Speaker 1: Our atheists blind to the truth of God's existence? Are
we suppressing the truth in unrighteousness? Is God clearly seen
and understood from what he has created so that atheists
are without excuse? Are we secretly believers but just want
to deny Christ so that we can go on sitting.
Our atheists really just mad at God because of church hurt.
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then
you might be experiencing a commonly known malady called cognitive dissonance.
It was once thought that this ailment was incurable and
that believers would experience chronic symptoms indefinitely.
Speaker 2: But now there's hope.
Speaker 1: The Atheist Experience is proud to announce dizen X. Dis
an x is an over the counter weekly dose of
reality to help you smooth out your mental contradictions. What's
more is that dizn X is completely free to the public.
Every Sunday night at five point thirty Eastern Standard time,
and all you have to do is call the number
on the screen. The lines are open and the show
starts now. Welcome in, Friends. Today is September twenty one,
twenty twenty five, only two days away from the rapture.
I'm your host justin You might know me as Deconstruction Zone.
I am pleased to introduce my co host for today,
the Queen of Cadreceps, the champion of cellular secrets, the
Mistress of mitochondria, the barrenness of biometrics, and a high
priestess of homeostasis. She's a physiologist and the Deacon of Deconstruction.
Please welcome Sarah from Leaving Faith.
Speaker 3: Hi, thank you very much for having me, and that
was an amazing intro. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I am thrilled to be on the screen with you
here today at XP And for those who like, if
you know me, you probably have seen Sarah's channel around.
But Sarah runs a channel doing deconstruction talk and she's
of the very nice persue. So this this could end
up being a good cop bad cop situation. Obviously, Sarah
as a good cop, as we may or may not
find out, depending on how the guests behave. But for
those who don't know, she's TikTok famous at Leaving Faith
and she's now on YouTube and now she's here, she's
here in front of us and we're going to be
taking some calls today and hopefully we'll get some calls
that are right in your wheelhouse, your wheelhouse physiology. We
may even get some calls wanting to talk about Hell.
Speaker 2: Hell's a popular topic.
Speaker 3: I do like talking about Hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Actually it brings up good Hell kind of has
a special place in your heart, and it kind of
assisted in your deconstruction, which I think is why we
talk about it so much.
Speaker 2: For those who don't kind of don't.
Speaker 1: Know your backstory, how does hell kind of play into
how you came from being a dedicated, sold out born
again Christian to a cold, rotten atheist.
Speaker 3: It's very cold. I'm a very cold person. Yeah, So
the kind of first domino for me to fall was
around Hell. I think I had a lot of cognitive
dissonance about what hell was and who went there, and
was like, well, everyone I know in love is going
to heaven, so I don't have to think that hard
about it. And when someone I really cared about passed
away and I didn't think that they had sort of
met that standard of asking Jesus into their heart, I
then really had to consider, now, hold on a minute,
does it make any sense that he would be suffering
for eternity? And so, yeah, through my whole deconstruction, process,
and looking back now, I feel I feel really strongly
about talking about hell because of I think the negative
impact it has on us.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I think if you believe that you are so evil
you deserve infinite punishment, that affects how you see yourself.
And if you think everyone around you is bad, that
affects how you see them too. So yeah, that's why
I really love to talk about Hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you probably remember, like I, you know, when
we were believers, it seems like there were so many
people that were like making friendships and connections, but the
real motive is to like, well, I need to witness
this person, because once you think that your friends and
family are going to hell, if they don't believe what
you believe, it's I think it's hard to have genuine
connection with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, I lost most of the
friends that I had once I stopped believing. And part
of the reason was just because we couldn't have a
genuine friendship because all of our conversations were them trying
to win me back, you know, and I just felt
like a project instead of a friend. And I think
that the way, especially evangelical Christianity is designed is that
you know, everyone who's not a Christian is a lost soul,
and it's your job to go help them, and that
changes the nature of your relationship, no matter what.
Speaker 2: That really does.
Speaker 1: Anyways, I'm certainly glad to have you here tonight. I
want to do the obligatory opening statement, and then we've
got one caller in the queue. If you're thinking to yourself, no, no, no,
Hell is completely logical and you two are insane, maybe
you should go there. Then go ahead and call the
number on the screen. We promise we won't bite your
head off. There are other shows you can call into
to get some of that content. We'll have a reasonable
dialogue with you about your God and about Hell. And
with that, The Atheist Experience is a product of the
Atheist Community of Austin, a five' one c three nonprofit
organization dedicated to the promotion of atheism, critical thinking, secular humanism,
and the separation of religion and government. And with that,
I would remind the callers that this is not a
political talk show. If you call in wanting to talk
about politics, I will drop you. This is an atheist
talk show and we're going to be talking about atheist topics,
religious topics things like that, and with that we've got
looks like in the guests cute Terry isn't a believer,
but has something on their mind. So we'll grab Terry,
and then while we're talking to Terry, theis by all
means call up, get yourself in line. Don't wait till
the end of the show, because then we might not
be able to get to you. So if you want
to get into the show, please, by all means, go ahead,
dilan now and talk to our lovely call screeners and
then we'll get you on the show.
Speaker 2: And with that, let me pull in Terry.
Speaker 1: Terry from Vermont was raised Roman Catholic and says, now
I agree with you guys more than I do. Theis
that I come in contact with How you doing, Terry?
Speaker 4: Hey, how's it going guys? Thank you for taking my home.
Speaker 2: Hey Terry, what's your in your mind?
Speaker 4: Well? I just wanted to say that I was a
raised Roman Catholic and I've been to many many churches
over the years, and I remember them saying, you know,
read the Bible and you know you'll you'll find the truth.
And what I found was more inconsistencies than they could
shake a stick at.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that that was kind of my experience
was the Bible itself seemed to be one of the
largest barriers to believing the truthfulness and the validity of
the Christian message. But I think even if you if
you're not really like reading the Bible intently, just thinking
about some of the concepts can get you to the
same conclusion. Like Sarah was talking previously about how hell
doesn't really make any sense, but there is heaven.
Speaker 2: Heaven doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: It certainly doesn't seem to square with any of our
known physical laws, like where would heaven be? Can have
we ever observed a completely immaterial realm where spirits are
floating around?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 1: Like, none of these things makes sense if you just
think about them for a little bit.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I remember when Stephen Hanking meant the
Pope I think it was nineteen eighty five or eighty six.
He asked him a question. He said, is the universe infinite?
And the Pope said yes, And Stephen said, well, then
what room is there for your God? And the Pope
didn't have an answer.
Speaker 2: That's a good question, right. I know for me personally, I.
Speaker 4: Engage with every time I engage in any sort of
a conversation with Christians, they like to use circular arguments,
and you know, they believe. There is a guy who said, well,
what proof do you have? And they go to the Bible.
I said, well, other than the Bible, what do you have?
And they said that's all I need? And they just
keep talking in circles, and no matter how you shoot
them down, they don't seem to get it. They don't
seem to understand that the Bible isn't proof because if
you even look at the at the Christian religion or
any religions, they go by a book and their books
are faith. Their books are not proof.
Speaker 2: Indeed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I heard a really good explanation for that once actually,
when I was deconstructing that belief is isn't just something
you come to logically, but consider it more like a footstool,
and so you have your belief and many things, there
are many legs on your footstool. And so it's why
when you when you talk to someone who has any
type of religious belief, you know, describing one logical error
isn't going to change that belief because it's not just
logic that holds it up. You know, you have experiences
and culture and family and psychology you know that are
all holding up that belief. So even if you knock
one of the legs out, you still have all those
other legs holding it up.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's funny. I thought that when the
Jonestown massacre happened, I think it was in nineteen seventy
eight or seventy nine, I would have thought that people
would have gotten a clue. But now these television evangelists
in their megachurches are making more money and fooling more
people than ever. And I really don't it deboggles my
mind to think how people could fall into that trap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think if you're raised in it, like
you were raised Catholic, right, I think if you're raised
in it, it can be difficult to question what you
were raised in. I know, for me, I grew up
in a very religious background, even though my family wasn't
super religious, and so there are a lot of things
you just accept as true, right, so when you start
to deconstruct that in your adult years, it's hard to
throw it all away right at once. And if you
if you never deconstruct, like if you just swallow the
whole hog. Then there's really not a whole lot of
limits as to what you won't swallow, Like if if
if you're willing to buy a hook line and sinker,
they can just keep adding more worms on that hook.
