Speaker 1: In seventeen oh eight, so the story goes, a great
Speaker 1: ship called the Concordia was wrecked on the coast of Australia,
Speaker 1: with ninety survivors going inland and founding a colony in
Speaker 1: Central Australia. In eighteen thirty four, the Leeds Mercury newspaper
Speaker 1: published a story about a British Army expedition that had
Speaker 1: come across the survivors, and an eighteen fifty one Dutch
Speaker 1: magazine told of a British sea captain recounting a tale
Speaker 1: of carrying passengers that had met a Dutch colony living
Speaker 1: in a primitive manner. Dutch DNA found in modern native
Speaker 1: people from the area, European style cave paintings encountered by
Speaker 1: early explorers, and native women with Old Testament names encountered
Speaker 1: by early missionaries all make this story intriguing. Thirty years
Speaker 1: after the Leeds Mercury report, there was no trace of
Speaker 1: any colony, if they existed at all, they had disappeared
Speaker 1: entirely from Central Australia. All we are left with is
Speaker 1: fragmented and tantalizing pieces of information that may or may
Speaker 1: not inform that this story is true. So should we
Speaker 1: believe it? It is intriguing, perhaps to some even compelling,
Speaker 1: but should it be convincing? The pursuit of truth is
Speaker 1: very important, and how we assess the evidence and form
Speaker 1: our conclusions is a matter of discussion. Are we being biased?
Speaker 1: Are we motivated by the story being true? Does the
Speaker 1: evidence sufficiently support the claim? The great thing about the
Speaker 1: above story is that it would rewrite Australian history if
Speaker 1: it were true, and yet it hasn't convinced historians. Imagine
Speaker 1: if those historians hadn't only got those scraps of evidence,
Speaker 1: but had been brought up in a culture and society
Speaker 1: where tradition helds that the story was true, and believe
Speaker 1: in that story had influenced in shape society where in
Speaker 1: every city there was a monument to the colonists and
Speaker 1: holidays were organized around the alleged dates of the shipwreck
Speaker 1: and encounters with them. Would they be more inclined to
Speaker 1: believe it if they were steeped in a tradition that
Speaker 1: it was true. I think yes, And I think that's
Speaker 1: what persuades many religious people their faith is true. Not
Speaker 1: that the fragmented evidence is sufficient to infer it is true,
Speaker 1: but the tradition has told them that it is true.
Speaker 1: If you disagree, give us a call because the show
Speaker 1: is about to begin. Hello, Hello, welcome everyone. Today is
Speaker 1: May the eleventh, twenty twenty five. I'm your host, Richard Jilber,
Speaker 1: and with me today is a very surprise host, Aaron Jensen.
Speaker 1: How are you, Aaron, I'm well, a surprise, I'm here.
Speaker 2: I made it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we brought you in at last minute. Unfortunately Dan
Speaker 1: couldn't make it, and you were very kindly on hand
Speaker 1: to step in. So we are going to hopefully have
Speaker 1: a good one. We're going to get some fist calls in,
Speaker 1: and we're going to get some evidence for God's existence.
Speaker 1: Surely we are day.
Speaker 3: It's Mother's Day here in the United States. So what
Speaker 3: better day then to bring out evidence for God than
Speaker 3: on Mother's Day.
Speaker 1: Bring your mother as well and let her give us evidence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that don't even make sense.
Speaker 3: I don't know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Talk Keithen is a production of the Atheist Community of
Speaker 1: us in, a five h one c three nonprofit organization
Speaker 1: which is dedicated to the promotion of atheism, critical thinking,
Speaker 1: secular humanism, and the separation of religion and government. Talk
Speaker 1: Keithen is a life calling show and we have open lines,
Speaker 1: so get your calls in at five one two nine
Speaker 1: nine one nine two four two all from your computer
Speaker 1: at tiny dot c c slash call t H. But
Speaker 1: of course, before we do that, we're going to do
Speaker 1: what we normally do and go in for the question
Speaker 1: of the week. Let's welcome Eli to take it away.
Speaker 4: Hey, uh, yes, so it's time for our hot Heathen
Speaker 4: to me segments. We're we into you the question. Last
Speaker 4: week we asked you rewrite a scripture using modern slang
Speaker 4: on Here are the top three angel answer is chosen
Speaker 4: by Johnny p Angel Number three Miranda Rensberger Revelation twenty
Speaker 4: two fourteen from nrsvue. Blessed are those who wash their
Speaker 4: robe so that they will have the right to the
Speaker 4: tree of life and may enter the city by the gates.
Speaker 4: Modern slang version, Yo, smell check bra you on your
Speaker 4: last chance? Undis or what you best mow the laundry
Speaker 4: if you want to hang around here, because don't no
Speaker 4: one want you around? And that's thank asspit.
Speaker 3: Laundry. I that's that's a new approach to doing the line.
Speaker 3: I haven't heard, I have never mowed my laundry before.
Speaker 3: Also give that a try. I've never heard mo before.
Speaker 3: I seem to think it wouldn't last, you know, but
Speaker 3: I'll give.
Speaker 4: Yeah and yeah, that's the only time you can Number
Speaker 4: two from stealing time at work. A fool lip doth
Speaker 4: funk around and his mouth invites him to find out
Speaker 4: Proverbs eighteen six. I like that one a lot.
Speaker 3: That's opera po to kind of what's going on here
Speaker 3: in the United States is like, okay, this is what
Speaker 3: this is what we get now?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: Hm? Topical I guess is number one from Alan tenor
Speaker 4: modern slang Bible verse.
Speaker 6: NGL.
Speaker 4: Not gonna lie that apple over there really slaps, but
Speaker 4: if you door dash one, you'll literally get unalived in
Speaker 4: a hot minute, no cap.
Speaker 3: I like the unlive. I think is the best part
Speaker 3: of that is you know, with all the YouTube videos
Speaker 3: and filtering that the platforms do unliving and other words
Speaker 3: that people come up with the replace whereas that they
Speaker 3: can't use.
Speaker 1: Right, So I'd be glad that you did tell as
Speaker 1: what NGL men, because I had no idea being incredible.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Now that was just for me to demonstrate that
Speaker 4: I knew basically, like like I'm I'm like old enough
Speaker 4: for people to think I'm too old to talk like that,
Speaker 4: so I'm like, I still get it though. So the
Speaker 4: problemt for next week is how do you know when
Speaker 4: you've overstayed you're welcome at Bible study? Aaron, do you
Speaker 4: have an answer for this one?
Speaker 3: Usually I know I've overstayed my welcome when the lights
Speaker 3: go out. That's you want to know it's time to
Speaker 3: wrap things up. Their deaths, they are just gone. You know,
Speaker 3: they've talked themselves into bed, they're asleep. That's usually when
Speaker 3: I know I've overstayed my welcome. That's a pretty good indicator. Yeah,
Speaker 3: fair enough.
Speaker 1: Well, my niece, she's grown up now with two children,
Speaker 1: but we took her to a Bible study ones. They
Speaker 1: were playing in the sunfit during this Bible so that
Speaker 1: they this little out wooden figures in the sunfeit representing
Speaker 1: different tribes of Israel, and it sweeps them all up
Speaker 1: with the hands. This was the first time she'd ever
Speaker 1: been to any church service of any kind whatsoever. She
Speaker 1: sweeps them all up in the hand, stood up, held
Speaker 1: their arms aloft, threw them to the ground, and just
Speaker 1: shouted out, I am God. I am going to kill you.
Speaker 1: That is one way to get out of any Bible studies.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, I know I lived it.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. Maybe this isn't the best fit for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, these are both really good.
Speaker 3: Just what's in the Bible? I mean kind of I'm
Speaker 3: sure we can find a Bible story too where that's
Speaker 3: kind of happening. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, once you imitate God, I think they're ready for
Speaker 4: you to leave.
Speaker 3: So yes, that is definitely true.
Speaker 4: So we're anxious to see what the audience comes up with.
Speaker 4: In the comments section, give us your best answers and
Speaker 4: tune in next week to see the top three. And
Speaker 4: I'm gonna dip out. You guys have a good show.
Speaker 1: Thanks, thank you very much. Yeah, it's of course, it's
Speaker 1: not just us and Eli who make this thing happen.
Speaker 1: We do have a crew as well. As much as
Speaker 1: it pains me to say so, they do do a
Speaker 1: good job and deserve some accreditation for that. So let's
Speaker 1: have a look at them. There.
Speaker 3: They are.
Speaker 1: Bad eyes on one or two of those people, and
Speaker 1: they know why Wales it has not been forgotten. So
Speaker 1: while we're waiting for calls to come in, it is
Speaker 1: mother's day, But that is not an excuse not to
Speaker 1: call theists. I want to just I want to just
Speaker 1: remind the people on the Talk Heathen, on the eighth
Speaker 1: Community of Austin facebook page, and on the Atheist Community
Speaker 1: of Austin TikTok, and on my own TikTok page, and
Speaker 1: on the Atheist Community of Austin what's that on the
Speaker 1: Instagram page that's the one, all the pages, all these
Speaker 1: platforms where I have have interacted with religious people who
Speaker 1: have been down like slagging off our show and commenting
Speaker 1: on our videos and saying that the hosts don't know
Speaker 1: what they're talking about, the hosts are wrong, and have
Speaker 1: extended the invitation to call. Please do call. Don't just
Speaker 1: sit there doing nothing, don't just sit there, you know,
Speaker 1: being keyboard warriors. And I'm going to use that term
Speaker 1: because that is what a lot of these people are.
