And now a reading from his word Mark four eleven and twelve. He told
them the secret of the Kingdom of God has been given to you and to
those on the outside. Everything is said in parables, so that they may
be ever seen but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding, otherwise
they might turn and be forgiven. So like, does Jesus not want everyone
to be saved? Why would he perfectly speak in a way that not everyone
would be able to understand. I thought God sent Jesus to save everyone,
not just those who understand parables. If you can make sense of this passage,
then please give us a call, because the show is coming right now.
Welcome to Talk Heathen. Today is Sunday, July sixteenth, twenty twenty
three. I am your host, Christy Powell, and joining me today is
the off Disgust rarely seeing Kenneth, who was discussing, Oh my God,
hey good here. I mean, it's fun remembrances, little anecdotes, you
know, just wondering how it's going. Where you've been, I mean,
how you've been doing, buddy. I've been doing really well. I've been
I've been parenting a lot on weekends, which frankly beats, you know,
posting shows. Yeah, all right, but yeah, I've been doing I've
been doing the dad thing on weekends. It's been great. Yeah. Well,
okay, since we were able to steal you away for just a moment,
are you are you feeling rusty or you're feeling ready pent up at all?
Are there any topics that you're like really excited to tear into. Well,
I love where where you took it with that that reading from mark Um.
I pay a lot of attention to the ACA TikTok and there's a clip
that is on there that's went fairly viral where Matt is talking about questions of
predestination from an old clip of of of the Atheist Experience, and we've had
like seven thousand or so people commenting on it, talking about questions of free
will? Who does God want to and not want to save? What's the
deal there? Yeah? All that stuff once is it always right? Right?
So yeah, I love digging into that stuff. It'll be it'll be
fun, cool, awesome. Well, we'll get into it. We've already
got a bunch of calls on the line, but we definitely want to encourage
people to give us a try. I'm gonna mention briefly that Talk Heathen is
a product of the Atheist Community of Austin, a five O one C three
nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of atheism, critical thinking, secular humanism,
and the separation of religion and government. We are a live call in show
with open lines, So give us a call where at five one two nine
nine two four two, or you can catch us on your computer from tiny
dot cc slash call th And before we get started, let's take a quick
moment to check in on the results from last week's Talk Heathen to me.
Last week we asked you, what are you calling dibbs on if the Christians
ever do get around to getting raptured. Our number three choice came from Antonio
Kuza, who said, I called dibbs on the National Cathedral in DC.
Sunday parties will be up all right? That sounds like a good time.
Yeah, it's pretty good. Our number two choice was from the Justin,
who says I've got dibbs on Joel Ostein's private jet, so singing some rocks
uh. And finally, our favorite answer this week came from Eric Schuler,
who says, I called dibbs on the popemobile. That's a good one to
get in on. I mean, there's so much art, there's so many
incredible buildings. I mean, there's a lot in these sort of dragon hoarding
institutional endowments. But the popemobile might be the most fun and unique of the
of the things until we get into the crazy relics. Anyway, it's pretty
good. Yeah. So, Kenth, for you, I have to ask
our prompt for this week, is right, a slogan for Satan? Yeah?
What do you got? We're looking for best answers in the comments section?
How about for you from you? So if I was if I was
Satan's campaign manager, the slogan would be the lesser of two evils. I
mean, you know, I think it pretty much writes you know when you
when you look at the records of the candidates. Yeah, hey, Satan
hasn't genocided anybody that I'm aware of. No, that goes a long way
clean hands. Yeah. Well, we're definitely excited to hear from y'all.
I know that you're going to have some great answers, and I am really
excited to get into it. But Kenneth, we had a little bit of
trouble getting started. So what do you say we just go ahead and jump
right in and talk to Chloe in Pennsylvania. Love it Chloe. What is
on your mind this morning? What is on my mind? Well, I
got into the h got into the lap chat, just wanted to see how
you're doing. And I saw the initial comment of you know, faith and
and what about the all these churches and these organizations that use the faithfulness of
that they demand from their from their congregants. What if they use that for
good? Like? Sure, how are we supposed to react when we can
clearly see that religion is clearly pushing pro social behavior. Yeah, I mean
it's a it's a tricky question, I guess, because you know, can
we keep the baby in the bathwater or however we want to try and frame
all of that. I guess it's a little bit tricky because you have to
keep in mind that nobody's really asking, you know. I mean, it's
great when people watch shows like these, when they are curious about the philosophy
of religion and ethics and moral philosophy and these kinds of subjects. But I
try to be really mindful of the fact that rando's on the street don't really
want me to give my opinion about their belief system, and it's not really
my job to step in until there is a problem being caused. With that
in mind, what should we feel, what should we be thinking, or
what kind of message should we be giving to people who are in a religious
circumstance and that religion seems to be having a positive benefit on the world.
You know, I think we can give them some patience. I think we
can give them some kindness, and definitely we can sort of deprioritize them on
our list of things to be concerned about. But I still think that we
need to be working towards a evidence based world. I think that we need
to encourage critical thinking and be asking people to look at what they believe and
why sort of regardless of what the quote unquote fruits of that thought process are.
Kenneth, how does that land with you? So this is something that
I am like, very very opinionated about. So I was like, my
mouth is watering looking at the question of you know, how do you question
someone's faith when when it seems to be leading to good outcomes. I've got
two thoughts, and I'll try to be as quick as I can be.
I was talking to someone the other day about this very thing, and they
were talking about how we need religion to guide our morals, and I pointed
out to them that the best that that religion can offer is bad reasons to
do good things. I can't think of a single thing that a religion could
be instructive on as a as like a social good that we cannot arrive at
through purely secular, rational, compassionate, humanistic means. Do this because it's
in line with a religion is inferior to do this because of the good effects
of it, Like we can we can evaluate the effects of our actions without
having to go this is good because a God said so, or a prophet
said so or whatever. So yeah, I think that's the best we can
do. If someone's life is going well, if they're like, hey,
look at all this good that's happening in my life because of my religious beliefs,
I would I would ask them, do you need the religious beliefs to
to get there? And the reason for that dovetails into the second thing,
which is the effect of the normalization of using faith to arrive at our conclusions
moral or otherwise, Okay. Faith is just believing things in the absence of
evidence. Okay. So using that, anybody can believe anything about anything.
And the more that we normalize that, the more that there's confusion about what
even constitutes a social good. People who who have incredibly regressive and toxic and
harmful views that are informed by their religion may still think that they are accomplishing
social goods because they believe they're being guided by a God or a prophet or
whatever. We can't even get to what social goods are without thinking about it
separately from using faith. So that's that's where my brain goes on end of
it. Ye, Chloe, I feel like we've had a version of this
conversation before and sort of agreed to disagree on this ultimate point. How does
everything that Kenneth is saying to you, how does that sit? How does
That's? Basically what I was coming into form because I kind of had this
feeling that this would be where you would fall. Where I thought my perspective
would be a little different, would be as an animating animists in your life.
Where I came into religion through science wasn't through the hard science. It
was through the soft science. It was just through this is just what humans
do. And from that perspective, selflessness, religious selflessness like genuine what I
would call plausible acts of of genuine religiosity. How are we supposed to say
this isn't something, this isn't How do we get to the points where we
can have a conversation and I am so sorry for wasting your time on this,
um, how do we get to the point in the conversation where we
can start inviting atheists and nonbelievers into the interfaith work work world. How can
we integrate that work? I don't know that there is space like we can
all sort of when we're working on a project together, if we are coming
together to end homelessness or to you know, provide services and resources. Yeah,
I do think that there is room for atheists and for a number of
different religious groups to come together around those shared common goals. But if we
are sort of setting up an atheist table at the religion uh, you know,
an atheist chair at the religion table, I don't think that that makes
sense, and I don't know that that is going to I know that we've
sort of talked through this a couple of different ways, and I guess what
I really want to just lay out for you, Chloe and ask you to
reckon with is what Kenneth is saying. And this idea that like when I
worked in crisis services as a crisis counselor, there was a lot of training
around the fact that people in that first responder role need to be responsible to
never lie to a client, to never say anything that is dishonest. Because
even if you can talk to somebody who's like literally on the ledge, who
is discussing or having the idea of jumping off or ending their life doing something
violent or hurtful or destructive, even if you could talk them out of it
by making some grandiose promises or by offering a little white lie or something that
is going to quote benefit them at least in the short term, you're creating
a world. You're creating an environment where that person is never going to trust
another first responder again, where they're going to be cautious and anxious around all
of these things, not to mention devastated at whatever false promises you offer them.
And I really want you to take a moment and recognize that even if
you can get a positive result out of a lie or out of a fiction.
It's incredibly dangerous and problematic to be doing so. So wait, let
me let me ask this, if you'll let me um, what I would
promise someone who's on the ledge is not that God is beautiful and you know,
don't jump or whatever. It's that tomorrow morning, the sun's gonna rise,
and that sun and that sunrise is going to be beautiful. Tomorrow you're
going to have breakfast, and that breakfast is going to be delicious. That's
all true and could be yeah, and and those are things that we lead
with faith on. We don't know that the sun's gonna rise tomorrow. We
have faith the sun is going to rise tomorrow. No, we don't.
