# Contraduction: Fine-Tuning Arguments are Upside-Down (with Dan Barker)

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 9 Nov 2024, 41 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/62047869/podcast_768_contraductionv2.mp3

Dan Barker is an ex-pastor, co-president of Freedom From Religion Foundation, and author of a new book which turns apologetics literally on its ear. GET THE BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Contraduction-Dan-Barker/dp/1839195975 VIDEO of this conversation: https://youtu.be/yOegdJHBQv0 Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists in this country is going.
[0:13] Speaker 1: Through the rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred.
[0:18] Speaker 1: If I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 1: not because I put my hand on a book and
[0:24] Speaker 1: made a wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 3: Take the risk of thinking. Feels so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 3: Truth Usian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 3: My INTERVIEWEAT today a compelling and wonderful guest. As always,
[1:01] Speaker 3: we had an imperfect connection, so there's a little bit
[1:04] Speaker 3: of phasing on the audio. I don't think it's a
[1:06] Speaker 3: deal breaker, but I beg your patients at indulgence. There
[1:10] Speaker 3: is a video of this exchange the YouTube link in
[1:13] Speaker 3: the description box of the show. Having a conversation today
[1:23] Speaker 3: with the gentleman who was there at a pivotal time
[1:27] Speaker 3: in my life. I was coming out of Christianity, I
[1:30] Speaker 3: was beginning to actually I was in the middle of deconstruction.
[1:33] Speaker 3: Stumbled upon his book Godless, and it just I mean,
[1:37] Speaker 3: it made an amazing impact. So it's always cool when
[1:40] Speaker 3: I get a chance to cross paths with Dan Barker.
[1:43] Speaker 3: He is the author of many books. He was an evangelical,
[1:48] Speaker 3: hardcore Sunday go to meet and preacher for a great
[1:51] Speaker 3: many years, co presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation,
[1:56] Speaker 3: and author of a new book called Controduction. Dan, It's
[2:00] Speaker 3: good to have you back, brother.
[2:01] Speaker 2: Good to see you again. I've also been influenced by
[2:04] Speaker 2: your books too, so I guess it's a cross pollenization here.
[2:09] Speaker 2: But I do have a complaint. Seth Okay. You gave
[2:12] Speaker 2: me one of your wonderful mugs of thinking atheist mugs
[2:15] Speaker 2: and you signed it, but your signature is washing off,
[2:18] Speaker 2: and I.
[2:19] Speaker 3: Don't I think that's symbolic. No, that's indicative of life.
[2:22] Speaker 2: That is, I have to get another one.
[2:25] Speaker 3: I'm fading over time as a human being. So I
[2:28] Speaker 3: think this is probably a you know, symbolic of my life.
[2:31] Speaker 3: The subtitle of your book fascinates me, the hidden fallacy
[2:35] Speaker 3: that inverts reality. I feel like we live in an
[2:39] Speaker 3: inverted reality. I mean, just as far as the headlines
[2:43] Speaker 3: the people I live around. Do you ever feel that way?
[2:45] Speaker 2: Dan? Yeah, and that was kind of the point of
[2:47] Speaker 2: the book. And by the way, the publisher took the
[2:50] Speaker 2: subtitle off of the book, it's just now called contraduction.
[2:55] Speaker 2: I had wanted to subtitle the book the Death of
[2:58] Speaker 2: the design argument. But contraduction, as you point out, it's
[3:02] Speaker 2: a new word, and it's still not in the dictionary,
[3:05] Speaker 2: but a lot of people are embracing it and using it.
[3:08] Speaker 2: It's a fallacy that in virtu reality we get things
[3:11] Speaker 2: totally wrong. And like I said in that debate, you
[3:14] Speaker 2: were at that debate in Florida where this whole thing started.
[3:18] Speaker 2: It's kind of like the guy who's so impressed, And
[3:21] Speaker 2: how did they make all those rivers flow right along
[3:24] Speaker 2: the state border? How did they do that? It must
[3:28] Speaker 2: have been an immense expensive civic project to exquisitely fine
[3:32] Speaker 2: tune those rivers to perfectly match the borders. Well, of
[3:36] Speaker 2: course that's backward, right, it's inverted. It's what i'd call contraductory.
[3:41] Speaker 2: If you think about things the wrong way around, you
[3:44] Speaker 2: won't see the real picture. And this, of course applies
[3:47] Speaker 2: to what a lot of people say is the strongest argument.
[3:50] Speaker 2: It's not a great argument, but the strongest argument for
[3:53] Speaker 2: a God is the fine tuning argument, where we think,
[3:57] Speaker 2: look at how look how the universe is exquisitely fine
[4:01] Speaker 2: tune for life. Well you can see where that's going,
[4:03] Speaker 2: can't you.
[4:04] Speaker 3: It's a word that you made up. Is it a
[4:06] Speaker 3: Dan Barker word?
[4:08] Speaker 2: It is a Dan Barker word. In fact, you were there.
[4:11] Speaker 2: Do you remember the debate in Florida a couple of
[4:13] Speaker 2: years ago. You gave a talk at the Free Flow
[4:17] Speaker 2: and I was debating Adam Lloyd Johnson, and during his
[4:21] Speaker 2: opening statement, if you remember, he said, I'm not going
[4:24] Speaker 2: to argue for the biblical God. I'm arguing for mere
[4:27] Speaker 2: theism using abductive reasoning. And I thought, abductive. You know
[4:34] Speaker 2: how often do we hear that word? Well I knew
[4:36] Speaker 2: what it meant. And as I got up in my rebuttal,
[4:39] Speaker 2: I said, abductive is the week is kind of reasoning.
[4:41] Speaker 2: It's really just kind of a best guess, you know,
[4:44] Speaker 2: the best explanation. And I said, I think Adam's thinking
[4:48] Speaker 2: is backwards reversed, and what we need. And you can
[4:51] Speaker 2: see this during the debate, I was ad libbing. I
[4:53] Speaker 2: was thinking, we need a new word, not abductive, we
[4:56] Speaker 2: need a word and I said, how about post deductive?
[4:59] Speaker 2: We need a word this shows it wrong, that has
[5:01] Speaker 2: slipped around wrong. And the audience did not seem impressed
[5:05] Speaker 2: with that because I was just add a living. But
[5:08] Speaker 2: later I was thinking, so well, word is doing you.
