Everyone open your bibles this morning to Hebrews eleven one. Now, faith is
being sure of what we hope, for being convinced of what we do not
see. Really, I mean, I'm all up for being optimistic, But
are we just supposed to believe everything that said to us? Because we're supposed
to believe everything that isn't observable and other verses they tell us to live by
faith and not by sight. So is the Bible condoning living in a fantasy?
I don't think we should really live by faith. I mean, the
evidence is going to lead where it leads. And if something isn't able to
be detected by realistic means, then what's the point in believing it? If
you think that we should live by faith and that we should believe in things
that we can't see, call us because the show is starting. Now,
welcome to talk. He Then, today is Sunday, August six, twenty
twenty three. I'm your host, Doctor Ben, and joining me today is
the one and only Christy Powell. How are you doing today, Christy?
I'm doing great. I had a very rare and precious weekend home alone to
myself, and so I am well rested and shot out of a cannon this
morning. Let's do it. Amazing. I'm super excited to be on a
show with you, and I can't believe it's August already. I feel like
part of this year just flew by. I mean, maybe it's just me,
but it still feels like June to me. I gotta say, this
summer is dragging on here in Texas world really everywhere where we're having historically record
breaking heat. Climate change is a real right. I guess this summer has
felt very long for me, is what I'm trying to get to. I'm
quite ready for the fall. Yeah. Oh, I'm an autumn person as
well. But hopefully it's funny seeing our different perspectives here. Maybe I'm just
so busy. But if anybody wants to talk with us about the weather or
anything, just getting plased on calling and talk about the weather. But this
is a Collin show and we have open lines, so if you want to
call in, now is a great time talk. Heathen is a product of
the Atheist Community of Austin five O one c three nonprofit organization dedicated to the
promotion of atheism, critical thinking, secular humanism, and the separation of religion
and government. And like I said, talking than is a call in show
and we have open lines, so get your calls in at five one two
nine one nine two four two or form your computer at tiny dot cc slash
call t H And what happens a lot of times if people will call in
near the end of the show and we don't get as much time to talk
with you. So if you really have a burning question you want to ask,
call in asap because the sooner we get you on the show, probably
the more time we'll have to have that discussion. But in the meantime,
we do have our famous segment talk Heathen to me and I want to find
out what you all said in the comments for last week's question. So last
week we asked you wrong answers only why is God hiding from us? And
our top three answers were pretty good. So in third place from this past
week was Jay Ray says, don't predators always hide from their prey? Which
this is a great one seeing as kind of what we're what we're going to
be talking about in a little bit. But what are your thoughts on this
one? Christie? I mean it hits. I appreciate a little bit of
snark early in the day, like at the beginning of the broadcast, I'm
here for it. And number two is Jason Katz that says God isn't hiding,
he just goes to a different universe in Canada, you wouldn't know him.
Solid work. I love this one. The your girlfriend in Canada that
right, she couldn't come. She's busy modeling. She she could make it
to this middle school dance. Yeah, I promise she's absolutely real. Just
she lives in Canada and goes to a different school and all that. And
in first place we have Scottish hear saying why is God hiding from us?
He owes Mary two thousand years and child support? He holy ghosted her.
There are a multiple multitude joke right, like, there are multiple puns in
here and I love this. Any other thoughts on this one only that this
is great work and I really appreciate everything that the audience puts together on these.
Has been a really fun segment for the last several months. Oh yeah,
the creativity in the comment section is absolutely amazing. And if you have
some humor or some snark that you want us to read out on the air,
if you're one of the top three chosen from this next week's talk Hey,
than to me segment, then your name and your comment will be read
on the screen. So the prompt for next week is what is a prayer
request that would raise eyebrows in a place of worship? So if you haven't
answer to this question, put your best answer below in the comment section,
not in the side chat, because we won't read it there. In the
comment section below. After this goes uploaded after the show today and next week
we'll reveal the top three answers. But in the meantime, I want to
ask Christie, what is a prayer request that would raise eyebrows in a place
of worship? You know, I gotta be honest with you. I had
a hard time coming up with anything that I wanted to put four because my
first thought was all of these sort of gossipy bits, And then I realized
that going to Christian schools and being in the church for most of my adolescence,
that's all prayer requests were. Anytime you were asking other people to pray
for something in a group setting, it was always really just a way of
sort of pointing the finger at you know, Oh, my poor friend Sally
like, can we all pray, Dear Lord that she stopped being a terrible
person and apologize for the things she said to me? It was just gossipy
bullshit. And so with that in mind, I came up with another one,
and then I realized, this is an actual prayer that I used to
pray all the damn time. But my thought was, Dear Lord, if
it be within your will, please make the Bible make any amount of damn
sense whatsoever, because that is something I used to pray all the time.
And yet, if you think about it, kind of ridiculous that we would
need some magical force to come in and make the perfect inherent word of God
means something right. That's absolutely true, and I think I've had similar prayers
in the past related to that. And I think, I mean, as
much as we normally give very funny answers to these kinds of questions, I
think it's very telling just I mean, how realistic this answer is, and
how many of us in this community have had similar prayers like that. If
God really wanted us to understand what was being said to us, and if
he cared about getting any of us to heaven, if that's the end goal.
Then shouldn't we have clearer instructions and not have to wonder why none of
it makes sense? Yeah, no, he says, You know, faith
comes from hearing and from hearing the word of the Lord. But I spent
a lot of time listening to it, and apparently you also need to get
some sort of divine intervention. You also need to be in fellowship, Like
there are all these things that you have to do to make the words on
the page make any sense. And you know, that's the only book I've
ever felt that way about, right, Like I've never picked up any textbook
or any other piece of fiction or anything else and thought to myself, if
only the Lord would reveal to me what these words mean, rather than you
know, like a dictionary. Right. And that's something we hear from a
lot of religious leaders and devout religious practitioners, is that, like, well,
you're just an atheist because you don't understand this book and you haven't prayed
for it to be revealed to you, or like you don't meet certain criteria
for it to be revealed to you. Like, but then what's the point
at all? Like if I don't have a chance at all to understand what's
being said to me, and you need that understanding in order to be a
believer, then why are you even trying to convert me in that case,
because apparently there's no chance that it's going to happen. Yeah, no,
fair to say. And there's no other place in life that we use this
skill. However, we wanted to find faith and we want to talk about
trust and all these different things that can get kind of convoluted and pulled together.
There's no aspect of my daily life that I have to take on faith
or pretend makes sense when it just truly doesn't. And I think getting over
that particular mind purdle is probably the most problematic or challenging aspect of deconstructing your
faith. Definitely, all very great answers for this question this week, So
if you have a similar answer, or if you want to even debate in
any of those answers, you can do that in the comments below. And
we I hope to see some really good top three answer choices for next week.
And it looks like we have a call coming in from a theist and
I'm very excited for this one. So I think this kind of goes along
a little bit with what we were already talking about. So let's talk to
is that Stephen or Stephen? I want to make sure I pronounce your name
right from Iowa. And it sounds like you want to talk about the importance
of faith. Stephen. Okay, awesome, Stephen, you are live on
Talk Heathen. What would you like to talk about today? Well, I
just wanted to talk about how faith is important in the regards of like our
identity, right as individuals. I think that if God exists and he's real
and he's infinite, that if we were created in his image, that we
have value. Right, So if it starts there, we accept all those
conclusions. Yeah, sure, right, And as far as the evidence is
concerned, that's just different people's perspective on what they see and how they how
they grow in life and what they like. What I see right now is
nature, and I see things I see beauty, right, and so certain
things I don't think fall into the evolutionary narrative as far as like forgiveness,
for instance, I don't really understand on a social construct how the evolutionary process
can can explain things like forgiveness, right, Oh, I can I can
really jump into that. There's a lot to be said there, but I
want to not just tear apart all of your individual premises, because you've already
laid out four or five things that I might disagree with. What is sort
of the central pillar of your call, though, because rather than getting distracted
by each plank, what is your kind of basic conclusion that because forgiveness exist,
like I'm talking about beautiful, there must be a guy. Yeah,
my world. If my worldview starts with God, then I believe myself to
have value and faith will then become important. And learning how to trust something
greater than myself, which is part of faith, is also important because if
you know, if I believe that I was, you know, and I'm
not trying to be like take this the wrong way, but if I'm over
an overgrown evolved bacteria, I don't think there's any real justification for doing anything
right or wrong. It would it would really be kind of pointless, and
there really there wouldn't be much purpose to life. Right. Well, I
I kind of wanted to jump in and I feel like there's a false dichotomy
happening here within kind of your initial argument of saying that basically, like we
can have forgiveness, we can have faith in these things, like or we
could or the alternative is like believing in evolution, And it's like these are
not really dichotomous, and there's nothing related to evolution within our talk about faith
and forgiveness, Like none of that has anything to do with evolution. Like,
can I kind of understand a little bit what your understanding of evolution is?
Yeah, I'll do my best to explain it, like I do understand,
and I do believe in evolution. By the way, I do believe
in it because you know, if I believe that God is beyond you know,
time, so it's really a process that doesn't matter to God, but
it was a process that we were involved in. But I believe that,
you know. So I've heard lots of different um like Richard Dawkins and things
like that try to explain how the reason we have love and all these things
is so that we can reproduce, and that you know, evolution is a
selfish process that involves survival, right, and so the only reason we care
for each other is is for the betterment of our survival and our reproduction.