We do not have faith the sun is going to rise tomorrow. And maybe
I made a foot I mean, well no, no, but but you're
you're you're pointing to something that's important that there There are there are two distinct
usages of the of the word right. There's a colloquial use of the word
that can mean essentially it's anonymous with hope or trust. But in the context
of religion, a faith community like what you've been referring to, we're talking
about belief in the absence of, or even contrary to evidence. Right,
So, if you're talking about crisis intervention and making appeals to things that we
have evidence for, then you are necessarily stepping outside of the realm of faith
to do good for this person or to attempt to But is it outside the
realm of faith? Because yes, for me, it's the evidence enters the
equation it is it is outside the realm of faith as as soon as there's
evidence, as soon as we've got good reasons for believing. Yeah. So,
like the colloquial idea of believing in people, I mean, how do
you how do you how do you square that belief with evidence? God,
the beliefs in people is evidence. People exist, people are here, my
neighbor's hurting, I go help my neighbor. So you want to make the
world a better place? Yeah, and and and you don't have to believe
anything without evidence to recognize that people exist, that there are benefits to helping
people. That you know, even even if you're detivated by pure selfishness,
that by making the world around to you a better place, that there's a
sort of rising tide that lifts all boats and the world becomes better for you
too, you know, the more we can promote things like empathy, generosity,
compassion, and kindness. So yeah, there's no's no, there's no
faith involved there. It's just you know, good old fashioned thinking. Well,
there is a certain amount of faith involved because you do because I mean
get Chloe in the sense that every time I take a step without looking at
the ground, I have an amount of faith that the ground will be there
to catch me and that it won't just evaporate underneath me. Yeah, if
we're going to use the word faith that way, then sure we have faith
that the sun is going to rise. But we're really taking that word and
taking its elasticity and it's multiple meanings and trying to force it and fit it
into things in ways that are kind of silly and ridiculous. When I take
a step, I have faith that the ground is still going to be underneath
me, because I've taken millions of steps in my life and it's almost always
worked out without me tripping and twisting an ankle. And I think that you
need to really recognize there's a meaningful difference between trusting and assuming that my ten
billionth step is going to land on the ground is not the same thing as
trusting and believing that the God of Abraham is going to give me a seat
in his father's house after I die, or that you know, thora Odin's
son is going to have these magical powers or commune with me in nature,
or any of these other philosophies. That's not the same use of the word
faith, And it's a little disingenuine to try and shove them together. It
just creates confusion right now, because we know, we know that your you
know, the ground exists, your feet and legs exist. There's a lot
of sort of epistemic groundwork that has already been laid, so you don't have
to believe anything on insufficient evidence to think that the next step you take is
going to be like the previous. Right, you see that, Chloe,
Right, Yeah, I see that. But that's where I'm getting at is
that when it comes to faith, I used to be an atheist, and
coming out of atheism was a series of blind walks of having them walk forward
with no longer no longer having a grounding, a solid grounding in materialism.
Okay, that's what we're asking people not to do. It's okay, and
that you did it, but we're encouraging people to not do that part.
Yeah, But what I'm trying to tell you is that people are doing it
every day. They're doing it now race, they're doing it with joy and
beauty, and it's not all terrible. And you are invited to the Interfaith
Conversation. You are invited to the tape, whether or not you want to
be there. You know that is that is You're around, though, and
look around and see the other effects of people believing things without evidence, or
thinking that they believe things that they have evidence for but they actually don't,
and they're confused about the nature of evidence. They don't know how to evaluate
truth claims. Look around the United States, look at how certain groups are
being marginalized. Look at how we can't figure out the answers to very solvable
problems. And this is a global phenomenon. I don't want to just pick
on America because I live here, but I feel like you cannot help.
But notice when you look around how people seem to be having a lot of
difficulty figuring out what the hell is real. And and I have to say,
the culprit seems to be that a lot of people seem just fine with
believing things that they don't have evidence for a variety of reasons. But you're
assuming that this is something that doesn't extend into the atheist community, that this
is something that doesn't affect I am not community. It absolutely affects the atheist
community. Good, good, Good. I want to make sure we're on
the same page here, because I was ready to talk about Richard Dawkins and
this weird turn into eugenics. And you can find examples of irrational people.
You can find examples of bad ideas, bigotry, etc. In any community.
And that's what we're hoping to discourage is all that stuff, because those
things are symptoms of more fundamental problems and failures, not just on the rational
side, but also with respect to you know, things like compassion and empathy
and all that stuff. So there's there's a there's a sort of collision of
failures that lead to people believing things for bad reasons. But it's from my
experience though, going you know, experiencing things with other religious people. We
all don't have this denial of reality. In fact, I would say a
majority of us don't. We are willing to accept that climate change is real.
You know, COVID was real, all these other things were real.
That reality is real. We just have our own reasons for believing something that
may not exactly be true. And but notice that you're operating from the same
foundation as the climate change denihilists, as the bigots, all the other people
who believe unjustified stuff are using the exact same broken epistemological tool that you're using.
You're applying it in this one area and you're like, it's not particularly
harmful, but the tool itself and the continued use of it, it creates
huge problem. But the tool I'm using is I'm following that sense of community
and I'm following my own sense of you know, togetherness. I'm following where
the people take me. And it's a better face, don't Yeah, Like
Chloe, we get it, we get it. We understand how you got
from point A to point B, and we're just asking you to recognize that
it's cool that you ended up in a place that you feel pretty good about,
but that's a very dangerous path to be on. We're not saying that
you should become an atheist because atheists are better. We're saying that you should
think critically because critical thinking helps to prevent people from becoming anti vaxers and transphobes.
We're asking you to be thoughtful about what you believe and why not because
it will magically give you this set of beliefs that will help you out at
the voting booth or make you into a more charitable person. Those are some
happy consequences some of the time, but ultimately we're asking you to think critically
about all of these things so that you don't use your sense of community,
your desire for connection, your intuition, and all of these other things that
can be so thoroughly manipulated and find yourself in a dangerous place. And I
can totally accept and appreciate if that is not a change that you are interested
or able to make, or willing to make at this time. We started
this call out with me sort of affirming that it's not my job to like
come into people's homes and tell them what to believe. I am, however,
going to continue to broadcast these ideas on YouTube and encourage people to tune
into them and to consider on their merit whether or not it's valuable to choose
to think in this way, to be mindful and intentional and thoughtful in this
way. And I really hope, Chloe, that you are willing to sit
with that a little bit and to consider the potential value here. But I've
spent most of my life as an atheist. I've sat with that, with
that proposition, and what I came away from was that the why we become
feist is not related to the arguments. It's related to the experience. It
is related to those things. And that is why things like um, that
is why we need to have skeptics about things like intuition. That's why we
need to have and there's a word for it that it's my mind's blanking on.
Uh, I'm sorry. UM. Discernment the power of discernment. And
that's why we need the power of discernment, not just in our secular lives,
but also in our non secular lives, because we can be led to
places that are beyond ourselves if we can stay on the path by following some
simple rules such as, you know, make sure you're not being harmful,
make sure you're not doing this, make sure you're doing that. We should
be exploring our space. We shouldn't be just stuck thinking, well, we
can't we can't get out of our we can't get out of our comfort zone
because that's going to lead to dark things. Well, everything's going to lead
to dark things everything. And it's like any from video games, politics,
you know, even tabletop games, even knitting. There's weird. You know,
the past felt Fulan I don't know how comfortable some of the beliefs or
philosophies or values that I've come to are. I think that they're valuable,
and I do find some comfort in the results of them. But I think
the thing that I will leave you with today, Chloe, is just to
suggest, as a mental health professional, I see countlessly how often choosing to
sort of block out or be willfully ignorant or dismissive of facts, of evidence,
of information in one domain of life always ends up bleeding into other domains
of life. That doesn't mean that we are all of us always critical in
all of our thinking always. It does mean that if we just sort of
allow ourselves like this part of my life, I'm just gonna, you know,
just I'm gonna have a little bit of deludedness as a treat I'm just
going to give myself permission to not think critically in this one space that's going
to end up eventually bleeding all over your life. And you know you don't
owe it to me, Chloe, you don't ow it to anybody else to
like stop blieving in these things. And there's a non zero percent chance that
if you were to just lose your faith today, that you might become a
more destructive, more violent person in your community. And I hear all of
that, and I'm still just asking you patiently to investigate your supernatural claims,
your philosophical beliefs, your religious beliefs, all of these things with the same
lens of critical thinking that you would apply to any other aspect of life.
And what if I told you I did, and I came to the conclusion
that I want that I want Odin in my life. I mean, what's
the respect? I respect your choice? Yeah, I respect. I'm not
I'm not your therapist. Like if we were to sit down for an hour
and talk about what's going well in your life and everything else, I might,
you know, be kind of curious about what is working and what isn't.
