Speaker 1: Christian morality loves to sell itself as human centered, but
when you actually read the source material, that's not what
you get. You get a worldview where the greatest command
is to love God with everything you are, where you're
told to deny yourself, to take up your cross, seek
God's kingdom first, and place loyalty to Jesus about family,
comfort and even your own life. And it doesn't stop there.
God tells you to lean not on your own understanding
and biblical wisdom supposedly begins with fearing him. That's not
a person focused morality. That's deity focused obedience with human beings.
Somewhere down the priority list, Secular humanism starts in the
opposite place. It ask what reduces suffering, protects dignity, and
helps actual people flourish.
Speaker 2: So the question is simple.
Speaker 1: Should morality serve a God or should it serve persons?
If you have an answer to this question, then please
call in because the show starts now. What's up, Heathens,
How y'all doing?
Speaker 3: Today?
Speaker 1: Is May third, twenty twenty six, and I'm your host,
Godless engineer John Gleason. Joining me right now is Fish Stark.
Speaker 2: What's up there?
Speaker 3: Fish? How you doing Hey, John, it's good to see
you again and good to be streaming with you again. Man,
I am doing really, really well. It's great to be
at the Atheist Community of Austin. This is my first
time here. Such an awesome setup, in awesome space, one
of our faiths. I'm not supposed to have favorite American
Humanists Association local groups, You guys are one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm envious actually that I'm not actually
there right now, and I wish that I didn't live
in the hell hole that is Alabama. But in case
there's anybody out there that doesn't know who you are
what you do, won't.
Speaker 2: You tell people about yourself?
Speaker 3: One hundred percent? So my name is Fish Stark. That's
fish like the animals, Stark like iron Man. I am
the executive director of the American Humanist Association. Humanism is
for anyone who believes science tells us what's real and
compassion tells us what's right. And for coming up on
a hundred years, the AHA has fought to promote humanism,
build humanism community, and fight the religious rights so that
we can all live with civil liberties and dignity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm right, there with you.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm in a little bit more of
a precarious situation with you know, where I work. But
you know, I'm definitely on their short list for calling,
you know, a terrorist or something.
Speaker 3: And that's why we're spending a billion dollars a day
to bomb school children in Iran. So thank you.
Speaker 1: You gotta love you, gotta love that that very God
centered sort of mentality, right, I mean that was kind
of what my opening was about.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've been.
Speaker 1: Hearing a lot of rhetoric in you know, the news
lately about you know, how this is sort of like
a God.
Speaker 2: Centered war that we're waging over there, and.
Speaker 1: It's been framed in a very religious sort of centered
sort of mindset there, And I'm just kind of curious, like,
you know, coming from a secular humanist organization and everything,
how do you think that this is kind of, you know,
affecting I guess the you know, the United States in general,
Like I guess I'm what I'm focusing on is like
the shift, you know, the radical shift from you know,
a more secular state to this very Christian oriented sort
of rhetoric.
Speaker 3: I think that they are rapidly exposing all of the
things that make people skeptical of religious nationalism in the
first place. They it's honestly impressive how quickly they've shown
how much of a failure religious nationalism can be right
because people, you know, I really don't think in twenty
twenty four people voted because they were like, you know what,
I really want a religious nationalist state. They're like, well,
my grocery prices went up a whole lot, and my
gas prices went up a whole lot, my home prices
went up a whole lot, And I guess maybe changing
the party in charge would work. And instead what they've
gotten is illegal, undeclared wars that they were promised they
wouldn't get. More expensive groceries, more expensive housing, way more
expensive gas, and a government that is way more concerned
with making ai images of themselves as Jesus and trying
to tell us all how to worship. And you know, John,
I think it gets back to you know that ultimately
they think their morality comes They don't care about helping
the American people. They care about their very narrow vision
of what they think is biblically ordained right. I brought
up Doug Wilson for a reason, because he went on
a podcast a few years ago when he said empathy
is a sin because it encourages people to turn away
from God for the sake of the neighbor. And that's
the undercurrent of their whole philosophy. It doesn't matter what
they do to everyday Americans as long as they feel
like they're bringing about their prophecy at end times. And people,
even Christians are saying this and they're like, wait a minute,
I am tired of this. This My whole thing is
actually that I think we should love everybody, and I'm
tired of enforced cruelty coming from the top. Sorry.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I started laughing at the very beginning of that
because I was gonna correct you. And I think that
you mean doctors like them dressed as doctors and healing
you know, potential uh p three dos.
Speaker 2: I feel I.
Speaker 1: Feel like that's very indicative of where we're at in
this current administration. But but yes, uh so, I just
wanted to let everybody know that the atheist experience is
a product of the atheist community of Austin. If I've
on one C three nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion
of atheism, Critical critical thinking, secular human and the separation
of religion and government.
Speaker 2: We are try streaming tonight.
Speaker 1: So a big shout out to our viewers over there
on TikTok and on YouTube mobile. If you are watching
us on TikTok tonight and you'd like to talk with this,
then request up and we'll bring you up on stage.
Please make sure that you are over eighteen years of
years of age before doing so, And while you're over
there on the TikTok app, make sure you're tippy tapping
on that screen.
Speaker 2: To get those lags up.
Speaker 1: It'd be great to see those lugs get up over
like five thousand here at the very start of it,
so that we get into the algorithm there. Make sure
you're sharing the stream out with your friends, family, and
people that you could potentially might want to call in.
If anybody out there on any of these platforms has
a question about secular humanism or like to challenge us
on the prominence of I guess Christian morality. Would I've
been calling Christian morality because like, I don't know how
you feel about it, fish, but like the Christian morality thing,
I know that there's no Christian morality, but I feel
like it's starting to take shape in our culture right now,
this sort of idea of Christian morality, and it's very
it is very sort of it's not focus on helping people,
but it's focused on well, what does God want? And
I mean that really is the central idea in Christianity,
and with Christianity being you know, the central focus here
with Christian nationalism and everything like that, how do you
feel about that framing of it being like them implementing
like Christian morality and everything.
Speaker 3: Look, you asked thirty Christians what morality is and you
get thirty different answers. I can't you know, I don't
think we can ask a religion that can't figure out
which of three different figures is God for a coherent
definition of morality that can work across time, space and communities.
Like ultimately, I just got interviewed for this article in CNN.
It was on Eastern There was this guy who had
written a book called Dominion that was like, Hey, all
of the good things about Western culture, like individual rights
and feminism and all these things come from Christianity. And
I was like, that doesn't make any sense, right, Like,
there's I it would be imagine me going and saying
humanism has a monopoly on morality, that actually all good
things about the world came out of humanism. Like the
truth is the only way we've come to good things
is by religious and non religious people from a bunch
of different traditions trying to figure out what is good together,
rather than somebody's stone tablets beating somebody else's stone tablets out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, the whole the whole stone tablet thing. Like,
so as far as the tank commandment's good, that this
has been one thing that which I don't know. I
don't I'm frozen on screen. Do I need to on
the back end? Do I need to like refresh or anything?