I mean, there's not a lot of limits.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've I've tried. I've tried to believe, and I've
tried to see what what was the payoff or what
was the rationale or what was the logic, and just
found that there really isn't much logic anymore. They say,
you know, the Roman Catholics, I have to admit one
thing about them. They if they can't explain something, they go, well,
it's a mystery of face. Whereas typical Protestant or you know, Evangelicals,
they'll talk in circles, you know, for hours, and it's
it's just kind of funny. So I don't even bother
getting into that. A few a few weeks ago, I
was walking and I saw a couple of the Mormon
missionaries and they asked if I wanted to hear the
word of Jesus Christ, and they said no, I said,
I'm a secular humanitarian. And they were totally stunned. They
didn't even know what that was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, to be fair, we're not a huge
percentage of the population.
Speaker 2: Like in my life.
Speaker 1: I can kind of, on one hand, like the atheist
that I personally know Sarah is probably the same. I
don't know if we're surrounded by a lot of people
that are of this variety.
Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure, I can't say.
Speaker 4: I can't say that I'm an atheist, but I know
darn will that I'm not a I'll put it to
you this way. If there is a God, if it
is not what they're telling me it is, it can't
because what they're telling me does not make sense.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we couldn't agree more. Oh sorry, go ahead, sir.
Speaker 3: Well, I was just going to say, it would be
very unjust for that God to expect you to worship
and serve him if that God doesn't make any sense.
You know, I've had many people in my lives tell
me things like, well, you know, I don't get it either,
but we just we just have to obey and worship.
But I think it would be very unreasonable for God
to create a situation where you can't understand him and
he doesn't make sense, and yet somehow expect you to
worship him, so I agree with you.
Speaker 4: Well, I agree with you too. It's it just when
you start. When you start, you call it deconstruction. When
you start examining the evidence you got, and when I
point out some of the inconsistencies, they go, oh, well,
we don't do the Old Testament anymore. Now, this is
what really really got me when when my wife joined
this new church. It's a it's a very small local
Baptist church. The pastor. One of the first things he
said was Thomas Jefferson cut out parts of the Bible.
If he didn't agree with it, then he cut out
part of the Bible. He said, you have to accept
the whole Bible. So one day I nailed him with this,
with something in the Bible, and it was about circumcision.
And I said, well, I said, you know, in the
Old Testament it says you have to do it, and
the New Testament says it doesn't. Oh, he says, we
don't go by the Old Testament anymore. So you can
see how they rationalize and justify anything to try to
prove their point. And rather than actually prove their point.
I thought he made himself look stupid.
Speaker 1: I mean, that'll do it, right, when almost two thirds
of your Holy book is the Old Testament, it's awfully
silly to say, well, none of that's now relevant. Well,
if the Old Testament says that you're going to circumcise
your children forever, which it does in Ezekiel forty four
and elsewhere like Deuteronomy thirty, if that's what it says,
and then there's a two point zero, there's a patch update,
and the patch up date says, ah, we were just
joking about that circumcision forever.
Speaker 8: Bit.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just a flat contradiction. God can't contradict himself,
Like you can have updates, you can have changes of
direction maybe, but you can't have straight contradictions.
Speaker 2: God's not allowed to contradict himself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And because at that time, they were trying to
get me to get baptized in the church and I said,
I don't see the need for it, and they said,
I don't see the need for religious ritual And they said, well,
what do you mean what rituals? So I said circumcision
and he just laughed and he said, oh, we don't
do that anymore. It's in your book, you know, right right,
you know, don't don't.
Speaker 2: Try to blow.
Speaker 4: Don't try to blow smoke because I read it and
I know what it says.
Speaker 8: Well.
Speaker 1: The final thing too, that I'll say on circumcision is like,
you know, even in the Western world, like we were
raised that we need to be circumcised and baptized as babies.
Speaker 2: Right, I was baptized as a baby.
Speaker 1: I was circumcised as a baby, because it's just what
Christians do, right, Which is really funny because the pulses
in the New Testament, that is, if you take the
marks of circumcision, Christ is of no use to you.
So even on their own doctrine.
Speaker 2: They have no idea what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Like if if the New Testament clearly taught that you
do not need circumcision, why does the Christian West insist
on mutilating the genitals of little boys too in order
to maintain a doctrine they don't believe in. Like they're
so confused and tied up amongst themselves because they don't
even read the book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well now they you see here in America, they
win another route that nobody else has gone, and that
is they say there's a medical benefit in which there isn't.
What the United States is the only country that does
that for medical reasons, and that's how they sort of
skirt it around that they say, oh, well it's healthier,
and or oh, I don't I want my son to
look like my like like his father. Oh I don't
want him to look different in the locker room. And
they use one thousand and one excuses. And it reminds
me just what they what the Christians do with the Bible.
They'll make excuses for anything.
Speaker 2: Right, that's true.
Speaker 3: And I think what you were talking about baptism too,
is such any example of how the Bible is not clear,
even when we're simply looking at the New Testament, you know,
which is supposed to be what we all use. Now.
You know, if you ask a Christian do you have
to be baptized in order to go to Heaven? You
ask ten Christians and you might get ten different answers
because it is contradictory. You know, what did Jesus say
about it? What did John say about it? What did
Paul say about it? Can you baptize someone as an infant?
How does that work? What's happening when you do it
as an infant? You know, there are some Christians who believe, no,
you must be fully immersed, and you must be an adult.
It's again, it's it's just not clear. And when something
as significant as salvation as at stake, you would you
would think the book would be crystal clear, but it's not.
Speaker 4: Well, he is the the his his uh.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Our argument ended this way, and it got rather hostile,
and I was very close to punching him out right
in front of my own wife, Right in front of
my own wife. He said, well, you were baptized the Catholic.
I said, yes, I was. He says, well, that doesn't
count because you could not give consent. We only baptized,
you know, when you a person can give consent. I said, yeah,
but you're circumcised. You two boys, and I'm sure they
didn't consent always. Then it got really mad. He said,
you have to do this because the Bible says so.
I said, no, I don't. I'm not going to that's it.
Speaker 8: I said.
Speaker 4: This conversations over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're glad that it didn't lead to fisticuffs.
Speaker 1: We certainly don't want that for anyone.
Speaker 4: Well, he's still a bigger than I am, so would
the board gone well for me? But I was that
irate I could not believe he was saying crap like this,
you know, and justify his Bible, you.
Speaker 1: Know right, Yeah, we've heard it all before for sure.
Well listen, Terry, we really appreciate coming up.
Speaker 2: And having a chat with us.
Speaker 1: We're gonna keep the show moving right now, we don't
have any callers in the queue. We do take atheists
agnostic callers as well, but obviously we take priority over
the THEIS callers. So now it's a good time to
call in and Terry the best of luck to you.
We're glad that you're using your rational faculties.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you, guys. I mean I I appreciate. I
try to catch you guys on YouTube every once in
a while and when I can, and thanks you appreciate
good work and I'm pulling for you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Cheers, have a great day.
Speaker 3: Guy, nice guy, super nice. I'm glad he didn't get
himself hurt.
Speaker 1: That we're trying to avoid that. We want to avoid
the fights over religion, moving people out of it.
Speaker 2: We've got a couple super chats.
Speaker 1: Let's let's read uh some super chats and then if
you're if you want to call in to the show,
the number is on the screen. At least it was
on the screen. I don't see it at the moment.
There it is I five one two nine two four
to two. You can call in, and I believe we've
got one person in the queue right now. So if
you want to call in, now's the time to do it.
Let's read a couple of super chests. We've got one
super chat from our friend Lou. Lou is a well
known member in the community. Lou, welcome in, great to
see you. Li says, love you both. Hey return the favor, Lou,
we appreciate it. And we've got another super chat from
s D a inventor. I think I said that name right,
SD A seven Day Adventist Inventor. Is that that the name?
It looks like there's a super thanks or a super chat.
