# A Kat's Paw Podcast

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 31 Oct 2024, 55 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/62573466/podcast_768_katpodcast.mp3

Let's wrap up October with a bonus show loaded with host rants and listener calls! 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.
[0:13] Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred.
[0:18] Speaker 3: If I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 3: not because I put my hand on a book and
[0:24] Speaker 3: 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: My fellow animal lovers. You ever wonder if it's it's
[1:00] Speaker 2: worth it? We know it is. I know it is.
[1:05] Speaker 2: But we pay a heavy price for love, don't we.
[1:09] Speaker 2: We had a traumatic moment, so you know cat right,
[1:15] Speaker 2: probably most famous for that drawing that I did at
[1:19] Speaker 2: the Recovering from Religion fundraiser, and I did this sort
[1:22] Speaker 2: of last second sharpie drawing that was done so quickly.
[1:25] Speaker 2: There's not even a tail on the cat. It just
[1:28] Speaker 2: came out funny and it became a thing. And then
[1:31] Speaker 2: Matt Delahunty said, if we raised this much for our
[1:35] Speaker 2: fr I will have this tattooed on my body, and
[1:40] Speaker 2: he did he's got cat or that drawing that I
[1:43] Speaker 2: did of cat on his calf. I just horrified by
[1:46] Speaker 2: the idea. I'd try to talk him out of it, dude,
[1:49] Speaker 2: you know, and he just thought it was funny. And
[1:51] Speaker 2: a bunch of people have asked me to put it
[1:53] Speaker 2: on T shirts. He stell T shirts of Cat. I
[1:57] Speaker 2: don't know. I might, I don't know, but he family.
[2:00] Speaker 2: He's my child, like Linus and Gracie are my children.
[2:05] Speaker 2: He's very Persian, and I guess I've been reading about it.
[2:10] Speaker 2: I guess this is a thing with the Persian breed
[2:12] Speaker 2: that they may not be quite as lovey. They they're
[2:16] Speaker 2: not lap cats quite as much as some of the
[2:19] Speaker 2: other I mean, I've had other cats my whole life,
[2:21] Speaker 2: and they would anytime you sit down, they're on your lap,
[2:23] Speaker 2: and they're just lovey, and some wanted to be held
[2:26] Speaker 2: and not Cat. He's never been that. He likes it.
[2:31] Speaker 2: He's grafted to me, and he's definitely become more lovey
[2:36] Speaker 2: and kind of snugly over the past four or five
[2:39] Speaker 2: years as he's gotten older. But I lay down, he's
[2:43] Speaker 2: got to be right here, kind of near my neck.
[2:45] Speaker 2: If I sit on a couch, he has to be
[2:47] Speaker 2: sitting on the arm, but he won't get any closer.
[2:50] Speaker 2: I'm allowed to pet him, but only in a very
[2:53] Speaker 2: specific way, so he doesn't like fingers on the fur,
[2:57] Speaker 2: anything near the hunt of the back or his Oh
[3:00] Speaker 2: hell no. He will give the immediate warning, don't touch
[3:05] Speaker 2: that again, or you will bleed. But I can take
[3:10] Speaker 2: the back of my hand and hold it up. I
[3:12] Speaker 2: just hold it and he walks past it and he
[3:16] Speaker 2: rubs himself on it. He's rubbing his scent. I'm sure
[3:18] Speaker 2: on me. It's a sense of belonging. I'm part of
[3:22] Speaker 2: his pride, and he will start to pur very loudly,
[3:26] Speaker 2: and he might allow me to scratch his head, neck
[3:28] Speaker 2: and shoulders for about eighteen seconds, and then he decides
[3:33] Speaker 2: he's done and he turns into satan. I get the warning.
[3:37] Speaker 2: It's a very shrill I mean, stop it. So he
[3:42] Speaker 2: goes from yes, yes, yes, yes, to stop it immediately.
[3:49] Speaker 2: If I continue to scratch him for another second and
[3:52] Speaker 2: a half, he will make me bleed. Right, he just
[3:56] Speaker 2: turns on me. So I've learned, and we haven't had
[3:59] Speaker 2: him turn on me for years. I know what the
[4:02] Speaker 2: Cat wants I get the boundaries, all right, but he
[4:06] Speaker 2: is totally bonded to me. I just got back from Knoxville, Tennessee.
[4:09] Speaker 2: I spoke for the Rationalist of East Tennessee. That his
[4:12] Speaker 2: speechs there on identity beliefs. I walked back in the house,
[4:16] Speaker 2: and of course the dogs are wagging and yipping and
[4:18] Speaker 2: jumping and barking, and we have a big reunion. But
[4:21] Speaker 2: Cat is right there, traumatized that I was gone for
[4:24] Speaker 2: two days, and he follows me around. He won't leave
[4:30] Speaker 2: me alone. So he's a good kittie boy. He's a
[4:35] Speaker 2: good key boy. And a couple of weeks ago, actually
[4:41] Speaker 2: a little longer, he developed a limp in his left paw.
[4:46] Speaker 2: We just noticed it, honey, Why is he limping hobbling
[4:51] Speaker 2: into the living room? Wait a minute, what happened to him?
[4:55] Speaker 2: So we gingerly grab him. Wasn't a fan of that,
[4:59] Speaker 2: but we grab him. When we kind of massage the
[5:02] Speaker 2: foot a little bit, the ankle, We check the shoulder.
[5:05] Speaker 2: He's not jumping, he's not wincing, he's not shrieking. It
[5:08] Speaker 2: doesn't look like there's a sharp pain, but there's something
[5:11] Speaker 2: going on. Well, maybe he tweaked it jumping off a chair, right,
[5:18] Speaker 2: So we decide, well, let's just keep an eye on him,
[5:20] Speaker 2: and we do days pass. He's still limping. He is
[5:24] Speaker 2: breaking my heart. I call the veterinarian, bracing myself because
[5:30] Speaker 2: here we go. You know they're going to do a radiograph.
[5:33] Speaker 2: That's two three hundred dollars before I get out of there.
[5:37] Speaker 2: But Kat's family, let's do the right thing. I could
[5:40] Speaker 2: go to some hole in the wall that right, Oh yeah,
[5:43] Speaker 2: we'll do it for fifty nine dollars. We can get
[5:46] Speaker 2: you in right away. And I'm not going to those
[5:48] Speaker 2: sketch places. I want someone that's reputable checking out cats.
[5:53] Speaker 2: So we go in, we do the X ray, and
[5:56] Speaker 2: the doc says bone spurs. I'm not sure. I buy it.
[6:03] Speaker 2: I'm sure there are bone spurs, and they say arthritist
[6:06] Speaker 2: is a thing for older cats. But there's something about
[6:10] Speaker 2: the way he's limping that makes me think it's a
[6:12] Speaker 2: tissue injury. So right now we're having the conversation about
[6:15] Speaker 2: whether to take him in for a cat scan to
[6:18] Speaker 2: check the tissues, and then I'm doing the math on that. Okay,
[6:24] Speaker 2: how much money is not going to cost? But at
[6:25] Speaker 2: the same time, it's not about money, it's about taking cares,
[6:29] Speaker 2: about doing the right thing right. So we're having that conversation.
[6:34] Speaker 2: He is lying here right next to me. He looks content,
[6:38] Speaker 2: he's comfortable. His paw is sort of up on the
[6:42] Speaker 2: cat bed. But anyway, we were sitting in the living room,
[6:47] Speaker 2: back to my traumatic event. We're sitting in the living
[6:49] Speaker 2: room and we're having a conversation. Natalie says, well, how
[6:53] Speaker 2: old is cat? So we started doing the math. Okay,
[7:00] Speaker 2: him in twenty eleven, and they said he was about
[7:03] Speaker 2: nine months old then, so it's twenty fourteen, almost twenty fifteen,
[7:10] Speaker 2: probably fourteen years old. Fourteen. So then I make this mistake,
[7:19] Speaker 2: and I'm sure I'm going to set off your echo
[7:21] Speaker 2: when I do this, But I called back. I said, Alexa,
[7:25] Speaker 2: how long do cats live? And she says, according to
[7:32] Speaker 2: I forget the website wikipediacats dot com or something, the
[7:37] Speaker 2: average lifespan of a house cat is fourteen years. And
[7:46] Speaker 2: that and I just looked at each other. Oh my god,
[7:49] Speaker 2: it's the beginning of the end. Cats live fourteen years.
