Speaker 1: In an age where Christian nationalism is clawing at the
foundations of our democracy. We're here to push back with evidence,
with reason, and yes, with kindness. This is the Atheist Experience,
where faith meets facts. We take your calls, live, strip
away the excuses, and put every claim under the harsh
light of reason. If it's true, it survives. If it's nonsense,
it doesn't. We attack ideas, not people. So step up,
make your case for what you believe, and more importantly,
why because the show starts now. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to
the Atheist Experience. Today is August tenth, twenty twenty five.
I am your host, the Cross Examiner, and with me
today a very special guest, the Blind Limey Jamie, how
are you doing.
Speaker 2: I have put on my big boy trousers and I
am ready to go.
Speaker 1: Not your big boy kilt. We were just talking about kilts.
Speaker 2: That's a potential thing for the bat Cruise, which we
will be talking about maybe back crewise.
Speaker 1: Well, we should say before we get into that, that
the Atheist Experience is a product of the Atheist Community
of Austin, a five oh one c three nonprofit organization
dedicated to the promotion of atheism, critical thinking, secular humanism,
and the separation of religion and government, and they put
on an annual back cruise that we should talk about.
The bat Cruise is coming up fast. It's August sixteenth
in Austin at seven pm local time. There's the slide.
Tickets are selling out very quickly. We only have a
dozen or so left, so please grab them now. As
one of our producers said, toot sweet to get yours
today so you can join people like me. I think, Jamie,
are you going.
Speaker 3: To be there?
Speaker 2: I'm Austin locals. I'll be there.
Speaker 1: Excellent Scott is one of our our hosts here. He's
a backing. Backing is up today. He'll be there and
lots of people. Lots of people will be there, Caitlin,
Jonathan R. Kelly, all sorts of people who already got
their tickets will be there as well. If you're not
able to attend, you can still help out by donating
underneath the live chat to purchase a ticket for one
of our hosts or crew That would have really helped
them out. So visit tiny dot c c slash back
Crews to get your tickets and we'll see you on
the boat. Have you been before, Jamie.
Speaker 2: This will be my third year. It has always been
one of the highlights of my year. I I last
year was particularly excellent because not only did a bunch
of people come and I got to sort of talk
to people in person I don't get to speak to
very often. Your Forest Falkeys and your srs and you
and all the luminaries. We we it's basically a two
day long party. You know, there's there's live showings and
people and we mingle. But after the Sunday shows wrapped,
we all went out for our sort of goodbye sort
of evening, and the sensible people went back to their
hotel rooms, but myself, Secularity, Ja, Mike and a couple
of other people from the from the Back Crows people
who gathered. We all went downtown to the Fourth Street
in Austin, which, if you know, is where all the
gay bars are. So we went to We went and
glammed it up down there, and it was absolutely fantastic.
Jamike had never been to a gay bar before, so
he was loving it and can't guarantee that something similar
will happen this year, but it's just so nice. It's
the reason I go to things like convention. It's the
reason why we have these gatherings, just to be in
a space where you're just surrounded by like minded people
and you know you can just be yourself. And just
to say that while it may seem like, oh, a
dozen tickets left, that sounds like there's plenty if last year,
in the year before anything to go by, they get
snapped up quick.
Speaker 1: In the last year, it's a jump dozen out of
one or two hundred, So yeah, grab them while you can't.
This will be my first year. I was supposed to
go last year. I tested positive for COVID the night before,
so I had to scrap everything. So I'm really looking forward.
But I think you buried the headline. You called SR
and J Mike not sensible. They were in the not
Sensible crew that decided to go out afterwards. So we're
gonna have to follow up with that, all right, So
I'm so glad you're here. We have a caller. We're
gonna jump straight in. We'll do more announcements later. We
have James from Louis, Siana right now. His note is,
how can we discern straightforward sacs versus metaphors in the
Bible When discussing things with theists. So I'll ask you,
James he him from Louisiana, Did I have your question right?
Speaker 3: I can? There we go? Okay, Hi James, so pretty much? Yeah?
Would you want do you want to expand on that question?
Speaker 4: Hi?
Speaker 5: Su Yeah, so yeah. I am an atheist and sometimes
I do end up having discussions with some theists that
I know. And one thing that I cannot seem to
quite vocalize properly. I guess you could say, is how
do you tale what's poetry or not to be taken
literally versus what actually happened when most of it's written
as though it's literal, like could actually happen.
Speaker 1: I understand that is a common frustration, Jamie. Would you
like to take the first crack at it?
Speaker 3: I know my method.
Speaker 2: So there's things in the Voilable that can be independently verified.
You know, we know that certain places exist and certain
events actually happened. But anything that can't be verified we
have to take as just a story. I would always
proportion my belief that the thing actually happened as to
how much evidence we have outside of the Bible for it.
The only other problem is is that, oh no, it's
just a metaphor. Trust me. Bro is honestly one of
the most frustrating tactics that are used by theists when
you start pointing out things in the Bible that are
either contradictory or immoral or just generally heinous, Like the
amount of people that say that the scourging of the
what are the ones pick a genocide basically in the Bible. No,
that's just metaphor that didn't actually happen, Or the first
the plagues of Egypt, they just metaphors. They will conveniently
make things that if they actually happened and were ordered
by the all powerful the rule of the universe, would
have been horrifically monstrous, and say, nah, that's just a metaphor. Mate.
But then when it's a man shall not lie with
another man, and they really want to push their homophobic agenda,
Now that's literal, and that's not a metaphor. That's absolutely
literal and moving. We have a set of moving goalposts
here on the set for a reason, because they keep
moving them goal posts. Unfortunately, what do you think, see.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great take.
Speaker 1: I always I always struggle with this, to be honest,
James because I was not raised in a religious household.
We had some exposure, but for a during my youth,
I just assumed there was some sort of instructions, some
you know, division between the stories, the metaphors and the truth.
And as you have recognized, there isn't. So what I
do when I'm talking with people if they claim that
X is a metaphor, right, And it comes up commonly
because one of my favorite topics is the efficacy of
intercessory prayer. So intercessory prayers when you're asking God to intercede,
intercessory intercede with something on your behalf. So commonly it's like, Okay,
my father is in the heart is in the hospital
with a heart attack, Please please make him better. Right, So,
the power of prayer, And when people talk about that,
they know that it doesn't work, Like all the studies
show that the prayer is ineffective. The Templeton Foundation put
on the Giant Prayer Study if you google the Great
Prayer Study. Templeton Foundation, very religious organization, the biggest study
of the power of prayer in the world. In the
history prayer is no different than placebo. And in fact,
if you're aware, you're being prayed for, you actually statistically
might have a worse health outcome. So people tend to
know this. So when you point the Bible where it
says something like verily verily, where two or more of
you are together in my name, anything is possible through prayer,
or if you truly believe to and you want to
move a mountain, you can move the mountain anything you
ask for in prayer if you believe it will be
given to you. All of these phrases, they will say, Ah,
that's just a metaphor, or that's just that's just poetry,
as you said. But then I go back to okay,
so why is he saying verily verily? If you google
verily verily in the Bible, you see a lot of
apologetics trying to get away from that. They will either
embrace it and say when Jesus says variably or when
the writers say variably, they mean truly, truly variably, verily verily,
But some of them will say, well, it's a form
of amen. They're trying to say amen before the statement
to sort of just put their stamp on it, but
it doesn't mean truly. Sort of try to back off,
and then you go to other verses that say, verily, verily,
the only way you can be saved is through Christ,
and well, in that case, this verily verrely means true.
So you have to take the time and put in
the effort to walk them around through these passages and
ask them how do you tell what the difference is?
And what you will end up with is, oh, it's
metaphor if it's easily disprovable under today's standards, and if
it's not, then it's literally true. That's pretty much what
the rule is, is that what you've experienced James.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I was having I've called in on a
TikTok live about why I don't believe in Catholicism or something,
and basically they said, well, you know, why don't you believe?
