Did you know that one third of Americans believe in faith healing. However,
faith healing is a dangerous practice that prays on the vulnerable and sick, often
leading them away from effective medical treatment. Believe in that prayer or divine touch
concutor serious illnesses can result in tragic outcomes, as individuals may delay or completely
forego necessary medical interventions. This reliance on faith over science can exacerbate conditions,
cause unnecessary suffering, and even lead to preventable deaths. Moreover, faith healers
often exploit their followers financially, promising miraculous cures that never materialize. It's crucial
to recognize that while faith can provide comfort, it should never replace evidence based
medical care. Lives depend on the responsible and informed pursuit of real, scientifically
based health care solutions. But if you think you can make a case for
faith healing, then give us a call because the show is starting now.
Welcome everybody. Today is July seventh, twenty twenty four. I'm your host,
Doctor Ben, and joining me today is Secular Spirit. How are you
doing today? Hello? Hello? How's it going? So it's a good
Sunday? I know we kind of had the holiday weekend over here. But
I'm happy to see everybody ready to go for a show today. But if
you'd like to share with audience kind of who you are and what you do.
I'm sure some people have seen you on other shows, but we'd love
to introduce you to our audience here. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
my pleasure. Oh hold on, I think I'm having a sound issue on
my end. Hold on a second. Ah, there we go, all
right, figured it out. So yeah, my background is Muslim. I
grew up in the Middle East, in the Gulf region, in Dubai specifically,
and I spent the first sixteen seventeen years of my life being a very
adamant, practicing believer. And when I moved to Canada for university when I
was seventeen, I basically went through this whole big existential crisis, which I
guess is common to a lot of teenagers, of what am I doing with
my life? What is my purpose? Why am I even going to school?
Why did I make this big move halfway across the world. And it
kind of sent me on this process of questioning everything about my life, like
what do I want to do with my life? And what are the foundations
of my life. And I think a combination of that crisis and just being
in this new environment where I was no longer in the Muslim world, no
longer surrounded by Muslims, and meeting new people, different kinds of people,
people of different faiths. It sent me questioning the things that I'd never questioned
before in my life, and that was Islam. And I just realized I
didn't have good reasons to believe, and I just been believing because that's what
everyone around me was telling me was the truth. And so I became an
atheist pretty much then and there when I was around seventeen eighteen and didn't really
think about religion or faith that much anymore. It just wasn't part of my
life. And what eventually happened was I realized that there were a lot of
people who were really suffering in silence because they had left a religion. I
was fortunate enough where my family accepted that I had left my immediate family anyway,
a lot of my extended family doesn't know till this day, and they
definitely don't know that I'm doing this kind of stuff online. And I just
realized that I had this responsibility to amplify the voices of former Muslims ex Muslims
because the punishment for leaving Islam, besides you know, burning in hell,
which is what a lot of Muslims believe, is punishment of death, which
isn't enforced that much, thankfully, especially not in the West, but it
does happen to a lot of people. A lot of x Muslims are disowned
by their family, they lose their jobs, they're jailed. And I figured,
I'm here in Canada and I don't have to say risks that a lot
of Muslims do. I don't have to worry about my family finding out.
And here's the other important thing. I noticed that a lot of people who
criticize Islam, like let's talk about the new atheists, They're dismissed. The
criticisms of Slam are dismissed because Muslims will say, well, they didn't grow
up with the religion, they're Westerners. And I felt like, as an
Arab, as someone who lived the religion, that I think my criticisms hold
more weight, especially within the Muslim community. And that's what led me to
starting this channel, Secular Spirit. And I call it Secular Spirit because I
want to explore faith in general, not just the Slam, but the reasons
why we need faith, the things that we get from faith, what the
problems are with organized religion, and what we can do to replace the things
that religion give us without needing to rely on blind faith. That's awesome,
and I love that we have people like you bringing this kind of perspective to
many of us in the West who haven't had a lot of exposure to Islam.
And I know we have a very christian centric focus because of our upbringing,
but understanding that humans all have similar fallacies, that we're prone to similar
biases, even across culture, and so I really appreciate what you're doing in
this space and I'm excited to hear what you bring to the conversations today.
Thank you. So Talk Heathen is a product of the Atheist Community of Austin,
five oh one c three nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of atheism,
critical thinking, secular humanism, and the separation of religion and government. This
is a live call in show, so get in. Get your calls in
now so we get plenty of time to talk with you about your religious experiences,
your experiences with faith, healing, any fun stories, you want to
share from growing up in Islam or in Christianity, we'd love to hear from
you. We also love to address any particular points of contention that we might
have across different beliefs. So get your calls in at five one two nine
nine to one nine two four two. You can go to your browser type
in tiny dot cc slash call THH and we'd love to hear from you.
But first we have a fun segment, talk Heathen to me, and we
are going to go through the comments that we received from last week's question.
And our question last time was when you go to Hell, who is the
first person you want to talk to? And our answer in third place is
from Cocob The first person I talked to in Hell frigidare HVAC installation specialist.
And in second place we have Miranda Renzberger says the first person I want to
talk to in Hell is mother Teresa, because if Christianity was real, she's
definitely there and I have some things to say to her about what it means
to care for the sick, and that is a burn that is a really
good, good choice too. And in first place we have from x million,
they say in hell, I'd want to talk to my alter ego.
God, damn it, Tim, I warned you about staying away from absent
all really good responses. So if you want your name and response to be
featured on next week's show, we're going to give you another question, which
is what would Jesus tweet? So answer your question below in the comment section,
and we'll pick our top three responses and read them live on next week's
show. But, Secular Spirit, what is your answer to this? What
do you think Jesus would tweet? Oh? I was thinking about a good
one for this, but I first, we just wanted to say I think
the fitting punishment for the HVAC repair man is to be given a six hour
time window when the customer is going to be there for the repair, but
they never show up for eternity. That's serious. So yeah, I was
thinking of a few things and I can't up with this. So this is
Jesus's tweet. The most important question about Jesus, of course, is when
is he coming back? We've been waiting and waiting for thousands of years now,
So Jesus wanted to address this by saying by posting Messiah return updates running
a bit late, but don't worry. I've got eternity on my side.
Hashtag second coming soon ish, I love it, I love it, you
know, And he would do something like that. He would definitely oh he's
a tease. Yeah, yeah, he would bait that over and over again.
But if anybody else has answers to this, what would Jesus tweet?
Answer in the comments section and watch next week to see if yours was chosen.
And we can't do the show without some very very important people behind the
scenes. So let's go to the crew cam. We have our audio crew,
our video crew, people that do the stamps for the recordings, and
the call screeners. We have so many people behind the scenes doing a lot
of work that goes into this type of show, and we're incredibly grateful to
these lovely, lovely people. So what do you think about taking a call?
Let's do it all right, So we're going to take Van. He
him from California. Van, it sounds like you want to talk about philosophy.
Can you summarize your argument or requestion? Sure? I just in conversations
with THEUS I've had I and just let you know I'm naxa apeists and I
come across this argument a lot from theist about the ontological existence of God.
We're using ontological arguments like anthelm, writing, stay cards, writing, things
like that, And so I wanted to get your thoughts on how you would
approach responding or rebutting to these arguments. I brought up, you know,
shit begging and things like that. But I just want to hear what you
guys have to say. Yeah, do you have any specific argument, like,
I mean, other than we we know, Uh, these people have
a very specific like way of phrasing the argument. But have have you had
in your encounters, like, had a specific argument that was brought to you.