Speaker 2: I'll read it though.
Speaker 1: It says, thank you XP for the free education on
how to think and question. You set me free from
mental prison that religion put on me.
Speaker 2: I would have lived my life.
Speaker 1: Missing out on the elegance of science.
Speaker 3: Oh that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: That is beautiful, Sarah, How did you deal with the
stuff like that?
Speaker 1: Because you know you're really into physiology, you know, the
physical body, how did you deal with the difficulties of
learning about the science of the body and evolution and
things like that while you were still in the face.
Speaker 3: You know, I think my faith definitely, for lack of
a better word, evolved, Like when I was a kid
and in really fundamentalist spaces, I didn't believe in evolution.
But honestly, once I got into like high school and
particularly college, I think accepting evolution didn't really bother me,
Like it didn't particularly challenge my faith because I don't know,
I guess it didn't seem to be a problem I
had such I don't know, maybe like a magical view
of God in that well, God can do anything, you know,
and so yes, using our human tools, this is what
we can measure, but that doesn't negate the power of God.
And so I think it just I don't know, maybe
it was cognitive dissonance, but I was really able to
have kind of two compartments. You know, this is my
God side of my brain and this is my science
side of my brain. And you know, it really didn't
bother me all that much because I loved science and
I loved learning about it, and it was also like, well,
but also God can violate any law of science if
he wants to. So, yeah, I guess it didn't directly
cause a problem for me.
Speaker 1: I got that. Yeah, I think that's how most of
us did it. There's like a god box, and anything
goes in the god box.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean you do have so many Like, when
it's such a deeply held belief, any apologetic, even of
really weak one, often satisfies you because you your brain
needs you to keep believing this so badly, because it
would cost you so much to examine it. So yeah,
when you learn about how poorly the body is actually
put together, it's okay because that was because of sin,
right or whatever. Like, it's it's easy to find an
apologetic to allow you to keep holding onto that dissonance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, couldn't couldn't agree more. We've got two callers in
the key. Let me grab the first caller. Looks like
it's going to be Claude. I think I pronounced that
name correctly from New York And yes, Claude's callscreen says
hell and then garble, garble, mostly inaudible.
Speaker 2: How are you doing, Claude?
Speaker 9: Okay, Hi, that's usually how I speak.
Speaker 7: Okay, So yes, the question online was should anybody.
Speaker 9: Go to hell?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 7: And so my point is that only those people who
refuse to and willfully ignore their senses and to use
their senses should go to hell, because hell for them
would be a world where they have to use their
senses and they can't get around it by use using
blind Right, Well, that's.
Speaker 3: What do you mean by use their senses?
Speaker 7: People who don't investigate the world using the senses that
they're supposed to Creator gave it and gave them. If
they're not willing to look and see what's in front
of them and just blindly say no, my God says
something different, and you're not doing the thing that your
God told you to do, which is to use your senses. Here,
I'm supposedly giving your senses.
Speaker 8: Why aren't you using them?
Speaker 7: No one ever asked why don't they use their sentence, It's.
Speaker 3: Like, okay, so you're saying that you actually don't accept
the Christian ideology. You personally think that people who don't
investigate the world around them they should go to hell.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm just playing with the word hell. I don't
believe there's a hell because I'm not religious. So, but
if they believe there's a hell. Then those that don't
use their senses to navigate and investigate the world are
those who should go to hell in their world?
Speaker 3: Well, certainly. I mean in many religions they are not
asked to use their senses in that way. It's much
more have blind faith is what they are, or have
faith is what they are asked to do, rather than
investigate right.
Speaker 7: And to that end, I then was my other point,
which is that all these people who say that we
don't understand or they understand the will of God, the
point is that nobody understands the will of God. Even
God doesn't understand the will of humans because we have
free will. So ergo if they say they understand God's well,
they're putting themselves above God. Because God can know my will,
so how would you know his will?
Speaker 10: Well?
Speaker 1: I think, and I could be wrong. I think most
Christians when they're telling you the will of God, they're
just reciding what the Bible says the will of God
is right, or what they think the Bible says. I
don't know, I could be wrong. I don't know too
many Christians that can divine the will of God.
Speaker 7: Well, they all claim they do. That's not what he wants,
that's not what he means any well. The whole reason
we have all these different favors of religion and Christianity
is because this room for interpretation. How can I have
a book of truth but yet everybody can make their
own the interpretation of it.
Speaker 8: That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that's why you get the
disconnect between Protestantism and Orthodoxy and Catholicism is you know,
in those two branches they say, no, you're right, you
can't determine, you can't interpret it, that the Church does
that for you, versus in Protestantism. There is a lot
more individuality in leeway.
Speaker 7: Okay, but that just proves that it's up to individuals
who want to say that they're the ones who can
interpret the Bible best, buy any book best, and you
should follow them, which just balkanizes and breaks up the
thing that they claim they should have, which is a
uniform entity or uniform group. So the whole bs about
believing in a book of truths, but yet everybody has
their own truth when it comes to the book, just
leads nowhere to totological mindscrew up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we agree, we agree, well, listen, claud we appreciate
you calling in. We're gonna move to the next caller
in cube, but thanks so much for sharing with us.
Speaker 2: Church friend.
Speaker 1: I do know this, I don't believe in the hell.
I personally don't want anyone going there. That's my vision.
Speaker 3: Yes, my personal opinion is that it would be unjust
for anyone to go.
Speaker 1: Indeed, indeed, we've got another caller, Dalton in line. Let
me grab our next couple of super chats. We'll pull
Dalton right into the conversation. So Dalton, hold tight.
Speaker 2: We will be up in about thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: We've got a super chat for four and nine from
our friend Adam Brown. Adam, great to see you in
the livestream managed chat tonight, Adam says, Love and two
dougites on the AXP tonight justin.
Speaker 2: I hope you're.
Speaker 1: Feeling better, Buddy rock hard for feel much better, Actually
feel a lot better.
Speaker 2: Appreciate that.
Speaker 1: And Ashley, ash thank you so much for the five
dollars super to, Ashley says, the perfect duo. Love you
both well, Thank you, Ashley. We certainly appreciate that, and
we're gonna hopefully we're going to get some good calls
tonight that we can sink our teeth into poork Ramen.
Thank you for the two dour super chat. Pok Raman
says Justin go Browns. I said dog Pound Downtown all
the way, all the way. And last one from John Paul,
thank you for the ten dollars of predeceas Justin, I'm
getting an accounting degree. I'll be a sophomore next semester.
I'm considering changing to a double major in polysci and philosophy.
I was wondering if he had an opinion on that. Well,
I don't give career advice. However, However, I have met
quite a few people with philosophy degrees, and my only
advice would be the same. I was as I would
give somebody for a theological degree, which is, do a
legitimate degree first that will get you employment. So accounting
would be a great step. Finish that degree, and then
you can do another major, or do your political science degree,
and then you can add philosophy on top of it.
You can always minor in philosophy, you can always get
your bachelor's and then do a master's in philosophy. There's
lots of ways to get the philosophy. In My only
caution would be try to do something that is employable first.
Like when I went to school for theology. I went
to engineering school first, and my dad was smart. He said,
justin you can always do theology. Do your engineering degree
first and then do theology. That way you have a
good career if theology doesn't work out. And that was
the best advice I could have been given it as
a young person, and I would give that same advice
to anyone who wants to get multiple degrees. Get the
degree first that will land you a spot in the workforce,
and then worry about the soft degree.
Speaker 2: Anyway, it's best to.
Speaker 1: Leck to you. I hope it goes well for you.
Let's grab Dalton from the queue. Dalton from Texas is
with us, and Dalton has a message about the upcoming rapture.
Speaker 7: We're ready for Dalton, Oh boy, hija, and hey Sarah, I.
Speaker 5: Would I how do y'all?
Speaker 4: I was wondering.
Speaker 5: I mean, I mean, it seems that there aren't a
lot of Christian callers and they're all getting ready for
the rapture.
Speaker 1: Scared, well, they're intimidated by having Sarah on this stream.
Now we've got a real big brain here. There's no way,
no way they're going to be calling in.
Speaker 3: Well, apparently the rapture is imminent, right, supposed to be Tuesday?