And I said, you know, there's almost no scientific accuracies,
you know, listed in the Bible. And I brought up
the creation story. You know, plants before the sun, sun
and moon, that being the same size in our atmosphere,
in our atmosphere has a solid dome to keep the
waters out, and you know all of that. And they said, well,
you can't take that literally. That's that's just poetry. And
like I mean, I know it's from an ancient zorya Zoroastrianism,
you know, creation myths and stuff, and it was pretty
much just piggybacked. But you know, your book claims it
to be true. There's nothing, there's no disclaimer saying, hey,
this is just allegory for some greater meaning or something.
You know, it's pretty much intended to be you know,
this is the cause of why everything is, and it's
patently false and untrue. And you know, I just I
couldn't seem to verbolize how to show that he was
just doing all these intricate dances to get out of,
you know, admitting that he was wrong.
Speaker 1: I would I would recommend doing the uh, you know,
explain this to me like I'm five dance where they
start using, oh, that's just a metaphor that part that
I don't like or is obviously false as a metaphor
or poetic and then you can say, oh, okay, I'm sorry.
I didn't realize there was a way that God had
instructed us how to differentiate between metaphor and poetry and
literal assertions of fact in the Bible. Because the Bible
asserts facts all over the place. They asserted that miracles happen.
They assert that you know you're going to go to
hell if you don't believe and accepted in Jesus Christ.
In various forms, they assert that it's okay to own slaves.
They assert all sorts of things. And then you ask them,
the person who's making the claim that the Bible is
true and is asserting facts, how do I tell what
is the consistent rule that God has given us to discern?
What is flowery language? And what is the assertion of facts?
And the guideline for the most important question in the
history of all the universes. If it's true, how do
we get to an afterlife? And they won't be able
to give you a rule? At least let me not
straw man anybody or put words in people's mouths. I
have asked that question many times. I have never heard
anybody be able to give me a cogent response that
is a consistent rule when in doubt. These are the
signals if we say verily, it's true, If not, it's false,
or it's metaphor or whatever. They won't go there because
verily is used to identify lots of things that are
demonstrably false.
Speaker 3: Today.
Speaker 1: So that's the only way I can deal with it
is to say, you just wiping something away as a
metaphor calls into question in our discussion the whole concept
of oh so this whole thing isn't literal, and then
I want to jump back to Jamie here. But one
other point that's related to that. There are millions of
Christians who disagree with whomever you're talking about about, which
one is literal, right. I could cite the Westover Baptist
Church folks, who's one The one thing I applaud them
for is taking the fewest liberties within interpreting the Bible.
They just say the Bible is literally true and they
go from there and they end up as being racist, misogynistic,
really awful people. But they don't do what your people
are doing is like, well, that's obviously false, so I'm
gonna call it metaphor. They don't do that. They say no, no, no, no,
it's literally true and it's only you only think it's
false because you're being deceived by the guy, by Satan
or something like that. So that's another tack that you
can use. It's like, well, what do you say to
Christians who disagree with you about whether this is literally
true or not. Anything to add there, Jamie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's a good point. I mean there's
if it was so cut and dried and clear what's
a metaphor and what's not, we wouldn't have all of
the different denominations and sectarian violence and all this kind
of stuff. And boy, oh boy, ask me how I
know that that stuff gets real serious. But if you
think that the person you're speaking to may be amenable
to it, you might want to ask them to look
at this text and just let's just take it on
a textual level, and if they can detach themselves a
little bit from it and go look at and say,
look at it from my perspective as someone who doesn't
believe that that this is anything but stories, the historical fiction.
Let's read one of these passages, one of these stories,
and then and then break it down. You can do
with Genesis, you do that. The one I've recently been
reading for a side project is Two Kings Two that's
the story of Elijah and Elijah. And at one point
during that story, Elijah is literally and it's and it's
point of fact in the story that it's a literal
happening taken up to heaven in fiery chariots with fiery
horses in a whirlwind. This is a physical thing that happened,
according to the book. And you say, well, take it.
Try and see it from my perspective where I'm reading
that an old man was taken up literally physically in
a whirlwind on a flaming chariot by it pulled by
a flaming horse. Now, how do I know that that's
not a literal thing? How do I know it's a metaphor?
Can you break that down for me? Can you not see? How?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 2: All?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 2: That sounds how unbelievable it is to someone who doesn't
have a pre supposition that everything in this book is
either true or a metaphor for something else that's true.
Speaker 3: That's an excellent point. What are your thoughts there, James?
Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Another thing one other thing you can also do
is writing on top of that, is to ask them
about other religions, right, and if they don't believe the Koran,
for example, right where the moon was split in two,
and obviously it's not split in two, and I don't
think it ever says and it was put back together.
You would hear the same thing in other religions. Oh
that's metaphor, that's poetry, et cetera, et cetera. But this
other part about you know, women being subservient, No, those
are literal instructions. And you can say, you disc you
find that laughable, but you don't find it laughable when
you do it. Have you Have you ever run into
that with the people that you've been conversing with.
Speaker 5: Not really a lot of them. They just pretty much
ask me for my opinions and stuff, and they may
chime in every now and then. But I'm not much
of a debater, talker or whatever. And that that live
that I explained earlier, that was the first time I
ever actually had like an actual debate, And you know,
I'm not used to having to, you know, dig into
other people's belief systems and whatever, and so I was
just trying to get some advice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, TikTok lives are pretty difficult debate space. I mean,
I've gotten in and we try and be as even
handed on this show as we can, but I've seen
I've been in Christians lives and it's varied in quality
of how well I was treated, and they are often
just looking to get a gotcha. You're not there. They're
not honestly wanting to know your opinion. What they're doing
is they're trying to maneuver you into position where they
can slam dunk you and and and big up their
own preconceptions. So if you can find ones you might
want to try, Like if you have friends who are
Christian or or you know and wouldn't mind talking about this,
or even not do about Christianity, like any other belief
that seems a little bit unfounded, Like maybe you have
a friend who believes that the moon landing was faked
or that some other thing that is difficult to think like,
have them make it make sense to you if they can.
And especially when it comes to things like interpreting the
religious texts. As as Graham was saying this, cross examiner
was saying, do a textual like right, well, we'll leave
the Bible alone. Let's have a look at I don't know,
a passage from the back of ad Geita or Norse
mythology or something. How do we know that this didn't
actually happen? How do we know that it's only metaphor's
let's let's go on this journey together, shall we.
Speaker 1: Really, the problem you have is they're asserting that prayer works,
that God created the universe, that the Earth is six
thousand or ten thousand years old, whatever crazy thing they're asserting.
And if you're not comfortable engaging in, you know, logical
syllogism and things like that, you can always take the
Socratic approach of just asking questions. People will tend to
engage with you if you ask sincere questions, if you
just and if they say, well, why aren't you answering,
You're like, I'll answer any question you have, but I
don't know what I believe. That's why I'm talking to you.
Could you please explain to me why or how X?
And then just have them do it and then think of, okay,
the part that doesn't make sense and then say, oh, okay,
well what about ABC and just hear what they say,
and sometimes that can cause them to end up going
in a circle. I will point you my favorite one
to go at with this is Matthew twenty one. I
think it's twenty one. Let me check, yeah, Matthew twenty
one verse twenty one, so twenty one, twenty one and
I'll read it to you and you'll see what I'm
talking about here, Jesus replied, quote truly. So I'm looking
at the NIV, so it'll be verily and the King James. Truly,
there's that signifier. I tell you, if you have the
faith and do not doubt. Not only can when you
do what was done to the fig tree. He did
some stuff to the fig tree because he didn't like
the fact that it didn't give him figs, but you
can also say this to the mountain, go throw yourself
into the sea quote quote, and it will be done.