Yeah, one that I had recently a person said that basically, the
mind is perfect and set see if I can see if I can remember it.
It was a bit it was a bit esoteric. The mind is perfect,
therefore anything that the mind can conceive of then is conceivably perfect. Therefore
God exists because God is perfect. I think, Yeah, that's a garbage
argument. Yeah it is, it is and so and so this is what
I said. I just said, Okay, so what if what if somebody
just objects to your basic premise? Uh, you know, and it's question,
begging what if? What if? What if? That's the basic objection,
and he said, well, that's silly, and so I just kind
of rubbed my temples, you know a little bit, but you know,
and so at this point I just like, okay, whatever, But again,
I wanted to hear kind of some of your thoughts on that. And
I've heard other things. You know. A person came on I talked with,
talked about an sol arguments and films arguments, and when I kind of
tried to approach it from a pistemological sense, they were like, well,
that's not the same thing because you can't approach the concept of God from a
pistemological sense because you're relying on purical evidence. You can't rely on purical evidence.
I'm like, okay, well then if that's you can't rely on purical
evidence, then what else can you compare it to, you know, So
you know, and I tried different ways, like leprechauns unicorns, and it
was always not the same thing, not the same thing. So so again
I wanted to hear your thoughts. I mean, psychlo spirit, do you
want to go for what? Sure? Well, thank you for the question.
By the way, Van and I see why you want to ask it,
because for me personally, this is the hardest argument I've dealt with when
talking to theists, and the reason why is because a lot of it is
just kind of, you know, mind mental gymnastics, like really abstract thinking.
And what I found to be an effective communication method to talk to feists
about this is that when you think about arguments like this, you don't actually
know anything about what this god entity is. And I don't know why you
would even want to call it god, like this god has no characteristics,
no traits. You could substitute in the word the universe for example, and
you couldn't really argue with them. So if you're, say, talking to
a Christian, the question I would ask is, how can you connect Let's
say, let's say this is true, this ontological experiment is true thought experiment.
How can you connect this god to the God of Christianity. If you're
talking to a Muslim the God of Islam, clearly you still need to do
a lot of work work, and the best someone like for example, William
Lane Craig will do is well, this is what we mean by God when
we think about the greatest possible thing and then he sneaks in all these specific
traits and characterists about him in separate arguments. M I see. So in
other words, are you saying something to the effect of, Okay, well,
this this this perfect being that you're that you're talking about onto Logically,
yeah, what other characteristics does this being have? Could it conceivably be be
evil? And how do you know that these characterists characteristics exist? Precisely?
Like, there's no reason to think that this this being cares about us.
What could be completely indifferent, let alone being evil? Could be could be
neutral, not loving, or evil. We just don't know. Okay,
yeah, I see, yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought about that.
You know how you run through a conversation later in your head, you
know, oh I should have said that, I should have said that,
And I kind of had that thought as well. Oh no, definitely.
I think when it comes to a lot of feists, especially the ones that
have looked into the apologetics, they're coming in from a position where they already
believe whatever faith they're professing, and there might be like this element of insecurity
about like, well, how do I know it's true? And then they
find things like this to support their argument, And again, what I would
say to a Christian, let's say a Muslim can use the same exact argument
for their God, and someone could just invent a religion and use the same
argument. Well, this is what I mean by God, this perfect being
that we can't conceive of something being greater than it. So how do we
know which God is real? How do we connect this entity to a God
that tells you that there's certain things you can't eat on Sundays or Fridays or
whatever, or well, according to Muslims, you can't eat pork. There's
like a big missing gap between the ontological argument God and God that people actually
believe in. Yeah, And what I've found also is that the leap usually
goes to well, you know, the it goes to the something or nothing
from something argument or the something from nothing argument. He usually goes to that.
And again that's yeah, like you were saying, it's kind of a
leap. Yeah, it's a leap, and so it normally just shifts the
goalposts kind of shift, and then it's just a you know, so I'm
yeah, so I think that's what I am. Like you said, it's
a pretty hard argument to really, it's really like there, it's like a
grief pig. You know, they're just really it's a really slippery argument,
and it's really really hard to kind of nail him down on something. And
that's you know, that's really what I'm trying to do. Oh oh,
Ben, we can't hear you. Thanks pull the Johnny today. But with
regard to your initial argument, well not your argument, but the argument that
you were responding to with the mind being perfect, I flat out reject that
premise, and I'm sure you do as well, and it would be pretty
easy to, yeah, kind of help them understand that. Like, there
are definitely times that the mind can conceive something that is flawed. And we
see this on a day to day basis. I mean every time that you
lose your keys when you think for sure you place them in the same place
that you always do, but then you find them on the counter instead of
you know, in your bag, and you were sure that that you had
left him in the right place, but your brain was not perfect. Your
mind was not perfect in remembering what it did. And there are plenty of
things that we theoretically come up with and we'll do thought experiments about, but
they don't actually translate to reality and that's why bench research is so important and
why you can't just get theoretical degrees only, and we don't just base medical
treatments on theory. We have to have live demonstration of these things, and
even how we need in vivo data and not just in vitro data. You
can conceptualize whatever you want, but that doesn't mean that reality is going to
reciprocate in like going along with the theory. And so it's definitely, it's
just it's just a flawed premise to begin with. And I'm sure all of
us are on the same page with that piece. Oh yeah, definitely.
I think when we think of words like perfection, it's ultimately subjective, like
tied to the whole concept of you know, beauties in the eye of the
beholder. Yeah, and that's not to say that yeah, go for it.
Oh I'm sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt. I was just going to
say, what no, go for it on is just how slippery it all
it all gets with as far as you know, it's basically different things like
well, that's not the same thing like if I brought up I brought up
things like you know, uh, you know, well, we can't apply
real word situations to God, you know, because God is immaterial and things
like that, and you're talking about material it's just it just gets really,
you know, bogged down, and it just gets super super slippery. Yeah,
and God influences material things, then he should be able, we should
be able to materially demonstrate because if they're going to make the claim that it's
purely immaterial, then what's the point in even doing anything with him? Because
if he's not going to influence the material world, then fine, then we're
in like a we're in a completely different realm of like an impersonal like deism
situation. But even the deist God like was at least a creator, at
least in most of the deistic theology that I'm familiar with, that at least
the deist God has intervened with our material reality in some way. And so
even that's not really immune to this thing. So I think we're all on
the same page here. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Oh yeah,
without a doubt, without a doubt. But yeah, I sick in.
I just wanted to hear kind of how you would approach this, you know,
just to see where you land on it. And I kind of feel
like I'm in the same at least in the same ballpark as you, so
for sure. Like the one thing I would say, Van, is I
find that the best approach is to not tell or dictate things to FeAs you're
having these kinds of discussions, but to just ask them questions almost And I'm
for me personally, it's a curiosity to see how they justify it for themselves,
whatever their belief happens to be. And I think when you ask questions
that really get to the things that you think don't make sense, it gets
them thinking about it too, even if they might deny it on the spot,
but it could get them thinking later on or the next day. The
ways you said you sometimes think about things you should have said. Yeah,
I totally agree. I think one of the biggest things I read was avoid
facts, you know, just keep asking questions. Yeah, that makes sense.
