Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
Speaker 1: an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through the.
Speaker 1: Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
Speaker 1: tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not because.
Speaker 3: I put my hand on a book and made a wish.
Speaker 1: And working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 3: Take the risk of thinking. Feels so much more happiness.
Speaker 3: Truth Usian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast, hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is just something to listen to. It's a bonus,
Speaker 3: absolutely free to patrons in case you're looking for some content.
Speaker 3: Maybe you're killing an hour and you want to sort
Speaker 3: of evesdrop on a recent conversation I had on the
Speaker 3: Humanism Now show with host James Hodgson out of the UK.
Speaker 3: I love talking about humanism, and he asked me the
Speaker 3: basic questions to start about my past and my deconstruction,
Speaker 3: my deconversion, and then we got into humanism, humanist values
Speaker 3: and the world around us. And you know, he's looking
Speaker 3: over the ocean and all the insanity that's been happening
Speaker 3: here in the United States, and I thought it was
Speaker 3: an interesting and compelling chant. And so if you're looking
Speaker 3: to kill an hour and you'd like extra content, here
Speaker 3: you are. I'm going to go ahead and include all
Speaker 3: of his production tags. I mean, it's his show, and
Speaker 3: I'm real broadcasting with his permission. But you'll hear his intro,
Speaker 3: and he's hosting, he's asking the questions, he controls the
Speaker 3: vertical and the horizontal. A lot of fun for me,
Speaker 3: and big thanks to j James for letting me share
Speaker 3: it with you.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Humanism Now, a podcast about secular ethics, curiosity,
Speaker 4: and compassion.
Speaker 3: I'm your host, James Hodginson.
Speaker 4: Our guest today should need no introduction to our listeners.
Speaker 4: Seth Andrews is one of the ogs of humanist and
Speaker 4: atheist podcasting, as the host of the Thinking Atheist podcast,
Speaker 4: one of the most popular podcasts and online atheist communities
Speaker 4: in the world. A former evangelical and Christian broadcaster, Seth
Speaker 4: is now one of the leading voices in the atheist
Speaker 4: movement globally. He's authored six books, including his latest offering,
Speaker 4: Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot and He hosts
Speaker 4: a second podcast called True Stories with Seth Andrews. A
Speaker 4: renowned conference speaker, always with humor and heart, Seth is
Speaker 4: a global advocate for science and skepticism, importance of humanism,
Speaker 4: and why we should all bursue a personal relationship with reality.
Speaker 4: Seth Andrews, Welcome to humanism.
Speaker 3: Now I'm with an intro like that, I sound like
Speaker 3: I should run for office, although I know in Oklahoma
Speaker 3: and in the United States, being an atheist, I'm probably
Speaker 3: the least qualified, like the least electable. Maybe I'm more
Speaker 3: qualified least electable. But now thanks for the kind words
Speaker 3: and thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: It's good to be here.
Speaker 3: Maybe the campaign starts here.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's true. Yeah, maybe we'll start. This is ground
Speaker 2: zero right here, so.
Speaker 4: I'm sure most of our listeners will be aware of
Speaker 4: the thinking atheist. And I've heard you speak previously, but
Speaker 4: I don't think i've ever heard the full journey or
Speaker 4: your full personal story to how you arrived at whether
Speaker 4: you'd like to call yourself humanist or you prefer the
Speaker 4: term atheist, having previously been a Christian broadcaster, So whether
Speaker 4: this will begin for you.
Speaker 3: It's funny I used to lead with atheist when I
Speaker 3: first came out of the faith first several years. Now
Speaker 3: I lead with humanist right because atheism is what I
Speaker 3: don't bel the god I don't believe in are gods
Speaker 3: I don't believe in.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 3: That's not a statement of values. Really, humanism is my
Speaker 3: statement of values. And I've really been pounding that drama
Speaker 3: a lot more on the show. The short version of
Speaker 3: the long story is that I was born into a
Speaker 3: devoutly Christian home. My mother and father were hardcore believers,
Speaker 3: theologian level believers. They wrote sermons for pastors. There was
Speaker 3: no light reading in our home. They had an entire
Speaker 3: bookshelf of concordances and breakdowns, theologies, religious histories, and my
Speaker 3: mother wrote a Greek New Testament study guide that was
Speaker 3: used at the college level. I mean, this was the
Speaker 3: type of Christianity we had. So it was Bible literalism.
Speaker 3: Adam and even Noah's aren't and Moses and all those
Speaker 3: things Jesus died on across Heaven and Hell are real.
Speaker 3: And so that was my normal and we loved it. Yay,
Speaker 3: good for us. We happen to be born into the
Speaker 3: right faith at the right time, in the right place
Speaker 3: to the right parents and the right religion, and so
Speaker 3: I was just immersed, literally baptized into Christian schools, Christian churches,
Speaker 3: Christian music, Christian culture. I was a student leader, kind
Speaker 3: of this front facing dude with the ability to communicate
Speaker 3: when I was in high school. So I ended up
Speaker 3: on stage a lot. You had some teenager who's expounding
Speaker 3: and giving his great wisdom about the world. Wasn't old
Speaker 3: enough to drive, I wasn't old enough to vote. I
Speaker 3: hadn't been into the world, but somehow I was useful
Speaker 3: for church leaders. Ah, look a bright and shining example
Speaker 3: of the new generation that will take back this country
Speaker 3: for christ. And because I was immersed in Christian music
Speaker 3: and a big fan, it was an easy segue into
Speaker 3: Christian radio, and I became a Christian radio host in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety and I spent fourteen years in FM radio,
Speaker 3: most of it Christian radio, Amy Grant, Stephen Curtis Chapman,
Speaker 3: Michael W. Smith, Whiteheart Striper, those types of bands, and
Speaker 3: then I segued into video production for a decade, and
Speaker 3: most of our clients were churches. I was eyeball deep
Speaker 3: in it. But it was funny because late in the nineties,
Speaker 3: I started to hear that alarm bell of doubt in
Speaker 3: the back of my skull, and for a long time,
Speaker 3: under the surface, I was really struggling to make sense
Speaker 3: of the senselessness. And it was in my late thirties
Speaker 3: that I started to finally give myself permission to not
Speaker 3: take for an answer, just take it on faith, but
Speaker 3: to try to find out what's going on. And that's
Speaker 3: why I named the site in the podcast the Thinking Atheist,
Speaker 3: which is not me, certainly, but it's an idea because
Speaker 3: faith is a terrible way to find out what's true
Speaker 3: if you take it on. Christopher Hitchins used to say,
Speaker 3: it's called faith because it's not knowledge, and so I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of gaps will never fill in
Speaker 3: our knowledge. But I don't want to just believe when possible.
Speaker 2: I want to know.