And I think our flawed because that's only true. But please go ahead.
Yeah, I think our framing is a little bit problematic because, like,
I primarily want to push back on the idea that there's an intention to evolution,
or that there's an intention to love and an intention to these other processes,
because I think that that adds some bias to the equation of saying that,
like there there is some reason for anything. I don't think that there's
any reason to anything, especially when talking about evolution. It's it's a process
and there are results, and there are certain things that are selected for.
But when we say selected for, that's even a bit weird of language because
that kind of implies that there's some agency or intent. I don't know exactly
what the best wording would be to describe it, but like the it ends
up being kind of cause and effect might be a better way to word it,
where it's not that it's not that love directly was intended to have organisms
like reproduce, but the ones that ended up reproducing are the ones that are
more likely to have their species survived, so therefore we're going to see more
of that species propagate in the future. So it's not that like this was
a desired trait. It just happened to be what led to to the propagation
of the species. So could there be what I'm talking about, a social
perspective, like how we interact with each other and certain emotions that come from
the kind of transcend evolution, and one of them would be forgiveness, right,
And so you know, like a soldier jumping in front of somebody and
doesn't even know them and dying, you know, sacrifice and things like that,
which don't really account for that particular narrative that you know, but they've
reason we have these processes and things like that. Yeah, that's why I
said it only makes sense in aggregate, Like, yes, if I were
right now to go and jump in front of a speeding car in order to
protect a bunch of orphans, that doesn't do anything to further my bloodline.
So when we look at like one specific individual case in that sense, it
causes something of a problem. But if we zoom out and think about it
in aggregate, think about it with any sort of like larger millions of years
evolutionary type perspective, we recognize that oh, okay, a species that has
an element where they're willing to jump in front of a car or push orphans
out of the way, is a species that is less likely to be devoured
by leopards and hyenas and everything else. We have to recognize that these things
happen in a piecemeal fashion, and in the same way that we have these
sort of like crude and now almost sort of quaint and cheesy evolutionary charts where
you see, you know, a chimp slowly begin to walk upright, and
eventually you get to some picture of a caveman. We can see those same
sorts of things when we talk about a lot of different human emotions. Obviously,
when we're talking about emotions and then we're trying to analyze the behavior of
animals who we can't actually speak to and get a proper understanding of their consciousness,
we want to be really mindful about the way we anthropomorphosize, in the
way that we project these things. But you can see quote unquote forgiveness in
baboon troops, in elephant colonies, among orcas, among all kinds of big
brained and sophisticated animals, and you can see lower and lesser degrees of that
as you go all the way down the evolutionary ladder. It makes sense that
it's any legs really come up with a good explanation for that. But and
I would say it would take a lot of faith to believe that you know
all this all this is random, since all we've ever observed is order.
Really because not random things happen, and then some things happen to happen more
often because they end up reproducing themselves. Stephen, does the lack of an
explanation make your belief system true? No, I just think it puts us
in the same boat. I think we both have to have faith. Why
you understand? So then if we don't understand something, why how does that?
But even if you specifically don't understand something, why does that then call
for a supernatural being to be present? Like? Why? Why then are
we jumping to faith? And instead of just saying I don't know, yeah,
I mean I get where you're coming from, I would say from of
calling God supernatural, right, I really don't subscribe to that in a sense
where I think God is necessary. I think he's not supernatural. He always
was. He's a part of nature. He's also outside of nature, right.
It's it's a concept of the creator of everything that we see right and
know to be true. It's not whatever we can imagine God can do.
Like a lot of people think, well, why didn't God do this and
God do that? Well, that's really not reality, right. What we
see in reality is that there's a lot of things we don't understand, like
the infinite universe that we observe um. You know, the constants of the
universe, which are actually pretty fine tuned. If you actually talk to some
scientists, if any one of those constants were changed or deducted in any way,
life wouldn't exist. That's not I reject, reject that argument. Stuff
in but just talk to some scientists. Ben, Yeah, I have to
really see you're sitting here accusing me of not understanding the thing that I am
trying very patiently to slowly and gently explain to you. I am not a
biologist, I am not an expert in ethology. I'm not especially qualified to
sit here and explain evolution to you. But I understand why a sea turtle
that lays a hundred eggs doesn't need to have the same emotional capacity for caring
for their young as a chimpanzee who only has one baby maybe every five years.
Like it makes sense that we would end up working through these different systems,
and we can see piecemeal how we can go from one system to another
system, and why one system might propagate more effectively than another one. To
say that we don't understand that is just kind of lazy. You can't just
wave your hand and say, well, it's all made up, and so
I can make up whatever I want to make up, right, Yeah,
totally. I mean, I get what you're coming from. I'm just saying
those things we don't understand. I'm not saying that what you just explain to
me I don't understand. I'm saying that there's things beyond that we still don't
understand. And so in a hundred years ago we greatly understood any of the
evolutionary stuff I'm talking about, and a hundred years before that in that yeah,
so then in the meaning we'll have a better understanding of ao biogenesis and
the founding of the universe and everything else. In the meantime, why are
you insisting that my God isn't the God from the Bible or the God that
has this power or that power. My God is just the thing that fills
in all this stuff I don't understand. I mean, what does that even
mean if I don't understand it, therefore God, I mean yeah, in
a in a sense, right, I mean, it's the only explanations that's
never observed, nothing creating something and way of describing something you don't understand.
Hey, Stephen, how many universes have you seen created? Okay, Stephen,
how many universes have I don't believe. I don't believe it. Believe
in a multiverse, I don't know. So hold on, hold on,
I've I've got a specific reason why I'm asking these questions. Um So,
how many universes do we do we know of? For sure, we only
know of this one one? But right, so, so how many universe?
So if if we're doing if we're talking about probability, like I kind
of want to go back to the thing that you said, like if one
thing was off, then life wouldn't exist. I reject your fine tuning claims.
But there's a big problem with your arguments here in that when we're doing
any kind of study, right, like, like, do you understand statistical
power? Does that statement mean anything? It does? But you can elaborate
if you like. Okay, so let me let me explain a little bit.
So Let's say let's say I have a six sided die, right,
and I roll it one time and the number comes up to be six,
And I say, well, the number six, and that's the only thing
that can that can be rolled. If I roll this die, it's going
to be six. Because I've only seen it be a six. You probably
look at me and you'd say, wait, hold on, you need to
roll it more than one time in order to see what other options you're going
to get. A's like no, but but I rolled it this one time
and I rolled the six, Like, so here, what happens with the
universe? Like, we have one instance of all this happening, right,
we have an equals one. So can we even make any determinations about probability
based on that? I'd argue, no, no, we really can't.
And um, this isn't a case necessarily where we can just reroll the die
because we have no power over just rerolling the universe and seeing what's going to
happen. Right, So the most we can do at this point is would
require face. Well, we can hypotheses, we can hypothesize, but we
cannot draw any conclusions because we cannot determine statistical significance. The more times you're
able to roll that die, the more accurately are able to determine probability.
So my argument here is that you cannot determine probability based on the data that
we're given. So so these arguments of well, this is the way the
universe would be if X, YC change, those are all hypothesis. We
don't have a way to test them. We have no way to determine the
actual experimental probability. Like, do you understand that there's a difference between theoretical
science and experimental science? No, I totally, yeah, I do,
and that fact right, So so we can't. So it's kind of disingenuous
to say that because I disagree with this theoretical science, then this is what
the experimental outcome would be, because we don't know, and that's as far
as that's as far as we can get. And so like a lot of
the arguments you're making just don't really have grounds to be able to make conclusions
from. Right, I made the conclusion right because of my faith, But
it's like I understright, so don't so I don't think you can make that
conclusion. So that's the problem you're starting with a conclusion and instead of fine
if you don't believe, right, No, So why are you starting with
the conclusion? Stephan? Are you listening to me? Why are you starting
with the conclusion instead of starting with the question? Why are you starting with
the conclusion already? I'm a I'm a theist. I have a conclusion.
You know I have. But why did you start? Why do you do
you start with a conclusion for anything else in your life? Do you just
assume things and then operate based on your assumption? Was I originally thought that
there wasn't a god? Actually for a very long time. I'm not going
to get into my personal life. Well what so, what experience does that
have happened? So what convinced you that? I'm sure? On the radio
station if I don't want to hear about my testimony, but I can tell
you. You know, I don't necessarily want your testimony, but I want
your evidence. Like, what convinced you that this is the correct conclusion?
Okay, so I'll give you the shortest possible. Um, I didn't believe
in God. I had my grandfather was a street preacher like evangelist. If
no one else in my family was Christian. He gave me a Bible,
he said, read it. Okay. I put it in the seat next
to me on my vehicle the day before. I said, okay, God,
if you're real, just reveal yourself to me, said a little small
prayer. I didn't really believe it was going to happen. I was actually
on my way back from the strip club with my brother, because that's what
he did on his free time. He'd like to take me there. I
was driving home and the ignission went off on my car. I pulled off
to the side of the road. Car started smoking, got out immediately,
fire all the way through the front. My entire car burned up completely.