[7:55] Speaker 2: It was just terrible. So we started looking at cat
[8:01] Speaker 2: like he's terminally ill. This is it. He's just gonna
[8:05] Speaker 2: fall over, he's gonna deteriorate. We're gonna wake up someday
[8:08] Speaker 2: and he's gonna be just dead on the bit. Totally
[8:12] Speaker 2: worst case scenario ourself immediately. And then I got smart
[8:17] Speaker 2: and I pulled out my phone and I went to
[8:20] Speaker 2: a reputable side. I went to the ASPCA website to
[8:23] Speaker 2: learn more about cats, and okay, they often live a
[8:30] Speaker 2: lot longer than fourteen. Some cats live to be sixteen seventeen.
[8:34] Speaker 2: There have been some who have reached twenty. It may
[8:37] Speaker 2: not be the beginning of the end, after all, but
[8:42] Speaker 2: I can help it. Now. When I look at him,
[8:45] Speaker 2: I think, how long do we have? How long do
[8:48] Speaker 2: we have?
[8:48] Speaker 4: Shit?
[8:49] Speaker 2: I'm doing it with Linus and Gracie. Oh long, Linus
[8:53] Speaker 2: is ten little dogs live? What fifteen? Sixteen seventeen? Okay,
[8:58] Speaker 2: I'll take that. I'll take it. It's a heavy price
[9:01] Speaker 2: we pay for love. It's worth it. It's worth it
[9:07] Speaker 2: every minute of every day. It's worth it. But it's
[9:09] Speaker 2: a heavy price we pay for love. Anyway, Maybe call
[9:15] Speaker 2: him the veterinarian again today to I don't know. I'm
[9:20] Speaker 2: just suspicious that this is some sort of a specific
[9:24] Speaker 2: injury beyond arthritis. I don't know. I'm not asking you
[9:29] Speaker 2: to email. I mean, I know a lot of people
[9:30] Speaker 2: have experience. If you want to share that, great, I'm
[9:32] Speaker 2: not trying to get diagnoses on social media that way
[9:37] Speaker 2: madness lies. It has been an interesting week. I early
[9:43] Speaker 2: voted for the first time in my life. I think,
[9:48] Speaker 2: if I'm going to be honest, there are two main reasons. One,
[9:51] Speaker 2: I just wanted to get it done because I'm apprehensive.
[9:54] Speaker 2: I saw a meme or a cartoon where there was
[9:58] Speaker 2: a dog and he had one of those vests on
[10:01] Speaker 2: that said thunder shirt, you know the things that are
[10:04] Speaker 2: supposed to make dogs feel safe and secure when storms come.
[10:08] Speaker 2: And then his owner is sitting in front of the
[10:10] Speaker 2: television set and he's wearing a vest and it says
[10:12] Speaker 2: election shirt to help keep him from having anxiety. I
[10:17] Speaker 2: have anxiety. So I think part of me wanted to
[10:22] Speaker 2: just go. But I don't have to think about it
[10:24] Speaker 2: for another week, and wonder are there going to be
[10:27] Speaker 2: huge lines? What if I don't make it through, you
[10:29] Speaker 2: know that kind of thing. And the second concern I have,
[10:32] Speaker 2: and I think this is legitimate, I'm worried about some
[10:35] Speaker 2: batshit crazy person driving through the parking lot shooting at
[10:40] Speaker 2: the crowd with an AR fifteen. I don't think that's unwarranted.
[10:43] Speaker 2: There are some nutbars out there. I think election violence,
[10:47] Speaker 2: I hate to say this, I think it's inevitable. I
[10:50] Speaker 2: think there are going to be outbreaks of violent pockets
[10:54] Speaker 2: of violence all over the place, and you never know where.
[10:58] Speaker 2: I think it's the agents of chaos are going to
[11:00] Speaker 2: go and sew chaos. They want obfuse scation. They want
[11:04] Speaker 2: to make sure that it's so jacked up and crazy
[11:07] Speaker 2: and chaotic that nobody knows what's up or down, or
[11:10] Speaker 2: true or false. And it's in that fog of war
[11:13] Speaker 2: that the bad people can cry foul and maneuver and
[11:17] Speaker 2: cheat and steal.
[11:18] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[11:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm terrified of that. So I thought, Okay, I
[11:22] Speaker 2: want to early vote for the first time in my life.
[11:25] Speaker 2: Natalie agreed, so we set out the morning. She decided
[11:29] Speaker 2: she was going to get into work late. She made
[11:31] Speaker 2: that arrangement she had to be in by ten thirty. Okay, well,
[11:35] Speaker 2: if we get in line at eight point fifteen, we
[11:38] Speaker 2: should be fine. I'm thinking a half an hour forty
[11:43] Speaker 2: minutes to get through and vote early. We show up
[11:47] Speaker 2: at the polling place, and the parking lots spilled out
[11:51] Speaker 2: of the parking lots into a grassy and dirt area,
[11:55] Speaker 2: cars everywhere. It looked like freaking woodstock. It was an
[12:00] Speaker 2: ocean of people coming out of the building. There was
[12:03] Speaker 2: a line and it wrapped all the way down to
[12:05] Speaker 2: the north and then it went around the building. And
[12:07] Speaker 2: as we walked around over there, that line went so
[12:10] Speaker 2: far I couldn't see the end of it. It wrapped
[12:15] Speaker 2: around some distant fence, and we thought, what in the
[12:20] Speaker 2: world are we going to be able to get through
[12:23] Speaker 2: this in time to get Natalie to work? How long
[12:25] Speaker 2: is it going to take? What's happening? So we went
[12:27] Speaker 2: ahead and hopped in two hours, two hours, edging forward
[12:33] Speaker 2: step by step until finally we did cast our votes,
[12:37] Speaker 2: and we have that sigh of relief. We got our
[12:39] Speaker 2: eye voted stickers. I don't know why I have such
[12:42] Speaker 2: a rush whenever I can get an eye voted sticker. Yay,
[12:45] Speaker 2: I voted. There are some people who say it doesn't
[12:47] Speaker 2: make a lick of difference, especially in a red state
[12:50] Speaker 2: like Oklahoma, and I understand why they think that it's
[12:54] Speaker 2: a pipe dream to think that Oklahoma is going to
[12:57] Speaker 2: turn blue, that it's not going to be Trump Land.
[13:00] Speaker 2: We've seen the politicians Governor Stitt, Ryan Walters, etc. But
[13:06] Speaker 2: but we are looking at Democratic candidates for mayor in
[13:13] Speaker 2: this city. The Republican mayor in Oklahoma City just published
[13:18] Speaker 2: a piece in the Oklahoma and saying he's been a Republican,
[13:21] Speaker 2: voted Republican his whole life. He feels like in order
[13:24] Speaker 2: to protect democracy he must vote for Kamala Harris. That
[13:31] Speaker 2: is massive. That is big news. That's a major shift.
[13:36] Speaker 2: Is it a reflection of what's happening overall in the
[13:40] Speaker 2: state of Oklahoma. I'm not expecting a blue wave. I'm
[13:44] Speaker 2: not a fan of that term. But are people getting
[13:47] Speaker 2: fed up. I've seen people who are on our tennis team,
[13:51] Speaker 2: in our relative social circle, in our neighborhood. I would
[13:55] Speaker 2: have never pegged them to vote Democrats and their Kamala.
[14:01] Speaker 2: They are ready loud and proud and passionate about stopping
[14:07] Speaker 2: the Trump train. Holy cow, is this a zeitgeist shift
[14:12] Speaker 2: in Oklahoma. I'm watching Texas Texas Ted Cruz, who is
[14:19] Speaker 2: pretty much without any redeeming quality. I just look at
[14:23] Speaker 2: Ted Cruz and I can hear him saying, you know,
[14:26] Speaker 2: this human suit is awfully uncomfortable. He is right there
[14:32] Speaker 2: on the bubble. Some poles have him losing his congressional seat.
[14:39] Speaker 2: Ted Cruz might lose. Wait a minute, is something happening?