Speaker 3: And so The Thinking Atheist was an encouragement to myself
Speaker 3: and to everybody else. Let's think on these things, let's
Speaker 3: reason it out, let's try to figure it out as
Speaker 3: best we can. And so the site in the show's
Speaker 3: been going on for about seventeen years, and somehow I'm
Speaker 3: still here. So anyway, that's my story in a nutshell.
Speaker 4: So was it quite an immediate jump then, from being
Speaker 4: immersed in the world of not Christian radio whinning are
Speaker 4: but still working primarily with churches to I guess had
Speaker 4: you fully deconstructed when you launched the Thinking Atheist or
Speaker 4: were you still working through these questions?
Speaker 3: I'm slow. I mean you stiped me forever. It was
Speaker 3: in the late nineties. I remember that I was starting
Speaker 3: to think, well, this doesn't make sense. But you are
Speaker 3: trained in the faith that doubt is his sin. Right,
Speaker 3: Who's the one disciple that our parents never told us
Speaker 3: to be like. They were like be like John, be
Speaker 3: like Paul, be like Peter. They never said be like
Speaker 3: Thomas doubting Thomas right. Bible says the one who doubts
Speaker 3: is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed
Speaker 3: by the wind. That person should not expect to receive
Speaker 3: anything from the Lord. And so doubt was either an
Speaker 3: attack of the evil one, or it was rebellion, or
Speaker 3: it was just weakness in your faith. And so whenever
Speaker 3: I would hear those doubts, I used to just blink
Speaker 3: them away. Oh there's something wrong. I should never doubt.
Speaker 3: That's disobedience, that's weakness. It's an attack. And I don't
Speaker 3: know if it was midlife or maybe it was just
Speaker 3: all those years of being dissatisfied. I just came to
Speaker 3: a point in my thirties where I thought, all right,
Speaker 3: well I'm gonna figure this out. But it took me
Speaker 3: a long time. I mean, my deconstruction. I think I
Speaker 3: started to my deep dive. I thought, I'm gonna go
Speaker 3: back to square one. I'm gonna figure this out. I
Speaker 3: was thirty seven, but I didn't say the word atheist
Speaker 3: in regard to myself till I was thirty eight.
Speaker 2: And so it was a year.
Speaker 3: It was a year of reading the Bible and getting
Speaker 3: into Bible history and speaking to the experts, the apologist,
Speaker 3: and of course the more they answered my questions, the
Speaker 3: more questions I had. It just it took me a
Speaker 3: long time too to find the courage and and it's
Speaker 3: a mess. It was a big noise in my own head,
Speaker 3: and I had to let that noise settle just a
Speaker 3: little bit. And then after that, you know, I was like,
Speaker 3: I want to be part of these conversations.
Speaker 2: I've got to get the word out.
Speaker 3: I was so naive when other believers hear what I
Speaker 3: have discovered about the Christian faith. They will all lock
Speaker 3: arms with me, and we will walk away from superstition
Speaker 3: and we will prance off to Reasonville together and it
Speaker 3: will be a beautiful thing. And of course that's not
Speaker 3: remotely what happened. Nobody cared, nobody wanted to hear. Everybody
Speaker 3: was patting me on the head like I was some
Speaker 3: broken thing. And I actually probably started my activism long
Speaker 3: before I should have.
Speaker 2: I should have taken.
Speaker 3: A few years and settled down because I was hot,
Speaker 3: I was keyed up. I still had so much to learn.
Speaker 3: I always do, But back then I jumped into the
Speaker 3: race a bit too soon. But even then, it took
Speaker 3: me a few years after that to get over the
Speaker 3: fear of hell. Even though in my brain I'm an atheist.
Speaker 3: I know Christianity is not true, but that baked in
Speaker 3: fear of what if I'm wrong, I'll burn forever? Oh
Speaker 3: my god, what's going to happen? That stuff runs deep,
Speaker 3: So it took me a long time. It was not
Speaker 3: Some people get out with the snap of the finger,
Speaker 3: and for me it was it was a slow burn.
Speaker 3: It took a long time for that fuse to reach
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 4: And so then you would have started The Thinking Atheists.
Speaker 3: Two thousand and nine, I think for the website.
Speaker 4: So then you lords Thinking Atheists really before the boom
Speaker 4: in podcasting, and yet to publicly advocate as you say.
Speaker 3: But also think through these questions. Yeah, what's funny is
Speaker 3: that I was still working for a company owned by Christians,
Speaker 3: which serve churches. Mostly we did some It was a
Speaker 3: video and three D animation company. We also served universities
Speaker 3: and some city planners and some other things. There were
Speaker 3: probably eighty percent of the videos we did were fundraising
Speaker 3: videos for churches. So I was terrified that if I
Speaker 3: am found out, I will lose my job. They'll find
Speaker 3: a reason to fire me. I won't be able to
Speaker 3: afford my mortgage payment, I'll lose everything financially. I will
Speaker 3: be destitute at midlife. What else would I do? And
Speaker 3: so for the first two years of The Thinking Atheist
Speaker 3: it was an audio podcast and videos that did not
Speaker 3: feature my face. No one knew who I was. It
Speaker 3: was just my first name. And it wasn't until the
Speaker 3: summer of twenty eleven that I finally just decided screw
Speaker 3: it and stood on stage at a convention and sort
Speaker 3: of introduced myself to the world. The cats out of
Speaker 3: the bag. Whatever happens happens. But it took me a
Speaker 3: while even just to be able to be real enough
Speaker 3: to say hi, I'm Seth and reveal my first and
Speaker 3: last name and face. I think that speaks to how
Speaker 3: hard of a journey it is for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: It's there are some who dismiss and say, come on,
Speaker 3: get over it. It's Santa Claus for adults, you coward
Speaker 3: or what's the matter, and they don't understand the many
Speaker 3: gears in the machine of deconstruction, and sometimes those gears
Speaker 3: turned slowly, And I think we need to be empathetic
Speaker 3: and understanding about that.
Speaker 4: And I think anybody who goes through that process there's
Speaker 4: a huge amount of bravery to step away when, particularly
Speaker 4: when you're so immersed, you know, and it's every part
Speaker 4: of your life, but even more so to do it
Speaker 4: in such a public manner.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: I say that to people I meet on the road.
Speaker 3: They will come up to me and they're like, I
Speaker 3: heard this show and it encouraged me and you inspire
Speaker 3: me or something like that, And I'm like, holy cow,
Speaker 3: I'm like, do you have any idea how much courage
Speaker 3: it took for you to be honest with yourself and
Speaker 3: others about your journey and to speak in your authentic voice,
Speaker 3: whatever the consequences were, and to come to this point
Speaker 3: in your life when so many other people will never
Speaker 3: get there. I say, you inspire me, and that's I'm
Speaker 3: not trying to be fake or Sacharin.
Speaker 2: I'm like.