If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for
in prayer. So a first you ask him do you
truly believe? Then hit him with this, say, well, could
you please explain Matthew twenty one twenty one to me
where Jesus not only says that prayer works, but that
if you believe it will be done, you can make
a mountain go into the sea. And not only does
he say that, he says truly before it. What's the
point of saying truly if it's not true? Are you
calling Jesus a liar? So's that's that's what I tend
to do. What are your thoughts, James before we move on?
Speaker 5: It all really makes sense. Okay, sorry, he said Jamie
for a second.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no problem. We have a little delay here,
so that that's part of the continuion. I just want
to make sure. Do you have any other questions?
Speaker 3: Go ahead.
Speaker 5: No, that's all I can really think of. I just
wanted to say thank y'all for all y'all's work. I've
been an atheist for about fifteen years now, but I've
been listening to this program for probably about twenty maybe
a little bit longer than that, and you have really
helped me along with logical thinking and things like that.
And I'm just I'm grateful for all of y'all's hosts,
all of y'all's people in the background, and I just
really appreciate y'all.
Speaker 2: We appreciate you youship as well. And don't feel obliged
to engage in these conversations. Yeah, that's comfortable. Take it
from me. There is only misery down.
Speaker 1: That is very true. I would second that, so thank
you so much.
Speaker 3: James.
Speaker 1: Please feel free to call back if you have any
other questions or if you want to relate to us
any experience you've had when you were interacting with people.
But speaking of the people who help us out, I
would like to take a moment to thank you to
send X thanks. I shouldn't say thank you, I want
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big thank you out to the ACA crew who put
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as a dog.
Speaker 3: This week, is this a Scottie dog? I can't tell?
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Speaker 3: Through the crew.
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Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I tend to do all of them, Jamie. I will
watch the videos if I have time, but when i'm
driving around I've been driving a little bit more, I'll
listen to the podcast. I'm kind of impressed how well
it works pretty much anywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I stick the are in for for premium,
so I tend to just have the videos running in
the background. But many, many many A simulated flight across
the digital skies has been to the dulcet tones of
my colleagues here having a conversation about faith or some
other epistemological thing. I remember a wonderful call, the one
that spawned the look at the Mangoes. I was flying
up the side of Mount Fuji while I was listening
to that was great.
Speaker 3: Think I was on that call. I think I talked
to that guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the crew, of course, have been extremely busy
because they don't just they don't just do the show,
they do everything. So we have events here at the
at the library every week. We of course, I have
the back crews coming up, and the same people who
are there pushing the buttons and doing the giggles and
the knobs and the twiddlings are also the people who
are arranging things and making peace sure people are in
place to do this stuff and then everyone has a
good time at these events as well. They're very, very busy,
extremely dedicated people who are often doing it for nothing
but things.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, So we have more callers lined up. We do
have some lines open. We'll probably get to you if
you call in now, so please do But next up.
We have John. He him from California. This is an
interesting conversation topic. Watching this show converted him to religions,
So why don't we get John on the line and
John from California? Did I get your statement correct? You did?
Speaker 3: Hey, guys, all right, going doing well? Doing well?
Speaker 5: How are you?
Speaker 6: I'm doing great? Before we start, I kind of just
wanted to say, so, I've been on this show a
couple of times before. That's a pretty bold claim, right
if it happened to you, kind of have to call in,
right like you'd have to at least try.
Speaker 1: I've had some which which claim was bold. Sorry I
didn't hear which claim was bold?
Speaker 6: A lot of them, I think. So this show converted
me to religion, and then okay, bibile happened to me
in real life is a pretty bold claim. I just
before we started, I had the last few times i've
called you, guys kind of think that I'm throlling. I'm
genuinely not, to be honest. The only reason I called
today was just being the queue trying to live. I
like listening to the show, even if the show doesn't
like me. I really like the show, So I was
kind of just trying to listen today. I'd be glad
to talk about it if you want to.
Speaker 1: Okay, So why don't you tell us what's the biggest
reason that watching this show converted you to religion? Maybe
we can take a background step and say, before you
watched the show, the statement you make implies that you
were not religious, and then you watched the show and
you became religious. So I think what I'd be eager
to hear from you is how that worked is you know,
not minutes of it, but you know it was sort
of high level summary of how that happened. What were
the biggest, you know, the one or two biggest factors
that convinced you of the truth of some sort of religion?
Which religion did you convert to due to watching this show?
And where are you now? Why do you believe what
you believe now?
Speaker 6: Sure? So my background is when I started watching the show,
I was still pretty young. I was like an eighteen
year old senior in high school. I actually only came
across this show because one of my coworkership, my old boss,
showed it to me. He was a pretty couel guy,
you know, he kind of turned me on to I
really admire this show for the way that you handle logic,
the way that you're very careful about, you know, challenge
people's premises, and just doing things in a very structured
and formal way. I think it's hard to find shows, honestly,
anything out there that does that in the same way
that you guys do. So I, you know, honestly, it
had nothing to do with religion to me. At first,
I wouldn't say I was an atheist, but I was agnostic.
Just religion wasn't a super huge especially you know, I
was in the eighteen year old It wasn't a huge
factor in my life, and I didn't necessarily take it
too seriously. And then as a Joe, after hearing the
flying spaghetti monster thing, I started going through the Bible
trying to see if I could pick out, like Bible
clothes that would support the idea that Jesus is the
flying spaghetti monster. No, I'm telling you, that shit converted me.
I am full blown I consider myself a literal biblic
biblical literalist, full blown Christian. This has changed my entire worldview.
I'm pretty sure Jesus.
Speaker 3: Actually is plant, actually is what plant?
Speaker 6: The flying spaghetti you know, some people joke that, like
the atheists experienced, the flying spaghetti monster, joke goes too far.
We're not being nice enough to religious people. As a
religious person, I'm saying it doesn't go far enough. This
converted me, This is real, This is amazing.
Speaker 1: Okay, Jamie, I'm gonna I'm gonna put him on mute
here for a second. I don't think there's a legit
reason that this person's calling in point Jesus is plants.
I'd be eager to hear from Jamie if there's any
interest in continuing talking here.
Speaker 2: But well, first of all, the flying spaghetti Monster is
not an invention of the atheist community, correct something we
used before. It's just an example of the unfalsifiability of God.
We never claim that it's real, and in so far
that Jesus or at least his divinity is also unfalsifiable,
then yeah, I agree, there are some parallels, but there's
also parallels to roll on the closet, goblin behind me,
or you know, at least the Rainbow giraff or pick
any other number of gods we've made up to to
be an example of unfalsifiability. I you know, I'm kind
of willing to engage for a little bit. But right,
but this is the same John that wanted us to
literally that the daily bread is literally bred and the
Christians should be giving out more actual physical bread. And
so I actually I want to take this calling very
different direction. John, What do you hope to get out
of this call? P What are you hoping to get
out of this call?
Speaker 6: Like I said, originally, I kind of called in today
just to help, hoping to be in the queue, just
trying to listen into the show. You guys don't like me.
If I really liked the show, you.
Speaker 2: Can listen to the show without being in the huge.
Speaker 6: Walking through, So it's easier to call for me just
because my my friends, I've had issues getting the lives
stream working, so sometimes I just called to listen.
Speaker 3: But okay, so I'm I'm with Jamie.
Speaker 1: I I can't take you seriously for a couple of reasons. One,
the claims you're making are so ridiculous that maybe only
you and the world either believe them or are lying
about them. And that really is the dichotomy we're dealing with. Right,
You're lying to us now, which I tend to at
this point to believe is more likely, but I don't
have final evidence of that, so I'm giving you the
benefit of doubt or you sincerely believe this, in which
case I then have to ask myself, what is the
usefulness for continuing this conversation? What is the real world
implications that some guy that says his name is John
from California believes that Jesus is plants or is the
literal spaghetti monster, or that Christians should give out literal
bread and that's what they're commanded to do. What's the
real world implication of that particular fact that you are
out there and it's so minimal compared to the problems
that this world is experiencing right now that I don't
think our listeners have much interest in hearing this. So
I'll give you another chance. I'll ask the same sort
of meta question that Jamie was asking. I'm just going
to come out and say it. Do you feel guilty
at all by calling in and doing this?
