# The Worst Arguments for God

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 15 Apr 2025, 1 h 11 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/65315545/podcast798_worstargumentsforgod.mp3

Apologists have some doozies. Let's talk about their "proofs" for a Higher Power. 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 this country is going through the.
[0:13] Speaker 1: Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
[0:19] Speaker 1: tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not because.
[0:22] Speaker 3: I put my hand on a book and made a.
[0:24] Speaker 1: Wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking, feel so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 2: 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 2: So much talk about politics and religion. I want to
[0:59] Speaker 2: come back to just religion. Having come out of a
[1:02] Speaker 2: fundamental faith and having been co hosting on the Line
[1:08] Speaker 2: Network where we talk to a lot of theists and
[1:12] Speaker 2: they bring their proofs for God, or at the very
[1:15] Speaker 2: least they're trying to sow doubt about atheism. I think
[1:18] Speaker 2: one of my not favorite, but one of my hashtag
[1:23] Speaker 2: favorite arguments is why do you hate God or why
[1:29] Speaker 2: do you say there could be no God? Which is
[1:32] Speaker 2: not what atheism is. I'm struck by how often apologist
[1:37] Speaker 2: misrepresent what atheism means. You know, I do not believe
[1:41] Speaker 2: in God seems pretty basic, but I think it's in
[1:44] Speaker 2: the interest of a lot of apologists to do that
[1:47] Speaker 2: very thing. And over the last let's see, I started
[1:51] Speaker 2: the website in two thousand and nine. Holy shit, what
[1:54] Speaker 2: is that sixteen years? I've had a lot of these discussions.
[1:59] Speaker 2: And you know, there are some arguments for God that
[2:04] Speaker 2: make me crazy, and I know they make you crazy too,
[2:06] Speaker 2: And I want to hear the ones that make you
[2:07] Speaker 2: want to stick your head through sheet rock, the stuff
[2:11] Speaker 2: that just you're like, how could you even bring that
[2:13] Speaker 2: to the table. It's it's not that the apologist hasn't
[2:17] Speaker 2: heard it before, because I know this is fresh material
[2:20] Speaker 2: for a lot of people. And I mean the stuff
[2:22] Speaker 2: that you're like, this is not even an argument, makes
[2:24] Speaker 2: no sense, like prove there is no God, which to
[2:29] Speaker 2: me is the equivalent of prove the universe doesn't exist
[2:33] Speaker 2: in a giant snow globe which sits on the mantle
[2:37] Speaker 2: of a cosmic space octopus. Right, prove that for me?
[2:43] Speaker 2: You know, that's not exactly how proof works. You've got
[2:47] Speaker 2: the well, I'm not a monkey. My grandfather wasn't a monkey.
[2:51] Speaker 2: You know, I'm not a primate. I may be a mammal,
[2:55] Speaker 2: but I'm not an animal. I heard that when recently
[2:58] Speaker 2: I heard the story about Charles Darwin having a deathbed conversion.
[3:03] Speaker 2: Have you heard that story? Oh, Darwin wrote on the
[3:06] Speaker 2: Origin of species. Sure, but at the very end of
[3:09] Speaker 2: his life, when he knew he was facing the music,
[3:13] Speaker 2: he had a conversion. And there's a whole narrative. Somebody
[3:16] Speaker 2: came and visited him at his deathbed, and he had
[3:20] Speaker 2: kind of an epiphany, and his heart changed, and he
[3:24] Speaker 2: opened his mind and his spirit to Jesus Christ and
[3:28] Speaker 2: he became a believer. Bullshit, that never happened. It's like
[3:33] Speaker 2: that story about Einstein in the college classroom. Hang on,
[3:39] Speaker 2: let me see if I can find that this is
[3:41] Speaker 2: unplanned Einstein classroom god story. I'll bet it pops right up. Yeah,
[3:51] Speaker 2: Albert Einstein humiliates an atheist professor. Here's how the story goes,
[3:57] Speaker 2: and this has been circulating for more than twenty years.
[4:01] Speaker 2: Does evil exist? The university professor challenged his students with
[4:07] Speaker 2: this question. Did God create everything that exists? A student
[4:12] Speaker 2: bravely replied, yes, he did. God created everything. The professor asked, yes, sir,
[4:20] Speaker 2: the student replied. The professor answered, if God created everything.
[4:25] Speaker 2: Then God created evil. Since evil exists, and according to
[4:29] Speaker 2: the principle that our works define who we are, then
[4:32] Speaker 2: God is evil. The students became quiet before such an answer.
[4:38] Speaker 2: The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to
[4:42] Speaker 2: the students that he had proven once more that the
[4:45] Speaker 2: Christian faith was a myth. Another student raised his hand
[4:50] Speaker 2: and said, can I ask you a question? Professor? Of course,
[4:56] Speaker 2: replied the professor. The student stood up and asked, yess
[5:00] Speaker 2: or does cold exist? What kind of question is this?
[5:05] Speaker 2: Of course it exists. Have you ever been cold? The
[5:08] Speaker 2: students snickered at the young man's question. I love the
[5:13] Speaker 2: hero narrative. Right, you got the evil snickering professor and
[5:16] Speaker 2: the noble hero student. The young man replied, in fact, sir,
[5:21] Speaker 2: cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics,
[5:26] Speaker 2: what we consider cold is, in reality, the absence of heat.
[5:30] Speaker 2: Every body or object is susceptible to study when it
[5:34] Speaker 2: has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a
[5:38] Speaker 2: body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero minus
[5:44] Speaker 2: four hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit is the total absence
[5:48] Speaker 2: of heat. All matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction
[5:53] Speaker 2: at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created
[5:59] Speaker 2: this word to describe how we feel if we have
[6:02] Speaker 2: no heat, The student continued, professor. Does darkness exist? The
[6:09] Speaker 2: professor responded, of course it does. The student replied, once again,
[6:15] Speaker 2: you are wrong, sir. Darkness does not exist either. Darkness is,
[6:21] Speaker 2: in reality, the absence of light. Light we can study,
[6:25] Speaker 2: but not darkness. In fact, we can use Newton's prism
[6:29] Speaker 2: to break white light into many colors and study the
[6:33] Speaker 2: various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A
[6:38] Speaker 2: simple ray of light can break into a world of
[6:41] Speaker 2: darkness and illuminated. How can you know how dark a
[6:45] Speaker 2: certain space is. You measure the amount of light present.
[6:50] Speaker 2: Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man
[6:53] Speaker 2: to describe what happens when there is no light present. Finally,
[6:58] Speaker 2: the young man asked the professor, sir, does evil exist?
[7:04] Speaker 2: Now uncertain? The professor responded, of course, as I have
[7:09] Speaker 2: already said, we see it every day. It's in the
[7:12] Speaker 2: daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in
[7:16] Speaker 2: the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world.
[7:20] Speaker 2: These manifestations are nothing else but evil. To this the
[7:25] Speaker 2: student replied, evil does not exist, sir, or at least
[7:30] Speaker 2: it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the
[7:34] Speaker 2: absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold,
[7:39] Speaker 2: a word that man has created to describe the absence
[7:43] Speaker 2: of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not
[7:47] Speaker 2: like faith or love that exists, just as does light
[7:52] Speaker 2: and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when
[7:55] Speaker 2: man does not have God's love present in his art.
[8:00] Speaker 2: It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat,
[8:03] Speaker 2: or darkness that comes when there is no light. And
[8:07] Speaker 2: the professor sat down. The young student's name was Albert Einstein.
[8:17] Speaker 2: This entire story is a big pile of cramp. It
[8:23] Speaker 2: never happened, and yet it has been shared in Christian
[8:27] Speaker 2: circles for I don't know how long, and many people
[8:31] Speaker 2: who during his life his contemporaries were asserting that Albert
[8:36] Speaker 2: Einstein was somehow a Christian. He came forward and he said, no,
[8:39] Speaker 2: it's a lie what you've been hearing about my religious beliefs, right.
[8:44] Speaker 2: I think he was more of a Spinoza's God kind
[8:46] Speaker 2: of a thing. It's really more about the cosmos and science,
[8:50] Speaker 2: And he was not a Christian. And yet you know,
[8:53] Speaker 2: they want to brandish Einstein as if you know, this
[8:56] Speaker 2: is a gotcha. Well, and even if Einstein had been
[8:59] Speaker 2: a believer and a brilliant scientist, would that have proved God.
[9:04] Speaker 2: Scientist X believes in God, therefore God exists. This is
[9:10] Speaker 2: not how science works. There's the God of the gaps.
[9:17] Speaker 2: There are gaps in our knowledge. We don't know things
[9:20] Speaker 2: what happened before the Big Bang. I mean, it could
[9:23] Speaker 2: have been of specific deity with a proper name who
[9:28] Speaker 2: then had anonymous primitive men write a sixty six book
[9:33] Speaker 2: book which talked about garden nudists and talking reptiles and
[9:40] Speaker 2: nine hundred year old people and giants and sea monsters
[9:44] Speaker 2: and those types of things. One of my favorite parts
[9:47] Speaker 2: of the Bible is in the Book of Revelation, the
[9:50] Speaker 2: story about the flying dragon writing, actually it's a seven
[9:56] Speaker 2: headed dragon, writing space prostitute. Ah, yeah, horror Babylon. Totally
[10:03] Speaker 2: reasonable to say that, because we don't know even if
[10:07] Speaker 2: there was a before. I was talking to astrophysicist doctor
[10:11] Speaker 2: Dan Batcheldor about space time, which is just literally a
[10:15] Speaker 2: skull melting thing to get into, especially for lay people
[10:19] Speaker 2: like us. But if space time didn't exist, until the
[10:23] Speaker 2: moment of the singularity. Then time may not have been
[10:27] Speaker 2: a thing. There may not have been a before right,
[10:32] Speaker 2: There may not have been anything before the Big Bang.
[10:35] Speaker 4: I don't know.
[10:36] Speaker 2: It's a lot to take in. But to say, well,
[10:39] Speaker 2: we don't know therefore, gee, it just makes me crazy. Anyway,
[10:45] Speaker 2: I want to know what your pet peeve arguments are
[10:48] Speaker 2: for the existence of a god. It can be any
[10:51] Speaker 2: god or God's plural, or spirits or ghosts or whatever.