Speaker 8: Supposedly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was actually just wondering. I thought everyone would
love to hear it too. You two were both at
one point Christian, so I'm wondering if when you were
both believers, did either of you have experience with like
getting caught up in like rapture hysteria.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you a story. Okay, when I was
in elementary school and I went to VBS, right like
we all did. We went to VBS Vacation Bible School
for the uninitiated, and we had someone leading us in
like songs at the end. And at the end of
this particular VBS, she said, Okay, now we're going to
do rapture practice. And rapture practice meant that she had
I had like a little trumpet with her, and she
would blow a trumpet and we would all jump in
the air as high as we could, and that was
our rapture practice. It was awesome. Sound very effective, Oh
yeah exactly. But more seriously, like I did, I read
all the Left Behind books. Also when I was oh gosh.
Also in elementary school, I watched the movie A Thief
in the Night, which it's like the seventies version of
Left Behind, and it is graphic and a lot of
death happens, and you should not show this movie to
fourth graders. But here we are, so yeah. I mean,
I was very sure the rapture was going to happen
at some point. How soon depended on you know what
age I was, But I definitely was convinced it was
going to happen all the way until I stopped believing
in my mid twenties.
Speaker 1: Sarah, when most most young women had pictures like posters
of Jonathan Taylor Thomas on their wall, did have Jonathan
right next to right next to JT. T was Kurt
Cameron in Left Behind.
Speaker 3: I did not, never, never, at the blasphemy.
Speaker 2: About you, Bud, so fair question. You know, my father
was into raptus theology. He was all about it. He
thought the end times was coming. He loved Left Behind series.
Speaker 1: But my dad was also his form of biblical education
was watching the Televangelist on Sunday, right, and so he
he didn't have a lot of tools to work with,
and he he finally moved out of this end times
nonsense when he started going to a small Baptist church
where the pastor that was teaching there actually had a PhD.
He was a retired professor that ended up working at
the church, and so he didn't do any of that
left behind nonsense. And so I think going to that
church was really helpful for him because he kind of
got him out of that weird apocalyptical type of mindset.
That being said, as a young person watching my dad,
you know, kind of run through this theology track, I
didn't find it appealing to me. It sounded silly. And
the church that I was going to I went to
a different church actually, when I became a Christian. The
church that I was going to had a very different mindset,
which is like, listen, if God wanted you to know
when the rapture was, he would just tell you, so
stop wasting your time and get busy doing what God
actually wants.
Speaker 2: You to do.
Speaker 1: Get busy being like the hands and feet of Jesus
on the earth right. And so this whole nonsense over
like the Rapture is coming always seemed like a waste
to me. And plus I had seen even in the
short time that I was a Christian, as you know,
a teenager to my younger twenties, I saw so many
rapture predictions fail that I was like, yeah, the nonsense.
Everyone's just wasting their time. So I never fell into
the rapture nonsense, but I certainly was kind of, we'll say,
surrounded by it.
Speaker 8: I suspected as much.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm gonna get out of your hair now.
Speaker 5: And Hope and Doug will and we'll get some nice
Christians and to discuss. But I love you both, and
y'all have a good day.
Speaker 2: Hey, thank you, you have a great one. May the
courts be with you.
Speaker 1: And we do have another caller in the screen. While
we're waiting for the caller to screen, I'm going to
read through the announcements and then we'll see if the
caller is ready from the screening. Available on Atheist dash
community dot org are printable call in flyers.
Speaker 2: You can post.
Speaker 1: These with permission to community bulletin boards, local coffee shops.
You can post them where.
Speaker 2: You're in public places.
Speaker 1: We're allowed to post them to let people know that
they can call in and give us a free education
on their God. Another way to support the stream is
by sending superchats, so we read them during the stream,
typically between guests. If we have any leftover, we read
them after the stream, and it's a good way for
the audience to interact with the hosts. If you like
what we do, please consider supporting us also on Patreon.
Giving to our Patreon ensures the ability to continue to
produce this content. You can find Patreon at tiny dot
cc four slash patreon AXP. It's tiny dot cc four
slash patreon AXP and I think we've been here now
for twenty seven seasons, twenty seven seasons of the Atheis
Experience giving out free education and free doses of Dizen XO.
We also want to send a big thank you to
the crew that put on the show.
Speaker 2: They do it every week, week in, week out.
Speaker 1: We have video operators, audio operators, note takers, call screeners,
and chat moderators. Thank you so much to the crew
for making the show possible. It certainly wouldn't be possible
without all the hands help to make the streams run
smoothly on the technology that we have available to us.
And with that, we've got a caller in the queue
and another one queuing up after that looks like Ryan
from Michigan. And Ryan appeared to be agnostic and wants
to talk about their journey. We'll see if we can
get them loaded up. I hit the talk button. Let's
see if it pulls it in. Maybe there we go.
If I hold, if I long press it, it'll it'll
catch up. I think the internet browser was slow, fantastic.
Ryan should be with us now. Ryan is, as far
as I'm reading this correctly, an agnostic from Michigan and
has something to say about their journey from is it
theism to agnosticism or from atheism to being an agnostic?
Speaker 10: I would say it's more atheism to agnosticism.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, what were the factors that led to this?
Speaker 10: Well, for one, I just don't really like claiming things.
And that's not like a defining fact, you know, like
as like you know, like like one plus one is two.
That's a defining fact. But like I don't know even
God is real and God is not real. That's really
a known fact at the moment. I mean, I have
beliefs about it, but there's no answer. So, like I
guess that was kind of agnostic in my whole life.
I mean, I wasn't raised religious, and I was like,
you know, obviously I had like religious people around, and
I'm like, okay, that's cool. And I was like, you know,
go on, sure.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like you went from being an agnostic
to an agnostic?
Speaker 2: Have you heard that?
Speaker 7: Thesm?
Speaker 3: Like, both Justin and I we would call it ourselves
agnostic atheists, that your your beliefs and your truth claims
are are different things. So like, I don't believe in God.
I don't think there is a God, and also I
don't think I have definitive evidence to demonstrate that there
is not a God. So I say, like, I'm agnostic
because I can't know for sure. But if you were
to ask me do I believe in God? My answer
would be no. Is that kind of what you're saying
where you are?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I assume.
Speaker 10: I mean it's not like I don't like technically believe
in a god. I mean I don't know where things
have been through, so.
Speaker 2: You just don't know.
Speaker 10: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, fair enough, well Ryan, I mean, we're not
here to force anybody into atheism, but we are here
to have robust, hopefully discussions and or debates with people
who do believe, and we do have one theist in
the queue that I think wants to have such a discussion.
So I want to move on to our next guest
from the queue. But thank you so much for coming
up and chat with it, Ryan, and best luck on
your journey.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Sorry, I was going to talk about something else that, like,
my brain breaks all the time. I forget everything I
was going to say.
Speaker 1: It happens. Yeah, stage fright. I'll get you a right
cheers friend. You know, if you're not used to getting
onto a call show, one piece of advice I could
give people calling is to just jot down on a
notebook a little bit of bullet points so you don't forget.
It's super easy to think about here's the thing I
want to say, and then soon as you're in front
of the lights, you're like, I forgot what I was
going to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Let me grab our theis from the queue. It looks
like either is a Christian or named Christian from Arizona
and says the reason I still have faith in God
is that it's nice to think of loved ones having
a place to go after they're gone. Is your name Christian?
Speaker 2: Or are you a Christian? Which one is it?
Speaker 8: In name only used to be used to consider myself
a Christian, and then I did a deep dive into
the actual scriptures and also what one of your shows
that a friend turned me on to and officially deconstructed that.
But I do still have faith. I believe in a
god of well limited power. Excuse me, sorry about that.
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like maybe the belief that you have
left over is like a vestigial type of a belief,
right It says that you still have faith because it's
nice to think that your loved ones will will go
somewhere after death. Is that what I'm reading?
Speaker 8: I mean, that's definitely a part of it when you
see all of the suffering in the world, and you
know that's why a god of limited powers really the
only type of god I could believe in. By the way,
the rapture practice things sounded adorable, I just wanted to
talk about that. Said, there are a couple of scientific
reasons why I think there may be a creator. One
the idea of the heat death of the universe. Entry
see the idea that everything is going to fizzle out
and it's just going to be a cold and dark
for an indetermined period of time, essentially, and yet no
one can explain like where the fuel source came from.