[14:47] Speaker 2: We're watching the Trump rallies dwindle, people leaving early. It
[14:51] Speaker 2: just looks like a deflated balloon. Kamala rallies look like
[14:54] Speaker 2: a rock concert, filled with joy and enthusiasm. They're charged
[14:59] Speaker 2: with like tricity. Is something happening and are these early voters?
[15:05] Speaker 2: Are they there early?
[15:06] Speaker 5: Like?
[15:07] Speaker 2: I think I had read a statistic. I don't want
[15:08] Speaker 2: to misrepresent this, but that most early voters lean democratic,
[15:13] Speaker 2: they lean liberal? Is that true? We were watching the people.
[15:17] Speaker 2: You're not allowed to wear election clothing to a polling place,
[15:21] Speaker 2: that's illegal, But we were watching other markers. What do
[15:25] Speaker 2: they have? An American flag shirt and a camo hat.
[15:30] Speaker 2: That's probably Trump. We saw a lot of blue. Natalie
[15:36] Speaker 2: brought this to my attention, women wearing blue and pearls,
[15:40] Speaker 2: and I guess pearls are an indicator that you are
[15:43] Speaker 2: a Kamala voter and supporter. I didn't realize that. Then,
[15:47] Speaker 2: you know, there was somebody else who had an activist
[15:50] Speaker 2: type shirt about women or equality for women. I saw
[15:55] Speaker 2: are They just ran the gamut as far as ethnicities
[16:00] Speaker 2: beyond white people, we saw people of color across the board.
[16:04] Speaker 2: I saw people running from the age of twenty to eighty,
[16:08] Speaker 2: few people in wheelchairs and walkers. I mean it was wild.
[16:11] Speaker 2: It was a see in ocean of humanity there to
[16:14] Speaker 2: vote early. It felt I know this sounds like hyperbole,
[16:18] Speaker 2: but it just felt like history. It felt like history.
[16:26] Speaker 2: And even if and when Oklahoma gows for Trump, I
[16:30] Speaker 2: sure liked the idea of seeing the newscasters reporting statistics
[16:36] Speaker 2: to the maga types that you know, the temperature of
[16:40] Speaker 2: this state may be changing. Look at the rise of
[16:44] Speaker 2: those who are in opposition to Trump and trumpers. You
[16:50] Speaker 2: may not be in the monopoly very long. Your privilege
[16:55] Speaker 2: just might be temporary. You might be forced to share
[16:59] Speaker 2: this state equally with people who don't look like you,
[17:04] Speaker 2: sound like you, vote like you, worship like you, love
[17:08] Speaker 2: like you, and you better just get ready for it.
[17:12] Speaker 2: I really like that idea. Anyway. Just picture me, picture
[17:16] Speaker 2: my dog with the thundershirt, me with the election shirt on.
[17:21] Speaker 2: For Tuesday night, I'll probably be glued to the television.
[17:25] Speaker 2: High stress. It's stressful. Anyway, short break. I'll be right
[17:30] Speaker 2: back with more babblings and ramblings from your humble host
[17:35] Speaker 2: after this. My patrons get the broadcast early and commercial free.
[17:46] Speaker 2: If you would like to support me, go to patreon
[17:49] Speaker 2: dot com slash Seth Andrews and you have my thanks.
[17:55] Speaker 2: So there is somebody on my outer friends circle. We
[18:01] Speaker 2: would cross paths on the tennis courts ten twelve years
[18:04] Speaker 2: ago and we haven't spoken in years, and yet occasionally,
[18:10] Speaker 2: Elsie a post pop up on Facebook. You know you
[18:13] Speaker 2: have those relationships. I mean, you don't hang out with
[18:15] Speaker 2: hundreds of people, but you do have a connection in
[18:19] Speaker 2: some way. And I know she is an evangelical Conservative
[18:24] Speaker 2: and I saw a post of hers from a pastor
[18:29] Speaker 2: about state church separation. Now she is a Goden Country
[18:32] Speaker 2: Christian Nation conservative and she posted this thing from a
[18:36] Speaker 2: pastor in Tulsa. His church is called Bridge Church. His
[18:40] Speaker 2: name is Orlando Juarez. And I noticed that Karen shared
[18:46] Speaker 2: it with the words whatever you do watch this, which
[18:51] Speaker 2: is kind of what everybody's doing on Facebook and Twitter
[18:54] Speaker 2: these days. Stop whatever you're doing. If you watch one
[18:58] Speaker 2: clip today, what this? But if everybody's doing that, then
[19:03] Speaker 2: it becomes self canceling. Right, everybody says, this is the
[19:09] Speaker 2: one clip you have to see. If everybody's doing it,
[19:12] Speaker 2: then it loses its power. But I notice that the
[19:15] Speaker 2: video was about a minute long, and she's like, if
[19:19] Speaker 2: you don't understand state church separation, watch my pastor or
[19:23] Speaker 2: this pastor. I don't know if it's your church. Okay,
[19:25] Speaker 2: here's the clip.
[19:26] Speaker 6: Did you know that the phrase separation of church of
[19:29] Speaker 6: state does not appear anywhere in the United States Constitution.
[19:33] Speaker 6: This idea of the separation of church and state doesn't
[19:37] Speaker 6: mean that the church should give up their duty to
[19:40] Speaker 6: be involved in the political process. It actually means that
[19:45] Speaker 6: the government can't impose a specific state instituted religion on
[19:49] Speaker 6: its citizen, ensuring all Americas have the freedom to express
[19:52] Speaker 6: their individual religious beliefs. Don't take this to mean that
[19:57] Speaker 6: the Church and the Christians should be absent from the
[19:59] Speaker 6: political p process. As citizens of both this nation and
[20:03] Speaker 6: God's Kingdom, we have a duty to be active, informed
[20:07] Speaker 6: citizen engaged in shaping policies that reflect Christian values.
[20:12] Speaker 2: This guy, first of all, says that state church separation
[20:15] Speaker 2: isn't in the Constitution, which means he's never read the Constitution.
[20:19] Speaker 2: You and I need to sit him down and educate
[20:22] Speaker 2: him about the establishment clause. It won't take long, pastor
[20:27] Speaker 2: we'll just tell you what Congress shall make no law
[20:30] Speaker 2: respecting the Establishment of Religion actually means. Okay, we'll talk
[20:34] Speaker 2: about the Danbury Baptist and Thomas Jefferson's letter about the
[20:38] Speaker 2: Wall of Separation, John Adams, the Treaty of Kriply blah
[20:41] Speaker 2: blah blah. Okay, we'll tell him about that. Will educate me.
[20:44] Speaker 2: He says, we are a nation with Christians but a
[20:47] Speaker 2: whole lot of other people. So there he's sort of
[20:50] Speaker 2: acknowledging we are supposedly a pluralistic democracy. Well, that's refreshing.
[20:57] Speaker 2: But in the next breath he says, we as Christians
[21:03] Speaker 2: have an obligation the responsibility to become activists and inject
[21:08] Speaker 2: biblical values into our laws and policies. So I'm thinking,
[21:15] Speaker 2: on one side of his mouth, he's saying, we're not
[21:17] Speaker 2: a theocracy, and there's room for everybody, and if you
[21:21] Speaker 2: disagree with Christianity, you have that rights. You can be
[21:24] Speaker 2: of another faith or none. Okay, fine, And then on
[21:27] Speaker 2: the other side of his mouth you hear him say,
[21:29] Speaker 2: but we need the Bible to inform our laws and
[21:34] Speaker 2: policies over here, which we're not a theocracy, and then
[21:38] Speaker 2: he flips his face to say, by the way, we
[21:41] Speaker 2: want theocracy. I debated correcting the record. I know I'm
[21:46] Speaker 2: not going to change her mind with facts, and in fact,
[21:50] Speaker 2: the speech I did in Knoxville that's going to release
[21:52] Speaker 2: in a few days or a few weeks, we'll talk
[21:55] Speaker 2: about why people are a brick wall and why. I
[21:58] Speaker 2: doubt she's remotely interested in my correction. But I felt
[22:03] Speaker 2: it was necessary to correct the record, and so I
[22:05] Speaker 2: popped in and said, let me inform you about some
[22:09] Speaker 2: of the constitutional issues here and what it would do
[22:13] Speaker 2: to non Christians. And I did all that, and I
[22:15] Speaker 2: laid it all out God on the money and the pledge.