Speaker 3: Not at all?
Speaker 6: Like I said, I kind of, I was hoping I
can maybe just listen. I do listen to the show
a lot. It's a good show.
Speaker 1: Okay, every time we've answered a question right now, you've
answered with I listened to the show a lot. That's
how you started the beginning. That's how you started when
I first asked you a question. It's how you started
when you answered Jamie's question. Is now how you're answering here?
That's irrelevant to what we're asking you. I think you
should be a little bit If you truly believe this,
good for you. Please don't call back, because I don't
think anybody in the world cares. I think it is
much more likely that you are not telling the truth.
And quite frankly, you should feel some sort of shame
or guilt about wasting people's time in an era when
we are facing the very real probability that people who
genuinely have religious beliefs are going to come to such
a point of power in this country that they will
be able to enforce their beliefs on others through our government,
that the First Amendment is going to go away or
not be enforceable anymore. That's the world we live in
right now. So as for one guy that likes to
say Jesus is the Flying Spaghetti Master or Jesus's plants
and just call in and say that and then refuse
to engage except to say I like the shows.
Speaker 3: You should be.
Speaker 1: Quite frankly ashamed. Do you have anything else to add, Jamie?
Speaker 2: If you like the show as you say you do,
then you should know the kinds of questions we would
ask of someone that we believe is being sincere. So
if I believed that you were being sincere, it was
giving you the benefit of that doubt, I would ask you.
Two people come to me, both of them declare that
they know that Jesus was real, and he is the
Spaghetti Monster or is plant one of who actually has
the truth, and the other person is either mistaken or
lying or trolling? How do I tell the difference? So,
can you maybe one last thing before we sort of
move on or anything. How do I tell the difference
between you? I'm going to give it to you that
I'm going to believe you out of the goodness my
heart that you are actually being here. But how do
I tell the difference between you and someone else who's
saying the same thing and he's not being sincere? How
do I tell the difference?
Speaker 6: That is a really good question.
Speaker 2: I know it's a good question. Can you please answer it?
Speaker 6: If I legitimately started what if I actually start a
church with money behind it that I put real effort
into based on the idea of free beer and free
popcorns for everybody, Like, can I call back in at
that point? It's a real thing that like.
Speaker 2: That would know about. That would not prove anything. That
may prove the effica John John John joh John John
joh John, that may prove your sincerity. But I'm already
giving you that. You don't have to start a church.
You just have to tell me how do I tell
the difference between someone who's sincere like you because you
say you are and I'm believing you, and someone who isn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we're dealing with Poe's law here, right, This
is this is what we're struggling with. Like Poe's Law says, basically, Uh,
given any amount of of ridiculous claim, when you have
fundamentalists in your society, it becomes impossible to distinguish satire
from reality with respect to fundamentalist claims. So yours is
a crazy, out there claim. There's pretty much nothing you
can do at this point to show to us that
this is a sincerely held belief other than engaging an
honest dialogue and so far, you come across as very dodgy.
You don't you don't answer questions, You just want to
talk about You like the show and you just want
to listen. So I guess the one question I have
before we go is if you aren't sincere, what is
the point? What are you trying? It's the same thing
that Jamie said, what are you trying to do with
this call?
Speaker 6: I'd be doing this.
Speaker 3: I think you would be surprised.
Speaker 6: Share my belief that I believe are pretty intensive.
Speaker 1: So to share beliefs in a vacuum is just sharing
for either attention or because.
Speaker 3: I'm going to mute them.
Speaker 1: Second, so your question was, why would you be doing
this if you didn't believe it. You've heard of prank calls, right,
You've heard of crank calls. You've heard of people who
are just attention seeking. We were just having this conversation
between us, the crew, and our backup host Scott before
the show, like why do some of these people call in?
Speaker 3: Because it's tough.
Speaker 1: To filter out. It's pose law is very strong. It's
tough to filter out. But when somebody fails to start engaging,
then I don't have to believe or disbelieve their claims.
What I can start to do is to doubt this
sincerity of their effort. To communicate the point of this show,
in addition to exposing the logical fallacies that are common
in religious belief around the world, is to do the
things that we say in our mission statement. It's dedicated
to the promotion of atheism. Doesn't relate to your calls,
the promotion of critical thinking. We're not doing that here, right,
You're not engaging in critical thinking, secular humanism. We haven't
talked about that. I don't think that there's really a
point in talking about that with your call, because I
again don't believe that you're sincere, and the separation of
religion and government. Taking your call when neither of us
really believes that you're sincere, really furtherre's none of those missions.
So I think we should just move on. Jamie, Do
you have any last.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, he had his chance that I'm sorry, John,
I gave you a very very and if you were
a fan of the show, as you say you are,
you just have seen this come in a mile off
that you have two people giving me the same claim.
One of them is sincere, the other one isn't how
do I tell the difference? And all you could say
was that's a good question. I'm like, I fucking know
it is. It's why I asked it.
Speaker 1: That is a little pet beeve of mine is when
somebody you ask somebody a question and then they go
through this preamble of sixty seconds of well, you see,
that's a good question. And it made me think a lot.
I understand that talking to people live on a stream
can be disorienting. It can be odd because maybe you're
listening to hold music or some other the lagging of
the live show, and then you jump in and people
are talking to you and you might need to catch
up mentally. Totally get that. We don't bite here. I
think you've seen We've tried to give James a benefit
of the doubt more than I think I've ever done.
Speaker 2: James from Louisiana. That was the problem.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, who is this? Yes?
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a problem today, Like we're trying here
to do good work for society as a whole, because
let's face it, religion as a whole tends to be
dwindling in the United States. But we have seen throughout
history that When religious organizations start shrinking, they start to
get more extreme. That's why cults when they go to
the end. I'm not saying Christianity's a cult, but when
you study cultism, one of the end games is the
compound us versus them mentality. The end of the world
is near, so we better get right with God, and
it turns into this fight for survival, or let's burn
the whole thing down because that'll bring about what we
want anyway, which is the end of times. We have
people in our government today that believe this shit. They
are acting on it, they're trying to bring it about.
Project twenty twenty five was a playbook right out of
the most religious fundamentalist political action committee. Are not Pack
a political organization dedicated to the furtherance of christian nationally
the United States in the history of the United States.
So to call in and waste everybody's time with what
I'm just going to say, I presume are lies and bullshit.
Maybe you're off giggling in a corner now that I'm
still talking about it, but I think it really does
raise a real problem of do we all fiddle while
Rome burns?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 1: Are we all just going to be entertained by engagement
rather than engage in actual, meaningful conversation that might change minds,
might help people figure out how to think clearer and
then translate that into action that will help make the
world better. I'm choosing the latter. I think our former
caller chose the former.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, when you make patently difficult to swallow claims
even even though other Christians wouldn't wouldn't get on with
you know, I I wanted to just for the sake
of the conversation. I wanted to give the benefit of
the doubt, like I'm going to I'm going to lay
out all of the rope and you can. You can
tie the biggest news It's fine. And I feel that. Yeah,
not only is it like it's wasting our time, is
wasting the viewer's time. It's emblematic of a problem that
is endemic that seems to be coursing through that people
are lacking in any kind of empathy like you and
I'm just taking advantage of people's good will for their
own amusement, not just get their jollies. I really can't
get on board with that. And unfortunately a lot of
the discourse vectors that we have, like the debate scene
and even shows like this, to some extent, we don't
try enough to understand the people we're talking to and
maybe try and at least understand their point of view
before I criticize it. And I try and do that.
I think you try and do that. Most of the
people who work for the ACA are trying to do that.