[5:11] Speaker 2: We don't need a prefix that means after, We need
[5:13] Speaker 2: a prefix that means inverted. So contraductive. We have deductive reasoning,
[5:19] Speaker 2: inductive reasoning, abductive reasoning for whatever that's worth. Then, and
[5:25] Speaker 2: I think we have a fallacy that precedes the reasoning
[5:28] Speaker 2: called contraduction, where we if your premise that you start
[5:32] Speaker 2: with is reversed, your whole argument is wrong.
[5:35] Speaker 3: Dan, how many debates, I mean, just ballpark? How many
[5:38] Speaker 3: debates have you done over the years.
[5:41] Speaker 2: I don't need a ballpark. I've been keeping track since
[5:43] Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five February, where I did my first debate
[5:48] Speaker 2: as an atheist with doctor Ruble Shelley in Nashville, Tennessee.
[5:53] Speaker 2: I have done one hundred and forty formal, public, moderated
[5:59] Speaker 2: timed debates like the one that use one hundred and
[6:01] Speaker 2: forty of them. And I don't count informal debates or
[6:06] Speaker 2: TV talk show debates or radio debates as actual debates.
[6:11] Speaker 2: So I don't count the debate I did with William
[6:13] Speaker 2: Lane craig on National TV because it wasn't a formal,
[6:17] Speaker 2: moderated debate. It was more like a you know, casual conversation.
[6:22] Speaker 2: So one hundred and forty debates as of right now.
[6:25] Speaker 3: I'm going to come back to William Lane craig in
[6:27] Speaker 3: just a second because he's famous for kalam and it
[6:29] Speaker 3: will explain for those who don't know what the colomb
[6:32] Speaker 3: cosmological argument is. Do you find it when you're talking
[6:35] Speaker 3: to just every people. They're not theologians, they're not apologist,
[6:39] Speaker 3: or don't play in that sandbox. Some of that stuff
[6:41] Speaker 3: gets really esoteric, especially when it comes to the lofty
[6:46] Speaker 3: language that comes out of the mouths of the experts,
[6:49] Speaker 3: the god defenders. They go way off into the weeds.
[6:53] Speaker 3: Do you ever find people kind of glazing over, checking out,
[6:55] Speaker 3: like you've got to literally rope them and drag them
[6:58] Speaker 3: back into the conversation.
[7:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, because there are these specialty fields like the philosophy
[7:04] Speaker 2: of religion or philosophy subfields like fine tuning, and all
[7:09] Speaker 2: these words that are very important and useful words that
[7:12] Speaker 2: the experts used to talk among themselves. With, but the
[7:15] Speaker 2: people on the street aren't part of that little subculture,
[7:19] Speaker 2: and so it sounds like gobbledygook, Which is kind of
[7:21] Speaker 2: why when Adam Johnson used that phrase, I'm going to
[7:26] Speaker 2: use abductive reasoning, I wanted to kind of demystify the word.
[7:31] Speaker 2: It's just a fancy word that just means, hey, it's
[7:34] Speaker 2: our best gas, you know, And so you can say
[7:37] Speaker 2: the same things using simpler words. But you're right. I
[7:41] Speaker 2: was walking by the Jehovah's Witness booth on campus a
[7:44] Speaker 2: few weeks ago, and this young man there was telling
[7:46] Speaker 2: me about the truth and we get along pretty well.
[7:49] Speaker 2: So I stopped and I asked the guy. He seemed educated.
[7:52] Speaker 2: I asked him, oh, so tell me what is your epistemology?
[7:57] Speaker 2: And he just stared at me. Huh, what is your stemology?
[8:01] Speaker 2: He goes, what does that word mean? So he's college educated,
[8:05] Speaker 2: but he doesn't even know the word epistemology. And I
[8:08] Speaker 2: guess I don't blame him. If you're not running in
[8:10] Speaker 2: that little circle or that circle of thought, you're not
[8:13] Speaker 2: going to know those words.
[8:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, but how much of that do you think is
[8:17] Speaker 3: I know this is a subjective opinion, but by one
[8:20] Speaker 3: hundred and whatever debates under your belt? How much of
[8:23] Speaker 3: that is just the weaponization of language to impress, right,
[8:26] Speaker 3: let me use a lot of syllables, therefore I shall
[8:29] Speaker 3: sound credible. It's almost like those you know, intelligent design
[8:33] Speaker 3: apologists who talk about the quantum and they just go
[8:36] Speaker 3: way off into these really lofty sounding terms to overwhelm
[8:40] Speaker 3: people and sound credible.
[8:43] Speaker 2: Well, then they're bad debaters because the debater is supposed
[8:46] Speaker 2: to relate to the audience and communicate with an audience
[8:50] Speaker 2: in ways that an audience will understand. And if I
[8:55] Speaker 2: don't think they're always obfuscating, I think they genuinely use
[8:59] Speaker 2: those words because they're common words to them in their field.
[9:03] Speaker 2: But it almost sounds like sometimes they're talking down to
[9:07] Speaker 2: the audience. I did an audience with Richard How. We
[9:10] Speaker 2: did two debates. I did one in Florida and then
[9:13] Speaker 2: another one at the apologist conference for the Southern Evangelical Seminary.
[9:19] Speaker 2: And Richard how at the first debate we did, he
[9:22] Speaker 2: got up before that university audience, not Tampa, at the
[9:28] Speaker 2: university there, and he had brought a big trunk with
[9:32] Speaker 2: him and he unloaded the trunk and put the stack
[9:35] Speaker 2: of books by the podium on the floor, and during
[9:39] Speaker 2: the debate he was telling these students, you're not going
[9:42] Speaker 2: to understand any of this unless you've read as much
[9:45] Speaker 2: as I have. You know, there's so much depth behind
[9:48] Speaker 2: all of this. In a debate tonight, we're not going
[9:50] Speaker 2: to be able to go too deep. So trust me,
[9:52] Speaker 2: I have read all these books. Look at him, And
[9:55] Speaker 2: of course that backfired. That was like insulting the audience. Yeah,
[10:01] Speaker 2: you can refer to author I refer to authority sometimes,
[10:04] Speaker 2: but mainly to quote what they say, not just to say, hey,
[10:07] Speaker 2: look at there's all these authorities. So if your only argument,
[10:11] Speaker 2: or if your main argument is an argument from authority,
[10:14] Speaker 2: you don't really have an argument that'll stand on its
[10:17] Speaker 2: own feet.