That confuses me. I don't really have a lot of
confidence in the age of the universe, particularly because no
one was there to witness this proposed expansion at the
beginning of the Big Bang in the first place, so
we have no idea how far out everything is. For
all we know, everything could just be randomly bouncing around
out there. I think I just recently heard from Neil
Degrass Tyson we're eventually going to collide with another galaxy,
for example.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean that would be different though than like
the universe at large could be expanding whilst individual galaxies
you know, collide within it. So those would be two
different concepts.
Speaker 8: Oh sure, sure, that was just my one example.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And well the other thing too, is is as
far as we know, like, there wasn't not that longo.
There's a conference of cosmologists and physicists and they actually
did a survey during the conference of what they think
the Big Bang says about, you know, the existence of
things prior to the Big Bang, and the overwhelming majority
of scientists commented on the poll that you know, the
science of the Big Bang doesn't comment at all about
there being nothing or what was prior to the Big Bang.
It's just a theory about the expansion of the universe
moving forward and more and more, you know, cosmologists and
scientists are embracing the idea that the cosmos, even though
the forum we have it now, may have been traced
back to the Big Bang. That certainly doesn't mean that
prior to the Big Bang there was literally nothing. Even
in like Lawrence Kraus's book, he spends the whole time
in chapter nine describing when he says something from nothing,
he doesn't really mean nothing.
Speaker 2: Nothing doesn't mean nothing thing.
Speaker 1: And so there was a time when the Big Bang
was like a new science that people would be like, oh, yeah,
there was absolutely nothing, and then it gave rise to something.
You know, matter, space, and time all came to an
existence at once. That's not really the consensus that I'm
seeing right now, especially not with the you know, the
big movement in quantum physics. A lot of people are
suggesting that, you know, there could be an eternal quantum
field giving rise to matter for an indefinite period of
time in the past and in the future, and I.
Speaker 8: Have nothing against you know, there being something prior to
what we know now, and even the possibility of multi versus.
You know, it just seems like the more we learn
about science, the weirder and cooler it gets. Like, uh,
what is it called the blind split experiments? Something about
the two particles behavior differently based on whether or not
there's a physical Oh, double slip, thank you. Yeah. Yeah,
reality is bizarre.
Speaker 3: It certainly is. I mean, I absolutely agree that reality
is wild, and we there are so many things we
still don't know about it, and certainly agnosticism in the
face of that makes sense to me. I mean I
get the idea that is it possible that there is
something that we just can't yet detect with science. I
think that's a totally reasonable position.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's anything in current science that says, oh,
this is leading us to a conscious, sentient creator. But
I absolutely agree that there's a lot we don't know yet.
And you know, again, there's is it possible that there's
something out there that we just aren't able to measure
or describe? Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I had one question, you know, is it wrong or
silly to hope that consciousness, even though there's no evidence
for it yet, that consciousness might go on somehow.
Speaker 3: It's not silly. I mean, I think it's such a
a basic human instinct. You know, for most of human history,
humans have had some sort of belief in an afterlife
of some kind. And I think a huge part of
that is trying to wrap your brain around non existence
is just totally mind boggling. And so I think that's
totally normal and a totally healthy thing. You're right, though,
that we don't have any scientific reason to think that
consciousness could exist without brain function, you know, we just
you know, even when you talk about near death experiences,
which I think are super interesting, Like I genuinely enjoy
reading about near death experiences. You know, you're you're not
talking about someone who has actually completely died and remained dead, right,
We're talking about someone who has approached death and come back.
And so even those, they still don't give us any
empirical evidence that consciousness can exist without a functioning brain
in some way.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 3: So again, I think it's so human and so normal
to want to continue to exist.
Speaker 8: I really appreciate the feedback from both of you. I know,
this is going to be helpful when I can rewatch
it a few times, let it all think in and
so understanding.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you a question. Do you believe
in evolution? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, so like it. I think evolution is one
of those I'm going to call it a fact of
science that is so firmly rooted it's hard for me
to believe that so many people reject it nowadays. But
I think the problem with evolution is, like if evolution
is true, like if it's true that that really happened,
I don't know how we square that with God creating
human beings, right, because I think typically we think that, well,
we're going to spend this after life with our loved
ones because there's a God who took this time to
create the planet for us and.
Speaker 2: To put us on.
Speaker 1: But if we just evolved from lower forms of life
to where we're at today, it's hard for me to know,
like how the God equation factors into that because it
doesn't necessarily seem like if evolution is a mechanism that
the God chose to give rise to humans, that he
would have like implanted a soul or a spirit to
live on. Right, at what point in our evolution history,
did we have a soul?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 4: When?
Speaker 2: When did we get it? You know what I mean?
I think we just lost them?
Speaker 3: Oops oopsy, Well, thank you for calling you were so lovely.
Speaker 1: But that is nowadays, more and more evolution is being
accepted by Christians. And I took I took a class
after I already graduated. I try to audit like one
class a year because it's free for me. And I
took a really fun class and the it was a
class on the Book of Genesis and are the professor.
The professor for the class was really into the Biologoist
foundation and their kind of form of apologetic which accepts
the science. They try to marry the Bible science together.
And I mentioned that, like the idea of having a
soul seems incompatible if we just evolved to what we
are today, because like there's no real clear reason or
rhyme to when there would and wouldn't be a soul
That gets implanted like did homo hobblists have a soul?
Speaker 2: Like where's the limit? It doesn't make any sense, right.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it makes so much more sense if
you are participating in more either like an Eastern religion
or indigenous religion where it is not just humans who
have souls. You know that there is some and I'm
out of my depth, so don't quote me on this,
but you know there's some type of spirit spiritualness to
everything versus humans just being the select species that has
a soul.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Actually I could rock with that explanation much better
than the Biblical or the Christian explanation because it was
not a good one. Well, let me grab We've got
a handful of superchests that came in during that chat.
While I'm reading off the super chests, if you want
to get into the discussion, the queue is currently empty,
so first come, first serve in the call Q if
you want to discuss the.
Speaker 2: Bible or religion or.
Speaker 1: Evolution, we'd love to have those discussions with you. We've
got a doctor niney nine super chat from our friend
Milf Wrangler. Mil Frangler says, the community really comes up
with great, great handles. They've missed you justin on unapologetic
glad to see you. Well, Milk, I'm sorry I couldn't
be there, but thank you so much for you being
there to watch the stream, and we really appreciate you
supporting this stream as well. We also have a super
chat from Arvin for four to nine says, my church
used to do tribulation trials, haunted houses on Halloween, showing
kids what the Antichrist slash God would do to people
after the rapture. And yes, not far from where I
grew up. There's the church that they do this every Halloween.
It's called a Trip to Hell and what. Yeah, they
have So it's a pretty large church. They have a
pretty big wooded area and they go through the woods
and they set up these stations.
Speaker 3: In the woods.
Speaker 1: They literally they're literally walking teenagers through the woods to
various stations where they act out plays where people that
you think are decent people get drug off to Hell.
And then at the end, at the very end of it,
they walk you through like this barn that's set up
to like be Hell, and it like in it is
like the most.
Speaker 2: Horrific stuff possible, attempting to scare you. You don't want
to go here?
Speaker 1: Does it matter if you're a good person, If you
don't accept Jesus, he'll torture you forever. And then then
they march you to the church and try to get
you to sign your life over to Jesus and ten
percent of your gross incum.
Speaker 2: So there's that.
Speaker 3: Oh that's terrible. That's terrible. It's tough also really trying
to bank on Halloween, Like you want to have a
haunted house, but don't call it a haunted house kind
of thing.
Speaker 1: I know, right house.
Speaker 8: Jeez.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I went to one of them,
because this isn't the only church doing them, but I
remember I was a Christian. When I went, I was like,
I should check this out as a Christian. I was mortified.
I'm like, there are children here, Like, children aren't meant
to see this nonsense, Like a good God isn't going
to send your ten year old to eternal suffering and
torment because they didn't accept the gospel. But that was
kind of the message they were preaching.