Speaker 3: Yours is a remarkable story, and that's the encouragement I
Speaker 3: give other people, because it does take a lot of courage,
Speaker 3: and a lot of times people pay a terrible price
Speaker 3: with the crime of being an authentic person.
Speaker 4: Were there any advantages you found from going through this
Speaker 4: process publicly? Was it helpful but having a way to
Speaker 4: explain your abuse to people who may have questions that
Speaker 4: they could help them understand, or did it help you
Speaker 4: went through any issues.
Speaker 3: One thing about being an ex evangelical is I have
Speaker 3: a kind of equity in conversations about Christianity. So if
Speaker 3: someone comes up to me with one of the standard protests,
Speaker 3: no one who ever knew the love of Jesus would
Speaker 3: have ever walked away, or you don't know what true
Speaker 3: Christianity is, or that's not what the Bible says. After
Speaker 3: an entire lifetime or at least thirty some years in
Speaker 3: the faith. Yeah. No, I was absolutely sincere, and I
Speaker 3: did believe it when I said the Salvation prayer, and
Speaker 3: I did understand what the culture is like. Everything I
Speaker 3: did was Christian, everything we said was Christian. And then
Speaker 3: part of my deconstruction was an even deeper dive into
Speaker 3: a Bible I thought I knew at the time, but
Speaker 3: going back, of course, we like, oh was that verse
Speaker 3: in their Holy Cow? I never read this scripture this
Speaker 3: way before, Oh what's this about? And it's interesting because
Speaker 3: I knew more about the Bible than many of its defenders.
Speaker 3: So having those decades inside the faith has I lament
Speaker 3: the wasted years, and I beat myself up sometimes for
Speaker 3: being too thick to figure out that maybe an Old
Speaker 3: Testament donkey did not speak in Hebrew, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: this is basic. But the upside is is that I
Speaker 3: can speak with authority about what happens behind church walls
Speaker 3: and what is within the covers of the Christian Bible,
Speaker 3: and that has helped me in my efforts to help
Speaker 3: others deconstruct and to sound my protests about a superstition
Speaker 3: which does provide some good things, but has way too
Speaker 3: much baggage for me to support.
Speaker 4: And I guess you know the arguments that they were
Speaker 4: put forward. I always wonder looking back at the time,
Speaker 4: what would you have said, was the strongest argument that
Speaker 4: you knew of for the truth to Christianity.
Speaker 3: For me, it was more of a defensive posture. Here's
Speaker 3: what Christians are often, even if we're not realized, we're
Speaker 3: trained to do it. The science and nature and the
Speaker 3: evidence proves God. And then someone brings evidence that doesn't
Speaker 3: add up, and we say, it's not about evidence. God
Speaker 3: exists beyond the natural. This is a matter of faith.
Speaker 3: I have a personal relationship with Jesus, and so I
Speaker 3: always had a fallback position. I wasn't engaging non believers
Speaker 3: a lot when I was in the faith because I
Speaker 3: was just surrounded by Christians. I was in a reinforcement culture.
Speaker 3: We just knew we were right. We didn't have to
Speaker 3: answer ask any more questions because we already had the
Speaker 3: answer with the capital Hey, it's one of those things
Speaker 3: like we were taught to make fun in Charles Darwin,
Speaker 3: none of us had ever cracked open on the origin
Speaker 3: of species or taken a legitimate evolutionary biology class, So
Speaker 3: we knew he was wrong, but we didn't know what
Speaker 3: he was talking about, and that's kind of the faith.
Speaker 3: But a lot of it really came down to he
Speaker 3: lives in my heart and I just know it in
Speaker 3: my heart, and that's this weird spot where because people
Speaker 3: can't read minds, because clearvoyancy isn't real, then we felt safe.
Speaker 3: But beyond that, it was the typical stuff. How could
Speaker 3: you look at the birth of a beautiful baby, how
Speaker 3: could you see the design? How complex the world is?
Speaker 3: We saw complexity, and we saw great engineering. And of
Speaker 3: course engineers will tell you that the most amazing pieces
Speaker 3: of engineering are the ones that are distilled down to
Speaker 3: simplicity with the least amount of waste. But we just
Speaker 3: saw complicated stuff and we thought, wow, it's beyond me
Speaker 3: Jesus kind of thing. But you know, probably the personal
Speaker 3: relationship argument was the one I used the most.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I guess that's the hardest one to challenge
Speaker 4: from the outside as well.
Speaker 3: How do you know what I'm thinking? How do you
Speaker 3: know if there wasn't a magical moment inside my body
Speaker 3: and my mind? Well, how do you prove I don't
Speaker 3: have a soul? It's one of those things where because
Speaker 3: they can't crawl into my skull, I'm supposedly able to
Speaker 3: quote unquote win the argument.
Speaker 2: It's pretty convenient.
Speaker 4: And now that you're an active leader advocate within the
Speaker 4: atheist humanist movement globally, how do we avoid some of
Speaker 4: those same mistakes of falling into groupthink and the arrogance
Speaker 4: of going we know that we're right.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of that. It's funny, I'm preparing
Speaker 3: this speech. I don't know if I'm going to give
Speaker 3: it this year. That I may do this speech, I
Speaker 3: may do it this fall, and many of the non
Speaker 3: religious in my circles are going to get it, and
Speaker 3: they're going to go with it, and they're going to
Speaker 3: support it, and they are going to be others who
Speaker 3: lose their minds. And it's about how we who are
Speaker 3: not religious are not immune from being emotional bags of
Speaker 3: animated meat. Right, we're all primates. We look for things
Speaker 3: that reinforces what we already think and who we already are,
Speaker 3: and we can be very knee jerky. And I found
Speaker 3: that atheism is not an inoculation against irrationality or awfulness.
Speaker 3: I've met flat earth atheists I've met anti vaccine atheist.
Speaker 3: I've met just nasty, mean, toxic human beings who happen
Speaker 3: do not believe in a God. So I don't believe
Speaker 3: in God doesn't guarantee anything else about you. I would
Speaker 3: like to think that removing the god baggage might prime
Speaker 3: you a little more possibly to edge into a natural
Speaker 3: world existence, a science based existence. But you know, we
Speaker 3: make a lot of mistakes. I'm often online when I
Speaker 3: see my fellow atheists, humanists, progressive, and they'll post some
Speaker 3: sort of meme about the religious that is totally untrue
Speaker 3: and unfair. Religion is a mental illness.
Speaker 2: No, it's not.
Speaker 3: I wasn't mentally ill when I was a devout believer
Speaker 3: in Jesus. It's horrible argument, and why in the world
Speaker 3: would you ever say it. There was one that I
Speaker 3: saw where why are Sunday so peaceful? It's because the
Speaker 3: evil people are at church? You know, somebody actually posted
Speaker 3: that one. Politically, a lot of people like to post stuff.
