's like, why do you think we like each other? Exactly, as if like that's not a profound thing, taking comfort and feeling secure in the presence of another.
Yes, yeah, nothing is there. Anyone could offer that to anyone, just willy nilly, just.
Little robots making you know, the world bearable through their presence.
And there's not fuck you for just being like, oh, you know what, the cat relationship is very transactional, like shut the fuck up, yeah, Jonah hill ass it's weaponizing therapy talk. Yeah.
I fucking hate all these because again I am I am not a believer that human beings and animals are experiencing fundamentally different things. We just have words and animals have you know, I don't know whatever Echo the Dolphin is doing in that Echo the Dolphin video game anyway, whatever we could we could we trudge on? So what motivates God? Asks the delivery boy? Do you have an answer to that question? Or are you just yanking my chain? I can conceive of only one challenge for an omniptant, being the challenge of destroying himself. You think God would again, potentially an idea you can have some fun with in a sci fi book, right, the idea that like God. Yeah, but also the way to make that fun is not spoiler God's debris as God murders himself at some point in the past and like now we're we're we're all living in like the shattered remnants of God trying to reconstruct himself. Right, that's what intelligence is. Yeah, I don't know. I think a more interesting version of that is, like you.
Actually the Dilbert guy. Yeah, not written by the Dilbert guy.
I don't know.
You can do a lot with You could do a lot with the idea of like a God who maybe is playing different religions off of each other in order to like somehow kill himself, like trying to fit in like people uncover that mystery and you've got to I don't know, there's a fun like vaguely kind of fucking gnostic work of fiction that you can.
Wear out of that where credit is due. Yeah, every I guess on average, it sounds like three hundred pages at Scott Adams writes, he writes one half good idea that he uses terribly. It's a guy who has uh, you know, the the In the last book it was a general who had a guy falling around with a gun to kill him if he ever gets too powerful. And in this one it's a fucking, I don't know, suicidal god who kills himself.
Scott Adams is pretty good at coming up with half of a good idea. Like if he was a TV pitch man, you know, he'd be like.
So this.
So this therapist moves to Seattle, you know, from his from his old home on the East coast, and he, let me tell you, this guy hates the Irish.
You think you don't like the Irish. Boy he's made.
It cut out everything he said. After therapist moves to Seattle, we gotta banger, Adams, you did it again.
Well he left out the whole thing where the the rolicks nose. He's got a drunk nose. You're gonna cut the hole. That's the whole point. I do want to see Scott Adams Fraser too.
It is funny because like Fraser is basically a parody of the kind of guy Scott Adams is. But yeah, yeah, very funny, good stuff, all right anyway, angel and yeah, and r I p Kelsey Grammar who died right after that show and has gone on to do nothing else.
Yeah. Well, you know he played Beast.
He did play that was actually really I I always thought was good cast.
I thought it was a great choice. It was like, its a good beast. Yeah, it's a good beast.
Although I having seen the hell Boy movies too, I kind of want to see David Hyde Pierce's beast. I know he didn't wind up being the but he's I think he could have done it. I think he would have been great. Ah, I love me. That's why I'm not excited about the trade. The Fraser reboot.
Is that, like, what there's a Fraser reboot? Yeah, they're doing a reboot.
He's back in Chicago, I think it is, or not Chicago, and where the fuck he came from?
I think he's back the Seattle is where he's at.
Seattle's where he's at. But when the Fraser series ended he was moving to Chicago, I think, and I think this this new one's supposed to start with him leaving Seattle back for Boston. For like the next where is the Cheers Bar? It's in Boston, Like presumably we might see it. Okay, I think they did film something at part of the episode there, although maybe I'm getting that wrong. But like my frustration with the show idea is that, like I think, because this is all Kelsey Grammar's baby, it's been confirmed that like David Hyde Pierce isn't back. You know, it's him and a new cast of characters, and I think they've like convinced themselves that, well what we all the core of the show was always Fraser, and you know we can always have we can just move him to It's like no, no, no, no, no no, was a fun side character in Fraser. We were there because of Martin and Niles. Like that is that is what brought our asses into the honest Edie and Edie great dog actor man that's also look up fucking uh what's his name? The guy the Fraser actor. He gets so angry when people call the dog an actor because he's like, it's just memorized the series of tricks.
Like, that's not what acting is. Let's be real. Acting is memorizing a series of tricks. Cry, look hawk, I get it, speaking of a series of tricks. H it's time for some ads. Oh I love ads, Thank you, thank you so do I.