Speaker 3: Why? I don't know.
Speaker 2: If I didn't clear.
Speaker 1: John, yeah, my videos like frozen, I'm not sure what's
going on there. But so one of the things that
I've encountered the most in my conversations with people online
has been that, you know, they want to reject all
of the commandments of the Old Testament when they're talking
about their Christian morality, and then what they want to
do is they want to only adhere to the Ten Commandments.
And you know, I really find the Ten Commandments to
be nearly devoid of any kind of real sense of morality.
But you know, whenever somebody talks about the Ten because
we got the Ten Commandments in the news cycle like
a lot here lately, with them being forced into schools
and everything, I'm wondering, how do you feel about the
Ten Commandments?
Speaker 2: And how do you.
Speaker 1: Feel about the forcing of the Ten Commandments on the
American people?
Speaker 3: I mean, depends on the commandment, right, thou shalt not kill?
That one is I try to follow that one in
my own life. That one is pretty top for me.
The idea that the government should be making statements around
I am the Lord, your God, Thou shalt have no
other gods before me. There's no there's no way around
the fact that the Ten Commandments are an explicitly religious
document meant to advance the promotion of the Christian religion.
And that's fine if you believe in that, But I'll
be damned if you're going to use my tax dollars
to teach that to school children. And so, you know, ultimately,
we just won this last month, our lawyers won in
federal court against the state of Arkansas. They were trying
to plaster the Ten commandments all over their state government,
and we got a federal judge to say that is
not an acceptable use of tax payer money, especially if
you're going to tell other religious groups they can't put
up their holy monuments too. At the end of the day,
I don't want to live in a country where everybody
thinks like me. That's not the point of being an American.
That's not I think the point of living anywhere. The
goals should be to have a country where everyone can
follow the dictates of their conscient and this idea that, oh,
if everyone just believed our moral code, the world would
be fine. Not only do I think that that is
a sad view of other people's ways of thinking. I
think thinking about moral questions in different ways allows us
all to come to a better response. That's just not
the way the world works. Who can't ban different ways
of believing about morality and expect to have a society
where people are actually free and can collaborate. So I
don't know. I am glad we beat the snot out
of the Christian right in that case. I'm looking forward
to doing it again when they appeal it. And I
really would love somebody to call in and argue with
me and tell me we actually should have state and
forced morality from the top down. And tell me where
you've seen it work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I can't tell you where I've seen
it work unless you're talking about authoritative regimes where people
are like pretty miserable and everything, which I don't know
if I'm sure that you guys can still hear me.
But I'm cause playing God right now, this is what
God looks like. The visual Oh no, the visual representation
of God.
Speaker 2: You see me.
Speaker 1: The point at the exact same time, Just so that
everybody's clear, where's your yeah, because he heard to think so?
Uh but yeah, well you know, I just uh you know,
I've I've got them stash away.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be doing something with them.
Speaker 3: This is really convenient, actually.
Speaker 2: Outing I mean, don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: There's a there's a hole. They've got like tons and
tons of bottles of water here, and I you and
I could go into the wine business right now. I
just as long as this holds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, I just uh, you know,
I hope So, I mean I definitely could snap my
fingers and create all that wine right now.
Speaker 3: I mean honestly, this is who we're going to hire
another lawyer.
Speaker 2: I mean I should just be able to like snap.
Speaker 3: And that's what I'm saying. Man, like, I'll go now
now that you're now the disembodied voice is lurking, I'm like,
oh man, it's time for me. Is anyone here, anyone
here needs some healing? Anybody here? Anyone want? Anyone want
bread and fish? Like John is just John's going to
perform some miracles live.
Speaker 1: I can just multiply it immediately, like that's that's that's
how God works, right, magic. I ain't gotta explain anything
there you go.
Speaker 3: Can you make from my wrist?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Oh, I mean I could.
Speaker 1: I can, I can make I can make anything from
your rib? I mean, come on, why not?
Speaker 3: What what fruit?
Speaker 2: Am I what I need to do on my end?
I don't think there's anything I can do dragon fruit?
I just and that's just like.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to throw out this whole box with
some kind of honey or something.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, only only eat the fruit of the tree.
Speaker 1: Been to the uh right, I've I've actually been to
the Creation Museum and they have like the the tree.
You know that they have a representation of it, and
it looks like a dragon fruit.
Speaker 2: It's so crazy to see.
Speaker 1: They got this dragon looking snake wrapped around a dragon fruit.
And inside the dragon fruit are these like seeds that
looks like little capsules, you know, and it looks like
little taile andol pills the gel caps and that's apparently
what's stored in dragon fruit according to the Creation Museum.
Speaker 3: Wow, I you know, that makes the whole thing make
a lot more sense. If I told somebody not to
eat that fruit and they ate it, I'd be like, wow,
you are pretty stupid. That does nothing.
Speaker 2: But no, it does not.
Speaker 1: Now, So we were talking, Sorry I got distracted and everything.
So we were talking about the Ten Commandments in schools.
A lot of people think that it's gonna do something
and that and there, I guess, do something for the
students or like the students need to be reminded of
it and everything. My criticism, of course, is like what
does this say. Well, for one thing, we've got the
first three commandments, like you pointed out, like you know,
have no other gods before me and everything like that.
They want to try to paint that as being like
non religious. Oh no, is it just me, Or is
that like really bullshit?
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know how I am the Lord,
thy God, Thou shalt have no other gods before me
could ever be construed as non religious. I think you
know they're leaning in on this defense that says the
Ten Commandments are not it's not a religious document, it's
a historical document, because the founders all believed in the
Ten Commands, know the fuck they didn't. Like you've got
Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, You've got these old like
deist Unitarian universalists who I guarantee you one hundred percent,
straight up and down, did not believe in the Ten
Commandments because they very clearly did not believe in an
interventionist God. Right, So if you're gonna say the Founding
fathers believed in these things, and these are the foundations
of American society, you should be able to show that
the guy who wrote the Comsents pamphlet and the guy
who wrote the goddamn Declaration of Independence actually incorporated this
and the way that they were thinking. I don't deny
that there were Christians at the Founding like George Washington,
although George Washington famously warned about the dangers of religious states,
despite being religious himself. But my god, if you're gonna
make some kind of craven historical argument to force your
religion on kids, at least do us the courtesy of
being right. It's just such a profoundly stupid exercise to
try and pretend that the founding Father sat down and
challenged a state religion with a king who was said
to be divinely ordained with this idea of consent of
the governed, which has morality comes from the people, and
have people be like, oh no, but what they really
wanted was for government bureaucrats to decide what religion your
child should be. It's asinine, and if you disagreed, yell
at me.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely call in. We would love to hear from y'all.