But when I have those conversations with people, I don't make it my
mission to take away their religious faith. That's not my right. That wouldn't
be valuable or useful to anybody. If it's working for you. I'm glad
that it's working. I'm nervous about the potential consequences for you and for your
community. But it's not my job to tell you to stop. It's only
I'm only here to help encourage you to think about it and to consider all
of the vulnerabilities that Kenneth and I have been pointing out. So let me
ask you this though, because this just leads me to an interesting question.
What data do you have on on that kind of thinking versus versus rationality over
a large population that isn't a psychet that isn't in a psychiatric context, Because
I think you might have a bit of survivors or a bit of selection bias
here, because you're seeing all the people who are you know, who may
have some sort of psychiatric issue or some other thing, when the majority of
us aren't doing that, when the majority of us are just living our lives.
I mean, we don't have do we have that kind of data to
analyze? I mean yet, yes? And no, Like it's a it's
a tricky question the way you have it framed. And no, I'm not
going to sit here and cite any specific research or resources. I do you
think that that is an interesting question and one that can be answered to a
certain degree, But I don't want to sit here and act like, well,
according to this study, clearly belief in God makes you a bad person,
because that would be ridiculous, and I'm not trying to put that idea
forward. I am going to continue to maintain that the dearth of psychological research
will continue to promote the idea that blinding yourself to certain ideas like refusing to
accept evidence, being in that place of resistance and denial is an incredibly destructive
force on a microbe on a personal level as well as in a cultural level
at large. I honestly think that you can see that just by looking at
our election cycles and our current political climate without a whole lot more commentary.
Certainly, there are books that are volumes long trying to answer the question that
you're asking. So I'm not going to say more than that. I'll turn
it over to Kenneth, but I do think it's something you should be wrestling
with. My brain immediately went to I've been doing a lot of research lately
into primarily within the evangelical community, but also a little bit broader. The
reasons why people still think it's a good idea to hit their kids if they
want to affect changes in the children's behavior. I've been looking at a number
of curriculum from various miseducators in this field, people who give seminars, people
who are part of large communities, people who will argue to you that you
might not want to hit your kids, but doing so is an act of
submission to God, because the Bible says that if you spare the rod,
you will spoil your child. That it's actually a sort of an act of
worship to hit your kids, and you can save them from the fires of
hell by hitting them. Now do they have any evidence that this is the
case, horse nut? But they have communities. Many of them think that
what they're doing is a social and moral good because they've been convinced of a
certain set of claims. This is the consequence of faith. Someone can have
community, someone can have purpose, someone can think they are engaging in pro
social behavior as they abuse their children. This is what faith does. The
same tool that you've used to feel warm and fuzzy about your faith they used
to feel warm and fuzzy about beating their kids. That's the problem. So
claim I'm gonna give you the last word. How does all of this come
together? How does it feel to be having this conversation with us right now?
All right? What? We will leave it there, Kenneth, I
don't know if you're going to make it, but I am excited about the
annual Bat Cruise. It's coming up in about six weeks here on August twenty
six. I know that I will be there, as will Forrest Valkai,
J Mike, a bunch of other hosts from the Atheist Experience, Talk Heathen,
and the nonprofits. We're gonna hang out, mingle, drink, chat
all through this two hour cruise on Ladybird Lake before the Mexican freetail bats come
out in incredible numbers. Get your tickets at tiny dot cc slash Bat Cruise.
Are you going to be down? Have you done it before? I
have not yet been able to do the Bat Cruise, And actually Jay Mike
messaged me just the other day to go, dude, are you gonna be
able to go this year? I cannot, but I wish I could because
it sounds like a blast every year. Yeah, yeah, no, it
really is. And it sucked for me because I missed out. Like I
had done this type of cruise before, but I hadn't gotten to do it
with the ACA when I very first started, and then COVID came in,
and then finally we got it going again last year, and the bats just
refused to come out. So I am I am hell bent. I'm going
to be there. You should be there. Tickets are still available, so
come and join us. And in the meantime, let's touch base with Cayden
and Florida. Yeah yeah, all right, Caden, what you got for
us this afternoon? Okay, all right, I was not exactly I came
in here thinking this was a conversation about evidence. But I have a lot
to say about the conversation that you just had with that individual. Um,
well, about evidence. I hear that. Yeah, let's talk about what
you called for. Yeah, let's talk about evidence, because yeah, the
prompt said you had evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. I do, yes,
not proof though I don't know if you read that any decide. Note
there there is a large thing between things that are proven and an evidence.
So okay, this is the source in law position is basically this, there
is data surrounding the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For instance, the tomb was
found empty. The apostles all except for John die horrific deaths. John was
exile. Saint Paul and Saint James, both of which altered Books and the
New Testament, were not believers before the death of Christ. Right specifically,
Saint James is important because he was raised with Jesus Christ. They were brothers
together. I pause it really quick. I want, I want, I
want you to Kayden, hang on. I want because I want you to
get through all these points. Um, but I've decided I want to write
them down, and before I do that, I just want to make sure
we can all agree on what evidence is. So I think of evidence as
anything that can be used to demonstrate the truth of a claim, in other
words, to increase the probability that a claim is true. Do we agree
that that's that? That is what evidence is. Definitely, definitely with the
Alex sweet before I repeat everything, maybe a little bit slower so you can
do the tomb. I'm the purpose of this is to show you, guys
that there is no alternative theory that explains the data that is more likely than
the resurrection. Right, I'm with you, common one. So I just
want to get through because you gave three things before I cut you off.
It was an empty tomb, there was some people becoming believers who were not
believers before. Oh, and martyrdom. Right, that was the other thing.
Yes, The second and the third one are sort of intertwined. That
point circles around Saint James as they were raised together. And he rejected Christ
throughout the entire ministry of Jesus, the whole life of Jesus Christ. He
didn't consider Christ the Messiah the whole life. Cool, it was right,
still he sorry, good, no, no, So so we got empty
tomb, we've got martyrdom, We've got some some changed minds. What else
is there on the list? Okay? What else is on the list is
the the secular sources that talk about the writings of the apostles and the lives
that they live. Okay. The fifth thing that I want to bring attention
to is the quick development and the way that it ca on even through the
persecution. Right, because there was not a single person that actually knew Christ
personally that didn't think he resurrected from the debt. There's not one example of
that at all. Normally, whenever a miracle happens, there's at least one
person that's going to sit there and think that it is probably not true,
right, at least at least one. But that didn't happen, not for
a long time, at least, you know, barn and everything else.
But all right, true, Okay, so pretty good, Gliz Kennethy.
You need some more? Yeah? Is that it? I mean? Now?
Okay? So, um, I too am familiar with this minimal facts
approach. You know that's been made popular by people like you know, Mike
Winger and Mike Lacona and Gary Habermass, all those kind of dudes. Um,
But here's the problem. Nothing that you just gave as an individual point,
None of those individual points can possibly be used to demonstrate that the resurrection
happened. And when you take a handful of things that cannot be used to
demonstrate that the resurrection happened and then pile them together into a non evidence pile,
that pile does not then become evident. Well, here's the thing is,
you're you're misinterpreting what I'm doing here. What I'm saying is that this
data all is true. This data is not religious. This is not my
interpretation of what happens. This is the reality of it. So now it's
on us as as you use critical thinking people to analyze what happened here and
come up with a theory that best fits the evidence. Right, Okay,
the ones that I encounter are hallucinations or lies. I'm not sure if you
have a favorite, but that's going to depend how I perceive. Well,
let's let's just let's just evaluate if so. Are you saying that you agree
that none of this stuff is evidence that the resurrection happens. No, I'm
saying that all of it together builds a case for nothing else making any sense
whatsoever. Them Lying is less likely than Christ's resurrecting, them hallucinating is less
likely than Christ's resurrecting. And there's a there's I've met a couple other things
that people said might have been true, but those are also claims I might
want to play with you. How do we how do we figure out if
because we know that people telling stories, people making things up, people hallucinating,
that those are all things that actually happen in reality. So on the
other hand, I'm not aware of any evidence to indicate that people can,
you know, resurrect from the dead. So when we've got a handful of
natural claims up against a supernatural claim, like, they're more likely right just
by virtue, if we don't have any way of evaluating the supernatural or demonstrating
that it even exists. This is where I jump in on the supernatural point.
If anyone were to resurrect, I think William Layne Craig talks about this,
it would be Christ. Oh boy, right, There's no other place
in history where God would have touched mankind. That is the only time in
which God actually would have touched mankind Islam, maybe due to a size,
but I have my own that's a different conversation completely. Now, So go
back to what you said in the beginning about all of these things not being
any evidence on their own. I definitely agree with you. Right, Like
I said, this isn't proof. The only thing that I'm attempting to provide
to you is that my position is rational. It is based in history,
and it is based on evidence. Right. It's not as though this is
it based on things that didn't actually happen. Everything that I said is that
we don't have evidence. But wait a second. So this and this is
where this is why I like, I get stuck on this with people because
and it's why I put the definition out at the outset in hopes of avoiding
the evidence. For something to be evidence, it has to be it has
to have the quality of being useful for demonstrating the truth of a claim.