[10:55] Speaker 2: And I know you got some. So this is the
[10:58] Speaker 2: place to vent as we just spend some time sort
[11:00] Speaker 2: of refocusing, getting a little bit more away from politics
[11:04] Speaker 2: and Christian nationalism today and getting into theology and the apologists.
[11:11] Speaker 2: I've got nine zero one on the phone. Hi. Who's this?
[11:16] Speaker 4: Hi? This is Cullen. How are you doing, suth?
[11:18] Speaker 2: Is it culin? Yes, sir, welcome to the show. Thanks
[11:22] Speaker 2: for calling. What's on your mind?
[11:24] Speaker 4: My girlfriend she did like a theology class. There was
[11:29] Speaker 4: way after we broke up, and I just happen to
[11:32] Speaker 4: see it, and she had to post videos on YouTube
[11:36] Speaker 4: of her giving sermons, and one of the ones that
[11:38] Speaker 4: she gave was that once upon a time there was
[11:43] Speaker 4: a shepherd with the whole flock of sheep, and every
[11:47] Speaker 4: night he would bring them all back into the barn,
[11:50] Speaker 4: but there was always one that would wander off, and
[11:53] Speaker 4: day after day he had to go find that sheep
[11:55] Speaker 4: and pick it up and carry it back and put
[11:58] Speaker 4: it back in the fold. So one day he gets
[12:00] Speaker 4: tired of doing that, so yoesll and he finds the
[12:03] Speaker 4: sheep and he takes a big heavy step and he
[12:07] Speaker 4: just breaks its legs and then he carries it back
[12:10] Speaker 4: home and he fixes it up. And he did that
[12:14] Speaker 4: not to hurt the sheep, but because he loves the sheep.
[12:17] Speaker 4: And that's why God looks bad things happen to us.
[12:21] Speaker 4: And when I heard that, it took me about twenty
[12:24] Speaker 4: minutes of just sitting there outside smoking a cigarette. I
[12:27] Speaker 4: don't even smoke anymore. I just keep a practice in
[12:29] Speaker 4: face for times like that. It absolutely broke me.
[12:35] Speaker 2: I think this is a slave celebrating their chains. He
[12:39] Speaker 2: only hurts me because he loves me. This is a
[12:42] Speaker 2: faith building exercise, pain in this life, bliss in the next.
[12:47] Speaker 2: The more suffering that happens for God here on Terra Firma,
[12:52] Speaker 2: the greater my reward will be in eternity. And I
[12:57] Speaker 2: also think that people are great at creating narratives where
[13:02] Speaker 2: the nonsensical makes sense to them. The tornado hit more, Oklahoma,
[13:08] Speaker 2: and forty five people were killed, including a dozen children.
[13:13] Speaker 2: Well maybe it was because Oklahoma has too many of
[13:16] Speaker 2: those icky gay people. Or maybe God is using our
[13:21] Speaker 2: light and momentary affliction to produce in us a greater
[13:24] Speaker 2: glory that far od weighs them all. This is a
[13:26] Speaker 2: faith exercise, you know. There were so many apologetics that
[13:30] Speaker 2: are supposed to excuse the inexcusable, and the more you
[13:33] Speaker 2: and I hear it, the more we think, Dear God,
[13:35] Speaker 2: these people are they're playing twister, And I'm sure you
[13:39] Speaker 2: felt that, right, You're like, how far have you just
[13:42] Speaker 2: bent to make this make sense? Right?
[13:47] Speaker 4: Absolutely?
[13:48] Speaker 2: Unfortunately, well I don't know how to change that mind.
[13:51] Speaker 2: This is the question of the ages. All I know
[13:54] Speaker 2: is that I share your frustration, and I myself hear
[13:57] Speaker 2: that kind of thing, and I want to put my
[13:59] Speaker 2: head through sheet rock. So you and I have we
[14:03] Speaker 2: share frustration. You and I are sitting at the bar together.
[14:06] Speaker 2: I'm drinking something non alcoholic, but I tip my glass
[14:09] Speaker 2: and I share your frustrations. My friend, Thanks for Colin Cullen.
[14:14] Speaker 4: Absolutely thank you. I have a great day. You bet
[14:16] Speaker 4: him stay perfect.
[14:18] Speaker 2: Well, you know it's and this gets tough. We're in
[14:21] Speaker 2: tornado season here in Oklahoma, and we've already had some
[14:24] Speaker 2: big weather and we were supposed to get a lot
[14:26] Speaker 2: more baseball sized hail, right, giant, deadly cannonballs of ice
[14:31] Speaker 2: from the sky. We've got tornadoes on the ground. We
[14:36] Speaker 2: had shingles ripped off of brooves. I saw trash cans
[14:40] Speaker 2: blowing down the road with sixty five mile an hour
[14:42] Speaker 2: wind gusts. It's just been wild, and it's you know,
[14:45] Speaker 2: it's not even May. But it's very common for people
[14:50] Speaker 2: to reach out and paint the silver lining whenever tragedy
[14:54] Speaker 2: and calamity happens. I mentioned more Oklahoma talked about them
[14:58] Speaker 2: in some various speeches where there was loss of life
[15:02] Speaker 2: and billions of dollars in property damage, and people will
[15:05] Speaker 2: put up a sign that says God bless more. Or
[15:08] Speaker 2: when they get really twisty, they find a Bible in
[15:14] Speaker 2: the ruins. Sometimes the Bible is opened and they'll locate
[15:18] Speaker 2: a verse on whatever page happened to be open, and
[15:23] Speaker 2: they're like, this verse means something. It is a reminder
[15:27] Speaker 2: that God has not abandoned us. There was a television
[15:31] Speaker 2: station in Oklahoma City where the reporter actually did a
[15:35] Speaker 2: story about a deadly tornado, and somebody found a Bible
[15:40] Speaker 2: in the debris field, and it was open to a
[15:43] Speaker 2: certain verse. I think it was out of Isaiah, some
[15:45] Speaker 2: inspirational fortune cookie. And that was the news story. Bible
[15:52] Speaker 2: found with inspirational verse in rubble. And I'm over here
[15:59] Speaker 2: like you are going, I'm sorry, hang on. The woman
[16:02] Speaker 2: who owned that bible was killed. I think it was
[16:06] Speaker 2: a grandmother. You know what I'm saying, She's dead. Sorry
[16:13] Speaker 2: about the death, Sorry about shredding a human life. Enjoy
[16:21] Speaker 2: these pieces of paper. God says, that kind of thing
[16:25] Speaker 2: makes me crazy. Some other gems on the argument's roster.
[16:33] Speaker 2: It takes more faith to be an atheist. Who's the
[16:36] Speaker 2: apologist who says this? I gotta look it up. It
[16:43] Speaker 2: takes more faith to be an atheist. He's got a
[16:49] Speaker 2: book by that title, Norman Geisler, the apologist. I think
[16:55] Speaker 2: he's dead. I think he's alive. I don't know if
[16:58] Speaker 2: there is an open Bible in his way, but I
[17:01] Speaker 2: think he's dead. I don't have to go look. I
[17:03] Speaker 2: don't have enough faith to be an atheist is the
[17:07] Speaker 2: name of his book, and this is a common thing.
[17:11] Speaker 2: It takes more faith to not believe in God. In Oklahoma,
[17:14] Speaker 2: they're going after the public schools. A lot of it
[17:17] Speaker 2: has to do. It's a riff on the teach the
[17:20] Speaker 2: controversy angle. Well, you know, intelligent design one of those
[17:26] Speaker 2: things where we need to teach both. You know, let's
[17:29] Speaker 2: teach the scientific record, let's teach evolution, let's teach cosmology
[17:35] Speaker 2: and the origins of all things according to science, and
[17:38] Speaker 2: then let's teach intelligent design, and we'll let the kids decide. Right.
[17:44] Speaker 2: That's a terrible way to approach education. It's ideology first.
[17:48] Speaker 2: It's creationism in costume is all ID really is? These
[17:53] Speaker 2: people make me crazy. Dan at eight one five, thank
[17:58] Speaker 2: you so much for calling. What's going on?
[18:00] Speaker 5: Hey, Seth, appreciate you having me on you bet. Yeah,
[18:05] Speaker 5: I don't have a specific argument exactly, but it's more
[18:09] Speaker 5: of a general, you know, flow that I encounter a lot,
[18:13] Speaker 5: and you know, my interactions with theists, and it's always
[18:18] Speaker 5: the argument of personal anecdote, regardless of what it may be.
[18:22] Speaker 5: It's Oh, I prayed for my friend to be healed
[18:26] Speaker 5: from their chronic headaches than they were healed, or you know,
[18:29] Speaker 5: it's go down the line. It's really frustrating because that
[18:33] Speaker 5: seems to me, in my personal experience, to be one
[18:37] Speaker 5: of the prevailing cruxes of the issue, where they just
[18:43] Speaker 5: can't get past a personal experience of theirs that they
[18:48] Speaker 5: have deemed to be causal instead of just maybe corollary.
[18:53] Speaker 5: And so I don't know if that's something that is
[18:56] Speaker 5: the main issue when it comes to how a lot
[18:59] Speaker 5: of theists come to their conclusions, but it's certainly one
[19:02] Speaker 5: that I've experienced, and it's really frustrating. I don't know
[19:06] Speaker 5: if you've seen the I think it's Jubilee that puts
[19:09] Speaker 5: on these kind of panels where we'll have one person
[19:12] Speaker 5: sitting at a table and like twenty people around them
[19:15] Speaker 5: trying to basically rush to the center to be able
[19:18] Speaker 5: to present an argument and discuss with them.
[19:20] Speaker 6: Have you seen that?
[19:21] Speaker 2: No, I haven't seen it.
[19:23] Speaker 5: They're interesting videos, like Alex O'Connor was on it, and
[19:26] Speaker 5: you know, he would make his various claims and then
[19:29] Speaker 5: this circle of people who disagree try and present their arguments.
[19:33] Speaker 5: But they recently and I know this particularly isn't a
[19:37] Speaker 5: religious argument, but they recently had a doctor come on
[19:40] Speaker 5: who described why vaccines are important, and he was surrounded
[19:44] Speaker 5: by twenty anti vaxxers, and every single person that came
[19:48] Speaker 5: up to make their argument about why they were against
[19:51] Speaker 5: vaccine was always about, well, I was able to, you know,
[19:56] Speaker 5: cure myself of this particular thing by just using holistic medicine.