Speaker 3: And I'm a huge critic of President Donald Trump. I
Speaker 3: just despise the man and what he represents. But people
Speaker 3: will post things about him, quotes that he never actually said,
Speaker 3: and I have to come forward and say he never
Speaker 3: said this quote, and they get mad at me because, well,
Speaker 3: it sounds like something you would have said. And why
Speaker 3: in the world would you take a moment to talk
Speaker 3: about what's wrong with us when so much more is
Speaker 3: wrong with him? And I'm like, this is an example
Speaker 3: of how we often become less interested in being right
Speaker 3: than sounding right or being proven right or being validated.
Speaker 3: And you know, we're all flawed, fallible human beings, and
Speaker 3: so you know, it's the difference, I think between atheism
Speaker 3: and rationalism. And I get it wrong. I've shared stuff
Speaker 3: I found out was wrong and had to go retract it,
Speaker 3: have that horrible ideas, and I'm like, oh, what was
Speaker 3: I thinking. But once we acknowledge that we are not
Speaker 3: immune because we use the A word in regard to ourselves,
Speaker 3: it does open us up to live a more honest,
Speaker 3: a more difficult, certainly even a more honest life when
Speaker 3: it comes to trying to figure out what is true.
Speaker 3: Robert green Ingersol famously said the more false we destroy,
Speaker 3: the more room there will be for the true. And
Speaker 3: I've taken that coda up in my own life.
Speaker 2: It's a goal.
Speaker 3: Let's destroy the false so we can make room for
Speaker 3: the true, and if that includes something that we have believed,
Speaker 3: something that was said, or a bad statement about religious
Speaker 3: people or whatever, we need to destroy that.
Speaker 2: So we can make more room for the truth.
Speaker 4: It's a good quote because it doesn't say that whatever's
Speaker 4: left is true. Yeah, you still have to do the work.
Speaker 3: And as some of that just comes from such a superior, smug,
Speaker 3: reductive attitude. Most of the people in my life for
Speaker 3: religious and they're not evil, they're not wicked, they're not Nazis.
Speaker 3: And I think, well, what are you trying to accomplish.
Speaker 3: This's just tribalism, which is what we say they're guilty of.
Speaker 3: This is us being the superior tribe. We are the lofty,
Speaker 3: meritorious in group, and they are the troglodite out group,
Speaker 3: and therefore we diminish and dehumanize constantly. That's not the
Speaker 3: world I'm want to live in. That's not how we're
Speaker 3: going to change the world. And I'll tell you, our
Speaker 3: tribe can have some really bad ideas. Any group, any organization,
Speaker 3: any gathering of people who have like minded ideas or
Speaker 3: like interests, or whatever, a family of any kind, they
Speaker 3: can be guilty of the tribalism. Having a tribe can
Speaker 3: be a wonderful thing, but we know that tribalism has
Speaker 3: a dark side to it, and atheist humanists are far
Speaker 3: from immune, and we have to be honest.
Speaker 2: With ourselves about that.
Speaker 3: I think to be able to pursue truth in a
Speaker 3: healthy way. My conversation with James Hodgson, the host of
Speaker 3: Humanism Now, will continue in just a second. A lot
Speaker 3: of content creators are understandably nervous about this mandated switch
Speaker 3: that Patreon is forcing everybody to do. Actually, Apple is
Speaker 3: forcing Patreon to do it, moving from a per upload
Speaker 3: support system to a monthly subscription. If you are a patron,
Speaker 3: please log onto your Patreon account and make that switch
Speaker 3: to a monthly subscription. And if you're not a supporter,
Speaker 3: I'd welcome your support to help do what I do,
Speaker 3: but subscribe as a monthly, not as a per upload,
Speaker 3: because they're going to switch everything over and make that
Speaker 3: mandatory I think the first week of November. Patreon dot
Speaker 3: com slash Seth Andrews continuing the conversation I recently had
Speaker 3: with host James Hudson on his broadcast Humanism Now.
Speaker 4: Have you seen tribalism in all areas get worse with
Speaker 4: the rise of political polarization, I think particularly in the US,
Speaker 4: and I know you're focusing on more political content.
Speaker 3: Now do you think that the.
Speaker 4: Tour related or was there always a strand of that
Speaker 4: within this the religion versus the atheist context.
Speaker 3: Human beings have always potted themselves, you know, podd not
Speaker 3: potted like a plant, but they've always gotten into pods
Speaker 3: and even potted the word I just made it up,
Speaker 3: Thank you world. But the Internet has really facilitated disinformation
Speaker 3: and information and disinformation and tribal silos where the algorithm
Speaker 3: can push you into an extremely narrow way of thinking.
Speaker 2: That's new.
Speaker 3: So we're starting in the nineties, we really began to
Speaker 3: see that we could immediately lock in with somebody who
Speaker 3: was hyper focused on how we think and validating how
Speaker 3: we think, echoing how we think, and vice versa. We
Speaker 3: feed on and feed into this group and we are
Speaker 3: then connected with each other. And even though we are
Speaker 3: digitally connected to the rest of the world, there is
Speaker 3: a disconnect intellectually and emotionally from what others are thinking
Speaker 3: and feeling. And so now we have instead of this
Speaker 3: amount of tribes, we have a squillion micro tribes, sometimes
Speaker 3: within those tribes like groups and subgroups, And I don't
Speaker 3: even know how you deal with that except we have
Speaker 3: to purposefully, as a course of will, step out of
Speaker 3: our tribe, beyond our walls, and begin to whenever possible.
Speaker 3: And it's certainly not always to understand where are others
Speaker 3: getting their information, what's feeding them, what's their background, what's
Speaker 3: their temperaments? Where they primed in some way? Are they
Speaker 3: members of a cult? And how do cults operate? What's
Speaker 3: the model or what are the models for cults? Am
Speaker 3: I guilty of tribal thinking in a destructive way? And
Speaker 3: this requires time and energy and pain and nuance. And
Speaker 3: you know what the internet does not do well?
Speaker 2: Is all of that? Right?
Speaker 3: We want it simple, we want it on a sticker
Speaker 3: or a.
Speaker 2: Meme or a line. We want to win.
Speaker 3: We're not interested in engagement as much as just smashing
Speaker 3: the other. I can put any comment online, I'm going
Speaker 3: to make any polarizing opinion online boom. And there is
Speaker 3: very little in terms of nuanced approach to other people.
Speaker 3: I have to go into my own threads and say,
Speaker 3: two members of our community in the atheist movement or
Speaker 3: whatever let's stop with the name calling. This is an
Speaker 3: unfair response. They came in with an apinut disagree with.
Speaker 3: Let's explore that as adults in good faith throwing feess
Speaker 3: at each other to try to win, and then gathering
Speaker 3: our tribe to gang up. Is their tribe gangs up,
Speaker 3: and before you know it, you're mashing into the internet
Speaker 3: forums for weeks. Nobody changes their mind, everybody leaves exasperated,
Speaker 3: We're further divided. I'm not saying it's always possible to
Speaker 3: connect with because sometimes we have to draw the hard line.
