At what point can we finally say that being religious doesn't make anyone a better
person. We can talk all day long about how many chances are given to
abusive men in churches, how predators are held up in religious communities as leaders
and their victims are driven out or silence. We can watch as the most
avidly religious among us advocate for continued military violence, violently turning refugees away at
the border who are just seeking safety. We can watch them ban books that
tell the truth about history, actively lie about and to sort scientific findings,
regardless of the harm that they may cause, so long as it advances their
agenda, and deprive their own children of knowledge while filling them with hate for
those who are different from them. And this isn't even a complete list of
things that I have seen religious folks do lately. It's just what I thought
of all I was sitting on the couch in five minutes. It doesn't include
anything historical. This is all happening right now. So when we just give
up this charade that religious people are more moral than those who or not,
And if religion doesn't make anyone or anything better than what's the point to save
souls? Do any of these things that I just said sound like something a
saved soul would do. So whether you find yourself shouting at the screen in
agreement or think I'm being a horrible heathen wench, then give us a call
because the show is starting now. Hello, doctor Ben, how are you
all right? How about you? I'm doing well. Welcome everyone. Today
is June second, twenty twenty four. I am Sophia Spina, and as
I just mentioned, this is doctor Ben, who I'm very excited to be
hosting with. Like, we've not hosted together before. No, this is
our very first time, and I'm surprised honestly because it feels so natural the
way we've been talking with each other, and it seems like we have already
done shows together, but I guess this is the first one. So I
feel like you're just really interesting to listen to. So I'm like, yeah,
it's nice to just, you know, get to get to know you
a little bit too. So, yeah, a brand new pairing, just
so we all know. Takithan is a product of the Atheist Community of Austin,
a five oh one c three nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of atheism,
critical thinking secular humanism and the separation of religion and government. Talkithen is
a live call in show and we have open lines, so get your calls
in at five one two nine nine one nine two four to two or from
your computer you can call at tiny dot c C slash call THH. That's
c A L L T H. And all that information is also on the
screen right now, right below, so you don't have to wait for me
to say it again. You can just plug on in there. So yeah.
So, also, uh, happy Pride Month, doctor Ben, you
mentioned before we got on You're like, this is the first show of Pride
Month, and I hadn't even thought about and I felt I was like,
oh my gosh, Yeah, we have to say something about that. Yes,
yes, for sure. And we even have a super chat that came
in before the show from Miranda Rensburger gives five dollars, saying that I won't
be able to stay for the live stream, but just wanted to say Happy
Pride Month. Happy Pride Months, everybody. This is the first Talk Heathen
of Pride Month, and I'm very excited that it gets to be our show.
We also got another super chat from Puck. Guests five dollars saying,
say, minimal praise for inimital plays in a liminal space. That's I can't
even speak the words that Puck is saying. I want to try minimal praise
for inimitable plays in a liminal space. But I had to pause really long
there. I feel like a cheated That's a hard one. But yes,
Happy Pride Month to everybody. Very excited to be part of this heathen heathen
his community of queers and everybody else alike. So wear your rainbow shor rainbow
spirit in the side chat. I'm excited to be able to share that with
all of you today. Yeah. I had a really happy experience last night
where I'm not going to mention the brewery. It is less we get in
trouble because this is Texas, but there were it was this awesome, like
very family friendly brewery. There's kids running all around, there's a drag queen
getting ready to perform in the background, and some like middle aged cheerleaders because
that's a thing good why not? And then there's like a couple of booth
tabling about like sexual health and all these It was like this is they have
amazing I love this brewery. They have amazing food trucks and I can't drink
beer right now, but they do have amazing beer when I can and vibe.
And I was just like, what a lovely little world right now of
all of these people kind of coming together and it's not a big deal because
it shouldn't be. And what a kind of fun Saturday night to have like
drag queens and playgrounds. You know, absolutely, And I know that there's
a lot of talk in the media frequently about people being very upset about Pride
and things associated with You see lots of videos of people intentionally avoiding crosswalks with
the Pride flag on them. You see people climbing up a railing for some
stairs to get to a transport platform or something, and like there's the painting
of the Pride flag along that and so they tried to climb up the railing
so they wouldn't have to touch the Pride flag. There's a lot of things
like that that we're seeing. But this this holiday, like this month of
Pride is yes, it is celebrating the right to survive and exist and to
be authentically you. And yeah, the focus is on the queer community,
but it's not exclusively celebrated by the queer community. This is for everybody.
This is a celebration of being authentically you and being allowed to be authentically you.
And so even if you're not part of the LGBTQ plus community, that
is okay. You are allowed to celebrate with us. We welcome you to
celebrate with us, just on the grounds that you're going to be respectful.
And you know, I literally that's it, Like just be respectful, be
as a person, and like, like it's not that hard. You don't
have to change who you are, and we don't expect anybody to change who
you are. Unless you're an asshole, then you can maybe change that.
That's a personal choice, though, and it is your choice to be an
asshole. It's not a choice to be gay. It's not a choice to
be trand it's not a choice to be straight. It is a choice to
be rude. It's a choice to be welcoming, it's a choice to be
all these other things. So this is not to like exclude anybody, but
to welcome everybody in that community. So I hope that everybody can celebrate pride
with us and don't feel that just because you aren't part of that community.
It doesn't mean that you're not welcome to join in. So I love that.
I also love who in your side be like just don't just be respectful.
And then there was like no other and just like and that's it.
That's all you have to do. It doesn't feel like it's like this really
high bar you know, to navigate, unlike a fence, which I guess
people are climbing to avoid Pride flags. I wonder what they think will happen.
Will they be contaminated, will they suddenly come queer magically because they've touched
a Pride flag? Like it's leading It almost sounds like, I don't know,
it's so highly superstitious. It was really bizarre way right. It's funny
too, because I mean leading into a lot of the interesting discussions we have
with many theists, but at least the people that I was raised around,
the type of Christianity that I practiced, like, we often believed that God
was so powerful and that God could do all of these things, and that
there wasn't anything in this world that could overcome God's love and God's sense of
justice and God's plan. But somehow, you know, if God's plan for
you is to be straight. Stepping on a pride flag just completely overrides that.
Talking to gay people completely overrides that show shown up to the bride in
a too, too completely overrides whatever God's plan was for your sexuality. And
it's interesting to think, like, what forces here are more powerful in this
sense? Like, is God's plan overthrown so easily by a pride flag?
What is this saying about your theology? What is this saying about you know,
your position in general? And it's very interesting. Yeah, it is
hard to buy the whole love the sinner, hate the sin thing, which
is bullshit for so many reasons in the first place. But when people behave
out of this deep seated fear of anything that they may view as I don't
know, emblematic of the queer community, not to bring up something that's like
totally left field, But now I'm going to bring up something totally left field
that I found so funny is that the people who fear queerness so much,
and their main representative, who I would argue is Andrew Chate, recently came
out and said that it is gay to have sex with women. So we've
fully, you know, full circle that that I guess you're so scared of
feeling any kind of joy that you know, we gotta we got to keep
all genitals on lockdown all the time unless it's for procreation. So you're so
really amazing you're so afraid of being gay that now your definition includes everybody to
some extent, everybody is gay. So I don't know if that's achieving the
goal that they want to or if it's just you know, people want to
be part of our community and they're like finding ways to become part of it
without explicitly saying so, which if that's the case, Like no, like
I mean, you could just you could just be nice and join our community.
Like, like I said, it's not that hard to do. But
we do have a couple more super Chats we have. Uh. David Tech
is a new member and says Pride Month, Thank you David Tech and David
Tech not only gave super Chat and became a new member, but also gifted
twenty others talking to the memberships to people in the community. And this is
this is so pride with us about my friends, Like we got somebody sharing
the love. So thank you so much. That is absolutely wonderful. Thank
you so much, David, and that, yeah, I love that.
So moving on to question of the Week real quick, just because I'm like,
I feel like I could just talk to you. Yeah, but we
do have a talk heathen to me. So the talk hethn to me segment
is when we get into the question of the week. Last week we asked
you why is God so obsessed with sex? Wrong answers only, and here
are our top three answers. You want to you want to go ahead and
give us the top three there, doctor Ben, Yeah, God's obsessed with
sex because humans keep calling out his name during orgasm. That is amazing.
Michael Johnson composers later wrote that, which is like, that is great.