[22:17] Speaker 2: I mean, I put it all out there, and after
[22:20] Speaker 2: three days there has been not one syllable of response.
[22:26] Speaker 2: I'm not going to hold my breath. But the Christian
[22:28] Speaker 2: Nation crowd, I don't know what constitution they're reading, but geez.
[22:33] Speaker 2: I had another guy chied me on Twitter because I
[22:36] Speaker 2: posted this meme and it said, have you ever wondered
[22:40] Speaker 2: what you would have done during the rise of fascism?
[22:43] Speaker 2: You're doing it right now. And he said, you know,
[22:47] Speaker 2: this hyperbole is not helping. We're not facing fashion. And
[22:53] Speaker 2: a Kasparian said as much on her page the other day,
[22:56] Speaker 2: and so I actually had to respond with the definition
[23:01] Speaker 2: of fashion. I just went to the basic definition Miriam
[23:05] Speaker 2: Webster's definition of fascism a populist political philosophy, movement or
[23:12] Speaker 2: regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual,
[23:17] Speaker 2: that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by
[23:22] Speaker 2: a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic
[23:28] Speaker 2: and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition. Oh yeah,
[23:37] Speaker 2: that's totally appropriate. America is for Americans only. MAGA is
[23:43] Speaker 2: infected with racist language and white supremacy. We've got a
[23:48] Speaker 2: centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader. He said,
[23:54] Speaker 2: I want to be dictator for a day. The guy
[23:56] Speaker 2: wants to weaponize the government against his enemies. He wants
[24:00] Speaker 2: to weaponize the military against everyday people. Who's that sound
[24:05] Speaker 2: like Trump loves totalitarian murderous tyrants, Putin's, Kim Jong un, etc. Jesus,
[24:13] Speaker 2: I mean, what else do you have to be to
[24:14] Speaker 2: be a fascist? But my critics are out there saying,
[24:18] Speaker 2: how dare you this hyperbole is not helpful. It ain't
[24:22] Speaker 2: all that bad, and I just disagree. I think it's
[24:26] Speaker 2: as plenty bad. Let us see what our listeners want
[24:31] Speaker 2: to talk about today, Charles at two one seven, what's
[24:35] Speaker 2: on your mind? What do you want to talk about.
[24:37] Speaker 7: The reemergence of David Barton's foundation of America as a
[24:43] Speaker 7: Christian nation being sprouted by more and more people high
[24:48] Speaker 7: pop all people like Ben Carson. He specifically stated that
[24:53] Speaker 7: when they were at an end pass at the Cartinental
[24:58] Speaker 7: Convention that would formerate Constitution of the United States, they
[25:02] Speaker 7: marched in lockstep down to the Baptist church down the
[25:06] Speaker 7: road and got into prayer modes and was enlightened and
[25:11] Speaker 7: came back and formally it's the constitution.
[25:14] Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, David Barton has been full of shit since
[25:17] Speaker 2: day one. He's the guy who wrote a biography on Jefferson.
[25:21] Speaker 2: I think it was him. And the biography of Jefferson
[25:24] Speaker 2: was so riddled with in accuracies that his own Christian publisher,
[25:28] Speaker 2: Thomas Kincaid Publishing, pulled the book from store shelves because
[25:32] Speaker 2: it was just so rife with errors. He's not a historian,
[25:35] Speaker 2: he has no degree as a historian. He is an ideologue,
[25:39] Speaker 2: He is a Christian nationalist, he is a history revisionist.
[25:42] Speaker 2: He is totally full of crap.
[25:44] Speaker 7: Yeah, but it's beginning to become more and more of
[25:48] Speaker 7: the evangelicals. Are we citing that specific point that all
[25:53] Speaker 7: the founding fathers were all Evangelicals, And it's like it's
[25:59] Speaker 7: beginning to grow into the Christian naturalism and we're all
[26:03] Speaker 7: supporting Trump.
[26:05] Speaker 2: When I was in Christian school, they sold us the
[26:08] Speaker 2: myth that it was a Christian nation. Founding fathers were
[26:11] Speaker 2: all Christian, and you know, they were all pretty much saints,
[26:14] Speaker 2: and you know, it was a whitewashing of history by
[26:17] Speaker 2: those in power. Is something, sadly that is not uncommon.
[26:21] Speaker 2: All we can do is correct the record as loudly
[26:23] Speaker 2: as we can. And I'm thankful to constitutional attorneys and
[26:28] Speaker 2: experts on our founding and our country, like Andrew Seidel
[26:32] Speaker 2: at Americans United for Separation of Church and States. They're
[26:36] Speaker 2: doing great work out there. I'm going to move on, Charles,
[26:38] Speaker 2: but thanks for the call very much. I appreciate you.
[26:43] Speaker 2: See you Okay, I've got arp Y. I want to
[26:47] Speaker 2: make sure I'm saying your name right on the switchboard.
[26:50] Speaker 2: How do I say that?
[26:51] Speaker 5: This is arp arpy?
[26:53] Speaker 2: What's on your mind? What do you want to talk about?
[26:56] Speaker 5: The question I have is did Jesus take his own
[27:00] Speaker 5: life as in the sinful way that Christians usually see it?
[27:04] Speaker 2: You mean, did Jesus commit suicide?
[27:07] Speaker 7: Yes?
[27:08] Speaker 5: I didn't know if you wanted that word thrown around
[27:12] Speaker 5: on the show.
[27:12] Speaker 2: So let's just call it what it is. Just step
[27:14] Speaker 2: lightly Okay, no, no, no, you're good.
[27:16] Speaker 8: Cool cool?
[27:16] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Jesus killed him. So Jesus as God is
[27:20] Speaker 2: the Holy Spirit, the triune deity of the Christian scriptures,
[27:23] Speaker 2: and he came to earth for the purpose of ritual suicide. Yeah,
[27:27] Speaker 2: he killed him. So that's what I think. What do
[27:29] Speaker 2: you think?
[27:30] Speaker 8: I think so too.
[27:32] Speaker 5: And I'm kind of workshopping this argument for my sister
[27:36] Speaker 5: who's just kind of holding onto her belief by a thread,
[27:39] Speaker 5: like she she's left the church that we attended as children,
[27:43] Speaker 5: and she's currently unaffiliated, doesn't go to church on Sunday.
[27:47] Speaker 5: And we've been having I think, pretty good talks over
[27:50] Speaker 5: the past couple of weeks, and I feel like this
[27:53] Speaker 5: could be something that could kind of get her to
[27:55] Speaker 5: flip that switch.
[27:57] Speaker 2: I mean, it's a pretty hot one is she that?
[28:00] Speaker 2: I mean, if you come at someone who is I
[28:02] Speaker 2: guess if she's deconstructing, maybe that's different. But if I
[28:05] Speaker 2: was to say to somebody who was even a casual Christian,
[28:08] Speaker 2: Jesus decided to off himself, I mean, that might put
[28:11] Speaker 2: him back on their heels for.
[28:13] Speaker 5: A little contact. It's what got the ball rolling for me.
[28:16] Speaker 8: My cousin took his life a decade and a half ago,
[28:20] Speaker 8: and just the way people were talking about it at
[28:24] Speaker 8: his service just didn't really sit right with me.
[28:28] Speaker 5: The pastor basically said, well, we know what happens to
[28:31] Speaker 5: people who take their own life.
[28:33] Speaker 8: He didn't directly say that is in hell now, but
[28:36] Speaker 8: he implied it, and that just made me sick.
[28:40] Speaker 2: Wherever you see your way in, I think that's valid.
[28:42] Speaker 2: I mean, you can do it that better than I can.
[28:45] Speaker 2: If she's already at the point where she's starting to
[28:48] Speaker 2: tap on the glass, then probably anything's fair game. I
[28:52] Speaker 2: would just recommend that in all points she feels safe
[28:55] Speaker 2: and that you know you're you're not pushing it. But deconstruction,
[29:01] Speaker 2: I mean, I think once the dominoes start to fall
[29:04] Speaker 2: for a lot of people, it's inevitable and I hope
[29:06] Speaker 2: she ends up going all the way to an authentic
[29:08] Speaker 2: life free of dogma and superstition. In fact, if those
[29:13] Speaker 2: conversations go well, or even if they don't, you should
[29:15] Speaker 2: call back some time and give us the update. Okay,
[29:17] Speaker 2: all right, sounds good, All right, take care, We'll see
[29:20] Speaker 2: you later.