Ah, we're back. We're thinking about how disappointing the Fraser reboot's gonna be.
Yeah, doesn't have any of our favorite characters, and in fact, the few of them are no longer with us.
Scott is promising in this terrible book about God to wrinkle our brains and like spin them around, uh pleasantly. Whereas the biggest shock to my mind, the thing that like most like shook my fundamental belief of about reality, was hearing that Martin from Fraser was played by a British man. What yeah, oh man, Yeah, that accent is all like acting. Not one break. There's not a second in that show where you don't believe he's a fucking street smart cop from the fucking working class Seattle neighborhood. It's amazing, crazy, Oh my god, it's so cool.
British people are really good at doing the accent. I really yeah, we just yeah, I can't do that. It's like in reverse. It wouldn't work. I could never be on peaky blinders, you know.
No, no, nor.
Can I.
Em hul voice hlorious boy, he boasting not you will put doctor as big as a house saw him.
That's what that shows about. He's a very big doctor. Boy.
I bet that we probably lost about a third of the audience with that little spree of accent work.
Zvie shows up just shaking and livid, furious. Let's continue, Let's finish this last bit of Scottish we got to finish.
Through flawless logic that we're all totally convinced of. Scott has gotten us to believe that all the only reasonable thing for God to want to do is commit suicide. You think God would want to commit suicide, I asked. I'm not saying he wants anything. I'm saying it's the only challenge I think that God would prefer to exist, then not to exist. That's thinking like a human, not like a god. You have a fear so like I'm not trying to say what God thinks, but you're thinking like a human, not like a god. And I know how a God would think. You have a fear of death. So you assume God would share your preference. But God would have no fears. Existing would be a choice, and there would be no pain of death, nor feelings of guilt or remorse or loss. Those are human feelings, not God feelings. God could simply choose to discontinue existence. There's a logical problem here, according to your way of thinking. I said, if God knows the future, he already knows if he will choose to end his existence, and he knows how he will succeeded it. So there's no challenge there. Either you're thinking is getting clearer. Yes, he will know the future of his own existence. I know normal conditions, But what do his omnipotence include knowing what happens after he loses his omnipotence or what his knowledge? This is again all like, I'm high with my fucking dealer and he won't stop talking to me.
All like, I'm getting anxiety because I'm like, bro, you're definitely fired, You're definitely fined. Yeah, no, you're losing.
It's okay. He becomes the avatar. That's what this avatar is doing, is he's pilling this guy to make.
An asplaining that to your fucking manager. Oh okay, I was late because I became the avatar.
I became the embodiment of all human knowledge and potential. Like, I'm sorry I missed my last like dozen deliveries.
Bra Like, yeah, I'm sorry about that. I'm God shure himself real fucked up. Yeah. Did you hear the thing where God did suicides to himself?
God and Hitler both both did a suicide. Hitler, who is not that bad in this version of the future because another guy didn't even worse genocide of.
The Jews, Right, That's.
Right, Hitler's in the number two in terms of genocides of Jewish people in this book.
That's the way that Scott likes it. The way Scott likes some of this way off of Hitler. You know this guy, I think we've been misjudging him a little bit. Let him rest in peace.
I'm gonna make a worse Hitler and he's Muslim, Yeah much kind of Muslim, all of them.
All of them, But you know, fucking I don't care if they're the shit one or the Sun one. The point is they all worship.
The wrong God, which is the dead God committed suicide. So I'm going to skip ahead to the end here the chapter called fifth level? Who are you?
I asked.
I didn't know how to phrase the question lightly. The old man certainly wasn't normal. I'm an avatar? Is that some sort of title? I thought it was your name. This man has never encountered the word avatar in his life the first time? Yeah, yeah, I never watched that cartoon or this is where I learned the word avatar from when I was eleven, played Avatar or played Eldar in third edition Warhammer forty thousand.
Anyway, I learned it from you know, forums where you know you had a fucking you have a forum avatar, right, yeah, and so you have an avatar common word.
Yeah, excuse me for asking this, The delivery guy asks, I don't really know how to phrase it, so I'm just gonna come out and say it. You want to know if I'm human? Yeah, I apologize. Because of all of his brilliance, he can't possibly be a mortal man. I apologize if that sounds silly, It's just that the old man waved off the end of my sentence. I understand. Yes, I am human. I'm a fifth level human. An avatar. Fifth level, he doesn't doesn't even get another feet yet. Jesus Christ. You can't even do two attacks if he's like a melee class.