[10:19] Speaker 3: You talked about the rivers that outline the states and
[10:22] Speaker 3: how amazing it is that those were created just to
[10:26] Speaker 3: border us. Some reminded I think it was a Douglas
[10:28] Speaker 3: Adams argument that talked about the pothole and the rainstorm
[10:33] Speaker 3: and the water had gone up and had said, Wow, look,
[10:37] Speaker 3: this pothole is made perfectly for me. The edgies are
[10:40] Speaker 3: formed and the depth is absolutely perfect. This must have
[10:42] Speaker 3: been designed with me in mind. Would that be a contraduction, Dan, It.
[10:48] Speaker 2: Would be yes, if such a thing actually happened. I mean,
[10:51] Speaker 2: it's a good metaphor. I suppose. Another one would be
[10:55] Speaker 2: look at the human nose. Look how perfectly shaped the
[10:59] Speaker 2: human nose is to support a pair of eyeglasses. How
[11:03] Speaker 2: do you explain that? Look at the perfect fit?
[11:06] Speaker 3: You know.
[11:07] Speaker 2: So that's contraduction, that's just thinking the wrong way around.
[11:12] Speaker 2: I think the earliest and most powerful contraduction in the
[11:15] Speaker 2: human species is the idea or the impression that the
[11:20] Speaker 2: sun rises every morning. The sun rises, right, Well, actually
[11:25] Speaker 2: it doesn't. It's only because from our point of view.
[11:29] Speaker 2: We are looking at the world like I think all
[11:31] Speaker 2: organisms have to start from their own point of view,
[11:34] Speaker 2: and it looks like the sun is rising, assuming a
[11:36] Speaker 2: geocentric or a flat earth concept. But actually the sun
[11:40] Speaker 2: is not rising. That's contraductory. It is we who are rising,
[11:44] Speaker 2: and so we use the word sun, right, even those
[11:46] Speaker 2: of us who know that it doesn't mean what it says,
[11:49] Speaker 2: we know the sun's not rising, we still use the word,
[11:52] Speaker 2: which is just a convention of language, I suppose, because
[11:55] Speaker 2: what else would we call it? Oh, look the horizon set,
[11:58] Speaker 2: you know. I mean, that's a weird way to flip
[12:01] Speaker 2: your mind around and the illustration I start the book
[12:04] Speaker 2: off with, and by the way, thanks for giving me
[12:06] Speaker 2: a good endorsement on it. Have you ever been sitting
[12:09] Speaker 2: on a train that's not moving when the train next
[12:13] Speaker 2: to you starts to move and you briefly think it's
[12:15] Speaker 2: you who's moving, or on a plane or a car.
[12:19] Speaker 2: I think has happened to all of us, and we
[12:21] Speaker 2: get it totally backward because we're looking at it from
[12:24] Speaker 2: our point of view rather than from outside of our
[12:27] Speaker 2: point of view. That's contraduction.
[12:29] Speaker 3: Do me a favor for those not aware define the
[12:32] Speaker 3: Kalam cosmological argument.
[12:35] Speaker 2: So Kalam is an ancient Islamic word that for Islami
[12:41] Speaker 2: scholars who first developed this idea that since you can't
[12:45] Speaker 2: have an infinite series of preceding events, there had to
[12:48] Speaker 2: be a first event, right, because if there was an
[12:51] Speaker 2: infinite series of preceding events, we never could have got
[12:54] Speaker 2: to now, but we have got to now, So that
[12:57] Speaker 2: means there must have been a beginning. That Kalam argument
[13:00] Speaker 2: has been spruced up in modern times with the knowledge
[13:03] Speaker 2: of the Big Bang and people like William Lane Craigan
[13:06] Speaker 2: others are saying, well, now the Big Bang shows that,
[13:08] Speaker 2: in fact, indeed there was a first event, the Big Bang,
[13:13] Speaker 2: And so the argument goes, everything that begins to exist
[13:17] Speaker 2: has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore the
[13:24] Speaker 2: universe had a cause. On its face, that reasoning is valid.
[13:30] Speaker 2: It's a good deductive argument assuming the premises are true.
[13:34] Speaker 2: But it turns out that the conclusion is not valid.
[13:37] Speaker 2: The conclusion is not sound. It's well, in my book
[13:42] Speaker 2: I explained that this really a category errors. What's happening here?
[13:46] Speaker 3: I think Kalam was added after they started with just
[13:49] Speaker 3: a cosmological position the universe has a cause, or everything
[13:55] Speaker 3: that is has a cause or something. But then they
[13:57] Speaker 3: added the word begins. I think because they wanted the
[14:00] Speaker 3: starting block where they could, I guess, stick God with
[14:03] Speaker 3: a starting pistol there at the beginning of the race.
[14:06] Speaker 3: And it seems to be a deistic Oh go ahead, Dan,
[14:09] Speaker 3: go ahead.
[14:09] Speaker 2: Well yeah, but I mean begin. The idea of beginning
[14:12] Speaker 2: was implicit within the early Colomb argument, is I see,
[14:15] Speaker 2: because of the impossibility of an infinite preceding events.
[14:19] Speaker 3: You know, But yeah, Dan, isn't that just a deistic claim?
[14:23] Speaker 3: If that I mean when I see William Lane Craig,
[14:25] Speaker 3: and I've been to his website, it talks about everything
[14:29] Speaker 3: that begins to exist has a cause, and then there's
[14:32] Speaker 3: just paragraphs pages of word salad and a huge canyon
[14:37] Speaker 3: size leap to his specific deity with a proper name.
[14:41] Speaker 3: But Kalamb itself is not a theistic position, right.
[14:46] Speaker 2: It's just the columb itself, which just supports the theistic position,
[14:50] Speaker 2: supports it in that there must have been a first
[14:53] Speaker 2: that must have been a beginning or a first cause.
[14:55] Speaker 3: Yeah, But I mean, in all these debates, how do
[14:57] Speaker 3: they get from point A to point z.
[15:00] Speaker 2: Well, in the debate that you saw that prompted this
[15:03] Speaker 2: new book with Adam Lloyd Johnson, he was honest enough
[15:07] Speaker 2: to say that I'm not arguing for the God of
[15:10] Speaker 2: the Bible here tonight. I'm arguing basically for mere theism,
[15:14] Speaker 2: whatever that means. And I'm and there's actually there's another
[15:19] Speaker 2: book coming out about that debate, and I'm asking, well,
[15:21] Speaker 2: what is mere theism? Are we supposed to offer it
[15:24] Speaker 2: mere worship? You know what? Obviously he's a Christian and
[15:27] Speaker 2: he has an organization, a Christian organization called Convincing Proof.