I feel like it would be kind of It's like getting a page and you're
like wait what oh man, you know, like there's kind of a maybe
just feels like a false alarm going off and God's like rats again. So,
yeah, God likes to be in the room, the room where it
happens. Yes, indeed, he likes to be in the room where it
happens, and so he Yeah, it's a very weird dynamic. I'm not
judging God's you know, sexual preferences, but you know he could, he
could allow for some more consent in that instead of you know, saying,
I'm just going to be there in that room watching you, and if he
could ask first, that would be preferable. It's not really his style,
you know, consent, but there's that It kind of reminds me of in
middle school dances when people talk about like leave room for Jesus. I don't
like the implication of that is that Jesus is like grinding on you. Instead,
like that there's a whole Jesus sized person between you and your partner in
middle school and he's just in there, and that feels kind of weird when
I stop them think about it in that way, that's super weird. Anyway,
Moving on number two from X million seventeen oh four, God's obsessed with
sex. We're not sure why. However, he made a universe full of
holes that suck for some reason. Apparently. Yeah. I mean there's so
many, so many holes, so many there's so many in space, there's
so many in humans, there's so many in every other animal. There's so
many holes around nature. There's I don't know if we're talking about if we
think about themes within creation or themes within the scriptures and everything. I know
there's a trend to when something repeats multiple times, we tend to latch onto
that and think, oh, this is important, this is meaningful. So
that's a really good point. Maybe there is more significance to the fact that
everything has holes in them. I don't know that answer, and so many
of the holes. Yeah, it are compelling when we stop and think about
how gravity works and how you have black holes. That are you know,
just these crazy epicenters of gravity, right, Like, that's that's fundamentally what
a black hole is. And I guess God also created the force of gravity
and sex would be more difficult without it, so true. Thanks question Mark.
Anyway, then our number one is from Ben Peacock. God is obsessed
with sex because it's been two thousand years since he got nailed. Too soon.
This is this is absolutely brilliant. That should be on a T shirt
that somebody just wears in public. Maybe it's a little too much, but
I think that's hilarious. That's that's gold. Yeah, I think that that
is incredible. It's like the kind of perfect combination of like almost almost feels
too far, but also why I'm like, who is it a fen ding
all the right people? Just that is incredible. So we also have a
prompt for next week, and the prompt is what is Jesus really saving us
from? Enter your best answer below this video in the comments, and next
week we will be able the top three answers. But let me get your
answer, doctor Ben, what is Jesus really saving us from? Well,
based on our talks backstage, which maybe we'll get this we all know from.
More specifically, he's saving us from the Pride flag itself. Flag flag
is sinful and Jesus is saving us from the Pride flag. I love it.
Yeah, Jesus just comes in and takes all the Pride flag for himself,
kind of like a you know, no kind of moment in a movie.
Yeah, just throw your Pride flags at Jesus, I guess and that
works because I really well, that is a great answer, and I'm anxious
to see what our audience comes up with. So in the comment section,
give us your best answer and tune in next week when we reveal our next
talk three. During talk Ethan Jumy, I also want to take a second
to think all of the people who make the show possible. So if we
could go to the crew cam and think, look at all those amazing,
lovely people and a poppy Oh my goodness. Sorry, clearly that was exciting
for me. Yeah, thanks to all of the video and audio people,
moderators, notes, the people who do notes and stamps and call screeners like
we are the people you see, but there there are so many people behind
the scenes who make this happen every single week. Like we come on sometimes
and you know, we have a rotating schedule of hosts, but these folks
are consistent and every single week make this happen, so it is amazing.
Also, they're just delightful people, Like that's I feel excited when we get
to talk to them and interact with them because they're just wonderful. Yeah.
Absolutely, we love the crew. Everybody else should also love the crew.
They are absolute superheroes and they do things that I sure as hell could not
be doing, like you don't want me touch it, you don't want me
touching those buttons, like you'll be broadcasting to I don't know, some we
just would accidentally mess everything up. So the crew is wonderful. We love
them, yeah so much. They're great. So this is kind of like
a weird. It feels like a hard right turn. So we're talking about
like Pride Month and how exciting that is, and you were talking about watching
an exorcism video. Yes, it had a little bit of overlap at least
into some of what we're discussing. Do you want to tell us about that,
Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to talk about it. And if there's
anybody in the audience that has thoughts about kind of the culture around these exorcism
videos, or if you have a story about something like this. But the
culture primarily within the Pentecostal or like charismatic churches especially, there's so many famous
people that have made videos and posted them about exercising the demons out of people.
And there are a few very popular people, especially there's one in front
of South Africa. There's a few others, but it's very interesting. Number
one, the person I was watching is a woman doing these exorcism which is
funny because you're in these very very anti woman pastor type churches and yet these
are people that are becoming super popular, which, like in any other context,
I would have no problems with this, But it's not the fact that
they're women that they're the problem. It's because they're exercising demons out of people
unnecessarily that it's the problem. But it's just interesting that it contradicts with their
you know, underlying theology. But whatever. So this lady does the typical
style of that a lot of others do, where you have people coming into
the church and they're for some reason, they're always like hunched over and they're
like almost like filming at the mouth, like just like snarling and like making
all these weird like animal noises. Like the trope around like demon possession is
very interesting about why if a demon were to possess a human, why that
would be the go to posture. Why would this be how they decide to
carry it out. I don't know. If I were a demon possessing a
human, maybe I would if I were actually trying to do horrific things,
or if I was trying to corrupt humanity, I would try to be as
natural as possible probably and not be trying to stick out. But either way,
these people show up and they're like seizing all over the place and like
they're speaking in tongues and stuff. But the most interesting ones you have people
coming to her for their HIV they're coming to her her for marriage difficulties,
they're coming for being gay, you know, I mean that's a more common
one. And so she's like praying to dispel these demons of HIV. And
so she claims and tells a person that you are cured of your HIV with
this prayer. She does the same thing with autism. She does the same
thing with this people's divorce. Like they show up and they're about to get
divorced, and she says, like, I denounce the spirit of divorce,
and they start screaming and crying, and then I don't know the outcome of
that whole thing, but it's just amazing. Number one, to see these
people like flocking and I'm not sure how many of them are legitimately seeking those
services or how many of them are plants in the audience, because I'm sure
there's a mix of people, but this is super dangerous. For one.
And number two, you get kind of a taste of like which things matter
most to this church population and what things don't. Like When the person's like
gay desires left his body, the crowd goes wild. When you see someone's
autism be expelled from them, the crowd goes wild as if this is such
a miraculous thing. Then on the flip side, you have this like about
to divorce couple, and the crowd's just like okay whatever. So like,
clearly autism and gay identities are far worse than a divorce, But it's just
it's a very interesting dynamic. And I know you had some thoughts about this
as well, with how these are played out and like, and even more
when they affect children. And I was just kind of blown away by the
fact that, like people really think that HIV can be dispelled by just saying
things like or that depression and anxiety can just be cured by just saying some
words, which I think if it actually did work, I don't know many
people that would not try that. Like, I don't know many people that'd
be like, yeah, no, I'm okay. I just I just hate
Jesus too much to say these necessary words. Like I feel like if it
worked, we'd have a lot more people being helped by this. Yeah.
I think that it's this desperation to that drives people to seek this kind of
of help, because we think about the idea of like someone who is suffering
from an illness or someone who has depression in an extremely severe way. And
I really wonder if all of these folks backgrounds are actually believing in demons or
are they just like nothing else has worked, and here's someone who's telling me
they have something that will work, and it's praying upon folks who are really
vulnerable at that time and just want any leaf, and so they end up
believing in Charlatan's which this cannot be anything but that when we were talking earlier,
you're right, like, for me, I tend to be very upset
by anything happening to kids like that's it's children are just sort of my heart.
I guess I don't know how to describe that. But I did see
an exorcism video once where this girl who was like seven years old was watching
a lot of mermaid content on YouTube and she was really into mermaids, and
so her parents decided she had like a demon of a mermaid sort of inside
of her and that that needed to be exercised from her. And so this
crying, clearly upset seven year old is put in this situation with people screaming
and wailing, and she knows enough about this performance that she's kind of putting
on this like you know, like answering kind of as the demon. But
she's clearly so upset, and the preacher is talking about, yeah, and
you're not gonna you're gonna let go of this little girl. And then once
the exorcism is complete, like basically, once they've traumatized this poor kid enough,
as she gets increasingly upset because I guess that means the exorcism is working,
they eventually ask like, so you're going to watch YouTube videos of mermaids
anymore? And she's like no, And so just watching this kid who is
in this situation, all of these adults are screaming at her, all of
her responsible adults in her life that normally would give her comfort are not giving
her comfort, are actively participating in this. She has nowhere to turn,
she has nowhere to go and be like. She doesn't have the wherewithal to
say this is really weird, this is really messed up. She's a child
who's being I say, this is absolutely abuse. And anytime I think you
traumatize a child this way intentionally for no benefit other than to scare them out
of watching a YouTube videos too much, is disgusting to me. And I
don't know the parents' background. I mean, maybe they went through similar things
when they were young, but it doesn't justify anything. So that broke my
heart. And I think that when we think about like exorcisms and demons,
I look at how vulnerable people are when they're in these positions to bring themselves
or bring their child, and how helpless they must feel in general that the
only thing they can do is turned to someone who just screams a lot about
demons and hopes they hope that will work. Yeah. I guess that's the
summary of me being like, I have to limit my own intake of these
videos because they're so horrifying to me because of the vulnerability that's just being exploited,
you know. Yeah. Yeah, Anyway, on that note, I
feel like that was kind of before the show we started getting to these really
deep conversations. We're just like, oh my heart, you know, believe
it or not, atheists do have them, And well, I recognize that
my feelings don't come from my heart, that that is in fact a metaphor.