Speaker 3: Sometimes we have to cut a cord. I sometimes we
Speaker 3: do have to go it to go nuclear. I get that,
Speaker 3: But too often we unnecessarily cheat ourselves of the humanity
Speaker 3: that many of these conversations deserve. And again it's not
Speaker 3: always popular. I get a lot of pushback, but I
Speaker 3: feel like I have to lead by example as best
Speaker 3: I can. But I'm guilty. We've all knee jerked. We've
Speaker 3: all heard and said something where like oh, I'm done,
Speaker 3: I've just done, and then you go into nuke mode
Speaker 3: and nukem from morbit. But the tribalism is going to
Speaker 3: I think it's only going to get worse. The only
Speaker 3: way to get past it is to be aware of it,
Speaker 3: and that's going to be a challenge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it seems to come back to this idea that
Speaker 4: if you want to be considered rational, you want to
Speaker 4: be considered reasonable. It is constant work. It's not a
Speaker 4: case of saying I am a rational person. Now I'm reasonable,
Speaker 4: therefore I've got the right views on associating with the
Speaker 4: right people.
Speaker 3: As you say, it's that constant questioning. It is, and
Speaker 3: it was in my own life that I had to
Speaker 3: I was pretty snarky about the religious I think I
Speaker 3: was mostly just angry with myself. For the first three
Speaker 3: or four years of my activism, I was really sarcastic.
Speaker 3: My content was really snarky about the sheeple. And then
Speaker 3: once my temper subsided and I got my head together
Speaker 3: and I realized how unhelpful I was being, I thought, no,
Speaker 3: I'm I wasn't a bad person when I was a
Speaker 3: believer for so many decades I was. I didn't deserve
Speaker 3: the insults. When I was a believer. I was simply
Speaker 3: a victim of bad ideas. I was perpetrating bad ideas,
Speaker 3: but I was also a victim of bad ideas. And
Speaker 3: this is also something the Internet does not do well,
Speaker 3: and we emotional primates do not do well. And the
Speaker 3: truth is that more than one thing can be true
Speaker 3: at the same time. We liked it, people like cut
Speaker 3: and dry, ab left, right, black, white, good, evil, absolutes
Speaker 3: and that's just not the worst. Are there things that
Speaker 3: are absolutely this or.
Speaker 2: That out there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will, I'll concede that. But often many things
Speaker 3: can be true at the same time, and that requires
Speaker 3: again us putting in the work to get through this
Speaker 3: ocean of nuance to be fair. And that's something that
Speaker 3: especially when we are bombarded with the avalanche of information, disinformation,
Speaker 3: inflammatory headlines, online, baits, you name it. We're puns drunk
Speaker 3: all the time. We are certainly not in the mode
Speaker 3: of well. I think I'll take a few days and
Speaker 3: with consideration, research this one thing. We're scrolling past five
Speaker 3: hundred things that have doom scrolled through our lives in
Speaker 3: the course of an afternoon, you know.
Speaker 4: And do you see a need going back to the
Speaker 4: point about politics and polarization, do you see that there's
Speaker 4: a press need to have more political content in the
Speaker 4: current times with your podcasts or do you still feel
Speaker 4: that the main space needs to be in the atheist
Speaker 4: humanist advocacy.
Speaker 2: Things have changed.
Speaker 3: I think there's an overlap between humanism and our political conversations,
Speaker 3: and there's some overlap with atheism. But I'm an activist
Speaker 3: against the overreach of this administration in the United States.
Speaker 3: I'm an activist condemning the grift and the corruption and
Speaker 3: the predation of Donald Trump, the weaponization of our government
Speaker 3: against our own citizens, the cruelty and the suffering that's
Speaker 3: being carried out with glee and supported by tens of
Speaker 3: millions of my fellow countrymen and women. I'm against that
Speaker 3: which is political, but I'm against it because I'm a humanist,
Speaker 3: because I want to decrease suffering and increase flourishing. And
Speaker 3: I resist all this holy word God speak that many
Speaker 3: are using to justify.
Speaker 2: The worst of behaviors.
Speaker 3: This country is infected with this idea that we one
Speaker 3: nation under God and God wills it. And there's a
Speaker 3: riff on divine command theory or vertical morality, which is
Speaker 3: how many people in the Maga cult excuse the horrible
Speaker 3: things that Donald Trump does. You challenge them, and you say, well,
Speaker 3: he doesn't represent any of the best teachings of Jesus
Speaker 3: turn the other cheek, a soft answer, turns away wrath,
Speaker 3: don't love money, don't lust, don't commit adultery, don't take revenge.
Speaker 3: And they're like, God has appointed him, and if he
Speaker 3: breaks some rules, and if he bends the laws and
Speaker 3: he has to smash the system in order to rebuild it,
Speaker 3: as long as God appointed him, that's all that matters
Speaker 3: to me. And that allows them to excuse the literal
Speaker 3: shredding of our constitution because God's champion is here and
Speaker 3: will rebuild God's Kingdom upon the ashes. Resisting that is
Speaker 3: a humanistic thing to do. We say the supernatural needs
Speaker 3: to be taken. Our foreign policy initiatives, our attitudes about
Speaker 3: the Israeli genocide and Gaza, which has just been confirmed
Speaker 3: by the UN investigators, these are religious. They are excused
Speaker 3: biblically in this country, Israel at all cost, Net and
Speaker 3: Yahoo supported at old Cosmo, matter who's murdered, et cetera.
Speaker 3: I resist the religion in a political environment because I'm
Speaker 3: a humanist. Again, more than one thing can be true
Speaker 3: at the same time. And as a result, on my
Speaker 3: own channel, we've gone from we still do a lot
Speaker 3: of dissecting of the religions Christianity, Islam, we get into
Speaker 3: the cult, we talk about the psychology belief, so we
Speaker 3: do a lot of religion. Most of what we've done
Speaker 3: recently is about politics, the culture, humanity, and humanism. And
Speaker 3: that's because the country's on fire and you can only
Speaker 3: debunk the Book of Genesis so many times, you can
Speaker 3: only debunk Adam and Eve and Noah's flood so many times.
Speaker 3: So my work lately has really been more about humanism,
Speaker 3: and that speaks to the political nightmare that we are
Speaker 3: living in. And by the way, for the record, I'd
Speaker 3: like to apologize to the rest of the world for
Speaker 3: the rogues and the anti democratic agents of cruelty in
Speaker 3: the fact that we, once a leader in the world,
Speaker 3: are now a runaway clown car. I'd just like to
Speaker 3: apologize for tens of millions of us who've been dragged
Speaker 3: into this nightmare by a very well funded and very
Speaker 3: well organized minority, very well put.