And when someone comes in and takes that good will
and just uses it as a funny hat, I find
that quite offensive. But anyway, the thing I mean we
were talking earlier about how do we deal with the
how do we deal with this like malaise of engagement
over content, over the authenticity kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's troublesome. I'm working on my show, on
a new series that's going to hopefully educate people about
the Constitution one little clause at a time. I haven't
figured out what I'm thinking that as bite sized constitution
or something, but the idea of people I don't want
to feel like grampat kids today, But to some degree,
I think the studies bear this out. While we have
improved education for humanity as a whole over time, today,
given the what's at play, people are vastly uneducated when
it comes to the important stuff civics, the legal system,
the government, or constitution. And it's because of that that
they not only not knowing what it says, but not
understanding the context, the history of why the Constitution is
so special, why the First Amendment alone is like radical
in the entire history of the world. It's the most
important law I think that has ever been made that
ensures freedom that everybody cherishes. And it comprises not just
religious freedom under the establishment clause, but it also incorporates,
incorporates the freedom of the press, the freedom of speech.
It's all in that First Amendment. There's a reason it's
number one, right, that's the most important. So when we
have so much content out there that people just gamify
it or call in and have they want to joke,
it can be very frustrating, to be honest, and if
that was your objective was to frustrate me or to
frustrate Jamie or frustrate callers, you achieved it. But as
I said, you should be ashamed of that. And if
you don't feel a little bit of shame to be honest,
there's something wrong with you. That's not a normal human behavior.
Grow up and engage with the world around you, because
if you don't, other people will and they don't have
your best interests at heart when it comes to things
like freedom of religion in this country, it's coming and
we need to be ready for it.
Speaker 2: If there are only any theists out in the audience
that are hesitant to call in, first, you don't want
to let that guy be the last impression of a theist. Yes,
this audience experiences. And secondly, we aren't going to bite
your head off like I try and be as chill
and cool and as you saw. I'll even grant it
for the sake of argument, wild shit, just to keep
the conversation going in what could be hopefully fingers crossed
a constructive direction, like I'm a nice guy, but there
is a we have to sort of draw the line.
So we do still have open lines if you want
to call us, though you know the show does on
I do.
Speaker 1: I do want to let callers know if you were
on the line and you got dropped, that was a
problem that we had. I think we've lost to the queue,
so please do call back in. In the meantime, we
do have some uh, let's call the segment we get voicemails,
we get letters, we get emails. So we do have
a few offline interactions that were submitted to us before
the show that I think we can address if while
we're waiting for people to call back in, we have
some screenshots, I think we should just start with the
first one. These my understanding are these are screenshots of
messages that were sent to us emails or posts in
our discord, which is a great way to interact with us.
Or maybe there were things said at the at the
back cruise hope I'm hearing music now. So did we
make a TikTok out of this? It says perhaps you
should have a talk with retired for End detective Jay
Warner Wallace about this subject matter. He might enlighten you.
This is in response to a previous show that I
think I commented on when I was on the show,
and I said, eyewitness testimony is not a strong form
of evidence.
Speaker 3: So Jay Warner.
Speaker 1: Wallace, I think I don't want to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I have one of his books.
Speaker 1: I think he's the retired detective.
Speaker 3: I could google him.
Speaker 1: I think he's the retired police detective who's the cold
case for christ or something. Like that, Jay, or have
you ever read any of this stuff there?
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not nearly as widely read as I
would like to be because the physical act of reading
books is difficult for me and audio books take time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, gotcha, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Do have this book.
Speaker 1: It's cold Case Christianity is the name of the title colon.
A homicide detective investigates the what is it, the claims
of the Gospel. To be honest, I was hope when
I started reading this book, because he was a detective,
that he would be investigating the actual claims from a
evidentiary standpoint. That is not what he does in the book.
If you read that book, just within the first chapter,
he abandons every technique that we use in the criminal
justice system or the civil justice system. Quite frankly, when
we come to vetting evidence, he makes the fallacy of
saying that eyewitness testimony is reliable as the call as
whoever left this message thinks is true, when in reality,
the statistics just don't play that out at all. Every
lawyer in the world worth their salt will admit that
eyewitness testimony is very, very easily corrupted in the sense
of people can truly believe what they think they're testifying about.
They can blue believe their testimony, but they can be
mistaken for a wide variety of reasons. So I do
not recommend the book unless you can get it from
the library or a friend hast unless.
Speaker 3: It lend it to you.
Speaker 1: But again, if you just take a highlighter and go
through the first chapter, I should pull it out. It's
somewhere over here, we could talk about it. Where did
it go?
Speaker 3: I don't have it ready.
Speaker 1: It's up here somewhere. It's just filled with inconsistencies. And
he starts like he held on for like five ten
paragraphs of talking about his background and why the investigatory
method is so important, and then he misapplies it and
makes a bunch of unsupported assertions. So have you had
any people claim to you, Jamie, that eyewitnessed to ay,
that eyewitness testimony is very reliable, that we should believe
people because they say they saw something, and b that
claim that anything in the Gospels is in fact eyewitness testimony.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty common. There's a there's a visiting tolockey
who's calling on of your shows who sort of seems
to have the standpoint that that the eyewitnesses that are
mentioned not only are they eyewitnesses in the Bible, but
they are more likely to be telling the truth than
would normally be. And I'm like, how how you fig
of that? And it comes often now use arguments like well,
they died for their beliefs, so they must have been true,
And it's like that just means they thought they were true,
They believed them enough to put their life on it.
But even even just being a human being, like going
throughout this world and knowing my own flaw flaws like this,
this terribly put together water called meat computer is not
is not great at an image retention and recall, Like
memories are just our brain telling us the closest approximation
story of what we actually experienced and were unreliable, And
there's so like you said, there's so many reasons people
can be complete telling what they think is the truth
and be wrong and be mistaken. They don't have to
be lying, they could just be wrong, and even just
false memories can just be I think I mentioned this
when I was backing up a previous show, that I
have a memory, a vivid memory, a memory so so
clear that I believe that I would I would withstand
physical torment rather than deny that it was real. But
I have zero evidence that it actually happened. It was
an advert I think I think happened, but I've never
been able to track it down. No one's ever heard
of it. But it was so vivid. But knowing that
my mind is fallible when people say no, no, it's
a testimony, it's bulletproof, and my like tissue paper's bulletproof.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, I mean yeah, part of what you're
describing could fall into the Mendela effect, right, the the
the concept or the experience that many people have had
of a societal collective memory that was just absolutely wrong.
Speaker 3: People in the.
Speaker 1: I think this is in the nineties when it got
his name, people thought they collectively believed that Nelson Mandela
had died in prison in the eighties, which was not true.
But you know, people were interviewing people all over the
world and they all like, yeah, he died in prison,
that's what made him famous. But no, he died in
twenty thirteen. You know, he had a rifled age.
Speaker 2: He ran a country first, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Exactly, And so they call it the Mendela effect. But
there's lots of examples of it, like, hey, through the
loom underwear tag doesn't have a cornucopia sign on it.
Uh ben Stein bez Yeah, wrong names, or there was
I remember there was one about a movie, the Shazam
movie or something like that where a famous basketball player
was supposed to have played a genie and that never
took place, but people will swear that it happened. So
and that's on just sort of obscure stuff. But just
go to a Penn and Teller show right and tell
me that the ball was under the cup or wasn't
under the cup? Right? You can't tell. And people will
see something, believe that their senses are reliable enough to
depend upon it, and then they will swear that that's
the truth. And that's not necessarily the problem. The problem
is that the finder of fact, the judge or the
jury puts too much weight on a single eyewitness. If
you get a whole bunch, maybe it's more reliable. But
when you're dealing with the Bible, you don't have any
of that. At least with the Gospels. There are no
eyewitness testimonies in the Gospels. The Gospels were written by
people that we don't know who they are. They are
anonymous church traditions says it's Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
But if you open up any Bible worth its salt,
it will tell you the Christian PhDs who put the
Bible together will write and explain to you. We call
them Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because that is church tradition,
quote unquote, that's the polite way of saying. We used
to lie to people and say it was written by Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John a long time, and now that people
understand that that's impossible, we alwill just call it church tradition.