Speaker 1: The repeat commenters. You know, there's people on our YouTube
Speaker 1: videos who will preach week in week out on every
Speaker 1: single video we make, and I'm constantly telling them preaching
Speaker 1: is the least likely thing you can do to convince
Speaker 1: me that God exists. If you want me to be
Speaker 1: convinced that God exists, bring arguments, bring evidence. That's the
Speaker 1: thing that will convince me. In fact, if all you're
Speaker 1: going to do is preach at me, that tells me
Speaker 1: that you don't have good reasons to believe that God exists,
Speaker 1: You don't have good arguments, that you don't have any evidence,
Speaker 1: and that, for me, is a sure sign that you
Speaker 1: don't know what you're talking about. So don't just sit
Speaker 1: there tapping away your keyboard. Come in and talk to
Speaker 1: us directly. We're not going to buy it's you know,
Speaker 1: we're not going to shout at you. We want good conversations.
Speaker 1: And with that, we do have a call. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: we do have a call ready to go. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk to buddy, who says he respects the Pope
Speaker 1: and was prompted to call via the poll. So let's
Speaker 1: have a talk to buddy. Hey, buddy, how are you?
Speaker 5: Hey, how's it going? Richard?
Speaker 3: Very well?
Speaker 1: Thank you? How are you?
Speaker 5: I'm doing the best I can?
Speaker 1: Good? Good. So do you tell us in your own words,
Speaker 1: what is you want to talk about?
Speaker 6: Well, I.
Speaker 5: Joined the stream, and I saw the poll and I
Speaker 5: voted on it, and I'm one of the few people
Speaker 5: that was like, yes, I do respect the new Pope's views,
Speaker 5: even though I am an atheist and all of that.
Speaker 5: I just wanted to see how you guys feel about that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I'm not going to light here. I'm not
Speaker 1: familiar with the new Pope. I don't know what his
Speaker 1: views are. So if you could lay some of those
Speaker 1: out for me, and like, give us what you're thinking
Speaker 1: the kind of the best not just the best example
Speaker 1: of his views are, but the best example of his
Speaker 1: putting his views into action and kind of influences influencing
Speaker 1: his flock to do the same. If you have an
Speaker 1: example of that, have me just I think we may
Speaker 1: have had a couple of technical problems, but are you there?
Speaker 5: Oh goodness, I keep I keep getting bounced back and
Speaker 5: forth between you and the call screen.
Speaker 1: I apologize, So I don't know what how and that
Speaker 1: if you can, if you can give us an example, buddy,
Speaker 1: of what you think the kind of the best of
Speaker 1: the Pope's views are, but not just his opinion on them,
Speaker 1: but how he's actually influenced his flock into acting in
Speaker 1: such a way that represents these views that you're consider good.
Speaker 5: So they're My personal view is that the new Pope
Speaker 5: is going to have to do a transitional period between
Speaker 5: his papacy and uh, the previous pope, and that's that's
Speaker 5: going to be interesting to see how it goes, especially
Speaker 5: because Ship what was his.
Speaker 3: Name, Francis Francis.
Speaker 5: Uh, he was a very staunch supporter of UH regressive views.
Speaker 5: And I'm very interested to see how the new guy does,
Speaker 5: especially being an American born or American native.
Speaker 2: Quote unquote quote.
Speaker 5: That's going to be interesting. But he has given enough
Speaker 5: pushback to stuff that I can't necessarily speak to knowing
Speaker 5: the nature of the channel, but I'm interested to see
Speaker 5: what he does and just what the nuance that he
Speaker 5: brings to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll give them the benefit of the data first,
Speaker 3: and hopefully he can solve some problems that the Catholic
Speaker 3: Church has. You know, rampant sexual abuse is very much
Speaker 3: still a problem in the church, and they haven't seemed
Speaker 3: to be doing anything about it. I think that's the
Speaker 3: biggest problem that I would expect. I would hope any
Speaker 3: pope is going to solve that. That should be their number
Speaker 3: one priority is protecting kids, So I hopefully he gets
Speaker 3: on that really quick.
Speaker 5: One of the one of the primary ones that is
Speaker 5: on what I would like to see happen.
Speaker 1: Is just the abuse. Has he made any comment regarding
Speaker 1: that in the past that you know of it? Has
Speaker 1: what has been his opinion on that abuse? Then that's
Speaker 1: taken place?
Speaker 5: Oh oh, just the the way that the church has
Speaker 5: buried the treatment of you know, minors and younger people in.
Speaker 1: The church, condemning it, I would like to see brought
Speaker 1: to light. But has it Has it made comment on
Speaker 1: these previously that you know of? Uh?
Speaker 5: I am honestly not terribly uh well aware of any
Speaker 5: of their positions, but I would be very much interested
Speaker 5: in seeing how this gets addressed.
Speaker 1: Yes, so what is it specifically?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 1: What is it? What is it specifically said that has
Speaker 1: kind of media rather than just kind of appearing to
Speaker 1: be progressive. What has he specifically said that's kind of
Speaker 1: led you to think this guy could be a good pope.
Speaker 1: He's very progressive. He might kind of change out the
Speaker 1: shape of the church moving forward.
Speaker 5: And to be perfectly honest, I don't know. He's very
Speaker 5: recently been put into this position. Ultimately it's up to
Speaker 5: him to make that move. But at the same point,
Speaker 5: what I have seen so far is that he's said
Speaker 5: stuff that makes an orange person quite upset with.
Speaker 1: That, it is upset in somebody who's in power, regardless
Speaker 1: of that political spin. Is that enough to kind of
Speaker 1: give us confidence that the guy is actually progressive and
Speaker 1: may make changes for the for the positive what we
Speaker 1: would consider positive from a kind of perspective of humanism.
Speaker 5: That's that's a very good question. It's it's not a
Speaker 5: great baseline, but as in as an overall it's it's
Speaker 5: a good place to start. And specifically, like if you've
Speaker 5: been outside, outside is a very scary place recently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was gonna ask the same question that
Speaker 3: Richard asked us. Just because you upset the orange one,
Speaker 3: doesn't does that make you qualified for people to listen
Speaker 3: to you? And I would say, you know, probably not.
Speaker 3: You know, I really want to see a pope, uh,
Speaker 3: progressive maybe not be the right word that is going
Speaker 3: to appreciate that people would appreciate that aren't atheists, but
Speaker 3: someone who's going to let people love they want to love,
Speaker 3: who's going to let people live their lives that they
Speaker 3: want to live, whether it's Catholic or Christian or not.
Speaker 3: That he's going to preach what I think are the
Speaker 3: most important things that Jesus taught that to love one
Speaker 3: another and to serve your neighbor, and to love your
Speaker 3: neighbor and to help other people that are around you.
Speaker 3: And I hope that he doesn't continue to I shouldn't
Speaker 3: say continue, but I hope that he doesn't try to
Speaker 3: double down on intolerance and on the historical, you know,
Speaker 3: ideologies Christianity where things have the dogmatic aspect, where things
Speaker 3: have to be a certain way, and that he can
Speaker 3: lead people to be more loving and more accepting of
Speaker 3: the people around them. That's what I'd like to see
Speaker 3: from a pope, for any religious leader, honestly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's that's exactly the kind of things that
Speaker 5: I hope he would do. But he's just getting started,
Speaker 5: so we still got to give him a little bit
Speaker 5: of leeway to do what he's going to do, and
Speaker 5: hopefully it's going to be a good thing.
Speaker 3: Hopefully, I hope it is.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to lie. I'm not confident.
Speaker 5: Beyond that that beyond that will be proper for the
Speaker 5: after show, So I will let you guys get on
Speaker 5: to another color.
Speaker 1: All right, Okay, but thanks for your call. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I think for me, I think it's we are. I
Speaker 1: think for me it's important to kind of get this
Speaker 1: this idea of progressive. You know, what does that actually mean?
Speaker 1: You know, just just making noises about someone being progressive
Speaker 1: doesn't demonstrate for me that we've got, you know, a
Speaker 1: progressive guy coming in who's going to make a real,
Speaker 1: real difference to things that will have to be shown
Speaker 1: out in his actions. And the Catholic Church, from my
Speaker 1: understanding of there's you know, there's many, many denominations of Christianity,
Speaker 1: like Church is not up there with the most progressive
Speaker 1: of them. And I think, you know, coming in you
Speaker 1: upset in the apple car in an in an organization
Speaker 1: such as that, Being progressive in an organization such as
Speaker 1: that might be a long way off what I would
Speaker 1: consider being a progressive person. Aaron, what do you think
Speaker 1: on that?