I yeah, seeing this sort of injustice is so upsetting. Yeah.
On that note, we have a call from Rob who is he him?
It looks like identifies as an atheist and wants to talk about numbers five.
The abortion ritual says there is a fungus that grows on wheat and would be
present in the temple counters anyone arguing against abortion from the Bible. So hey,
Rob, tell us about what's going on in numbers five. I.
So, as we all know, one of the key components of the aborting
or tool in numbers five is to take dirt from the temple floor. The
temple is where they brought all their offering meat grain especially, and ergot is
a naturally occurring fungus that grows on cereal crops. And we know that we've
actually been using it for literal millennia in obstetrics, and one of the things
that can cause is miscarriage. Yeah, also migraine treatments. It was used
for a long time in treatment of migraines, but we stopped using it because
it causes a slew of other side effects as well, and so it's like
not the best thing to use in general. But yeah, it's it's possible
that you know, this was a use for that purpose back then. Interesting
and definitely that like an all powerful and all knowing God would prob Sorry good,
oh no, no, please, oh, just the idea of an
all powerful and all knowing God if he is instructing you to do something that
could potentially cause miscarriage, seems this seems odd that he would be so upset
by abortions if he's doing something that could potentially cause a spontaneous abortion. But
what were you going to say? It seems odd? It seems that it
seems as though intentionality, like we know that it exists to use it in
medicine. There's no way God wouldn't know that. Yeah, you would think,
yeah. I mean with that particular topic, I have some questions about,
like because I know, I know there are intentional abortions mentioned in the
Bible. There is intentional commands to terminate pregnancy in the Bible. I wonder
with that specific wording from that verse, I wonder how much of that was
like intentionally going for miscarriage. Because I know with the temple, the dirt
on the temple floor, while it could contain urge like poisoning it, I
don't know if that particular versus hinting that it's intentionally being used for that,
or that it's intentionally like known that that substance would be in the soil that
they would be eating. But I do think that there there are definitely other
examples where they do mention. For example, there's a compound at one point
that is likely copper containing and use like for the purpose of terminating pregnancy,
especially preventing like implantation of a fetus. So yeah, there's definitely definitely examples.
It's so interesting how many of the natural elements that exist on the planet
can cause things, can cause our bodies to miscare and to cause us to
have negative reactions for completely odd, mundane reasons. We use copper all the
time, you can cook with it, but if you have it inside your
body, it can cause problems. It's very interesting that the natural world seems
to align with the ideas for all these various things, but like, actually
a lot of it's really hostile to our ongoing likelihood. Yeah, pregnancy,
pregnancies in general are very difficult to maintain, They're very difficult to have go
well. People that think that pregnancy is just an easy, straightforward process are
very like misunderstanding of everything that happens. Miscarriage is incredibly common, and there's
a lot of times you might miscarrying and not even know because you could have
a like a zygode or a gestation that is like barely past stages of conception
and then not implant and then that would be a miscarriage that you just don't
even know about. There's plenty of different places where pregnancy can go wrong,
and people tend to focus primarily on where it goes well, which nowadays,
most of the time it does go well. We've we've come to a place
where understanding is good enough to know how we can adjust things with physiology in
order to make it go well more often. But it didn't used to be
that way, and especially in the Bible, there likely were a lot more
miscarriages and a lot more people that didn't survive childbirth. And it's a very
difficult process to have go well. And yeah, the world that we live
in, everything is not it's not well designed for anything to physiologically go well.
A lot of it's just it accidentally just seems to work in a certain
way. But yeah, I would I would agree with you that things are
not statistically favorable in a lot of senses. And I mean that just kind
of goes into evolution, like how we get recurrences of things that are more
likely to be favorable, and I think we're all in this room. I
think we're all in agreement on that. As a person who is currently almost
exactly seven months pregnant, I feel like it's been interesting for me. This
is my second pregnancy that it has gone fairly well. I'm extremely fortunate,
and so I look at my like healthy pregnancy. I still ended up being
anemic. I still have, you know, blood pressure that's low enough to
need to be monitored. I still was nauseous for months and months on end,
which is a good sign. I guess that you know, if you're
nauseous, you're less likely to miscarry. But it's a miserable good sign,
gotta say, particularly if you already you don't have a child or trying to
do anything with your life at all, including get out of bed. I
think about the fact that my nerves in my back are almost just crippled in
pain every day by the end of the day, like I can't really move
very well because it hurts so badly, and it's just the weight of the
baby pressing down, is what I've sort of been told. I honestly feel
like doctor would probably understand some of what's happening here better than I do.
But my pregnancies are great. Nothing that happens in them risks my life or
the life of the child that I'm just dating, and I'm grateful for that.
But even with that, it's still miserable. Even with that, it
still takes this incredibly high toll on my health as a whole. My hips
are two inches wider than they were before my first child, which means that
in that sixteen hours of labor, in two and a half hours of pushing,
I somehow expanded my bones. That's a bizarre thing to have happened to
you, and a bizarre thing to say. But when we talk about this,
this is like best case scenario. You know, I was able to
give birth in a way that was relatively you know, pretty much uncomplicated.
You know, nothing was going to be pretty crazy, too drastic or wrong,
And this is still what happened. These are still some of the epic
things that occurred within my body, let alone any kind of like mental health
consequence for not being able to get out of bed without puking for months and
how that can be really stressful. Were just the fact that there's so many
different hormones going on that you end up having sometimes very odd reactions to situations
in your life. Pregnancy is hard when it's great, and so the idea
that were designed in any way for this to go well is totally bizarre to
me. Oh absolutely, My wife and I had a really good pregnancy,
and I say ay, as though I had much to do with it,
it went really well. And even all of that, it still changes your
body. It physically is taxing. It is a dangerous endeavor. Even some
cultures in history have recognized that the Spartans you only got a grapestone if you
died in battle, or if you were a woman who died giving birth because
you were sustaining the empire. And it's like even different cultures recognized these things
were incredible and it might be sexist to turn it to men fight on the
battlefield, women's fight in the birthing, but I didn't take it that way.
Thank you get randomly, Yeah, I mean it's it's interesting too.
You know, I live in Texas, so of course me being pregnant is
something that I have to have a discussion every time about what we will do
if something happens that cannot be medically dealt with here in Texas, and I
am thank you. I realized that we are in such a fortunate situation in
my little family that if we did need determinate the pregnancy for whatever reason,
I could leave, but I would have to come back to the state and
not tell anyone what I had done, because I would be a felon if
I did that, and I could be arrested. It's just a very thin,
a very strange thing to think about when I'm like, and this is
like a fully wanted pregnancy, and it I still could be punished if it
goes wrong, and that's absolutelytly bizarre to me. I know, they don't
much to say other than about that. Yeah, And like I said,
I'm fortunate. I I feel like that's really it's I can't even comment on
other women's situations who have been experiencing miscarriages and might actually end up being prosecuted
for a miscarriage, which for some reason, pro life is like to pretend
could never happen, and yet absolutely has. You know, I think they
don't. I think they don't examine examine the end result of their beliefs,
like if you want enforced by law, then you need an mechanism by which
to investigate it, because we're not just going to go back to which trials
and accusations. We hopefully we don't, but I know you're like, we're
not. And I'm like, yeah, oh, that that one, Oh
that one, that one, that one might be. The one faced thing
I believe in is like I think there's enough people here who think and use
their brains. I really don't know that there are, but I sure hope
there are, because even if we do the things that they want, it's
like, okay, how you have to design a system? Now, you
don't just get to go I want a thing. Tell me how you're going
to make it happen, and I can tell you whether or not that's probably
a good thing or not. But if you don't even know how and that
thing sounds unreasonable, then I don't Then I don't even want to try and
engage with the concept at all, Like that doesn't sound like a good idea
to do, Like you can't even tell me how to make it happen.
That would make it seem okay. Yeah. The problem is they start pulling
the trigger on things and they happen, and they don't even They don't they
don't understand who are the victims of the consequences of these things. They don't
care enough to look into it more. And it's unfortunate because, like,
there are plenty of reasons why you would need an emergency termination or even a
non emergency termination, if there are conditions that leave you at such high risk
for complications, Like if you ask anybody, like if you had even let's
take even a small risk like ten percent, Like if you had a ten
percent risk that you could absolutely just die in your pregnancy and there'd be nothing
that we could do to help you. Would you take that risk for yourself?