Right, it has to It has to move the needle on the probability of
whatever claim we're evaluating. So if if there's a claim that there is a
tomb, but there is nobody in the tomb, this is not evidence that
anything supernatural happened. It's just an empty tomb. If if we've got the
claim that a bunch of people have died for a set of claims, well
that too is not evidence that what they believed was true. Because we know
people are willing to die for things just based on whatever they're convinced of.
You can look at you know, Jim Jones or you know, I mean,
there's there's all kinds of of of cults and religious movements and political movements
where people have been willing to die for things. That doesn't mean that what
they believed in was true. People having their minds changed is sort of dovetails
into that nicely, like there's no people people can have their minds changed.
People who have known cult leaders directly have become convinced of their claims. People
have been family members, et cetera. Have started out not believing and then
change their minds. That there's not there's no evidence that a resurrection was involved
for for someone to change their mind. Um, lives of the apostles.
Yeah, we've got secular sources for that. We've got we've got some records
related to the early Church. That that doesn't mean that what they were convinced
of is necessarily true. And the growth of a religion is an evidence that
the religion is true. We've got a billion Muslims and you're not a Muslim,
but that religion grew right. So so again, like none of this
stuff points to it is it's so useless for with respect to demonstrating anything about
the resurrection that that I very very confidently am telling you it's not evidence.
Here's what I'm trying to say. Though all of those points I agree individually,
they do nothing. If I just had one of them, I wouldn't
be able to prove anything you brought up the to first, I agree as
far as lying is concerned. They totally could have just stole the body out
of there somehow. And even though the penalty for abandonment of a position in
Roman times is death, I'm sure they could have figured out some way to
get the guards moved or whatever. But that is evidence against the hallucination.
And you said all of these things, we have evidence for them happing nationally
naturally. I apologize. Group hallucinations are not natural. It's actually never been
one that's as well documented in the same way as this one is. Because
there's always people that are denying the hallucination, people that are there while everybody
else is hallucinating, but they're not seeing it. There's at least one or
two of them. This is not the case with the resurrection. What are
you pointing with your documentation sources here? Yeah? What are you pointing to
for your group hallucination here? What would be that? What would be the
group hallucination? I'm more just say that because I was spoken with other atheists
and they mentioned group hallucination. I know what I'm saying, Like, are
you are you referring? Are you referring to stories in the Gospels and in
acts of people seeing the resurrected Jesus. Is that what you're talking about in
reference to the scriptures, Yes, but I'm talking about group hallucinations. Like
in the natural world, they don't happen. It's it's not a thing that
happens. And so when you have multiple people hallucinating the same thing at the
same time without the use of drugs, it's statistically very very unlikely, very
unlikely. I thought you just said it doesn't ever happen. It's well,
it's a statistical impossibility. To a statistical impossibility is something that's so unlikely that
you can just write it off. When I say, getting into this is
why I get worried when we allow people to have like eight or ten claims
stacked on time to each other, because if you try and chase each one
of them down, you start to see that not one of them really holds
up. But to Kenneth's point, even if we take all of these and
grant them to you as accurate and true and then pile them all together,
we still just have all these little data points that you need to construct a
narrative around, and your philosophy, your idea that the most cogent, the
most reasonable narrative is that the all powerful God of the universe sent himself in
corporeal form to Earth in order to be sacrificed for our sins, in order
to protect us from him. Like, I don't think that that's the easiest,
most realistic Akham's razor narrative that we could possibly assemble. Is that fair?
Yes? Yes, But with the main point that I'm arguing is that
Christ resurrected, not all the dogma that comes with that, the dogma because
we don't know Christ resurrected because of the dog it's very different. I get
that, and I alogize, like I this might this might be useful.
Imagine that you are on trial for murder. Okay, someone was killed at
the food court at the mall. Okay, and I'm going to be your
prosecutor. All right, here we go. There's a taco bell in the
food court, and Caden likes tacos. Somebody said that they think they saw
Cayden there. Caden's car was seen on video in the parking lot at the
mall. Are we anywhere close to yet having anything that could be used to
convict you of the murder. No, right, it's like that the court
of all. Yeah, it is so, but none of that is evidence
that that you committed a murder. We don't even have evidence that you were
in the food court for all. We know that eyewitnesses is mistaken. We
don't even have the eyewitness we had to hear, say, we had someone
heard they saw someone saw, you know, someone who looked like you.
So when we're looking at stuff like the stories and the gospels about you know,
people seeing the risen Jesus, we don't even know. We don't even
know that that's accurate. Your example is fallacious because it's you're you're asking this
though it's it's it's flacious because of this. I'm not saying that we know
exactly that it was me that committed the murder. R because you're using murder
as the example. It's more that I know that a murder was committed.
That's obvious. There is a bunch of reasons. That's why the murder was
committed. Who it is who committed the murder, we don't know, but
there is a murder. It's almost as though you guys are denying the existence
of the murder because guns are illegal. So obviously no one could have shot
somebody because under are illegal. That I'm denying the existence of the resurrection.
Yeah, we're talking about We're talking about a story in a book about somebody
resurrecting from the dead. There's there's no evidence that that happened. There's a
bunch of circumstantial stuff. There are claims there, there are a third person
anonymously written hearsay accounts of this happening. And that's the best you've got.
You've got some people were convinced that this happened. That's the best you've got.
It's not evidence, it's it's more than that. I listen at least
five But like I said at the beginning, and I'm gonna repeat this,
it's not as though I'm saying that these things then therefore me and Christ resurrect.
This is not proved. It's not even really all that direct. The
only thing that all of these data points do is they disprove everything that isn't
the resurrection. A lot it's disproven by no, it just improves the resurrection.
It just disproves. No, they don't non resurrection. No, they
don't. Let me help you out empty tomb. Okay, first of all,
I don't think there's any records that actually point to there being an empty
tomb as described in the gospels. Even the Gospels can't agree on what happened
the morning of the resurrection. Okay, so there's there's a claim that there
was an empty tomb, not we can't even and verify if that's true.
We've got people willing to die again. This does not demonstrate that a resurrection
happened. We've got people changed their minds again, this does not indicate that
a resurrection happened. We've got secular sources about the early Church and the lives
of the apostles. This does not confirm that a resurrection happened. None of
this points to the resurrection happening. It points to people believing a set of
claims. That's a very very different thing, right at all. When you
look at the Evans, it's not like a direct thing like, do you
have some other theory as to what maybe could have happened around the time that
Christ has died. In the three days after we could sit here, and
we could sit here all day day, and we could sit here all day
and come up with natural explanations for the spread of a set of ideas,
and all of them will be more likely than a supernatural resurrection. It's not
just the spread of ideas, man, It's a lot more than just the
spread of ideas. And I okay, then what is it? Name one
that you can think is more likely than the resurrection, and then we can
discuss that what is more likely than Jesus resurrecting. People wrote a story about
Jesus resurrecting and came to believe it. There you go, Okay, so
they lied, Then that's basically that's no. I didn't say anybody lied.
I didn't say anybody lied. I'm saying there's a tradition that grew and was
accepted by a lot of people. See, the first people could have been
since there are people could have been, people could have been sincerely convinced that
they thought they saw the resurrected Jesus. That does not mean the resurrection happened.
Okay, Look, you made two points there. So the first point
you just made, I'm an Orthodox. It's in the note there, which
means I don't believe doctrine developed. The same faith I have now is identical
to that of the Apostle to that of Paul or John or even Jesus Christ.
The faith didn't change in any way whatsoever. Then the way it was
originally conceived, there is not a single dogmatic change that happens. Okay,
that's the position I So that's the reputation to your first point. The second
thing that you said that that's not a reputation, that's just an assertion of
what you believe. That doesn't refute anything that I've said. Well, the
reason why that's important is because if you look throughout the councils and the writing,
the saints and everything, you can see that it didn't develop like they
all agree that there's a lack of development because their predecessors believe the same things
that they believe. And then you can just yeah, they say, but
if you don't, you don't have any way they're saying that, and then
it developed that didn't happen. But this is irrelevant or the truth of the
claims themselves. You can say, hey, people have believed that X for
thousands of years. That has nothing to do with whether or not X is
true. Correct, But you were saying that they wrote story down and then
it developed into this whole other mystical thing. Right, it developed into something
that it wasn't originally because they weren't lying. It developed. I said that
these processes work. It's it's like right back to talking about the quote unquote
group hallucinations, this dichotomy between well, they either lied or he was a
lunatic or there was a group pellucine. Like life is so much more nuanced
and complicated than that. You recognize that we are talking about something that,
if it happened at all, or whatever aspects of it that did happen,
happened two thousand years ago in a completely different world to a completely different culture.