We would love to hear from y'all. The phone number
is it's covered up right now. I'm so blanking right
now on the phone number. I know that it's out
there somewhere. I don't know in the chat. I know
it's in the chat. I'm floundering because I'm not on
the screen. Uh yeah, it's uh five one two nine
to nine to one nine two four two, call in,
or you can hit up that link in the description
called uh it's tiny dot c C forward slash call axph.
Do that now if you would like to disagree with us. Now,
one of the things that I usually run with and
that people have a problem with is I is and
and most.
Speaker 2: Of this is to be inflammatory.
Speaker 1: And that's the statement that Christian morals have done more
harm than good. And it's really just a challenge that
I issue to people, would be like, call in and
tell me what Christian morality, what Christian morals has has
actually succeeded in doing good, at least more good than
it's than than Christianity on the whole is done harm.
But kind of curious, how do you about that statement?
Speaker 3: You know, I would say, who what do you get
to call Christian morals? Right? When I when I ask
people what is Christian morality, they're like, well, Christian morality
is about dignity. Okay, Well, news flash, every religion in
world history has a concept of human dignity. You don't
get to claim that because there are more of you
than us and say you came up with it, like
there is a concept of human dignity and Hinduism and
Buddhism and Judaism and Islam. Right, So when you're talking
about Christian morality, you should talk about the things that
are distinct to Christianity that make it separate from say,
Judaism or humanism, which also believes in things like human
dignity and reciprocity and humility. So what are the specific
tenets of Christian belief that you think make your life
better than mine? Is the question? Or make your country
you're imagined Christian nationalist country better than mine. And that's
where people start to have a hard answer, and it's like, look, okay,
like we can. We can both believe in the Golden
rule in loving thy neighbor. And your belief in loving
thy neighbor is not somehow stronger than my belief in
loving thy neighbor because you read it in a different
book than me. So you know, again, I'm curious if
somebody thinks that their Christianity makes them a better person
than John and I because of what you believe, not
how you live. Because I again this for humanism, right,
Like humanism isn't something you can just call yourself. You
can't convert to humanism. Humanism is about what you believe
and what you do, because we think that's what morality is, right.
It's like not what club you say you're in, it's
who the hell you are and how you live your life. Yeah,
And I feel like I've really started to work in
a lot of those aspects into my interactions with people.
I've started, you know, you know, deploying that statement of
Christianity as Christian morals has done more harm than good
as a way to get people into the common station,
to demonstrate to them that they're actually better than their
own God, because it's like, you know, they don't oftentimes
they don't even realize like how deplorable some of the
some of the things that they think.
Speaker 1: Are benign are. I had a kid the other the
other week. I say kid, because I'm you know, forty, and.
Speaker 3: Am I a kid?
Speaker 2: John twenty or so?
Speaker 1: So I said, I say kid, No, no, no, no, You're
definitely not a kid. But he he was definitely young
in multiple different ways. But he did not understand that
the Tenth Commandment listed women as property and that you know,
had slaves in there, just like you can own slaves.
Speaker 2: That was like a mind blowing thing for him.
Speaker 3: Doude, what do you think?
Speaker 1: I guess this leads me to think, what do you
think the ramifications are of places like Texas as well
as other states forcing the Ten Commandments into schools.
Speaker 3: Well, I think number one, you're going to have every
child in that school who doesn't come from an Abrahamic
religion feel ostracized, feel less than feel that their government
is saying that other families' religions are worth more than theirs. Right,
I will you know, I will be damned if my
tax dollars are used to teach my child in a
public school that they might be going to hell. That
to me is beyond the pale. Right. So number one,
that's what I care about. I don't kids deserve to
be who the hell they are, and I don't want
any kid going to school to feel like they don't
belong there because their family's the wrong religion. And again,
I think it promotes it's bad because it's historically inaccurate.
I think it promotes this total myth that the Founding
Fathers intended to establish a country based on the Christian religion,
when in fact you can find every Founding Father, even
the religious ones, being like this is not what we're
trying to do at all. And then, yeah, John, I
would agree with you. There are elements of Old Testament
morality like, oh, you know, if you hear a disembodied
voice saying to kill your son, you should definitely do that.
That are this is a mark of your faithfulness and
worthiness and virtue that I think we want to rightly
move people away, right Like, I don't care if someone's
got a different theory of what happened before the Big
Bang than I do. But what I think is really destructive,
and I think this is what you're talking about with
Christian morality. Are these concepts of things like original sin,
the idea that people can be born inherently broken. I
used to be a teacher. Nothing in my classroom ever
would have been about telling a kid they are inherently
broken or inherently bad. You don't get good behavior out
of kids when they think when they believe you think
they are inherently no good. You get good behavior and
good results out of kids when you're like, I believe
that you are a good person, and I think you
have the ability to grow and change. So yeah, there
are certain there are just elements of that I don't
want anywhere near a public school classroom, not just because
it's not my belief, but this practice of looking for
badness to punish in people, I think has created so
much violence in our culture, and that's what we need
to move away from. What do you think about that, man?
Speaker 1: I totally yeah, yeah, I totally agree that that we
need to move away from from all that in our
culture and we need to get back to a more like,
you know, individual focus sort of and I don't mean
like selfish, I mean individuals and well, we instead of
focusing on like, well, what does this old book want
or what does this character in this old book want?
Speaker 2: What does he say?
Speaker 3: Is good?
Speaker 1: I think that I think that, uh, you know, what
we need to be focusing on is what what do
we what can we do to be you know, better
to our fellow humans? And you know it, it seems
to me like the way things are going right now
is that there's an intense pressure to refocus you know,
ourselves into like this, Well, what can I what can
I justify with with this old book? What can I
justify with the morality of the Bible? What cherry picked,
uh you know, versus out of it? That seemed to,
you know, sound profound, but yet they the only profound
thing that.
Speaker 2: They do is profound harm. And uh, it's just it.
Speaker 1: It's rather ridiculous that that that people seem to focus
more on, Well, what is this? I'm being very this
is gonna be a pejorative. What does this you know,
old sky wizard wants? Which is essentially what it ends
up being. It's like what appeases this sky wizard that
I'm interpreting out, And really what it is is what
offends this sky wizard? And the only way that I
know that is by what my pastor is telling me.
Pastors like Doug Wilson or who's that one Christian nationalist
guy that's been going on the podcast that like is
incredibly racist.
Speaker 3: Oh that guy Devin Right?
Speaker 2: Webe Joel Webbin, Joel.
Speaker 3: I think it's something Eban the guy who was saying
he was saying something on Twitter the other day about
how like the world needs is like masculine, virtuous men
who are going to come in and forcefully take rights
away from people. And it's like, where the fuck did
Jesus talk about any of that? Man? Like, what in
what world do you think most people, even most Christians
define their morality by coming in and strong arming things
away from people. And what part was Jesus like, you know,
thou shalt go out to all the temples, and thou
shalt self appoint you know, put yourself in charge of
all the other people who know less than you do. Ultimately,
I think for a lot of these people, none of
this is really about God or Jesus, right, Jefferson said,
in every country and in every age, the priest has
always been the ally of the despot. This is in
part about the fact that they want a massive power
grab and they want to figure out how to Oh
my gosh, we're gonna We're about having good time up
in here. This is about the fact that the religious
right is in cahoots with billionaires trying to grab as
much power and money as they can for themselves. And so,
you know, at the end of the day, you know,
I think that we've got sorry, I'm districted, because we're
about to have a very special guest on the atheist experience.