[15:31] Speaker 2: But he came to the debate unwilling to defend his
[15:34] Speaker 2: own personal God. He just wanted to defend this concept.
[15:38] Speaker 2: So the kalamb argument and some of the and the
[15:41] Speaker 2: fine tuning argument, other types of these arguments are really
[15:45] Speaker 2: just an attempt to give a scientific plausibility that that
[15:50] Speaker 2: that God could then plug into. It's not those arguments
[15:53] Speaker 2: don't prove God. But what they do is they show
[15:56] Speaker 2: that their theism is not incompatible with science. There for
[16:01] Speaker 2: you are justified in making the leap if you want
[16:04] Speaker 2: to go further like and believe the Bible or believe
[16:07] Speaker 2: all those things.
[16:09] Speaker 3: More on thinking upside down and then trying to flip
[16:12] Speaker 3: it right side up with my guest Dan Barker. Next,
[16:20] Speaker 3: Continuing now my conversation with author Dan Barker about his
[16:25] Speaker 3: new book, Controduction, Dan. I just released a speech to
[16:31] Speaker 3: YouTube where I take on God the intelligent designer with
[16:36] Speaker 3: some ideas for improvement. So I was talking about bad
[16:39] Speaker 3: design that you know, those who are talking about fine
[16:42] Speaker 3: tuning and optimization. I mean it was everything from the
[16:46] Speaker 3: appendix to harmful UV rays, to the birth canal to
[16:50] Speaker 3: blind fish with eyes. I mean, you name it. But
[16:53] Speaker 3: when you get into the concept of controduction, you get
[16:57] Speaker 3: into fine tuning, how do you approach someone says, well, man,
[17:00] Speaker 3: if the Earth was this much closer, this much further
[17:03] Speaker 3: from the sun, we would either fry or freeze. How
[17:06] Speaker 3: do you explain that?
[17:08] Speaker 2: And that is the essence of the fine tuning argument.
[17:10] Speaker 2: And it's important to point out that the fine tuning
[17:12] Speaker 2: argument is based on natural laws, natural principles, natural probabilities,
[17:18] Speaker 2: and real mathematics in the real world. So, yeah, it
[17:22] Speaker 2: does seem improbable if the universe were tuned for life,
[17:26] Speaker 2: any one of those twenty or so parameters or constants
[17:30] Speaker 2: that could be the forces like force of gravity, electroweak force,
[17:36] Speaker 2: the cosmological constant, and so on. There's about twenty or
[17:39] Speaker 2: so of them. If any of them were off by
[17:42] Speaker 2: the tiniest amount, then life would not be permissible. That's
[17:46] Speaker 2: assuming that life is the aim right, It's like the
[17:49] Speaker 2: rivers and the borders, right, it's assuming you've got it backwards. Yes,
[17:54] Speaker 2: life would not be permissible. But who in the world
[17:56] Speaker 2: said that the cosmos has to be aimed at life
[18:00] Speaker 2: being permissible? And in Victor Stanger's book The Fallacy of
[18:04] Speaker 2: Fine Tuning, he was a wonderful man. He died not
[18:07] Speaker 2: too long ago. He was an astrophysicist. He concludes the
[18:12] Speaker 2: universe was not fine tuned for us. We were fine
[18:16] Speaker 2: tuned for the universe. It's like the glasses in the nose, right,
[18:20] Speaker 2: You've got it backwards if you think the universe was
[18:22] Speaker 2: fine tuned for us. And he shows that actually it's
[18:28] Speaker 2: true that if you miss with one of those constants, ooops,
[18:30] Speaker 2: the whole thing falls apart. But he shows in his
[18:33] Speaker 2: book that if it's like dials, imagine God stumbles upon
[18:37] Speaker 2: this primordial soup of constants that he has to like
[18:40] Speaker 2: twist them until he finally makes life up here. Victor
[18:43] Speaker 2: Stanger shows that, yeah, if you twist this one off
[18:45] Speaker 2: this much, then life's not permissible. But if you twist
[18:48] Speaker 2: this one this way, like writing a bike, you could
[18:51] Speaker 2: stay in balance. You could have a universe that is
[18:54] Speaker 2: life permitting, maybe not necessarily carbon based biological life, but
[18:58] Speaker 2: you could have a life permitting universe with other variations
[19:02] Speaker 2: of those constants being tuned in a different ways. And
[19:05] Speaker 2: he gives examples of it, and I can't even understand
[19:08] Speaker 2: his all of his equations, but he gives the exact
[19:11] Speaker 2: examples and then Lawrence Krass comes along and he said, well,
[19:14] Speaker 2: you know what, some of those constants are not that
[19:16] Speaker 2: fine tuned. The cosmological constant is very tiny, but it
[19:21] Speaker 2: could have been less. In fact, as Krous points out,
[19:24] Speaker 2: if the cosmological concept were even smaller than it is,
[19:29] Speaker 2: life would be more probable. So there's all those ways
[19:33] Speaker 2: that you can approach it, but I think the basic
[19:35] Speaker 2: way is just to go like, you know, like Gilda
[19:39] Speaker 2: Radner on Saturday Night Live, she realized, oops, I got
[19:41] Speaker 2: it wrong, and she says, never mind. We were thinking
[19:45] Speaker 2: about it the wrong way around, like we're looking through
[19:47] Speaker 2: the wrong side of a telescope. Oops, never mind, I
[19:50] Speaker 2: got it wrong, and flip it around. Then you can
[19:51] Speaker 2: see how things are. It's only because we humans think
[19:55] Speaker 2: the cosmos must be aimed at us, because we are
[19:59] Speaker 2: all human centered, that we tie ourselves in knots, kind
[20:02] Speaker 2: of like what Ptolemy did with this solar system. In
[20:05] Speaker 2: the second century. Ptolemy came up with what's not as
[20:07] Speaker 2: the Toolemac solar system. He couldn't understand the motion of
[20:10] Speaker 2: the planet, so he invented this weird Rube Goldberg machine
[20:14] Speaker 2: concept of spheres within spheres to account for their retrograde,
[20:18] Speaker 2: and this really complicated thing. When all he had to
[20:21] Speaker 2: do is realize the Sun's and I rising, we are,
[20:24] Speaker 2: that whole thing just disappeared. You don't even need the
[20:28] Speaker 2: argument because there's no question there in the first place.
[20:32] Speaker 3: When you were an evangelical pastor. How much of this
[20:36] Speaker 3: was I guess what Carl Sagan would have called the
[20:38] Speaker 3: folly of human conceits. How much of this was I
[20:43] Speaker 3: want to be superior, right, I'm feeding the ego, I
[20:46] Speaker 3: am the center of all things. Did that feed some
[20:48] Speaker 3: of your perception about the universe?