I mean, our efforts to try and understand what happened there are really
complex, and this notion that you can simplify all of this down into these
basic categories is just such obvious rhetoric. And I would really really ask you,
Kayden, to just stop and take a breath and recognize that piling up
all of these different ideas on top of each other doesn't get you anywhere when
each of these individual ideas is very very flimsy. I mean, just looking
at the notion of the empty tomb, what does that mean that we have
these disparate accounts that there was a tomb that was empt How does that evidence
Jesus Christ raised from the dead. What that means is that anyone that hurts
that Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead and didn't immediately either see the risen Christ
or believe, could go to that tomb and verify if the body was removed
or not. Because again, you know, I means whether or not Mark
wrote it down, maybe many assumption you built into this. Yeah, you
can demonstrate that joy is just simply unscientific. I don't know if you know.
It is not. No, it is not. You cannot demonstrate.
You cannot demonstrate that this tomb existed in the first place, or that Jesus
body ever made it into it. You cannot verify that any of these claims
about the Roman guard being at the tomb actually happened. You can't verify any
of it. It's stories in a book. I want to I want to
just really quick, because we're we're beaten a dead horse at this point,
so I want to just ask you this. Are you aware that the tradition
in Islam is that the Koran as a recitation was recited perfectly up until the
point that it was written down, and that what is written down is a
preservation of this unchanged Koran, going all the way back to the direct revelation
from Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad. No, because there's a si from the
I believe it's from Ayisha. She writes about how a sheep eats Sarah thirty
three or the later half of it. So no, even to Muslims,
that is not perfectly preserved. There's a just in the same way there's there
are traditions in Christianity. They're in the same way. They're traditions in Christianity
that would disagree with your orthodox position. But there is a there is a
few I've talked. I've talked with dozens of Islamic apologists who tell me that
the Koran is perfect and completely unchanged. Okay, they are convinced of this
in the same way that you're convinced of this with respect to biblical claims.
So there are stories in the Koran that we could point to, and I
could I mean, we could ask you, like, Okay, there's there's
I's like the twenty six or twenty seventh Surah somewhere around there there's a story
about Solomon and his armies, and his armies have have gin and people and
birds in them, and in that chapter Solomon can can talk to birds,
they can talk to him, he can talk to them. And the idea
is that that story has been unchanged. Okay, is that evidence that Solomon
could talk to birds? Do you do you think that that King Solomon could
communicate with with birds? That's that's evidence that the story didn't change. And
the only reason why I brought up the development is because of what you said
about the fact that they wrote stories and then it developed into something that we're
answering a different question than when I asked you are are you convinced? Are
you convinced that Solomon could talk to birds? No? Why not? Because
I'm not a Muslim? So what there's a there's a story that is unchanged.
It hasn't changed. Yeah, came straight from the mouth of Gabriel.
Actually, why don't you believe it? It's because Christ resurrected, and no,
Christ resurrection has nothing to do with whether or not Solomon could talk to
birds. Listen to me, people, people in the name of Islam.
People have been so convinced that this, people who were not Muslims have changed
their minds and become convinced of it, even in the prophet's own family.
Why don't you believe that Solomon could talk to birds all the time? I
mean, you can just be incorrect about something that's totally normal, very common,
and like, hey, wait a second, why are you claimed by
two sets of rules? How come the rules for believing Solomon could talk to
birds and the rules about Jesus resurrecting are different? Why they're not? Yes,
they are. We could take all of the stuff that you think of
as being indicative that Jesus resurrected apply it to Islam. We've got a story
about it, dude, talking to birds. You're not convinced. Why because
someone that knew Solomon didn't write it. And also we have in the Old
Testament from people that actually knew Solomon not writing about that. So that's basically
the reason is that the time differential because that's at least six hundred years after
Jesus Christ Versus. The New Testament was written within twenty to fifty, So
you know it's a little bit is by Who tell me, tell me who
wrote those gospels? Who wrote those gospels, since that matters if whether or
not they knew the source directly? Who wrote the gospel? Helped me out
the apostles? Did they? Yeah? Well, actually, why do you
think that not written by anapolosile? Mark was written by Mark? Oh?
Peter or getting in trouble. So the Gospel of Mark is actually Peter's gospel.
Mark is the scrit because of fairly certain Peter wasn't great. Hey,
anything's possible when we use our imagination. But listen, if you look at
the scholar of the consensus, we don't have any idea who wrote the gospels,
So good luck with that. You're not true in either way. There's
the tradition of it. So we have like saying Iranians, for instance,
who comes from the year one hundred and seventy. If you read this rule
about the notion of tradition in all of our conversation about Islam, I'm kayden,
I'm cutting you off. I'm talking over you here. No, No,
let's not though we've gone through this, We've gone around this, look
back over this, watch this tape, try and recognize this two system that
you're applying here. You mentioned the notion of critical thinking, that we talked
about with Chloe earlier in the show. Let me encourage you to go through
this conversation, watch it back over and recognize whether or not there are two
different systems that you may be applying when we talk about Islam, when we
talk about some of these other claims versus the claims that you're making. For
now, I'd like to leave it there. I'll go ahead and give you
the last word before we take the next call. Fair. I am very
thankful for that, and I'm very honored that you would give me the last
word, and I appreciate the fact that we that you're being very respectful.
I'm honored at that. As a closing statement, I would only like to
say that the reason why they appeared those same is because they both operate around
tradition. But what you need to understand about tradition is that it doesn't really
prove anything. It only proves who wrote the books. So when you brought
up the Solomon point, I'm not denying that whoever claimed that wrote that thing
about Solomon wrote it. I'm very positive they probably did. And whatever the
tradition is that in reference to the talking of Solomon, it's probably been held
for all of the time. I'm not denying that, So that's why it's
not It doesn't contrast itself in the way that you think it does. But
with that, I will leave you, guys. I hope you have a
wonderful day. God bless hey, you take care. Thanks for giving us
a call. Okay, Well, Kevin, I don't know if you have
anything that can help us sort of put all of that word salad together,
or if we just need a good palate cleanser before we jump onto the next
call. I would like to think that we can arrive at a place where
we bring various religions together by pointing out that like the resurrection is exactly as
likely as Solomon talking to birds, or you know, whatever else might be
out there, so that people feel like, you know, they're operating physicians
of equality, yeah yeah, or you know that we can refute our own
religion by the same tools we used to refute everyone else's. That's an idea
that I think we're going to start to feel very uncomfortable with that whole outsider
test for faith thing right that John Loftis wrote about. Um, it's useful
if you just just think about your religion in exactly the same way that you
think about all the others, big things can start to happen. Yeah,
hey, I mean it might be a little bit simplistic, but doctor Jerrold
Raise Raiser is just to recognize, well, what's the religion that your parents
taught you, what was the religion that you grew up around. And even
if you've kind of gone through a bit of a journey and some changes,
were you planted in soil that was pretty well primed for the thing that you
eventually came to. And the vast majority of cases, that's that's gonna cut
through a lot of it. Yep. I hope that's helpful to Caden and
to everybody else out there. And for now, let's talk to James in
Canada. James, what you got for us today? As how you doing
doing? Well? Oh it's good. Oh yeah, I want to talk
about Jesus. Please do what's on your mind? And okay, um,
I'll tell you what's going on. Um. There's two verses. I'd like
to mention that at one or an Old Testament. One's in the New Testa
seven fourteen. You know it, Isaiah seven fourteen. Not off the top
of my head. Okay. A version shell give birth and caller his name
Emmanuel. Okay, Matthew version verse one, uh no one, section two
or whatever they call it. So it's the same thing. Version sheell give
birth and call his name Emmanuel. That was his real name. Okay,
um, So his reel name is actually spelled with the juh and his true
teach no Jamanuel with a j no. Okay, Bill, you still pronounce
it as Emmanuel, but it's spelled with a j okay sign. Teaching anywhere
online on YouTube, on the internet, James, I'm not looking to rush
you or fast forward, but I would like to have a sense of where
we're going and why. Okay, because the two teachings are in the time
that of Emmanuel. What happened to Jesus. Basically, the reason why he
wasn't in his toom was because he was rescued from his tomb. He was
rescued from his tomb. There are clues that that where they say they're healing
salves and not into his tomb right for his wounds. Okay, that's what
that was for. And there were healers who were waiting for him after he
was he was actually nailed to a dead tree in the shape of why where
he fainted. He's only on there for six hours. Brought into the tomb,
the healing salves are brought in the healers from the east or the words
you're making are you're making all these claims, but we haven't yet arrived at
a reason to think that any of this stuff is true. You might as
well, you know, be telling me about you know, Harry Potter's third
year at Hogwarts. Man, I like, what are we what are we
talking about? It is true, we're talking. We're talking about how do
we know of the mind called Jesus? Yes, how do we know that
any of the things that you've shared with these teachings were found in the original
teachings were found in his original tomb? And how do we know that any
of this is true? Please? Don't just tell us more things. Tell
us tell us why any of the things you've already told us are true?
Because it makes more sense than anything else. It's in the Bible. I
hear you. We we just went round and round on that earlier today.