I think that at the end of the day, it's
using the stories from the Old Book as a smoke
screen to get people to buy into whatever narrative serves
the people with the most power, because ultimately, those are
the people who have always been able to claim that
they speak for God and get people to follow them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, we're about to have a special guest as
he's are they still getting set up?
Speaker 2: Don need de vamp a little bit.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not sure he looks ready to go.
Speaker 4: Let me see.
Speaker 5: Am I hearing? Am I hearing myself? You guys hearing me?
I think it will depend on when we get the
shot going.
Speaker 2: Oh who I'm hearing it's another disembodied voice.
Speaker 3: H O WHOA one one more and will be truly trinitarian.
Speaker 5: The multitude in the heavens is multiplying exponentially at this rate.
At this rate, we're gonna have about sixty people hosting.
Speaker 4: By the end of this ghost, we'll.
Speaker 3: Be able to feel the whole baseball team called Angels
in the outfield.
Speaker 5: John, you're the Father, Jamie, Holy Spirit. And then me, well,
I'm the sun, what I'm the fishes and you're the fishes.
Speaker 4: We just need the loaves and we'll have a whole group.
Speaker 3: Guy, I got some cakes right here.
Speaker 5: Hey, everybody, I think that you were on.
Speaker 3: Uh, well, now I feel I'm there so thank you.
Speaker 5: I would say, yeah, as soon as anybody wants me
to talk about the fact that that's what my next
vide is, I'm super happy to do that.
Speaker 3: Talk about what your next video is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I think okay.
Speaker 5: So, historically speaking, white supremacy and Christianity have gone hand
in hand. You know, white supremacy in the United States
has always been a Christian institution and cultural movement, and
that's for a reason. That's because Christianity has been the
dominant religion. I actually would say the somewhat controversial thing
among a lot of seculars and say that I don't
think that Christianity even has to be inherently chauvinistic. I
don't think that's the reason why Christianity became white supremacist
at some point. I actually think it's because Christianity was
first popular and it was used as a weapon to
divide people and allow fewer resources to get into more hands.
So the reason why white supremacy and Christianity are often
using and dealing with a lot of the same narratives
is that if you look at the history of white supremacy,
what did it arise in order to do? What was
the function that it meant to provide from the get go.
It meant to provide justification for colonizing places and for
enslaving people. What's the point of colonizing places and enslaving
people extracting wealth from those places? Then, like you have
all of these narratives that are just justifying, like, oh,
we're allowed to do that because scientifically we're the superior
race and so we deserve.
Speaker 4: To do that.
Speaker 5: Now, you know, Christians today will say something really strangely similar.
We're allowed to go to war with Iran. We're allowed
to do such and such two Palestinians, we're allowed to
do genocide. And that's because we are the chosen people.
We are the people who actually have the moral of
justification and right to rulership.
Speaker 4: It's like the.
Speaker 5: Divine right of kings, but you know, changed a little
bit for a liberal democracy. That's the kind of like
Christian talking point right now. Ultimately, what is that doing
though materially in the world, that narrative that is allowing
people to go into places like Iran and go, you
know what, they have a lot of oil.
Speaker 4: But if I just say I want to do all.
Speaker 5: This stuff to them, unseat their leaders, bomb them because
I want their oil. The vast majority of people, whatever
religious system they're a part of, the vast majority of
people are going to say, I don't like that.
Speaker 4: I don't think that that's okay. I don't think that's moral.
Speaker 5: Most people have a conscience and would not be okay
with just bombing to take somebody's stuff. So they say instead, oh, well,
those people are the wrong religion.
Speaker 4: Those people are Muslim.
Speaker 5: And it operates the same way as white supremacy historically has.
It provides moral justification for a bunch of rich people
to go in and steal a bunch of stuff from
regular people so they can keep getting richer.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, that's what it is, right and that's what's happening
with public schools too. Again, So much of the debate
they're trying to ignite in public schools is about trying
to undermine confidence in the public school system so they
can defund those systems which support so many working class
and middle class jobs in America and provide every kid
with an equal opportunity to make good right and then
take that money parcel it out to a decentralized set
of services that don't work, that make kids dumber and
that are run either by tech billionaires or the Christian right.
It's a giant grift.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what's really crazy about the school voucher thing. So
we have a school choice here supposedly in Texas now,
and what that means is that essentially you can start
a school or you can be a private school, and
you can basically have a student come in and you
take about nine thousand dollars per student nine to eleven
thousand dollars depending on the district, away from a public school.
So that then that that private school can be funded
to educate that student. Supposedly. Now, private schools don't really
have much oversight. But here's the really interesting part of
this is that this is not just a grift that
makes it to where Christian private schools can take money
from public schools and therefore empower like a Christian base. No,
it actually has to do with the main lobbying group
for getting the school choice thing to happen was not Christians.
Speaker 4: It wasn't.
Speaker 5: It was like you're saying, tech people who created companies
to serve as the middleman to help create accounts where
money from public schools could go and sit for a
little while accrue a little bit of interest and then
go to the private schools. So, ultimately, are we really
talking about fighting Christianity or are we talking about fighting
whatever it is that is incentivizing people to use Christianity
to get richer.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and ultimately I think we're talking about fighting. I
call it the axis of nonsense, the alliance between the billionaires,
the bishops, and the biggots, the people who are realizing
that ultimately they can't agree on a lot. They can't
agree on things like H one B visas, they don't
agree on Israel, but they can agree that our government
cares about too many people too much of the time.
And what they want is our government to sort of
a smaller number of people who either share their wealth,
or share their whiteness, or share the way they worship.
And that's ultimately what humanists are fighting against, right, not
for everyone to think the same way we do, but
for everyone to live with the same dignity. And that's
the thing they can't abide.
Speaker 5: Right, we were just having a conversation about. Ultimately, you know,
the thing that I think that people can and already
are uniting over is that people want to be able
to control the means that they subsist off of in
their lives. So that means that means having democracy that
is both in electoral politics but also economic democracy.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: So we're not ultimately talking about going out there and
being like, this is why God doesn't exist, and if
everybody is just an atheist, things are going to get better.
We're talking about empowering people regardless of what they believe,
and that can come from a place of well, we
believe in the inherent human dignity of every person.