[20:51] Speaker 2: Maybe in retrospect, looking back on it, maybe at the
[20:56] Speaker 2: time I didn't think that. At the time, I thought
[20:59] Speaker 2: we humans were worms, We humans were small, We needed
[21:03] Speaker 2: to bow down, shackle our wrists, lower our head before
[21:07] Speaker 2: the Great Master, and that the Great Lord was deserving
[21:11] Speaker 2: of worship, and he's all powerful and so and so
[21:15] Speaker 2: we're sinners and we're little and we need his grace
[21:18] Speaker 2: all of that. So that's what I was thinking as
[21:22] Speaker 2: I was preaching that how great thou art? You know,
[21:25] Speaker 2: we were created for His glory, you know the Westminster
[21:28] Speaker 2: Confession to worship. We're here to give glory to God.
[21:33] Speaker 2: So you know, what is the end of man? So
[21:36] Speaker 2: that's what I thought, that there really was a being
[21:38] Speaker 2: who was deserving of our worship. And the next book
[21:41] Speaker 2: I'm working on is going to address that question. Why
[21:44] Speaker 2: do we have this innate instinctive need to worship anything?
[21:49] Speaker 2: And I think there's a good adaptive explanation for that
[21:52] Speaker 2: which I'm going to argue this whole idea. If you
[21:55] Speaker 2: look at the postures of prayer, you know, prayer, Your
[21:58] Speaker 2: hands are shackled, your head has bowed, your kneeservent, you're
[22:02] Speaker 2: prostrate on the floor. They're the same postures of slavery,
[22:06] Speaker 2: exactly the same if you look at it. You go
[22:09] Speaker 2: to the airport and you see the chapel signed as
[22:11] Speaker 2: a person like this, kneeled down like this, humbled little,
[22:14] Speaker 2: like I'm praying before the big, great Lord. So in
[22:17] Speaker 2: my mind, I had a very negative perception or a
[22:22] Speaker 2: negative image of human nature. We were bad, we were little,
[22:26] Speaker 2: we were small. We deserve damnation and we can't do
[22:29] Speaker 2: it on our own because we're just not good enough,
[22:31] Speaker 2: and we needed the grace and the goodness of this
[22:34] Speaker 2: wonderful God.
[22:35] Speaker 3: There was no one worthy, no, not one. Yeah, you
[22:39] Speaker 3: get into eternal life as a contraduction. Hope you understand
[22:44] Speaker 3: that where are you going?
[22:45] Speaker 2: Well? So I have a chapter in the contradiction called life,
[22:50] Speaker 2: And a lot of people think life like it says
[22:53] Speaker 2: in the Bible we have this treasure in earthen vessels,
[22:56] Speaker 2: that life is something that comes from the outside and
[22:58] Speaker 2: inhabits this physical being of ours. And a lot of
[23:02] Speaker 2: religionous think that that we are something that transcends, we
[23:05] Speaker 2: are souls. And there's even some non religious people who
[23:10] Speaker 2: think life is some kind it's called vitalism, that there's
[23:14] Speaker 2: something alive that comes into us, as if these boxes,
[23:18] Speaker 2: these physical boxes call our bodies, are receptacles for this
[23:22] Speaker 2: thing that comes into us. I think that's the contraduction.
[23:24] Speaker 2: Life is not something that comes into us from the outside.
[23:28] Speaker 2: Life is something that emanates out of us. We measure
[23:32] Speaker 2: life by body temperature, at least we measure life by
[23:36] Speaker 2: the movement of the organism. And when the body dies,
[23:41] Speaker 2: people ask, when the body dies, where does the soul go?
[23:43] Speaker 2: Where does the mind go? Well, mind and soul, if
[23:47] Speaker 2: you can use that word soul, mind and consciousness are
[23:51] Speaker 2: really just functions of an organism that's working. The brain,
[23:55] Speaker 2: right When the brain is working, nothing's coming into it.
[23:59] Speaker 2: When working, it's creating this whatever you want to call it.
[24:03] Speaker 2: In fact, we are aware of things, and then when
[24:05] Speaker 2: we become aware of the fact that we are aware
[24:08] Speaker 2: of things, we create these loops. That's what I think
[24:11] Speaker 2: is consciousness what Daniel Dennett called the center of narrative gravity.
[24:15] Speaker 2: So when the body dies, when the stomach dies, nobody
[24:18] Speaker 2: asks where did the digestion go? Or when the heart dies,
[24:22] Speaker 2: where did the circulation go? The word mind and circulation
[24:26] Speaker 2: and digestion are labels for the functioning of the living being.
[24:31] Speaker 2: If you see a plane flying over, how does the
[24:34] Speaker 2: sound of that airplane travel with the airplane? How does
[24:37] Speaker 2: that happen? Well, it's not because the sound is something
[24:39] Speaker 2: outside of it is produced by it. So death basically
[24:44] Speaker 2: is the cessation of all the organs of the body.
[24:47] Speaker 2: And nothing has left, nothing has gone, Nothing spooky went
[24:51] Speaker 2: out of us somewhere. We just died. When we eat
[24:54] Speaker 2: a piece of steak. If you're a meat eater, do
[24:56] Speaker 2: you think you're eating a soul when you eat steak? Well,
[24:59] Speaker 2: what happened? Where did it go? Well, that's backward thinking,
[25:02] Speaker 2: that's thinking that life it comes into you when actually
[25:04] Speaker 2: life emanates out of you. This contradiction. So therefore I
[25:07] Speaker 2: can't live on. And I have a whole chapter in
[25:10] Speaker 2: the book about time too. The whole concept of eternal
[25:13] Speaker 2: life is an incoherent concept, just like it's the same
[25:16] Speaker 2: with the concept of time travel is also incoherent.
[25:19] Speaker 3: I remember looking at eternity in the Bible after I
[25:23] Speaker 3: left the faith. I didn't really thought it through when
[25:26] Speaker 3: I was a believer, except wow, I get to go on,
[25:29] Speaker 3: because I was afraid of death, and I had this
[25:32] Speaker 3: very nebulous idea of a happy place with color and
[25:35] Speaker 3: light in the family, dog and music and mansions and
[25:38] Speaker 3: all those things. I hadn't thought about those verses where
[25:42] Speaker 3: essentially I sit around and just say, Holy, Holy, Holy,
[25:45] Speaker 3: is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and
[25:47] Speaker 3: is to come forever, Which does not sound like heaven
[25:51] Speaker 3: to me. Dan, And do you explore the concepts of
[25:54] Speaker 3: eternity your own concept when you were a preacher?