Speaker 3: No, I totally agree. I think you're going to be
Speaker 3: the organization that you're a part of can only let
Speaker 3: you be so progressive. There's a there's a factor in
Speaker 3: the Catholic Church and how progressive you can be. I
Speaker 3: used to be Mormon, and it's the same thing in
Speaker 3: the Mormon Church. No matter how progressive somebody a leader
Speaker 3: in the Mormon Church wants to be. There's only so
Speaker 3: much the church, the other leaders that you have to
Speaker 3: work with. I'm the same with the pope. He may
Speaker 3: want to make sweeping changes, but he's he's still going
Speaker 3: to be responsible to be held to come up by
Speaker 3: the other cardinals, by the other members of the church.
Speaker 3: And if you get too progressive, you may lose members,
Speaker 3: and then there's butts and seeds and so I hate
Speaker 3: to say it, but if you're sitting at the top,
Speaker 3: it's a it's a calculus that you have to do.
Speaker 3: How progressive can I be and still maintain our power,
Speaker 3: our influence. Our butts and seeds are tithying those kinds
Speaker 3: of things.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, Yeah, I agree with you, So let's let's swiftly
Speaker 1: move on. So, the ACA wants you to know what
Speaker 1: is going on in our community. You can head over
Speaker 1: to www. Dot Atheist Hyphencommunity dot org where you can
Speaker 1: learn about the organization itself, it's policies, and how you
Speaker 1: can get involved. And another way to support us is
Speaker 1: by sending super chats. Get them in and we will
Speaker 1: read as many as we can if they are appropriate
Speaker 1: to do so. I'm pretty thick skinned out. I think
Speaker 1: you can get away with most things. We do have
Speaker 1: merch so get your talk keythan merch at tiny dot
Speaker 1: c c slash merch Aca. And I've not said this
Speaker 1: for a long time, but i will say this now.
Speaker 1: It probably won't affect many of you because you'll live
Speaker 1: across the sea from me, but any of our British fans,
Speaker 1: if I see you in the street wearing a piece
Speaker 1: of talk Heathen merchandise and you approach me and have
Speaker 1: your photo taken with me and we can publish that
Speaker 1: photo on the show, then I will buy you another
Speaker 1: piece of merchandise from my own pocket, of your choice.
Speaker 1: So if you are a British fan or an American
Speaker 1: fan and you happen to be visiting Britain and you've
Speaker 1: got your talk Heathen merch with you, wear it and
Speaker 1: if we bump into each other, might get you an
Speaker 1: extra piece for free, absolutely free in the UK. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do do do. Let me have a look.
Speaker 3: We don't have any superchats yet. I must say I'm
Speaker 3: kind of disappointed that we don't have any superchats yet.
Speaker 3: Come on, people were there that? Oh is that at
Speaker 3: super Chat? Watch Chris Conspiracy, biggest cover up in two
Speaker 3: thousand years. I have no idea what that is? Never
Speaker 3: heard of?
Speaker 1: I have not seen it.
Speaker 3: Did we just give someone some free screen time.
Speaker 1: That Hey, they send us two dollars. It's not free,
Speaker 1: they paid for it.
Speaker 3: Yes, I guess we're two thousand dollars for christ Spiracy.
Speaker 3: It's a groundbreaking documentary revealing the biggest cover up in
Speaker 3: two thousand years. Okay, yeah, very interesting. Okay, well, thank
Speaker 3: you for that super chat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we might having a couple of technical difficulties.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and take the next call. Let's
Speaker 1: see if we can do it. Yes, yes, Michelle, have
Speaker 1: we got you? Michelle? Are you there? No? I don't
Speaker 1: believe we do it. I've having a couple of technical difficulties.
Speaker 1: Just bear with me one second. Well, we try and
Speaker 1: soort this out. And in the meantime, Aaron, let's talk
Speaker 1: about what some people have said about me. Oh I
Speaker 1: have I was apparently criticizing religious people for being intolerant
Speaker 1: of the LBGTQ community, and someone responded to that saying,
Speaker 1: none of what I listed is objectively wrong in atheism.
Speaker 1: I am assuming that they think that there is nothing
Speaker 1: that can be objectively wrong because atheism has no ground
Speaker 1: for objective morality, And in response to that, I would say,
Speaker 1: listen here, cupcake, nobody has any grands for objective morality.
Speaker 1: So you know it's not just an atheism thing. I
Speaker 1: invite people who are religious, and to all your religious
Speaker 1: people who are listening now, I invite you to call
Speaker 1: and have this discussion with me. To show me where
Speaker 1: in the Bible, either through his actions or instructions, God
Speaker 1: demonstrates that there is an objective morality because there isn't
Speaker 1: anywhere where that occurs. What he does is demonstrates subjective
Speaker 1: morality all the way through it. And what's even more
Speaker 1: frustrating about this for me is the subjective morality is
Speaker 1: not inconsistent with most forms of theology. So I don't
Speaker 1: understand why kind of Christians and religious people thrust this
Speaker 1: kind of there must be an objective morality out there
Speaker 1: because it's not inconsistent with God, with theology. It's not
Speaker 1: an argument against God to say that morality is subjective.
Speaker 3: In my experience, people that have religious beliefs they pick
Speaker 3: and choose which part of religious beliefs they like, and
Speaker 3: they kind of either ignore or don't recognize the part
Speaker 3: that they don't like. That's subjective. That's subjectivity, right. And
Speaker 3: I think they do the same thing with those commandments
Speaker 3: that come down from on high. You know, mixed fabrics,
Speaker 3: people or mixed fabrics. That's not important anymore, right, you know,
Speaker 3: christ fulfill the law. And there's even more, you know,
Speaker 3: really heinous examples of genocide in the Bible. Nobody. I
Speaker 3: don't see many Christian preachers out there preaching genocide, chattel, slavery, awful,
Speaker 3: awful things that are still in the Bible that people
Speaker 3: just kind of say, well that was back then, or
Speaker 3: they somehow just you know, excuse it away, or just
Speaker 3: don't pay any attention to it. But they feel and
Speaker 3: they focus on the things that they like, which is
Speaker 3: which is I think is good. That's kind of humanist.
Speaker 3: Let's let's focus on the good parts, right, Let's take
Speaker 3: the good prows of all these things and and use
Speaker 3: those going forward, because we know they're good, they know
Speaker 3: they help people.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of my one of my I'm going to
Speaker 1: say favorite, I use the loose sleigh. One of my
Speaker 1: favorite kind of apologetics comes from a guy called Jonathan Sheffield.
Speaker 1: I don't know if any of you have heard of
Speaker 1: him as a scholar and apologist, and regarding the verse
Speaker 1: in Numbers where God orders the virgin girls to be
Speaker 1: taken a spoils of war, he argues that we shouldn't
Speaker 1: say that they are being sent into sex slavery because
Speaker 1: that is not true. They are not being sent into
Speaker 1: sex slavery. The context of the time is that they
Speaker 1: would have been forced to marry the soldiers and become
Speaker 1: their brides. I mean, come on, man, if that, if
Speaker 1: that's your defense of.
Speaker 3: It, yeah, oh they're getting married, They're forced being married.
Speaker 3: Oh that that fixes it. Yeah, that makes it okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If you if you want to kind of argue
Speaker 1: against us against that, if you kind of want to
Speaker 1: argue against us against this object objective morality thing, please
Speaker 1: do give us a call. You know, I love having
Speaker 1: these conversations. I don't get to have them anywhere near
Speaker 1: enough on this show. So if you want to kind
Speaker 1: of discuss the objective morality thing, I will be more
Speaker 1: than willing to take your call. The Numbers call is
Speaker 1: one five, one two nine nine one nine two four two,
Speaker 1: or you can use your drowser at tiny dot c
Speaker 1: c slash call t H Right. I'm going to bring
Speaker 1: Michelle back in. I think we've got everything works out, Michelle,
Speaker 1: are you there? I do apologize for the earlier debacles.
Speaker 2: No worries, sir, Richard, no worries.
Speaker 1: How are you doing and what is it you'd like
Speaker 1: to talk about.
Speaker 2: I'm doing very well, sir, Thank you for asking you.
Speaker 2: I would like to talk.
Speaker 6: About the kind of like the idea that that in
Speaker 6: my heart and my emotions I still linger and believe
Speaker 6: in a creator, whether I don't whether at the moment
Speaker 6: I don't know or no not, if that creator is
Speaker 6: deistic or deistic near or far closer distance, I know not. However,
Speaker 6: in my heart and emotions, somewhere lingering in there, there
Speaker 6: is something that says they or he or she is
Speaker 6: real and exists. Well in my mind, my mind, that's
Speaker 6: all foolishness. It's kind of like I harkened back to
Speaker 6: Brodo when Warmere tries to take the ring from him
Speaker 6: and he and process the Wormere. I know what you
Speaker 6: would say, and it would seem like with them except
Speaker 6: a part of me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great subjects. I think to talk about this. What
Speaker 1: I'm going to do is I'm going to pass it
Speaker 1: over to Aaron to kick this off because Aaron himself
Speaker 1: has deconstructed from religion, and we'll be able to talk
Speaker 1: from a personal perspective from this, whereas I have never
Speaker 1: been you know, I'm never really believing in God. I
Speaker 1: don't have this perspective. So I'll kind of go through
Speaker 1: some of the more technical stuff afterwards, but I'd like
Speaker 1: to hear what Aaron has to say on this first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, michell, so why do you think you want to believe?