Speaker 3: That's right. There was an old labor slogan from the
nineteen twenties, no Gods, no masters. Right. That's the whole
central point of humanism, by the way, which is where
we got some of our greatest labor advocates like Goldman
and a Philip Randolph and Eugene Dubs from Happy may Day,
is there should be no higher power than all of
us collectively, than the human spirit and the human experience.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We are here ultimately not to serve some abstract function,
but to help other people live lives of freedom and flourishing,
and everything else often just serves as a smoke screen
and a distraction from that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think John gave a really excellent intro when
he was talking about this idea of Christian morality being
floated out there, And you know, when I think of
Christian morality, I'm thinking of their way that they're kind
of posing this is there is a moral system that's
delivered from an ultimate.
Speaker 4: Authority, you know, top down.
Speaker 5: And in doing that, in delivering that idea that there's
one guy who's the ultimate authority who's decided what's right
and wrong, and we can just adopt that, they're hiding
the fact that even if you do you believe in
the inerrancy of the Bible, even if you do believe
in a God who is divine and morally authoritative, they're
leaving out the part that is required even for people
who believe that, which is a group of people coming
together to create a moral system based on their interpretation
of what God has said. At the end of it,
all moral systems, even if the Christians are right that
their God is real, are based on the consensus of
a group of people who want to influence the world
around them.
Speaker 4: We're just saying that that is the case. They're hiding
the fact that that's the case.
Speaker 3: Right right, Humanism ultimately is about harnessing what is true
about human nature to improve the world. And the thing
that's true about human natures. We don't accept things as
moral because someone tells them to us, right. This is
Psychologists have worked for years on how people actually develop
their moral beliefs. We stop at around age six accepting
that things are true because somebody said so. The reason
we think things are good is because we're social beings
and we can see the impact our actions have on
other people in the world, and so we start to realize, Okay,
this is a good way to treat people, and this
is a bad way to treat people, not because it's
written in the sky somewhere, but because of our innate
sense of empathy and our desire to be liked by
others and to want to do well for others.
Speaker 5: Okay, I got to pick on a word there. You say,
innate sense of empathy. It sounds like you might tell
me if I'm wrong. It sounds like you might make
a case that there is a natural part of human
nature that might lend itself well to a kind of
humanist type of community. Christians like to make the point
that humans are naturally evil and naturally they do all
these bad things, and so you have to have a
kind of top down moral authority or else we'll just
evolve into chaos.
Speaker 4: But it sounds like you're saying no.
Speaker 5: I think that human nature actually at least has a
significant element which lends to cooperation.
Speaker 4: And that's why humanist community might work.
Speaker 3: That's how we've built civilization, right, haven't. We haven't had
Christianity throughout all of civilization. What we've had at every
turn of human history is people who ultimately see it
as to their benefit to work together with others. We
can go back and you know, we can look at
the we can look at evolution and we can see
that ultimately the species that survived were the species that
we're able to collaborate. There's absolutely some genetic evidence that
humans have the ability to empathize with others encoded into
our DNA, not in the literal sense, but that this
is a biological function within us to try and because
the goal is to connect to people, right, ultimately, we
are hardwired to find community with others because we know
that's how we survive. And there's so many ways we
can create that community. But you cannot create that community
without being a decent person. You're not going to have
people around you if you don't treat them well. And
we've realized this fact as we've evolved as a species. Now,
obviously I don't believe that people have fixed innate natures. Right.
We have within us the ability and the drive to
do good, and we also have in us the ability
and the drive to be selfish sometimes, and the act
of being human is about making the hard choices over
and over again to prioritize the common good over our
own selfishness. But the truth is there's no one else
but us who makes that decision. There's not some unseen
force making those things for us. That is an awesome
and terrifying responsibility we have, and that's what makes life
so hard. But it also wants to make what makes
a well lived life so beautiful.
Speaker 5: Okay, I have put out the take that I don't
think that evil exists. I've talked about that a deviation
from a cooperative or at least like a morally neutral
set of base actions that humanity does. Deviation from that
comes from a circumstance in which somebody is seriously disenfranchised,
in which they they're material existence is severely threatened, or
they have they're in a society where the social relations
have incentivized just extreme acts of selfishness rather than cooperativeness
and generosity, or maybe they have some kind of chemical
or neurological imbalance. I think that's where bad stuff, bad
actions come from. I don't think that they come from
some kind of inherent broken human nature. I don't think
that there's any kind of like supernatural metaphysical evil substance
like sin that is corrupting our souls. I don't think
that corruption isn't even inherent, you know, is a coherent concept.
What do you think about if you think that about
you know, morally, that's where morality comes from.
Speaker 4: Where does bad stuff come from?
Speaker 5: Am I like way off to say that evil doesn't exist,
given there's been some pretty bad things that have happened
in history.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think you are. I think ultimately what
we are is people reacting the circumstance right in part
of the in part, good things come from the fact
that we need to collaborate in order to survive. I
do you think that a lot of the evil in
the world comes from deep personal wounds that people are
trying to reckon are falsely and maladaptively trying to reconcile
by lashing out. I think it comes, as you said,
from scarcity, the fear that if I don't keep these
people down, they'll take the things that I need to survive.
I think it comes sometimes. I think bad things often
come from a desire for order that you're not entitled to, right.
I want to make the world make sense to me.
The world will look a lot better if everyone lived
the way I live, and I definitely will feel a
lot less entropy in my life. So I'm going to
try to subjugate people. You know, Ultimately, all of the
reasons I think people behave really terribly come from a
lot of the morality we've been taught and misinterpreted. I'm
with you. I don't think that there's any dark matter
substance within us that compels us to be bad. I think, certainly,
you know, we have a self interest, and sometimes if
we don't temper that self interest with other things, that
can get out of hand. And that's true. But when
I look at what humans have achieved throughout history, and
when I think about the what I find my own
instincts being the other instincts of the people around me.
I think most people are driven by a desire to
help others, help themselves and find ways for those things
to be true at the same time.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm gonna ask.
Speaker 5: I'm going to make the moral request that you scoot
in closer to the mic because we'll get a little
bit better audio quality that way.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Okay, Oh oh that's sounding really Chris. Oh okay, all right, uh.
Speaker 3: Thank you for encouraging my moral behavior.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, That's how it works, folks. What what does
what is the AHA? And I mean what is fish
stark and the aha? More broadly, think about encouraging and
helping to create moral behavior. Then are you guys, are
you acting upon kind of what we're talking about, this
kind of more You know, if you alleviate certain conditions,
then people are better incentivized to cooperate.
Speaker 4: Are are you doing something like that? Are you going
out and telling people be good?
Speaker 3: Be good?
Speaker 5: What's the approach to actually trying to encourage moral behavior?