Speaker 4: And it's interesting as well that you know, there's clearly
Speaker 4: religious elements and fundamentalist believers who are within that movement,
Speaker 4: as you said, a movement which is founded on, as
Speaker 4: you say, dehumanization. Really cruelty, anti empathy, anti democracy, anti
Speaker 4: curiosity as well. It's wanting to limit people's access to
Speaker 4: information and education. But there are also people at fairly
Speaker 4: certain would be atheists who are within that movement as well.
Speaker 4: And likewise, I think we have allies on our side
Speaker 4: of a people of faith as well. I absolutely, as
Speaker 4: you can imagine from the focus of this year, someone
Speaker 4: who agrees that the antithesis of what we're seeing is humanism.
Speaker 4: Humanism is this fantastic broad term which covers all of
Speaker 4: those areas which we want to promote in society. But
Speaker 4: I'm wondering, do you see that humanism is well understood
Speaker 4: in the US at the moment, and or is it
Speaker 4: still seen as slightly threatening atheistic, purely atheistic, rather than,
Speaker 4: as you say, advocating some of these positive attributes.
Speaker 3: I do find myself having to explain humanism. I remember
Speaker 3: I was a kid. We were watching Classic Star Trek
Speaker 3: Geene Roddenberry Star Trek, which originally aired in the late sixties,
Speaker 3: and I was watching the reruns of it in the
Speaker 3: seventies and the eighties, and I remember there was some
Speaker 3: Roddenberry was an atheist, and there were a lot of
Speaker 3: humanistic themes in Trek and I think that's true even today.
Speaker 3: But my mother was watching, and I don't know it
Speaker 3: was Kirk or someone went off on some tirade about
Speaker 3: how humanity and she said, oh, that's humanism, and the
Speaker 3: way it came out of her mouth set a tone.
Speaker 3: It was kind of baked into me that oh, humanism,
Speaker 3: bad humanism. And it was framed it as it's human centric.
Speaker 3: It's human focused, not God focused. So it's selfishness. It
Speaker 3: is the arrogance of thinking that it's all about us,
Speaker 3: or that we would even have the power to do
Speaker 3: what God would be doing. Good and evil and morality
Speaker 3: and all these things should be guided from the divine,
Speaker 3: not from the carnal and the mortal. But I didn't
Speaker 3: really understand what humanism was. I didn't see the beauty
Speaker 3: in it. I didn't see the importance of it. And
Speaker 3: I do find myself having to explain, well, well, what's
Speaker 3: a humanist? Is it just another religion? Some people have
Speaker 3: been the religious right in this country. They are defined,
Speaker 3: their campaigns are defined by scare words. Socialism's one of
Speaker 3: the big ones. Trans is another big one. Communism right now,
Speaker 3: that's another huge one. In the news this week, but
Speaker 3: they bake it all. They literally marry it all together.
Speaker 3: So it's all humanism, socialism, LGBT, the Sodomites, the humanists.
Speaker 3: They just throw everybody who is different and scary in
Speaker 3: coming for you. And they're coming for your church and
Speaker 3: your faith and your religion and your Bible and your
Speaker 3: God and your children and your future and your country.
Speaker 3: They're all coming for you. Humanists get locked into that narrative.
Speaker 3: And it's funny because these people are often like I was,
Speaker 3: they knew, they resisted it, they couldn't tell you what
Speaker 3: it was, and so I do enjoy having that. That's
Speaker 3: actually it's too an easier conversation than the atheist one
Speaker 3: because you say the word atheist and people will sometimes
Speaker 3: blink and blanche and sit up, Oh atheist, right, But
Speaker 3: if I say a humanist, I don't get that response
Speaker 3: as much. But they're like, what is that? And I'm
Speaker 3: able to talk about good for goodness sake, solving our
Speaker 3: problems in the here and now, leading with empathy, building
Speaker 3: the world we want to live in, and values wise,
Speaker 3: that is often something they relate to. They framed it differently,
Speaker 3: but they don't want to hurt people. The people I'm
Speaker 3: talking to, they want to help people. They want to
Speaker 3: live in a more peaceful and less warlike world. They
Speaker 3: don't want to see unwanted suffering. That's a point of agreement.
Speaker 3: And it's on those tiny foundations that I think larger
Speaker 3: conversations can begin. Also, if they know I'm non religious,
Speaker 3: but I'm interested very much in the good, it shatters
Speaker 3: their categories because they've been trained to think that the
Speaker 3: godless are these rudderless, sad immoral, purposeless beings. And here
Speaker 3: they see seth Oh, he's pretty centered and he's got
Speaker 3: lots of love in his life, and he laughs and
Speaker 3: has a great time, and his life is good. So
Speaker 3: how do I reconcile that? And secretly I know there
Speaker 3: must be having conversations. I'm messing up their categories and
Speaker 3: hopefully expanding how they see.
Speaker 2: People who don't believe what they believe.
Speaker 4: I was going to ask you if you elevate a
Speaker 4: pitch for humanism, but I think you gave it this.
Speaker 3: I had a guy call my show a couple weeks
Speaker 3: ago and he's like, well, how would you know right
Speaker 3: from wrong?
Speaker 2: How do you even know what harm is? Without God?
Speaker 3: And I look at it, and I'm like, it's not hard.
Speaker 3: I understand what harm is because I've had harm done
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 2: I get it. It's not arbitrary. I think.
Speaker 3: The example I use with him is, look, look, I
Speaker 3: could send you to the spa and we could do
Speaker 3: I could gift you here's a two hour massage, and
Speaker 3: you're going to get pampering, and they're going to bring
Speaker 3: you wine and they're going to treat you like a king,
Speaker 3: and you're going to go and decompress and have the
Speaker 3: ultimate pampering. Or I could hit you in the face
Speaker 3: with a bat. Which one of those could be qualified
Speaker 3: as flourishing and which one would be harm and suffering.
Speaker 3: This is not a difficult concept to understand it because
Speaker 3: we can understand that helping to build a society where
Speaker 3: we are reducing suffering and increasing flourishing, it helps others,
Speaker 3: which helps the tribe, which helps the species, which may come.
Speaker 2: Back upon us.
Speaker 3: Even if there's nothing there's no such thing as true altruism, Okay, fine,
Speaker 3: we can have that cont even if it's partially selfish,
Speaker 3: it's still beneficial to everybody to act in a pro
Speaker 3: social way. And so where I once didn't understand humanism Now,
Speaker 3: I look at it and I think it's very intuitive. Right,
Speaker 3: Let's be who we want others to be and ourselves
Speaker 3: to be to live in the world that we want
Speaker 3: to live in. It seems basic to me.