I totally agree with that. All Right, anything else we can help
you with today, Van, Guys, thank you so much. Yeah,
thanks for calling in. I hope you have question. I have a good
rest to your Sonday, and I hope I hope to hear some updates on
how these conversations go. Yeah, yeah, please let us know. Oh
yeah, for sure. Okay, yeah, come on, I'll come back
in and let you guys know. Thanks again, have a good day,
all right, All right, that was a great, a great starting call
for us. But I have a very exciting announcement that I want to tell
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much for that contribution. That's very very generous of you and Secular Spirit.
Are you ready for another call? Let's do it. I'm ready, alrighty,
I think I've talked to this person before. Let's talk with Annie from
Canada. Annie, it sounds like, do you want to talk about what
caused the universe? Can you tell us the summary of your question? Actually
I wanted to Oh, well, first of all, nice to speak to
with you again. What I wanted to talk about was a little bit of
what you spoke about with the first caller. And what was said was that
Kristens can't close the gap between the first car and their God, which is
true that like ontological and ontological arguments don't do that, but you still need
to concede that the universe was caused if the argument, the cosmological argument,
specifically, it sound or disprove it, and atheism resistant to doing that for
some reason. So Annie, I just want to jump in and say that
I do not claim that the universe was not caused. I don't really know
any people who make that claim. I'm sure there's possibly some out there,
but I do not claim that the universe was not caused. I just do
not accept that there was a supernatural cause to the universe. So, and
I don't necessarily know what this natural cause would be. I'm not a physicist,
and there's a lot more that I need to learn about this. But
that's not me saying that there is no cause. It's just I would much
more easily accept a natural cause as opposed to a supernatural cause. Does that
make sense? What you're saying makes sense. I understand your argument. Am
I allowed to respond to that? Yeah? Absolutely well. To say to
ask for an natural cause of the universe, what does that mean? Because
the universe is everything that is natural, So to ask for a natural cause
to everything that is natural is to ask for the universe to bring itself into
existence, or at least no, not necessarily. Not necessarily. Okay,
I'm a little bit curious starting the question around to you, what makes you
say that the universe had to have been caused by a supernatural cause? How
did you get there? Well, I just explained it's impossible. For since
the universe is all of that is natural, everything in everything that we know
and can ever know, then to suggest that something or equality of the universe
is the cause of the universe is just a logical impossibility. It's not a
real idea. It makes sense in English as a sentence, but logically it
doesn't make any sense. It's like a spirit. It looks like you wanted
to jump in a second ago. Uh sure, yeah, Hi, Hi
Annie. I'm also in Canada. By the way, I'm in Toronto.
Thanks thanks for calling and asking this question. It's a really good one.
And what I always think about is when it comes to these big kinds of
questions, I just adopt the approach of, well, I don't really know.
There might be a lot of things that are beyond our knowledge currently.
We might figure them out eventually, and you could be right. Maybe there
isn't anything within our observable universe that created the universe, but we don't really
know. We can't rule out there being something beyond our observable experience. There
might be something that is natural, but we don't understand that it's natural.
And where I get stuck is so you said that it's impossible logically for the
universe to create itself. I don't know what a supernatural cause could be,
what domain it exists, and if we could even say that it exists in
a domain, So it almost seems an abstract, meaningless thing. That would
also be impossible to say that there's something outside of nature, and I don't
know how to bridge that gap. Well, I guess it's just something you
understand or you don't understand, because you can't bring something. For something to
do anything, it has to already exist, so something can't bring it.
That's not the case. That's not the case though. That's not the case
though, because we know things emerge from combinations of other things. This is
the case with a lot of even different elements, different minerals, many different
natural things did not originally start out that way. They started from something that
was not those things, And so I think that's a problematic argument to make
that something would have already had to exist. It's just like when we get
arguments about consciousness. I don't believe that consciousness was something that already existed.
It was an emergent property of having chemical and physical activity within a brain.
And no, we can't necessarily explain the minutia of how all of that happens.
We're working towards further understanding, but I don't accept that premise that something
had to have already existed in order to make something different or make something else.
Well, the difference between the universe and objects or elements of the universe.
Let me start again. It is not accurate to compare the create what
the first cause of the universe, to thing that think, to element,
to atoms of I'm so sorry, just giving you a second, take your
time, please, thank you. I just don't It's yes, there are
elements and chemicals that come from elements and chemicals, but those things are all
part of the universe. We're talking about what created everything, what was the
cause of everything, not what was a cause of Yeah, and I think
this is this is where we have a difference. The fact that you seem
to need to have a concrete answer to this question, and I don't.
I don't have an exact answer for what caused the beginning of the universe,
And I'm willing to admit that I don't understand how you get to this needs
to like this needs to be something supernatural, and that you have an answer
for this question when I'm not convinced that there's one answer to this question.
There's so many unknown variables here, and it sounds like you want an answer
and are more interested in having an answer than kind of looking more into it
and wondering what we could be missing with trying to find an answer to this.
Well, I'm not sure about that. I don't think that's what my
intentions are. To go back to what I was saying before, we understand
that things nothing comes from nothing, everything comes from something. That is,
how did you get to that? How did you get to that claim?
If you're saying, especially if you're saying that we understand this, how did
you come to that understanding? How did I come to the understanding of what
you please act like, yeah, the understanding that something has to come from
something and that nothing could come from like something can't come from nothing? How
did you how did you get to that understanding? It's nothing, it's it's
a foundational truth. Nothing. How do you know that? How do you
know that it's a foundational truth? Are you pulling a common sense argument?
Is that what you're saying, No, I'm saying that. It's like A
is equal to a. There is no A is not A is equal to
a. So something is equal to something and nothing is equal to nothing.
For nothing comes from nothing. There is no. That's not no, that's
not it. That's not You're making two different arguments here. So something coming
into existence is not the same thing as an argument of A equals A.
Like you're using an identity argument and then trying to talk about things coming from
other things. So something coming from something else is a process, and so
that's different distickly from an equation that is an identity. And so I think
what's happening here You're trying to like, like, what you're essentially communicating to
me right now is that you have this understanding that you believe is fundamental understanding
to just how the universe works and how the world works. But the problem
is we disagree on it, and so we can't go back and say that
this is a fundamental thing that we all understand, because we don't agree on
it. So I need to know why are we in disagreement? How did
you get to this and we didn't because just saying this is just something that
we all know, isn't that? That's not going to convince me that you're
correct here. Okay, so you said that nothing is an identity? What
is that? That is nothing? So nothing is an identity. Nothing is
equal to nothing. I don't under like how how you get something from nothing?
When nothing is nothing, it does nothing, it's nothing. So I
don't know how much math background do you have. But if we were to
make an equation, yeah, it's very easy to say nothing equals nothing because
we've assigned terms to either side of the equation. But understand that when we
add bigger equations, or when we're trying to make proofs that something can lead
to something else, you have other variables there. And so when we manipulate
those variables through addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, et cetera, adding
other variables, adding powers of two, powers of three, et cetera,
when we manipulate that we are no longer in a equals a, we have
a situation where A could equal X plus y to the fourth like. Oversimplifying
that process to an identity equation is not proving necessarily what you're suggesting it does.