[20:00] Speaker 5: Or this other person who was saying they know somebody
[20:04] Speaker 5: that got the vaccine and then died afterwards. It really
[20:08] Speaker 5: does seem to be a problem of correlation versus causation,
[20:12] Speaker 5: and that's really hard for people to get past.
[20:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they see validating things, or what they
[20:17] Speaker 2: believe is validating things like the pseudo documentary died suddenly
[20:24] Speaker 2: talking about all these famous people who got the COVID vaccine,
[20:28] Speaker 2: and then they keeled over, And people who didn't do
[20:32] Speaker 2: any more digging who felt vindicated in their anti vax
[20:36] Speaker 2: stance were like, Aha, these celebrities are all dead. They
[20:40] Speaker 2: died suddenly. But if they'd done a five second Google search,
[20:44] Speaker 2: they'd realize that the people that were supposed to be
[20:46] Speaker 2: dead were actually alive and well and still doing whatever
[20:49] Speaker 2: they do without a problem. I mean, it's so frustrating, right,
[20:53] Speaker 2: confirmation bias. It's everywhere.
[20:55] Speaker 5: Yeah, And the most frustrating part about it is, as
[20:58] Speaker 5: you mentioned, a lot of the time, the answers are there,
[21:02] Speaker 5: they are available, they're readily available, and they're either dismissed
[21:07] Speaker 5: or they just don't look into it enough.
[21:09] Speaker 2: I remember talking to my mother when I was having
[21:13] Speaker 2: doubts going through deconstruction, and that's one of the first
[21:17] Speaker 2: arguments that she led with, you know, I had an experience.
[21:21] Speaker 2: I had a spiritual experience. Jesus appeared to me, and
[21:24] Speaker 2: I know he's real and I know he lives in
[21:26] Speaker 2: my heart. And it was kind of a take my
[21:28] Speaker 2: word for it thing where you know, if I had
[21:31] Speaker 2: told her that I'd had an experience with the snow
[21:36] Speaker 2: globe possessing cosmic space octopus, I just know it in
[21:40] Speaker 2: my heart, take my word for it, she'd lacked me
[21:43] Speaker 2: out of the room. But I'm supposed to take her
[21:45] Speaker 2: word for it. It's a total double standard. But yeah,
[21:48] Speaker 2: the anecdotal claims it's hard to know what to do
[21:50] Speaker 2: with him except maybe flip the script and say, hey,
[21:53] Speaker 2: would you take somebody else's word if they pitched a
[21:56] Speaker 2: different god ideology, political stance, fills or whatever. That's all
[22:01] Speaker 2: I know how to do.
[22:03] Speaker 5: Yeah, it seems to be really the only approach you
[22:05] Speaker 5: can take.
[22:05] Speaker 2: It.
[22:06] Speaker 5: It's frustrating because you know a lot of times you
[22:08] Speaker 5: just end up hitting a wall where oh, well that's
[22:10] Speaker 5: not exactly the same or that's different because of X,
[22:14] Speaker 5: Y and Z, and it's yeah, there are roadblocks, But
[22:18] Speaker 5: I agree. I mean, you can't really do much when
[22:21] Speaker 5: somebody has an emotional attachment and a personal attachment to
[22:25] Speaker 5: how they come to their conclusions. I just I really
[22:28] Speaker 5: think critical thinking in general, if you just take like
[22:31] Speaker 5: religion or any specific topic out of it, I just
[22:33] Speaker 5: really think society at large has really failed to educate
[22:37] Speaker 5: its populace on how to properly think critically, and that
[22:42] Speaker 5: would solve a lot of our problems.
[22:44] Speaker 2: It would solve so many of our problems. I feel you, Dan,
[22:48] Speaker 2: great calm, Thanks for being a part of the conversation today.
[22:51] Speaker 5: Thanks for having me all right, see.
[22:53] Speaker 2: You later, Okay, I know that you, like me, just
[22:59] Speaker 2: want to sin. But we are going to continue with
[23:02] Speaker 2: more of the worst of the worst apologetics arguments out there,
[23:06] Speaker 2: plus whatever our collars want to talk about next. The
[23:15] Speaker 2: American Atheist National Convention this coming weekend. You can still
[23:20] Speaker 2: get tickets for Minneapolis, go to Convention dot Atheists dot com.
[23:27] Speaker 2: And then the first weekend in May, I'm going to
[23:29] Speaker 2: be at the Western Canadian Reason Conference, and if you
[23:32] Speaker 2: want to get tickets for Alberta, Canada, we can reason
[23:37] Speaker 2: dot com. This week we're talking about bad apologetics, some
[23:43] Speaker 2: of the worst believer arguments that you and I have
[23:46] Speaker 2: to field every single day. I had a message from
[23:51] Speaker 2: Lance in the chat, the moral argument is one of
[23:56] Speaker 2: the worst arguments for God. Where do your morals come from?
[23:59] Speaker 2: I think this is pretty basic pro social behaviors, communal
[24:05] Speaker 2: or community thinking, collectivism in that way, ethical actions benefiting another,
[24:13] Speaker 2: creating solidarity with another, which then comes back to you,
[24:17] Speaker 2: which means you are more apt to procure resources and
[24:20] Speaker 2: survive threats. So pro social behaviors are actually a great
[24:25] Speaker 2: adaptation to pass on your genes. It makes total sense
[24:28] Speaker 2: to me evolutionarily, even if altruism doesn't truly exist. Let's say,
[24:34] Speaker 2: in the back of my mind, I'm like, well, okay,
[24:37] Speaker 2: if I benefit somebody else in some way might benefit me. Whatever,
[24:41] Speaker 2: We're still talking about moral pro social behaviors and the
[24:45] Speaker 2: idea that this stuff has to be handed down from
[24:47] Speaker 2: on high. It makes no sense to me. And then
[24:51] Speaker 2: who wrote the Ten Commandments because they're mostly a waste.
[24:56] Speaker 2: We'd run through a few more of these messages on
[25:00] Speaker 2: the chat. Frank Tuuric, thank you. He's the apologist I
[25:04] Speaker 2: was first thinking of. He says, you don't have it
[25:07] Speaker 2: takes more faith to be an atheist. And he also
[25:09] Speaker 2: says that's a common denominator among people who deconstruct out
[25:15] Speaker 2: of Christianity just want to have sex. It's all about sex,
[25:19] Speaker 2: sexual shame, and sexual sin. They want to go out
[25:22] Speaker 2: and do all these prurrian things. Well, you know, there's
[25:26] Speaker 2: a component to kicking away the shame and the quote
[25:30] Speaker 2: unquote moral restraints, but he's just trying to reduce it
[25:34] Speaker 2: to everybody wants to go out and have orgies, which
[25:37] Speaker 2: you know, I don't think that's really the driving force
[25:41] Speaker 2: behind people asking is this true case? G R seven
[25:47] Speaker 2: has asked why my webcam is so shaky? Fair question,
[25:52] Speaker 2: terrible answer. I shake my leg when I'm sitting in
[25:56] Speaker 2: a chair, drives Natalie crazy. You know that invisible baby
[26:01] Speaker 2: bouncing on the knee thing. I'm always doing it, and
[26:05] Speaker 2: I have to try to remember to Will myself out
[26:08] Speaker 2: of it. That's why the camera was shaking. We did
[26:10] Speaker 2: not have an earthquake in Oklahoma. I was sitting here
[26:14] Speaker 2: bouncing my knee like an idiot. I've done this. I
[26:18] Speaker 2: do it in movie theaters and Natalie has to nudge me.
[26:21] Speaker 2: I did it on the bleachers. We were watching one
[26:24] Speaker 2: of the grandkids play a ballgame, and I didn't realize
[26:28] Speaker 2: I was doing it, and the entire row apparently was
[26:31] Speaker 2: ding ding ding ding ding, and Natalie's like, hey, squit it,
[26:36] Speaker 2: You're bouncing the parents on the entire row. Oh sorry
[26:40] Speaker 2: about that. So anyway, I throw myself at your mercy.
[26:45] Speaker 2: Oh look, super chats and some much welcome support to
[26:50] Speaker 2: the channel. Hunter Biden's laptops says, thanks for appearing on
[26:55] Speaker 2: Secular Rising last night. This is doctor J Bundy. Hey,
[26:59] Speaker 2: doctor J. Big smart people, and I had to follow
[27:03] Speaker 2: Jay on the freaking show, right, So we've got a
[27:07] Speaker 2: PhD followed by the guy that took thirty years to
[27:10] Speaker 2: figure out that donkeys can't speak Hebrew. That's awesome, that's awesome,
[27:14] Speaker 2: Thanks for that Secular Rarity. Thank you for making me
[27:17] Speaker 2: do that. But we were hanging out in the green
[27:19] Speaker 2: room and had a great conversation and it was a
[27:22] Speaker 2: real honor. So hey, doctor j it's an honor to
[27:24] Speaker 2: be able to have you here. Craig says, Islamic apologetics
[27:29] Speaker 2: seemed to dive deep into numerology. The number nineteen seems
[27:34] Speaker 2: to be a big deal into retro predicting historical events.
[27:40] Speaker 2: I don't know that much about Islam, but I do
[27:42] Speaker 2: know there's a lot of Da Vinci code type apologists
[27:45] Speaker 2: who were always doing weird math to try to make
[27:48] Speaker 2: the nonsensical make sense. The only thing it proves to
[27:51] Speaker 2: me is that human beings are pattern seekers or pattern makers,
[27:56] Speaker 2: connecting dots, even the ones that aren't supposed to be connected.
[28:00] Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. They're like, oh, this means something. Well,
[28:04] Speaker 2: what it means is is that we are pattern seeking primates.
[28:08] Speaker 2: That's what it means. Ben says that I have a
[28:12] Speaker 2: nervous trump twitch. Okay, Cookie Monster says, I'm just trembling
[28:19] Speaker 2: in fear of God. Bohemian Lucy has asked the question,
[28:27] Speaker 2: what is retro predicting? Oh, that's such a good question.