[29:21] Speaker 3: Thanks.
[29:22] Speaker 2: Yeah. Like the Atonement sacrifices in the Old Testament, right,
[29:26] Speaker 2: they're like, there is sin in the land among our tribe,
[29:30] Speaker 2: Bring me two goats, and they take one goat and
[29:34] Speaker 2: they slash the poor thing's throat and bleed it out,
[29:37] Speaker 2: and then they put the sins of the tribe on
[29:40] Speaker 2: a second goat, and then they send it off to
[29:42] Speaker 2: starve in the wilderness. That second goat was called the
[29:46] Speaker 2: escape goat, which is where we get the word scapegat.
[29:50] Speaker 2: But I mean, how primitive is that. But Jesus was
[29:52] Speaker 2: for us the Atonement sacrifice. So all the sin goes
[29:55] Speaker 2: on him, and then he dies hashtag dies, right, and
[30:00] Speaker 2: he takes a three day hiatus before he reappears, and
[30:03] Speaker 2: he has become the Atonement goat. But it's accurate to
[30:08] Speaker 2: say that he killed himself. He offed himself ritual suicide.
[30:13] Speaker 2: Jesus Christ I will die on this hill, even as
[30:17] Speaker 2: he died of suicide. Nancy at seven oh two. Are
[30:20] Speaker 2: you there, Hi, Seth?
[30:22] Speaker 4: Can you hear me?
[30:23] Speaker 3: I can?
[30:23] Speaker 2: Indeed, What do you want to talk about? What's on
[30:25] Speaker 2: your mind?
[30:26] Speaker 4: Well, I just want to say that I was on
[30:29] Speaker 4: your show a long time ago. It was probably twenty seventeen,
[30:33] Speaker 4: and it was the what are you afraid of? And
[30:37] Speaker 4: I was the one that was afraid of needles? And
[30:39] Speaker 4: I have made Lebowski as my little icon picture. So
[30:43] Speaker 4: I've been a big fan for a long time.
[30:45] Speaker 2: Nancy, you got to explain mode Lebowski for those who
[30:48] Speaker 2: aren't big Lebowski fans.
[30:50] Speaker 4: Oh, so, there's a fantastic movie called The Big Lebowski
[30:55] Speaker 4: by the Cohen Brothers, and Jeff Bridges is Lebowski and
[31:00] Speaker 4: Maud Lebowski is Julianne Moore and it's just it's a
[31:04] Speaker 4: wacky fun movie. Actually, I live in northern Utah and
[31:08] Speaker 4: we are getting ready to have our annual Lebowski Fest
[31:12] Speaker 4: coming up soon.
[31:13] Speaker 2: I wish we were neighbors. Did you know that I'm
[31:16] Speaker 2: a dudist priest. There's a Church of the Latter Day Dude,
[31:19] Speaker 2: there's an actual religion that came up around the dude,
[31:22] Speaker 2: which is Lebowski, and I went and signed up. So
[31:26] Speaker 2: I'm an ordained dudist priest. So if you ever need
[31:29] Speaker 2: someone to marry someone, there'll be an officiant. That's just
[31:33] Speaker 2: one of the I'm also a monk. I went online
[31:36] Speaker 2: and became a monk, and I'm an officiate with the
[31:38] Speaker 2: Universal Christ Church. So I'm sorry I totally hijacked that.
[31:42] Speaker 2: But when I heard Maud Lebowski, I went crazy. Go ahead,
[31:45] Speaker 2: continue what you were saying. You called in fear of
[31:47] Speaker 2: needles A.
[31:48] Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and I was on your show and we
[31:52] Speaker 4: had a nice little talk and it was just a
[31:54] Speaker 4: thrill to be on your show. But yeah, come on
[31:57] Speaker 4: down for November ninth to north of Salt Lake City.
[32:01] Speaker 4: We're doing our Lebowski Fest. They have a costume contest.
[32:04] Speaker 4: It's a great time. I love going every year. But
[32:07] Speaker 4: the main thing I've been wanting to get a hold
[32:09] Speaker 4: of you and say thank you. So back in the
[32:12] Speaker 4: midst of the pandemic in twenty twenty, I had emergency
[32:16] Speaker 4: life saving surgery. My appendix wanted attention and had to
[32:21] Speaker 4: have that done. But I spent a lot of time
[32:24] Speaker 4: recovering in bed, and I listened to several episodes of
[32:27] Speaker 4: your podcast, So I just wanted to say thank you,
[32:30] Speaker 4: thank you for keeping me company while I was recuperating.
[32:33] Speaker 2: Thank you, Well, it means a lot.
[32:35] Speaker 4: You know.
[32:35] Speaker 2: There are millions and millions of shows out there, and
[32:38] Speaker 2: I've been around so long I keep waiting for the
[32:40] Speaker 2: day I've become obsolete and everybody replaces me. So the
[32:44] Speaker 2: fact that you are still with me and that it
[32:46] Speaker 2: made a difference in your life and became a companion
[32:49] Speaker 2: that keeps me going as well. And that's a huge
[32:51] Speaker 2: amount of encouragement. So you'd be safe out there and
[32:54] Speaker 2: have a hand the Halloween you as well.
[32:56] Speaker 4: But also super quick. Yeah, if you want to come
[33:00] Speaker 4: do the vow renewal theeremy for me and my husband
[33:03] Speaker 4: next year. Next year it'll be twenty five years for us,
[33:05] Speaker 4: so we could have a dudist wedding officient that would
[33:09] Speaker 4: be amazing for our now renewal.
[33:11] Speaker 2: Well, I'm around, If I'm around, If you guys get serious,
[33:14] Speaker 2: just drop me an email and have your people contact
[33:17] Speaker 2: my people and we'll do the thing.
[33:18] Speaker 4: Okay, definitely, thank you so much.
[33:20] Speaker 3: Stuff.
[33:21] Speaker 4: I appreciate this.
[33:22] Speaker 2: It's an honor to talk to you. We'll see you later.
[33:23] Speaker 2: Happy Halloween, you too, We'll see you actually pulled up
[33:27] Speaker 2: the latter day Dude page. I wrote about this in
[33:31] Speaker 2: my book Sacred Cows Too. I wrote about Dudaism and
[33:35] Speaker 2: the Church of the Jedi Order. I think is that
[33:37] Speaker 2: what it's called. It's a Jedi church based on Star Wars.
[33:42] Speaker 2: Let's see Dudaism dot com. While Dudism in its official
[33:47] Speaker 2: form has been organized as a religion only recently, it
[33:51] Speaker 2: has existed down through the ages in one form or another.
[33:55] Speaker 2: Probably the earliest form of Dudism was the original form
[33:58] Speaker 2: of Chinese down before it went all weird with magic
[34:02] Speaker 2: tricks and body fluids. The originator of Daoism, Lao Zoo,
[34:08] Speaker 2: basically said smoke them if you got them, and mellow
[34:11] Speaker 2: out man. Although he said this in ancient Chinese, so
[34:15] Speaker 2: something may have been lost in the translation. Down through
[34:18] Speaker 2: the ages, this rebel shrug has fortified many successful creeds, Buddhism, Christianity,
[34:25] Speaker 2: Wow Sufism, Sufism, John Leninism, and fo Shizzle my Nizzlism.
[34:36] Speaker 2: I don't know what that is. The idea is this
[34:39] Speaker 2: life is short and complicated, and nobody knows what to
[34:42] Speaker 2: do about it, So don't do anything about it. Just
[34:46] Speaker 2: take it easy, Stop worrying so much whether you'll make
[34:49] Speaker 2: it into the finals, kickback with some friends and some
[34:52] Speaker 2: oat soda, and whether your role strikes or gutters. Do
[34:56] Speaker 2: your best to be true to yourself and others, that
[34:59] Speaker 2: is to say, abide. Incidentally, the term dude is commonly
[35:04] Speaker 2: agreed to refer to all genders. Most linguists contend that
[35:08] Speaker 2: the diminutive dude abt is not in keeping with the
[35:12] Speaker 2: parlance of our times. Now littered in here is a
[35:15] Speaker 2: bunch of language that relates to the movie They're on
[35:17] Speaker 2: a bowling team parlance of our times. As a line
[35:20] Speaker 2: from the movie all of those I love. People either
[35:24] Speaker 2: love or hate The Big Lebowski. I think not only
[35:26] Speaker 2: is it awesome, it's one of the more quotable films.