Yeah, this guy's barely got any XP and he thinks he's a fucking genius.
What a what bullshit bullshit loser. Yeah, you can't even cat like I guess. Actually, if you're a wizard in three point five, you can cast fireball now, so that is that is when things start to get fun at fifth level is a wizard.
So there you go. Get a little too nerdy for me there, buddy. But you know, I've seen a vagina before I find myself. That's good, that's good.
It is very funny that we've turned around from like D and D being a thing that like people shoved me into lockers when they noticed my D and D books in middle school to like people getting laid dropping D and D knowledge these days.
Yeah, I can DM a campaign one. Yeah amazing. I've decided to stick with the bullying thing now because now it feels like I'm bullying the mainstream culture. I'm even ahead of you. I'm bullying people fork in comic books.
Yes, like I see somebody like an iron Man and I just shove him and a lot of times that guy is three hundred pounds of solid muscle, and let me tell you, I get the shit kicked out.
Yeah, I still out of ten. But the point is, as you stood up to the big corporation.
A lot of huge dudes who are into comics and better at fighting than they actually Yeah, it's become a problem.
Yeah, it sucks that they all teamed up with like the MMA guys. So they're all fucking doing keeto and lifting and reading iron Man and I'm sitting here like a lump, just going like fuck you, just thinking.
In new ways to call them dorks. Yeah, oh, I bet you like it when people combine three colors in a variety of ways to make a panopoly of color in a print medium.
Huh you need Yeah? Got him?
So he's a fifth level avatar. People exist at different levels of awareness, and avatar, who's one who lives at the fifth level? Is awareness? Like intelligence? I asked, no, Intelligence is a measure of how well you function within your level of awareness. Your intelligence will stay about the same over your life. Awareness is entirely different from intelligence. Awareness involves recognizing your delusions, for what they are. Most people's awareness will advance one or two levels in their lifetime. What does it mean to recognize your delusions? When you were a child, did your parents tell you that Santa Claus brought presents so on Christmas Day? Yeah, I said, I believed in Santa until kindergarten when the other kids started talking. Then I realized Santa couldn't get to all those homes in one night. Your intelligence did not change from the moment you realize that Santa Claus was a harmless fantasy. Your math and verbal skills stayed the same, but your awareness increased. You were some suddenly aware that stories from credible sources, in this case your parents, could be completely made up. And from the moment of that realization you could never see the world the same way because your reality had changed. I guess it did. And in school, did you learn that the Native Americans and Pilgrims go, oh, boy, Scott, I don't want you dig it diving in it?
Yeah, but he does. He does.
To be fair, He's like, yeah, this was made up.
You know.
You learned that a bunch of your history is made up. Awareness is about unlearning. It's the recognition that you don't know as much as you thought you did. He described what he called the five levels of awareness and said that all humans experience the first level of awareness at birth. That's when you become aware that you exist. In the second level of awareness, you understand that other people exist. You believe that most of what you were told by authority figures. You accept the belief system in which you were raised. Also, Scott doesn't really get little kids here, because like it's a little bit messier than that, because kids definitely believe you at some point. But also little kids have a period where like the only thing they want to say is no, and like reject everything you tell them. Like that's why touching a hot burner is kind of inevitable. Every kid will have some version of that experience pretty much. It's not always a burner, but like because you don't listen to what the adults tell you, because that's part of anyway.
Whatever, dude, this is a full grown man writing.
This is a full grown man. I'm skipping the other levels. The fifth level of awareness is the Okay, the fourth level awareness is skepticism, So all right, I guess I should continue. The third level of awareness is that like human beings are wrong sometimes, but you can still believe in God. The fourth level is when you become an atheist on the internet and you believe that the scientific method is the best measure of what's true, and you have a good working grasp of truth thanks to science and your senses. You are arrogant when it comes to dealing with people in levels two and three. That also says a lot, because like it's certainly true that like little kids, babies and stuff are aware unaware of things that we're aware of, like the idea of like object permanence and stuff. Right, this is very basic shit. But I don't I'm not like arrogant about them. It's I think it's amazing. Actually, I got to watch the other day. I got to have this amazing moment where like there's this little baby that is effectively a roommate of mine occasionally, and you know, like on like a floor mat for doing yoga, I have these ones that like you can fit a bunch of them together like puzzle pieces. So they have these little inns that you can put on them that are shaped like zippers, like little like foam zippers three or four feet long. And this baby that I hang out with noticed that the shape of the zipper was kind of similar to the silhouette of a train, and the baby started making chew chew sounds. And I'd never seen the baby exhibit sort of a capability of abstract thought before. It was like, watching this moment in development hand happen, I was just like yeah, more yeah, instead of like I was not filled with arrogance, like look at this dumb baby. It was like, Wow, there's like the sense of wonder, of almost religious awe at, like watching a brain like change over, Like it's beautiful. Actually, I think that's why people like being parrots, you know. But now everyone's just like, look at these shitty ass kids. They don't know fuck.