[28:32] Speaker 2: So what we do is somebody writes a prophecy, and
[28:35] Speaker 2: the Old and New Testament are great examples or the
[28:37] Speaker 2: Old Testament, New Testament and modern day headlines are a
[28:40] Speaker 2: great example of this. But what you often will do
[28:45] Speaker 2: is somebody who is more of a contemporary makes a
[28:48] Speaker 2: prediction or says that something has transpired rather that is
[28:52] Speaker 2: a fulfillment of prophecy. But they are already aware of
[28:57] Speaker 2: the prophecy that was made before and were able to
[29:00] Speaker 2: sort of mold or retro fit this prophetic occurrence into
[29:05] Speaker 2: the story of old or the people who write the
[29:10] Speaker 2: fulfilled prophecy had access to the old material. So the
[29:14] Speaker 2: New Testament writer has access to the Old Testament story,
[29:20] Speaker 2: and then the New Testament people say the fulfilled prophecy happened. Well,
[29:25] Speaker 2: we can't verify either one of them, but somebody was
[29:28] Speaker 2: using a cheat sheet. And again we still have vague
[29:31] Speaker 2: predictions where people are connecting dots because they want to,
[29:35] Speaker 2: and we have a ton of failed prophecies like the
[29:37] Speaker 2: prophecy of Tire and the Old Testament totally failed. Nobody
[29:42] Speaker 2: wants to talk about that one. Nobody wants to talk
[29:45] Speaker 2: about that one. You were never a true Christian to
[29:51] Speaker 2: begin with, Oh seth, Nobody, nobody who ever really knew God,
[29:59] Speaker 2: nobody who ever knew had a relationship with the risen Savior,
[30:03] Speaker 2: with Jesus Christ, would have ever walked away from him? No,
[30:06] Speaker 2: you were a counterfeit, You were an impostor. Oh you
[30:10] Speaker 2: may have thought you were a Christian, but absolutely not.
[30:14] Speaker 2: What you needed was a true and authentic encounter, and
[30:18] Speaker 2: then you would still be a believer. How dare somebody
[30:22] Speaker 2: else tell me what's going on in my own mind
[30:25] Speaker 2: and heart? If Dan Barker, who was a preacher for
[30:29] Speaker 2: a lot of years and he's co president of the
[30:31] Speaker 2: Freedom from Religion Foundation, he likes to say, if I
[30:34] Speaker 2: wasn't a true Christian, nobody was. And I feel the
[30:37] Speaker 2: same way. I was all in true blue Bible believing
[30:41] Speaker 2: Bible literalist Christian and so to have some third party
[30:46] Speaker 2: sitting in the cheap seats looking at me going, ah,
[30:49] Speaker 2: you didn't do it, you weren't there, I'm like, you
[30:52] Speaker 2: have no idea what you're talking about. You didn't see
[30:55] Speaker 2: me when I was just a kid walking up the
[30:57] Speaker 2: aisle at Eastwood Baptist Church almost crying because the Revival
[31:01] Speaker 2: preacher had rattled my cage. I wanted to go to Heaven.
[31:05] Speaker 2: I sure didn't want to go to hell. So I
[31:07] Speaker 2: went forward and I pleaded with all my heart, Dear Jesus,
[31:11] Speaker 2: save me and take me to heaven. I mean, I
[31:15] Speaker 2: couldn't have been more sincere. And then after that, I
[31:18] Speaker 2: was so insecure about getting it wrong or losing my
[31:22] Speaker 2: salvation and going to hell. That's all the time I
[31:26] Speaker 2: continued to restate the salvation prayer, Dear Jesus, please save me,
[31:31] Speaker 2: cleanse my heart. I know I'm a sinner, Please I
[31:34] Speaker 2: you know, please rescue me, you know, make me a Christian,
[31:38] Speaker 2: over and over and over and over and over again.
[31:42] Speaker 2: So I followed the instructions in the New Testament. If
[31:46] Speaker 2: you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and
[31:48] Speaker 2: believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
[31:51] Speaker 2: you will be saved. I qualify. If anybody qualifies, totally
[31:56] Speaker 2: irritates me, or what's another one. You took this verse
[32:00] Speaker 2: out of context, usually in the context of slavery. Discussions
[32:05] Speaker 2: of slavery, well, you know it. It was a different time,
[32:09] Speaker 2: so the owning of other human beings and the beating
[32:13] Speaker 2: of people who were enslaves or they were indentured servants,
[32:20] Speaker 2: so they were just paying off a debt. When somebody
[32:23] Speaker 2: beat them with a stick and made them unconscious for
[32:27] Speaker 2: two days, and then kept them for the master's entire
[32:31] Speaker 2: life until the slave died, and the offspring of the
[32:36] Speaker 2: slave got to be slaves themselves, on and on through
[32:40] Speaker 2: the generation. So oh, yeah, that's indentured servitude. You know
[32:45] Speaker 2: I'm saying. You know, that's sorry. Weird verses are metaphor
[32:52] Speaker 2: or parable, conveniently literal verses that might align in some
[32:58] Speaker 2: way with the his historical record. Well, those happened. Everything
[33:02] Speaker 2: else is allegory or it's a moral lesson Jesus Christ,
[33:06] Speaker 2: if you'll pardon the expression. Bob said, I just didn't
[33:13] Speaker 2: read it with the correct spirit, right, which is another
[33:16] Speaker 2: apologetic Well you need to get saved. Well, this doesn't
[33:20] Speaker 2: make any sense to me. Well, you have to have
[33:22] Speaker 2: the Holy Spirit to be able to properly discern God's message.
[33:27] Speaker 2: Well when do I get that? Well, you get the
[33:30] Speaker 2: Holy Spirit when you get saved. Wait a minute, if
[33:34] Speaker 2: I'm not saved, how do I get the Holy Spirit
[33:36] Speaker 2: to get saved so I can have the Holy Spirit?
[33:39] Speaker 2: This makes no sense. Four three four calling out of
[33:43] Speaker 2: Kansas City, Thanks for waiting, are you there?
[33:45] Speaker 7: Yes, sir, Hey, how you doing today?
[33:47] Speaker 2: Excellent. Let's talk. We're venting frustrations about bad apologetics. What's
[33:54] Speaker 2: on your mind?
[33:55] Speaker 7: First off, seth, I apologize. I have a bit of
[33:58] Speaker 7: a speech impediment. I wanted to say I was the
[34:02] Speaker 7: guy who posted on your Thomas Jefferson's speech that got
[34:05] Speaker 7: the most likes talking about your fire being mixed with
[34:08] Speaker 7: compassion and empathy for others.
[34:10] Speaker 2: Oh, thank you, Yeah, no problem.
[34:12] Speaker 7: You really helped in my deconversion. In your level of
[34:15] Speaker 7: empathy that you show and even some of your satires
[34:18] Speaker 7: just wonderful. The reason I called in it wasn't that
[34:22] Speaker 7: I'm from Kansas City, but I wanted to talk about
[34:24] Speaker 7: the Kansas City Capital protest this last weekend. And I
[34:29] Speaker 7: don't know if you're aware of it. There was a
[34:32] Speaker 7: protest by the Satanic Grotto. Basically, Michael Stewart, the head
[34:37] Speaker 7: of the grotto, saw an anti abortion protest in the Capitol,
[34:41] Speaker 7: decided he wanted to do one. They got the permits
[34:44] Speaker 7: to do it in the Capitol, and the last minute
[34:47] Speaker 7: the governor basically pulled it and said they could do
[34:49] Speaker 7: it outside. They decided to do it outside and you
[34:52] Speaker 7: can see video of it on YouTube and stuff like that.
[34:55] Speaker 7: The part of it that bothered me was and they
[34:57] Speaker 7: got too because they said they had a consecrated host
[35:00] Speaker 7: to all this kind of stuff. But the part that
[35:01] Speaker 7: bothered me is I had a twenty year career in
[35:04] Speaker 7: law enforcement. At one point, when he went to desecrate
[35:08] Speaker 7: the Eucharist, a Catholic basically dived on it and shoved
[35:11] Speaker 7: at his mouth, and the police were very slow to
[35:15] Speaker 7: react when he went in the capital.
[35:17] Speaker 4: He walked in the capital as he said he would do. Basically,
[35:21] Speaker 4: they allowed.
[35:22] Speaker 7: A gentleman to assault him twice, and then finally when
[35:25] Speaker 7: he hit the guy back, they intervene tackled him and
[35:29] Speaker 7: you can watch it on the video. The other guy
[35:30] Speaker 7: just walks off casually. And from what I understand, several
[35:34] Speaker 7: people were arrested about it, but they had thousands and
[35:38] Speaker 7: thousands of Catholics basically protesting thirty people. And I just
[35:43] Speaker 7: wanted to get your thoughts and feelings on that, Like,
[35:46] Speaker 7: do you feel nowadays that the freedom of beach is
[35:49] Speaker 7: going to be contorted or twisted?
[35:52] Speaker 2: Yes? I think it is right now. I think we
[35:57] Speaker 2: are seeing the shutdown of Freezepe Beach.
[36:01] Speaker 7: Unfortunately I don't live in Kansas City. We wanted to
[36:04] Speaker 7: talk about Kansas City, but where I live would make
[36:08] Speaker 7: Oklahoma look secular. And if you ever want to know,
[36:12] Speaker 7: I can.
[36:12] Speaker 3: Reach out to you.
[36:13] Speaker 7: But where I live, I was a next door neighbor
[36:16] Speaker 7: of probably one of the largest pastors in history, And
[36:22] Speaker 7: basically I live in the buckle of the belt, and so.
[36:26] Speaker 4: I get the idea of ideas.
[36:28] Speaker 7: Being so scary around here. I mean it's I'm a
[36:31] Speaker 7: closet atheist. I can't come out in the environment I'm
[36:34] Speaker 7: in because this town is we have more churches than restaurants.
[36:40] Speaker 2: You can throw a rock here, and it's always say
[36:42] Speaker 2: we have two things in abundance, tornadoes and churches, and
[36:46] Speaker 2: the tornadoes are easier to escape. So you probably feel
[36:50] Speaker 2: a little bit like that you're surrounded right.
[36:53] Speaker 7: There is like literally no protest around here because you
[36:56] Speaker 7: will be shut down immediately. They don't care about free
[37:01] Speaker 7: speech around here pretty much. So it's just that because
[37:04] Speaker 7: I feel like more so now people are withdrawing into
[37:08] Speaker 7: closets because they don't want to talk about their political
[37:11] Speaker 7: ideology or the religious ideology or the correlation between the two.