But more importantly, would you want somebody else to make that decision for
you? Like, when you understand what is at stake here, it's hard
to say that you would oppose rights for other people because, yeah, I
might be willing to take a ten percent, but somebody else might absolutely not
be willing to take that ten percent. And if that ten percent, like,
for example, one of the big scenarios that seems to be complicated people
with connective tissue diseases such as our fans Elers, Dan Lows, et cetera.
If you have a condition where too much pressure on your aorta can cause
it to explode. Like literally you can get a dissection of your aorta that
can you very very quickly. If you have a connective tissue disease where your
blood vessels cannot hold up to that kind of pressure, you have a significantly
high risk of that happening during a pregnancy, and just buy the amount of
blood flow that you have to accumulate to compensate for the space that has to
get blood flow, like within the baby, but also the pressure from the
baby itself and it growing and taking up that space. If you had that
option of like, you have this amount of chance, and I think it's
small. I think it's around the ten percent range, but I could be
wrong. Like, if you have that that risk, would you want somebody
else making that decision for you? Like, Okay, you can either terminate
this pregnancy or you can have this risk that your orda is going to explode
and there's nothing we can do to help you. That's a choice you have
to make. And going to work with a ten percent mortality rate, you
guys, your job, No, I don't. There's a ten percent chance
I die. I'm not doing it. Yeah, well, and I think
too about factoring in that when you have previous children. You know, like
I'm the second of four kids between my parents, and I have a toddler
already. So if somebody told me that now, I think I wouldn't choose
to go for the ten percent anyway personally, but I absolutely would say no
because there is an extant child here that I could assist and that like needs
me as I already am so the idea that like, not only people making
that choice for you, but they're making that choice for your whole family.
This whole system is going to be impacted by whatever happens to you, And
that is just incredibly heartbreaking to think that somebody would choose that. And you're
not only making that choice for those people who get to say whether or not
they get a choice, you're also making a choice for the doctors that would
have to intervene in those ways. Like if you make it a felony to
perform an emergency termination, then you're going to have peer people that are willing
to do it, and you're putting them on the line for if they do
it, but then effectively for the people who need those options. Available.
Let's say somebody takes that chance, that ten percent chance for themselves and they
can't get help. Like, if it comes to be that they need those
procedures, you're now increasing their chances of harm because now you're limiting their ability
to be helped in those cases. So it's eliminating really every safeguard that we
have in this process for lots of people. And people don't understand, like
they think it's a black and white issue of either you get an abortion or
you don't, like either your baby dies or they don't, and that's not
the discussion. There's so much more layers of nuance here, and the fact
that we don't have people who understand weighing in on these issues is incredibly problematic.
It's like if I if I were to weigh in and decide I'm going
to make decisions for everybody else about their finances, and like I want to
start regulating banks, Like nobody wants that. I can promise you nobody wants
that because I will just ignore it and I don't know anything about the economy,
So like, why would I be the right choice for this. I
wouldn't. But I understand that a lot of people unfortunately don't understand that medicine
is similar that, like you can't just pretend to know it and then get
away with it and then and then say, oh, well this thing got
messed up, but it's their fault. And also I wasn't trained, so
how do you expect me to know? So, like, if you weren't
trained and we can't expect you to know, then why are you stepping into
this position of leadership and making the decisions like I just told them? Because
because in Ohio, I really get that, particularly as as someone who cares
about other people and literally cares for other people. Trying to dictate what part
of that job is against my better knowledge or in this case a doctor's better
knowledge is almost like enforced apathy. Imagine seeing someone who needs help, who
absolutely needs it, and being told helping that person is a crime none of
us. Wow that Like, it's it's what it's the it's the rambifications of
what they want, but they don't seem to like conceptualize it. And it's
so wild to me for people to either not have an imagination or just no
forethought, Like the thing you want will have to have rules, So the
rules are gonna be the problems that we encounter along the way. You know,
it isn't just one thing, it's theme you want and that system looks
bad, and they don't seem to really. They're just like, well,
but I like the thing, and it's like, but you could do that
just for you. You don't have to get one tell me what I can
do. That's it's this interesting thing where they want their own freedom, but
they also want the freedom to tell you what to do, despite that being
the opposite a pres I mean this idea that if you feel God has told
you that you have the answer, and it doesn't matter what you know,
what the practicality is of it, It doesn't matter what medical professionals say,
it doesn't matter the fact that you're going to be requiring people who are caregivers
to not actually help those in dire need, because this is what This is
what God said, and it doesn't matter that we can we can track exactly
when God started saying that, apparently historically, and that it was absolutely a
political movement and came from political ideologies, and the issue of abortion has been
used to manipulate voters for you know, almost generations. At this point,
None of that matters because to this you know, imaginary legislator or voter,
it's just this idea of well, God said it, So anything we're saying
becomes irrelevant in light of that, which I find so deeply disturbing. And
I think even when I was a Christian, I I'm not confusing that God
is okay with suffering, I guess in this way, and God is okay
with us inflicting it because this one issue that we've all decided matters more than
any other is on the table. It's divinely mandated cruelty at that point.
It's what it feels like. I grew up raised cats like my mother's Catholic,
and I never I never got even really past like the first communion stage
of belief in God. Because one of the first things in Catholicism for people
who don't know, is do your first union. It's like second grade.
You get all dressed up. There's a big thing. It's like a little
tiny kit king Sanira, a lot of fun. It's nice. You get
your family together, you get food, you get to dress up, you
get a picture taken. But one of the things is you have to go
to the priest and you have to confess your sins. And I'm eight at
this point, and I'm like, I don't know what, like what sins,
Like I've done bad things, but I've also expres rest, remorse and
tried to atone I don't feel the need to tell that to this guy.
I feel like God would understand, Yeah, don't punch your little brother,
but he was annoying me. Don't do it anyway, and like, Okay,
you're right, God, I probably shouldn't punch him, but you know,
you know, I'm a little kid. Like it's this weird idea to
me that God is both a loving, caring father who will then over punish
you. Like but but that's bad. Like like guys, like if like
if we put all of God's qualities into a person and then let that person
do things, that person's going right to jail. They're going to the Hague
right Like It's like, I'm going to set you up. I'm going to
set you up to fail. I'm going to absolutely set you up to fail,
and then when you fail, I'm going to say it's your fault and
I'm going to punish you for eternity. Like that's that's what happened. That's
yeah, incredibly abusive. He's so evil, it seems. Yeah, And
when you when you think about if you grow up in a family that talks
a lot about sin, then it's almost like, well, that's, of
course what the heavenly Father would do, that's what your parent, that's what
your earthly parents are doing. If you're talking about sin all the time and
there's this assumption that a seven year old can be possessed by a mermaid demon
or that you can commit sin before you understand the idea of even right or
wrong, then you're sort of being set up to fail by your parents here.
You know, you're getting punished for sinning when you're a small child,
as Georgia Purdham of Answers and Genesis referred to her like four year old as
a dirty sinner, which for some reason made me laugh just because she included
the word dirty. I'm like, you could have just said she's a sinner
anyway. But it's like, so, of course the heavenly Father. That
makes sense because that's what's happening inside of your home too, right, which
is also heart wrenching. Yeah, on that super depressing note, we have
another caller. I really want to get to. But I have so appreciated
talking with you. Rob. You are delightful and I appreciate your perspective.
Thank you so much, Lpia, Thank you much, Doctor Been, Like,
I didn't even know that the order, the a order thing was a
like thing that people have. That's fucking terrifying. I don't know how women
don't kick people who are anti joy It's because I can't get my leg that
high right now, so I can't kick anybody. Thank you guys so much
for the call, and I can't wait to hop in and listen to everything.
Thank you so much. Bye, What a delightful person. I just
appreciate your perspective so much, Doctor Ben too, because I'm like, I
can tell you what I'm going through, I can't tell you how it's working.
Yeah, So I find that really interesting. I think it's a great
it's a great dynamic that you and I have because I can't I've never been
pregnant, so I can't give that insight about what it's like to go through
a lot of these things. So I think it's a it's a great pairing.
We've got here and oh thank you. Oh no, I was gonna
say we have another super chat that I wanted to read real quick. This
is from x million and they give twenty dollars saying God's obsession with the YouTube
censored act which can lead to procreation because it imbues women with an inordinate amount
of power and responsibility over the fact over the act of procreation, which strikes
fear and insecurity in his heart, which is very interesting and related statement to
what we've been talking about. Absolutely and just the idea that women could have
control of this or could choose that you know what this does not a dude
I want to approcreate with is Yeah, I could see that being extremely threatening
to a lot of folks understanding of religion slash God. It's interesting too that
I look at it and the number of women I see blamed for the actions
of their child's father in hindsight, like, oh, well, you shouldn't
have ever had children with this man, sort of that's on you that he's
behaving this way. Like that's a really common narrative, both in and outside
of the church. This kind of sexism is not confined to it, and
so it's interesting to think that like giving women control to not procreate with a
particular individual, is that we can't do that, but we can blame them
for having children with the same individual, and that seems pretty perverse to me.