The metal was bent. That's how hot it was. Okay, everything in
my car burned, including the seat that my Bible was sitting on and my
golf clubs. That's how hot it was. I went back to the vehicle,
and after the sheriff pulled up, I grabbed my Bible and it was
the only thing that survived. It was sitting on a metal heat. I
went up to the sheriff and I told him what I could. This was
the only thing I could selfish, and then I asked him his name,
and he said Officer Gentile. So after that point I had I had a
couple of things, you know, I started to think, well, this
is probably a huge coincident, But there was a lot of things that happened
after that that convinced me that it wasn't. So that's why I decided to
turn my life over. And so me and my grandfather started having some Bible
studies and that's what changed me ultimately. So yeah, that's the end of
my story. Though I might have already gotten locked, I'm not no,
no note at all. I mean, really, what I'm hearing you say
is not at all dissiwhere from what Ben was pointing out about, you know,
the law of large numbers and just basic statistics. I'm glad that you
were safe in that situation, but it kind of feels like you said a
prayer to God one time you rolled the die and you ended up landing on
a natural twenty. But that doesn't mean that every time you roll it you're
going to end up with that same result. And I would even challenge you
to think back. Were there times where you kind of thought, well,
maybe there is a God. Did you ever say any sort of prayer ever
about Hey, God, if you're real, come and show me or whatever
else? And were those answered? I mean, when you start looking at
the selection bias and everything else, it does feel really thin. And I
appreciate the value and the significance of a personal story like that. I'm certainly
not trying to take that away from you, but it doesn't seem like a
very reasonable or rational way to gather truth. Yeah, I mean, you're
right, like I said, if it was a genermous coincidence that the officer's
name was Officer Gentile and that, you know, my Bible on a metal
seat, and usually I understand the process of physics, and like you know,
things books burn, right, especially if it's on a metal seat that's
been burned. That just got me. I'm sorry. I was just like,
God is God is real? Like if I don't look at this as
God telling me something? And then and then I started doing my own studies
and that was it. But yeah, I mean, we don't have really
any anything else. Yeah, go ahead, Yeah, which which god did
you pray to? Well? I pray the God of the Bible. Which
God of the Bible because my grandfather's while okay, so specifically the Christian God.
Um, so I've heard similar stories from Muslims. And why should I
believe your story that God would specifically God was say saving you and specifically the
Christian God was saving you, versus a Muslim friend that says that Allah had
saved them from uh something similar. Yeah, Well, technically, um,
Muslims, and I'm not discrediting them, they do believe in the God of
the Bible. At least they subscribe to the God of the of the Bible
and the Old Book, if you understand that to a Muslim, Yeah,
but they they they would probably disagree with you, Christie is saying in the
Bible, Well, they would not believe, They would not agree that that
Christ is God. So there's at least some distinct differences between your God,
your God, and theirs. And many Muslims would disagree that you that you're
following the same God. In in the fact that the gods, even looking
at the Old Testament, are interpreted to be very different. The character of
each God is very distinctly different. But even even let's let's say if I
had if I had a Hindu friend that said that they were saved by one
of their gods, why should I believe you and not them. Well,
I mean I can't obviously can't answer that. Um, I don't know.
I respect Hindu culture. I don't think that God came to die to take
away people's culture. One. You know, I don't believe that he ever
said anything about our culture. We still put up Christmas trees and that's pagan,
right, It's just it's just our culture. It's what we do.
But if somebody said that what God's concerned about. But if somebody gave a
very similar story to you and said that they were convinced they weren't a Hindu
and then they became a Hindu because they believed they were saved from some accident
because of this deity, would you say that their belief was correct and that's
a good reason to then become a Hindu. I mean, if if you
propose, if someone proposed that to me, I wouldn't personally because it wasn't
my own testimony. I don't know how i'd I'd probably fifty fifty as far
as like what I believed, right, But they can't. Your story and
their story can't both be true, right? Sure? No, do I
believe that forces out there and angelic beings that are called themselves God, like
Zeus and Thor. The Bible talks about like idle spirits. Yeah, so
you think that some people's beliefs are false, some people's faiths are false.
I would say that the entity they believe in maybe real, right, but
then they create a story based on their own spirit like Thor, which would
be like wrath. Right, So how do we know things like that?
So slep, And how do we know that yours isn't one of those false
ones? Well? That see that. Now we're getting into the source,
right, Like we're getting right to the beginning of how why No, so
we're getting into we're getting into evidence. I need some evidence. Yeah,
because like again, people can say whatever they want. They can say that
they believe in a certain things, like and they can say that their story
is a certain way. And I'm not I'm not discounting your experience, but
I question whether your interpretation of your experience is correct. Right. That's that's
Old Testament, and I know you've probably read it, right if you look
at all the stories in the Old Testament, I mean literally from Abraham sacrificing
his promise son or at least going to sacrifice promise son. A picture of
the father sacrificing his son. You have the passover, the blood of the
Lamb's put over. You have Psalms twenty two, which talks about you know,
I'm poured out like water. They pierced my hands on my feet.
This was written like six hundred years before the act of crucifixion was even a
thing. People have been murdering each other forever. This is not exclusive to
like the Old Testament or the New Testamenting my hands on my feet, that's
pretty detailed, right, It's detailed. So people have known people. People
have known how to kill each other for a long time, and often piercing
with sharp objects. That yeah, and part of it. Multiple cultures have
found like the easiest ways to kill people and the most torturous ways to kill
people. I'm not convinced that like this is a good reason to say that
your specific religion is the correct one because they knew how to murder people in
a certain way, or like they talked about murdering people in a certain way.
That's not convincing to me. That really stuffing it all comes down to
post hoc rationalization. Every single argument that you have made so far, whether
we're talking about the fine tuning of the universe, the power of forgiveness,
the beauty of trees, the safety of the Bible. I mean, everything
that you've described has been well, I saw a thing, So let me
go back and try to explain that thing using this Jesus model. And I
would just encourage you to think a little bit bigger, to realize that like
one instance of an occurrence, one event somehow creates a narrative. You're just
filling everything that you don't understand or don't like one with the word God.
And yeah, that's valid. I'll let you have the last word. I
haven't heard anything new or interesting other than I had an experience, and I
think God is the only way that it makes sense. And I would say
to you that no one else is going to be compelled by that. Okay,
I would disagree on that. And on a particular level, I will
say this that there's one thing that is true in the Bible, one thing,
and that is that love is sacrifice. And I don't know if you
have a family or not. Okay, that's not exclusive to the Bible,
though right noticive to the whole point is it's not exclusive. No, I
would agree with that, but it is the fundamental principle of Christianity if you
if you really dig into the gospel and what that is, right, I
mean, depend on how you interpreted and everything else. We talked to different
people every week who have really different ideas of what actually is or says or
does. Yeah, I mean, I'm just saying based on personal experience.
If you live long enough, you realize that love isn't just butterflies and rainbows,
right, It's sacrifice ultimately, And so the display on the cross was
just that it was sacrifice, and God displayed the highest point of love to
us because He's sacrificed for us. And I think that's that's good. Good.
Yeah, I mean Jesus spent a bad weekend and then went up to
heaven and to live with the fathers. I don't know how much. I
mean, Yeah, cursificions like not a pleasant process by any means, But
there are plenty of like humans who've been crucified and have stayed dead after that.
Um, So I don't know if Jesus really gave more than anybody else,
Like, it seems like he got a pretty hefty reward for all of
that, But there are plenty of normal people that are like still going to
be executed and die and stay dead and in a lot of Christians worldview,
going to hell afterwards. It seems like a lot of people are getting a
worse deal than Jesus. So I don't know how much he actually sacrificed.
Right, Certainly, he's not the only person who have ever loved or the
only person who've ever sacrificed. I don't see any supernatural here. And Steph
and I don't mean to talk over you or to keep bumping into each other,
but just to say I haven't heard anything new, I haven't heard anything
compelling, and I certainly wish you the best, but I would also very
much ask you to lift your eyes up to the horizon a little bit,
see the world a little bit more broadly, and stop looking at that single
role of the diet. And that I think I'll go ahead, Stephan,
and I'm not yeah, I mean, I'll take your advice. I respect
your guys's opinion. I have no animosity. I think that you guys post
some good points, and so yeah, I mean we'll leave it at that.
I appreciate the time though. Yeah, and Stephan, I'd love for
you to call back in sometime. I think you are very kind caller,
and none of us yelled at each other, and I think that was.
While we still disagree on a lot of things, I do think this was
a worthwhile discussion to have and I would like to have more discussions with you
in the future. So I hope you'd be willing to call in again sometimes.
Yeah, sounds good, we'll do. Yeah, have a good rest
here. All right. Well, I'm getting hyped up after that first call.