[37:16] Speaker 7: Like you, I grew up in an extremely fundamentalist environment.
[37:21] Speaker 7: Trust me, I have the scars to prove it. But
[37:24] Speaker 7: I know what religious fundamentalism is, and I'm seeing what
[37:29] Speaker 7: they prophesize at the end times. And you have people
[37:32] Speaker 7: that are really trying to push for that right now,
[37:35] Speaker 7: the idea of unifying Israel because it's biblical, bringing the
[37:40] Speaker 7: Jews back. You have this entire faith office in the
[37:44] Speaker 7: West Wing now with wonderful Paula White leading the charge,
[37:49] Speaker 7: and I feel like a lot of people are very scared.
[37:52] Speaker 7: I know some of the people around here that are
[37:54] Speaker 7: closet atheists are scared about what that means. You know,
[37:57] Speaker 7: you definitely don't want to come out now.
[38:00] Speaker 2: Is there like an argument that many believers make along
[38:05] Speaker 2: the thinking of the show? Is there anything that you
[38:07] Speaker 2: have heard that just makes you Oh?
[38:09] Speaker 4: No, absolutely.
[38:11] Speaker 7: I get all of the normal apologetics. In fact, I
[38:15] Speaker 7: graduated from a Christian university and I took course work
[38:19] Speaker 7: on apologetics. But it's you taking it out of context. Well,
[38:23] Speaker 7: what he's trying to say here is blank, you think
[38:28] Speaker 7: you're smarter than God. Just a lot of stuff like that,
[38:31] Speaker 7: And it's a lot of the priests suppositional Oh well
[38:34] Speaker 7: you think you're smarter than God? Oh you just want
[38:37] Speaker 7: to denounce him, and around here that is a conversation
[38:42] Speaker 7: that could potentially lead to physical problems, just because around here,
[38:47] Speaker 7: I've seen people involved in fistfights over religion, just in
[38:51] Speaker 7: the town I live, and it feels like it's getting worse.
[38:55] Speaker 7: A lot of these Christians feel more empowered.
[38:59] Speaker 2: And they see to be invoking almost the Old Testament
[39:02] Speaker 2: God theirs isn't that Jesus loves the little children God.
[39:06] Speaker 2: It's the Yahweh's going to jack you up God. That's
[39:09] Speaker 2: the one they seem to be really into these days.
[39:11] Speaker 2: It's scary times. I don't know. I've been having this conversation.
[39:16] Speaker 2: How do we correct it all without violence? I don't
[39:19] Speaker 2: want violence. I don't condone violence, but I wonder at
[39:23] Speaker 2: some point. I mean, I was watching the Alex Garland
[39:27] Speaker 2: film Civil War the other day and I thought, this
[39:30] Speaker 2: is like contemporary. I could project modern headlines onto what's
[39:36] Speaker 2: happening here. And I think it was directed and produced
[39:39] Speaker 2: that way so that it's sort of evergreen. Whatever factions
[39:43] Speaker 2: are going head to head, whatever splintering of a nation
[39:46] Speaker 2: might be taking place, you can say, oh, yeah, this
[39:49] Speaker 2: is relevant. And I thought, you know what happens, and
[39:53] Speaker 2: I fear. It's just a matter of time. There's going
[39:55] Speaker 2: to be bombs and fires and bullets and fists the street,
[40:01] Speaker 2: and I'm scared.
[40:02] Speaker 4: I think that you have the right idea.
[40:05] Speaker 7: Sometimes what brings me peace is listening to you guys
[40:09] Speaker 7: and knowing there's community out there, and especially from you
[40:12] Speaker 7: said you come from a place of empathy. You understand
[40:16] Speaker 7: you went through the Satanic panic with us. You know
[40:18] Speaker 7: you you live these experiences, and I think knowing that
[40:23] Speaker 7: others out there are like minded gives some result, at
[40:27] Speaker 7: least know to me, how about you?
[40:29] Speaker 2: I just feel like I'm not providing anything except I mean,
[40:34] Speaker 2: how many times have people called and they're like, what
[40:36] Speaker 2: do we do? I feel overwhelmed, everything's going crazy and
[40:41] Speaker 2: I sit here blankly and go, yeah, you're right. I
[40:44] Speaker 2: don't have any solutions. I feel like an idiot. I
[40:47] Speaker 2: feel kind of powerless. But I do want to be
[40:50] Speaker 2: an encourager, and I am activating. In fact, talking about
[40:55] Speaker 2: an event that has been going on nationwide. I actually
[41:01] Speaker 2: I'll talk about it here in a second. But I
[41:02] Speaker 2: had an activism poster for a live demonstration printed up,
[41:06] Speaker 2: so I mean I have been public, but I don't
[41:09] Speaker 2: know what to do. Is it lip service or does
[41:11] Speaker 2: it make a difference. I think I'm in the same
[41:13] Speaker 2: boat as everybody else. Maybe there's some therapy in that
[41:18] Speaker 2: you are not alone angle, but that's all I know.
[41:21] Speaker 7: Well. I think individually we don't have much of a voice.
[41:26] Speaker 7: But I think if we remember that there are other
[41:29] Speaker 7: people out there sometimes that can give us the encouragement
[41:33] Speaker 7: to hold on to our beliefs. It's very easy in
[41:37] Speaker 7: an environment like you and I live, where you have
[41:40] Speaker 7: to talk to talk, and I like you can speak fundamentalism.
[41:44] Speaker 7: I mean, you want to hear an altar call. I
[41:46] Speaker 7: can do a great one, but I don't know what
[41:50] Speaker 7: the answer is, And I like you am a big
[41:52] Speaker 7: pacifist despite previous careers in my life, I detest violence.
[41:58] Speaker 7: I think that the way that we arging to win
[42:01] Speaker 7: is or not really win, but just bide our time
[42:05] Speaker 7: and try to like you're doing right now, find ways
[42:08] Speaker 7: that we can resist passively. But let the world know
[42:14] Speaker 7: that we're out there.
[42:15] Speaker 4: There are people that are.
[42:17] Speaker 7: You know, they look at you around here.
[42:19] Speaker 4: Like you're a freak.
[42:20] Speaker 7: I have told a few people and they just can't
[42:23] Speaker 7: believe this concept of oh wow, you're like you're dumb
[42:27] Speaker 7: or something like you're too stupid to understand. But I
[42:31] Speaker 7: think you're doing great work, Seth, and I'll let you go,
[42:33] Speaker 7: but I just wanted to say thank you.
[42:36] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's an honor to talk to you. I
[42:38] Speaker 2: appreciate the encouragement. I'm going to talk a little bit
[42:41] Speaker 2: about my recent more recent forms of protests, such as
[42:45] Speaker 2: they are, and maybe provide a little more encouragement that
[42:48] Speaker 2: I'm taking a cue from the comments from the New
[42:51] Speaker 2: Humanists who just gave me a great idea. So I'm
[42:53] Speaker 2: going to borrow that and take credit for it. But
[42:55] Speaker 2: thanks for calling the show, and you take care, all right.
[42:59] Speaker 7: Can I say it real quick?
[43:01] Speaker 4: So I had God bless your heart, and God bless you.
[43:06] Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you so much. We'll see it all right.
[43:10] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we can speak the Christianese like that. I
[43:14] Speaker 2: can do it. I can recall it quickly. The New
[43:16] Speaker 2: Humanist in the comments that we got to form more
[43:19] Speaker 2: cohesive and active communities, ethical societies, oasis chapters, Satanic temple,
[43:25] Speaker 2: Sunday assemblies. There are options, and they need our support
[43:29] Speaker 2: and encouragement. Actually, this is a great point, and I'm
[43:31] Speaker 2: so glad you made it. I think we are better together.
[43:35] Speaker 2: I think we have to be unified. I think we do.
[43:38] Speaker 2: A lot of atheists hate the idea of forming groups
[43:41] Speaker 2: or acting in groups because they think it's a herd mentality.
[43:45] Speaker 2: This is horseshit. We are communal creatures. We are powerful,
[43:50] Speaker 2: more effective, stronger together. I think we have to put
[43:53] Speaker 2: aside petty differences that we might have here and there,
[43:57] Speaker 2: you know, the ancillary stuff, and I think we have
[43:59] Speaker 2: to come together and focus on big picture activism and resistance,
[44:04] Speaker 2: which is one of the reasons that many of my
[44:07] Speaker 2: co resistors are themselves religious people. They are state church
[44:11] Speaker 2: separation advocates, They are secular activists, they are moderate believers.
[44:17] Speaker 2: They are not necessarily Bible literalists. We disagree on theology,
[44:21] Speaker 2: but more importantly, we care about and love people and
[44:25] Speaker 2: want to save democracy. Am I going to make those
[44:28] Speaker 2: people my allies? Do I want to be their allies?
[44:31] Speaker 2: Damn skippy, Certain, yes I do. I also think those
[44:37] Speaker 2: of us who feel powerless have to find and support
[44:41] Speaker 2: those who are on the front lines, and this includes legally.
[44:44] Speaker 2: There are a lot of lawsuits being filed. There are
[44:46] Speaker 2: people who are policy experts who are on the front
[44:49] Speaker 2: lines making a case on a much larger stage than
[44:52] Speaker 2: you and I have an access to. So if we donate,
[44:56] Speaker 2: and I know it sounds lame, but what they do
[44:59] Speaker 2: takes fun. If we donate too, if we join organizations,
[45:03] Speaker 2: if we follow their work, if we subscribe to their
[45:06] Speaker 2: newsletters to stay informed, and if we donate to organizations
[45:10] Speaker 2: like Americans United for Separation of Church and State. American
[45:14] Speaker 2: Atheists has been doing quite a bit of work. I'm
[45:16] Speaker 2: on their board, the ACLU Secular Coalition for America Freedom
[45:22] Speaker 2: from Religion Foundation, who, by the way, is being sued
[45:27] Speaker 2: by Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction, because
[45:33] Speaker 2: they had the goal to say stop broadcasting Christian prayers
[45:38] Speaker 2: over public school intercoms. Ryan Walters thinks he's being harassed.