It's a trap, man. There's nothing you can do that will satisfy
these folks, which dang. Rough. Yeah, I feel like we're all
very in today's very serious day. I feel like we're really hitting a lot
of serious things, which I appreciate. But it's interesting to be like,
dang, it's heavy. On that note, we have another caller, David,
who goes by He him from Washington State, and he wants to talk
about the impracticality of bathroom bands. So hey, David tell us about the
impracticality of bathroom bands. Well, I thank you so much for bringing me
into the show. By the way, I'm grateful for this. Uh.
I just wanted to say that the bands that are being passed in a lot
of state legislators are very impractical and that the face, how would you The
only way you could is if you had a cop whose job was to sit
in front of every bathroom door in America and look at the lack of thing
and delegate genitals of everybody going in. I wouldn't want to be that cop.
I don't imagine either of you would want to be and I can't think
of anybody who would, h how would you form? The only thing that
these are schools, and that's the only thing that it could be used for.
It reminds me of asatomy laws which were used or for asked a men,
uh and uh, yeah, So that's kind of what I want to
do. There's no practical way of at applying it in any like universal or
fit way. Yeah. The whole bathroom band thing is it's a frustrating topic
and also kind of a funny topic at the same time, because you're hitting
it right on the mark in that like, there is no good way to
enforce this, even if people thought that this is a necessary thing to do,
and you're right, really the only way to do it would be to
inspect everybody's genitals as they go into the bathroom, which is making it much
worse for the people that you're trying to protect, because if the goal is
to prevent people from acting like that around women, you're now forcing everybody to
have that done to them. So it really contradicts the things that people are
saying they support with these bathroom bands. And you're right, there's nothing practical
about it. There's no way that this can end well for anybody. And
the way that I handle a lot of these discussions, at the end of
the day, you have to at some point be willing to accept self id
like. At some point you're going to have to get there because there's too
many variables involved with what categorizes you in one category or another. Where at
what point do you draw the line between male and female? Like? Where
do you put that? Because like, does it stop at like genital inspections,
does it stop at chromosome testing? Does it stop at like? I
don't know. There are so many variables and no matter how you define this,
at some point you're going to have to accept that not all of those
variables are going to line up. And so the concept even of a person
who is a woman and who is a man like, no matter how you
try to quantify that or qualify that based on physical attributes, you can't do
it. You cannot do it purely on that. You have to allow for
some level of self id Yeah, I think sorr phaps, but their physical
presentation is male and vice versa. And you also have for persons who have
an extra chromosome such as inclined filter syndrome and in other conditions where they may
be x y y or x y x. So how do we fly those
folks? You know? And what do you do about intersex persons? You
know, realistically things are not merely as cut and dry as people want to
make it out to be. And I just see these laws as not really
being about bathrooms, not really being about women at all, or about protecting
women. It's really just a crude attempt at harassment, trying to make lafin
even more difficult for a population that the person sponsoring these laws don't like.
And it's really nothing more than using the legal system as a weapon. There's
yeah, I think, I mean terribly. It doesn't remind me of a
James Acaster is a British comedian. He makes a joke about how, you
know, we looked around and we're like, you know, who's had it
too good for too long? Trans people and so started you know, making
these laws. But I fully agree with you on pretty much every point that
it's all so much more complicated. But then bringing it back to just practicality,
this isn't even necessarily about being trans. When we think about, like
I have a little boy and he comes into the bathroom with me, because
I'm not going to have a two year old to go into a public qustroom
by himself. Right. Is there an age limit that they're going to include.
What if they say by the age of seven they should be going into
bathrooms by themselves? But I still don't feel safe at that with that in
particular place where we are. What if at the age of five he looks
like he's eight, because not everybody develops age wise on the same scale.
So is someone going to stop and police me from taking my son into the
bathroom my f all the most comfortable bringing him into where I can monitor what's
going on. Is that not going to be allowed because it's someone they would
identify as a boy in a women's restroom and just not to in any way
diminish the fact that I am not the most impacted party when it comes to
these things. I am a cis woman. But I look at it and
I'm like, this impacts every person, even if they're thinking that it doesn't,
you know, I think about I grew up in kind of a Washington
Eastern Oregon area, so I'm actually kind of from around where you are.
But there were women I knew who were extremely conservative Christian and who were extremely
badass and like worked for like the Forest Service and things like that, and
their presentation was very you know, could be seen as very masculine looking,
and then when these laws started coming up, they were very for them.
And I was just kind of pointing out, like, you're going to put
yourself in a position where someone's going to start just questioning your gender simply because
you've been out in the woods all day and you didn't do glam. You
know that this is going to impact you as well. And that was something
that was was a difficult argument for some reason to make simply because they didn't
see it that way. It's yeah, these impact everybody. Yeah, And
their end goal here, based on the way that they are framing it,
is like they don't want trans people in the bathroom period. Like all of
these lead to, wherever they take it, they all lead to trans people
are not allowed in any bathroom. But go ahead, I want to hear
your thoughts. Sorry, I wanted to detail on something that Sophia had just
mentioned when she was talking about her child. This would also impact the parents
of children who have autism or have mental parents. You know, there are
some persons who physically may be twenty and twenty five years old and yet are
not mentally a place where they can function independently, Say a person with downs,
what are you going to do about those folks? Going to scopardize that
community and say, okay, you're not allowed to use the restroom either.
And the parents of these folks or their caregivers are now in a position where
if they're not the same gender of that child, they can't go out in
public with them for fear of having to use a public restroom and be caught
up in this whole nonsense. It's really just creating nothing more than a clinement
of fear, harassment, division, and hate. And you know, there's
a lot of persons out there that want to pretend that trans people haven't existed
until recently. But I as somebody who grew up in the Catholic Church,
I'm an atheist now antithiist actually, But having grown up Catholic, I remembered
the pope Joe was a woman who became pope in the ninth century, believe
it or not. And you know there has been in the historical record if
you read back far enough, even the Greeks and the Romans trans people.
You know, trans people have always been around, uh and always will be.
And these laws aren't going to make trans people go away. Uh.
It's really nothing more than hate and division being directed at a community that has
already got to do with entirely too much. You think, how you open
the news, but for some time I looked at them, I think,
yeah, the audio is cutting out a little bit. Well, yeah,
and I'm a I'm a trans guy that unfortunately has to use bathrooms, and
like, the the absolute best answer to all of this is having like individual
bathrooms with the door that goes all the way down to the floor and the
walls that go all the way down the floor, so you can be private
in your own space and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what body you
have, because everybody is safe and everybody's like treated equally in that. But
yeah, the way these all these laws are working, and we see this
for for all varieties of trans people, but oftentimes people are focusing on trans
women and whether or not they can use certain bathrooms, and they'll say,
trans women, go use the men's bathroom, which you'll see on the media
as well. Uh, people like pictures of a trans woman using a men's
bathroom and then them freaking out about that person being in there, like,
well, this is the thing that you asked for. But then if something
that when you when you discuss with people, they even even the mention of
trans men seems to throw the arguments like into interesting places because people forget that
we exist at all, and so the arguments don't stand as soon as you
throw a transmand into the mix. Because if we're if the goal is to
protect people who are assigned female, and you want all of them to be
in their own private space because they don't believe that I'm a man. They
believe that I'm a confused woman, and so I should belong in the women's
bathroom. But if I were to walk into a women's bathroom, people would
be concerned and I get thrown out because I make people uncomfortable because I am
seen as a man. So then the alternative is, do am I allowed
to use the men's bathroom? And like some people are okay with that,
but others are like, no, that's unsafe if you shouldn't be allowed to
go in there, Like okay, where do we go we don't go out
in public, and that's that's it. So the whole arguments end up being
contradictory on all fronts. But yeah, it's a garbage argument. It's totally
illogical and really just the bath Like, the thing about the bathrooms is there's
no need for our bathrooms to exist the way that they currently do, and
the fact that we are looking at it is like, oh, we have
to have this argument because what bathroom they're going to use? Like this system
is so arbitrary, just just get rid of it. And that's that's how
I feel about a lot of our systems, just like we don't have to
make this thing that doesn't work keep working. We don't have to like try
to revive this thing, just start over, do something better than this,
because we can do something better than this. And it's a simple, it's
a simple answer, Like it's not hard, and yet people want to make
it so hard. Can you think of how much more emotionally and psychologically safe
high school in middle school would feel if you just had your own bathroom cubicle.