Speaker 3: Well, the best way to shape moral behavior, and this
is what the humanistic psychologists figured out in the nineteen
sixties was Carl er Carl Roger Heavin aslow All, John
Dewey all my faves. They realized that morality doesn't come
from external threats or shame. We adopt moral behavior because
we have a vision of who we want ourselves to be,
and we try to live our life in line with
that vision. The concept is called congruence. Right. When I
how I imagine myself to be lines up with my actions,
you get an incredible mental health benefit from that. That's
when you feel a sense of joy and meaning. And
so the value of humanism is that it is a
moral code. Right. Humanism offers people question or answers to
the questions of what does it mean to live a
good life and serve others? And so if people see
themselves as humanist, one of the things that done throughout
centuries is it incentivized people to act like humanists. So
we're trying to build that community of people who say, Okay,
I have these values and I share them with other people,
and I'm going to focus on acting in line with
those values. Number one. And then the second thing that
we do is, yeah, I think it has to be
the work of humanists to make people's material circumstances better
so that they can live lives of service and meaning.
That's why yesterday we were out here together. That was
a lot of fun working on the American Empathy Project.
We funded one hundred and one community service events across
the country yesterday that were for humanists to come together
and help their neighbors, because that's that's our charge, that's
what we need to be doing right now in a
world with so much cruelty and brokenness.
Speaker 5: So what kind of so I know, tell the people
what kind of projects you guys had across the country
one hundred and one in one day, one.
Speaker 3: Hundred and one projects. We had people hosting free community
resource fairs. We had people doing period packing projects for
folks who are homeless. We had people fixing me for
immigrant families that can't go to the grocery store because
they're being targeted by ice. We had people doing free
community feedings. Overall, we invested one hundred thousand dollars in
these projects, and then people went out on the back
of that and they raised two, three, four times more
from local donors and they ran these projects and they
brought in people from around their community, some of whom
aren't even humanists. And we don't care to serve and
so you know, ultimately people think about humanism and they
think about it as like an endless philosophy supper club.
And the truth is, humanism in this country has always
been best when it's moved away from the temptation to
discuss things over and over and said no, if we
believe that human dignity is the most important thing, then
the work is not talking about human dignity. It's going
out and fighting for human dignity. That's why my favorite
human that's are not people who wrote a bunch of
books in mid two thousands, but people like Frederick Douglas
and Eugene Debs and Emma Goldman and Gloria steinem the
people who said, Okay, if it is up to us
coming to save us, then it is our job to
save ourselves and build that world together. That I think
is the thing I get from humanism personally, this idea
that Okay, if no one's coming to save us, I
have that awesome responsibility and that power. But ultimately, if
nobody's coming to save us and we're still here, that
means we've been capable all along of doing what it
takes to build the world we need.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I really like.
Speaker 5: That's so a lot of the time, you know, when
I meet somebody in person that says that they've watched
my videos and they like, you know, atheist content, they
will say something along the lines of, you know, I
stayed in for so long because I felt like I
felt like I couldn't do it by myself. I felt
like I just I needed to call on God's strength
in order to get through whatever my circumstance was. And
then I asked them, you know, how do you feel
on the other side of that, And a lot of
the time I'm able to deliver something that people find
empowering if they haven't figured it out themselves, than usually
they have.
Speaker 4: And that is any.
Speaker 5: Time that they have overcome something, anytime, whether they were
fighting addiction and they were calling on God for that,
whether it was you know, an abusive home life and
they figured out a way to escape from that, whatever
it was, even if it was just it was a
self esteem issue, Yep, they can have the realization that
every time they called on God and they felt empowered
to rise above that circumstance, or when they called out
for help and another person answered that call, ultimately, what
was happening is that human beings. The whole time humans
were solving human problems. That is how they ended up
actually getting out of that circumstance, is that they performed
something so great that their former conception of reality itself
demanded that only God could do that.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: I think that's a profoundly empowering realization. To have everything
that's ever been attributed to God has always been us,
both good and bad. If you look at the good
of that especially, I think that it's a way to realize, like, oh,
maybe miracles do exist, and every single time, yeah, exactly,
we're the ones that make them.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is you know, I often almost tell
people prayer works, but not for the reason people think
it this, Yes, right, Like I used to study developmental psychology.
That was what I did before I became a professional humanist.
There is so much research showing the positive effects of visualization.
If you were like, this is what I want for myself,
this is what I want for my future, and you
really think about it and you imagine yourself going out
and achieving it, it's more likely to happen, not because
you've appealed to some higher power, but because you have
trained and prepared yourself with a sense of confidence that
you can achieve this outcome, and so you'll go out
and do the work necessary to make it happen. And
so ultimately, you know, if this appear keel to a
higher power gets you thinking about the things that you
want in your life and then gives you the confidence
and the motivation and the agency to go out and
do them. That's a beautiful thing. That's why humanism matter
is because we are so powerful and we have so
much potential, and we ought to celebrate that rather than
taking our biggest and best accomplishments and credible, challenging things
people have overcome and outsourcing our own hard work and
success to something else and not giving ourselves or our
community the credit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, do you remember the social experiment that happened
where there was a lady on TikTok that was calling
churches and being like, Hey, I really need baby formula.
My baby's about to go without eating. Would you be
able to provide me just one day of baby formula?
And it was like ninety percent of churches said no,
every mosque said yes. And then the churches that said yes,
we can do that were small, family run churches where
you would had, you know, the same group of people
just scraping by to keep this church open for forever.
They never had any major donors, and a lot of
the time when they were, you know, providing that baby formula,
at the end of that it was the pastor or
a secretary or you know, the pastor's kid running out
and buying it at Walmart and meeting that person totally impromptu.
Those were the people who were willing to extend charity
and compassion outside of the fold. If humanist groups are
called to provide baby formula, to provide housing to our neighbors,
do we allow where that person has fallen religiously to
affect our answer?
Speaker 3: We can't and we shouldn't. And I'll give you an
example of something that happened just a couple of weeks
ago where I know for a fact we didn't ask
that question. I got a call I was in a meeting,
and I got to call myself phone from a friend
of mine who works for the ACLU, and like, I'm thirty.
Millennials don't call each other unless somebody's dying, So I
was like, I gotta pick this up. Something is clearly
going on and she was like, hey, we have and
I'm gonna be vague about this story because it involves
us like evading immigration enforcement. Right. She was like, we
have a mother and her baby in a city somewhere
far away from where they live, and the dad who
is with them has just been kidnapped by ice and
they're safe, but they're afraid Ice is coming back. We
have somebody driving down from that state right now to
get them home, but we need I don't know anybody
in this rural city, and we need someone who can
get them out of town. Do you know anybody? And
I was like, I know the AH Chapter lead in
the city thirty minutes away, and I'm gonna give them
a call and see what I can do. And I called,
I said, here's the situation with him. Five minutes they
had a volunteer going to get that mother and baby,
get them out of that city, and they're now home.
We didn't ask for a fucking second. Yeah, is this
person Christian Jewish? Does this person identify as an atheist?
Have they read The God Delusion? What do they think
about Richard Ducket. It's like, Okay, this shit is not
relevant to humanism. It's not about do you share our
takes on the supernatural. It's about are you a human being?
And do you need help? And then it is our
moral obligation to do what we can and get you there,
whether you're in the club or not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh exactly.