Speaker 3: Why do you think that emotional What do you think
Speaker 3: you have that emotional need to believe that there's a
Speaker 3: creator out there? And what about the creator? Do you? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 3: why do you want to believe that? What's that emotional
Speaker 3: need about?
Speaker 6: Do you think I wouldn't call it so much an
Speaker 6: emotional need as well?
Speaker 2: It started out I would say as.
Speaker 6: An emotional need, but that need as I grew to
Speaker 6: know or or I won't say no, because I don't
Speaker 6: believe anyone can know something that is unfalsifiable in nature.
Speaker 6: But I will say know that perceived the concept of
Speaker 6: my perception of what this being more beings were and
Speaker 6: how they were interacting were not necessarily totally interacting with
Speaker 6: my world and with okay, but large and like and
Speaker 6: so it was more a it wasn't a need so
Speaker 6: much as a so much as a as what I
Speaker 6: said before, as it was kind of like a longing
Speaker 6: for something greater than myself.
Speaker 3: So you're you're longing for something that's greater than yourself,
Speaker 3: that that gives you some kind of what What is
Speaker 3: having that? What does that give you? Because you give
Speaker 3: you peace? Does it give you content contentment? Does it
Speaker 3: give you purpose? What do you think it gives you?
Speaker 2: Well, I'll see. I know we all want to I
Speaker 2: want to say.
Speaker 6: I know where you're going with this, like and please
Speaker 6: interrupt me if I'm wrong, Please interrupt me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 6: But like, are you going?
Speaker 2: Are you taking this down the route?
Speaker 6: Can I not find any of this contentment?
Speaker 2: And am? Maybe?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to understand because I think at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, I think, at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, your problem is not is common right? I
Speaker 3: think at the end of the day, we are emotional
Speaker 3: creatures and we make emotional decisions. And so having this
Speaker 3: belief in a have you wanted having this belief that
Speaker 3: there's a deist or a theistic god, or wanted there
Speaker 3: to be one and not be able to let it go.
Speaker 3: I think that's just kind of human nature, and so
Speaker 3: I think the only way to really understand it is
Speaker 3: to understand, Okay, what is this giving me? Why does
Speaker 3: my why does my emotional side want to have? I want?
Speaker 3: As is the best wad I can I can come
Speaker 3: up with?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 3: Want to hold on to this belief or have this belief?
Speaker 3: Is it bringing me peace? Is it sheltering me somehow?
Speaker 3: Does it give me a purpose? I mean yeah, So
Speaker 3: I'm just really trying to understand you, because I think
Speaker 3: it can be different for different people.
Speaker 2: I gotta say a couple of different reasons.
Speaker 1: What is Michelle? Michelle, let me just interrupt me very quickly.
Speaker 1: Are you on speaker phone by any chance?
Speaker 2: I'm on the call in. I was kind of I was,
Speaker 2: I was late.
Speaker 7: I was kind of sitting back in your computer.
Speaker 2: Can hear me better now?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's kind of a cracker line. I'm not sure what's
Speaker 1: causing it. So I was just wondering if it would
Speaker 1: speak a phone. But if you're not on speaker phone,
Speaker 1: that's fine, Just go ahead. Sorry.
Speaker 2: So what really draws keeps me in my heart?
Speaker 6: Belief?
Speaker 7: And I'm believing in my emotions is that you know,
Speaker 7: the God who thinks about me, who loves me, who
Speaker 7: cares about me, whether that's from Afar or near. The
Speaker 7: idea that I've had it dreams where I've actually literally
Speaker 7: been encompassed by angel wings and seen he been in
Speaker 7: my dreams and been a part of that place soaring
Speaker 7: in the clouds and the glowing and all kinds.
Speaker 2: Of stuff like that.
Speaker 6: It's just the imagery at all of the imagery, the
Speaker 6: beauty of the artistry of that whole story. We take
Speaker 6: all the bullshit and crime and genocide out of it
Speaker 6: and just say that God got a big ser campaign
Speaker 6: in most of the religions.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So it sounds like you're You're kind of you.
Speaker 3: You enjoy the the idea of it that it does
Speaker 3: bring you some kind It brings you some kind of
Speaker 3: sense of belonging maybe in something that's bigger than yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, And I think that's I think that's kind
Speaker 3: of how I define spirituality. Spirituality is this feeling, this
Speaker 3: desire that we all have to feel connected to something
Speaker 3: bigger than ourselves. And fortunately, unfortunately we've grown up in
Speaker 3: a society or a culture where that something that's bigger
Speaker 3: than us is God, right, it's typically Christianity, but it
Speaker 3: can be other things. And so look, having to let
Speaker 3: that go and means finding something else to be connected
Speaker 3: to and be something that that And a lot of
Speaker 3: people use nature, they go out in camp or they
Speaker 3: go hi. Can they feel connected to the world, to
Speaker 3: the earth around them. Some people go out and find
Speaker 3: great friend groups and they just feel that sense of
Speaker 3: belonging and connection with friend groups. And so yeah, usually
Speaker 3: if you're if your I don't know if your goal
Speaker 3: is to get rid of this emotion or just understand
Speaker 3: it or what's your what's your goal here?
Speaker 8: That was my second part of the question that I
Speaker 8: didn't put in. Am I okay in my.
Speaker 6: Position being an agnostic, atheist and anti theist, Well.
Speaker 8: Yet somehow in my heart and I want to also
Speaker 8: practice that by dayg.
Speaker 9: I've had I've suffered a concussion, a seizure, disorder.
Speaker 6: An uh A stroke and an aneurysm and a brain
Speaker 6: blee all in a short period.
Speaker 2: Of time maybe two and a half three and a
Speaker 2: half years.
Speaker 3: That's a lot.
Speaker 6: And so I don't know if.
Speaker 2: It's Yeah, it's lucky to be alive.
Speaker 6: I don't know that some of those injuries and conditions
Speaker 6: that still cause disciplin gering believe kind of like maybe
Speaker 6: a split bringing patient with that's wort of thing going on.
Speaker 6: So I don't know if there's any true way around
Speaker 6: it other.
Speaker 1: Than Michelle, I would suggest that the reason you have
Speaker 1: this lingering belief is because you are a human being.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you were listening at the
Speaker 1: top of the show where I recounted the kind of
Speaker 1: story of this vessel that had crashed on the coast
Speaker 1: of Australia, and if we took it away from that
Speaker 1: fragmented there's little bits of tantalizing information here and there
Speaker 1: which suggests that they might have been a colony of
Speaker 1: Dutch in Australia before we actually knew they were one
Speaker 1: who kind of had relationships with the Aboriginal people, and
Speaker 1: there was a colony there for some a number of years.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's lots of tantalizing bits that might
Speaker 1: make that true. But how much more convincing would that
Speaker 1: be if we'd been brought up in that culture they'd
Speaker 1: been up to have been told that that was true,
Speaker 1: not just there's this bit of information here that we're
Speaker 1: trying to piece together, but this is true. Our holidays,
Speaker 1: our culture, everything else is based on it. I would
Speaker 1: think that that would convince even with the same amount
Speaker 1: of evidence that we have, I would think that would
Speaker 1: convince far farm far more people that that was true
Speaker 1: than they're currently are. And I think that's very, very important,
Speaker 1: the fact that we're kind of being brought up in
Speaker 1: a society where we are told that this thing is true,
Speaker 1: where we're convinced that is true. And I think you know,
Speaker 1: you were talking about the labels you would use, and
Speaker 1: you know, is this belief consistent with those labels? And
Speaker 1: what I would say is, for the moment, just kind
Speaker 1: of forget about the labels. You know, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: whether you call yourself or people call you an agnostic
Speaker 1: athee or an antitheist, or a theist or a deist.