Like I feel like some of the most intense feeling confrontations I ever had
is like a sixth grade girl or in the bathroom. Yeah, I mean
just I fully agree single stalls would make life better for everyone. Yep,
Hry David were to say something, sure statue, Yeah if somebody who grew
up as the shorter stature of your average male. The most terrifying moments of
my childhood took place in the school bathroom as well, you know, just
for you know, because I couldn't send anybody off. They were like,
you know, a foot taller than me. But honestly, I think even
more practical, like even for the folks to sale, we don't want to
spend all the money to do bathrooms differently, is why not just mind your
own fucking business, right, Like, I don't care the rules you have
here in the urimal next to me. If you can do it and you've
got to go, I mean an important a storm, right. I mean
I've been in positions where I had to go really bad before and for whatever
reason, the mentor wasn't working or they're you know, this full of people
or whatever. If you gotta go, you gotta go. Why do we
have to have gender bathrooms at all? Like why not just way look whatever,
just pay attention to your own business and don't bother other people. Yeah,
and I mean, thinking about the notion, I feel very aware of
privileging this conversation for myself, partially because I was just thinking about it.
I'm like, I don't know the men's bathroom all the time, and I
know no one's ever going to call me on it because I do it because
there's no line and I'm not a trans person, so I'll just be like,
yeah, I went in there and whatever. And because the point of
the law is so clearly to oppress trans people like I just sort of know
it would never apply to me, which is so fucked up. I almost
hesitate to say it because it feels weird to acknowledge that, like, yeah,
I can just do this thing obviously, but yeah, I don't know.
I'm sorry. I don't have a great conclusion for that. It's just
sucking is horrible, that's all. Yeah. Well, thank you so much
for calling. There is another color we should jump on and get to.
But I absolutely appreciate your perspective so much and definitely call in again if you
have have some more thoughts to share today. It's been an interesting day in
like thematically in my opinion, because it feels like there's this consistent theme of
people that religious folks or hardcore conservatives are willing to put on the chopping block
for the sake of their agenda, whether it's about trans writes or abortion.
It's like easy to list all of these other folks who will be impacted or
all of these awful negative consequences to these bigotries and this legislation, and none
of that seems to factor, and none of that seems to matter. And
it's just okay to sacrifice people, anybody, so long as they can get
to the to the people they want to hurt, and that's yeah. And
there seems to be like and this is something that goes back to kind of
our discussion about exorcism, even the idea that there's a lot within religious culture
of promoting a well, I'm just glad that's not me. I'm just glad
it's not me. That's the dirty ciner or the gay person going through conversion
there, or like a person struggling with addiction. People like people look at
other people and they say, at least that's not me. And in order
for this mindset to kind of carry forward, you need somebody else to look
at to say I'm glad that's not me. And so no matter what time
it is, you're going to find a group to think about that with.
And right now we've got multiple people on that chopping block. And if there's
a point where these people are no longer around, are no longer acceptable,
they'll move on to the next one. The whole kind of premise, even
within the Bible, is like making people happy that they're not the other person,
Like, not everybody's going to be saved. Be happy you're not those
people, and so you're just scrambling to do a good enough job pleasing God
so that you're not the person that gets thrown out. And I think that
goes into a lot of the panic and a lot of the attempts to be
the best Christian or the attempts to like put yourself out there as one of
the good ones so that you don't end up in that other pile. And
it's just it's fear on everybody's part, and I think that's something that it's
so hard to get out of religion because of that feeling. And so people
in religion are victims as well. And that's why I mean shameless plug here
for recovering from religion. I know we haven't had specific talks today relating to
that, but that's why we have organizations like r FR for people who have
come from those backgrounds of being taught to think, well, I'm at least
I'm not this other person, and then where do we go from there?
So a lot of things contribute to this, and hopefully we can get to
a place where we don't need to put other people aside, where we don't
need to have these arbitrary laws just so that we can feel better about ourselves.
I don't think we'll ever get there, but we can maybe take some
steps and just reform our bathrooms, I know, maybe just make a little
not as horrible for some people. On that note, I want to talk
about people that we do really appreciate to make make this possible, make it
possible for us to have these conversations. And those are our top five patrons.
Do you want to read the top five patrons for us there? Doctor
Ben? Do you want me to go ahead? I don't have them in
front of me. I'm sorry, I can go ahead and do it.
Sorry about that, all right? So the top five patrons. Number one,
we have Dingle Barry Jackson, who is just all these names are so
incredible to me. I love them. Two Oops all Singularity, three devor
Valjean, which I feel like is a rite of passage coming on the show
to learn how to like pronounce some of the patron names, and that one
I've alway struggled with a little bit more number four Kleevi Helvetti and five left
in the leaves. And this week we have an honorable mention for Michael Alessi,
who is also a patron. So we appreciate the patrons so much.
Thank you to everyone who gives to us on Patreon. If you want to
have your name read on the air, then please consider supporting us at tiny
dot cc slash patreon th and so that's just the word Patreon with THH for
Talk Heathen at the end. And on that note, we have also started
recording the Talk Heathen discord after show for all levels of paid patrons. So
if you want more content and a more informal, you know, look and
discussion with our hosts, then you can get that from Patreon. It's pretty
cool whenever we have like a chat after sometimes it gets really deep. Sometimes
it's just more about like who we are as people or just joking around in
the after show. So if you want to get to know us kind of
a little bit better, then you get that content if you sign up for
the for the Patreon. If you're not sick of me by the end of
the show, and you'll be like, okay, yeah. So we have
another call here that actually relates really well to what you were just talking about,
which is like recovering from religion. And so we have Tony who identifies
as a theist and also he him in Virginia, and he's talking about going
through deconstruction but has lingering fears and is stopping kind of at the final steps.
And so Tony tell us about what you're going through at the moment.
Well, first of all, thank you for having me. And that was
an excellent introduction. I appreciate that very much. And just to give a
little bit of backstory, I grew up in the church, attended church all
my life. I went to college to go into ministry. I worked in
youth ministry, and in the course of my studies excuse me into I guess
the early Christian Church and the way a lot of the tenants of Christian faith
were established and so forth. Also just looking into details of the theology you
of who the Christian got is. I used a phrase of the closer I
looked, the more I started to see the cracks and things didn't make as
much sense to me the more I look, and I found myself in kind
of this perplexing position where you know, I not to to my own horn
or anything, but I fancy myself, you know, of a certain level
of intelligence, and I'm kind of like, you know, God, you
gave me this brain and this ability to question and think logically and nationally and
to understand complex concepts and ideas. And the more I utilized that gift giving
me the less sense to me, and that ended of itself was very difficult
for me. And so that coupled with the fact that I lost a very
good friend of mine in cancer got twelve years ago. And while I was
when that happened, I was studying to go into the ministry on a Christian
college campus. I was attending church at a Christian church, working as a
youth minister at that church, and I was going through the artist period of
my life, having lost my best friend and never felt more alone. I
didn't have anybody checking up on me. I didn't have anybody saying, you
know, hey, man, you go okay? And like I was missing
classes, I was missing engagements with friends, I was missing fraternity events and
things like that, and like all the figns are there that I was going
through something dark, and I'm like, supposedly all these people are in Dwelt
with the same holy spirit that I think that I'm in Gwilt with. Why
the heck is nobody checking in on me here? You know? Why?
Am I just drifting alone? And that sent me to some dark places.
I don't want to trigger anybody, but you can. You can draw your
own conclusions. And that was kind of the beginning and the end for me.
So for the last you know, twelve years, I've been going through
this period. At first, it was just sort of like living however I
want that. I sort of came back to a place of like, I
don't really know what I believe and I find a piece of together and I
still have these there's I'll call it what it is. It's a desire.
I have a desire to want. I want there to be some meaning and
some purpose for life beyond the tangible universe. I want there to be something
supernatural. I want there to be some meaning behind this, and I think
that may be the linch pin that's keeping me holding on. But there are
also these lingering doubts in the back of my mind that you know, if
I were to die tomorrow, that you know, I'd be staring Satan or
God or some other entity in the face. And you know that these things
that I believe my whole life are actually true. And you know, I'm
sure you guys have been there, if you've ever been at this, So
that is as a stainct, say, background, as I can give you.
And I guess I'm at the point where I either want to just decide
that I believe that there is there's some purpose and meaningful life and I'm just
looking for that, or that there's nothing and move forward with whatever that means.
And I don't. I don't really feel any overwhelming push in either direct
and yeah, just trying to make sense that things ultimately truth is what matters
to be fact, So what matters to me. I want to know what
is actually accurate and true. I alts want to delude myself into a complacency,
you know, I want to first start by being like that is you're
joking about as sustinct as you could make it, but it's actually very rich
in detail your story. Also, I want to acknowledge like how difficult it
is to go through those things alone, and that I'm sorry that happened that
you were just sort of left hanging and people that you were told or your
community and you have this in common with that, you know, you have
the same Holy Spirit inside of you simply weren't there, because that makes it
so much harder to kind of keep enduring through difficult things when you've always been
told you'll be sustained through these difficult things, you'll be given this this energy
and you know this community, and then it just disappears when things get hard.