Speaker 5: And I think, first of all, I'm pretty sure I
know who you're talking about, because they're fucking awesome people
that I've been able to meet, and that's amazing, And
I am not surprised that I'll all to hear that
that's the thing that probably came out of that chapter.
Speaker 4: If I'm thinking it's the right person.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, yeah, yeah, I'm talking about Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: No, But you know, it's I think I asked that
question because it's something that's somewhat plagued atheist spaces for
a while and has really separated the atheists and anti
theist spaces from the humanist spaces, which have historically had
overlap but differences in some really key areas. You know,
there is an important point to make in that a
lot of us have been victimized by religious institution, structures, people,
and so we want to come into secular spaces and
be safe from that. Yeah, that totally makes sense. That's valid.
Like I felt that way the first time. Actually, the
first time I ever told you this. The first time
I ever went to a humanist, a secular humanist group.
It was my very first time ever talking to somebody
about being an atheist.
Speaker 4: I was in Tyler, Texas.
Speaker 5: I went to just like a dinner that had about
twenty people Secular Humanists of East Texas. And right after
I left the meeting, first of all, I had thought that, Wow,
this is amazing. Everybody was nice to me even though
God wasn't threatening them with hell, so that's really healing.
Speaker 4: But someone reported me to the group leadership for being
a mole. What they I thought that was insane.
Speaker 5: I thought that was ridiculous that some report me for
being like a suspected Christian. I thought, why would they
be like so hard up about a Christian potentially coming in?
Speaker 4: Maybe I just talked like a Christian. They got suspicious.
Speaker 5: I ended up finding out that the reason they reported
me as a mole or they were suspicious that I
was trying to infiltrate the group, was that they had
been infiltrated by local youth pastors three separate times, Holy
and the number one goal of these youth pastors was
not to spread the gospel to these people or show
them the love of Christ. It was to collect names,
figure out which church congregation those people were connected to
in their past or where their parents went to church,
and then report them to their own families and report
them to their church leadership. Essentially, it was an extremely
tactical form of doxing all within the Christian world. So
they were really suspicious of, you know, Christians coming in.
And so I think that you get this specibition in
spaces you know that are meant to protect atheists and
humanists from the trauma that's been inflected upon them, you
get the suspicion of Christians being in these spaces because
we want to protect ourselves. Is a hard question, but
I've got to ask, how do we because I agree
with you on the altruism part, how do we protect
human dignity, even of the people who might have been
a part of groups that have oppressed us, while protecting ourselves. Like,
what practically do you guys do on the ground at
the AHA to make that happen.
Speaker 3: It's a good question, And look, I don't want to
disclaim the need for a space with people who share
common values and common beliefs. Right. I think it's okay
to have spaces that are just for atheists about atheism,
but that can't be where our compassion ends. Right. We
can build community with people of like values, but what
you believe shouldn't be a barrier to whether we care
or not about your well being. And so you know
we are we're trying to model this part through the
policy work that we do. Right, our goal is to
show folks in the secular movement that, hey, there are
plenty of liberal Christians, liberal Jews, liberal Muslims who are
willing to work with the non theist community and fight
for the separation of church and state together. So you know,
we work with for instance, American United for Separation of
Church and State or Interfaith Alliance, both groups led by
religious people to work on policy issues at the federal
and state levels. And that's not an accident. It's not
only because they do great work and they're willing to
welcome us as full partners. But the truth is, humanists
have always been at our best when we say this
is who we are, and we're standing in our truth
as non theist. But we're going to collaborate with religious
folks and work together as long as we can share
an agreement about what we're supposed to do in this
one life on this planet.
Speaker 5: So are we talking about a collaboration based on shared
actions and shared goals rather than shared.
Speaker 3: Belief, shared actions, shared goals? And I think shared values right. Ultimately,
just as I don't think religious people own the idea
of morality, I don't think humanists own the idea of
compassion and reciprocity.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: And so there are things where you know, I think,
for instance, on opposing you know, expeditionary wars, there are
places where we can work with plenty of liberal religious groups.
And I think especially on protecting the right to free
speech and on protecting things like healthcare, and on fighting
this immigration bullshit. Like there is so much that if
we unite non theists and theists who believe in real
freedom and dignity, we constitute a majority when you bring
those groups together. Yeah, And ultimately, as long as we
have a democracy, that's the way to get things done.
Speaker 4: No, I think that's totally true.
Speaker 5: What's integral to that, obviously is community organizing like we
have to have in real life.
Speaker 4: Communities. We can't just do this on the Internet.
Speaker 5: As great as shows like The Atheist Experience actually are,
or we're getting our word out there with that, but
at the end of the day, we need something like
the Atheist Community of Austin, which the Atheist Experience comes
out of, where real people can get together. And what's
the cringey phrase that a lot of the non denominational
churches like to use, do life together?
Speaker 3: Do life together? Yeah, but this is doing life together right.
It's like I was here for six hours yesterday and
I'm so glad I got to visit ACA because You've
been talking it up to me for over a year now.
But like watching people come in and I watched like people,
I watched you. There were like a couple of different
guys who came up to you being like hey, Drew, like,
I'm here because I saw your video, and then you
introduced them all to each other. And then at a
certain point you stepped away and they were all talking
and everyone was, you know, sharing pizza and getting free
condoms and like doing all of the like listening to
the good music vern was playing and doing all the
fun things you do. I'm like, yes, this is living life,
and we didn't ask at the door what somebody's religious
beliefs were a through. If somebody was a Christian who
was questioning their belo and wondering if they could actually
meet and make friends with good atheists, I think they
would have found that at all.
Speaker 5: Event I'm entirely sure that we had at least a
couple of people that were about right there that came
in and had a good time.
Speaker 3: And that's what our spaces should be for. And that's
why I'm so skeptical of people who want to, like
you know, stand at the door like they're at a
frat party with a checkbox, being like, does somebody have
the right beliefs? It's like, look, our job actually should
be to bring in people who aren't sure what they
believe and not you know, manipulate them or tell them
what they have to be, but really lovingly show, not tell,
what we are about, and if it is for them,
they will stay. And that's that's the most beautiful thing
we could possibly do, as opposed to creating a really
small circle of people who just believe what we believe.
Speaker 5: Okay, So, in doing a little advertising for the community
fair that we had yesterday at the Atheist Community of Austin,
I had someone comment and say, as an atheis, this
is the lamest thing I've ever seen. And by that
they meant that we're getting together and we have any
kind of shared identity that we think that we should
organize to.
Speaker 4: I don't know, like help.
Speaker 5: Human beings live in conditions that are actually worthy of
their dignity, you know, that are not beneath their dignity.
They said that it was the lamest thing ever that
we that we get together, and there is a strain
of atheists that feel that way that will say, oh,
when you're getting together, you're just reproducing the things.
Speaker 4: That are bad about religion.
Speaker 5: I want to get your take on it before I
have to sound off on that, because.
Speaker 4: That I find that kind of infuriating.
