30: “If you hand most people a knife they won’t stab a cow!” – John Oberg – Sentientist Conversation

We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers. The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined.

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John is a professional animal advocate & public speaker. You can support his work at https://www.patreon.com/JohnOberg
and follow him at https://twitter.com/JohnOberg.

In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”  Sentientism is “evidence, commitment & compassion for all sentient beings.”

Full show notes and the video of our conversation are here: https://youtu.be/UTZlwC4nHq8

We discuss:

– John’s career in animal advocacy and vegan advocacy

– “It’s been the best change of my life

– it’s given my live a lot of meaning & I’ve made a big difference for animals.”

– Helping other advocates & organisations to be effective via social media

– Messages being seen by 10’s of millions of human eyes

– Growing up in the mid-West, but in a fairly non-religious context

– We generally assumed God exists, but it was rarely talked about

– Thinking at 14 “This doesn’t make any sense – I’m an atheist!”

– Going through a “militant” atheist phase – then softening to just being open minded… “I don’t rule anything out”

– The challenges of coping with family illness & death. Recognising the pull of the hope of an afterlife

– Given there are so many thousands of religions, amazing how someone can be so sure theirs is the right one. It’s just what they were taught as a child

– How the “golden rule” & broad themes of compassion pre-date, then run through most religions

– How naturalism needs to be humble & open minded (even to crazy ideas)

– Avoiding the arrogance of dogma even within atheist/skeptic/naturalistic worldviews

– Withholding belief until there’s evidence. Being comfortable not knowing until then

– “A Meaningful Life” and “The Animal Activist’s Handbook” by Matt Ball, founder of Vegan Outreach

– The meaning of life is about 2 things: The pursuit of pleasure and joy and the avoidance of pain and suffering (the latter being more important)

– And more..

You can find John at https://twitter.com/JohnOberg, https://www.facebook.com/JohnObergOfficial and https://www.johnoberg.org. You can support him via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/JohnOberg.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our “wall” https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this simple form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist.

Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is here on FaceBook.

Thanks to Graham for his post-prod work. Follow him: @cgbessellieu