That sucks so bad. So just mentioning that. But your your story
is I relate to so many aspects of it a lot. One big one
is the sphere of hell. Like I've mentioned on the show before that I
had a hard time letting that go. And even if I intellectually knew and
even through reading the Bible and like hell is not as we as you know
an evangelical church would have ever described it, knowing that wasn't enough because it
had been so deeply ingrained into into my faith, my conception of myself had
to be a little different because I'm like, where does my morality come from?
I felt like if I let it all go, it would become so
chaotic and I wouldn't be able to figure out what I was supposed to be
doing. There was always sort of a manuscript, or not manuscript, but
like a sequence you would go through that if you don't know what to do,
you know, read the Bible, talk to a past or, pray,
and it would just sort of come to you. And if I didn't
have that to do, then how would I find my own morality? It's
scary to lose all of that. It's also scary to tell people in your
life who knew you as a Christian that you don't believe that anymore. That
you've moved forward. I think I'm curious. I guess about you mentioned that
you're at this point where you want to sort of choose one or the other.
Why are you feeling urgency around that choice? And it's hard to sit
in this middle where you're not sure yet, but it feels like you feel
a push to sort of make something feel final. What's happening there? You
know, I don't know. I haven't really considered that. That's something I
think I might chew on for a little bit, but I think to a
large extent, it's an aspect of my personality. I don't like making decisions.
I don't like making choices, and so I will sit down and I
will wrestle with a thing, and I will make my decision, and then
unless compelling evidence comes along to convince me to change that decision, to change
that decision, I'll stick to it. Like I decided what my style of
dress is going to be twenty five years ago and I haven't changed. Like
there's just different colors, but otherwise it's the same shirt, same genes,
same you know, Like I have one outfit in multiple colors because I don't
want to have to make that decision, you know, And I just want
to get to a point where I'm like, Okay, this is what I
believe, this is why I believe it, and I don't want to think
about it anymore. And it's just sort of it's the way I operate.
It's very annoying to I mean, significant others. I've had in my life.
But I don't know. I don't know if there's anything pressing aside from
the fact that I I guess maybe I want. I want some peace of
mind. I want if there truly is nothing more than what exist in the
corporal of the universe, and when we're done, we simply cease to exist,
then I want to begin operating in that to maximize the time that I
have here and make the most out of what I have here. And if
there's not, if it is the case that there is some purposes, some
meaning behind it, like even if it's not within the Christian faith, you
know, if it's something other than that, that I want to begin operating
in that and pursuing that to the highest level that I'm capable of. And
as I've been deconstructing, I realize that, you know, growing up as
a Christian, when I heard other faiths and belief structures and philosophies and so
forth, I sort of address them the same way that we kind of address
the ancient breaking Roman pantheons of gods. You know, we talk about breaking
Roman mythology and we dismiss it with that word mythology. And I think that
that overlooks the fact that for the better part of however, many hundreds of
years, you know, much of the known world lived and died under those
religions and people, would you know what I learned about Buddhism and Confucianism and
Hinduism and Islam and all the other religions out there. I dismissed them with
that same like, oh, well, I know what the truth is.
These are just quite little folk beliefs of other people around the world, you
know. But I know what the truth is. I know it, I
know reality is. And so I stepped back and I said, I've never
really addressed these other faiths on their own terms, and I started looking into
them more deeply and more genuine And as I've done that, there are certain
ideals and tenants that are almost universal. The Golden Rule, for example,
shows up in some way, shape or form, and so many different philosophies
from around the world, which I think is, is you know something that's
relating to human nature of the fact that we all just want to be treated
a certain way. I've come to this idea that what if, what if
the point of religion is to grow beyond the need for it? What if
it's it's our training wheels to get us to a point where we no longer
require the prominence, paradise or the threat of damnation to be a good person.
We simply become good people because it's the right thing to do. And
maybe that's what this is really all about. And you know, that's sort
of the limb that I'm on right now, is wondering if if we're not
simply meant to grow beyond the need for you know, threat characteristics, if
you prefer yeah, yeah, I think people because you know, I don't
mean to hijack the shaft, right, I could talk for we're letting you
know, it's you're saying interesting things we care about. That's you're not hijacking
things. It's fine. And I think I think you're going in the right
direction. And I think I think you're going to be going a similar direction
that both of us have have gone on. Just I want to point out
something interesting that you're saying with like the idea that what if religion is meant
for us to grow beyond it? And I think that's an okay thing to
start from based on on where we're at in this conversation. But looking at
a lot of the things that religion has done. Unfortunately we start off our
training wheels are incredibly flawed, and our training wheels stick with us. We
have a bias that goes forward. We have things that we anchor on,
We have things that like our brain has developed kind of around the society that
we live in and around the stimuli that we perceive in the way that we
look at the world. And even if there are some things that are positive
that religion has done, there's also a lot of garbage that we're taught and
if we're letting that be our training wheels, that can be incredibly problematic.
And that's why people have trauma and leaving religion. And so I'm not saying
that everything that we learn from that is something that we need to throw away,
but I would maybe suggest using some caution in saying that, like religion
is something that we have, like that has as a purpose and letting us
grow from it. I see the desire of wanting to wanting to have a
positive spin on things that we used to believe or positive outlook on things that
happened to us. But I think maybe, and maybe I want to ask
you this question of why do you feel like you need to hold on to
these pieces. I get it's hard to let things go, but I think
really what's going to help us go in a direction is kind of unpacking what's
keeping you in this space. Well, I do want to respond to something
that you said they were playing and move on the go for it. You
know that the religion has done terrible things, and so often on the show,
I hear your hosts talk about the importance of defining terms, and maybe
I should have done that initially. I would define religion as the belief structures
in one of themselves, and not necessarily the deeds and actions those belief structures
and so forth. Not to say that there aren't negative aspects of the belief
structures, but essensibly, in a very broad sense, I think religion as
the thing which seeks to tell us how to be the best versions of ourselves
that we can be. They don't all get it right. That is O
sensibly sort of what the rail on deetra is, so to speak. So
that's I appreciate the correction on that. That's uh, that's helpful, but
uh, the I guess the thing that's keeping me holding on is a desire
to make the right choice. I don't want to go out on the limb
and know I'm one hundred percent certain it's not going to break and fall out
under me. And if you know the consequences of going out on the wrong
limb means spending eternity the wrong place or you know, not making the most
of my life. I mean, you know, the stakes couldn't be hired,
you know, but are you are you going to be one hundred percent
sure either way? Can you achieve that? Uh? I know that's our
question. It's our question, But like I get the paralysis of wanting to
make the right desion and not being able to move because you're not sure where
to go. But like, and that's that's the unfortunate thing here, is
that at some point you're going to have to accept something that you're not one
hundred percent certain about and you don't have to be like, that's not the
expectation. Like it's going to come down to what am I like more certain
of And even in that, like you don't have to necessarily jump to something
else to have a sense of this thing that I'm currently in is not it.
And I think that's where a lot of us end up starting, and
a lot of us are still there, like we don't necessarily know what the
right thing is. A lot of us would call ourselves agnostic atheists to say,
I don't know for certain any of these things, but I'm pretty comfortable
in saying it's not Christianity. I'm pretty confident in saying it's not Islam,
it's not these other things. I don't know what it is exactly. I
have some ideas about what is real in this in this universe, but like,
I'm not as worried about like what is the thing I jump to?
But at least I can narrow down my answer choices and say, well,
this one's not a right answer. And so maybe that's comforting in a way
of like it's scary to not have certainty. But more of us are in
that space of like I'm not really certain of anything. I'm just more comfortable
at saying this is less likely to be true. And That's where I'm at,
And I'm curious to hear both of your thoughts on that. Yeah,
I think I want to address a couple of things, and then I don't
want to cut you off, but I do want to get to like our
kind of one last caller, and we're reaching the end of the show.
But I'm first I would want to say that the discussion over what religion is
or isn't is interesting and difficult, and also happens in atheist spaces because not
all atheists feel the same way about the faith that they left. Not an
atheist ever had a faith, So there's quite a bit of diversity of what
we think. And you can still feel like you these good things from faith
and religion and now you don't believe it, but still acknowledge those things.
I personally have a hard time kind of finding this finding a middle there.
I think that there were some I don't know who I would be if I
wasn't without it, But that's simply because or if I didn't grow up with
religion. But that's simply because I can't know. I don't know if it
was better for me or worse for me. I can tell you ways in
which both could be argued, but I think for me, like I eventually
sort of asked myself, what what do I what evidence would convince me of
a god? And what evidence do I need to believe the Bible specifically,
And I needed more confirmation of the text personally, I needed to figure it,
like is this reliable? Who actually wrote it? How do we know?