Speaker 4: And in eight I think this goes back to something
Speaker 4: that's been argued, debated, refined throughout human history. As long
Speaker 4: as we've been able to communicate, we've been having these
Speaker 4: conversations whether and this is possibly how religions are originally formed,
Speaker 4: where they start from having these debates and conversations, and
Speaker 4: then eventually it gets written down in a book and
Speaker 4: that's what then other people rely on later. But it's
Speaker 4: got to come from somewhere, I guess, unless you believe
Speaker 4: it's been divinely inspired.
Speaker 3: My last segment on the Humanism Now broadcast we'll play
Speaker 3: right after this hang On just a few weeks away.
Speaker 3: It's the Unholy Trinity Tour. Why am I saying it
Speaker 3: like I'm a monster truck announcer. I do not know,
Speaker 3: like Sunday Sunday Sunday, except it's gonna be a Saturday night.
Speaker 3: August twenty ninth, fort Worth, Me, Matt Delahunty are in
Speaker 3: raw on stage together for the first time in a
Speaker 3: long time. A lot of good stuff on the way.
Speaker 3: Baja Cohn in Sarnia, Ontario. That's just a few weeks away.
Speaker 3: Rocket City Reason October FFRF, their national convention is happening.
Speaker 3: I believe in Milwaukee all the information on all this
Speaker 3: stuff and more the Thinkingatheist dot com slash events.
Speaker 4: I know that you're also very interested in a respectful way,
Speaker 4: in the history of religion and the origins of deities.
Speaker 4: And this is the subject of is it an upcoming
Speaker 4: bookcorn I'm going to which you're putting together.
Speaker 3: I just released it actually to YouTube. I'd given it
Speaker 3: on several cities and the audience jo loved it. I've
Speaker 3: done some really heavy subjects lately.
Speaker 2: And I needed a break.
Speaker 3: But I wanted something that would be interesting so we
Speaker 3: could laugh as we learn. I did a speech which
Speaker 3: you can find online, about white Jesus and this idea
Speaker 3: that if an actual first century Jewish guy appeared in
Speaker 3: the United States, that Jesus appeared now, there's a good
Speaker 3: chance that immigration would jam him into the back of
Speaker 3: a van and disappear him into a concentration camp because
Speaker 3: our perception of Jesus in this country is very eurocentric.
Speaker 3: He's white. If I was to take and we find
Speaker 3: and I give examples in the speech of Jesus, is
Speaker 3: that reflect the cultures that believe. So there's a Native
Speaker 3: American Jesus, there's a Japanese Jesus, there is a Hindu,
Speaker 3: there's a Muscle Jesus, et cetera. If you go into
Speaker 3: those cultures, they're God to look like them. And if
Speaker 3: I was to take an African American Jesus, you know,
Speaker 3: on the cross or giving the sermon on the mountain,
Speaker 3: I was to walk into the standard American Protestant Baptist
Speaker 3: church and hold up that Jesus, they'd probably beat my ass.
Speaker 3: They would be offended, how this blasphemy?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Well, why what's the problem? You're supposed to be a
Speaker 3: personal Jesus. And so, with a lot of jokes sort
Speaker 3: of interspersed into the presentation, I walk through the early
Speaker 3: Caesars and early Rome and how that Jesus looked a
Speaker 3: lot like the Caesars. And we get into the artists
Speaker 3: who would pain Jesus to kind of look like themselves,
Speaker 3: almost like a self portrait, and bring us into the
Speaker 3: present day and lovingly tie it all back into humanism.
Speaker 3: And I leave everybody with three encouragements. If I was God,
Speaker 3: if I'd made a god in my own image, what
Speaker 3: would I encourage humanity to be and to do? And
Speaker 3: I leave with an encouragement. But you can just google
Speaker 3: or YouTube set Andrew's White Jesus and the speech will
Speaker 3: pop ride up. I think it runs about thirty five minutes.
Speaker 4: I don't want to give away the three commandments. People
Speaker 4: should go and watch the speech. But I am curious,
Speaker 4: as I said, as someone who's been a leading light
Speaker 4: in this movement in the online content space and helping
Speaker 4: to spread humanism and normalize atheism and make it okay
Speaker 4: for people for coming up to over fifteen nearly twenty
Speaker 4: years now, what is your message to others who are
Speaker 4: finding their way in this space, who maybe, as you say,
Speaker 4: it's been difficult times. Things can feel a little bit
Speaker 4: hopeless sometimes. So what are your words of encouragement for listeners?
Speaker 3: Well, I think primarily I would I would say give
Speaker 3: yourself some grace. This journey is often chess, not checkers.
Speaker 3: This is something that takes a while, and don't rush.
Speaker 3: Some people think, well, I should call myself an atheist
Speaker 3: but I don't know if I'm an atheist. Am I
Speaker 3: an agnostic or I'm an agnostic atheist? Or am I secular?
Speaker 3: Am I a doubter? Or am I a seeker? And
Speaker 3: I think get hung up on terms. Hey, I just
Speaker 3: say stop. You don't need a label, right. Your journey
Speaker 3: is not about a label that you have to put
Speaker 3: face it forward, you have to put it on a
Speaker 3: name tag for anybody else. It's just your journey, right,
Speaker 3: So take it at your speed, give yourself some grace
Speaker 3: for the times you have gotten it wrong, and we'll
Speaker 3: get it wrong. Be a sponge, ask a lot of questions,
Speaker 3: and understand that we are all humans trying to figure
Speaker 3: it out. No worthy God would ever punish anyone who
Speaker 3: is genuinely trying to figure it out and live truthfully.
Speaker 3: That's a great place to be when you understand that
Speaker 3: if there was a God, a truly benevolent God, worthy God,
Speaker 3: good God worth following, would never punish a child for saying,
Speaker 3: I just want to be right on this, I just
Speaker 3: want to live a on this. I just want it
Speaker 3: to be true, and I want to be able to
Speaker 3: prove it to be true. That's a noble thing and Certainly,
Speaker 3: no benevolent God would ever punish or send a hell,
Speaker 3: or annihilate or cause earthly calamity to someone who is
Speaker 3: trying to live truthfully. Even if you're still going through
Speaker 3: doubts about God, understand that you have every permission. And
Speaker 3: that's the second part. The church likes to say that
Speaker 3: we don't have permission to think for ourselves. Trust not
Speaker 3: in your own understanding. If you look at the whole
Speaker 3: of Christianity, even though it's framed as a love religion,
Speaker 3: it's really a dehumanizing scenario. Baptism is a great example.