[25:58] Speaker 2: Well, when I was a preacher, it did sounds nice
[26:01] Speaker 2: to me because I was in love with that Lord,
[26:03] Speaker 2: you know what I mean. I was in love with
[26:05] Speaker 2: that God. I truly worshiped, and unlike a lot of believers.
[26:08] Speaker 2: I actually got goosebumps when I was praying. So I
[26:11] Speaker 2: felt this loving, parental, guiding father figure that was with
[26:15] Speaker 2: me and that someday I was going to be with him.
[26:17] Speaker 2: I mean to me, that was attracted. I didn't think
[26:20] Speaker 2: through all the details about. Like Woody Allen asked, the
[26:25] Speaker 2: trouble with eternal life is when does it end?
[26:27] Speaker 3: You know?
[26:27] Speaker 2: It just there's no end to it. And in my
[26:30] Speaker 2: book Life Driven Purpose, I point out that real purpose
[26:34] Speaker 2: in life, purpose and meaning comes from trying to solve problems.
[26:38] Speaker 2: That's where purpose comes from. We have challenges, we have problems,
[26:40] Speaker 2: and whatever they are, we work to solve. That gives
[26:43] Speaker 2: us meaning. But in heaven there won't be any problems.
[26:47] Speaker 2: Heaven will be meaningless and purposeless. And if you believe
[26:50] Speaker 2: the Book of Revelation, and a lot of Christians didn't
[26:53] Speaker 2: in the early days and some still don't now, heaven
[26:56] Speaker 2: is just this big cubic city that comes down and
[26:59] Speaker 2: sits on the earth, which is fifteen hundred miles across.
[27:02] Speaker 2: It's a cue basically with one street because there won't
[27:06] Speaker 2: be vehicles. I suppose the street of Gold is for
[27:09] Speaker 2: the king to promenade, you know, to watch out and
[27:12] Speaker 2: basically we we'll spend the whole time just praising that king,
[27:16] Speaker 2: which I used to find an attractive thought into it.
[27:19] Speaker 2: Like you, I thought it through and I realized that
[27:20] Speaker 2: that's kind of pointless, and it's kind of like you're
[27:23] Speaker 2: not even a living being anymore. And there's no sex
[27:25] Speaker 2: in heaven, there's no marriage given in heaven, and there
[27:28] Speaker 2: won't be any sleep in heaven. So what are your
[27:30] Speaker 2: rooms going to be? Like? What are these mansions going
[27:32] Speaker 2: to actually be? Like? Do you have to eat? Do
[27:35] Speaker 2: you have to defecate?
[27:36] Speaker 1: You?
[27:36] Speaker 2: Will there be waste management in heaven? I mean, I
[27:39] Speaker 2: think through the details of it, and it becomes a
[27:41] Speaker 2: sort of nebulous, immaterial idea that our souls are going
[27:44] Speaker 2: to just blissfully go up to me. That's the absence
[27:47] Speaker 2: of life. That's not life after death, that's like death
[27:50] Speaker 2: after death.
[27:52] Speaker 3: There you are in the pose of the slave, right
[27:55] Speaker 3: here on your knees with your hands together, and you
[27:57] Speaker 3: were bowing to the Great King as he parades. By
[28:00] Speaker 3: total digression. This is not in the book, but maybe
[28:02] Speaker 3: it relates. Somebody had said they were talking about why
[28:06] Speaker 3: it was an apologist like an armchair apologist talking about
[28:10] Speaker 3: why there's so much awfulness, so much suffering on this planet,
[28:14] Speaker 3: and one of the sort of the knee jerk responses
[28:17] Speaker 3: is free will. Well, God gave us free will, and
[28:20] Speaker 3: we chose poorly and things went to hell literally, And
[28:25] Speaker 3: so then the next question is, well, will there be
[28:27] Speaker 3: any strife or pain or cancer or abuse or any
[28:31] Speaker 3: of those things now infant death, Will any of that
[28:34] Speaker 3: stuff happen in heaven? And they say no, Well, then
[28:37] Speaker 3: are you saying that there is no free will in heaven?
[28:41] Speaker 3: And then their brain explode. No, no, No, is that a
[28:43] Speaker 3: bad argument?
[28:43] Speaker 2: Dan, Well, I guess it's not incoherent to make that argument.
[28:49] Speaker 2: I mean, if that's.
[28:51] Speaker 3: A compliment, thanks, Dan's totally incoherent.
[28:56] Speaker 2: No, I'm saying their argument is not, oh not yours. Yeah,
[29:03] Speaker 2: your point is very very good, but their argument, i think,
[29:06] Speaker 2: is within the context of their faith system, is not incoherent.
[29:09] Speaker 2: But yeah, you're right if they're saying, and I don't
[29:13] Speaker 2: think they would all say this, that free will exists
[29:15] Speaker 2: so that we can deal with these problems in life,
[29:18] Speaker 2: and there won't be any free will in heaven, because
[29:20] Speaker 2: if you're going to worship God for eternity, would you
[29:22] Speaker 2: have the freedom not to? Apparently that's what happened with Lucifer.
[29:26] Speaker 2: Lucifer was a creative being who somehow had the free
[29:29] Speaker 2: will to change his or it's or their minds. So
[29:33] Speaker 2: I do have a chapter in the book about free will,
[29:37] Speaker 2: which I think is also an illustration of contraductive thinking.
[29:42] Speaker 2: And to make a really long story short, it's kind
[29:45] Speaker 2: of like looking in a mirror. When you look in
[29:46] Speaker 2: the mirror, you think left and right or reversed, but
[29:48] Speaker 2: they're not. It's really front and back that's reversed in
[29:50] Speaker 2: the mirror. And if you can flip that around, you're
[29:53] Speaker 2: actually not looking at yourself in the mirror. You are
[29:56] Speaker 2: looking with yourself in the mirror, and so the goes away.
[30:01] Speaker 2: You imagine that person's looking back at us, but actually
[30:04] Speaker 2: looking through the paper with us. So with free will,
[30:08] Speaker 2: the analogy I use is that looking backward, looking to
[30:12] Speaker 2: the past. I think, and many philosophers and scientists think,
[30:16] Speaker 2: it's obvious that there's no such thing as libertarian free will.