Yeah, all great, I have a fucking idiot. Yes, he thinks the zipper as a train. Yeah, doesn't even know how to cook an omelet.
Yeah, drink your bottle, baby, anyway. So the fourth level of skepticism, the fifth level of awareness is the avatar. The avatar understands that the mind is an illusion generator.
Yeah, yes, I love he's straight up. Just like fourth level is atheist because why because that's one away from super genius. Yeah, that's one away. Yeah, once atheist, you are only one level away from being so smart that you can talk to animals.
And yeah, the avatar recognized the science is just another belief system. YadA, YadA, YadA. Anyway, this is all like second grade philosophy. Shit, that's uh, that's everything Scott Adams believes about the universe.
Matt Lee, how are you feeling? I mean, honestly, I'm feeling kind of like amazed and embarrassed for him, like like, because part of me is realized. Like halfway while you were describing the levels, I was like, all, fuck, he was attempting an l Ron Hubbard thing, Like he thought for a second it might be possible that he could do a hubbard esque rift and religious Yes, that's what he's doing. And I was just thinking to myself, like, fuck, that has got to be It's got to be really embarrassing to like begin the process of writing your own dianetics but then realize you're too fucking stupid to do it. So instead you invent a guy. You make it fiction, and you invent a guy who's this you label the smartest guy in the world, and then he says all the things that you thought of as your religion, Like that is I mean, you know, it's uh, it's great writing, it's great compelling story. Does it end with him eventually.
Becomes the avatar, the avatar disappears, whatever, this guy is the new avatar, YadA YadA.
YadA, avatar convincing the Delivery gotta suck his dick, because that's kind and what I would use it for.
This would be one of my favorite books if like it was. The review at the end was that he was just trying to fuck just Delivery. Now you get to hit you're a fourth level now after her socratic dialogue, but to hit fifth gotta my dick, you gotta.
Set my dick. Honestly, if it had gone that level, I would have been like, dude, maybe this is this is the best novel.
This is like, yeah, he's fuck Dostoyevski up in here of a modern era.
Absolutely choose this way of doing the story. You might as well start it off with like a guy comes over to fix the cable or clean the pool, like you're starting it off on a porno premise. You're not gonna end it.
That would be That would be so and the next and then it's thirty pages.
Of hardcore pornography that would.
Like he is like walking you through Like how when this when the avatar busts in this delivery boy's mouth, he gets that first taste of salt. That's the first experience and it takes him back to being a child seeing the coast for the first time, the spray of the ocean in his face, transported through time by the taste of the avatars. Come, Matt, you have anything to plug?
Oh dude, you know if you like come, you're gonna love pod yourself a gun, which is a Sopranos and the Wire Rewatch podcast were gotten through all of the Sopranos, and now we're at season three of the Wire, so check it out. By the time you hear this, we may be starting season four, which is the best season. Yeah, and you know, fucking follow me on Instagram at Matt Lee jokes. Oh right, I almost forgot. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area or any of the surrounding areas, on Tuesday, October seventeenth, at eight pm, specifically, my wife Francesca, if Youreantini and I are going to be headlining the San Francisco Punchline Comedy Club, So yeah, please come out to that. It is a Tuesday at eight pm October seventeenth, where at Voice, my wife and I are going to be co headlining. There's going to be some other great comedians coming out. It's gonna be a lot of fun. You can get your tickets at Punchlinecomedyclub dot com and Yeah, October seventeenth, please come out. It's going to be so good. I swear to God. I mean, at the very least, you're going to get to see my wife and I kiss, like live on stage. It's a sex show. Anyways, come out to that.
Follow Matt Leeb on the gram. Yeah, and the next time you see a person who believes a religion, tell them tell him a fart joke and a.
Fart joke and then you'll end war.
Yeah Yeah.
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