I know we have some other colors coming, but I'm very, very
excited to tell you all about the upcoming annual Bat Cruise on Saturday, August
twenty six, twenty twenty three, and we'd like to tell you. Unfortunately,
also, I guess it's kind of kind of cool. We got a
lot of people showing up, but tickets have sold out, so you can't
Unfortunately, you can't buy tickets at this time, but there's still a chance
that you can join us. We have a wait list and you can sign
up for that. In case there are any people that cancel, you could
take that spot and get on the Bat Cruise. So to join the wait
list. You can go to tiny dot cc slash bat Cruise and if you
already have tickets, you will get to join the ACA or a fun summer
evening on the water conversing with line like minded freethinkers like Forest Valki, j
Mike, Christy Powell who's sitting right next to me. Hey, I made
the Marquis and other hosts and crew from our various shows. So if you
want to get in on that action, but you don't have tickets yet,
you will need to get on the waitlist. I'm sorry you weren't able to
get your tickets in time, but we do this every year, so if
you're not able to go this year, I highly recommend getting on those tickets
as soon as they open for next year because it really really is a great
time. I'd also like to talk about some other ways that you can support
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You can also send a super chat, and we've got a couple that I'm
going to read out in just a second, So you can ask a question
or give a comment in a super chat and we will get to as many
as we can on the air live during the show. So if you want
to ask a question but don't feel like you want to call in, you
can send a super chat and get those in. So we've got a couple
right now from Greg Markowski sends five dollars. Thank you, Greg. Again,
I think the most frequent super chatter every week still goes to Greg Markowski.
I will I will be making a plaque for you out of a paper
plate or something in the future that we can put up the Actually I actually
think I might do that, send it to the studio and if you ever
happen to be at the library and can come pick it up, that'll be
for you or whoever takes your place as the most frequent super chatter on the
channel, but Greg says, thanks guy to you make my Sunday chores go
easier. And I'm glad that we could be here for you. Greg,
always happy to see you in the side chat. And we have another one
from Ben nine and you have a great name because Ben is a fantastic sense
of course nine ninety nine and says porn is a naughty is naughty and sinful
thought crime. And we got the see no evil here, no evil,
speak no evil or a dance with the devil target goal, a happy ending
without a god as a perverse voyor yes there I initially you're working through the
emojis. It's uh, yes, we definitely have some some porn talk coming
up. I'm very excited too. All right, let's do it. It's
a it's been a couple of months since I've done secular sexuality, so I
am all ready to talk to the internet about pornography. Who do you want
to start with? Yes, uh, we're gonna start with Laurie. She
her from Ohio because I think she called in first. She's been waiting a
little bit longer, and she wants to talk about pornography being a sin.
Laurie what are your thoughts, Laurie, you are alive. I power you
hello. Obviously tell you that um, the skin is phnography. Because while
lust and adultery aren't to say they are both sinful, God wants our hearts,
not just our obedient. We can say that phnography is a sin because
it violates the character of God as someone. Let's talk about that a little
bit. I want to clarify a little bit when you say that something is
a sin. When we describe something as a sin and label yes sin not
a sin, we're not talking about what is good for us. We're not
talking about what is healthy or harmful. When we say that something is a
sin, we're talking specifically about the fact that God has declared that this is
a bad thing to do. Right, Yes, it is from sin?
Yeah, Well, I mean I can't. I can't argue with you there.
I am not going to disagree with the notion that God hates porn,
except for insomuch as does God exist and or have the capacity for hating things?
We kind of have to go to the very beginning and figure out the
whole Is there a God? How do you know? And why? But
if we are just off reading from the premise that the God of the Bible
is real. Then yeah, sure God hates porn, But like, why
should Ben and I care because we don't believe that God is let alone hates
You know, I was once a sinner. I was lost. I did
not believe in God. And Harold told I went to church and then I
turned my whole life over to the Lord. When I fully surrendered to him
and accepted him as my favor, when I confessed him of Lord and confessed
my sins to him, and he cleans me, and he he opened my
eyes. My guy just spiritually opened Yes, okay, so you believe that
there is a God and that God hates sin, why should us the rest
of us care? Because because the God is true? How do you know
that of all that exists, like animals, everything that's alive, like dreams,
though the error us? You know, if God did not exist,
we would not be her. How do you know that He created us?
He created us to serve, to serve him, that was the perfect You're
just making claims. How do you how do you know that because the Bible,
the Bible speaks about it, and the Bible is true, how do
we know the Bible is true because it's the evidence of things that much scenes.
But the evidence, um, it's all true, it's all true.
How do you know that it's by face? Okay? So it's do you
know and knowing and knowing that God is true even though of the things,
of the evidence of the things I don't see, but I still believe.
Lordie, do you know what a circular argument? I don't know. Right,
So the way you're the argument that you've made is that God is true
and we know that God is true because the Bible says that God is true.
And then how do we know that the Bible is true? Because I
know the Bible is true. So it's you're not making any evidence. Why
not providing any evidence that any of those are true? You're using like it's
it's kind of like a game of rock paper scissors, where like rock beats
scissors, paper beats rock and says its beats paper. It's a whole circle,
but nothing really tells us why any of those is actually true, right,
You're just relying on the other thing instead of providing a reason to believe
why those are true. Like there are plenty of like I mean specifically taking
the Bible for an example. There are plenty of other people that would make
the same argument about their book and we just kind of went over this with
the last scholar about um, Like, Muslims believe their book is true,
and they probably say say the same thing, that their book is true because
because they believe it to be true and because their God is real. So
why should I believe your book? And that's what says you're believing Mum,
that's other false gods. That's how do you know that those The problem is,
though you're just asserting that that's what your your book says. I don't
have any reason to believe that your book is correct. Right, there's also
books out there well, but we read because it would take us away from
the truth living word of God. So if I have a book that tells
me that hobbits are real, is that book term because it says that hobbits
are real? Yeah? Why why is my book not true? All Bibles
they're all serving Satan, no matter what if it's other gods. The Lord
of the Rings is serving Satan. Oft is Lord of the Rings serving Satan.
I wasn't aware of that. Yes, it's true, they are of
Satan. Any other goods that are that are mine, Laurie. Okay,
Laurie, maybe we agree with you, maybe we don't, but can you
please just explain to me how is it that you know that the Bible is
true but the Vedas is not, that the Koran is not, that the
Lord of the Rings is not what makes you feel or how you know that
the Bible is the only one that's correct. Jesus Christ is the son of
God and anyone, and Jesus says, anyone who denies me, I would
deny you before I have any father right the Koran. These books also make
similar claims that the God of the Bible isn't real, but the Bible says
that the Bible is. Who else says that the Bible is real other than
the Bible? Because I know God is real. That's why. How do
you know this word is true? Yeah? Because because the Bible told her
first comes from hearing, Laura, we're back into our circular argument territory.
I really appreciate where you're coming from, but we're seven minutes deep, and
so far, I'm still hearing the Bible says so, And I know because
the Bible says so, and it's true because the Bible says that it's true.
And the Bible is true because the Bible says. So I would ask
you to maybe think that through a little bit, maybe give us a try
on another week. Yeah, yep, i'd agree. But can I tell
you one both about one more thing. We'll let you have the last word.
Eighteen. Can you repeat that it would be better for thee to be
answer into life hot or pain, rather than having two hands or two feet
be cast into help into fire. And so that says I blocked it out
and cast it from thee. It would be better for thee to enter into
life with one eye rather than have in two eyes and to cloud be cast
into hell fire. And that. Now, God does not mean for you
to go put your foot if you like, or your hand if you hit
somebody. He doesn't mean that to cut it off. It means for you
to turn away from the sin. And yeah, we're still means for you
to stop watching the porn. That's why we, Laurie, we're still we're
still leave to God's mad about what I do in my private time. Sorry,
I didn't mean to cut you off either, Ben, I just appreciate
you. I think we need to move on. I think we need to
move on and maybe try some fresh ideas. Yeah, we're gonna move on
to some other colors, Laurie. I would strongly encourage you think about your
reasoning of how you got to your position, and and maybe as well,
like you had started to talk about not being a believer before and now you're
a believer. Maybe next time if you call in, you can tell us
what made you make that decision to switch, and that might be a more
interesting call for the future. But in the meantime, I want to tell
you all about something really cool, and that is we got a Patreon.
I know a lot of you know about the Patreon, but every week we
read off the top five patrons a week, which we will read off later
on in the show today. But if you want your name to be on
that list, you can go to tiny dot cc slash patreon THH And we
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So if you want to listen to the show without seeing our faces,
you can go to tiny dot cc slash aeon podcasts. You can also become
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I think some TikTok shows happening now throughout the week that some people from the
ACA are putting on. So go subscribe and join that pre show on Talkie,
then TikTok and some of the other shows during the week. I know
Richar Jilliver, one of our regular hosts on this show, is very,
very proud of the work that he's doing over there on the TikTok, So
please go over there and watch that. It'll be a great And we have
some more calls about porn, so I think we're I think we're just going
to take a bunch of porn calls today. Like it's not very often that
we get Christie and me together on a show, so I'm going to have
a good time today and talk all about porn. So let's bring on.
Is it pronounced? I'm sorry if I mispronounced anybody's names, feel free to
correct me. Drey, he him from Texas, wants to talk about porn.
Is wrong? Drey, you are live on Talk Heathen. What is
your argument I'm doing today? First personally, Hey, did I pronounce her
name correctly? Yeah? He's right, Okay, I wanted to make sure.
Yeah, Jerry, what do you want to talk about? Um?