And I don't know. The Bible is made up of hearsay, an old
tech, the Bibel Bible makes no sense. I mean, I'm on board
with that. Why is the Book of Emmanuel not that way? Because it's
his true teachings. You have to read it to understand it. Do you,
okay, James? Do you appreciate that there's a distinction between a claim
and the evidence presented for the claim. If I tell you that there are
flowers in my backyard and that fairies planted them there, and if you were
to ask me, how do you know that's true? If I said,
well, because it makes more sense than if the fairies weren't there. Have
I gotten you any closer to I don't. I don't go by that,
you know, just logic, Yeah, exactly what you just did. I
don't. I don't don't. I don't listen to that. I know it's
true because there is a profit of the New Age. I'll give you as
initials as is, D, E, A M. That's all say,
and I don't need a yeah. Yeah. I think we're gonna leave it
here. I want to point out to you that we keep talking to folks
today and that you can compare this to some of our other conversations. Why
should we believe that this book is the correct book. We have already said
that because of like the amount of tradition or how long it's been around doesn't
make it make sense. The fact that you might feel some particular emotion when
you read it doesn't make it make sense. And the mere fact that you
are sort of cobbling together a narrative to describe all these disparate facts of you
know, semi semi accuracy, doesn't make any of this makes sense. I
really appreciate you given us a try, and I hope they have a great
weekend. Ye, they didn't kill them. And the name Jesus Christ comes
actually from a death call from Greece. Oh okay, and we're just stacking
more. I wanted to give you a moment, but we appreciate you.
Take a good care friend. Okay, Well, in order to have more
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can have more and more of these not at all exhausting or even vaguely upsetting
conversations. All right, if you've got more in the tank, I think
we can talk to Ryan and Kentucky, who also believes that the Bible might
be perfect? Is that the case? Ryan? All right, we will
come back to Ryan a little later and try. Now Manuel in the Dominican
Republic anyway him what can we do for you today? Hey guys getting here
now? Just we can Yeah, what's going on? Hey? Hi,
give a good afternoon. So very quick, I want to like introduce myself
on Manuel from the Dominican Republic. I love the show. I recently just
started hearing the show, and I love it because I think it's the only
space that I personally have where Oh no, we maybe have been disconnected.
Well, we will try again here as well. All right. I will
take a brief moment to encourage people to again just be part of this conversation
with us, to join us on all these different platforms, and to not
let this be a situation where Kenneth and I just sort of alone lecture out
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You can become a part of the Talk Heaven the community and our fan
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at TV at Atheist hyphen Community dot org. And all right, let's try
again with Ryan in Kentucky. Ryan, what can we do for you today?
Go here? Mate? Yes, we can't kis on your mind?
Not much. Yeah, I was just kind of calling about the prompt that
was on there earlier. You know, is the Bible of the God parson
the God of the Bible perfect. Yeah, I was just kind of going
to maybe trying to find that position if you guys had any quarrels with it,
or you know, hear from your guys's stance on that. This is
a huge one of my own opinion on it as well. Yeah, No,
I really want to hear from you. This is a really important one
for me, and it's one that's come up the last couple of times that
I've been on air, And I really do want to take a brief moment
and recognize that this sort of modern thought around biblical inerrancy, or the notion
that the Bible has to be perfect, is somewhat new and not necessarily the
way that people have chosen to define religious thought for a number of centuries.
And I really want to suggest that the Bible kind of has to be perfect
in order for any of this to make sense. So tell us Ryan,
like, what makes you believe that the Bible is perfect? And does that
question matter to you? I think it absolutely does matter. I think it's
absolutely critical for the Christian faith that it does not have any untruth in it.
First of all, I'm human in terms of in terms of truth.
Um, So sort of in some way, it's like the Bible is viewed,
you know, on my end, as a as kind of more of
a library than a you know, a single book, um, because it's
obviously it stretches back a long time, and you've got many different authors that
are coming in and different styles of writing, different ways of teaching. You
know, you've got poetic books, you've got more historically founded books and things
like that. So you've got all of these different types of teachings, a
lot of storytelling, you know, a lot of um, a lot of
straight up preaching, you know. And I think that it's all true,
at least from my understanding and what I've been able to gather at this point
in my life, in so far as I've understood it, um, and
that all of the stories, though they may not be historically or scientifically true,
give some truth to our experience that each of them does in their own
separate way. So but as a I don't I don't want to strung end
say. What I'm basically getting is that it doesn't necessary early matter if the
Bible is true in like a direct or literal sense, because the general vibe,
like the story of it is accurate, and that's the important part,
right sure, sure like it Like there are there are a lot of people
that take the Bible literalistically. I know. It's a very common you know,
it's it's a very common practice in you know, your more Protestant fates,
you know, a methodism, Baptism that it's taken as more of a
you know, they have sola scriptura, you know, like the understanding of
the literalism of the Bible, which to me personally doesn't make sense, and
it's hard to get behind that because there's a lot in the Bible that would
not make sense from a literalistic standpoint or from a scientific standpoint, a historical
standpoint, and that rather you have to individually take all separate stories of the
Bible and view them under different lenses to find the truth that is hidden in
the style of which it is written. So if it's about interpretation, then
does it even matter if it's accurate or true? I think it does because
interpretation is important as I view it, which is why so I'm Catholic,
okay um, I would consider myself a part of the Catholic faith and as
I found it. You know, so far this is a big you know
quarrel between uh you know, Christians, Methodist, Baptist, you know,
Protestants and the Catholic churches. Is really big on interpretation and the authority of
the Catholic Church to interpret the Bible in a specific way where there has to
be there There cannot be an from my perspective, and from what I understand,
it only makes logical sense that there has to be a definitive interpret true
one way of interpreting each text, you know, like, you can't you
can't have like somebody who's like, well, this is my truth of this
text. No, well this is my truth. Well, then nobody ever
comes to really any solid truth, and there's no way of really getting down
to what the actual truth of the text is. You know. It's like
it's like playing a game of baseball, and if you don't have an umpire
there, then everybody's just squabbling about what the rules of the game are and
nobody's actually playing the game, which is to try and get try and reach
salvation or reach happy or get you know. Yeah, I mean, I
your point, like, there needs to be some amount of consensus at least
about what's going on, but I can't helpe it. Feel like, at
the very beginning of this call, I heard you say pretty plainly that the
Bible needs to be completely accurate, and now are sort of saying, well,
yeah, it's accurate so long as your interpretation is correct, which feels
like a little bit of a cheap Is that fair, Kenneth, Or am
I in a little too hard? Like? No? Yeah, I mean
how do you respond to that Ryan like interpretation or truth just on its face?
Well, I mean yeah, I mean I think I probably at the
beginning of a call could have probably communicated that better. Um, but I
think, you know, I think that truth in its entirety. I don't
think that for something to be a fact, it has to be in a
certain realm or a certain stratosphere. Right, So it doesn't have to be
a scientific fact for something to be a fact. Can you do me a
favorite when you use the word truth the way that just because at this point
I have no idea what we're doing. Yeah, the philosophy if this is
so complicated when you when you use the word truth, can you just tell
me what that means? What is truth? Truth is? I guess truth
is something that's held by the standard of of what we know and um,
something that is falsifiable, I suppose. Okay, So now I have to
ask you what does it mean to know something? What is that? What
are you talking about? Okay, So what what do you mean by that
question? I'm asking you to define the word that you use, so I
know what you meant the word. No, I guess, I mean,
I guess. The way I think of it is you reason within your your
human brain and you logically go through steps to determine whether or not something is
worthy of belief or if it's not worthy. This is great, We're we're
tugging on this string. What what what makes something worthy of belief? If
you've come to a logical conclusion and there's different factors, I suppose like there's
a there's a logical sense. Um. I guess maybe there's a there's an
emotional sense with it as well, But but it's I think it's more rooted
in in logically coming to a conclusion that that's true. That's something that something
has more reason for it being a certain way than it would be without it.
Sounds like we've gone in a big circle. Let me let me tell
you. Let me throw some ideas out there and see if you agree with
me. Your right. So, So, when when I'm thinking about what's
true, I'm just thinking about what is consistent with reality. If something corresponds
to reality, I think of that as being true. Yeah. When I'm
when I'm thinking about knowledge, I'm thinking about something that is a generally speaking,
a justified true belief. Okay, So if I'm convinced something is the
case and it actually is the case, and I have some evidence for that,
I would say that that that's that's knowledge. Right. And then but
then when we're assessing, like like what makes a belief like worthy? The
worthiness of a belief? Um, I mean I personally care primarily about whether
or not my beliefs are true. I want to believe true things. I
value truth. But people can people can place all kinds of different value judgments
on what they believe. People. A lot of people believe stuff because they
just like how it makes them feel. You know, there's all kinds of
reasons for believing. Some people can have pragmatic reasons for believing something. So
when we're evaluating the Bible and trying to figure out what's true for someone like
me who cares about that kind of thing, like why would I believe anything
in the Bible? Well, I suppose you could look at the world around
you. Okay. Um, let's say let's say we have we have a
we have different, um, different paths of truth, right. I mean,
I guess in today's culture you would understand it as an objective and a
subjective sense of the truth. I don't because because because I think truth is
what's consistent with reality. So there's that objective thing of what's consistent with reality,
and my subjective viewpoints may or may not be consistent with reality aka mayor
sure true? You know, yeah, I was. I was thinking that
yesterday too. By the way I was, I was thinking about objective and
subjective truth, and I was thinking objective truth is subjective truth is really just
an objective truth about somebody. But anyw, sorry, I'm going on a
tangent. But just like with respecting the Bible, right, you could pick
any claim you want to. It's in the Bible. And I'm just wondering,
like, what would be it the reason for believing something that's in the
Bible. I suppose that that God created the universe. Let's go with that.