Speaker 1: What matters is what you are convinced of. And if
Speaker 1: you are convinced that God exists, then you are convinced
Speaker 1: that God exists. And let's look at the reasons why
Speaker 1: you are convinced that God exists or you know, when
Speaker 1: you get the opportunity explore yourself the reasons behind why
Speaker 1: you are convinced you exist. Rather than trying to fit
Speaker 1: yourself in a neat little box, have a look at
Speaker 1: the reasoning behind it. You know, there's lots of work
Speaker 1: being done in psychology and neurology that talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: the reasons people believe things. There's lots of biases that
Speaker 1: we are prone to, that our prains are prone to,
Speaker 1: just through the basis of the way it is evolved
Speaker 1: and the you know, these can be. They were good
Speaker 1: for us from a survival perspective, they're not so good
Speaker 1: for us in trying to assess what is true perspective. So,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a very hidden Psychology is very interesting
Speaker 1: because what it does is it shines a light on
Speaker 1: how our brain. It doesn't work as we tend to
Speaker 1: think that it works. It's not a computer. Our eyes
Speaker 1: on video cameras when we see the world, we aren't
Speaker 1: seeing like we would on a film, a video image
Speaker 1: and motion of image in motion. What we're taking is
Speaker 1: lots and lots and lots of little separate snapshots, and
Speaker 1: then the majority of what we experience in any given
Speaker 1: moment is our previous experience. Cross referencing those little bits
Speaker 1: of information that are coming in, and that is how
Speaker 1: we form opinions about the world. It's not all this
Speaker 1: stuff is coming in and it's pure and it's perfectly computed.
Speaker 1: That's not how the brain works. And I think having
Speaker 1: a look at this would you know, you know, going
Speaker 1: and going in your own time and having a look
Speaker 1: at this would really really shed a light on a
Speaker 1: lot of the reasoning behind why you are convinced that
Speaker 1: God might still exist. And I think that is far
Speaker 1: far more important than kind of stick trying to stick
Speaker 1: yourself in a label and in a box. Sorry, Michelle,
Speaker 1: go on, please, in my.
Speaker 6: Mind, I would say, in my head, in my thinker,
Speaker 6: I'm not convinced. I don't see any evidence, but in
Speaker 6: only in my heart, and even in my heart, I'm
Speaker 6: not convinced.
Speaker 1: But why is your heart? There is no There is
Speaker 1: no that. We don't have two separate things. We don't
Speaker 1: have a head which just does rational stuff and the heart,
Speaker 1: which does emotional irrational stuff. That's not how we work.
Speaker 1: That's not you know, our emotions and our brain and
Speaker 1: our consciousness are all part of the same system.
Speaker 2: And I share a hypothesis.
Speaker 1: You can indeed, and I will not mute you myself
Speaker 1: when I say that you can, so you can actually
Speaker 1: hear me. Please go ahead.
Speaker 2: Free to meet me. If you do, it's your show,
Speaker 2: go right ahead.
Speaker 3: But no, so you.
Speaker 8: Know, I know that the chemical that our emotions come
Speaker 8: from our brain, right because like our brains are producing
Speaker 8: all of those chemicals and neurons and electricity.
Speaker 6: That fire throughout our body and then get processed by
Speaker 6: our body, and then our body feels those emotions.
Speaker 2: Because of those chemicals.
Speaker 6: But I think sometimes when they go back to the brain,
Speaker 6: they change and then they send another signal, and those
Speaker 6: signals can sometimes say get bypassed and do a whole
Speaker 6: bunch of shrent things and odd things and say oh
Speaker 6: we don't like this, I like that, and then you
Speaker 6: have kinditive.
Speaker 1: Distance, Michelle. I have a very good friend who is
Speaker 1: also one of the ACAS nonprofits, called doctor Richard Firs
Speaker 1: god be here, who is an expert on emotions and
Speaker 1: in fact wrote the book on emotions, which is maybe
Speaker 1: very useful, you know, to kind of inform you on
Speaker 1: some of this stuff. It's called the Human History of Emotion.
Speaker 1: And this what Dr Richard would say, as soon as
Speaker 1: I heard you say, our brains form emotions I had
Speaker 1: Dr Richard Firth's God be Here heading my voice in
Speaker 1: my head saying no, no, it's not our brains. It's
Speaker 1: on emotions. It's our it's our whole kind of system
Speaker 1: that forms emotions. It's the chemicals, it's the it's not
Speaker 1: just neurons, it's a chemical reactions in our body. It's
Speaker 1: our goat has a lot to do with it. All
Speaker 1: of these things have a big part to play in emotion.
Speaker 1: We are we are a system. We are not just
Speaker 1: an isolated brain, you know. And there's a there's an
Speaker 1: interesting thing in biology which is often overlooked about. And
Speaker 1: I will shout about this till the ends of the earth,
Speaker 1: and I will criticize consciousness studies to the ends of
Speaker 1: the earth, because whenever you get consciousness studies, what you get,
Speaker 1: and you get these conferences about consciousness studies, what you
Speaker 1: get is you get a whole load of people in
Speaker 1: my field philosophy. There you get a whole load of
Speaker 1: psychologists say, you get a whole load of neurologists say,
Speaker 1: and they're all bantering about. But what you don't get
Speaker 1: is animal biologists consciousness conferences. And you should because there
Speaker 1: is a thing in biology called the unvault, and it
Speaker 1: is the sensory perception of a particular species. Is so,
Speaker 1: as a human species, we have a particular sensory perception
Speaker 1: which is related to our biology. An ant, or a
Speaker 1: bat or a dog as a completely different sensory perception
Speaker 1: because it has a completely different physical makeup. So emotions
Speaker 1: and consciousness are far more than just the brain doing shit.
Speaker 1: It's the whole physical makeup. It's the whole body, it's
Speaker 1: the it's the all chemical interaction between it. This is
Speaker 1: a fascinating and you will see me get animated on
Speaker 1: this because this is something I it's something that's in
Speaker 1: my field and something I love talking about. And it's
Speaker 1: very very important that we take all of this into
Speaker 1: account when we're talking about how we interpret reality and
Speaker 1: how we kind of assess what might be true and
Speaker 1: might not be true. And that's why I say to it,
Speaker 1: it's so important not to say that the head does
Speaker 1: this and the heart does this, because we are a system, right.
Speaker 6: I guess, yeah, thank you, sir Richard, that I just
Speaker 6: need to be built in like I get that the
Speaker 6: whole boy. Yeah, now I'm understanding more like the whole
Speaker 6: body and the God, the heart, the head, everything, the bones,
Speaker 6: the marrow, everything, Like you can feel emotions in different
Speaker 6: parts of the body at any given moment, and the
Speaker 6: body is so like an integral in how we perceive
Speaker 6: the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And one of the damaging things that I think
Speaker 3: religion can do and Christianity and my experience did to
Speaker 3: me was it actually tries to separate your brain from
Speaker 3: your body. It tries to It tries to tell you
Speaker 3: that we're like these spiritual beings having this physical experience
Speaker 3: on earth, and so we have to not we have
Speaker 3: to deny our body, have to deny our emotions, what
Speaker 3: we're feeling, what we want, and we have to be
Speaker 3: purely in our heads. I know that my religion did
Speaker 3: that to me, and so it's really and I'm literally
Speaker 3: learning and working on every every day trying to integrate
Speaker 3: back my brain and my body and understanding what I'm
Speaker 3: feeling and what I'm thinking and realizing I'm one big system,
Speaker 3: one big connected thing. I'm not. I'm not just as
Speaker 3: I heard someone describe once, not just this head that
Speaker 3: my body body moves around from room to room, right,
Speaker 3: and this whole, this whole human being. Yeah, does that
Speaker 3: make sense?
Speaker 6: Well that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you guys had anything more to say,
Speaker 6: but I'm allbun.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is my come out.
Speaker 9: Public trans I mean, I'm coming out publicly, like Michelle
Speaker 9: is my my trans name, and I have a couple
Speaker 9: of different lady names that I go buy trans names,
Speaker 9: but they're all feminine sounding, and so yeah.
Speaker 3: Congratulations on congratulations and thank you for doing that out
Speaker 3: here with us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we appreciate that very much. So and you know,
Speaker 1: we hope that our community. Sorry Michelle, go ahead.
Speaker 2: Did you mind Richard that I did that? Is that
Speaker 2: okay on your show?
Speaker 1: Of course it's okay. Yeah, Look this this community is
Speaker 1: here for you, you know. And you know, if if
Speaker 1: you want to if you want to discuss your journey
Speaker 1: and your identity and you want to talk to someone
Speaker 1: who's had that experience, called back when Dr Ben's hosting,
Speaker 1: because Dr Ben is a trans man, so you know,
Speaker 1: Dr Benn has lived that and he will be able
Speaker 1: to kind of you, you know, if you're just beginning
Speaker 1: on this journey. Dr Ben is you know, he's been
Speaker 1: doing this in the public space, talking about this in
Speaker 1: the public space for a long time. And he might
Speaker 1: be able to give you some helpful advice. But absolutely
Speaker 1: you are welcome to do it on our show. You
Speaker 1: you you stand from the rooftops and and say on
Speaker 1: our show, Michelle, because you are more than welcome to
Speaker 1: do that, and you are more than welcome to call
Speaker 1: back any time and continue discussing your your journey through
Speaker 1: your identity or your journey through your belief with us
Speaker 1: at any time you want to do.
Speaker 2: Thank you, sir Richard. And was it William moves on
Speaker 2: Aeron Aeron. That was my next guest, A.
Speaker 1: Thank you. That was a great call. It was a
Speaker 1: great Callah, so many many reasons I don't get chance.