Yeah, I want to. Um, so not I saw the topic of
discussion and me coming from a theist perspective, automatically, I'm automatically assuming that
one is wrong, so I won't try to arguing from a PSP point of
view, arguing from a secular point of view. Yeah, So when we
say porn is wrong, like we talked to the last color about how porn
is quote sinful because God says it's bad and I can't argue with that.
But when you say it's wrong, what does that really mean? Does that
mean that porn is harmful to people? Does that mean that porn is damaging
in some way? Like? What does wrong meaning in that sect? Absolutely?
Absolutely what I elaborate for anyway, Absolutely absolutely damaging to people. Okay,
how do you know? Because Um, just from a historical standpoint,
Um, no society has ever, ever, has ever been able to build
the pawn a foundation of hedonism. So the act of putting pleasure first has
always destroyed society's in history, not all of history. So the only and
I only say that. I only say this because the reason I want to
tie in how this is how porn is imogen because porn relies on the objectification
and the commodification of sexuality or sexuality is something that's personal and it's intimate.
Let me let me jump in right there, because I feel like that premise
alone is enough to keep us talking all day. Why is porn only or
rather sex? Why is sex only supposed to be about intimacy? Where is
that written? Who declared that? And whose best interest did they have in
mind? Obviously you can have sex that is commodified. Obviously you can have
sex that isn't intimate, and plenty of people do so. When you say
you can't, what is it that you actually mean here? I'm not saying
that you can't. I'm just it shouldn't maybe the greater good. It doesn't
serve the greater good of humanity, That's what I'm trying to argue. Okay,
I mean, how does me going and playing golf for for eight hours?
How does that further humanity in any sort of useful or meaningful way?
How is you playing golf any better for society than me masturbating to pornography for
eight hours, because um, the sorry, the implications of golf being perverted
are low. The implications of six being perverted are high. I mean,
and are talking about a sport that has a lot of classism. We're talking
about a sport that has a huge environmental impact. I mean, golf can
be really really problematic to society. Wait wait, wait, wait, the
implications of six being perverted is for one, and this is a huge this
is a huge problem that we have. And we have a problem with child
we have a problem with sex trafficky, and we have a problem with rape.
We have six. The perversion of six is not It's totally different from
proversion of something like golf. Golf isn't a perversion of nature if if we
want to, you know, take that point. Like, I'm still trying
to figure out how pornography leads to any of the social ills that you're talking
about. You know, it reminds me at the start of the call when
you were talking about how a society built on hedonism is going to be destroyed,
And I have to ask, like, what society on a long enough
timeline hasn't been destroyed. You know, there have been plenty of societies throughout
time and history and culture that have had quote unquote hedonism, that have had
beautiful gardens, that have had vineyards for growing wine and all of these kinds
of things, and eventually all of those societies get destroyed. Is that because
they were too hedonistic? I mean, what do these things mean? Yes,
But personally I want to say hedonism is a part of why to get
destroyed, because I think when people become too obsessed with pleasure, they put
down, they put their purpose on the back hands, and infrastructure starts to
crumble. Yes, So if we all spent like forty hours a week playing
golf and none of us participated in life or were raising our children, or
educating ourselves or performing labor, then our society would crumble. Similarly, if
we all decided to spend forty hours a week watching pornography, our society would
kind of crumble. But I'm strugg going to figure out any differences here between
pornography and golf. If you want to be totally honest with yourself, golf
is not nearly as fun as six It's not nearly as pleasurable. So that
is a very that's the equivalency that you're trying to make. It doesn't we
should only do boring stuff that sounds like happiness. But like, let's take
any any hobby and like going along the lines that Christie was saying, like,
so I'm a doctor, right, so I do a lot of very
important work for society throughout the week, and it gets very excessive sometimes,
Like there's a role in everybody's life for pleasure and for a little bit of
hedonism. And we're not saying that. I don't think any of us here
is going to say that your entire life should be based on just doing what's
fun and abandoning what needs to be done to further humanity. None of us
are making that assertion. But we're saying that sometimes it's a good idea for
people to have outlets for social functions, outlets for sports, outlets for sexual
pleasure. These are all necessary things for humanity. And I think Christy especially
would advocate that like having your sexual needs met leads to humans in general being
more productive in their society. So I don't think that, like, if
we want to talk about like humans and their their value to their society.
I mean, that's a certain discussion, but that has nothing to do with
whether or not the act of watching porn itself is problematic because what if somebody
watches maybe for an hour a day, and then it's very productive in their
life, Like, you can't have people only doing their job or people burnout.
Right, let's see, this is the this is them, So the
barriers that the comes from not being for porn won't be obsessed it. It's
kind of stems from its prohibition. So the okay, so from a PST
point of view, sin it's something that you shouldn't do, right, but
it's something that people do any ways, and it's something that people should feel
bad for because if they don't feel bad for, they will do it without
consequence. I know what's gonna happen regardless, So people aren't desiring to have
their sexual needs meant, it is something that's going to happen regardless. But
we have we have the societal barriers. For instance, we got societal barriers
because okay, that's the instance if we did not have societal Sorry, I'm
sorry that was a Yeah. Let me let me jump in a little bit
dre because I feel like you might be struggling here. It really sounds like
you had that experience that we all have at some point where instead of our
mom or dad telling us like, Okay, you can have a cookie,
but only one, we all had an experience at a certain age where mom
wasn't looking and we ate as many cookies as we possibly can and then got
sick from it and started to realize, oh, there was a good reason
my mom said that there was a restriction on the number of cookies. What
I'm hearing from you, dre what everything I have heard from you over the
course of the last ten minutes can feels like it can be boiled down to
I'm worried that this cookie tastes so good that I can't trust myself and I
shouldn't like it, And there's all of these ideas of what I should be
doing and what I shouldn't be doing, and what I'm gonna do anyway even
though I shouldn't do it, and it all is just sort of this notion
of being somehow unable to control yourself around the things that you enjoy. And
because you don't think that golf is that particularly fun, you're not really worried
about it, and you don't really see golf as sinful, but porne,
who mama? Is that something that's a lot of fun and therefore we have
to be extra extra careful about it. And then we bring in all of
this like moralizing from God and everything else. Is there anything that I've said
just now that you disagree with or that doesn't actually encapsulate your argument up to
this point? No, it doesn't. I want to say. I just
want to say, like one more thing that I've got to go back to
work. But what I want to say is that if you look up actual
actuals to statistics, you will know that a lot of people, a lot
of a lot of um, sexual predators and people that are that have been
guilty of sexual crimes they follow. Um, it's a certain pipeline that well,
but there's something lots of people committing lots of crimes, the biggest crimes
in our country because a lot of people that are are committing a lot of
these crimes are in religious institutions and especially in positions of power in religious institution.
Um. And just some something thrown out there. Yeah, if we're
trying to profile people based on their hobbies, I am much more interested in
the criminality of the top one percent of golfers in this country than the criminality
of the top one percent of porn consumption in this country. Absolutely take that
to the bank. I appreciate what you're saying, but when you say statistics,
you are so far off course. You have no citation on that,
And while I don't want to be pedantic or pick it any specific little thing,
I have to just flat out reject this whole porn to predator pipeline philosophy
that you're promoting here. It's a shout out to our sound team for those
closest Sorry, real statistics. Call us back. When you have real statistics,
email us. I would love to see a number TV at Atheist hyphen
Community dot org. I will be sitting here with bated breath, desperate to
see that research study because I have spent so much of my career trying to
find those numbers that everybody says are out there that I swear to you do
not exist. I will read them on air. I put you have my
word right now, Dre. If you email anything even remotely resembling the statistics
that you claim you have, I will read them on air. You have
my word. Other than that, thank you for calling. Please keep thinking
on it. Yeah, thank you for calling in. We love to hear
back from you, and I hope you have a good rest of your Sunday.
Oh Ben, I didn't mean to get too turned up towards the end
of it, but it's started to resemble sort of the worst of the backwater
for Channy. I guess twitter x now conversation that our culture seems to be
having that you and I were even touching on before the show, about how
there's this idea that anybody whose sex life doesn't look like you know, the
Cleavers, is somehow grooming children is somehow going to be like violent or predatory
towards kids or towards other marginalized people. And I just get so angry at
this notion that something that our society is uncomfortable with is inherently evil and the
source of every bad thing that's ever happened. And it just makes me laugh
too. Every time we get a caller that wants to try to explain to
us the statistics about something like this, and they have no idea that they're
talking to an expert in the field that has been studying sex and how humans
like respond to sexual stimuli and all that. Like, it's hilarious that want
to present that and not not give any statistics. It's just funny to me.
Yeah, No, I love I mean, it's so nice when you
have it in such a tight bow, because that conversation is reflective of almost
every conversation I have about pornography in my work as a therapist, because so
often people will come in and they'll say, well, I really want to
argue this from a secular standpoint. I'm not being roped in by my old
religious beliefs. But then when you start to scratch the surface or push back
on any of this quote unquote accepted knowledge, you realize that, no,
it just devolves into religious moralizing again. Yeah and again like Christy already mentioned.