Okay, there's so there's our claim. So what would be what would
be the reason if I value truth? Why why should I believe that?
Okay? So there's a there's a causality of things, right, um,
as we can tell in reality, like you know, everything has a causality.
You know, so in the way that matter works, the way the
energy works, it's you don't you come back in time? You know,
it's it's similar to but not exactly akin to uh, you know, parents
and children, you know, you are caused by your parents, and your
parents are caused by their parents, you know, so to speak. But
it's in similar ways, not exactly the same, but in similar ways.
Matter shape shifts and forms and changes. And you know, we have come
to this point now. We have used our sciences and this has been a
great tool of sciences that are a great tool to go back in time and
reconstruct how things came to be, until eventually we've gotten to the point where
we where we've come to the Big Bang the understanding the Big Bang I'm a
believer in the Big Bang theory, but there still is a you know,
a question that comes to there has to be a causality even before the Big
Bang, things have a reason, something that effects have causes. I don't
mean to cut you off, but when Kenneth talks about truth, he says,
it is things that we see in reality, like an idea that comports
with reality. That's truth. We have been talking to you, Ryan for
almost ten minutes now, and we still don't have any notion what your definition
of truth really is. And I hope that you can appreciate why that would
make me very hesitant to take your guidance on the creation of the universe,
or your guidance on what I should do with my quote unquote soul or who
I should be praying to and worshiping to. And when you talk about the
Bible being true and you struggle to really tell me what truth even is,
let alone how we know the Bible is true, I am going to have
a little bit of cause for concern. Is that can you appreciate, if
not my actual beliefs, why somebody in my position would be hesitant to take
their cues from you. Absolutely, I understand that. Um. I would
like to say too, you know that this this conversation that we're having,
first of all, is very is going to be very brief, and it's
you know, it's in a situation where we don't have a lot of time
to talk about this, right, and the claims that you guys stand behind.
You know, I would assume you're both atheists, right, um am?
I am I right in assuming that yere I'll be an atheist when I
do the later show today, I'm a human. You don't even have to
assume because we talk about it pretty publicly. Yeah sure, yeah, Okay,
Well, then there's there's a scientific realm that that you guys dabble in.
I would say, you guys mainly plant yourselves in, which is only
justin It's only fair, and it's only right in your position. However,
mine is coming more of a more of an unstudied or less material understanding of
the way that the world operates and the way the world looks. Therefore,
I believe it to be a much more complex way of understanding how reality works
in terms of how long it complex in the way of meaning that it takes
much more time to explain. And so you like, I want to draw
attention that, Ryan, and I'm only cutting you off because of the intermurs
of time. Right, Ryan, you use the word understanding, and I
want to draw your attention to the difference between an answer and an explanation.
Okay, if someone were to ask Christy or I, Hey, what is
like causally prior to the Big Bang? I feel fairly safe in saying that
that both of us would tell you that we don't know. Christy am I
am? I out in left field here? Yeah, No, That's where
I would go with it. Yeah, So so I'm going there's there's a
barrier to like, there's a limit to my knowledge. And you know,
I can look around and say, as far as I can tell, effects
have causes. Someone would have to demonstrate to me that the Big Bang itself
is an effect before asserting that it is that it had a cause, and
then all their work would still be in front of them to demonstrate what that
cause was or how they could know about it or anything. So right,
so when someone starts going down the line that you went down of Okay,
well, hey, look we know that effects have causes and the cause of
everything is the Biblical God. I just I want you to appreciate just how
much legwork you you really would have to justify that it's kind of a claim.
Yes, yeah, absolutely, it's a lot of leg work. Absolutely,
how many yeah, like you tell me twoys, you know, being
a Christian, and I really do enjoy these conversations, so I have them
a lot. So it's it is, it's a lot of legwork and for
every for every answer that I give. And this is probably in junction with
my own I don't know if you want to call it evangelistic style or my
way of um, my way of communicating myself. But I take, I
take a question, and I try to trace it all the way back down
to its fruit, and then I try to, you know, because I
want to give the fullest answer, you know, so I'm probably a little
unskilled at that coming to a concise answer quickly. So you know, obviously
I hear that, and I started jump in Ryan, this will be sort
of the last word for me before we move on to the next call.
But we started the show with a recognition that they're this sort of like mystical,
it's esoteric, cabbalistic, very hard to understand. Aspect seems to be
not a bug in religion, but rather a feature. And I would really
encourage you to consider that, like why is it that these faith claims are
so difficult to just simply spit out in simple language? Why does it take
us ten minutes to agree on a definition for the word truth. I don't
want to be dismissive or overly reductive. I love the philosophy of moral reasoning
and the epistemiology, like how do we understand these things? I'm okay with
getting into the weeds and spending a lot of time trying to define these simple
terms. But I have to suggest to you that the fact that there is
so much exception finding and sort of circular paradoxical reasoning around. All of this
seems to be not just like smoke. It seems to be the entire fire.
It seems to be the entire thing that you have to offer here.
And so I would encourage you not just to maybe be more concise in your
presentation, because I'm not really here to nag you about the way you talk
about it. I'd like to encourage you to be a little bit more critical
in the way that you think about it, and I hope that you will
put some of that thought into it and maybe give us a call in the
future. All Right, well, I real appreciate you guys. You guys
have a good day, aren't you too fair enough? Take care? Okay?
Well, I you know I mentioned that other show that Apeist Experience that'll
be coming up later today. I will actually be appearing on that show two
weeks and I would really like for people to be there to cheer me on.
If you happen to be in the Austin area on July thirtieth, then
please consider joining us live in studio for the broadcast of Talk Heathen and AXP.
Talk Heathen is going to be hosted by Jamie Boone and Jamie the Blind
the Blind Limy, I apologize, and then I'll be on Atheist Experience with
my good buddy Objectively Dan. Our doors open at noon and we would love
to see you there. It's going to be a great show and a great
time. And while we're here, let me take a quick moment to thank
some of our patrons, these very faithful and loyal folks, Kellevi, Helvetia,
DeVore, Valjeane Oops, all Singularies Iami, and of course our number
one Patreon remains dingle Berry Jackson. Quick shout out to this week's honorable mention,
UGO Insider. And then I would like to also take a moment and
say thank you to George Markowski who gave us a super chat four ninety nine,
thanking us for the show and all. Kenneth, is there another call
you'd like to jump in with? I? I mean, I think Otari
works just fine there at the top. Okay, yeah, let's do it.
Otari in the Nation of Georgia. What can we do for you today?
Um? Held on, how are you doing well? Um? Before
I get into my topic, if I may, I want to set the
course straight on the Bible contract to the color said, Okay, yeah,
I think I may have missed a little bit of what you said just because
of our phone connection. If you'd like to walk us through that again,
or even just jump into it where you're listening. It sound like you want
to talk about where the previous colors said. Yeah, I mean, if
I may, I want to set the corsetright on what colors about the set
that course straight? Do it? So? He said, claimed that cartous
not interpret the Bible literally, and that's that's that's just not true. Our
contact I'm as well, I'm a cart mm hmm. Okay, you're saying
that not all Catholics interpret the Bible literally, or or that no Catholics interpret
the Bible literally. No, we interpret the Bible literally. Okay, yeah.
Can I ask how you resolve some of the parent or you know,
somewhat obvious contradictions within the Bible, you know, questions like, uh,
you know, how did Judas die? Well, I don't know about that,
pertisecutional part um. Any any apparent to contradictions can be solved by the
chart kitchen on. It sounds like you avoided the question. Let's just ask
you directly, Hey, when you read the Bible? How did Judas die?