Speaker 3: Ask me about Heaven's Gates House Flames.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we've talked about that.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, yep, yeah, no, they think a good God
absolutely would do that to a ten year old.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I that was when I had my my born I
became born again at my first experience at Heaven's Gates
Hill's Flame.
Speaker 3: You did, Oh I didn't know that. Oh, my God, Yeah,
of course you did. It's it's a horrifying play like,
of course you did.
Speaker 2: All right, let me grab them for a super chat.
Speaker 1: We'll get our next guest in here from Forum Galorum.
Speaker 2: Think you for the ten dollars.
Speaker 1: Super Chest says as a child, I would watch Benny
hit on TV for comedic purposes. He would punch, slap,
and whip congregants with it with his blazer jacket as
they came up for healing. Great for laughs. I couldn't
agree any more than this. And I don't know if
anyone has any favorite Benny Hint videos, but my personal
favorite is somebody who took his jacket slapping crusade outtakes
and match matched it up to let the bodies hit
the floor. And if you like rock music, I mean
you can get down to that. Oh all right, let's
go to ex call it And we got a Frank
Think from Georgia. And Frank says using the Bible as
a basis for deconstructing what's in your mind tonight, Frank.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I just I'm a big fan of of the
channel and big fan of of you, Justin and Sarah.
I've I've watched a lot of your content and uh
uh listen to some of your double study stuff, and
I just find the idea of using the Bible as
a basis for deconstructing is like really interesting and a
really cool sort of angle to take it. And so
I was just kind of wondering about like some first
of all, about building out sort of my reference, uh
you know, framework for like you know, different things I
can cite for these kind of discussions. And then just
like and I'm kind of leaning towards Sarah on this
other point about because you know, Sarah, you have such
a great way of talking about these these topics and
making it like non confrontational and accessible and just you know,
these are such emotionally charged discussions usually, So I just
wanted to sort of from justin get the perspective on
how to build out my knowledge base to be able
to have those discussions and then maybe just those discussion
strategies to make it more constructive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, when it comes to having these discussions,
I think Sarah is the queen of trying to make
sure the discussions are constructive and cordial. But the advice
I would give is, in order to have these discussions,
you have to know.
Speaker 2: The Bible better than they do.
Speaker 1: And that's really what it comes down to. Most of
these people profess to be of a book like this
is the book. It is an errant, it is the
word of God, whether it's the Koran or the Bible
or some other book. That's where the key is. The
key is with the books. So if you want to
debate them on the points of their religion, or even
just have a discussion with them, and you don't know
what's in that book, they're not going to care what
you have to say say. But if you know the
book better than they do, and you can walk them
through the book and demonstrate not with your opinion, but
with the book, you can demonstrate clearly with the book
where the flaws are. While they may not come to
be in agreement with you right away, it'll at least
it'll at least start to gnaw away at their thinking
process if they're honest individuals, and they'll think about that later.
They'll think about that later when you're going down and
getting ready for bed at night, drinking their tea or whatever.
Speaker 2: They'll be yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: He was making a good point, and like, yeah, I
guess it does kind of make sense. And because the
reality is it's hard to convince somebody to come to
your side in the middle of a discussion, but they're
going to review it later.
Speaker 11: Justin I think actually an example, I'm sorry, I was
just going to say, I think justin he was also
asking for like some specific reference books, like what do
you have on your shelf that.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of things on my shelf. Let
me let me get you some of my favorites. Okay.
So for deconstruction, if if it's a Catholic, what you
want is the second or the third edition of the
Jerome Bible Commentary, really good, great academic source. And what
it's going to do, it's going to allow you to
look at the Bible through in academic resource. Because most
of what Christians believe about the Bible isn't what you'll
learn in seminary, it's not what you're going to learn
in Bible college.
Speaker 2: It's what they.
Speaker 1: Learn more through like the zeitgeist. Right, So in order
to break their thinking about well, this passage must mean this, right,
So most people think, for example, that the final Kingdom
in the Book of Daniel is in fact the Kingdom
of Rome, right, but so this particular this is the
second edition of the commentary, this was done in nineteen
sixty seven. In this commentary, this is a Catholic commentary.
They're stating in nineteen sixty seven that the field has
already shifted and almost nobody agrees that Rome is the
final kingdom, is actually the Kingdom of Greece, and that
all of the Book of Daniel is addressing the antiochen crisis.
That's a great commentary. If you want to dispel some
of these dumb notions about how to interpret Bible prophecy
from an academic lens, if they're not a Catholic, you
might want to try reading from the Oxford Bible Commentary.
It's a single volume commentary set. It's going to give
you a lot of the same stuff that you'll get
from the Jerome Bible Commentary. And then if you're like, listen,
I just want like a really good study Bible to
start with, I would probably turn to the new Oxford
Annotated Study Bible. You can get a fifth edition right now.
That being said, the sixth edition is right around the corner.
It's supposed to be out just before the end of December.
So if you can wait just a little bit, you'll
get the sixth edition, and it's going to be excellent.
It's going to have the new rebiased standard Edition, updated
for the translation, which I love that translation. The other
Study Bible you want want to consider is it's called
the Catholic Study Bible. This is one edition of the
Catholic Study Bible. You want to get the third edition.
Don't get the second edition. But I like this one
because it's got really good notes, and it's got a
margin for you to write your own notes in, and
the pages are thick enough that your ink won't bleed
through it.
Speaker 2: But those are really good places to start.
Speaker 1: If you want something after that, then I would start
recommending volumes that are much larger. The only other thing
I might recommend is this is the Jewish Annotated New Testament.
It's actually a commentary on the New Testament written by
by people that are actually in Judaism. And so if
you if you're looking through the New Testament and you're like,
this seems silly after I've read the Old Testament, don't worry.
It's not just silly to you. It was silly to
the Jews who heard it as well, and and here's
there's some some some lighthearted commentary on it. They don't
go too hard. They're pretty nice to their to their
Christian friends in this commentary, but they don't really hold
any any punches either.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and so I have a couple of examples of
just things that I've heard from sort of your streams
that I've sort of used in some of these discussions recently,
Like the curse of Jack and Ayah for the line
of Joseph right is something that most Christians like would
not be aware of, right, and they were all surprised
to be like, oh, well, you know Jesus's line goes
through Joseph, and like that's difficult. But also that you know,
the curse of Jack.
Speaker 5: Andia is like a you.
Speaker 9: Know why Joseph's line wouldn't even be eligible and then
you have to like sort of do this exceptionalism sort
of you know thing once you realize that. And then
the other thing was the you know, the way that
the septuagent translates Alma for the virgin birth right, And
I found I find that kind of stuff really interesting,
the fact that like, you know, the Greek translation we
we have, like the way that the KJV will translate
certain things sort of in ways that, uh, mislead the reader,
like you have that same issue with the subtu agent.
I find that kind of stuff really interesting. So I've
just I've been really enjoying your content and finding those
kinds of points really salient, and they get through somewhat
that it always feels like I'm kind of also browbeating
a little bit, like get that. I don't know where
you're getting some deep on it right right, but but
I appreciate it. I'm excited to look into the references
you've provided. And yeah, and Sarah like as as Justin said,
I find your your sort of style to be so
approachable and like, you know, constructive, and so you know,
I just any strategies from you, I'd be interested to hear.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Sure.