But just for anybody else out there, if you've got debates on this
particular point, or if you have studies that would suggest that that porn is
bad and that this pipeline exists, then you can send an email to TV
at Atheist hype in community dot org and let us know what you think about
that. And also if you just want to send us feedback in general,
you can send to that same email. You can tell us what you like
and what you don't like about the shows. You can tell your your least
favorite host to fuck off if you really want to, because somebody, somebody
will send us that email, probably m Or if you just want to say
hi, that's also a way to do that. And if you want to
know more about what's going on in the atheist community, you can go to
www dot Atheist hyphen Community dot org where you can learn more about the aca
it's policies and how you can get involved. And I know earlier we talked
a little bit about the top five patrons of the week. I feel like
it's a good time in the show to read those names off. I know
it's a you're gonna have to squirrel up a little bit. Christy, would
you like to read off the top five for this Yeah, of course,
as always in our number one spot is our friend Dingleberry Jackson, followed closely
by Aame Oops All Singularity Devour Valgene and number five spot is held by Collevi
Helvetti. Honorable mention this week is are In the number six spot is our
Lord Trilobite Amazing and next you want if you want your name on that list.
We already talked about it. But you can go to the Patreon and
compete for one of those hop spots and maybe your name will be read out
next week. M all right, well we have we have some more calls
on the line. I think, you know what, this is just turning
into a porn episode and I really don't mind that. Yeah, here for
it. Um, let's do it. Let's let's talk to Slave of Christ.
He him from Texas. All right, Slave of Christ, you are
on the air. What would you like to talk about? Hi? Christie
Powell, Hi Ben. We've spoke before, if you remember from my voice
I do. Yeah, just because we've been kind of circling this issue a
little bit already today when we talk about pornography being bad, can you just
start by kind of telling us what is? What does bad mean? Bad
for society, bad for health, bad for offending God? Like what makes
it bad? Uh? Well, there's uh okay, uh. This was
like my basic argument. I urge you, as foreign nurse and exhaust abstain
from sinful desires which which wage war against your fall. That's First Peter two
eleven of First Corinthians. Also in the First before you jump into another verse.
Can you boil down what you're saying to porn is wrong because God says
it's wrong. No, that's not my argument. My argument is when you
consume those materials, you're more likely to fall into fornication. And I have
a I actually could sun Yeah, define fornication pornication. Uh, define fornication
for me and tell me why I would not want to fall into it.
Okay, fornication means uh, there is an order of God, which means
God all only wants us to enjoy pleasure within a marriage circle. Right.
So so I'm pushing back here. I'm interrupting you because I asked you,
like less than a minute ago. Does this boil down to porn is wrong
because God says it's wrong? And it sounds like you're about to tell me
that porn is wrong because God's that right. No, I was about to
hide you. Research that in the Christian community having relations outside of marriage is
rising, and there is a link or a connection with pornography conception. So
save a christ hold on the problem. The problem here is that you're asserting
that watching porn is going to make you more likely to fornicate, and that
the study then that you're hold on, hold on, and that the data
is now saying that there are more Christians that are having sex outside of marriage,
but you still haven't communicated why that's a problem. I don't see why
sex outside of marriage, when it's consensual between adults is a problem. Okay,
So there's like, after we die, we will all face the judgment
seat of Christ. Right. I don't believe any believe christ. I don't
believe God says it's wrong. I don't believe any of that is true.
Why it's other than can can you give a non religious reason why having sex
outside of marriage is wrong? Okay? Well, the issue is not you
having relations to outside of marriage. There the issue is it will you will
end up harming your own self, your physical how How how does having sex
outside of marriage harm myself because it will affect your your day to day life,
the way you're interact with other how How give me specifics? Okay,
okay, okay, you have to respect other pole right should not. But
it is it is what people say, But christ I'm saying that. So
let's have two people and they want to have sex, and they both are
in the right state of mind, they are not impaired in any way,
and they both say they're both over the age of consent, so they are
both adults, and they both say, Hey, I want to have sex,
Let's go have sex, and then they do. How is that?
How is that impacting their their reactions to other people negatively? That seems like
they had an adult discussion and they both agreed to do this activity and they
were both consenting to it, and they're both respecting each other in the way
that they went about this. I don't see how that's a negative interaction.
Yeah, my colling is not about like in general, it's not about pornography.
It's about pornication and objection. We're asking you to tell us why.
So you're dodging the question because we asked you why porn was wrong, and
you went to fornication, and then we asked you hold on, and then
we asked you why fornication was wrong, and then you said it's bad because
it will impact your day to day life and will negatively impact how you interact
with other people. So you made that claim. Now I need you to
give specifics about what negative things are happening in those interactions, and how is
that caused by fornication. You have to demonstrate that. Okay. So so
okay, let me ask you this question. Are you white? Yeah,
I'm asking people they're white. I don't see what this has to do with
anything. Okay, Okay, I'm darker scan That's why I'm asking of this.
That has nothing to do with anything. Though. What does that have
to do with having sex with people outside of marriage? Okay? Okay.
What I'm saying is, uh, there's this issue of uh, you know,
like a certain racist are going outside of the race to get married and
you know, being more attractive to the other race, and they do you
believe resolved? Hold on? Do you believe that that's a problem. I
don't see a problem with it. No, I'm not saying that's a problem.
What I'm saying is objectifying others and disrespecting others. Basically, when it
comes to disrespect, that's the objectifying. That's not necessarily what's happening. I
gave you. Hold on, we're not talking like I would agree that that
objectifying people is a is a problem. If you're if you're engaging in sects
with somebody that does not want to do that, that is sexual assault and
that is bad. That is a crime, that is absolutely immoral. But
that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about two consenting adults that want
to have relation and that they do. These are totally difference in it.
Oh okay, why do why people objectify us? Why this is not this
is not related to you called in to say porn was wrong and we are
seven minutes deep into this come conversation, and I we've covered the gambit,
but we haven't actually talked about anything. So Slave of Christ, I'm a
little bit worn on. Patients were towards the end of the show. I'm
just gonna say it very plainly. Will you please give me a thirty second
elevator pitch on the concept of why pornography is bad and if you can do
that, we can continue this conversation. If you refuse to, I'm done.
Okay now. The first is it is the cause, the main cause
of people for people to get a sexual sex, said addict. The second
will be it is more likely that they will commit unprotected sex. The third
will be the damage of the family. When people are consuming such materials,
you're more likely to be on lawyers to their mates or partners. The fourth
will be like the religious one, where people will be trade their religious ideas
like Christianity or such desires. Okay, so I'm just gonna go down the
road here really quickly. Pornography causes sex addiction. Not true. There's no
such thing as sex addiction. It's a complicated issue. We tried really hard
to cover it well on Secular Sexuality and other places, but I'm just gonna
say it plainly here. Sex addiction is not a real thing. So I'm
throwing that out. You said it leads to more risky sex, that watching
pornography leads to, like failing to use contraception and stuff like that. Hard
disagree. I have seen over and over and over, and the statistics seem
to bear out that people who are engaged with their sexuality, people who are
not shameful about their sexuality, people who are not uncomfortable with pornography and things
like that, are going to be much more informed about sexuality. It only
makes sense if you are comfortable talking about sex, then you're not going to
feel weird or squigged out going to a doctor and having an STI check.
For one thing, you said that porn leads to eating, which God no,
I mean, how would you know that? There's certainly no statistic to
support that, and there's plenty of reason to believe that in many cases,
people are able to enjoy pornography as a way of avoiding cheating, as a
way of having a healthy form of sexual expression within the confines of an otherwise
monogamous relationship. And then finally, you said that porn leads to betraying God,
which is what I knew you were going to say when we first started
this call, because it's what everybody has been saying so far on this topic.
And I don't care about betraying God. There is no God, and
so I'm very happy to disappoint him in this way. If you don't have
anything else, Emmanuel, I feel like I have covered everything that you've had
to say, and in the last ten minutes, I don't feel like we've
gotten very far. Do you have any question or something like that. I
think I'm good. Yeah, I think I think we're ready to move on.
We're almost done with the show, So thanks for calling in, and
we're going to move on. And I did want to mention because I know
I didn't say this earlier. I know I said that the tickets for the
Bat Crews were sold out, but it's still okay because even if you can't
make it too specifically the Bat CRUs, if you're in Austin or the surrounding
area and can be at the Library on August twenty seven, twenty twenty three,
you can still join us for the live shows of Talkie Then an XP.
Talkie Then will be hosted by Forrest Valkai, J Mike, and Jamie
Forbes. The Atheist Experience will be hosted by Johnny p Angel, Forest Valki,
and J Mike. Doors open at noon, and we hope to see
you there. So even if even if you can't make it to the bat
Cruise or you didn't get your tickets in time, you can still make it
to the Library, which is super super fun. I highly highly recommend you
get out there for a show at least once. It's a great time and
I'm excited to see each show hosted by three different people. That should be
an experience. Yeah, no, it it'll definitely be a lot, a
lot of strong voices. So that's a good time I'm looking forward to.
All Right, I think we um we're gonna move on from the porn talk
to talk about a little bit different content. So I know if anyone's in
the audience says like I didn't come here to watch a show on porn,
well we're gonna take a call now. That is such an atheist stereotype,
by the way, like peace loving, dope smoking, porn watching atheistsans.