Speaker 2: And it's not just the Gospel of the Gospel of
John that that literally says at the start that I
am collecting the story like yes, it says.
Speaker 1: Witness, I am not an eyewitness. I am a reporter
of stories like he goes that far like everybody else.
And of course they're all written at least a generation
or more after the death of Jesus and the events
that they claim they are portrayed. But even if they were,
let's say they were talking to eyewitnesses. Most of them
were not, but let's assume they were. Somebody comes to
you and says yeah, yeah, I saw this guy there.
There was there was no wine, and all of a
sudden he turned the water into wine. Like, okay, is
that enough for you to believe that there's an afterlife,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that you know the
mind of a being that created the universe and that
it wants you to do something.
Speaker 3: No, it's not.
Speaker 1: Nobody in the right mind would say that, but it
convinces people for some reason.
Speaker 2: If I witness testimony was so gosh dang reliable, we
wouldn't have invented dash counts.
Speaker 1: Excellent point, excellent point. All right, another communication that we got.
Let's go with number three. We'll put that one up.
And number three says, don't you feel shy? And I
think maybe that means ashamed?
Speaker 3: Oh? Here it is.
Speaker 1: We've got music to it again. At least I'm hearing music.
I don't know if you are. Don't you feel shy
when you believe in nothingness created everything by randomness? Do
you have brains or what is up there? Lol? So
that's a great question. Do I feel shy slash ashamed
when I believe in nothingness created everything by randomness? So
I'm going to turn it over to you, Jamie. Can
you fall? Can you spot the straw men and the
false premises?
Speaker 2: Well, I might feel ashamed to believe that everything came
from nothingness if I believed that, but I don't. What
I believe is I don't know where everything came from
because as far as I'm aware, and I'm not a cosmologist,
I'm not a physicist, but I trust the evidences that
have been put forward by cosmologists and physicists that there
is this thing called the plank time. It is the
smallest amount of time, and before the first plank time
start of the universe, we literally can't know what's happening. Then,
at least under our current models, math breaks down all
this kind of stuff. And in fact, is it not
the Christians themselves who believe in creation ex nihilo, because
from nothing God made everything? And then we get into
special pleading. Man, it's just fallacies all the way down, mate.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: As for the straw man, I am in with you.
To believe something is to accept it as true if
you assume that definition of believes. And no, I do
not believe that nothing, nothings created everything by randomness. There's
like three or four problems there. I'm not sure there
was ever any nothingness in a way that even makes
sense to us. I don't know, and I don't think you,
as a Christian do either. I think that you assume
that God is outside in space and time and for
all intents and purposes, has always been and will always be.
So there was never any nothingness in your belief system.
Maybe there was never any nothingness here. I also think
there's a problem with the definition of nothingness. When you
speak of nothingness, you're thinking of a different nothingness than
most physicists do. Of you know, some sort of quantum
field of potentiality is like the only thing that could
even exist according to the math. But my answer to
that is I don't know, right, I don't know. I
don't accept it as true that a there was a nothingness,
that if there was a nothing this quote unquote, it
had the power to create much less did create something
everything And by randomness is another phrase you tacked on there,
that is meaningless. It's a word that apologists try to
throw out there to convince people, usually people who are
already convinced. It's just sort of making people feel better
about their belief systems. Yeah, that's shown right in the
junk yard, right, just randomness without explaining anything. So I
will say what I do believe. I do believe that
we know a hell of a lot about what Jamie described,
where everything was very very very very very very soon
after an event that seems to have been stemming from
some sort of singularity, some single point where everything was
at that point and everything since then makes sense, and
all the evidence we've ever collected about it says it's true.
Just like the Catholic priests who proposed the Big Bang,
just like the many churches around the world who accept
the premise that fourteen point whatever billion years ago everything
was in this point, I know what happened before that,
or even the concept of before that makes sense? No,
does that mean I think it didn't happen.
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: Does I think it means that it created something?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: My answer is I don't know. And that's the point.
You should be.
Speaker 3: You should be.
Speaker 1: You should feel a little silly for saying aren't you
ashamed that you believe this thing? When, in reality, the
adult way to respond to any of those questions to say,
I don't know, but I strongly suspect based on your
mocking attitude that you would come in and say I
know that God created everything, and that in and of
itself is really as you said. You should be a
bit shy about that.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: As for the no brains up there, you've got me
dead to rights. Hamsters on the wheel. His name is
Jeff and he's a good little boy.
Speaker 3: Good little hamster up there.
Speaker 1: Huh all right?
Speaker 2: Umm, looks like someone. Oh we were having someone screened.
Speaker 5: But I.
Speaker 3: Do have to apologize.
Speaker 1: We are having technical difficulties with the I saw the
call room reset again. I did see a caller pop
in and pop out. I don't know if that was
a test.
Speaker 2: We do want to talk to you.
Speaker 3: We're not scared, Yes, absolutely all right.
Speaker 1: So let's go on to another I think we have
a voicemail, Yes we do, so, queuing the the crew here.
We did get a voicemail whose title is The King
James Bible is Proof. So while we're waiting for people
to call back in, perhaps we could listen to this voicemail.
Who's a caller it called earlier? Couldn't be during the
live show and see what they have to say.
Speaker 3: So take it away, crew.
Speaker 4: So I wanted to call to just talk to you
guys about the teleological argument. I guess that's why I'm
leaving this maybe so somebody else would hear this and
potentially think about it, because there comes a point where
you're dismissing evidence, then you might not be interested in believing.
But anyways, so evidence is just an available body of
facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is
true beyond a reasonable doubt. And if something has a
low chance of being true, then you probably wouldn't want
to believe it, right, Like, if something has a really
low chance of being true based on evidence, say with
all the evidence, we come up with an actual calculation
that shows how low of percentage or how low of
a number between one and whatever there is of it
being true. And so if something is a low chance
of being true, you don't want to put your belief
in that. Right, which atheism is a belief believe means
to accept it as true. And you guys, as atheists,
do accept it as true, the idea that there is
no God right, Thus it is a belief. And I'm
not saying you guys are to night, I'm just saying anyway,
So if atheism were to have a low chance of
being true based on the evidence, would you still believe it?
Speaker 1: So thank you crew for that one. I'll take the
first hack at this one. I can see you drowning
in frustration, something we get all the time. So eye
rolling is appropriate here. So there's several there's several problems here.
I do want to thank the caller for calling in,
but I do think you need to adjust your definition's
a bit, or at least use different words. I'm not
going to make an argument from definition here. I can
speak for myself, and I think I can speak for Jamie.
He'll correct me if I'm wrong. The type of atheism
that most people I interact with on this show and
in the world is a type that just says, when asked,
are you convinced that there is a God? My answer
is I am not currently convinced.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: That's what atheism is. It's like going to court and
being a juror and then saying, are you convinced that
the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Is a
different standard, But let's say are you convinced and you
say no, You can't turn around and say aha, therefore
you think he's innocent right. No, not guilty means I
haven't yet been convinced to whatever standard of proof is
on the party making the claim. In criminal cases, that's
beyond a reasonable doubt. In the civil case, it's the
preponderance of the evidence, like a fifty one percent type
of rule. The best I am going to reach off
of I am going to reach off of my.
Speaker 3: Bookcase.
Speaker 1: The best analogy I ever saw was long ago on
this show. Somebody had some marbles and I would ask you,
are you convinced that this jar I'm holding has an
odd number of marbles in it? And if you say no,
I can say aha, so you are convinced that it's
even right. No, you're not convinced that it's either. The
answer is I don't know if it's odd or even,
because I would have to take them out and count them.