[30:19] Speaker 2: It's all determined if you look back, and you can
[30:21] Speaker 2: look at all the previous causes that led to you.
[30:23] Speaker 2: But flipping around, like looking in the mirror and looking
[30:27] Speaker 2: forward looking into the future. Since we don't know the future,
[30:30] Speaker 2: we don't know what it's going to be now, we
[30:32] Speaker 2: will later will know what happened. We have this illusion
[30:36] Speaker 2: that that mirror is looking back at it. We have
[30:39] Speaker 2: this illusion that since I freedom make my choice between
[30:42] Speaker 2: now and then, even though looking backward will know you
[30:45] Speaker 2: were not, at least for now. We have this illusion,
[30:48] Speaker 2: I think, and some people think it's a pernicious illusion.
[30:52] Speaker 2: I think it's a beautiful illusion, kind of like the
[30:54] Speaker 2: illusion of depth perception, which helps us navigate the world.
[30:57] Speaker 2: I think free will is an illusion, but it's a
[31:01] Speaker 2: useful illusion in the meantime, as we before you make
[31:05] Speaker 2: your final decision, you have that gap. And by the way,
[31:09] Speaker 2: if there's a God who knows the future, he also
[31:13] Speaker 2: knows his own future decisions. He cannot look forward and
[31:17] Speaker 2: have a period of uncertainty during which he's going to
[31:20] Speaker 2: what should I do? He knows in advance. Therefore he
[31:23] Speaker 2: doesn't have free will, like God who knows the future
[31:26] Speaker 2: cannot have free will. I know. They try to argue
[31:28] Speaker 2: out of that by saying, well, he's a timeless being,
[31:30] Speaker 2: whatever that means. He exists outside of time, but free
[31:35] Speaker 2: will in the illustration you gave, I think raise is
[31:38] Speaker 2: another serious problem. And that God created Adam and Eve,
[31:42] Speaker 2: and God is a perfect being and he can only
[31:44] Speaker 2: create perfect things. And yet he gave Adam and Eve
[31:47] Speaker 2: free will, And for some reason, Eve chose wrong eve
[31:53] Speaker 2: exercise for supposed free will, and she made the wrong choice. Ah,
[31:57] Speaker 2: Now the human race is damned because she made this
[32:00] Speaker 2: wrong choice. Seems like we inherited that, doesn't it. It's
[32:03] Speaker 2: like I say, in our genes or something. But why
[32:06] Speaker 2: did Eve make the wrong choice? There was obviously some
[32:09] Speaker 2: flaw in her nature if you believe the story. I
[32:12] Speaker 2: don't believe a story. But if the story's true, why
[32:16] Speaker 2: did Eve make the wrong choice? There was something wrong
[32:18] Speaker 2: with her before she made that wrong decision? Who created
[32:23] Speaker 2: that flaw? If Eve was created by God with a flaw,
[32:27] Speaker 2: who created that flaw and who's responsible for it? So
[32:30] Speaker 2: what good is the free will defense in that case?
[32:34] Speaker 3: I'm going And this is again a digression. I'll come
[32:37] Speaker 3: back to the end of the book in just a second.
[32:39] Speaker 3: But it becomes infinite regress, doesn't it if we don't
[32:43] Speaker 3: have free will? But then we ask God to change
[32:46] Speaker 3: what his will is then we're asking a perfect plan
[32:50] Speaker 3: to be altered. So was it imperfect to begin with?
[32:53] Speaker 3: Or was God expecting us to pray because he fore
[32:56] Speaker 3: knew we would drop to our knees and petition him
[32:59] Speaker 3: for some alteration, some miracle whatever. And then he's holding
[33:03] Speaker 3: the answer hostage. But he meant to do it. I mean,
[33:07] Speaker 3: you've gone in this sort of hamster wheel, right, it's
[33:10] Speaker 3: maddening after a while.
[33:12] Speaker 2: There's a big theological word kenosis, which just means that
[33:16] Speaker 2: God emptied himself when Jesus came, And so God created
[33:21] Speaker 2: this physical universe with risk in it, with problems in it,
[33:26] Speaker 2: and with suffering in it, so that we could then
[33:30] Speaker 2: test our free will against that. If God had not allowed,
[33:34] Speaker 2: not created this big mess of the universe, then we
[33:37] Speaker 2: would just be robots. We would just be like the angel.
[33:39] Speaker 2: So God is temporarily willingly allowing the universe we live
[33:43] Speaker 2: in to be a degraded state within which then we
[33:47] Speaker 2: can exercise. And those few of us who do turn
[33:50] Speaker 2: around and say yes to God, He's going to bless them,
[33:52] Speaker 2: and the rest, of course, are either abolished or go
[33:55] Speaker 2: into eternal torment, depending on your theology. So it's all
[33:59] Speaker 2: done for a test in One of the theodicies that
[34:01] Speaker 2: some Christian apologists the theologians offer is the what's called
[34:06] Speaker 2: the character building or the sole building analogy that the
[34:09] Speaker 2: reason we have suffering and evil is so that we
[34:11] Speaker 2: can grow from it it becomes stronger. And how in
[34:15] Speaker 2: the world could that happen unless there were challenges and
[34:18] Speaker 2: obstacles and threats and risks in the real world.
[34:22] Speaker 3: I know Doctor Norman Geisler used to say that you
[34:25] Speaker 3: have to have the crooked line so that we know
[34:27] Speaker 3: what the straight line looks like. And his argument partially was, well,
[34:32] Speaker 3: how would we know what good is unless God contrasted
[34:35] Speaker 3: it against evil, and then with the evil he can
[34:39] Speaker 3: demonstrate his great goodness, So evil becomes a utility. I
[34:43] Speaker 3: think it was in Isaiah forty five or it was
[34:45] Speaker 3: said that God created evil. This conversation about contraduction continues
[34:53] Speaker 3: in just a second. Hang on. My special guest for
[35:01] Speaker 3: the show today, Dan Barker, co president of the Freedom
[35:05] Speaker 3: from Religion Foundation, author of many books, including his latest Contraduction.
[35:13] Speaker 3: I remember I was I'm trying to think of the university.
[35:15] Speaker 3: It's about half an hour east of here, Northeastern State.