[35:30] Speaker 2: It's also impossible to describe to anybody who hasn't seen it.
[35:34] Speaker 2: Daan at five seven four, are you.
[35:37] Speaker 3: There, Yes, sir, thanks for taking my call, set.
[35:39] Speaker 2: Thanks for calling. What's on your mind?
[35:41] Speaker 3: Well number one, I'm also a returning caller. I was
[35:44] Speaker 3: on the Our Atheist Leading People to Doom episode and
[35:49] Speaker 3: you asked me if I was dissatisfied with church and
[35:52] Speaker 3: with Christianity, and I'm happy to report I still am okay.
[35:58] Speaker 3: So that's number one.
[36:00] Speaker 2: Wait a minute, you're distified, meaning that you're are you
[36:04] Speaker 2: religious or non.
[36:05] Speaker 3: Or I walked my way out soon well, just before
[36:10] Speaker 3: that that episode, just before that call, and have been
[36:13] Speaker 3: out ever since and doing better than I've ever been
[36:16] Speaker 3: in pretty much every metric of my life. So I'm
[36:18] Speaker 3: very grateful for you and people like you that are
[36:21] Speaker 3: creating content to help kind of grease the wheels of
[36:24] Speaker 3: that exit. So number one, thank.
[36:26] Speaker 2: You, Thank you well, you did all the hard work, man,
[36:28] Speaker 2: and so props to you. What else is on your mind?
[36:32] Speaker 3: Well, so if you were talking about your cat, and
[36:34] Speaker 3: I'm working from home today, I'm working in my home office,
[36:37] Speaker 3: I've got my cat by me, it's it's spooky season,
[36:40] Speaker 3: it's Halloween, and the election's coming up, and all those
[36:43] Speaker 3: things are on my mind. Brother, So I figured i'd
[36:46] Speaker 3: give a call in, and I really want to talk
[36:48] Speaker 3: about the hysteria that is already surrounding this election and
[36:52] Speaker 3: Shirley Tuesday could be a nightmare. So what I'm stuck
[36:57] Speaker 3: on is two of the principles that you definitely espouse
[37:01] Speaker 3: would be the humanism aspect and skepticism. So I'm trying
[37:06] Speaker 3: to apply that equally to both candidates, and I guess
[37:10] Speaker 3: it just it bothers me like a lot of the
[37:12] Speaker 3: Nazi comparisons to Trump, because while there is similarity, I
[37:17] Speaker 3: don't think it's the same. And if we're going to
[37:20] Speaker 3: be skeptical and we're going to be empathetic, you know,
[37:24] Speaker 3: fifty percent roughly of the country is conservative, and so
[37:28] Speaker 3: my question, I guess, is how do we lower the
[37:30] Speaker 3: temperature as opposed to, you know, just try to win,
[37:33] Speaker 3: because that's clearly the game he's playing is just trying
[37:36] Speaker 3: to win. How do we introduce empathy into the political process.
[37:40] Speaker 3: I mean that maybe a full errand, but I was
[37:43] Speaker 3: curious to see if you had thoughts on that.
[37:46] Speaker 2: I think, to be clear, who was it who said
[37:49] Speaker 2: even if Trump wasn't a Nazi, the Nazis think he's
[37:53] Speaker 2: a Nazi. There was that recent boat parade and the
[37:56] Speaker 2: guy show up and they're waiving Trump and Nazi flags.
[38:00] Speaker 2: I think he is a white supremacist. I think he
[38:02] Speaker 2: has a history of white supremacy. I think there is
[38:05] Speaker 2: white supremacy as a cancer within MAGA culture. So I
[38:10] Speaker 2: take that stand, and I'm genuinely concerned this is a
[38:13] Speaker 2: largely white and white supremacist movement. However, I also know
[38:20] Speaker 2: that we are in a country of three hundred and
[38:22] Speaker 2: sixty plus million people, and there are a lot of
[38:26] Speaker 2: folks who are not racists, who are somehow sucked into
[38:30] Speaker 2: Trump cult, who either they vote solely on the abortion issue,
[38:36] Speaker 2: or they still buy into the outsider business genius narrative,
[38:41] Speaker 2: or there's something else going on and they're disconnected from
[38:44] Speaker 2: the problems regarding race, etc. I'm not excusing it. I'm
[38:48] Speaker 2: not saying that they don't have a responsibility to know
[38:51] Speaker 2: this stuff. Ignorance is not an excuse. But I agree
[38:56] Speaker 2: with what you're saying. And a speech that I am
[38:58] Speaker 2: releasing in a few weeks talk talks about how we
[39:01] Speaker 2: want to put everybody in a box and crush the box. Right.
[39:05] Speaker 2: Everybody who is a Republican is a Nazi is just
[39:08] Speaker 2: a nonsensical It's a false statement. It's just wrongheaded. It's reductive,
[39:13] Speaker 2: it's binary, and we as rationalists need to be better
[39:17] Speaker 2: than that. And I know Nuance is dead in the
[39:20] Speaker 2: Twitter verse, but that's no excuse either Republican equals Nazi
[39:25] Speaker 2: simply doesn't fly. Am I saying there aren't Nazis in
[39:29] Speaker 2: the Republican Party? Hell no, I'm not saying that whatsoever.
[39:33] Speaker 2: And the only thing I know to do is to
[39:35] Speaker 2: try to lead by example and to engage my interlocutors
[39:39] Speaker 2: as human beings first, to try to determine what is
[39:42] Speaker 2: their motivation, who are they, what's their background, how have
[39:46] Speaker 2: they been conditioned? Have they been brainwashed the way I
[39:49] Speaker 2: was brainwashed when I was a Fox News Christian And
[39:52] Speaker 2: leading by example and trying to de escalate with my
[39:55] Speaker 2: language at the front end. That's my first line of defense.
[39:59] Speaker 2: And it also me in check because I can be
[40:02] Speaker 2: biased and knee jerky and nasty and all those I
[40:05] Speaker 2: could be wrong, and I have to be aware of that.
[40:08] Speaker 2: I have to try to force myself into intellectual humility.
[40:12] Speaker 2: How would you approach this complex issue?
[40:15] Speaker 3: Well, I mean a lot of what you said I
[40:17] Speaker 3: agree with. I mean, most of my family is pretty conservative.
[40:22] Speaker 3: I don't know that they would that they're super gung
[40:25] Speaker 3: ho about MAGA, but they're probably voting for Trump on Tuesday.
[40:30] Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean, honestly, since my deconstruction deconversion, I
[40:37] Speaker 3: I've not been super open with it, and I don't
[40:39] Speaker 3: really know how those conversations would go, but overall our
[40:42] Speaker 3: relationship hasn't suffered. You know, these are people that in
[40:46] Speaker 3: many cases raised me, people I respect, people I love,
[40:50] Speaker 3: And I guess my thing is, you know, Okay, we
[40:52] Speaker 3: disagree on politics, so you know, and I don't mean
[40:56] Speaker 3: to be flipping about that. There's certainly there's certainly consequences
[41:00] Speaker 3: to elections, and we need to be careful.
[41:02] Speaker 2: I don't know if we can say let's just agree
[41:04] Speaker 2: to disagree. We can, I think to a point. But
[41:08] Speaker 2: if I am in a room, I'm thinking about my
[41:11] Speaker 2: own family, Dane, I can think of one person on
[41:15] Speaker 2: my immediate family tree who is I mean, I call
[41:19] Speaker 2: a racist. Just there is some.
[41:22] Speaker 3: Race, there is bigot with it.