[45:44] Speaker 2: So now FFRF is facing a legal battle. Yeah, we
[45:48] Speaker 2: need to support them in a few bucks. Hey, it's
[45:51] Speaker 2: not lame. It does matter. I didn't mean to go
[45:54] Speaker 2: off on another trail. I was going to try to
[45:56] Speaker 2: do something other than Christian nationalism, politics and the state
[45:59] Speaker 2: of the state. Forgive me for that. Back to bad arguments,
[46:04] Speaker 2: Pascal's wager. I'd rather believe and be wrong, which is
[46:09] Speaker 2: crap because you can't force yourself to actually believe. If
[46:12] Speaker 2: you don't believe, then you're just projecting or saying you believe,
[46:16] Speaker 2: which means you're fooling God. Like God couldn't tell the
[46:19] Speaker 2: difference that I'm just playing a poker hand, so I
[46:22] Speaker 2: don't go to hell. Pascal's wager is just total crap.
[46:26] Speaker 2: How did something come from nothing? The eye is too
[46:30] Speaker 2: complex to have evolved, talk about crap. Not only are
[46:37] Speaker 2: there models revealing how the eye evolved naturally, models that
[46:42] Speaker 2: make perfect sense. We have examples of the various stages
[46:48] Speaker 2: of eyes. Now you can find like the organisms with
[46:54] Speaker 2: the very basic eye that just detect light, and then
[46:57] Speaker 2: you can see more complex eyes throughout the animal kingdom.
[47:01] Speaker 2: You can actually see in real time the progression of
[47:04] Speaker 2: the eye and how it would and could happen. There
[47:08] Speaker 2: were whole videos by scientists that take this one apart.
[47:11] Speaker 2: Apologists are like, look at the eye. I'm like, you
[47:14] Speaker 2: know what, Look at my bifocal glasses. Look at all
[47:18] Speaker 2: the people who had to go have lacic surgery. Look
[47:21] Speaker 2: at the people who have chronic degenerative eyesight and have
[47:25] Speaker 2: a hard time seeing their way across the room. Look
[47:27] Speaker 2: at that? Tell me about that, not that the eye
[47:29] Speaker 2: isn't wondrous and complex and amazing, but whoever that designer was, somebody,
[47:35] Speaker 2: somebody needs to be fired. Also, notice how many complexity
[47:40] Speaker 2: of the eye apologists wear corrective lenses. Yeah, notice that.
[47:49] Speaker 2: How are we doing? If I missed any of the
[47:51] Speaker 2: big apologetics out there? I know there's some that aren't
[47:55] Speaker 2: on my list. You can always sort of punch them
[47:57] Speaker 2: into the comments section and we'll take more eye of
[48:00] Speaker 2: your calls next. And hope you're having a fantastic day
[48:11] Speaker 2: and a great week. Despite all the insanity in the world.
[48:15] Speaker 2: This is a safe place. This is a hub, This
[48:18] Speaker 2: is family and a time for us to talk about
[48:21] Speaker 2: the things that amuse and occasionally frustrate us. This week,
[48:25] Speaker 2: it's bad apologetics. Let's talk to Sarah three three zero high.
[48:32] Speaker 2: Thanks for waiting on me. Are you there?
[48:35] Speaker 3: Oh my god, Hey, it's great to talk to you.
[48:37] Speaker 3: I just wanted to say I heard the last guy talking.
[48:39] Speaker 3: I work in politics for fifteen years. I'm a political
[48:42] Speaker 3: communicator and protests work. They do they build the muscle
[48:46] Speaker 3: of resistance and they get you in your community for
[48:48] Speaker 3: bigger and better protests. So getting out there and you
[48:50] Speaker 3: advocating for that stuff is amazing because it means all
[48:53] Speaker 3: of us are going to be able to get out there.
[48:55] Speaker 3: Because we see the big people like you who have
[48:58] Speaker 3: these big followingsating for it, the more and more people
[49:01] Speaker 3: are going to be doing it.
[49:02] Speaker 4: And that's that's amazing.
[49:03] Speaker 2: That's good to hear. Because I'm activating with hands Off
[49:08] Speaker 2: twenty twenty five dot com, which is a hub where
[49:11] Speaker 2: people can find various protests in their own zip code
[49:16] Speaker 2: or in their own region. And I mocked up this
[49:19] Speaker 2: big sign for the protest in photoshop. I was real
[49:22] Speaker 2: proud of it. I had Trump's White House vote. It
[49:25] Speaker 2: was posted on the official White House account of him
[49:28] Speaker 2: wearing the crown, and it said something like long lived
[49:31] Speaker 2: the King, and so under the image of King Trump
[49:37] Speaker 2: posted by the White House, I put that Thomas Jefferson
[49:40] Speaker 2: quote from his letter to George Washington, where Jefferson said
[49:43] Speaker 2: I was much an enemy to monarchy before I came
[49:46] Speaker 2: to Europe. I am ten thousand times more so since
[49:50] Speaker 2: I have seen what they are. And I debated, you know,
[49:54] Speaker 2: whether or not I should put kind of a thicker
[49:57] Speaker 2: quote on a placard that I'm holding on a street
[50:00] Speaker 2: corner but I didn't want to go out and be
[50:04] Speaker 2: so snarky and sarcastic that anybody driving by or walking
[50:09] Speaker 2: by would immediately shut down and just think I was
[50:11] Speaker 2: a woke, live, evil person. I don't think they can
[50:14] Speaker 2: do as much. With a quote from one of the
[50:17] Speaker 2: founding fathers, I think that takes some of the teeth
[50:20] Speaker 2: out of them. I don't know. Do you have a
[50:21] Speaker 2: perspective on that?
[50:23] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. So I'm working on this video on
[50:26] Speaker 3: why we need to rework federalism right now. And you
[50:29] Speaker 3: just hit to the point of it, right, which is
[50:31] Speaker 3: that Republicans are attempting to create essentially petty dictator shifts
[50:36] Speaker 3: with their own rules and restrictions in every state. And
[50:38] Speaker 3: that's the same thing as a kingdom just writ small.
[50:42] Speaker 3: And what the federal government is supposed to do is
[50:44] Speaker 3: protect our liberties and not reduce them into this like
[50:47] Speaker 3: Christian nationalist mindset. And we see that happening, especially in
[50:51] Speaker 3: your Oklahoma with the education stuff and with reproductive liberties everywhere. Yeah,
[50:55] Speaker 3: Thomas Jefferson is right that like this sort of rule
[50:59] Speaker 3: by the few, whether it's a king or a preacher,
[51:02] Speaker 3: is unfit for an American democracy.
[51:06] Speaker 2: Oh, you're good. Any other advice for us as far
[51:09] Speaker 2: as what to do and where to do it, because
[51:12] Speaker 2: I think that's the one thing we're waiting for, the
[51:15] Speaker 2: flash point. We're waiting for the rallying flag. We want
[51:18] Speaker 2: to do something, but we don't know where to be effective,
[51:20] Speaker 2: and people feel helpless and sometimes give up any thoughts there.
[51:24] Speaker 3: Yeah, So I originally come from like a very middle
[51:27] Speaker 3: class town in central Ohio, and I was triving to
[51:29] Speaker 3: see my parents. I saw like ten people out on
[51:32] Speaker 3: the corner of our city hall protesting Trump. Never seen
[51:36] Speaker 3: that before in my life. You protest with your small
[51:39] Speaker 3: group of people in your community, build those structures of
[51:42] Speaker 3: support in places they've never been before, and that builds
[51:45] Speaker 3: your muscles. So when the big action comes, and the
[51:47] Speaker 3: thing that the United States is kind of bad at
[51:49] Speaker 3: is getting to the mass mobilization. So that is the
[51:52] Speaker 3: goal that everyone should be working for, is like a
[51:54] Speaker 3: mass day of strike or just a mass day of
[51:57] Speaker 3: protest or whatever if it happened on like a Saturday
[51:59] Speaker 3: or something, so that everybody gets out there and is
[52:01] Speaker 3: ready to do it in their town because it has
[52:04] Speaker 3: to be seen everywhere. It can't just be in DC
[52:06] Speaker 3: and in Central Park.
[52:08] Speaker 2: Good stuff. Thanks for offering that up wheelchew on it
[52:11] Speaker 2: and do something with it. Appreciate you so.
[52:13] Speaker 3: Much, Thank you, thank you for what you do.
[52:16] Speaker 4: You're amazing.
[52:16] Speaker 2: Oh, thanks so much. Take it easy, We'll see you.
[52:20] Speaker 2: Let's see that website that I was talking about is
[52:23] Speaker 2: handsoff twenty twenty five dot com in the comments if
[52:28] Speaker 2: you are aware of I know there's is it fifty
[52:31] Speaker 2: fifty one and it's the words fifty to fifty one
[52:36] Speaker 2: dot com? Is that right? They're another hub where people
[52:40] Speaker 2: can find and either participate in or organize their own
[52:44] Speaker 2: protest and go public. I think the more and more
[52:48] Speaker 2: and more people are being visible. Once again, we have
[52:51] Speaker 2: spun from apologetic arguments that drive is crazy. Then we're
[52:55] Speaker 2: talking about the culture, politics, Trump Project twenty twenty and
[53:00] Speaker 2: the end of all things, the decline of Western civilization.
[53:04] Speaker 2: I guess this is just so on everybody's mind. We're
[53:07] Speaker 2: going to gravitate back to that. I'll let you decide
[53:11] Speaker 2: if that's what you want to talk about. It's true
[53:15] Speaker 2: because the Bible says so using the book to prove
[53:18] Speaker 2: the book that's always a joy. Have you heard this one?
[53:22] Speaker 2: All religions deserve respect. Why can't you respect religion? And
[53:28] Speaker 2: I always respond that I think when possible, people should
[53:32] Speaker 2: get respect, But ideas have to earn it, don't they.
[53:36] Speaker 2: Somebody walks in and they have a claim that we
[53:39] Speaker 2: automatically say, well, that claim is deeply held, that's a
[53:43] Speaker 2: sacred belief to one person. Therefore what that belief gets deference?
[53:48] Speaker 2: That's crazy. I saw somebody post this one. Oh, look,
[53:53] Speaker 2: they think they found Noah's Ark again. This was just
[53:59] Speaker 2: two or three weeks ago. I posted it on the
[54:01] Speaker 2: Thinking Atheists Facebook page. I'm like, how many times are
[54:04] Speaker 2: they going to discovered Noah's Ark and then realize it's
[54:07] Speaker 2: a mound of freaking dirt. Look, it's a little overlooking thing.