To be honest, I don't, I don't. Wait a minute,
wait, how are you? How are you making assessments? How do you
make assessments about whether or not the Bible has contradictions? And then say something
like you don't read it? Well, I kind of equipment, councils and
top You can just listen to you can just listen to what other people have
said and be like works for me. Right? Well, our talk is
that pop is um protected by the infallible when it talks about faith and moral
Wait, who's infallible? The pope? Popes are infallible? Well, if
we look at the chair of picture and all of the successors that have been
infallible. And also this is also part of my um poof for proof for
God Jess. So problem is this? So if I bote s chart and
only umcol Church is infallible, only the Catholic Church is infallible. Let me
just double check because it sounds like that what you said, and if it
is that, I have a strong reaction to that. Did you just say
that only the Catholic Church is infallible? Well? Yes, compared to other
political church as well, like you can altho they can be infallible or they
cannot be infallible. I think I really need to pin you down on this
one. Is the Catholic Church perfect? Is it inerrant? I mean,
whatever word you want to apply here, whatever epistemiology we want to run it
through. Are you comfortable with saying plainly and clearly that the Catholic Church does
no wrong, carphone no wrong. A relate teaching seat that it teaches in
pencil's contradicts itself. I just pulled up some stats. Okay, I've got
a few different sources here with a few different numbers, but apparently and and
fact check you don't take my word on this. I would say everybody look
it up because because this is a ten second quick search here. But it's
consistent with what I've seen before that between like the early eighties to the early
two thousands, church leaders paid out about three quarters of a billion dollars in
abuse lawsuits where members of the church had abused children. And I am under
the impression that the Catholic Church maintains about a two billion dollars legal defense fund
for the purpose of protecting, shielding and enabling serial abusers of children. Does
this sound like the behavior of an infallible organization to you? Um? Excuse
me, maybe you miss said me. Um. I just claim moral inablity.
I claim to infallibility of the teachings, infallibility of the teachings. So
the Catholic Church can have teachings that are super infallible about Jesus and morality and
the nature of you know, good and evil and and all that stuff,
while spending billions of dollars um settling sexual abuse cases, defending, relocating,
enabling the behavior of priests, bishops, etc. Who abused children. Well,
there are people from just like us, yeah, yes, not just
like us, Not just like us. No, you don't do that kind
of stuff, right, you're not You're not out there abusing kids, right
No? Right, yeah, so not like you. Yeah. Also,
they all to be fair from my point of view. So there's like a
no true Catholic type of situation, right, Like, those aren't the real
Catholics, the one who are out there doing all the messed up stuff at
multiple levels, at every level of the church leadership. It's those aren't like
the people who know about that, aren't the real Catholics right, the popes
and cardinals and bishops, never minding that the current pope has been not just
complicit but active in defending against a lot of these allegations for much of his
career. I'm sorry to go down that rabbit trail, and it seems like
it needs to be said right. Um again, I just climb clients infiblit
for tomorrow, Um actions of its pops or any bishops on or Okay,
all right, Well, we we seem to have different, a genuine difference
of opinions about the nature of an infallible organization. Um. It does again
just kind of make me ask, what does that word even mean? What
could truth even possibly be? We we keep kind of circling these issues.
Uh sorry, I'm struggling a little bit just to follow what you're saying.
Just because of the quality of our connection, I'd hope to maybe be able
to speak to you again at a time where we're able to understand each other
a little bit more clearly and directly. Is there anything else that you want
to say before we start to wrap up? Well, I would like to
say that I if you're on our open tool idea of God, I think
that's why you alone thinks it's talks. Then I would touch us to pray
soon. Sorry, and I hope that God gives you credits to tools.
Okay, well you pray for us, and well we'll think for you,
my friend. Huh, take care. We will leave it there for now.
Okay. Well, I know that we are already a little bit long.
I know I could use just a little bit of a palate cleanser,
So I'm gonna want to jump in quickly with Billy in Louisiana. Billy,
what's on your mind today? Gentlemen? How are you doing today? Marrow
Christy when you come down to thanks to Bernie drops for the weather. Well,
I'm I am in Texas, tex now, and I'm all right,
I'm gonna go ahead and admit all of this with all. I'm wearing this
very fancy coat and jim shorts right now because even with the air condition or
full blast, my thermometer is reading eighty two degrees in my office. So
yeah, it's pretty rough. You're in Texas at the moment. Kids,
it's been kind of weird. Anybody who's currently picturing and now you're doing it
again. Sorry about that, Okay, billy, I'm sorry, what are
we here to talk about that? Well, just recently here in Louisiana,
Governor John Dell Edwards passed a legislation that is not requiring all classrooms and I
want to emphasize this. Requiring all classrooms came through twelve in all universities to
have the words in God we Trust up in every classroom. And to me,
that kind of like the feast of the purpose of self reading, you
know, religion from government, because the way I see it, and the
way I've been viewing it, is that government is just legislating their beliefs into
these classrooms. Like the thing I have is, how do you know that
every student that goes to every one of these classes one is a believer,
a feist, seem believe in the religion that you're trying to basically impose on
these kids. I mean, I just don't think it's right. Yeah,
no, it's it's madness. And it sort of relies on this idea that
even if the United States is not a quote Christian nation, that we are
anything but an atheistic nation, which I take great umbrage with as an atheist
here in this nation, I know that Texas has recently been working through a
very similar proposition. Kenneth, what can you tell us about all of us?
So, the people who write this type of legislation and push it through,
they fundamentally do not care about whether or not they're going to be little
atheist kids in the classroom. They don't care. They don't care if they're
going to be kids in the classroom who believe in a different God than whichever
one they have in mind. This is this is just the sort of slow
creep of you know, Christian nationalist nonsense and happening in our country for a
while. So I've been pleased to seeing the news that there are some groups
that are pushing back on this um, producing in God we Trust signs in
Arabic for example, or in uh like with with Satanist themes, you know,
just to just to challenge the the application of this law, which is
going to be like a direct constitutional violation, you know, respecting a specific
establishment of religion. Right. So there's and it's a good thing when this
stuff happens, right when you when you have there's been other states that come
to mind where where a state legislature will say, okay, we're gonna we're
gonna put like across you know, in front of the state cap or or
something, or the Ten Commandment front of state cap And then someone's like,
sweet, we're doing religious displays and they come wheel out like a giant statue
of Bahamet or something, just just to be like, are are we doing
this? Is this what you want? Legislature? You want, you know,
displays of religion everywhere, because if it's going to be okay for one,
it's got to be okay for all of them. But that's not what
these legislatures want. This is this is this is this is propaganda. It's
it's indoctrination attempts. I mean, it's it's it's it's really sad, scary
stuff. I mean, we could talk about the threat of Christian nationalism all
day um and barely scratch the surface of what's going on in various you know,
state and local governments and freaks me out, would be the short answer.
Yeah. I mean in some and some asters, I think it's also
kind of hit the critical of Christians to kind of put their their doctrine up
in classrooms. I mean, if there is a legislation passing thing that in
Allah we crust or in our case, instant then the flying spaghetti monster.
We trust these people would be up in arms, you know, protesting thing
that you can't have that im needy classrooms. But they're perfectly okay when having
their religious doctrine in the classroom. Well, yes, no, no doubt
true. The separation of church and state is not something that we just sort
of say and then it happens and then it stays that way. It is
something that is constantly being eroded and needs to be rebuilt and defended. And
we are absolutely seeing some erosion of that wall going on right now. And
I appreciate that there are good people watching shows like this that are working to
make the world a better place. In that sense, certainly, it is
an important aspect of the mission of the atheist community of Austin. And all
I can really say about it is this is some bullshit and we need to
be doing some stuff about it. So, Billy, I appreciate you sort
of drawing our attention to that, and I hope that, Yeah, I
hope that people are taking this seriously. Yeah I would too. Well,
gentlemen, don't don't go to the you know what, we will see how
warm it is, but I very much appreciate that, and I do hope
that I'll get to see you at the back cruise and all of that good
stuff. Okay, well, it is incredibly hot, so I'm going to
need to rinse off, cool down a little bit. We're gonna wrap the
show up, but that doesn't mean that the conversation needs to end. Later
today, we've got the flagship show of the atheist community of Austin, the
Nonprofits as always, and later this afternoon on The Atheist Experience, you can
see two of my absolute favorite speakers, Johnny p. Angel as well as
Emma Thorne. And then even beyond, you can go to places like tiny
dot cc slash AXPTV or tiny dot cc slash ae NTV where you can catch
twenty four hours of coverage on shows like The Atheist Experience, Talk Heathen,
Truth Wanted, Secular Sexuality, just to name a few, watch or listen
to your favorite hosts over decades of content. Definitely worth a little bit of
your time. And you know, while you're watching these different things, while
you're thinking about these things, be kind of considering in the back of your
mind, what is a great slogan for Satan. We'd love to see that
in the comments on this video and to have you weigh in and be part
of the conversation, part of our community, Kenneth, before we start to
give out love rings and head out for the days, there anything else you
want to make sure to mention. I just love talk Eden. This is
where I sort of like really feel like I got my start with the ACA
um And when when you just said before we send out love rings, my
little grainch heart was just like, oh, love rings. It's been a
minute since I've gotten to give out love rings, right, Yeah. I
just cannot express enough gratitude for what the ACA does. So yeah, yeah,
well here we go. Yeah yeah, crew, Hey, our incredible
crew. We love you. Everybody who is watching, we love you.
If you don't believe this is your community, we want you to be a
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