[35:19] Speaker 3: Maybe it was a debate. It was an atheist and
[35:22] Speaker 3: an apologist, and the apologist said something fascinating. He said,
[35:26] Speaker 3: you know, if I wasn't a Christian, I'd probably be
[35:28] Speaker 3: a murderer. I mean, he just said something like that
[35:31] Speaker 3: on the stage. You know, if it wasn't for Jesus,
[35:33] Speaker 3: who knows why I could be a rapist or a
[35:34] Speaker 3: murderer or something like that. And I remember the atheist
[35:38] Speaker 3: guy said, well, in your case, I'm kind of glad
[35:40] Speaker 3: you're a Christian, right, I mean, your case might be
[35:44] Speaker 3: a good thing to be a Christian. But I find
[35:46] Speaker 3: that claim a bit insulting. If you didn't have my God,
[35:50] Speaker 3: you could be I saw one on Twitter this morning,
[35:53] Speaker 3: you would be a criminal. So you get into ethics, morality,
[35:57] Speaker 3: how do we know right and wrong? In the book contraduction,
[36:00] Speaker 3: you want to give me just a primer kind of
[36:02] Speaker 3: set it up.
[36:03] Speaker 2: Well, first of all, if we look at the example
[36:05] Speaker 2: of God in the Bible, he himself was the genocidal
[36:09] Speaker 2: murderer and what I would call the immoral character. But
[36:14] Speaker 2: I think morality is one of the chapters in the
[36:17] Speaker 2: book Contradiction is an example of contraduction itself, and that
[36:21] Speaker 2: we think morality should be top down, when really morality
[36:25] Speaker 2: is bottom up. We don't measure our actions, or we
[36:29] Speaker 2: shouldn't measure our actions by the decrees and the commands
[36:32] Speaker 2: of some big lord and master. That's what the masters want,
[36:35] Speaker 2: right to know what is right and wrong, because then
[36:37] Speaker 2: right and wrong just becomes a matter of the decree
[36:39] Speaker 2: of the master. But real morality, and I don't think
[36:43] Speaker 2: there's such a thing as objective moral values, but I
[36:46] Speaker 2: do think the values that we hold in our mind
[36:48] Speaker 2: that we call moral can be objectively justified, not by
[36:52] Speaker 2: referring to this top down model, but by flipping it
[36:55] Speaker 2: contraductively and referring to the real world. Morality is really
[37:00] Speaker 2: a measure of harm, and the way to be a
[37:02] Speaker 2: moral person is to act with the intention of minimizing
[37:05] Speaker 2: harm and harm whatever it is, it's natural. Harm is
[37:08] Speaker 2: something real. You can name a thousand things that are harmful.
[37:11] Speaker 2: And so to measure our moral values, we would refer
[37:15] Speaker 2: to the natural world bottom up. What are the actual
[37:19] Speaker 2: consequences of my action, of my decisions? What are the
[37:22] Speaker 2: actual fruit? Should I put this chemical in the river
[37:25] Speaker 2: or should I use this harm? You know what I mean.
[37:28] Speaker 2: That's how we determine what is right and wrong by
[37:31] Speaker 2: actual reference, justifiably referencing objectively in the real world, rather
[37:36] Speaker 2: than following orders.
[37:38] Speaker 3: I will say, you know, being I'm like you, I'm
[37:41] Speaker 3: a frontline guy. I've read a lot of books, you know,
[37:44] Speaker 3: listen to a lot of audiobooks along these lines. But
[37:48] Speaker 3: I've never seen or read or heard anything quite like Contraduction.
[37:52] Speaker 3: And I think that's one of the reasons that I
[37:54] Speaker 3: was sort of glad to preview it when you'd sent
[37:57] Speaker 3: it out, which is why I had the subtitle, because
[37:59] Speaker 3: it's had that at the beginning. But I've never heard
[38:03] Speaker 3: the inversion phrased and compiled in this specific way. And
[38:08] Speaker 3: it's an easily digestible book. It's not like War and Peace.
[38:11] Speaker 3: I mean, this is something somebody could probably read in
[38:14] Speaker 3: the weekend.
[38:15] Speaker 2: Right well. Ac Grayling, the Eminem's British philosopher, he read
[38:19] Speaker 2: it and one day he said, and he's read. In fact,
[38:22] Speaker 2: he put a blurb on the book. So it is short,
[38:25] Speaker 2: and it's spread out. It's got some cute illustrations by Marcostelius,
[38:30] Speaker 2: who's a physician in Santiago, Chile. And so I think
[38:35] Speaker 2: it's a fun book. I think it's light, and I
[38:37] Speaker 2: think it just scratches the surface. And I invite readers
[38:40] Speaker 2: to offer examples of their own, from their own field
[38:44] Speaker 2: of what they think is contraductory thinking. So it's starting
[38:47] Speaker 2: a conversation.
[38:48] Speaker 3: I'm going to petition the dictionary like Webster's Dictionary. This
[38:52] Speaker 3: is a word that probably should be included in the future.
[38:56] Speaker 3: So any final thoughts on the book before I let
[38:59] Speaker 3: you go, No, I mean, just give me the brochure
[39:01] Speaker 3: real fast.
[39:02] Speaker 2: You should petition Stephen Pinker because he's the editor of
[39:05] Speaker 2: the American Heritage Dictionary and he actually gave a blurb
[39:08] Speaker 2: to the book. Contraduction is an innocent fallacy that happens
[39:12] Speaker 2: to all of us, and not just with religion. It
[39:15] Speaker 2: could be all sorts of things in life. It can
[39:18] Speaker 2: be you know, free will or sleep, or it can
[39:20] Speaker 2: be looking in the mirror, it can be looking at
[39:23] Speaker 2: the sunrise. And in order to combat that and to
[39:27] Speaker 2: minimize the risk of having faulty premises before your logic
[39:31] Speaker 2: even begins, we have to actively look for errors and
[39:35] Speaker 2: fallacies in our own mind. We have to actively look
[39:38] Speaker 2: kind of like a continuity supervisor in a movie production,
[39:42] Speaker 2: looking to make sure that in the scenes everything fits together.
[39:46] Speaker 2: The viewer of the movie doesn't look for that stuff,
[39:48] Speaker 2: but the continuity supervisor does. And so I challenge most
[39:52] Speaker 2: readers to be their own continuity supervisors and look for
[39:56] Speaker 2: areas where we might indeed be flipping our oppression of reality.
[40:01] Speaker 3: Thanks evangelical author hero legend brother Dan Barker Man, It's
[40:07] Speaker 3: always good to cross paths. I'll link the book in
[40:10] Speaker 3: the description box. All success with it. Good stuff, and
[40:13] Speaker 3: let's talk soon.
[40:14] Speaker 2: Okay, thank you, Seth, You're a real brother not in Christ.
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