How is this decided? And the more I got into that, the
more I was like, all right, that was the evidence I would need,
and it was coming up incredibly short in ways that I had never known
before. So I'm curious as to what it is. What evidence are you
looking for? You know, because you're looking for an answer, but what
could that answer look like for you? I feel like we've asked you a
lot of really big questions too, and I think we do even yeah,
and even of course, like I want us to kind of get through these
points, but I would love for you to also call back other times because
I feel like we have an infinite amount of things we can discuss with you,
and you've You've been a very polite and genuine caller and I so even
if there's things we don't get to today, I still want to have these
conversations. I would love for us to keep to keep discussing. Yeah,
I think we've given you a lot of big questions that we ask ourselves too,
and unfortunately get we got to get going. So I'm going to drop
you, but thank you so much for calling and please please call back because
I want to know, give you some time to think about this and then
come call back and let us know what you think. So I'm super curious
about that. So I am thank thank you for the time and for the
thoughtful questions and just to fight this to summarize everything, I think whatever is
going to uh make me the best version of myself, there is going to
be the answer that I'm I'm ultimately looking for, soay, whatever that may
be, I don't know, but that's ultimately what I'm striving towards. And
I've certainly taken a lot out of my faith in the past, but I've
also become a much better version of myself moving away from my faith because you
know, uh yeah, my Christian faith, you know, to put me
against LGBT issues and things like that. And I have since come around and
being like, no, like people are people and you know, love and
love and everything else. Yeah, yeah, so there's some and you know,
in all areas of human experience. But thank you again. I don't
want to keep any further and I call back definitely what interesting polite people we've
had today. I feel very privileged to have had the callers. We do
to be honest, I do want to I have been remiss in making announcements
because I've been really focused on the callers. So it yeah, I supposed
to do this after the first call and I have not been doing that.
And I want to hit on one one super chat before we get into that.
Another one from David Tech, who gave ten Canadian saying that bathroom should
be divided between standing and sitting, which it's an option, this option as
well. Thank you for another super chat, David. It's also a joke
in The Simpsons that most of his lack makes about like he's labeled his bathroom
stand ups and sit downs. But so I'm like, you know, maybe
Mo was onto something. Yeah, So our announcements, it's time for our
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so comment like things you think maybe that we missed or something that you're like,
you know, actually, maybe a better way to go about that or
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yes, all the announcements their super chat. Speaking of super chats, Jamie
Gallier sends nine ninety nine and says great show with three hearts. Thank you,
Jamie. And that's another example of how you can send a super chat
and be heard on the air. Yeah, you could just compliment us too,
that's cool, Like we're not gonna I'm not going to say her to
that if you just want to be like you guys are super realiant and amazing
and should run the world and like great, thank you, except for doctor
Ben won't run banks, as we've established that will be the no banks,
no banks for doctor Ben. Yeah. So we have this sort of one
last call that I am definitely curious to hear from. So we have Niica
she Her who is an atheist in New York and asks could trans allies use
the quote unquote incorrect bathroom to de gender all bathroom spaces. So that's an
interesting idea. Tell us what you're thinking there, Nica, Hi, Hi,
doctor Ben, Hi, Sophia, thank you so much for thank you
much. I know at the end of the show, so I'll try to
make it quick. What if maybe just for Pride not or just forever,
just to normalize people to use whatever bathroom they feel like it at the time,
So I would use an assist female. I would use male bathrooms of
course if and when it's if and when it's safe, but kind of to
just normalize people being in different bathrooms so that it just confuses the biggest Yeah,
I think that, like, if people are comfortable doing something like that,
I think peaceful ways of inspiring social change is an okay thing to do,
like just keep it safe, keep it respectful. But I think that
that's a great thing if people feel so inclined to do that. And my
opinion is to defer to doctor Benn and those who are more affected by than
I am on this particular issue, and if it's felt that that is helpful
and then awesome, and yeah, that's kind of my take is if that's
helpful and folks who know more than I do about this are like, yeah,
go for it, then then that's my take. That's awesome. Okay,
maybe we need to start a campaign for people, especially for Pride months,
to just use whatever bathroom that would upset people. The most upsetting bathroom
the Satanist bathroom around the corner. That's going to be the Sorry. Yeah,
I mean I'm all in favor of things like malicious compliance and if there
are certain rules that pop up and it's like, well, you can't do
this because insert arbitrary reason here. You know, I'm all in favor of
just you know, following the rule to such an extreme that it defeats their
argument. Like, I think those things are great. I think those things
are great. It shows people where their arguments fall, usually depending on the
situation. A lot of times those things are really inconsequential things for us,
like using the wrong bathroom, et cetera. Like it's such a small thing,
but people get very worked up about it. So I think, if
that's something that people feel comfortable doing, go for it. Try it,
see see how it works for you. I'd be curious to kind of see,
like from a social experiment perspective, like how people would react to something
like that, kind of what what things would would come from it. Go
for it. Yeah, I think also as a swoman myself, our bathroom
lines are extremely long, so it would be very easier to be like,
I'm gonna use that one because there's no line. Yeah, well cool,
Well, thank you for calling. You know, that was like a little
bit of a short one, but thanks for calling. NKA. Yeah,
thank you so much. Guys, have a great after show, ye you
to thank you great Sunday. I'm such a dorg. I just said you
too for have a great after show, which is not Hey, join us
on that after show with us. Yeah, yes, you too can have
a good after show as well. Also you'll be having some Yeah. So
that is going to be our last call for today. So remember that the
prompt for this week is what is Jesus really saving us from? Reply in
the comments below this video and tune in at the beginning of next week's episode
to hear the top three answers. We want to thank Richard Gulliver for helping
us out. Jilliver, Jiliver, I'm sorry. I'm gonna move a boss.
I know. Good thing I don't get paid for this. True is
backup hosting today? Yeah, what did you think of the show? What
was your take? Favorite career, great conversations, great to see you and
Ben holsting together for the first time, a great fantastic chemistry there by the
way, really on fire, and great conversation all around. I particularly enjoyed
that. I think it was Tony's call about, you know, the kind
of way he was thinking. I'm always bewildered. I do a little bit
of stuff with theology and kind of looking at the early Christian Church and stuff,
and I'm always bewildered because I don't know what it's like in the US,
but in Britain, the Church of England kind of vicars and priests and
stuff have to go through university and they learn about this stuff. They learn
about the early Church, they learn about how the theology was formed, they
learned about the economical councils and all of that stuff. And I always find
it bewildering how you can go through that process and still remain religious, because
it's so obvious when you look at that stuff and how it kind of built
on things, and so little bits from kind of Platonism and little bits from
the Old Testament and marriage them together, and there were so many different theological
concepts, and you know, they literally got together and hashed it out,
which were the right concepts in which we're going to be seen as orthodox and
who was going to be kicked out of the church hall in non orthodox views,
and it bewilders me that there's all that there in plain sight, that
these people actually have to study it and they still come out of it believing.
I find that fascinating, fascinating. It's kind of cognitive dissonance. Is
it's kind of you know, at the point of there being no more cognitive
dissonance available, because it's that kind of bewildering to me. But it's great
when I love calls like that and you know, his ideas about you know,
the church and how you know people came to have these ideas about the
church and now it was a tool for understanding the world around them, all
great stuff. I really enjoyed that call. Yeah, I appreciate just that
honesty that it felt like was in that call of just like, ah,
what do we do now? And I think so many us can relate to
that, and I would assume so many viewers can too, Like people who
are watching this are probably like I've been through that or maybe going through that,
and so I always appreciate that. But when someone's honestly looking for the
truth and is starting to realize that some of this, some of these inputs
don't make sense with the out what they've been given. Yeah, I thought
that one was really interesting as well. Yeah, well we are here at
the end. I do want to mention one thing really quickly. I think
today was very heavy in a way that I actually really appreciated. But I
want to point out how much love there was with so many of these discussions.
That there's a lot of bad shit happening that is discriminatory and awful and
leading to terrible consequences for people, But we also had collars today being like,
how do how do I help? How do I deal with that?
How do I explore this? And I think it's such a gift to be
able to be part of that common conversation on here. It's a gift to
have callers who really want to do the best they can for others and who
are able to see through some of what is being fed to them about you
know, Hey, this this is what this is what this crusade is really
about. And they're like, I don't I don't think so. I don't
think you're just being a jerk. But I see a lot of love there
and a lot of care, and that gives me a sense of hope and
gratefulness that I can be part of this conversation as well. Absolutely so.
On that note, you can join us the aftershow tiny dot c c slash
ac a c D discord. If you don't believe, we do want you
to know that this is your community and we appreciate you being here. If
you do believe, we don't hate you. We're just not convinced. Yeah,
we want the truth, So watch Truth Wanted live Friday at seven pm
Central. Visit tiny dot cc slash y t tw and call into the show
at five one two four two, or connect to the show online at tiny
dot cc slash call tw