And that leads me to your second point, when you
start getting into, like you said, the teleological arguments, the
fine tuning arguments of that sort of stuff. Anytime anybody
brings up with me, what are the odds it's so
unlikely that whatever. As we were discussing before the show again, Jamie,
my first question is, what is your denominator, and I
don't mean like in a funny sense, literally do the math.
Show me the math. Because your denominator is made up,
I will be convinced. If you don't have math to
show me, then we can't have a conversation. All you're
saying is this is very unlikely. And that bit boils
down to an argument from it personal and creulity, also
known as the argument of ignorance. I can't imagine that
X would have happened, or that why would be the
likely outcome. Therefore, because I can't imagine it, it couldn't
have happened, or it is very unlikely because I can't
imagine it. So I'll turn it over to you, Jamie.
I'm sure there's more to pick a part here.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's examples we can give of a counter
arguments to the theological argument. The fact that we can
point out that you are making the assumption, and we
all know about Okham's raises and assumptions, who should make
as few as possible. You're making the assumption that the
current state of the universe, or life on Earth or
human humanity is the goal or target of the processes
of the universe, rather than just an effect. The analogy
that Douglas Adams gave about the puddle, like the water
lies in the puddle and it's like, oh, this puddle
is perfect for me. It must have been made just
for me. But no, you you filled the you know,
just the way it is.
Speaker 1: It is my favorite analogy, the sentient puddle waking up
and going, wow, I fit perfectly into this hole.
Speaker 3: What are the odds?
Speaker 2: And so the yeah, as you saw me, my eyes
click swiveling that hole like you're you're an atheist, therefore
you believe God doesn't exist? No, I don't. It's why
we phrase the question in the pole Chat today the
way we did. It's it's of the crime of existing.
We find God guilty or not guilty, not innocent, you know,
It's like it's it's it's we don't. I don't make
positive truth claims unless I'm damn certain I'm ready to
back it up with some kind of evidence or convincing argument.
Speaker 1: And we should and we should talk about that like
this is actually a good caller, even though he's not
on the line here, because it isn't. It's it's incredibly
important to not only this issue, but the issue of
dealing with claims made on social media, the rise of AI,
fake images and fake videos. You know, evidence, the concept
of evidence and the concept of sufficiency of the evidence
to accept a claim is really really important, and I
don't think enough people organize their thoughts about that. So
if you don't mind, I'll sort of mention a few
concepts there, and I'd love to get your reactions. So, first,
the caller said, evidence is just available and available body
of facts or information indicating whether belief or proposition is
true beyond a reasonable doubt. So there's lots of definitions
of evidence, and I don't like to get into argues
about definitions. I want to make sure you understand my
concept and then we can talk about that concept. So
in the legal realm, I find the definition of evidence
to be useful. Evidence is anything any claim or assertion
that makes a proposition more likely or less likely to
be true, not that it makes it true beyond a
reasonable doubt. So you know, when you look at the
Federal Rules of Evidence in the United States, you have
to define what evidence is. First, evidence is anything that's
going to make something more or less likely true. Well,
given that almost everything is evidence, right, I played tennis.
If I testify I played tennis at the murder trial
of the billionaire, They're going to go, what's the how
is that evidence? How is that relevant? And you could say, well,
the victim was a tennis player, and they both went
to this. You know this, and it's likely that this
person knew the terms that were, like anything can be
evidence under the Federal rules of Evidence. But then the
Federal rules of Evidence say all evidence is admissible. As
long as it's evidence, you can admit it. Okay, So
you can admit anything, any testimony is evidence. And then
the rest of the Federal rules of evidence are exceptions
except you can't you can't introduce this sort of evidence
or that sort of evidence. And it's important to understand
how we got there. This wasn't just me up by
some professor one year. This is you may have heard
of the thing called the the Magna carta, okay, eight
hundred years ago, however long it was. That was sort
of the start of the modern civil justice system, at
least in the in the West, and that that was
a many hundred years process of judges coming up with
these rules. And where they come from is human experience
shows certain types of evidence is unreliable. Number one that
everybody thinks of is hearsay. I can't go to go
to trial and say, well, Jamie said that he saw
that dude, shoot that shoot the victim. Immediate objection. That's hearsay.
If I say it, They're gonna have a maybe having
a mistrial, right because we have learned that are you know,
me testifying about an out of court's presence witnesses experiences
is so unreliable for the variety of reasons that it is,
we are better served in our justice system to ban
that type of testimony rather than admit it because it
might be helpful. And the reason I bring up here,
say is what is the Bible? What are the Gospels
if not a mountain of two thousand year old hearsay?
So sorry, that was my rant about the importance of
evidence and what evidence is and isn't.
Speaker 3: What are your thoughts there, Jamie.
Speaker 2: I mean I come with a more lay person perspective, obviously,
but I get to the same point where anything can
be evidence. I absolutely agree with you on that because
people have come to us with all kinds of stuff
as evidence for their belief, and I just take evidence
as any anything that either brings you to a belief
or strengthens your belief in a belief in some fact
or some perceived fact, some perceived truth. So I it
could literally be anything. And that's when we come to
like the strength of the evidence, that the how compelling
it is to whomever else is judging it. So they
say PSA doesn't compel us very much. But some people
are compelled by SA. Religious people.
Speaker 1: And let's put them in the same category as people
who buy time shares, people who believe TikTok videos. It's
not it's Humans tend to respond well to con men.
Con Men are people who gain your what con stands
for confidence, a confidence man. They inure confidence because of
the tricks they've learned on how to hold themselves. Maybe
they're handsome or pretty. They're confident to themselves. And when
you combine that with two thousand year old knowledge out
of a book that you can wave around and say
it's been around for two thousand years, you gain the
confidence of a lot of.
Speaker 2: People, especially if the evidence aligns with your already preconceived
notions about yourself or the world. And I love I
love stories of con men, and I love you know
the movies and shows and stuff about that, but there
are certain things that come up that I always take
as axioms for myself, where you know, you can't con
an honest man. So if someone's actually honest with themselves,
they're very difficult to con because they'll be introspective and
always look a gift horse in the mouth. So unless
you don't mind it being full of Greek soldiers, that's right.
Speaker 1: That's right, And there's a there's a there's a few
more points in this caller before we wrap it up,
so I think we address it already, but I do
want to make it clear.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: The caller characterized it as believing in atheism. If you
are well read and you understand what atheism is or
what people usually mean by atheism, you'll understand that that
is a is a weird concept. It's a nonsense concept.
So people do not believe in atheism. They either accept
the claim of a particular God or they don't, but
they don't believe in atheisms. There are people out there
who will go further and say I actively believe that
there are no beings or entities in the universe that
would qualify or any other universe are in all known
and unknown space and time that would qualify as a god. Right,
And I agree with a caller that if you're making
that claim that hey, this is definitely not true. Now
you've assumed the burden of proof. The burden of proof
is very important. If you are the one making the claim,
you need to back it up. So I don't go
out here saying there is definitely not a god. I
will say there are certain gods that we can use
logic to disprove. If there's a god that you believe
thinks that the sky is both blue and not blue,
or that any given claim is both true and false
at the same time without playing word games, right that
something is and is not. That violates one of the
three three core rules of logic. Right, if you believe
in a god that does that. I feel comfortable at
this point saying that's impossible and it can't exist. So
that god, I will say doesn't exist. But other gods
that are less drastic, I will just say, show me
the evidence. I'm not convinced, Kama yet, convince me, and
I'm open to being convinced. I don't know about you, Jamie.
Speaker 2: I mean, I am too I want, I'd like at
least I like to think so like I want to
keep an open mind, and I also want to make
sure that I'm embodying the idea that skepticism is not
synonymous with cynicism. I'm not denying things out of hand.
I think a lot of callers that call us think
that we're just shooting them down because we won't. We
won't accept any evidence and everything. You know, we're never
ever ever going to be convinced of anything. I've backed
down on certain things, and maybe people might in this
community might side ie me for it, Like I won't
argue the klum anymore because I'll just go, yeah, well,
you know, everything must have a cause. Therefore there's a
first cause, and now where do we get from there?