And so I get that this is an analogy and not meant to be
kind of taking one for one like as a like an equivocal situation. But
it's not as effective as of an analogy because we're not dealing with single variable
equations. We're dealing with a lot of variables, and things can transform as
you do proofs, as you add more variables, and and so we're missing
the dynamics of this question. You have a very static analogy trying to be
used to communicate a dynamic reality, and so I think that's where we're kind
of missing this. But I need to know how you're how you're getting to
this point, secular spirit, Do you want to weigh in it all?
No? No, I just want to give this space for antitudors. Respond
Yeah, well, how how how do you know? There are a lot
of variables? And can you tell me what those variables are? I can't.
And that's the thing. We know some variables, we don't know all
of them, and I don't know if we can know all of them.
And so that's why it's difficult for me to say we have an answer on
what caused the universe, because there's so many more variables that we can even
account for. And that's what you get into with astrophysics and with these experts
who know a lot more than I do. They've been working their entire lives
to account for these variables, and they find more variables. And it's the
same thing with any subject matter. It's the same thing with human biology that
I've been studying for a long time. There's always more variables that come up,
and we do the best that we can with applying what we know currently
because some variables we don't really need to We don't really need to know to
help somebody, you know, get over their pneumonia. I know enough variables
to address that. But with something so complex and so far removed as the
origin of the universe, we don't have enough knowledge to really make any claim
about it other than we need to learn more, and I'm not convinced that
there is a specific answer right now that we can point to. Well,
then how is it wonerful to talk about anything if we must assume there are
an infinite number of unknown variables to every question. Well, and that's what
we have to That's kind of the nuance of it is what do we what's
the utility of what we're arguing, and how are we using that information?
And in this case, I would say, for the most part, arguing
the origins of the universe really is not super useful. In general. It's
not getting us a whole lot of places to have those discussions. However,
it does matter when people are claiming that they're the origin of the universe is
a supernatural being that influences your day to day life and tells you who you
can marry, where you can live, how you live your life, and
that does matter. So that's why we have these conversations. And that's why
I take up these arguments, because people are using their answer to make other
claims. But otherwise, if we didn't have that issue, I wouldn't need
to debate this at all. Okay, So in your view, it's not
useful to debate the origins of the universe. It's only a problem that people
have an opinion on the origins of the universe. That is my perspective.
There are other people who study the origins of the universe that might say that
there are scientific applications to helping our planet with fuel sources, et cetera.
They have probably some other reasons why they would argue this. This is purely
my perspective. I personally do not think it's very useful in the things that
I'm needing to discuss, and it just sounds very I don't understand then,
why you invite debate if you're not. Oh, no, we do.
And that's what's I just mentioned. Are we value this kind of debate because
you are using this to justify the existence of a supernatural being who then makes
decisions about my life. And unfortunately, there are a lot of people being
hurt by this rhetoric. And that's that is the reason why we're arguing this
secular spirit. Do you want to well, I just wanted to add this
other point. The risk that comes with the claims from some believers that their
God created the universe, was the origin, the first cause of the universe
is if we feel like we already have the answer, well it was God,
then it could stop us from delving into if you want to call it,
the mysteries of the universe. Learning more about the universe around us.
It's underpinnings how it works, and it could actually stop us from searching figuring
out potentially the actual answer to this question instead of the one that feasts just
give us without much evidence. So it does have that potential cost too.
It's hard to quantify what it is, but it is a risk. Okay,
okay, So so I guess the question for you. Can I actually
ask a question? Yeah, yeah, Annie, I just wanted to ask
you a question. Is it important for you to know that there was a
first cause of God who created the universe, as opposed to just not accepting
that maybe we don't know the answer. Is it important to you that you
have an answer to that question? It's not a matter of important, it's
a matter it's the fact that the question exists and there is an answer.
It doesn't matter if the question is important or not. The question can be
asked. It's always, It's been asked for all of history. I've asked
it and there is an answer. So yeah, okay, there is no
answer or there's no point in I'm searching for the answer. No, no,
no, not at all. I just don't we just don't know.
We were just saying we don't know. Yeah, well I want the answer
to that question too, And you're right there there has to be some answer
that we I just feel like we don't have access to it yet and we
might never have access to it. Okay, But once again, if we
the possibility that mainly never have access access to the answerer, than the discussion,
as doctor Ben put it, is pointless. Well, no, it's
not like the possibility of never having an answer isn't a reason to just give
up and not look for answers. Agreed. It's it's like we may never
fully understand, like like from medicine, we may not fully understand every single
condition that can happen to the human body. But that doesn't mean that we
should just quit now and let people die like that. That's that's not what
we should be doing it. And so I think I think we're I think
this discussion maybe we need to continue next time you call in, just because
there's a lot of the depth here, and I think we've covered some ground.
We're saying, please, please, just one. We're saying, yeah,
go for it, go for it, Thank you so much. I
think what I was trying to say when I asked my previous question. Actually,
when I made my previous statement that the discussion is pointless, is that
now I, as a cis feel calling into this show is pointless because when
whenever you meet an objection that you can't refute, you just say, well,
maybe there are unknown variables, Like what's the point of me calling in?
If you're just going to escape through the Rules'll say, that's you,
and that's that's my question. Like how how are you so confident that there
is an answer and that the answer is your answer? How did you,
like, I guess, let me ask that what how confident? On a
scale of zero percent to one hundred percent, how confident are you that your
answer is correct? I am confident there is an answer regardless of whether or
not my answer is correct, and we can have a discussion to find the
answer, and which requires us having faith that there is an answer. But
if we always say there are unknown variables, that we may never know the
answer, then there can never be a discussion. There's no point in.
It's not true. That's not true. Though that's not that's not true.
Well, yeah, I disagree with that for the reasons I already mentioned that
not having an ultimate end answer or does not mean that the entire discussion is
pointless. And I think it is problematic to jump to a conclusion that might
not be correct. If you're saying that whether or not your answer is correct.
I think it's okay to think that there is an answer, and we
agree with you that there has to be an answer. We will concede that
there is an answer. We just don't agree that your answer is correct,
and so that's where our disagreement is. And so we're trying to get at
what made you confident that your answer is the correct one. That's what we're
asking. I assume, okay, I'm answering because I assume that there are
no unknown variables that I have to consider. How do you know that that
assumption is correct? I don't. That's where you and I differ. I
am a CS so I believe in God. That means I believe in truth.
You're an atheist. You don't believe in God. Therefore you don't believe
in truth. So if you don't believe in God, you don't believe in
truth. So I want to know how you got to that point. How
did you get to the point that that God is truth? It's because the
creator of the universe would be the source of everything that we know. Therefore
it would be true. Okay, So what I'm hearing is that would be
the case if your assumption is correct. So you're automatically assuming that you're correct
and then making your decisions based on the assumption that you're correct. Right,
It's doesn't that sound? Doesn't that sound to you a bit overly confident in
your answer? Well, I guess that's what what do you Is there any
margin of error for you at all? Yes? Like, I can be
wrong about a whole bunch of things. But I know I can be wrong
because I know that I can also be true. I can also be right.