Speaker 1: And I can see a j I can in my
Speaker 1: mind's eyes sat in the back laughing because she knows
Speaker 1: that I get so so animated and expressive when I
Speaker 1: talk about consciousness. It really really is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite subjects to talk about. And it really does infuriate
Speaker 1: me when we get this kind of snobbery in consciousness
Speaker 1: studies that kind of for some reason, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what the reason is that excludes to such an
Speaker 1: extent non human animal consciousness studies. There is so much
Speaker 1: great work being done on different animals, and as I
Speaker 1: said earlier, this thing is called the unvault, a sensory
Speaker 1: bubble that is their world that perceives the world as
Speaker 1: a species. There is so much great work that's been
Speaker 1: done with so many different animals and through so many
Speaker 1: different aspects, from spiders to bats, to whales to dogs.
Speaker 1: There's a great I think it's on I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if it's on Netflix. Is a documentary at the moment
Speaker 1: about how dogs sense the world and see the world,
Speaker 1: which is I watched that recently, and that's a great
Speaker 1: program as well. And there's so much out there, so
Speaker 1: much information out there, and we seem to completely ignore
Speaker 1: it when we talk about consciousness studies. And it is
Speaker 1: so baffling to me when it is so blatantly obvious
Speaker 1: that the physical makeup of a species has so much
Speaker 1: to do with its consciousness and how it perceives the world,
Speaker 1: and ignoring that, ignore that at your peril people, because
Speaker 1: it's ignorant to do so, I think. And I will
Speaker 1: stand loud and proud on my soapbox and scream about
Speaker 1: this to the consciousness community at every opportunity I get,
Speaker 1: because there's something I'm passionate about we need to do
Speaker 1: more of our and police.
Speaker 3: So it's a really fascinas and fascinating topic. You know,
Speaker 3: we're all these unique individuals and we're all we're all
Speaker 3: conscious conscious whatever that means. But consciousness makes you think
Speaker 3: that you're you came from somewhere, almost like there's and
Speaker 3: the thought of a consciousness like didn't exist once. Now
Speaker 3: it exists, and then it's going to stop existing. It's
Speaker 3: hard for the consciousness itself to accept that kind of fact.
Speaker 3: You know that it's gonna that it just came out
Speaker 3: of nowhere and then it's going to go away eventually.
Speaker 3: And and uh, the studying animals I think is crazy.
Speaker 3: It's it can be. It's really fascinating to see the
Speaker 3: ways that scientists can study other animals and figure out,
Speaker 3: even though we can't talk to them, figure out how
Speaker 3: they perceive the world, how they understand the world. Super
Speaker 3: clever scientists out there studying. I think it to be
Speaker 3: super clever to study those kinds of things. Pretty fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love I love the whole field.
Speaker 1: I love I mean my wife, I love psychology as
Speaker 1: a layman. My wife's an educational psychologists as well. So
Speaker 1: I get to kind of into a really really expensive
Speaker 1: books that I don't have to buy to read some
Speaker 1: of these like proper studies that have been done. So
Speaker 1: it's really good. I find it really fascinating and just
Speaker 1: I think we need to do more, then, needs to
Speaker 1: be more to just to educate people on how the
Speaker 1: human brain works and how human consciousness works. And I
Speaker 1: think this would dispel if people educate themselves, this would
Speaker 1: dispel a lot of people who do believe in God.
Speaker 1: Bringing it back to the last call of bringing it
Speaker 1: back to Michelle. My wife obviously has been married to
Speaker 1: me being my wife. That's what married people, don't, they
Speaker 1: are married to each other. We had conversations for years
Speaker 1: and years and years. She was a theist, and we
Speaker 1: had conversations for years and years and years, you know,
Speaker 1: talking through kind of epistemology and things like that. And she,
Speaker 1: you know, no matter how much I talked to her,
Speaker 1: she didn't relinquish her believing God. What made her relinquish
Speaker 1: her believing God was doing a master's degree in psychology
Speaker 1: and actually having that Eureka moment for herself, of shit,
Speaker 1: this is how the brain works, This is how we
Speaker 1: relate to things. And it was doing that, it was
Speaker 1: doing the homework herself that actually kind of brought her
Speaker 1: out of theism. And I think we need to push
Speaker 1: education now. I know there's some things in the US
Speaker 1: at the moment where you know, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get political, but education is not high on the agenda.
Speaker 3: And frustrating.
Speaker 1: Richard is exceptionally frustrating. And to my mind, to my mind,
Speaker 1: education should be the highest agenda, and how we interpret
Speaker 1: the world should be the highest of the education agendas.
Speaker 1: You know, just learning how can you operate as a society,
Speaker 1: as a function in society if you do not know
Speaker 1: how you work yourself? That baffles me, It really really
Speaker 1: does baffle me. And there was the frustrating thing about
Speaker 1: it is it's not like it's a fringe thing and
Speaker 1: it's just a couple of mad people on the internet
Speaker 1: like me shouting about it, saying, you know, we should
Speaker 1: have this in education. This is mainstream stuff. This is
Speaker 1: mainstream stuff that everybody should know about.
Speaker 3: And totally, yeah, we should be teaching people about it.
Speaker 3: How the brain works, why the brain works. The brain
Speaker 3: is not reliable, what's reliable? How do we know? We
Speaker 3: know there definitely needs to be a pistemology classes in
Speaker 3: high schools. Here we need to be paying teachers more.
Speaker 3: But in educated in educated populous is harder to control. Yeah,
Speaker 3: well put it at that.
Speaker 1: We have some super chats and we have some patrons.
Speaker 1: So what I'm going to do is we'll go through
Speaker 1: the patrons first year. I have the list of patrons
Speaker 1: in front of your Aaron, would you like to read
Speaker 1: them out?
Speaker 3: Let's see here, where are the page? I don't think
Speaker 3: I have the patrons here.
Speaker 1: I will read to the patrons out then in lou
Speaker 1: of you having the list. So the top five patrons
Speaker 1: are number one Oops All Singularity, number two Dinglebridge Jackson,
Speaker 1: number three Coleeve, Hella Vetti, number four Brian Zuppke, and
Speaker 1: number five J Colton. And an honorable mention goes to
Speaker 1: six and I can see my me and my wife
Speaker 1: have been married so long. An honorable mention to number six.
Speaker 1: It's you, So right, let's get that sillin us out
Speaker 1: of the way. We also have some super chats. So
Speaker 1: there's a super chat we have from Miranda Rensberger who
Speaker 1: has been a member for one year and kindly sent
Speaker 1: ten dollars and says it might be worth traveling to
Speaker 1: Britain stalking Richard just to get a free piece of
Speaker 1: Toki the merchandise. Something to consider absolutely, stalk away Nero
Speaker 1: Marlott said five dollars and says happy Mother's Day. All
Speaker 1: of your mamas out there are awesome and shouldn't really
Speaker 1: do that. In my actension, all of you all mamas
Speaker 1: out there are awesome and beautiful and kick ass warriors.
Speaker 1: Respect is due absolutely and Aladdin, and Aladdin sends twenty
Speaker 1: Danish corona. I think that is if I'm not mistaken, if.
Speaker 3: I am Darkey kN king Kingdom's.
Speaker 1: Kingdom, yev. We'll go with that one, and says time
Speaker 1: is an illusion, lunchtime double. So yes, we have open lines.
Speaker 1: So if there are many sists, don't let Mother's Day
Speaker 1: get in the way, give us a call, especially if
Speaker 1: you're one of the very, very brave people who've been
Speaker 1: doing the keyboard warrioring in our various platforms.
Speaker 3: We're nice, we want to have a conversation. Look at Richard,
Speaker 3: he's had tough conversations with his wife and still he's
Speaker 3: still married. Right, they go through it. Richard's a nice guy.
Speaker 3: He's not going to be mean.
Speaker 1: I might be mean, depends, but I'm un likely to
Speaker 1: be mean. If you're come in good faith, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to be mean. Oh, we have someone in chat.
Speaker 1: I don't often call people out in chat, but Maverick,
Speaker 1: being frank, says the evidence all points to a designed universe.
Speaker 1: Anyone who doesn't realize the assumption that the universe is
Speaker 1: not designed is not only logical. But I'm getting that wrong.
Speaker 1: Is he arguing against someone saying it's designed. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you think the universe is designed, give us
Speaker 1: a call. I might have read that.
Speaker 3: I might have a conversation about that. Theers is definitely
Speaker 3: not designed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's a big that's a big, big fail.
Speaker 3: So for engineering, someone who designs things, universe is not designed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's go back to, you know, talking about
Speaker 1: people who've disagreed with me. We have someone on comment
Speaker 1: number two crew who has said the hate of God
Speaker 1: is unmatched. You spend your entire day mocking the real
Speaker 1: God and leaving other gods. This, I have to say,
Speaker 1: is complete nonsense.
Speaker 3: Heat.