I get it. Yeah, yeah, But anyway, we're gonna talk to
Billy from Texas wanting to talk about humans are able to make simulated universes and
I'm really I'm really curious about this, Billy, what kind of give us
your your elevator pitch. I like how Christy said it before your thirty second
elevator pitch about what you want to talk about today? I saw the first
caller, and what's the first call you said that, Um, we you
know the argument that we only have one universe and and uh so we don't
know if they're us. The chacteristics are a cosmological constants. We're different than
we could possibly have a different universe or something something like this. So there's
no reason to think that fine tuning is a good argument or whatever. But
the thing is that, um, we do have multiple I mean, we
only have one universe that we can experience, obviously, but we do have
multiple universes. We do have many, many wols of the dice that we
do all the time. Even Einstein used to create simulated universes almost one hundred
years ago. That's how they determined that fine tuning, that the universe is
fine tuned, and that if those uh characteristics were different, that the universe,
in most cases of the universe itself would not exist, not just life
wouldn't exist. So Billy, so Billy, Yeah, that's that's my that's
my argument. Those are like, yeah, so we have some some simulations,
right, but those are theoretical, right, we don't have those universes
in reality that we know at correct well, I mean, obviously we don't
know of multiple life physical use. When you run into the post talk problem
as well, like yeah, the fact that we're looking at it from that
this this side of the event, but please ben ahead. Yeah, I
mean the whole thing is that, like, we can theorize a lot of
things, but there's a big difference between theory and actual experimentation and actual evidence,
right, Like I can I can think something in my brain and I
can do a logic, but just because I did a logic doesn't mean that
that logic is going to play out that same way in reality, because again,
there's a lot of variables that we might not know about yet. And
so if I say, yeah, I'm accounting for all the variables that I
know about, and maybe I give some leeway for some unexpected but either way,
we're not going to be able to test those in reality to verify whether
or not it's true. And that's why theory kind of, like at least
this kind of theory just kind of stays in theory until we can find a
way to really demonstrate that. So that's why when I say, like,
we cannot statistically like actually prove this. We don't have a weight, we
have an end equals one, and even if we have a theoretical alternative,
it's it's theoretical, and we see this even I use medicine frequently as examples
because that's my field. So like we've had different hypotheses over and over throughout
like the history of medicine, and I can guess, like, oh,
I think that this particular medication is going to be good for this person because
I understand this physiological process to a certain extent, and this is what I
can guess it's going to do. There have been so many times where we've
tried things like that and we've gotten a different outcome than what we expected because
we just didn't know. And so if I made decisions in medicine based only
on theory and not based on experimental evidence, I could potentially hurt somebody,
right, And so like, there's a danger too into relying on theory and
making decisions based on theory alone, because we have all of those variables.
And that's like, so I think it's I like to throw on the phrase
like it's mental masturbation to an extent, because it's like it's fun, it's
great, Like I enjoy having those discussions. But then there becomes kind of
a problem when we take this and say I'm going to make decisions for myself
and other people based on just this theory, right, and depending on depending
on what the theory is too, like there might be differences in the degrees
of consequence. Um. But that's kind of my pushback, is that this
is all theoretical, So I don't think it's a good I don't think it's
a good. Reason too then say that the fine tuning argument is a good
argument. Well, I think that's the reason. That's the reason why we
use simulations to to do these to evaluate this because obviously we can't experiment,
we cannot create universes um and in physical reality, so we have to do
it using supercomputers um like a like a lustous TG three hundred whenever we create
whenever, we created that simulation, and we used because we have a lot
of new information about the variables. We know a lot lot of information.
We know a lot, but do we know are there variables? Really are
there? We are there variables that we wouldn't know about. No, no,
billy, because I'm not going to let you keep smugling in points.
We're going to address the points as they come because otherwise we start assuming that
what you said was correct and you're able to just go off of those assumptions.
And I don't want to go off of those assumptions. So um,
even with the supercomputer or anything else, there is still data that cannot be
accounted for with that right because there are things that we don't know. Right
we can make simulations that we can make simulations that match what we see in
reality. Right now, using to an extent to an extent, almost identically
matches what we've seen in reality to an extent that from what we see in
reality. Right, we don't know everything in reality, right, we don't,
So is there still room for error in the simulations? We know enough
to know that we know enough you're saying we know enough about the universe to
not have error in our simulation. All are useful. We know enough about
physics to know that if certain four characteristics are different by a small amount,
than the universe itself would not exist. So and uh, it would not.
I'm going to push back on that. It may not exist in the
way that we currently experience reality. There are certain things like there are a
lot of variables. If we changed we might get a result that we just
didn't know was possible. And this isn't saying that I believe in those universes,
but I'm I'm in the camp of we don't know what the possibilities are.
We don't have a way to actually determine the probability. We can make
guesses, we can make theories, but that's not We've been doing that for
a hundred years though, I mean, you don't think that that we've do
you think Do you think, Billy, Billy, do you think that the
things that we know now are going to be the exact same things that we
consider be true like one hundred years from now or even a thousand years from
now. Do you think our science is so good right now that is not
going to be corrected in the future. I mean, I don't go about
I can't go on future knowledge because I mean, right, we don't know.
The most honest thing you can say right now is to say we don't
know right right, right, but there are things that we do know.
You do believe that there are things that we do know though right there are
things that we are confident in. Man. We also don't know how many
attempts quote unquote there were at the creation of a universe, and even that
word creation is really problematic. There is a singularity that exists that we cannot
look past right now, and to suggest otherwise is just using God as some
excuse to fill in all of the gaps. Again, this idea of post
hoc rationalization comes up, where we say, well, the universe exists,
and as far as we can tell. In order for a universe too exists,
it has to have these components. So therefore, God, it doesn't
work out that way. You don't know how many possibilities there were for all
of this to happen, and to suggest that it proves anything is a little
off point. Well, there are two other there are two other um possible
or possibilities. One is the eternal ternal inflation and then the crunchdown effect,
which is we're like if gravity was too strong by one. Things are all
hypothetical the universe, Well, these are all hypothetical. We don't have we
don't have realistic evidence that these are are happening. We have theory and we
have hypothetical situations. But it sounds like you are It sounds like you are
like taking these hypotheticals and then considering them to be just as good as like
experimental reality. I mean, it's the best we can do. That we
can't mean, yeah, but the best we can do does not mean that
it's sufficient to prove the point. Right, So do you think that these
simulated models are have any value at all? I think they have some value.
I don't think they have the value you're giving them. I think that
it's a step to learn about things, and I do think that theory is
a good way to start asking questions, like I think that there is value
to theoretical questions and theoretical models. There's definitely value, But the problem is
when you're saying that the value is greater than it actually is. And that's
what I'm pushing back on because I think theory gets you to the point of
asking the question and figuring out how we could demonstrate it in reality. But
until you make that step to actually demonstrate it in reality, we're limited in
what conclusions we can draw from it. And that's why I push backwards.
And I'm a little bit curious, billy, like, what is what is
your background? Until so, until we can make universes in reality, then
you don't believe that any any experimental data that we create, you know,
in supercomputers and solids. I think I think if we could, if we
could make experiment, if we could make experiments, if we could make a
convincing experiments, I might change to my mind. But the problem is everything
you've mentioned is theoretical, so and I don't know what it would take to
convince me that we have enough evidence. But if someone brought that evidence,
I might be willing to change my mind. But Billy, what is what
is your educational background on this particular field? I don't want to talk about
me. I'd rather talk about my argument now I want to I know,
I'm curious, like are are you a physicist? Like are you in some
branch of science? Like what is what is your education on that? I
prefer to specific to my argument and not talk about me personally. Seems to
lack any sort of Credentially, it seems to lack any sort of sophisticated understanding
of these models that we're discussing. You point out that these models have been
around for one hundred years. So what I'm unimpressed by all of this,
and I think that to continue to say, I'm not trying to mischaracterize what
you're saying, but what you are saying is that these models prove and that
feels really weak. Well, I mean, they come up the present conclusions,
they present a few of you know, hypotheticals, they present discussions,
and when when someone gives writes a paper and they have a conclusion section of
their paper, that isn't necessarily saying that they actually provided a whole lot of
evidence, like they might claim in their conclusion that that is what happened and
that that's a different story. But but just saying that a study has a
conclusion written in it doesn't mean that they actually concluded that there's evidence for X,
Y or Z. And like, like what Christy is saying, the
reason why I'm asking you about your background is is, Yeah, like,
I think the level of confidence you have in certain things is not the level
of confidence that many scientists would have. And it's I think a lot of
scientists approach these issues with more caution. And there's a reason why you get
a lot of conservative language in studies of saying like, under these very spec
specific circumstances, this might be something that happens, or this might be related,
This might be a correlation, this might be have a also a relationship.
Like there's very rarely are they going to say that they are like nineties
something percent confident that this is a cause of relationship. Like like, it
tends to be a lot more conservative in how they how confident they are in
these claims. And so that's why, like, and I see this a
lot with late people especially will will take in information and kind of misread what
the data is saying and misread what the discussion is happening a lot of times,
it's trying to lead to more study to be done on it. So
can I ask how how did you determine my confidence level in my argument based
on what you said? And that where are you saying that that I seem
so extremely confident, Like I think my confident because you made it because Billy,
you made the argument that, Billy, you made the argument that we've
studied this for hundreds of one hundred years and that the supercomputers are like as
close to realities we can get, and then therefore we can make these these
big conclusions like you've said, compared those like you actually having a universe,
that we have these simulated universes. Okay, well that's the argument that back
and listen to the beginning of the argument you made to the point where you
actually what are you doing with that? What I said was that Lester TG
three hundred matches with what we see in reality when they run that simulation.