[41:24] Speaker 2: I mean, there's bigotry, right, There is bigotry based on ethnicity,
[41:29] Speaker 2: skin color, xenophobic, that kind of thing, right, and very
[41:32] Speaker 2: much a trumpery. And then there's somebody within like one
[41:35] Speaker 2: degree of them on the family tree, and they are
[41:39] Speaker 2: the most generous hearted person that I know, and they
[41:43] Speaker 2: are voting pretty much completely on the abortion issue because
[41:47] Speaker 2: they believe that a human life begins at conception, and
[41:51] Speaker 2: that abortion is murder and that millions of babies were murdered.
[41:55] Speaker 2: So even if they have to vote against, you know,
[41:58] Speaker 2: for somebody they consider to be a toxic person, we're
[42:01] Speaker 2: talking about life and death and the babies need us,
[42:03] Speaker 2: and that's how they've rationalized it. Well, you don't fit
[42:06] Speaker 2: that it's the priority of it. But I do think
[42:11] Speaker 2: agreed to disagree works for a little while, and then
[42:16] Speaker 2: it doesn't. If you are generally an awful person and
[42:20] Speaker 2: you are bigoted against the people that I care about,
[42:23] Speaker 2: I'm not sure I want a relationship with that. That
[42:26] Speaker 2: seems a little reductive to me. Am I wrong?
[42:28] Speaker 8: Dan?
[42:29] Speaker 3: Well, you know this is a journey, so I really
[42:32] Speaker 3: I can't speak yes or no on that one.
[42:35] Speaker 2: Well, I don't mean to put you on the spot.
[42:37] Speaker 3: Principally, No, Principally, I think you're correct. If someone's showing
[42:41] Speaker 3: those types of tendencies, yeah, I don't want to be
[42:43] Speaker 3: around that person either.
[42:45] Speaker 2: It's situational, and I think it's complicated. There is a
[42:48] Speaker 2: point I think of a critical mass where someone is
[42:50] Speaker 2: so awful what they think in many ways is who
[42:54] Speaker 2: they are. So can we divide that line? Can we
[42:58] Speaker 2: be charitable? Empathetic. See that as victims of bad ideas,
[43:01] Speaker 2: try to wedge our way in. Sure, but I think
[43:05] Speaker 2: it's okay to hit a point where you're like, nah,
[43:08] Speaker 2: you know, I don't want anything to do with this,
[43:10] Speaker 2: And a lot of people have gotten there, and I
[43:11] Speaker 2: don't want to deny them the validation that they.
[43:15] Speaker 3: Oh I hope that's not what you heard me say. No,
[43:17] Speaker 3: that's a decision someone wants to make. I would support them,
[43:20] Speaker 3: but that's just not the decision I've made, and you know,
[43:22] Speaker 3: maybe that's coming. So we don't know. No, Yeah, no
[43:24] Speaker 3: judgment if you've had to draw a hard.
[43:26] Speaker 2: Line, Dane, be safe out there and keep spreading kindness
[43:30] Speaker 2: where you can and we'll talk soon.
[43:32] Speaker 3: Okay, doing my best, Thank you, sir, see you later.
[43:36] Speaker 2: Already people are like, you know what if you're this,
[43:40] Speaker 2: I want nothing to do with you. You big it you nazee.
[43:45] Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm just weary of it. It just
[43:48] Speaker 2: wears me out. We want everybody everything, every circumstance. We want,
[43:53] Speaker 2: our responses. We want. We wanted to go into a
[43:56] Speaker 2: tiny box and we crushed the box. It just do
[44:00] Speaker 2: some work that way. Oh LOOKI we got more callers
[44:04] Speaker 2: in the queue. We will get to them next. Thank
[44:13] Speaker 2: you so much for listening. We're doing kind of a
[44:15] Speaker 2: po Peri show. As we get set to wrap up
[44:17] Speaker 2: the month of October and we go back to the phones,
[44:23] Speaker 2: AJ is making a web call. Are you there?
[44:27] Speaker 9: Aj I said, yes, I'm here.
[44:30] Speaker 2: Welcome to the show. What do you want to talk about?
[44:33] Speaker 9: Thank you. I absolutely met you in Houston at the
[44:36] Speaker 9: Houston Oasis. I don't know if you remember me, Jim
[44:39] Speaker 9: were a woman with the cochlear implant.
[44:41] Speaker 2: Yes, yes, aj came up to my table and my
[44:46] Speaker 2: father was deaf and he had cochlear implant surgery which
[44:50] Speaker 2: opened his ears to the world. It was remarkable and
[44:54] Speaker 2: when I met AJ, I thought, wow, you know your speech,
[44:57] Speaker 2: your diction is just amazing. For some I do it
[45:00] Speaker 2: had long term hearing loss, and so I was just
[45:03] Speaker 2: we had that moment where we were speaking about it.
[45:05] Speaker 2: But I'm so glad you're here today. What's on your mind?
[45:09] Speaker 1: Think you?
[45:09] Speaker 6: Yeah?
[45:09] Speaker 9: The fact that I'm able to call on your show, yeah,
[45:12] Speaker 9: shows how far technology has come, and I'm am amazed.
[45:15] Speaker 4: Anyways, so I've noticed that.
[45:17] Speaker 9: You really enjoy ghost stories and you know, spooky stuff
[45:22] Speaker 9: and I always wondering, did you when you were a believer,
[45:26] Speaker 9: did you believe in ghosts as being the same as
[45:29] Speaker 9: the spirit.
[45:30] Speaker 2: I believed in spirits and spiritual warfare. I saw, you know,
[45:36] Speaker 2: light and darkness. I wasn't crazy about it. There were
[45:38] Speaker 2: some people who everywhere they looked there was a potential
[45:43] Speaker 2: demonic force. You know, there's an a literal angel on
[45:47] Speaker 2: their shoulder. I mean, I've met some extreme people like that.
[45:50] Speaker 2: I wasn't that, but I worried about the Ouiji board.
[45:55] Speaker 2: Oh god, you heard about some person and they pulled
[45:58] Speaker 2: a Wigi board out of the box and for you know,
[46:00] Speaker 2: they were their lives were impacted in some way by
[46:05] Speaker 2: spiritual forces. And it was not in a direct way
[46:10] Speaker 2: as much as I thought about it in the abstract.
[46:13] Speaker 2: But I did believe that there were spirits, call them ghosts,
[46:18] Speaker 2: call them whatever, some living things influential in the physical
[46:24] Speaker 2: world that somehow lived beyond it. Did you ever believe
[46:27] Speaker 2: in ghosts?
[46:28] Speaker 9: I did? Actually, you know, I was raised as an atheist,
[46:32] Speaker 9: and then when I was putnant with my kid, that's
[46:35] Speaker 9: when I got into religion because he had a hard condition,
[46:39] Speaker 9: so vulnerable young mother to be. So I fell into
[46:44] Speaker 9: Christianity web. But yeah, so I was going to tell
[46:49] Speaker 9: you a little story when my father in law passed away.
[46:52] Speaker 9: It was all that time when you know, started going
[46:54] Speaker 9: to church and getting deep into religion. So unfortunately, my
[46:58] Speaker 9: father in law passed away at that time, and the
[47:01] Speaker 9: same day of his funeral, we were coming into his home.
[47:06] Speaker 3: And keep in.
[47:07] Speaker 9: Mind, this was before I had my coclear implant, only
[47:10] Speaker 9: it was the human aid at the time. And so
[47:13] Speaker 9: we were walking into the house and I heard him
[47:16] Speaker 9: speak to me and he said something that he would
[47:19] Speaker 9: often say, you know. It was like something like, hey,
[47:23] Speaker 9: how are you guys doing, or something short like that,
[47:25] Speaker 9: But I heard the clearest day. And for many years
[47:30] Speaker 9: I told this story as my father in love spoke
[47:34] Speaker 9: to me from the great beyond, that sort of thing.
[47:37] Speaker 9: But as I became an atheist, then I started to
[47:41] Speaker 9: consider like the implications of my own claims, and I
[47:46] Speaker 9: began to sort of get into a lot of a
[47:48] Speaker 9: neural biology stuff. I love all stuff brain related, and
[47:54] Speaker 9: realized that this was more than likely just a mixture
[47:57] Speaker 9: of grief and maybe a memory that we played in
[48:01] Speaker 9: my mind.
[48:02] Speaker 2: I love the rationalist brain. You're literally dissecting what might
[48:07] Speaker 2: be going on in your mind, whether it's sensory stuff,
[48:12] Speaker 2: memory bias, desire, will, environmental triggers, other things. You did
[48:18] Speaker 2: some science on your own perception of ghosts. That's fascinating.