Speaker 1: I think what they're trying to say is that we
Speaker 1: kind of we are only picking on I assume the
Speaker 1: Christian God, because that's usually the kind of message again
Speaker 1: and leaving the other gods out of it. So let
Speaker 1: me tell you. Let me tell you that I have
Speaker 1: been having these conversations for well over thirty years. I
Speaker 1: have in that time talked to Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians,
Speaker 1: of all different denominations, people of kind of nature religions,
Speaker 1: people of pagan religions, all these different kinds of people
Speaker 1: I have had a conversation with, and they call the
Speaker 1: show we had a conversation. In fact, I believe it
Speaker 1: was last time Aaron was on where we had a
Speaker 1: lengthy conversation with a Buddhist caller. We have all sorts
Speaker 1: of conversations with all sorts of different people. We don't
Speaker 1: just pick on one god or challenge one god. That's
Speaker 1: not what we do. What we do, in fact do
Speaker 1: on this show and Christians, if you don't like us
Speaker 1: only talking to Christians, you can help us here. What
Speaker 1: we do is we talk to the people who call
Speaker 1: into the show. So if a Christian calls in, we
Speaker 1: talk to them. If a Muslim calls in, we will
Speaker 1: talk to them. If a Buddhist calls in, we will
Speaker 1: talk to them. If you want to see us Christians
Speaker 1: talk to more non Christian people, then by all means
Speaker 1: share the show. Go into your local mosques and go
Speaker 1: into your local temples, and go to our website and
Speaker 1: download the flyers that we have available and go and
Speaker 1: stick it on if it is safe to do so,
Speaker 1: on their bulletin boards, and you can help us get
Speaker 1: more non Christian callers. There they are look on the screen,
Speaker 1: they look very much like that. Download them and go
Speaker 1: into your local mosques and going to your local temples
Speaker 1: and go into your local goodwarrus and please please stick
Speaker 1: them up on the bulletin board with permission, and you
Speaker 1: know we will get more non Christian callers we tend
Speaker 1: to have. Well listen to this from mind blowing. So
Speaker 1: the ACA is the Eightist community of Asin Austin is
Speaker 1: in Texas. Texas is in the US. The main religion
Speaker 1: of the US is Christian. Most of our callers speak
Speaker 1: the same language as the main callers in the US,
Speaker 1: so while Christian and that is English, and therefore by
Speaker 1: some weird, weird coincidence that means we have more Christian
Speaker 1: callers than other religions from maybe regions that don't speak
Speaker 1: so much English and don't have predominantly Christian religions and
Speaker 1: no ACA in their area. Really weird, that isn't it.
Speaker 3: So it's how that works out. If you're in California,
Speaker 3: you're mostly surrounded by Californians, and when you're in Texas
Speaker 3: you're mostly surrounded by Texans. It's kind of weird. How
Speaker 3: when you're in a country that's mostly Christian, you're you
Speaker 3: mosto get Christian callers. That's kind of weird. But yeah,
Speaker 3: we are no respector of gods here. We will we
Speaker 3: will gladly demolish any belief in God, regardless of who
Speaker 3: they God is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I'm still waiting for the person who was mentioned
Speaker 1: in the chat who, whether it was them or whether
Speaker 1: they are talking to someone else, the person who is
Speaker 1: claiming that the universe is designed please call in again.
Speaker 1: The number is five one two nine nine nine two
Speaker 1: four two, or you can visit tiny dot c c
Speaker 1: slash call th I'd.
Speaker 3: Love to hear We'd love to hear evidence for that.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we would love to have that conversation with you.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, I'm going to pick on more people
Speaker 1: who've decided to pick on me, and the number three
Speaker 1: comment that people have pought to me is that they
Speaker 1: call its faith for a reason. Gules see in the end,
Speaker 1: not all things can be explained, doesn't mean they're not real.
Speaker 1: God bless. I hope you find happiness. To believe nothing
Speaker 1: must be a miserable existence, and that was aimed towards me.
Speaker 1: This is I find this one again. This one is
Speaker 1: so full of different stuff with good address, it's actually ridiculous.
Speaker 1: The one point I do kind of want to address
Speaker 1: in and just from a personal point, is that I
Speaker 1: must be miss I must have a miserable existence. I
Speaker 1: can tell you I am the happiest motherfucker alive on
Speaker 1: the planet. I am happy, almost unrelentlessly happy, almost all
Speaker 1: of the time, and to the point that it really
Speaker 1: didn't annoise people because I am so happy, and so
Speaker 1: I'm not miserable. I love life. I think life's great.
Speaker 1: I've had a very privileged life. I've been very lucky.
Speaker 1: I wasn't indoctrinated into believing that a man in the
Speaker 1: sky created everything, so I didn't have that massive burden
Speaker 1: around my neck. I've had a really great life. I'm
Speaker 1: happy life.
Speaker 3: And I and I am getting happier as I deconstruct
Speaker 3: my religion more and more. What makes me, what's making
Speaker 3: me miserable? It's all the religious baggage and all the
Speaker 3: it's all the ship that religion put on me. The
Speaker 3: way I should be, the way I was supposed to be,
Speaker 3: the way I was supposed to live my life. That
Speaker 3: just wasn't true and authentic to who I am. And
Speaker 3: now that I'm learning to be more true and authentic
Speaker 3: learning who I am, I'm way I'm a way happier person. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I kind of just address a Maverick being
Speaker 1: frank again in the audience, or the monster dealing with amicably.
Speaker 1: But you know they're saying that that argument for a
Speaker 1: designed universe is irrefutable. Give us a call.
Speaker 3: I will refute it.
Speaker 1: I will put I will tell you now on this
Speaker 1: spot because I have no callers in the queue and
Speaker 1: I'm struggling for it to talk about me, and I
Speaker 1: will refute it. You you sit there and boast in
Speaker 1: my chat that your argument is irrefutable, and you will
Speaker 1: get called out to call into the show, and I
Speaker 1: can absolutely guarantee you that I will refute your argument.
Speaker 3: I wonder why it's so important to them that their
Speaker 3: argument is irrefutable. Yeah, it's them.
Speaker 1: It's so irrefutable. They've got to sit there and tap
Speaker 1: away on the keyboard and tell everybody in the chat
Speaker 1: that it's irrefutable, rather rather than calling in and telling
Speaker 1: the thousands and thousands and thousands of people who are
Speaker 1: going to watch this show on replay that it's, you know,
Speaker 1: how irrefutable.
Speaker 6: It is.
Speaker 1: Really weird, that really weird, Aaron in Loo of callers.
Speaker 1: You know you've you've never been on this show in
Speaker 1: a while. Tell us a little bit about yourself and
Speaker 1: your ground. You mentioned Earlie you were a moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was raised Mormon, born and raised. I was,
Speaker 3: as I've heard it's in. I was in it to
Speaker 3: win it. Wanted to be, you know, return and live
Speaker 3: with Heavenly, with God, with heaven Father after I died.
Speaker 3: So I was, you know, an obedient Mormon. I got
Speaker 3: baptized when I was eight. I mean, nobody really that's
Speaker 3: usually when you get baptized as a Mormon, you don't
Speaker 3: as an eight year old, you don't really have much
Speaker 3: of a choice in it. You kind of do it
Speaker 3: because everybody tells you to do it. But then I
Speaker 3: went on a mission when I was nineteen, served for
Speaker 3: a couple of years there, came home, got married, started
Speaker 3: having kids. You know, the Mormon church is they give
Speaker 3: you the they give you the check. Let's they tell
Speaker 3: you how to live your life. Do this, and then
Speaker 3: do this, and then do this, and then do this,
Speaker 3: and and I was I did my best. I worked hard,
Speaker 3: I had I had responsibilities. I believed it. I was
Speaker 3: a true believer. And then it wasn't until my son
Speaker 3: was born, way back in two thousand and five where
Speaker 3: it all started to crumble down. Because my whole life
Speaker 3: I was taught that God is loving, God is perfect,
Speaker 3: and one my son was born, I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I have this incredible, incredible love for my son. I
Speaker 3: would literally do anything to help him, to protect him.
Speaker 3: I would move I would literally move mountains. If he
Speaker 3: needed me, I would hop on a plane, be there,
Speaker 3: no matter what the cost.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 3: And I realized that I did not get that from God.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I was not receiving any of that help, any of
Speaker 3: that comfort, any of that it's gonna be okay, reassurance.
Speaker 3: I know life is hard. God was just like he
Speaker 3: was actually absent from my life and That's when I
Speaker 3: started to kind of deconstruct what was going on. It
Speaker 3: took about eight years before I stopped going to church,
Speaker 3: and then another few years before I was like, no,
Speaker 3: I can't do this anymore. It was actually I was
Speaker 3: on YouTube and the algorithm showed me an atheist Community
Speaker 3: of Austin video and listen to that video, and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, this Matt Dilla, hunty guy. He makes
Speaker 3: a lot of sense, and started watching videos down their podcast,
Speaker 3: started listening to the podcast, and literally within two or
Speaker 3: three months of watching ACA videos, I would call myself.