Speaker 3: I think if you want someone to understand you, you know,
you have to first understand them. And I think the
vast majority of people are trying to be good people,
and that's how I see them. You know, Yes, there
are some people who are mean for the sake of
being mean, but for the majority of people, they're at
least trying to come from a good place. And so
I want to find that good place and meet them there,
and then I think people will listen to what you
have to say more once they know that you understand
what they are saying. Right, So, and I think coming
from you know, if you used to be a Christian
and you're not any longer, it's a lot easier to
do because you can remember like, oh yeah, I remember
feeling that way, I remember experiencing that, and so I think, well,
as to put it simply, is empathy, right, because I
don't want to hurt people. I don't want people to
be mad at me, and I don't want to be
mad at them. And I do think that it's a
really cool, fun experience when someone comes at you really
angry and aggressive and you can find that point of
connection with them and remind them, hey, you're a human,
I'm a human, Like we actually have a lot more
in common than maybe you thought we did, and so
I think that's really gratifying. So yeah, I would just
say try to understand them first and try to connect
with them with the thing you all actually do have
in common.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you know, I think it's uh, there's a bit
of a balancing act because, like I, I do sort
of have personally my personal values are that like the
prescriptivism of like moral like of moral objectivity is like,
I think fundamentally harmful. Right, Like I think that to
adopt that worldview that like your that morals can be
dictated to you and that your sort of decision making
goes out the window, and it's more of a matter
of like finding the right citation and finding the right
sort of absolute moral authority to uh to get to
gets you into this place of just impass right. And
it's something that I'm really passionate about, like how to
to tell people that as as a as a moral
subjectivist or relativist, that that doesn't mean that it's not important.
I think that importance itself is a subjective thing. So
I think it's the only thing that can be important
is that you know, these are decisions that we have
to make and that they have to be derived from context.
But for people that have that ingrained in them, it's
like it's such a fundamental shift that I find it's
like it's hard to get them to like see that
as not an attack on their like basic moral sense
and telling them that their morals are are fundamentally wrong
or fundamentally broken, but at the same time, like I
think it's important for to deconstruct that worldview because you know,
we all have to try to understand and empathize with
each other to make to arrive at those your values
that you're talking about. So it's a it's a delicate thing.
But I really appreciate both of you in the work
that you do, and so I don't want to take
up too much of your time, and you might have
more interesting or controversial callers, but I'm just a big
fan of the show and both of you guys. So
I just wanted to call in since I saw you
guys were live and tell you I appreciate all the
work that you do and all the work that the
line does. And yeah, I just wanted to have a
second to talk.
Speaker 3: So thanks so much.
Speaker 9: I'll let you guys go, but I appreciate that. Yeah,
I appreciate the time. Thank you, guys, big.
Speaker 1: W Frank, best look on your on your deconstructing journey man.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean I'm I'm fully deconstructed. I mean it's
more more me trying to be a constructive advocate in the.
Speaker 1: Space, right right, right, Well, let us know if you
need anything.
Speaker 9: Okay, all right, thank you guys.
Speaker 2: Chris friend.
Speaker 1: All right, we've got Christian back with us. It looks
like they're connection dropped out, but Christian came back to
let's finish our discussion on evolution.
Speaker 2: Let me grab Christian from the.
Speaker 1: Call you and then we've we may and may not
have somebody coming up in the call screen after Christian. Christian,
welcome back.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much, and I appreciate you saying the
connection there was actually me having a senior moment. It's
a new phone, and my finger was on the power button,
and yeah, I just shut it off on you guys.
So I apologize, thank you for having me back. I
promise I used the time away productively. I made some
notes here and I wrote them down after rewatching what
you were kind of to share with me. So I
know we were talking about evolution and that you were
saying how evolution doesn't necessarily equate to a soul. Honestly,
souls and spirits don't make sense to me. Energy changing
forms does, if that makes sense, So happy to.
Speaker 2: Help me understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that you previously said that you've believed
or you liked to believe because of the possibility of
your loved ones having like.
Speaker 2: A decent afterlife. Yes, absolutely, does that entail that you
would have a soul?
Speaker 8: I wouldn't use that word per se. I didn't know
how to describe it. I would say you would have consciousness,
what form like if there was a physical form that
would take I couldn't really say.
Speaker 1: So, what do you think would be living on or
do you think that the body gets resurrected?
Speaker 2: Like what's the what's the view here?
Speaker 8: I necessarily the body bodies seem pretty useless. Just the consciousness,
the essence of who you are. And by the way,
I don't think evolution resulted in humans specifically, or that
that was like a goal of evolution like some people
might infer. I think evolution just resulted in a beautiful
diversity of life. Humans aren't special in that regard. But
I also don't think eternal paradise is just for people
and you know, cute dogs. I think it's for all lives.
Speaker 1: Okay, so not just humans. What do you think of there, Sarah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so everything that has ever been alive gets to
remain alive forever.
Speaker 8: Yes, absolutely, if it wants to, and.
Speaker 3: There you'd have a lot of things in play there
like that, So then if it wants to I mean
that would mean that every living cell or plant or
animal is capable of making a decision about whether it
wants to remain alive. And then there would have to
be some sort of mechanism by which that decision could
be made, and then that the effect of that decision.
That would be a pretty I mean, it's a pretty
complicated proposition.
Speaker 8: Interesting everything needing some sort of survival instinct and being
able to act upon that.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean generally, like we don't get to choose
if we are alive or not. I mean, I understand
we as humans have the capability of ending that, but
it's not like a moment by moment decision would you
like to be alive or not? You know, it's not
we can't just close our eyes and decide, you know,
we have to take a very specific action. So if
every living creature was to be given this choice, then
there would have to be some mechanism by which their
life could go on or be end did and then
something would have to do that. Like get it's a
hard system I think to justify.
Speaker 8: I guess it just comes from my perspective that all
life has value. You know, everything has seemed to have
something to contribute.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that totally makes sense. It's just
the eternity part, the afterlife part, you know. I think
all life can have value and it doesn't need to
be eternal or infinite in order for that life to
have value.
Speaker 8: To quote the Late Great you know, Christopher Hitchins, it's
not like a celestial North Korea where you know you
have to stay there forever, like you have options.
Speaker 3: Yeah, then you have to have someone who's there or
something that's creating those options and directing those options. You know,
it's complicated, it is.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I definitely don't have all the answers for sure.
Speaker 3: I get that.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: I'm curious would you be of the opinion that getting
to participate in the after life would be like a
true dichotomy, like you either get to participate in the
afterlife or you don't, or is there an alternative like
you get sent to, like I don't know, a purgatory
or a hell or something like that.
Speaker 8: I think the comps. I'm so glad you asked that.
I think the concept of a hell is disgusting, and
purgatory never made sense to me, no, if there is
a loving creator, and I'm not going to assign a
gender to a creator, that seems stupid too. If there's
a loving creator, godisic. Oh, yeah, I got it. Okay.
If there's a loving creator and we are all all lives,
if we are all children of that loving creator, then
you know, yes, we're going to make mistakes if we
have absolute freedom, free will. But a true loving parent
would correct the child, would teach the child. But a
patience with the child hell is child abuse.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 3: Well, it sounds like you are in a really cool
place of trying to figure out what makes sense and
figure out what aligns with your own values, you know,
and I appreciate that you wouldn't want to worship a
god that would be cruel and that would be abusive.
So I yeah, I mean I get that. I think
it's sounds like you're in a really cool part of
your journey.
Speaker 8: I appreciate that. It's just I guess something I need
to cling on to. You know, the evils done by
the major organized religions, the things in scripture that justify them.
You know, I can have no part in any of that.
But I'd like to think I found maybe a happy
middle ground.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, we're certainly glad that you were, that
you're deconstructing and moving into what we would call like
a healthier position. So certainly best of look on your journey,
and if you did anything, come and ask questions.
Speaker 8: I add one last thing, So the only other thought
I was at and kind of kind of the reason
why I felt the pool to come back to some
form of theism is that as a former apist, it
took me personally, and I know this isn't the same
for everybody. It took me personally to a very dark,
nihilistic place where nothing had meaning. And this kind of
helps with.
Speaker 9: That a little bit.
Speaker 8: That and medication and therapy.
Speaker 3: And hey, I will always plug therapy. And yeah, for
people who medication is beneficial for love it way to
take care of yourself, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mental health is important.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much for your time. I want to
I want to take up the whole here.
Speaker 3: We appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. We appreciate you calling in cheers.
Speaker 8: Frank, you guys are great. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I do remember being in a similar spot after deconstructing
from Christianity, where I wasn't quite ready to let go
of some of the more some of the more pleasing
concepts of the religion, like getting to live forever and
seeing your loved ones again and things like that. I can,
I certainly understand where he's at right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, I can't. I mean, it's so much
to give up, it is, it's such a I mean,
I think I was weird in that while it took
me a year to get there, like I lost all
of it all at once in like one moment, which
is weird. But I definitely struggled for a long time
with the idea of wait a minute, and I'm just
going to die. What do you mean I'm just gonna die?