Like I can't sufficiently argue it, other people can, So
I'll say, yeah, find there's a first cause of some kind.
How can you then lead me to God?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Where do we go from a first cause? That could
just be another naturalistic phenomenon right to shellfish butt stuff?
Speaker 1: You know, it's as our host j Mike, who we
miss as was unable to be with us today, would say,
you give them all the toys and they still can't
make the case it's very true, maybe should get I
think that leads to one other concept to point out
to people, which is the apportionment of belief slash skepticism
to the claim. Right that if I come to you
and say, I, this is the one I use all
the time, I had a tuna fish sandwich for lunch today.
You don't know that I had a tuna fish sandwich
for lunch today, but you know that there are things
called tuna fish and that people make sandwiches out of them,
and people eat things called lunch and you know me
a bit, and there's no real risk for you accepting
that claim as true.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: But then if I came to you and said, oh,
and I ate the tuna fish sandwich on a flying
saucer piloted by a dinosaur, now all of a sudden,
you're going to be very skeptical about at least those things.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So the common phrase is, you know, is that you
apportion your belief to the evidence. Or you can say
that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That's why I always
use the term sufficient evidence. People will this guy even
used it proof. The word proof proof is a very
bad word. Don't use that in arguments. And on either
side talk about sufficient evidence. Is there sufficient evidence to
accept the claim is true? And before you get on
us about like is this how you live your lives? Absolutely,
this is how you should live your life too, and
you do live your life this way. When when the
guy comes to you with a multi level marketing scheme
that he wants you to party, should paid in or
says hey, if you give me one hundred thousand dollars,
I can get my ten million dollar inheritance out of
the bank in Nigeria and give you part. You exercise skepticism.
You are skeptical of that. We are skepticisms. We are
skeptics as well. Everybody should be skeptics. It doesn't mean
that skeptics don't believe things. It just means we think
about a portioning belief to the evidence that based on
the risk, based on the significance, based on what is
being claimed and the evidence, should I accept this or not?
And I think in America these days that bar is
way too low for a lot of claims, everything from
religion to political stuff to what is a good recipe
on TikTok?
Speaker 2: And well, while critical thinking and skepticism do take practice.
You know, you can train yourself, like any skill. Once
you train yourself in it, it becomes intuitive. It's the reason
why my computer is not filled with digital herciphalades, regardless
of the sketchiness of the websites I choose to do.
But yeah, I am completely on board with it. Like
you really do. Just apportion the evidence to the claim,
which is why again I'm happy to say anything that
can even be tangentially proven to be possibly true in
the Bible, I'll give it to you. Jordan's real place,
Jesus was probably a real dude. I have no argument
against that. But did he die and come back? Can
you prove that? Can you evidence that to me? Can
you provide me with sufficient evidence that it's possible for
someone to come back after two and a half days
of death and be cool walking around?
Speaker 1: And let's realize the definition of death has changed over
the last two years, right, We've gotten really pretty good
at detecting death. But it was until recently that we
associated with brain activity. It used to be breathing, it
used to be motion, it used to be all sorts
of things. So when you're dealing with two thousand year
old or in the old estimate, you know, oral tradition
dating back to the Bronze Age that was created by
goat herders that were illiterate and didn't know where the
sun went at night. And then you call in and
leave a voicemail like this entitled the King James Bible
is proof.
Speaker 3: He didn't.
Speaker 1: He was basically saying, you should be ashamed of believing
these things, believing that there is not a God. But
the answer to his ultimate question, if his atheism were
to have a low chance of being true, I don't
know how to answer that, because there's there's no chance
of me not being convinced of something of being true.
But if your question is, if there was a tremendous
amount of evidence for the existence of a supernatural being
resembling that of the Christian God, would I accept it
as true?
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: The problem is the claim is so extraordinary that it
would require such extraordinary evidence that I can't imagine what
that evidence would be that would be make the existence
of the God more likely Compared to me hallucinating, I've
I've hallucinated before. I've told a story about recovering from
my cancer surgery fifteen hour surgery started, get a new
meds from new pain meds, and thought the nurses were
trying to kill me and all this sort of stuff,
and would have sworn under oaths. Absolutely this person was
trying to steal my wife's purse, switch the meds back. Fine,
you can be very, very convinced of something and still
not be true. So I prefer the answer I've heard
from others on this show, which is, if God is
as powerful as most of his believers seem to think
he is, then he has the capability to convince me
whatever that may be, change writing it on my heart,
giving me some sort of evidence, whatever it may be.
Go watch the movie Contact or read the novel That
is a great, great exploration of this space of when
is when is it okay to be personally accept a
claim and when is it okay to then go out
and argue about that claim being true? And Jodie Foster's
character rides that line perfectly. Sorry, Jamie, go ahead, let's
I think we should bring on Scott at some point.
Speaker 2: We have a we have a man in the wings,
that's me. Do you have any up opinions on anything
that we have encountered? This show.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Actually I did want to touch on the voicemail
and they they they kind of snuck it in there.
I don't I don't know if you notice it, but
they said, uh, if we came up with an actual
calculation that shows how low of a percentage or how
low of a number between et cetera, et cetera and
I And I've seen this argument before, and anybody that's
ever presented this argument has never been able to explain
how they get that number cross examiner, as you mentioned,
how do you get that denominator right? And and so
any time I've ever seen any kind of formulation of this,
of this argument, and it you do have to dig
if you want to, if you really want to see
how they came up with like one out of ten
to the one and twenty eight, there's something like that.
It's just assumption layered on top of assumption, layered on
top of assumption. And then they take all those assumptions
and they combine them in ways that also require additional assumptions,
and so it's.
Speaker 3: Really ply them together.
Speaker 1: So you have exactly exactly gruth.
Speaker 7: Right, right, And so you know, if you can't at
least provide a basic explanation for an argument. I don't
believe that you find that argument compelling. I mean, if
you if you really have no idea how they got
this number, then you presenting it adds nothing to the conversation.
And so I would love it if somebody would would
call in and and examine that more closely. But like
many things in math, I'm a math teachers, so I
kind of see this stuff fairly frequently. If you say
something with math in it, people's brains will shut down,
and so they won't argue against what you're saying, and
they won't address what you're saying, and as is obvious
from this voicemail, they won't think about it before they
re heat it. And so please please think about your arguments.
If you can't explain it, then I don't believe that
it's compelling to you. So I just had to get
that out there. Otherwise I was not.
Speaker 3: Going to be able to sleep tonight. So thank you
for giving me that chance. Oh absolutely no.
Speaker 1: I wanted to thank you for being our backup today.
We had a change in host the last minute, and
Jamie was able to step in, which was great, and
you were able to step in as a backup. It's
one of the many examples of the work that goes
on behind the scenes at the ACA. So please continue
to support us liking and subscribing. And if you are
going to be in the Austin area this weekend, please
please please get your tickets now before they sell out.
There's a dozen or so left, and come meet us.
I'll be there, Jamie will be there. Scott, I think.
Speaker 3: You're you're going to be there. I'll be there.
Speaker 1: We'll all be there, along.
Speaker 3: With your other favorite hosts. We'll all be there.
Speaker 1: Take in the scenes, go out and tell war stories.
So any last words there, Jamie. Before we wrap up
the show today.
Speaker 2: We just want you to make an ass of you
and munction.
Speaker 1: I think that that should wrap it up. Thanks everybody
for watching. Sorry we had a few technical issues, but
next week we'll be back with more atheist experience.
Speaker 3: Have a great week.
Speaker 1: Bye bye. We start a.
Speaker 8: Stop around you watch Talking Than live Sundays at one
pm Central. Visit tiny dot c c slash y t
t E and call into the show at five one
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Speaker 2: S Hald