[54:15] Speaker 2: Therefore it is an arc. It is the arc of Genesis.
[54:21] Speaker 2: There are no atheists in Foxholes. You have not been
[54:27] Speaker 2: listening to this show, as we have. Members of the
[54:29] Speaker 2: military call quite often and they talk about what it's
[54:32] Speaker 2: like to be an atheist in the armed forces, often
[54:36] Speaker 2: deployed in combat. What about the longevity argument. If it's
[54:41] Speaker 2: not true, how come it's the most popular religion on
[54:46] Speaker 2: the planet two thousand years later?
[54:49] Speaker 4: Right?
[54:50] Speaker 2: If it's not true, why has it been around for
[54:52] Speaker 2: thousands upon thousands of years. Of course it's true, or
[54:57] Speaker 2: it wouldn't have stuck. Are you kidding? Or look at it?
[55:02] Speaker 2: Can two billion people be wrong? And of course our
[55:06] Speaker 2: answer is yes, you know, yeah, I'm sorry. Mass delusion
[55:15] Speaker 2: is delusion, isn't it? I did just I don't know.
[55:18] Speaker 2: That's just me. Let's see, is it? Emily at six
[55:22] Speaker 2: six zero high? Are you there?
[55:25] Speaker 1: Hello?
[55:25] Speaker 2: Hi a Emily, welcome. We're talking apologetics, arguments that make
[55:31] Speaker 2: us crazy? Is that what you want to talk about?
[55:33] Speaker 6: Yeah? When you brought up the Passcales wager earlier, it
[55:37] Speaker 6: made me think it was an argument my grandma actually
[55:40] Speaker 6: pretty us. It gives me once it's similar to the
[55:42] Speaker 6: past those wagers, except she admitted She's like, oh, I
[55:47] Speaker 6: understand that I may be wrong and go to hell,
[55:50] Speaker 6: but I would rather die trying. Does that make sense?
[55:53] Speaker 2: How sad? Is that kind of a life? You are
[55:56] Speaker 2: pledging at least an outward allegiance to the one who
[56:00] Speaker 2: might burn you in a furnace, and that's kind of
[56:03] Speaker 2: the place she's stuck with.
[56:04] Speaker 6: Huh Yeah, I think so. I mean this was several
[56:07] Speaker 6: years ago, so like I maybe misremembering, but Yeah, that's
[56:11] Speaker 6: how I remember. It almost felt like she was gambling.
[56:14] Speaker 2: Oh, it is gambling. It's very much not a statement
[56:17] Speaker 2: of conviction. It's hedging your bets. And I think the
[56:23] Speaker 2: lack of conviction in that position essentially it's self interest.
[56:27] Speaker 2: So it's very sad to hear, but it does sound accurate.
[56:30] Speaker 2: So anything else.
[56:32] Speaker 1: Oh, not off?
[56:33] Speaker 6: Ten, I don't. I really appreciate you taking my call,
[56:36] Speaker 6: and I appreciate all the work you do.
[56:38] Speaker 2: And no, it's a joy to speak to you. You
[56:41] Speaker 2: keep on keeping on and call the show again sometime. Okay, okay,
[56:49] Speaker 2: Ignore the Old Testament and focus on the New Testament.
[56:52] Speaker 2: Have you heard that one? I'm sorry? Did you just
[56:56] Speaker 2: write off more than half of the bottom. Did you
[56:59] Speaker 2: just like a machete and go shunk? Ignore that? Ignore
[57:05] Speaker 2: the Old Testament, which means what now? The Adam and
[57:08] Speaker 2: Eves story's gone. Ten Commandments are gone, the exodus from Egypt,
[57:12] Speaker 2: all that's gone, The walls of Jericha, all that stuff's gone.
[57:15] Speaker 4: Eh.
[57:15] Speaker 2: Whatever, it's shunk or Jesus came and undid the Old Testament,
[57:22] Speaker 2: which means they haven't read the Book of Matthew, where
[57:24] Speaker 2: God actually Jesus guarantees that all the law will be fulfilled,
[57:29] Speaker 2: you know, including in the Old Testament. It's crazy. There
[57:34] Speaker 2: was another comment. Let's see evil atheist said in the comment,
[57:39] Speaker 2: so if people wouldn't die for a lie, you all
[57:42] Speaker 2: better become Muslims real fast. Well to die for a
[57:45] Speaker 2: lie comment we heard with Mel Gibson on the Joe
[57:49] Speaker 2: Rogan podcast. He made the claim people don't die for
[57:55] Speaker 2: a lie, meaning that the apostles who were killed for
[57:59] Speaker 2: their faith, they wouldn't have died if it wasn't true.
[58:03] Speaker 2: There was so much wrong with that statement. Was I
[58:07] Speaker 2: on this show or a different show where I was
[58:10] Speaker 2: talking about the Heaven's Gate cult? All right, they put
[58:14] Speaker 2: on the purple tennis shoes or whatever, and they drank
[58:17] Speaker 2: poison so they could rendezvous with the comet. Well, they
[58:20] Speaker 2: were convinced they were sincere. Did they die for a lie?
[58:23] Speaker 2: Jim Jones's followers, nine hundred people dead in the field.
[58:27] Speaker 2: Did they die for a lie? Yeah, they kind of did. Right.
[58:32] Speaker 2: This idea that somebody is willing to and to the
[58:35] Speaker 2: Muslim faith, to Islamic extremism, the jihadists who are willing
[58:41] Speaker 2: to blow themselves and everybody else up to achieve paradise
[58:44] Speaker 2: and the virgins and everything else. Did they die for
[58:47] Speaker 2: a lie? Yeah, they kind of did. Let's talk to
[58:52] Speaker 2: Steve nine to seven zero. Welcome, thanks for calling.
[58:56] Speaker 8: What's up, hey, SEFs, great to be on your show.
[59:01] Speaker 8: I wanted to make one comment about the stupid thing
[59:05] Speaker 8: that theists say to defend their religion. And I get
[59:08] Speaker 8: into these discussions with Jehovah's witnesses occasionally and they always
[59:13] Speaker 8: end up saying, well, you know, they can't answer the question,
[59:16] Speaker 8: but you'll find out. You'll find out when you die,
[59:20] Speaker 8: you know, which I think is ridiculous.
[59:23] Speaker 2: Yeah, just wait till you're dad. Yeah, that's awesome, that's awesome.
[59:29] Speaker 8: Yeah. The other thing I wanted to comment on and
[59:32] Speaker 8: our political situation. I'm seventy one years old, so I
[59:36] Speaker 8: was ten years old when JFK was assassinated. And even
[59:42] Speaker 8: though I was ten years old, I remember thinking, wow,
[59:46] Speaker 8: you know, they can just somebody can come along and
[59:51] Speaker 8: kill the president, and you know, then our whole political
[59:54] Speaker 8: system goes into chaos. And then they assassinated his brother,
[1:00:00] Speaker 8: and then they killed Martin Luther King, and so we've
[1:00:04] Speaker 8: been living through, you know, some really bad stuff. So
[1:00:11] Speaker 8: it seems like what Trump is doing and Elon is
[1:00:14] Speaker 8: doing actually doesn't seem so bad after what we've been through.
[1:00:19] Speaker 8: This is a good thing in a way that it's
[1:00:21] Speaker 8: a wake up call. People are going to start saying,
[1:00:24] Speaker 8: wait a minute, you know whoa you know, maybe we
[1:00:27] Speaker 8: should start paying attention. And I think it's going to
[1:00:31] Speaker 8: create a lot more activism.
[1:00:32] Speaker 2: And you are saying that we haven't had presidential assassinations
[1:00:38] Speaker 2: and like the Martin Luther King tragedy, et cetera, the
[1:00:41] Speaker 2: murder of the civil rights activists, we haven't gotten to
[1:00:44] Speaker 2: that point where again there was gunfire and blood and
[1:00:47] Speaker 2: murder in the streets of these people. So given where
[1:00:51] Speaker 2: we are, this is a zeitgeist changing point where the
[1:00:57] Speaker 2: resistance rises, and we should see it as a good thing.
[1:01:00] Speaker 2: I don't know, A might hear in that rhyin state, Well,
[1:01:03] Speaker 2: I don't necessarily think it's a good thing, but I
[1:01:07] Speaker 2: do think it's a point of you know, if you
[1:01:10] Speaker 2: look at history and you see any violent revolutions that
[1:01:13] Speaker 2: have occurred, it's usually only when things get so bad
[1:01:18] Speaker 2: that people just can't do anything else. But you know,
[1:01:22] Speaker 2: get out on out in the streets and we may
[1:01:25] Speaker 2: be again at that point. Like like I said, they
[1:01:29] Speaker 2: refer back to the nineteen sixties when they had the
[1:01:31] Speaker 2: riots and the streets and there was you know, it
[1:01:35] Speaker 2: had gotten so bad that people, you know, the protests
[1:01:38] Speaker 2: of Vietnam War, for example. So it's just all happening again,
[1:01:44] Speaker 2: and maybe we finally will get to a point where,
[1:01:48] Speaker 2: you know, we can fix a lot of the problems
[1:01:50] Speaker 2: in the government that.
[1:01:54] Speaker 8: You know. And that's what I'm saying. I think this
[1:01:57] Speaker 8: is going to be a good thing, and that it
[1:01:58] Speaker 8: brings out the awareness that we haven't had for so long.
[1:02:03] Speaker 2: I wish I shared your optimism as I watched the
[1:02:06] Speaker 2: deportations and the shutdowns of governments, offices, protective measures, judges
[1:02:13] Speaker 2: under fire, the alienation of the United States against its
[1:02:18] Speaker 2: allies who have supported us over the centuries. I wish
[1:02:23] Speaker 2: I had your optimism. But maybe maybe there will be
[1:02:27] Speaker 2: a correction and maybe we'll survive it. All I know
[1:02:31] Speaker 2: is to keep activisting out there. Steve, So thanks for
[1:02:34] Speaker 2: calling the show. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, all right,
[1:02:37] Speaker 2: We'll see you later. How many people have heard Hitler
[1:02:43] Speaker 2: invoked by apologists? I probably jacked up my own algorithm.