That's terrible. So yeah, I can. I can really appreciate
how uncomfortable and painful and frustrating that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1: Well, we've got some super chats to read out. Thank
you so much for being here friends. We're going to
read out some super chats, and then we're going to
say hi to our friend who's been backing us up tonight. Meg,
thank you so much for the four ninety nine dollars
super chest says glad you survived the Great chili sauce
Apocalypse of twenty twenty five and Meg just man, I
tell you, I'm glad to be here and I didn't
get sauce raptured.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be okay. Don't worry about me.
Speaker 1: And el teen thank you for the twin dour st
el team says, hey, justin to stop people from following
in your footsteps? Was all that hot sauce pain worth
being constantly hit on during your live Pretty sure there's
a correlation there. Asking for a friend and el teen,
you're not wrong. The positive correlation was, in fact there.
The more hot sauce I consumed, the more people came
up trying to get a piece of the deconstruction zone.
Speaker 2: And so if.
Speaker 1: You're sitting around the weekend lonely and you're thinking to myself,
I need to find some company to be around, you
might want to consider taking a few shots of hot
sauce up in your temperature and then visiting your your
your local social get together. And this this is not
dating advice, as I can tell you, is what happened
in my experience. It's amazing, Daisy, thank you for the
time says, do you think the odds of a generic
deity existing is better or worse then being dealt a
royal flush in poker?
Speaker 2: That's a good one.
Speaker 1: The odds are apparently six hundred and forty nine seven
hundred and thirty nine to one, and I thanks.
Speaker 3: You would possibly do the math right? How could you
calculate the odds of a generic deity existing? I have
no idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 1: Actually, I don't know how you could possibly calculate the
odds since we have no mathematical way to relate something
we don't know exists. Yep, right, agreed, it's my odds
are with a royal flush, always bet on the house. Carlos,
thank you so much for sending out five atheists experience
gifted memberships, big w friend, and also for the three
hundred MX super gests is just enjoying this stream with
this these killing combo by the way, justin happy to
see the Browns one today. Hell Doug, Indeed, Carlos, thank
you so much for being here. And I'm lucky to
be a be able to share a screen with Sarah again,
and I'm glad that everyone was able to make it
to the show. And obviously go dog pound ecta fool.
Thank you so much for the two dar Superjest says,
Sarah time he is Sarah, not the like the Bob
Ross of our time period in the deconstruction zone.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that's delightful. I'll take it.
Speaker 1: There's obviously some crossover there, Shadow slaves, Thank you for
the ten dollars. Superjest Sato says, according to Levitica's twenty ten,
would Jesus even survive until being born if Mary claimed
to be pregnant outside of marriage? Such a good point.
There's a couple things to consider here. First of all,
Jesus had to die because he knocked up his own mother,
and that's a violation in Leviticus either eighteen or twenty.
And also in Deuteronomy twenty two he knocked up a
betrothed woman, which means he gets the death penalty twice,
which means Jesus still has another crucifixion coming. As far
as I a sort of my tally is concerned.
Speaker 3: Okay, but to be clear, it's technically the Holy Spirit
that did the knocking up, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's difficult because if Jesus is God and
the Holy Spirit is God, and God is the Spirit,
and the Spirit knocked up Mary, then we can only
logically conclude that Jesus knocked up as a mother to
give birth to himself.
Speaker 3: Right, A equals be equals C. Therefore a equal C.
Speaker 2: I mean exactly.
Speaker 1: I could have said it better, Goddess of Rebels, great
name and thinking for the twenty five dollars super check,
God says, I'm curious if you have heard of the
Bible Study Fellowship. It's a Bible education program. I was
raised in trained to format sermons by ten years old,
how to analyze text in historical context, still not allowed
to speak English. I've never heard of this project, have
you there?
Speaker 3: No, I have no idea what that is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I was a kid, we were encouraged to
read the Bible, but I can't say much beyond that,
we didn't really have any tools. We're just told we
should we should know it. To be fair, I went
to to a really decent Catholic school growing up, and
they read the Bible with us in religion class. So
there are some Catholic schools where they they you just
need to listen to the priest, don't read the Bible.
You don't need to know what's in there. I went
to a really cool school where they actually read the
Bible with us, so I'm happy about that. And last
super chat from our friend Evan Rock. Thank you so
much Evan for the down ninety nine super chat. He says,
Hot Sauce hangover survival equals miracle of Doug. Doug gave
me strake. Indeed, we we survived the Hot Sauce Apocalypse.
Everything's okay, friends, No worries, No worries. Deconstruction zone is fine.
Speaker 3: I would have I would have, you know, died after
the first one.
Speaker 1: Not everyone's cut out for it. You have to have
the right stomach for it. With that, let's think our backup.
A godless engineer has been back here all night watching
the stream.
Speaker 2: How you doing, buddy, You know.
Speaker 12: I'm doing pretty good. A lot of great callers tonight.
It's been awesome sitting back just watching you two. You know,
you know, have your discussions with them.
Speaker 1: Any thoughts on some of the deconstruction talks. It seems
like we had quite a few people that were either
late or mid journey deconstruction.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 12: The one that stuck out to me was the weird
one where apparently if you're unobservant you get to spend
an eternity in hell. Like that was a little weird
for me. Honestly, I really like to talk about rapture.
That made me think of when I was in I
believe it was high school. I had turned on the
TV one day and it was in the middle of
the Left Behind movie, but it was right at the
part where they were doing all the newscasts, and so
I was sitting there thinking, oh shit, is this really happening.
What's going on? Did the rapture occur? And so like
I'm running around and I'm the only person in the house.
Speaker 2: I'm like, fuck, it happened.
Speaker 12: And you know, I go back and I look and
it's like.
Speaker 6: Oh, it's on Team T It's fucking left Behind.
Speaker 12: Okay great, And so like I just had like a brief,
like five minute freak out thinking that the rapture had happened.
Speaker 6: And I'm alone, and uh, it's like the world's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it really was wild.
Speaker 12: But yeah, all the deconstruction talk, I mean it h
it brings me back to when I would h interview
people from my channel and talking about their deconstruction.
Speaker 6: Uh you know, journeys and.
Speaker 12: Uh, you know, there's a there's a lot there to
really unpacked and really uh that can really help a
lot of other people. Just hearing somebody's deconstruction story, knowing
that you're not like alone and whatever journey you're in,
that that can be very powerful for some people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can. Actually I don't know if I told
you this before, gee, but your channel is one of
the first atheist channels I ever subscribed to. Yours and
the Milwaukee Atheists and uh yeah, And I found it,
like really helpful that I wasn't the only one that
that was in that deconstru Like, oh, other people are
doing this.
Speaker 2: Like I know, I'm not crazy.
Speaker 1: I did the work, I put my homework in, right,
but I'm just glad I'm not the only one.
Speaker 12: Oh yeah. And I mean, like before I had my
YouTube channel, I had Facebook and so like I'd get
messages all the time where, you know, similar similar stories
about you know, helping people through deconstruction. So I'm just
I'm glad to be here and be a you know
that that anything that I.
Speaker 6: Do is a resource for people. That's that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Well, we're certainly glad to have you and Sarah, we're
certainly glad to have you with us today as well.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 1: If you if you like Sarah's content, you can find
it if you're not really following at Leaving Faith, it's
the same handle on TikTok and on YouTube, and she
goes live regularly so you can you can interact with
her through the comments and whatnot through the live streams.
Her live streams are healing. My live stream you're chaos.
Her live streams different are healing. So if if if
that's your vibe, Sarah's the place to go. And with that, friends,
thank you so much for being here today. It's always
a pleasure getting to talk about these topics with the callers.
And we'll see you again same time next week, four
thirty Central time, five thirty Eastern time, same place.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 13: Glad it's day say start albay Stott around.
Speaker 1: Watch Talking and Live Sundays at one pm Central.
Speaker 3: Visit tiny dot c c slash y T T H
and call into the show at five one two nine
nine nine two four two, or connect to the show
online at tiny dot c c slash call thh