You don't know if you can be right or wrong. But if you
just assume that you're right, Like if I if I say, let's say,
going back to math, if two plus two equals four. But I
say, you know what, I'm just going to assume that two plus two
equal seven, And if you don't believe that, then you're wrong. Would
I be reasonable to And then if I made every decision in math based on
that assumption, does that mean that I'm correct just because I've asserted that of
course not, but we know that, so I would have to justify how
I got there. You can't justify how you got there just by saying I
know that this is true because it is, and that I know I can
be wrong about other things because I know I could be true. But the
thing that you're you have that is true is something that you just asserted was
true. I'm not yet convinced that you've demonstrated that your truth is true.
You and I both know that two plus two equals four, So I'm so
that's why you can you're wrongly comparing my argument to two plus two equal seven.
You haven't shown that my argument is like two plus two equal seven,
And you haven't shown and you haven't shown that your God is true. Ben
if I could make a point too, So Annie, if I could just
make this one point the challenge I see where you're coming from in terms of
believing that you know you believe in God and this God is the truth.
The challenge for me is how do I know your specific God is the truth
and not some other feist's version of God version of truth? Like I grew
up Muslim, and there's a lot of key ways where the Islam's God and
Christianity's God are not compatible. There's direct contradictions with some parts of the beliefs
that Muslims and Christians have. So who has access to the truth here?
So you don't need to believe my God is true. You just need to
believe that God is truth. The creator of the universe, the force of
everything that we can know, would be truth. Like my God has nothing
to do with it. The creator of the universe would have to be truth
itself, I think, and with that the truth. Yeah, I think
we need to move on. But for the next time that you call,
I want us to pick up from how we got to the assumption that God
is truth, because we're not convinced and it's not something that we're going to
assume is correct. You have to demonstrate to us why that point is correct.
And so I think we'll move on for today. But please call in
again with that argument and we'll go from there. Okay, thank you so
much, Thanks so much calling in. Thank you for calling it nanny.
But yeah, but yeah, Ben, you could see why I asked that
question, because when when we have theists talking about having access to the truth
when it's abstract like that I actually don't really mind it. It's kind of
harmless. But to your point about how these kinds of things actually harm people,
it's when you have someone I'm not saying this about Annie to clarify,
but let's say a feist believes that LGBTQ people are exactly against the order of
nature and that is part of the truth of God. Then that's where the
risk is because you might encounter another feist who doesn't feel that way. So
how do we know which theist has access to this actual truth? We don't.
Yeah, yeah, and that is why we have these discussions. And
some of the topics seem frivolous, but that is that is what we get
to these arguments, and it's super important to make sure that we're addressing these
appropriately. And with that, we have the time of the show where we
talk about our patrons, and if you want to get your name on this
list, you can go to our Patreon and sign up. And this list
changes every week. So our top five patrons of the week we have Dingleberry,
Jackson, Oops, All, Singularity, de voor Valginkleevi, Helvetti Left
in the Leaves, and our honorable mention is Cat so congratulations to our top
five of the week. And we have a couple of super chats that I
want to read as well. We have one from Nash five Canadian says,
Annie was such a good caller. These are very good ideas and questions to
be asked. Was such a good conversation, Ben in secular Spirit, good
show so far. Thank you so much for your supports and your super chat.
And then we have Miranda Renzberger, who's been a member for two months,
says, I guess five dollars and says making up an answer is not
the same thing as finding the answer. Absolutely, any thoughts about that.
Well, also, just feeling or having faith that you have the answer is
not the same as it being the actual answer. You need to find a
way in which to determine it to be true with some sort of evidence,
And for me, faith is not enough. Yeah. Absolutely. For the
next call, let's take Michelle she her from California, sounds like you want
to talk about near death experiences. Tell us your story. Hey, thanks
for having me on. I appreciate it. Yeah, what's your experience.
I'm excited to hear about it. So this was in the late nineteen seventies.
When I was a teenager, I had a pretty serious UH event and
had a couple of surgeries, and during one of the surgeries, had an
adverse outcome had a near death death experience, which I didn't know about at
the time, of course, but I did have kind of a weird experience
while I was in surgery and had this weird kind of dream like state while
I was under an esthegia, and later on found out that I had a
near death experience, and I thought, oh, okay, that's what that
was. Now. I was raised specular, which was unusual in the seventies,
but the experience was not religious at all. I was black and white,
kind of like Keystone cops, like, you know, a train was
coming on the tracks and I was trying to get a car off the tracks,
and then I woke up in the recovery room. It had I didn't
know about NDEs back then. It wasn't until I was, you know,
went through medical school, went through residency and all of that, and then
I learned, you know, okay, these are a thing, and your
brain probably makes these up later and then religious started being off the all this.
So I just wanted to like let people know that not all of these
are religious. Not all of these are people that you know, drop to
their knees and you know, except Allah or Jesus or whoever Vishnu, some
of us have them and you know, go on about our lives, and
honestly, I rarely ever thought about it really until I started watching a lot
of atheist contents on YouTube, to be honest. So I just kind of
wanted to push back on some of the religious people saying that you know,
near that experiences prove God. Yeah, that's that's amazing. Do you say
your residency, what what specialty? I started off in family medicine and then
I switched to psychiatry. Oh amazing. I'm actually working on switching from family
medicine to internal medicine. So I'll be joining this switch rough club. Yeah.
I'm obviously probably going to retire in maybe another five six years. Yeah,
I'm at the end of my career. You're at the beginning. Yeah.
Well, that's amazing though, that we have some secular psychiatrists out there
that are doing some amazing work. And of course I don't know you personally,
but I know in a field that can be very heavily influenced by religion.
Happy to hear that there's some secular folk doing some good work. We're
pretty we're actually pretty secular as a whole psychiatrist and neurologist to be pretty secular.
But yeah, this was minor death experience as a teenager. This is
back in the seventies. Yeah, and NDEs, you know, people have
been experiencing these for a long time. People didn't, you know, tend
to popularize this quite a lot back then. Nobody made a big deal out
of it or a big fuss, And it wasn't really until maybe the eighties
or nineties that I started hearing about it, and that's when I started thinking
about it. But oh yeah, I had I had that experience. Mine
was not religious. It was you know, like I said, it was
like a like an old black and white movie. And honestly, I never
really thought about it until religious people kind of co opted it, and then
I started thinking about it a little bit more and I thought, you know
that I'll call and tell you about it. Yeah, that's awesome. Do
you have any tips, I guess for people engaging with these kinds of arguments,
Any any particular things that you've said to people that it maybe brought this
up to you about indic Yeah, have you had any discussions with people who
believe that they are supernatural experiences? And if so, are there any discussion,
like any any kind of methods of discussion that you've used in talking with
them. So, if it's a patient, I I don't ever uh push
back on patience and what they believe. If it's like in a s setting
or you know, family or friends, it depends. And if I am
going to push back on a family member or a friend, I tend to
use Socratic approaches with folks. Well, why do you believe that? And
what methods do you use to determine the you know, how you know what
the truth claim? You know, how is that? How do you know
that that's true? You know, how would you test that? Things like
that? And if they, you know, get kind of squirrely about it,
then then I drop it. I don't I don't tend to push it
too much. I you know, I I don't know of anyone else that's
had an actual INDE. So I haven't really had a lot of experience with
that as far as I know, I'm the only person in my my little
circle that has had an actual NDE. They're they're not really all that,
you know, and people would have you believe it, like half the population
has had these and it's really not. But people have all kinds of other,
you know, supposed supernatural experiences, but these are just feeling, you
know, we all get to stealing, and I just tend to ask people,
you know, well, how do you know that that's God? I
mean, how would you you know? Why do you believe that? It's
a really great question. I think that's the key one to ask. Ye.