[1:02:48] Speaker 2: I have noticed that whenever we talk about sensitive things
[1:02:52] Speaker 2: like this. I don't think I'm being paranoid or a
[1:02:54] Speaker 2: conspiracy theorist, but I have noticed whenever we talk about
[1:02:58] Speaker 2: sensitive stuff that those shows get less exposure on YouTube.
[1:03:06] Speaker 2: I've noticed that. I can't help but wonder if they're
[1:03:09] Speaker 2: being scanned for hot button terms and then AI or
[1:03:14] Speaker 2: whatever is knocking them down lower as far as the
[1:03:18] Speaker 2: exposure pool to potential listeners and viewers. But I'm going
[1:03:22] Speaker 2: to I mean, I don't know how to say Hitler
[1:03:25] Speaker 2: without saying Hitler. And one of the arguments is Hitler
[1:03:28] Speaker 2: was an atheist, meaning they have aligned non belief in
[1:03:32] Speaker 2: gods with one of the greatest tyrants, if not the
[1:03:37] Speaker 2: greatest tyrant and mass murderer of the twentieth century. And
[1:03:40] Speaker 2: I know it's a strong field, but you know, we
[1:03:42] Speaker 2: hear a lot of this Stalin was an atheist, and
[1:03:45] Speaker 2: I think, actually you need to do a little homework,
[1:03:48] Speaker 2: especially on I think Stalin may have been a non believer,
[1:03:51] Speaker 2: But you know, Hitler invoked God all the time. He
[1:03:55] Speaker 2: wrote about God and God's mission. You know, he believed
[1:03:58] Speaker 2: he was doing God's god work. He wrote about it
[1:04:01] Speaker 2: in mindcomft. He preached about it and screamed about it
[1:04:04] Speaker 2: from podiums in front of tens and tens and tens
[1:04:07] Speaker 2: of thousands of people. And he had alignments and allegiances
[1:04:11] Speaker 2: with the Catholic Church and blah blah blah. And of
[1:04:13] Speaker 2: course when I say that, the apologists say, well, he
[1:04:16] Speaker 2: wasn't really a true Christian. He was just politically aligning
[1:04:20] Speaker 2: with powerful organizations to be able to achieve his end goal.
[1:04:25] Speaker 2: Isn't that a convenient little excuse? You say? Okay, so
[1:04:31] Speaker 2: if they do good, they're a real Christian, and if
[1:04:34] Speaker 2: they do evil, then they're not a Christian. I've been
[1:04:38] Speaker 2: told that I just want to play God myself. The
[1:04:42] Speaker 2: reason you, arrogant, arrogant man, The only reason that you've
[1:04:46] Speaker 2: rejected God is because you wish to take God's place.
[1:04:51] Speaker 2: I've been told that Christianity is not a religion, it's
[1:04:54] Speaker 2: a relationship, and so I've got it all wrong. Well,
[1:04:57] Speaker 2: of course I gave up religion. I'm not religion. I
[1:05:01] Speaker 2: have a relationship with Jesus Christ. I guess which speaks
[1:05:04] Speaker 2: to the personal experience and the anecdote angle that many
[1:05:07] Speaker 2: people use. I've got a web call from Mike. Mike,
[1:05:13] Speaker 2: are you there.
[1:05:14] Speaker 9: Hey, can you hear we?
[1:05:15] Speaker 2: Okay, I can. Indeed, let's talk what's on your mind.
[1:05:18] Speaker 9: Well, I'm not from the US. I'm from Europe. I'm
[1:05:22] Speaker 9: from Holland, as you might say. And I might have
[1:05:26] Speaker 9: an interesting perspective for you guys, because around my parts
[1:05:30] Speaker 9: there's not really a hub of religion as you might call, like,
[1:05:34] Speaker 9: we don't have something like the Bible belt, right. So
[1:05:37] Speaker 9: I was brought up atheists. My friends were brought up atheists.
[1:05:43] Speaker 9: I think the thing that you pointed out earlier is
[1:05:46] Speaker 9: that religion and upbringing is so closely tied together that
[1:05:51] Speaker 9: since I was brought up in that environment of non religion,
[1:05:57] Speaker 9: that I cannot really relate to a p or a
[1:06:00] Speaker 9: group of persons that is so intensely religious that they
[1:06:04] Speaker 9: cannot see my point of view. So I'm wondering is
[1:06:08] Speaker 9: there a possibility of having arguments with each other at all?
[1:06:14] Speaker 2: I know that many people, especially here in this highly
[1:06:17] Speaker 2: religious United States or highly religious pockets of United States,
[1:06:21] Speaker 2: and they're big pockets. They are sincere believers living in
[1:06:25] Speaker 2: an alternate reality. And I think at some point, when possible,
[1:06:30] Speaker 2: we do have to have the hard discussions about what's
[1:06:33] Speaker 2: true what's not, what's been proven, what's moral, and what's not.
[1:06:37] Speaker 2: And I know in more secular countries they look at
[1:06:40] Speaker 2: us and wonder what in the hell is going on here?
[1:06:43] Speaker 2: But I think you know there can What was it
[1:06:46] Speaker 2: Christopher Hitchin said something like there can be no progress
[1:06:49] Speaker 2: without confrontation, and I think we are now at a
[1:06:52] Speaker 2: confrontation point in our history, and that's what we must
[1:06:56] Speaker 2: be doing and focusing on. Okay, Mike, I guess so,
[1:07:00] Speaker 2: all right, thanks for that perspective. I appreciate the call
[1:07:02] Speaker 2: very much. Take care of yourself. We'll see you later.
[1:07:05] Speaker 2: Of said, many Founding fathers were Christian, yet they still
[1:07:08] Speaker 2: knew the importance of separation and church of church and state.
[1:07:14] Speaker 2: What are great points? I made this point as well
[1:07:17] Speaker 2: in his speech I released a few weeks ago called
[1:07:20] Speaker 2: Jefferson's Jesus, and we talk about First of all, it's
[1:07:24] Speaker 2: irrelevant whether or not the founders had a personal faith.
[1:07:27] Speaker 2: Some may have believed in God, some were deists, some
[1:07:30] Speaker 2: like Jesus as a philosopher, some may have believed in
[1:07:32] Speaker 2: a divine Jesus. But when it came to the founding
[1:07:35] Speaker 2: and the structure of the United States, they purposefully left
[1:07:38] Speaker 2: God out of the constitution. People are like, we're a
[1:07:40] Speaker 2: Christian nation. Why because God's on the money? Uh huh,
[1:07:44] Speaker 2: where'd that come from? God's in the pledge?
[1:07:46] Speaker 4: Uh huh?
[1:07:46] Speaker 2: Where'd that come from? And you know this idea that
[1:07:50] Speaker 2: because somebody printed it somewhere, it's there. Okay, Well, where's
[1:07:54] Speaker 2: God printed in the United States Constitution, the governing document
[1:07:58] Speaker 2: of the entire country. Uh uh? And then their head
[1:08:04] Speaker 2: pops off and you see a spring kind of hanging
[1:08:06] Speaker 2: out of the neck, like, I'm sorry, show me one
[1:08:10] Speaker 2: mention of God, show me the word God anywhere in
[1:08:13] Speaker 2: the United States Constitution. There's the nd argument near death experience.
[1:08:20] Speaker 2: I was on my deathbed. My heart stopped for a second.
[1:08:23] Speaker 2: I floated above my body, or I saw a white
[1:08:25] Speaker 2: light and there was Grandma, and then Jesus was behind Grandma,
[1:08:28] Speaker 2: and then God was behind Jesus who was behind Grandma.
[1:08:30] Speaker 2: And it was a big It was like a big chain.
[1:08:33] Speaker 2: Everybody reached out their hand. And so therefore I know,
[1:08:35] Speaker 2: of course you and I are listening to the stories
[1:08:38] Speaker 2: about the brain deprived of oxygen and we're thinking hypoxia.
[1:08:43] Speaker 2: We're not thinking that heaven is real. Why Are you
[1:08:48] Speaker 2: stealing my joy? Why do you have to be such
[1:08:53] Speaker 2: a pain about now? You know, I'm sorry. Don't ever
[1:08:58] Speaker 2: let those people call us snowflakes. And the biggest freaking
[1:09:02] Speaker 2: Ryan Walters is the biggest freaking snowflake on the planet.
[1:09:06] Speaker 2: For somebody who doesn't believe in God, you seem obsessed.
[1:09:11] Speaker 2: You talk about God all the time. I think this
[1:09:14] Speaker 2: is self conscious and I'm like, you know, why do
[1:09:16] Speaker 2: cancer survivors or people who want to promote public health
[1:09:20] Speaker 2: talk about cancer so much? Do they worship cancer? Do
[1:09:25] Speaker 2: they believe in cancer? Do they love cancer? Are they
[1:09:29] Speaker 2: in denial about cancer? Is this a self conscious, sinful
[1:09:33] Speaker 2: approach to cancer? No, you acknowledge that it's doing harm
[1:09:37] Speaker 2: and you want to see the harm stopped?
[1:09:39] Speaker 4: Right?
[1:09:39] Speaker 2: Why do you talk about God all the time? If
[1:09:43] Speaker 2: I don't believe in God? Is such a bad argument?
[1:09:48] Speaker 2: I guess the final apologetic that I hear that makes
[1:09:51] Speaker 2: me crazy is you may not believe in God, but
[1:09:55] Speaker 2: he believes in you. That's I think that that's awesome.
[1:09:59] Speaker 2: How to say on thing without saying anything at all.
[1:10:01] Speaker 2: You may not believe in Jesus, but he believes in you. Oh,
[1:10:06] Speaker 2: thank you for that. Thank you for that nugget of wisdom.
[1:10:09] Speaker 2: Can I get an amen? Thanks for joining me for
[1:10:13] Speaker 2: the broadcast. Keep on keeping on. I'm going to go
[1:10:17] Speaker 2: and find the next protest that is going on right now.
[1:10:22] Speaker 2: My main hub is Hands Off twenty twenty five. But
[1:10:25] Speaker 2: if you've got some out there, put them in the
[1:10:27] Speaker 2: comments and we'll find rally points. Together, we can go
[1:10:30] Speaker 2: out and protest the injustice, stand for what is rights,
[1:10:34] Speaker 2: and make a difference. Be safe, I'll see you later.
[1:10:37] Speaker 1: Follow The Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
[1:10:40] Speaker 1: complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
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[1:10:51] Speaker 1: and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com.

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