Speaker 3: I started calling myself in atheist. I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I had no reason to believe that God existed, I
Speaker 3: had no reason to believe the church was true. It
Speaker 3: was it's all just it's all just made up. And
Speaker 3: then I've been deconstructing my faith ever since.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely so I've got some questions for you based
Speaker 1: based on that. First of all, is it true that
Speaker 1: you warm underwear that was made out of a material
Speaker 1: not is similar to this?
Speaker 3: Yes, yep, it's just like it looks like a cotton shirt,
Speaker 3: just like this. I still wear one. This is this
Speaker 3: is not the Mormon one. This is just a white
Speaker 3: T shirt that you get to Haynes or whatever. But yeah,
Speaker 3: just wear a white who looks like a T shirt
Speaker 3: under your clothes.
Speaker 1: Yep. The magic underwear of the Mormon Church.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, called the garment. Is the is the official
Speaker 3: name for it, but everyone else calls it the magic underwear.
Speaker 1: Yes, And did you go on pilgrimage not pilgrimage on mission?
Speaker 1: So I don't know.
Speaker 3: I serve. I serve the mission. I was called to
Speaker 3: serve in the Fresno, California Spanish speaking Mission. So I
Speaker 3: served in the United States, but learned Spanish and taught
Speaker 3: uh Spanish speakers in the San Ua Valley of California.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so you had to learn Spanish specifically to
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 3: Yes, I had learned Spanish. They could send you to
Speaker 3: the MTC. If you're learning in a language, you go
Speaker 3: for about two months and then they send you out
Speaker 3: to the field. If you're not learning a language, they
Speaker 3: send you there for three weeks to trend you out
Speaker 3: to be a missionary. Then you get sent out. And yeah,
Speaker 3: so I could probably still today, I might be able
Speaker 3: to have a somewhat coherent conversation about religion in Spanish.
Speaker 3: But I could not have every day regular discussion about
Speaker 3: anything as bad. I couldn't. I couldn't name five things
Speaker 3: in my house using their Spanish names. Well once we
Speaker 3: only use Spanish when we were teaching the gospel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was there a little bit of disappointment that
Speaker 1: you didn't get sent outside of the US on mission?
Speaker 3: Yeah? A little bit, Yeah, because that's kind of more.
Speaker 3: It's more, it seems more adventurous, right, it seems more
Speaker 3: glamorous to go out and be in a in a
Speaker 3: foreign country.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember speaking to a moment a great guy. Great
Speaker 1: guy was from about twenty miles outside of Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was speaking to him and he
Speaker 1: told me that we were actually speaking about Michael Jackson.
Speaker 1: Is the missionary was with was talking about Michael Jackson.
Speaker 1: And it had such a blank look on his face.
Speaker 1: And it turned out that it'd never heard of who
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson was. He'd been lived in such an isolated community.
Speaker 1: He never even heard of Michael Jackson. And the guy
Speaker 1: was so sweet, it was so nice. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: you will know yourself and that this is kind of
Speaker 1: everybody that you know, the guys who go on mission.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you were the same when you went
Speaker 1: on mission, did it? Sincerely? Really really nice nice people
Speaker 1: really you know, willing to do anything for people. But
Speaker 1: the church behind that is so manipulative and kind of
Speaker 1: controlling that it's kind of two separate worlds, and that
Speaker 1: you until you're not actually allowed to go to the temples,
Speaker 1: as I understand it, until you've passed the temple test
Speaker 1: to see if you're worthy of going to the temple.
Speaker 3: Yes, the more mature is very big on obeying the commandments,
Speaker 3: on keeping the commandments that they're that's and before you
Speaker 3: can go to the temple, they have a list of
Speaker 3: questions and they ask you are you keeping all of
Speaker 3: these commandments? There's like ten or twelve, I can't remember
Speaker 3: how many there are, but yeah, they ask you all
Speaker 3: the questions and if you can't answer note any of them,
Speaker 3: or you're not obedient, you can't, well they give you
Speaker 3: they give you a piece of papers called temple recommend
Speaker 3: and if you if you don't answer all the questions,
Speaker 3: then you can't get a recommend you can't go into
Speaker 3: the temple. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, that's really amazing. I think I think
Speaker 1: a lot more people could do with learning a lot
Speaker 1: more about the moment church because it is including many
Speaker 1: many practicing Yeah, because it is so it is so fascinating,
Speaker 1: how it I mean, it really is. I mean, you've
Speaker 1: got a modern religion that begun where you know, the
Speaker 1: founder of the religion was killed in prison, and you
Speaker 1: know it was it was brought up on fraud chargers
Speaker 1: and it was killed in prison. And many members of
Speaker 1: the church don't even know this, and when when it
Speaker 1: is given to them, it's given such a such a
Speaker 1: spin that it's completely reframed that he was Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was in prison for his own protection, and and you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah it is. It really is, and it comes from
Speaker 1: very much from the top in the latter day, since
Speaker 1: it doesn't look unfortunately like our brave keyboard warrior from
Speaker 1: the chart is going to call in and and it
Speaker 1: is Mother's Day, so I kind of I'm going to
Speaker 1: kind of give it to the thieves today that you know,
Speaker 1: I don't begrudge anyone spending time with the with the mothers.
Speaker 1: My mother is no longer with us, it would I
Speaker 1: would love to have that opportunity to spend time with
Speaker 1: her again. So I'm going to kind of forgive people today,
Speaker 1: So let's let's have a little conversation about the pro again,
Speaker 1: just remind people of the prompt. The prompt for this
Speaker 1: week is how do you know when you've overstayed your
Speaker 1: welcome Bible study? Replying the comments and tune in at
Speaker 1: the beginning of next week's episode to hear the top
Speaker 1: three answers. And we want to thank Eli for helping
Speaker 1: out today. So if we can bring Eli back in
Speaker 1: for a little bit, I just want to Eli, what
Speaker 1: were your favorite moments of the show, what we are
Speaker 1: least favorite moments? You know, give us your opinion on it.
Speaker 4: Well, I think I might share the same favorite moment
Speaker 4: with everyone. Michelle coming out I think was really super
Speaker 4: I you know, color me honored to be a small
Speaker 4: part of that. I was in the background. But I
Speaker 4: also I did want to touch on something that because
Speaker 4: I felt like in something Michelle said, she made a
Speaker 4: connection with neurological conditions and religiosity in the effect to
Speaker 4: the effect of like, you know, I've suffered X, Y,
Speaker 4: and Z, and I wonder if that's the reason that
Speaker 4: I still hold these beliefs. And I think, you know,
Speaker 4: I would just stress that not only is that unfair
Speaker 4: to you, Michelle, but also to atheists with neurological conditions
Speaker 4: and to religious people to sort of equate those two things.
Speaker 4: So I just say to take care of yourself, be
Speaker 4: gentle on yourself while you're kind of exploring these beliefs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And Eli, I want to thank you as well
Speaker 1: because you did as I want to thank Karen because
Speaker 1: you did step in at the last minute. We had
Speaker 1: a last minute change of personnel, and we did a
Speaker 1: little you know, when we're trying to find backup hosts,
Speaker 1: it's sometimes quite difficult to find, especially last minute to
Speaker 1: find backup holds for the show, and then it did
Speaker 1: become like busses and all fucking come up once and
Speaker 1: today we had like a pleasant of people. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we were fortunately we had many people to step in
Speaker 1: and what great people as well. I want to see
Speaker 1: if Eli's head can perform the massive magic trick of
Speaker 1: shooting loverings out. Yes, it's almost like they knew exactly
Speaker 1: what I was going to say.
Speaker 3: I think the university designed how did that happen? What
Speaker 3: other explanation is there?
Speaker 1: That's great if you want to come and see us
Speaker 1: in the atheist community of Discorde, we will have an
Speaker 1: after show after the show, and that's over at Discorde,
Speaker 1: and you are more than welcome to join us over there.
Speaker 1: That's at tiny dot cc slash ACD Discord. I believe
Speaker 1: all three of us are going to be over there,
Speaker 1: So if you want to ask any of us any
Speaker 1: further questions or continue the conversations we've been having, or
Speaker 1: even start new ones, you can have them in the
Speaker 1: Discord after show. We will all be there. If you
Speaker 1: don't believe this is your community and we do appreciate
Speaker 1: you being here, and if you're on a journey as
Speaker 1: Michelle was, please take advantage of that community. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of people here who've had life experience as parallel
Speaker 1: to yours and who will be able to help you,
Speaker 1: you know, navigate those difficult waters were. The great thing
Speaker 1: about the Eartheist community of Austin is we have such
Speaker 1: an array of people here. You know, I can't speak
Speaker 1: about coming out of religion because I've never been religious,
Speaker 1: but Aaron can. And that's what's so good about this
Speaker 1: community is you know, you'll always find someone who will
Speaker 1: be able to speak on your level and who has
Speaker 1: had a similar experience to you and if you do
Speaker 1: believe you, we do not hate you. We're just not convinced.
Speaker 1: See you next time.
Speaker 3: We want the truth. So watch Truth Wanted live Fridays
Speaker 3: at seven pm Central Call five one two nine nine
Speaker 3: one nine two four two or visit tiny dot cc
Speaker 3: forward slash call tw