I always wonder how much how much stock fists have in those kinds of
near death experiences. I know in the US there was that really massively popular
book I think it was called Heaven It's for Real, where it was just
sharing the story of like a child who had gone through a near death experience,
and I hear it get mentioned quite often. So I do wonder how
much do people, when they're thinking about their own faith, do they feel
like, well, there's all these near deaf experiences, people seeing the white
light and all that, and how much of it is just like a secondary
thing where they just leave anyway and then this is just something that comforts them
that they're already right, Yeah, exactly, yeah, for sure. All
right with that, I think we're gonna move on to some other calls.
I appreciate you bringing your story and really amazing that you're able to have some
of these discussions with people. Thanks for calling in, Michelle, and good
luck to you both and take care. Thanks, have a good rest to
your Sunday. All right, we have another caller uh in the queue.
We're going to talk to Jeffrey. He him from Pennsylvania, wanting to follow
up on previous argument advocating for theism, wanting to discuss God's truth. Jeffrey,
can you summarize your argument for us? Sure? Ken, How you
doing? Doctor Ben? And hey, Secular Spirit, It's good to talk
to you guys. Hey Jeffrey and hear me. Yep, we can hear
you. What's your what's your argument today? Okay? Yeah, I think
uh shout out to Annie, sat out to Michelle as well. I disagree
with Michelle with regard to to ndees. But Annie spoke about how God is
true. And I can't really speak for because she didn't say it specifically,
but I would imagine she may have taken her cue as to why why she
knew that God is truth, because this is exactly the message that Jesus brought
us. I love, I love being hurt. Yeah, we're just listening
to your argument. Okay, great, I was hearing a bunch of beeping
in my well. Okay, well, Jeffrey, I just wanted to also
mention. Uh, Jeffrey, I just wanted to mention I don't think Annie
clarified that she was a Christian. Man. You could correct me if I
mistaken. I don't because you mentioned Christianity or Jesus once when she was talking
about gods. So maybe she is Christian, Maybe she isn't. I'm not
sure. But I just wanted to make that point because of the point I
was making earlier that who has access to this truth of God? Which which
religion, which faith to meet? It's unclear. We all we all have
access to it. So why do different people disagree about which God is correct?
Then? I think it's because we believe different information. How different religions?
Yes, how do you know your information is correct? Well? This
is the Uh, this is actually the burden of I guess every man and
woman born on the planet, they got to figure out they got to figure
out given their their life, Uh, in their life, what is truth?
You know? The thing that what the was it? Pilot, I
believe asked Jesus what is truth? This is a this is a question we
all ultimately have to answer because there's so many lives out here that And I
think what's happening is because we live in what is really a dark world,
and Jesus is the light of the world. We're in in darkness, and
so there's a lot of lies that we're born into, you know, and
we and we see that all around us. And I think people are inundated
with lies around them, and so now they have no confidence in the truth
even in this in this pokemon, I heard the term post truth world being
guanteed about these days. You know, people don't even believe there is truth
anymore. You see, that's how dark this world is. So when Jesus
comes in and says I am the light of the world, we should listen
to his words so that we can be enlightened and move out of this darkness
that we're all in. And for you, Jeffrey, how do you know
that it is Jesus that is the truth? Like, how did you determine
for yourself. I understand what you're saying about how everyone has to go through
this journey and figure that out for you personally. How did you figure out
for you that this is the truth one hundred percent, no doubt. Good
question. So I heard or I read, you know, I was made
aware of Jesus's words, and when I got an understanding of what he was
saying, I obeyed, you know, his commandments. And when I began
to obey his commandment, I found confirmation of the truth that he was in
fact the truth that was my own personal journey. What was that confirmation?
Like, what does it look like? There is in the confirmation? There
is mutual joy, excuse me, mutual love between people that I interact with.
There is understand increased understanding of the things that are going on around me,
things that perhaps before hearing or getting that understanding, I was perplexed by.
And I just felt like again like I was in that darkness that I
was, you know. But as as as the Spirit of God began to
minister to my mind and began to reveal the truth, you know, it
gives you peace, It gives you a certain confidence, and people take that
confidence as being arrogant. Well, I can't really be apologetic before my confidence.
I mean, it's just something that I'm experiencing. People can call a
confirmation bias, and that's usually what happens. But I guess we all have
confirmation bias. But after we do we do that. So, Jeffrey,
sorry, sorry if I interrupts, I just have a question for you,
just about the inner peace you felt, like the in yourself when you when
you accepted Jesus. The thing that I find is, so my background is
Muslim. I used to be Muslim, and I remember when I was a
practicing Muslim that I had those feelings too, like I had the feeling of
inner peace and you know certainty that this is the truth. But for Muslims,
they don't believe that Jesus is the son of God. For example.
They believe that he was a very important prophet of God, but they don't
have that same belief about him being the son of God and part of the
Trinity for example. So my question, my question to you is I had
that inner I had that inner peace, that certainty, but I didn't have
belief the same beliefs about Jesus that you do. So can you See why
I bring that up because there might be more than one pathway to attaining confirmation
of one's faith beyond just your belief in Jesus. I think to the extent
that Islam, it's on any type of truths. And if you encountered those
truths, why you were in Islam, and you embrace those truths, I
think that's the source of your peace. See, the peace that I'm talking
about can only come from truth, can only come It's exclusive, it's holy,
it's set apart, but it exists, and a lot of things that
people realize don't realize that it does exist in you know, don't get me
wrong, but you have to investigate things. And when you encounter truth,
one of the things that it does do is it does bring truth. I
mean peace. Excuse me, but you see my point, Jeffrey, when
it comes to me, Let's say, when I was a Muslim, I
did not accept Jesus as my savior. I didn't accept the Christian version of
Jesus as the truth. So in that sense, I was in a set.
I was rejecting the truth of Jesus, wasn't I? And for a
Muslim who will look at a Christian saying that Jesus is the son of God.
A Muslim would see that as blasphemy, and so in that sense going
against the truth. And so the thing I get stuck on on is I
totally respect your believe that it's really important that you get those things like inner
peace from your certainty about Jesus. But how do we know it's it's actually
the truth when there's so many people with varying claims about this truth. Okay,
well, I think that one of the things in my faith tradition of
popular saying is well, not a saying, it's a scripture. I'll just
forget where it's at. It says, oh, taste and see that the
Lord is good. Though there is an experience in the tasting, you know,
that's just using a word. They're tasting. In other words, when
we interact, because we're interacting, we're interacting, we believe with an actual
mind, a person who we hold as the creator of all things. So
we can interact with this, with this person, and when we experience the
goodness. And I should have mentioned that as the other confirmation, not only
the peace, but the goodness that I that I not only felt, but
you know, walked in and existing. You know, whenever I experienced goodness
in my life, these were manifestations of the God who said and declared that
he was good. In fact, he actually declared only he is good,
you know, and we and the goodness kind of just flows through all of
us as we stand in agreement with what he says, so we share in
that goodness. But that is also a confirmation. So I have some questions.