It does match with what we see in reality. So I didn't I didn't
say that that's as good as we can get, but but it does match
with what we see in reality if you can look it up. The point
so what was your point? So what was your point in bringing that up?
Then? Well, I mean in that part of the conversation where we
were talking about you know, the um you know, precision of simulation.
This is so and they're pretty good, right, and you and you displayed
a lot of confidence that the simulations could accurately account for variables in reality that
would make you convince that that universe is fine. Tune. Yeah, we
plug in the variables that we account for, but there are plenty of variables
that we don't account for. And so that was my point, and it
seemed like your level of confidence is higher than mine. Wait, how do
you know that? How do you know that? Because there's always variables that
we can't account for it, there's always variables we can't And so this is
again, Billy, this is why I think that, this is why I
tend to think that you don't have as much foundation in this, because it's
extremely overly confident and and inaccurate with reality to say that they're that we've accounted
for all. But you're just saying that there are always variables that we're accountable.
How do you know that? Yeah, I am saying that that we
I mean, that's why it's a simulation. Yes, because we don't know
everything, and the computers that we build don't know everything. We cannot know
everything. There's there are very few things that I will make an absolute statement
about, but that is one that we do not know everything. We know
enough to we know enough to make simulations that close and again and again,
simulations are are not actual reality. They are theoretical. And I think we're
not getting anywhere with this call. So I think I think, yeah,
these simulations are pretty good. Ben like, don't don't put words in his
mouth. He's not confident in them. They're just pretty good. I don't
know what to do with any model is well debunked. Yeah, you guys,
have a good day. Um, it was a very nice talking to
you guys. I appreciate the conversation. Hey care, thank you. All
Right, we are going to go a little bit over because there's one caller
left and I really want to get to them. UM, so let's talk
to Romy she Her in Israel. It sounds like you want to talk about
losing, uh, your friends, losing their religious beliefs. Um, can
you tell us just really quickly kind of about what led to this call okay.
So, I've been an atheist for a long time, and um,
one of my friends recently who used to have like arguments in the basis with
all the time, told me that she's sort of fusing her religion and it's
because a few analogies and examples I gave her, which I'm fine with.
Value is completely fine. You know, everyone is on their on their own
journey, and I was on that journey as well. I'm an atheist and
I support that truly. However, it is causing her great distress, and
it's one of my first friends who ever like been through something like this.
And I don't know how how hard it is myself going from being Jewish and
being in a religious school and then slowly because of scientific evidence and that's slowly
going through my own journey. So I don't really know how to deal with
this because I'm kind of feel like I'm guilty, and I know how to
approach debates like this in the future considering what I feel in a sense,
And that's basically it. Because religious people tend to test the belief it's an
atheist and that's betey No. I hear that sense of personal responsibility and guilt
here, and I guess I just want to speak to that piece of it
first. You know, if you were out about town and you saw your
best friend's partner touching or being intimate with somebody who is not your best friend
in a situation where you know that's cheating, where you know that that's not
okay, and you go and tell your friend about what you saw, they're
gonna be hurt. And if you're a dick about it and you're like,
you're not gonna believe what I saw, then yeah, you're being cruel and
unkind, But you don't need to feel guilty about what you're sharing. If
what you're sharing is true, you know, the fact that your friend is
being hurt in that scenario is because they were being cheated on, not because
you shared that with them. And the fact that your friend is going through
this deconversion experience, I appreciate why there might be a sense of guilt.
And yeah, it's not universally true that everybody would be happier after they lose
their faith or after they deconvert, but it's also not your all that they're
going through this pain. This is the pain that comes from being lied to
by your culture, by your society, by your authority figures, by your
family. This is a pain that you did not cause. And I just
want to start there, even as you're trying to figure out, well,
how should I feel about all of this and how can I offer some support
in this challenging time? How does all of that lane? Is that fair
to say? I guess there is. However, I do believe that our
face is just one aspect on which I mean the friends you to disagreeing.
You know, there's one thing. If someone's like a hardcore right wing Jewish
person or fundamental Christian, they vote a certain way and they advocate for a
certain thing, Well that's not the taste with her, you know, So
I guess I just don't see the benefit in it, considering the fact that
she's been through so much. And I understand that knowing the truth is always
better, of course, but it's that's why I feel guilty, because that's
the kind of person where I don't mind if they remain in their face because
they still do the right thing despite it, whereas many people do not in
their face caused them to do horrible hope of things. And those are the
people I should like put my efforts on if I even put NFL on more,
I don't know. It's just really confusing. And yeah, I mean,
you feel like Santa clause for somebody, and I get that. I
you know, if you were to go into a kindergarten and just announce to
all the children listening that there is no Santa clause, dick move, don't
do that. And yet I feel no discomfort whatsoever sitting here on the Internet
in front of an audience of possibly thousands or more talking about how there is
no Santa clause because it's just true and it's better for people to know that.
Generally speaking, if you were forceful or aggressive or unkind in the way
that you sort of asserted these ideas, then you know, perhaps there are
some apologies to be made. But if that's not the case, if this
is just you speaking openly and honestly about things that are true and it had
an effect on somebody, you can still take some ownership and some responsibility for
that impact. You can still offer care and support and resources and acceptance and
everything else. But I would hope that you could give yourself permission to let
go of any feelings of guilt or shame over the fact that you said true
things to someone that is important to you, and I really quick want to
Yeah, I want to quickly jump in and say that this is a great
place to recommend an organization that we talk about a lot. Recovering from religion
can help your friend probably and you as well if you're struggling with this particular
issue and want somebody to talk to more in debt up to about how to
move forward with your feelings on this and also for your friend to be able
to talk to somebody and work out kind of their feelings about their deconstruction and
deconversion process. Um. They're very good and they have volunteers available at all
times and they can walk you kind of through that process of where to go
next. So UM, I can't shout them enough, but highly recommend you
and your friend go to the link is here at the bottom of the screen
if you're interested in that. Highly recommend for both. Thank you, sure
anything else so we can help with you with today? Um, thank you
very much. I certainly hope, yeah, glad to hear it. I
certainly hope that you can find some peace in all of this and just remember
that, yeah, there is pain here. There is distress here, but
that pain comes from living in a society, be existing in a culture that
is riddled with lies and magical thinking. You romy, Ben and I like
none of us caused that pain. We're just trying to do our small part
in being part of the cure. Thank you so much for giving us a
call and trusting us with your story today. Yeah, thank you so much
for calling. And I'd love to hear back from you about how it all
goes in the future if you're if you feel comfortable, of course, So
all right, have a good rest of your Sunday. And that was the
last call of the day. So how do you think I went today,
Christy? Hey, I mean it was a good time. I there are
legitimate confusions, complications, like things to be upset about with regards to pornography
and sex work. I mean, there's so many real things to be really
angry about. And I am, I guess just still crossing my fingers waiting
for the day that somebody calls in with something other than because God said so
exactly, And that's why we're here doing a show like this because and all
the time talk Ethan has been a thing very rarely has somebody attempted and argue
about porn and not relying on a religious argument. But we're still not convinced
that that porn's a bad thing. So you can always call them the future
if if you've got some inspiration now and you really want to have the conversation,
you can also call them to a XP which will be on this afternoon
if you still have some burning thoughts about porn and really want to bring that
up there as well. But if you if you like the show today,
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you do. Crew. Always good to see you supporting us from behind the
scenes. We could not do it without you. That's sicular sexuality. Sure,
just gotta shout that out. Oh yes, yes, it's a great,
great show. Check out the bad catalog. We talk a lot about
pornography, Oh absolutely. If you want to watch more shows relate it to
porn, you can. And as I've related to, not specifically porn,
but talking about porn pretty much any show that Christie is on. I'm sure
you don't mention Google. Let's throw out some love rings for the audience.
Our magic isn't working. God, we wouldn't pray hard enough for the show.
And so that's there we go. All right, we figured it out.
Thank you to all of our viewers. Thank you for being here,
Thank you for listening to Christy and me talk about porn for like ninety minutes.
It's been a great time. And whether or not you believe, if
you're an essential worker, please continue what you're doing. I hope you've got
some positive outlets. And if you have a really hard job that you go
out and do every day or even most days of the week, and you
need some time for yourself, it is okay to masturbate. In fact,
if that helps you get through your week, we highly recommend that you take
some time for that, of course inappropriate context and not around anybody that does
not consent. Just make sure, kind but give you some big old orgasm.
Yes, give yourself a big old orgasm. And if you don't believe,
this is your community. So if you want to talk about porn in
the ac D after the show, you'll free to do that. We're a
great community for talking about these things. Go to the Facebook group, have
some fun with each other consensually and safely. This is just this is just
becoming a sex said outro at this point. And if you do believe,
we don't hate you, We're just not convinced by really We want the truth,
so watch Truth Wanted Live Friday at seven pm Central. Visit tiny dot
cc slash y t tw and call into the show at five one two nine
nine one nine two four two, or connect to the show. I'mline at
tiny dot cc slash call tw