Speaker 3: So if you go and you're baptized by immersion, this
Speaker 3: is symbolism. You are dying to yourself. Yourself has to
Speaker 3: die because you're so awful, you're unworthy. There is no
Speaker 3: one worthy, no not one, and you have to be
Speaker 3: risen again, raised again, a new creation in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: The Bible, the faith itself, in its fundamental literal form,
Speaker 3: says you can't figure this out. Let God do the
Speaker 3: thinking for you. And I always say, give yourself permission
Speaker 3: to do your own thinking, because your understanding is important,
Speaker 3: and because you are qualified to be able to walk
Speaker 3: in and say all right, fine, show me prove it
Speaker 3: or I'm not going to buy it. You have the
Speaker 3: authority to be able to do that. You have the
Speaker 3: autonomy to be able to do that. Liberate yourself. You
Speaker 3: don't owe anyone else any explanation for who you are,
Speaker 3: where you're going, or why you're not on this earth
Speaker 3: to keep them comfortable. And they don't get to invalidate
Speaker 3: your autonomy and authentic self and your worth as a
Speaker 3: human being on this planet. So once you give yourself
Speaker 3: permission to tell all the piety crowd and the funded
Speaker 3: bible banging piece people who tell you that your mind
Speaker 3: is infected and you must do this and you have
Speaker 3: to do that or else your incent the minute you're
Speaker 3: able to say no, you don't get to do that.
Speaker 3: Now I do get to ask these questions and expect
Speaker 3: good answers, and I am going to find my own voice,
Speaker 3: and I am going to live my values, and I
Speaker 3: am going to take this journey on my own terms.
Speaker 3: The second you give yourself permission to do that, every
Speaker 3: day after that, despite the challenges, every day after that,
Speaker 3: you had given yourself a gift. The authentic life is
Speaker 3: one of the biggest gifts you can possibly give to
Speaker 3: yourself and it will return to you every single day.
Speaker 3: It'll fill up your heart, it will you'll be comfortable
Speaker 3: in your own skin. And others may make it difficult
Speaker 3: because now you're not validating them. But your journey was
Speaker 3: never about them. Your journey is about you, and it
Speaker 3: is just fine that it's about you anyway. That's the
Speaker 3: encouragement that I usually give people who are deconstructing.
Speaker 4: Well, that's a wonderful way to end. I'd love to
Speaker 4: end on that note. I do have to ask you
Speaker 4: a standard closing questions. So we've spoken at length about
Speaker 4: things that you've changed your mind on it and how
Speaker 4: you've kept an open mind, But is there anything specific
Speaker 4: that you can share with us that you've changed your
Speaker 4: mind on recently.
Speaker 3: Sets I've mentioned the hot button word earlier, and this
Speaker 3: is going to be polarizing, but one of the big
Speaker 3: bad mustache twirling villains in the American story is socialism,
Speaker 3: and I, in my own life didn't understand. And I'm
Speaker 3: not an outright socialist, but I have embraced the term
Speaker 3: for me, a democratic socialist. I think understanding the responsibilities
Speaker 3: that societies have to society, you know, to individuals. I
Speaker 3: live in a country where we talk about freedom and
Speaker 3: it's all about individuals. It's many times a very myopic,
Speaker 3: self centered, selfish version of freedom. We saw this when
Speaker 3: people were being mandated to take the vaccine to keep
Speaker 3: other people safe, to help society. We see all of
Speaker 3: these things that are brought down and everybody wants to
Speaker 3: talk about freedom that nobody wants to talk about responsibility,
Speaker 3: and no one wants to talk about societies that have
Speaker 3: a responsibility to take care of each other. And so
Speaker 3: I have really in the last half decade embraced I
Speaker 3: used to be a Las Fair Jesus as a capitalist,
Speaker 3: free market guy way back in the day, but I
Speaker 3: have changed my mind to believe that, yeah, no, I
Speaker 3: have a societal responsibility and socialist type programs, for lack
Speaker 3: of a better way of saying them, we already use
Speaker 3: them in terms of our school Public schools are fire
Speaker 3: and safety, emergency services. There are state programs that benefit
Speaker 3: the poor. And I think we have to stop thinking
Speaker 3: in terms of rugged individualism, which is a catchword in
Speaker 3: right wing circles, and think, well, the individual is important,
Speaker 3: and autonomy is important. But if I'm going to be
Speaker 3: part of a society. I have a responsibility to that society.
Speaker 3: What is it and how do we create governmental programs
Speaker 3: to assist those who are disadvantaged, who don't have the
Speaker 3: head start that I have, who are going through men's suffering.
Speaker 3: Right If I'm going to decrease the suffering and increase
Speaker 3: the joy, well, I can't do it alone. I think
Speaker 3: we can provide a governmental structure, hopefully with a measure
Speaker 3: of accountability, someday, acting in a pro social and honest
Speaker 3: way to assist and to build the country that I
Speaker 3: want to live in. Right now, it's a free for all.
Speaker 3: It's a meritocracy, it's an oligarchy, it's a grift. The
Speaker 3: billionaires have become wealth hoarders. We get a trillionaire or
Speaker 3: close to a trillionaire, which is just obscene, And I
Speaker 3: think now there's no reason in a world of this
Speaker 3: much suffering that there should be billionaires. I think social
Speaker 3: societal social list democratically socialist programs. We can have democratic
Speaker 3: processes in place, but we also need programs that we
Speaker 3: are all funding to benefit the society that benefits us.
Speaker 3: Freedom with responsibility, and that's something I've really changed my
Speaker 3: mind on in the last few years to embrace the
Speaker 3: concept of democratic socialism. Seth, thank you so much for
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 4: There's so much more I'd like to ask, and I'm
Speaker 4: sure we'll get lots of questions from honestness as well.
Speaker 3: But this has been an absolute pleasure. It's lovely to
Speaker 3: be able to target humanism is it's just what I've
Speaker 3: been leading with. I just want the world to know
Speaker 3: that we're good. I'm good, You're good. People are good.
Speaker 3: And this thing that we walk through life with that
Speaker 3: we're all born with original sin, and we're all infected,
Speaker 3: and we're all unworthy, and we all deserve hell or
Speaker 3: annihilation or the grave or some sort of punishment because
Speaker 3: we're icky.
Speaker 2: And all this.
Speaker 3: Whenever we stop all of that nonsense and we see
Speaker 3: and acknowledge and promote the preciousness of being alive, it
Speaker 3: is just transform it. So any conversation about humanism, I'm in.
Speaker 3: You call me, I'm in, And so it's an honor
Speaker 3: to be able to talk about this subject.
Speaker 2: That's so dear to my heart.
Speaker 3: What we don't have gods and monsters, right, all we
Speaker 3: really have is each other. And that means we know
Speaker 3: what the work is and we know what needs to change,
Speaker 3: and we know who's going to have to change it,
Speaker 3: and the humanist within us should now be activated to
Speaker 3: go and change the world.
Speaker 4: Seth Andrews, thank you so much for joining us on
Speaker 4: Humanism Now.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's the conversation on the Humanism Now show. I
Speaker 3: appreciate James letting me play along. I'll link to his
Speaker 3: broadcast in the description box if you want to go
Speaker 3: and subscribe to his show, which is streaming on all
Speaker 3: major platforms. So all my best to him and to you.
Speaker 3: Then I will see you back here next time.
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