Is it possible for people to find peace in something that is not good
and not true? No, I would say absolutely not. How do you
know that if somebody says that they are at peace, If someone says that
they're at peace because of something that they believe is holy, would you push
back on that? Well? I mean, I just happen to know that
inherently a lie something that's not true, right, it can't produce goodness so
to So yeah, but sometimes sometimes those things cause people this same inner peace
that they cause to other religious people. An example I'm going to go to
are people whose children die from refusing blood transfusions. These kids are martyred like
they're considered martyrs by the Jehovah's witnesses because they bravely accepted the rules of their
faith and denied life saving treatment because of what they believed. And that thing
gives people peace. It gives people who believe that peace that their family member
made the right choice in their eyes. So if this, if this,
if this knowledge of truth comes from you know, the feelings of peace and
all that, would you push back against this particular belief And if so,
does that feeling then not necessarily indicate that something is true or good? Not
only not only the feeling. You wouldn't just I wouldn't just focus on strictly
the feeling and that the two regular thing that's you specific example that you gave,
because just because they got peace about it doesn't mean that was good.
I have to reflect. So then how do we define goodness? You define
goodness? You have to judge a tree by a fruit, the fruit that
is that is manifested. And I wouldn't just go with the parents peace about
it and say, oh, that's a good thing. No, I would
say that first of all, I'm very close to that particular thing, that
that particular incident or example that you gave, because I have Jovah's witnesses in
my family. But I'm not I am not a Jehovah's witness. And that
is because I investigated and found that the scripture that they're basing, that whole
refusal to take blood transfusion is faulty. I discerned the darkness. I discerned
the lie right, And so how did you determine if you're able to determine
the lies from their religion? How did you go about approaching yours? How
did you find out that your faith is true and that you're adhering the true
things and not false things? Yeah? I had answered that earlier. When
the word came to me, I listened to it. I heard it.
First of all, how did you know that that voice was the right voice?
If you will, how did you know? Well? First of all,
the truth made itself manifest to me in the in the the Word of
God was made flesh in Jesus Christ. What does that mean? What does
that mean other than you felt that it was true? It means that the
truth was actually made flesh and dwelt among men and women. And how do
you know that? How do you did the word become flesh right in front
of your eyes? And like did Jesus sprout from the page and walk up
to you slap you on the face and say this is the correct one.
How did this? How did this happen? You're describing a lot of very
vague things of like this manifested for you and like you discerned these things.
I need to know if I'm going to have the same experience that you did,
if I'm going to read the same book and find out that it's true,
how is that process going to happen? Like how did you have that
process? And how is this going to convince me that it's true? Because
I should have a similar experience, right, Like if I read the book
and if it's true, and if I should just know that it's true,
I should be able to replicate what you did and have the same result.
Right, Yeah, you're skipping something that I said that's very important, which
is not just hear the word, but when you hear the word and have
faith in it, then you obey what is commanded of you. And then
within the obedience there is confirmation of the truth of the thing. So you
have to already believe it before I can believe it. Is that what you're
saying, So you hear it, but then you have to But then you
have to like it kind of sounds like you have to hear it and then
you have to already commit to it, and if you don't commit to it,
then you're not going to believe it. The faith comes from guys,
a gift of God that he gives to every man and woman who hears his
word. Yeah, except for I tried and it didn't work for me.
And there are several things that I will not I will not try because I
mean, a lot of the Bible tells me that I cannot be who I
am. So all that being said, it sounds like you're just kind of
preaching, and so well, if you want to call back next time,
we'd be happy to address this more. But I want you to think,
like, go home, think about what of your story is going to convince
us, Like, what can i do other than just already believing something,
because I'm not convinced and I did. I was a Christian and I was
very committed and I believed the things that I was taught. I had that
sense of inner peace like it mentioned, but I ended up not being convinced
now. And so I want you to go back and kind of think through
your reasoning of how you got to that and we'll talk to you next time.
Thank you, Jeffrey. Yeah, Ben, And before we jump to
the next car, I just wanted to make a point of tying into something
one of the channel followers sent in about Mother Teresa being in hell? Was
Mother Teresa a saint? I believe, someone who is revered by a lot
of Christians, and the whole notion of you judge a tree by its fruit,
like so goodness by its fruit. And when you consider the incredible amount
of suffering that she allowed to continue in her hospitals for the dying and sick,
is that a good thing? It was that the path of truth,
the path of Jesus. And that's the thing that scares me too, is
whichever religion you look at, you can see a lot of horrible examples of
what this faith has led to. And so again the question remains, what
is this truth? Who has access to it? Because you can point out
flaws in every direction. Absolutely, And with that we're going to move on
to Stephen in Florida, who wants to talk about some different interpretations of the
Bible. So Steven, can you summarize your question or comment to us?
Hey, guys, thanks for taking my call. I first would like to
bring up with what Annie said, God is not truth. You could argue
that Christianity, it has forty five thousand different denominations globally, so you could
say it's it is the most divided religion known to man. Therefore, you
could argue that Christianity has the less truth out of any religion due to the
expansion of different divisions or denominations. If Christianity was truth, it would the
reality. It would just exist. People would be able to find it without
a book or a prophet or somebody trying to teach them what reality is.
It would just exist. And so I did call in for a different purpose,
just to bring some light onto if we took the Bible literally, but
I would. I would like to now challenge your Christian callers or your religious
callers, mainly Christians, that believe that Jesus died for them, what tangible
proof do we have that Jesus's sacrifice even was accepted by God. The only
thing we know about life, the only certainty of life, is death.
And if Jesus paid the ultimate price that we owe to God, and that
was Semitic death, why are we still born into a sinful world. And
if you believe that, why wouldn't you be outsinning as much as possible so
that Jesus's death isn't in vain. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point.
I kind of want to address the topic you had called about, because
the theists in the chat can call in with their responses, but I don't
want to. I don't want to assume their perspective on this issue without them
being around. But I am very curious about your original topic because it just
seems interesting to me. Yes, sir, absolutely. You know, other
than Adam and Eve having three sons who populated the world, you find interesting
stories in the Bible, like, for instance, if we use Jesus's baptism
as a reference point, three days after Jesus's baptism, all the apostles write
that Jesus goes into the wilderness to resist the devil for forty days, but
John doesn't. John writes that this is when him and Jesus are at the
wedding in Canaan, and him and Jesus are both there along with Jesus's mother
Mary, and John never says who's actually getting married, but Jesus is having
such a great time that this is when he performs his miracle of turning water
into wine. Now, you know they would have scare drinking water, so
you can take that as you want. Jesus turning what little drinking water they
had into more alcohol couldn't really be deemed a miracle. But you know,
that story doesn't matter until we get to the Last Supper, where the beloved
disciples or the Christians will say they don't know who that was places his head
on Jesus's breast. But this could also be the disciple whom Jesus married,
considering the disciples didn't know where Jesus was all but John because when he's also
on the cross, John writes that Jesus then entrusts his mother Mary to John
in John's care, and we all know that. You know, obviously the
text tells us Jesus would have had a stepfather, Joseph, So I was
telling the screener. You know, at the point of Jesus's crucifixion, Mary
would have been at least twenty one twenty two years old. So it's possible,
giving Joseph, Joseph's history of liking little girls, that he just moved
on to another virgin thirteen year old girl when Mary was twenty one. She
might have just been too old for Joseph. I don't know if I accept
that interpretation, because I mean, as far as I know about Jewish culture
back then, I don't think that they would have easily just let somebody move
on to somebody else. I think they had some I don't know if there
are specifically laws, but they definitely had customs around, like monogamy and staying
with us as spout. I know that they would often like take additional wives,
but I just don't know. I don't know if I have the expertise
even to weigh in as much on this particular interpretation. But it's definitely interesting,
right right. I mean, it's just it's it's more of a whimsical
outlook as because I am an atheist, so it's more of taking the Bible
literally. How funny and childish the stories are? You know, for example
of Adam and Eve having three sons who populated the world. You know,
and you know, why how do we have four blood tights that are divided
into eight groups negative, AB, A, B and O negative and positive
Depending on what you inherit from your parents, you know this is all impossible
from two people, and so you know, the Bibles were feuded with basic
science. But you know, if I'm just I just wanted to call and
say, if we just took the stories literally, just reading the Bible,
we could assume with the disciples not knowing where Jesus is in the story except
for John, and with John giving Mary his mother on the cross, I
mean, you could assume that he was the beloved disciple that the Christians are
always saying that nobody knows who that was. Yeah, a secular spirit,
any thoughts. I always wonder about this kind of thing of the Bible.