[48:23] Speaker 9: Yeah, it's one of the reasons why I've started thinking
[48:26] Speaker 9: more and more about neurology and paying science. And it's
[48:29] Speaker 9: something that I really really enjoyed doing. I was hoping
[48:32] Speaker 9: maybe one day we can do a video today at
[48:35] Speaker 9: about healing loss and all of that story.
[48:39] Speaker 2: It's something I'm interested in, especially knowing that Dad was
[48:42] Speaker 2: dragged into church after church as a young man. You know,
[48:45] Speaker 2: he stopped submitting himself to it, but he was dragged
[48:48] Speaker 2: into all these healing services. Or he'd walk into a
[48:51] Speaker 2: new church and they'd see the hearing aid and they
[48:54] Speaker 2: go come forward, and everybody would lay their hands on
[48:57] Speaker 2: him and pray and call down God's divine restoration power,
[49:00] Speaker 2: and then he would leave as death as he was
[49:02] Speaker 2: in the first place. And then it was science. It
[49:05] Speaker 2: was science that became the miracle in his life. He died,
[49:10] Speaker 2: I think before he ever saw the irony in that.
[49:13] Speaker 2: But I am thankful that he was able to in
[49:15] Speaker 2: that way here the world and I feel the same
[49:17] Speaker 2: about you, and you continue to speak beautifully. And I'm
[49:22] Speaker 2: so glad you called. And I hope you have a
[49:24] Speaker 2: safe and wonderful Halloween.
[49:26] Speaker 9: Okay, thank you to have fun, see you later.
[49:31] Speaker 2: I mean, if you were to tell people half a
[49:33] Speaker 2: century ago, yeah, we're going to actually kind of drill
[49:36] Speaker 2: a hole in your skull and we're going to put
[49:37] Speaker 2: wires in here. We're going to attach them to I
[49:39] Speaker 2: forget how it's all attached. Is it to the ear
[49:42] Speaker 2: DRUMA is there another part of the canal that it
[49:45] Speaker 2: attaches to, And we are artificially going to send sound
[49:50] Speaker 2: into an ear that no longer hears sound. When Dad
[49:55] Speaker 2: had his put in, they had an option where all right, well,
[49:59] Speaker 2: would you like a separate wireless microphone that your wife
[50:04] Speaker 2: can clip onto her shirt so if you want to
[50:08] Speaker 2: hear her directly, even if she's across the other side
[50:10] Speaker 2: of the house, she could speak into the mic and
[50:13] Speaker 2: it would go right into your head. And he said,
[50:17] Speaker 2: hell no, I don't blame him. I don't think anybody
[50:23] Speaker 2: wants that. Like you really want to be spoken to
[50:26] Speaker 2: in any room anywhere you are, I don't think nobody
[50:28] Speaker 2: wants that. But it was an option for him, And
[50:30] Speaker 2: I thought, if you'd have told people in the mid
[50:32] Speaker 2: twentieth century that was even possible through science, they'd been like, wow,
[50:37] Speaker 2: you know, it would have been like going to the
[50:38] Speaker 2: far far future. It's crazy. Bill on the web, Thanks
[50:43] Speaker 2: for calling, Thanks for waiting. What's on your mind, my friend?
[50:47] Speaker 10: Oh? The political polls?
[50:50] Speaker 2: Do you want to talk about polls? Okay, fine? What
[50:52] Speaker 2: do you think?
[50:54] Speaker 10: I think that Trump is in the lead because women
[50:57] Speaker 10: are scared to object to their Their husband says they're
[51:03] Speaker 10: voting for Trump, and the woman says she's voting for
[51:06] Speaker 10: Trump just because her husband does, and she's afraid of
[51:10] Speaker 10: reciprocations that are bad when she votes for says she's
[51:14] Speaker 10: voting for Harris. What do you take on that?
[51:17] Speaker 2: You bring up something interesting. Let me see if I
[51:21] Speaker 2: can find this tweets.
[51:26] Speaker 4: There.
[51:26] Speaker 2: It is Dale Partridge. He is a Christian nationalist. I
[51:31] Speaker 2: think he's a pastor. He runs a ministry and he's popular.
[51:36] Speaker 2: He has a lot of followers, and he tweeted October
[51:39] Speaker 2: twenty ninth, nine oh six in the morning quote in
[51:43] Speaker 2: a Christian marriage, a wife should vote according to her
[51:47] Speaker 2: husband's direction. He is the head and they are one
[51:52] Speaker 2: unity extends to politics. This is not controversial. So his
[51:59] Speaker 2: take is, woman submit, follow the man's lead, let him
[52:03] Speaker 2: do the thinking, because apparently he thinks it's the year
[52:07] Speaker 2: eleven CE. And I've heard some other people say that
[52:12] Speaker 2: maybe a lot of wives and female partners they don't
[52:16] Speaker 2: want to go through the shit storm at home, so
[52:19] Speaker 2: they're going to keep their Kamala vote under wraps, keep
[52:22] Speaker 2: it a secret, maybe even lie about it. And I
[52:25] Speaker 2: think the larger message there is that you have women
[52:30] Speaker 2: tramped in relationships where they are not able to be
[52:33] Speaker 2: authentic and might even be unsafe. I think that's even
[52:36] Speaker 2: the larger headline. What are your thoughts?
[52:39] Speaker 10: I agree? I mean that's straight out of the Bible.
[52:43] Speaker 10: I've been an atheist since nineteen sixty five, but I've
[52:48] Speaker 10: got the skeptic salitated Bible right here on my desk,
[52:52] Speaker 10: and it says the same thing. Straight out of the Bible.
[52:57] Speaker 10: Women are supposed to subside pitter men. And I think
[53:01] Speaker 10: that's a lot of what's happening in the poll.
[53:04] Speaker 2: Well, maybe there is an underground in hardline funding evangelical
[53:09] Speaker 2: cultures of women who are yearning to see the misogynist
[53:13] Speaker 2: predator defeated. And they will secretly cast a vote and
[53:17] Speaker 2: help to weigh Kamala Harris's victory. That's an interesting take.
[53:21] Speaker 2: I'd be curious to see what the comments are about
[53:23] Speaker 2: that in the comments section. Anything else Bill, you know
[53:28] Speaker 2: that about?
[53:29] Speaker 10: Do it?
[53:30] Speaker 2: Well?
[53:30] Speaker 10: Let me say happy birthday to me.
[53:33] Speaker 2: Today is your birthday?
[53:34] Speaker 4: Bill?
[53:35] Speaker 10: Yes, sir seventy one?
[53:38] Speaker 2: Well, happy birthday. That's a lot of candles, small forest
[53:42] Speaker 2: fire dude. We get to when I got to forty,
[53:47] Speaker 2: we just stopped buying the individual candles, and you buy
[53:50] Speaker 2: the numbers. You buy a big four and a big zero,
[53:53] Speaker 2: and I think after that everybody has to otherwise it's
[53:56] Speaker 2: a fire marshal special. But I hope your day is special.
[54:00] Speaker 2: I won't sing to you, but I will say happy birthday, Bill. Okay,
[54:05] Speaker 2: all right, thank you, all right, be safe, I'll catch you.
[54:09] Speaker 2: All right, We'll see you. I will call it and
[54:12] Speaker 2: wrap it up and release this bonus podcast to everyone.
[54:15] Speaker 2: I am so thankful for you. Let us you know,
[54:19] Speaker 2: if I was in the faith that I said, let's
[54:20] Speaker 2: all keep our praying hands together for insanity and decency
[54:25] Speaker 2: and compassion empathy to win the day. But we're not
[54:30] Speaker 2: going to pray. I think we need to We need
[54:32] Speaker 2: to be humanists, which means human effort, human intervention to
[54:36] Speaker 2: find human solutions. You are much appreciated. Be safe, Happy Halloween.
[54:41] Speaker 2: I'll catch you later.
[54:42] Speaker 1: Follow the Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
[54:45] Speaker 1: complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
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[54:53] Speaker 1: pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
[54:56] Speaker 1: and conventions. Log onto our website Thanking Atheist dot com.

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