So obviously I'm an outsider, having grown up a Muslim, so I'm not
that familiar with the Bible. But what really stands out to me is the
sheer number of contradictions and variations and details of Jesus' life. And what's most
interesting to me about it is when we're talking about literal truth, the ways
that a lot of Christian apologists get around it, where you know, sometimes
you just have to engage the text and interpret it and the truth will come
to you. All of them were accessing the truth, but from different angles
and perspectives, but it's still the truth. So what matters in the end
is whether it's literal truth, metaphorical truth, allegorical truth, whatever you want
to call it. The Christian is stuck having to believe that it's true,
or it was true at some point, or that there's an essence of truth
through it. So I think it's reached a point where, two thousand years
later, no matter what you throw at them, what you throw at Christians,
they'll find some kind of way to justify their belief in the Bible.
And I don't know what the solution is to tackle that beyond asking for critical
thinking and reason and to look at it with an actual open mind, not
through the confirmation bias of belief. Yeah, read a different book, Yeah,
definitely. There are those Christians who are like I only have one book
and that's the only book I need, right, And most of them don't
even read it themselves. They pay something no interpret it for them, you
know. And then when you like, you know, this weekend, I
told my aunt the story of Lot and she didn't even know that Lot was
in the Bible, and I mean, I was like, well, that's
a big character in the Bible. Did not know, Yeah, especially the
sum of the unsavory parts of the story of Lots and you know afterwards with
his two daughters. There's stories like that where I don't really know what you're
supposed to take away from them. Are they just are they just there for
you to just kind of be awe struck. Are there morals you're supposed to
take from it? Because it's scary if you do take it that way as
a moral lesson, exactly, sir, Because the moral lesson that I got
out of that that I take away is that God justifies insist with the first
family having three sons, they either had sex with the mother or with the
daughter that the Bible doesn't say Adam and Eve had. And then we get
a story of Sodom and Gomora where the same deity kills all these homosexuals and
this problem solving all loving deity is about to kill the entire world in almost
no time in the grand scheme of time with an entire flood, but he
has to let you know how much he hates homosexuals specifically before killing the rest
of the world. So, I mean, if we're looking for things in
the Bible from the first few stories we gather that no homosexuals died and know
the wood because the deity already killed them before the flood happened. Yeah,
lots of interesting stuff, and I agree that the book isn't isn't super reliable
and there's a lot of contradictions. We are going to move on, though,
but if you have any more thoughts about this, we do have the
Discord after show after this if you would like to pop in and continue this
discussion. I'm sure we have lots of people in the discord that'd be happy
to have a group discussion about this as well. So thank you for calling
in, and you guys, thank you, Thank you Steven all right,
And for those that weren't able to get on the show today, I know
we had a couple of callers still in the queue, but I want to
encourage you to also join us in the discord for the after show because I
think that those questions were really good for a group discussion setting. And I
really hope you join us in a few minutes because we will prioritize your questions
if we see you in there. How did you enjoy today's show, Secular
Spirit? Oh, it was really fun, Like it really flew by,
didn't it. Yeah? Yeah, I think that there were a lot of
really core important questions to feasts and for that explored reasons why a lot of
people believe in God, and they're really really important and I'm so I'm kind
of glad that we kind of covered a lot of them, like near death
experiences, where did we come from? What happens after death? Where where
does truth come from? So yeah, really really good stuff to discuss.
Yeah, it's a great show, a lot of variety, a lot of
good calls, and I hope some of these people call back so we can
continue our discussions here. But just a reminder for the audience today we have
our talk. He then to me question of what would Jesus tweet? And
I think we need to make those bracelets from the eighties or whatever, what
would Jesus do? Bracelets? But what would Jesus tweet? Is now a
thing. So get your answers in the comments and tune into the next week's
show where we read the top three answers because yours might be chosen. And
we want to thank Richard Jilliver for helping out today as our backup host.
He was very kindly sitting backstage telling us all the things that he thinks about
the variety of calls that we had, and we got to see his lovely
facial expressions as he was fuming with a few different things. I just love
when I get to respond to philosophy questions and he doesn't, and he just
gets to sit on the watching me respond to philosophy question. Gonna lie.
That was the first two calls, in fact, was I was kind of
saying, this is right on my street. I so wish I was hosting
this week. It's great to get a philosophy one way. It's not just
people shouting at you and telling you that your grounding of being is wrong anyway,
So that'd have been that first call. Was great for that. I
love the beginning of the universe calls. That's kind of my wheelhouse as well.
So those first two calls as particularly, I was really like chomping at
the bit, shouting at the screen, typing madly and chatting all that other
great stuff. I just want to thank you Secular Spirit for coming onto the
show. It's been great having you along. Thank you for having me her
truth yes, and please tell us I know you talked to us about the
beginning, at the beginning about what do you do, But please remind the
audience who you are where they can find you and hear more about your story.
Sure, I mean, I'm an ex Muslim now atheist YouTuber. You
can find me on Secular spirit on YouTube. I'm also on Twitter and Instagram.
I talk about organized religion in general, although my focus is on Islam.
I am starting to cover Christianity a bit more in the recent months,
and I'm going to continue to do so. And I just want to explore
where we get our answers for life's biggest questions from and potentially maybe secular ways
of getting those answers and meaning in our lives. Awesome love to hear everybody
go watch Secular Spirits channel. I will be doing that as well. I
will be going and liking and subscribing, turning on notifications, all of the
things that you should also be doing with this channel. Like I mentioned before,
but let's throw out some lover rings to our audience. Jick and again
we have our discord after show for anyone that wants to continue the discussion anything
that we've talked about today, or if you have a new question or comment.
You'd like to mention that is tiny dot cc slash ACD discord. If
you're not there yet, if you don't believe this is your community. We
love having all of you here, providing a safe, secular space for all
of you, especially those of you who have maybe had to be around religious
family over the weekend and just need a little break. We're happy to be
here for you. If you do believe, we don't hate you. We're
just not convinced by everyone. We want the truth, so watch Truth Wanted
Live Friday at seven pm Central. Visit tiny dot cc slash YT and call
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