Speaker 5: I feel like the best parts of religion are the
other people sitting in the pews with you, not the
guy that's up there on the stage preaching and telling
you what you have to believe. And if we don't
have that top down, if we don't have that dogma,
then we have the good parts. Don't wait anyway, what
do you think about that commentary?
Speaker 3: I was talking to my friend Katie Cladgy Grant, who
runs camp Quest, which is, oh, yeah, I love Katie. Yeah,
camp Quest is awesome. Katie's amazing in camp Quest is
like it's this network of summer, low cost summer camps,
humanist camps that people can send their kids to, which
is something that religious organizations have done for a long time. Right,
They've had camps and use them as a tool for
faith formation. And she was like, look, there are these
things like camp, community, ritual belonging, shared singing, shared meeting having,
like having affirmative creeds of shared values. All these things
they can be good and beautiful, and we shouldn't let
religion claim the best parts of life and take them
away from us. They don't own ritual, they don't own community,
and in many cases they're not trying to write. No
one's ever tried to tell me like, oh, you can't
gather people together. That's like cultural appropriation of religon right,
Like I, in fact, I had religious friends tell me
to take this job because they were like, you know what,
what Catholicism gives me, like a community and a set
of values. I want other people to have that too.
I want you to go build that for people, and
so I think that we get so scared about reproducing.
I agree with you, we get scared of producing the
negative valances of religion. But let's just be clear about
what the bad parts are, right, Like, we don't believe
in authoritarian, top down moral codes. We don't believe in
coersive social control or shame as a tool of behavior improvement.
We don't believe in like gender essentialism and like saying
that there are only some jobs men and women can do.
We don't believe in like intense self denial or like
you know, sexual shame. Okay, Like I feel like I've
listed most of the things that are bad about religion
and we can just agree all the rest of the
stuff is okay.
Speaker 5: I really think that ultimately that kind of attitude comes
from the baggage that a lot of people carry out
with them when.
Speaker 4: They leave religion.
Speaker 5: Like, maybe you have not been told that, you know,
religion has a monopoly on community, But within the very
Protestant Evangelical Protestant space, I was told that there is
a there's a.
Speaker 4: True dichotomy out there. You're either in church, you're.
Speaker 5: Living in a communal way, and you are submitting your
will to everybody else, and you just get bossed around
and you don't get to make any decisions for your life,
and you're living in shame all the time. Or you
can be a true radical individual to where everything you're
doing is pretty much alone, but you get to make
your own decisions and you get to be your own
God and all of these things. And you know, the
way that the Evangelical Protestants put it to me was that, well,
with the communal model, yeah, you're gonna have.
Speaker 4: Plenty of neighbors who nag you, and that might be annoying.
Speaker 5: But you get order, you get structure, you get true morality,
and you never lonely. But on the other side, in
the individualist side, frankly, I was told that this led
to suicidal nihilism, and it always did.
Speaker 4: And I think that there is a set of atheists.
They tend to be men.
Speaker 5: There are atheist men that hold on to that dichotomy,
and they just think that being over here on the true,
completely and totally radically individualist side of that dichotomy is best,
and that for them they can resist the suicidal nihilism,
and so living there is the best. The thing for
me is that that ends up motivating people saying that
getting together with people is bad. Getting together with community
in order to do like effective political action, Well, that's
not only bad but also impossible, and they end up
being severely disempowered. They never get their political will like,
they never get their way, They never actually get to
be a part of any kind of effective social force
to make society better. They end up wallowing in their
own loneliness for forever. I'm sorry if I'm stepping on
any toes here.
Speaker 3: But nope, that you are describing a thing that happens.
Speaker 5: What I think that we need to get out there
is that this dichotomy in the first place is a
construction of oppressors. Yep, there is no dichotomy between being
able to live as your authentic self and having community.
Speaker 3: No, and you can do both at the same time.
You can't live as your authentic self, I would argue
unless you have community. I think that part of living
an embodied life is having people around you who you
love and who love you. I think you are. It's
almost like cutting off an appendage to not and you
don't need to get it through an explicitly secular or
religious community, right, But having a community of people that
you trust, that you can go to for support, that
you can provide support to is part of living a
full life and often helps us understand who we are.
But we understand ourselves in relation to other people. Right,
There weren't other models of the self, there being no
self to understand, Right, Like I have become the person
that I am. We have all become the person that
we are through the other people who have shaped us.
And I think there is this I would agree it's
this weird dichotomy between the idea of authoritarian control and
being completely alone. And the truth is that's just another
form of authoritarian control where you're the authority. The opposite
of a social system that is authoritarian control is not loneliness.
It is a social system where there is reciprocity and
shared norms and people are taking care of each other
and there's a balanced democratic way of understanding, you know
what is right and what is wrong, and how we
take care of multiple people's needs. It's not church versus
being alone. It's communities formed around authoritarianism as the moral
structure versus believing everyone deserves dignity. And we're going to
come to the ways to do it. Together, which is
what humanism is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: One of the things that people like to say in
my comments when I advertise for like the atheist community
of Austin is, oh, well, you're just giving into group think.
You need to protect yourself from group think. That's what
being a true skeptic is. And I heard somebody put
put a response to this in a way that I
really liked, and that was Okay. Yeah, when we're in church,
you do there is a lot of group think going on.
And then when you leave and you think that you
have to be a complete you know, island as a man,
then you end up being a part of group think.
Still you're still interacting with other people, you're still consuming
media especially, you're still you know, having an identity that
is formula based on the inputs of other people, comparing
yourself against other minds.
Speaker 4: That still does exist. Yes, it's just.
Speaker 5: That when you're in that really extreme uh, when you're
in that really extreme like isolationist, individualist place, you have
group think, but you don't acknowledge that the group exists.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, that's what's going on.
Speaker 5: You don't acknowledge your influences, and in that way, you
become just as susceptible to group think as people who
are in an authoritarian communal structure.
Speaker 3: I think about you've seen this thing with Richard Dawkins
talking to Claude, right, we were talking about.
Speaker 4: You just told me about that.
Speaker 3: This is like you can you can try so hard
to say, I'm going to try and isolate myself off
from all these resources, all these ways of shaping the
way you think. But ultimately the people, the psychosis that
we're most vulnerable to is convincing ourselves bullshit and getting
high on our own supply. Yeah right, Yeah, good communities
will challenge our thinking and encourage us to develop more
nuanced ways of thinking and belief. Right. Sure, communities that
stress ideological conformity are gonna tell us you have to
think X, Y, and Z and beat those over your heads.
But most good communities are going to free you from
the tyranny of only talking and listening to yourself, which
makes you arrogant and diluted, and force you to engage
with people who think differently about the world. That to
me is like, that's why I go to humanist communities,
That's why I go to Unitarian church like I like
as an atheist hanging out with theists and understanding how
they see the world, not because they're trying to convince
me of anything, not because I want to share their beliefs,
but because it helps me understand who I am, to
talk with people who have differences. Yeah, we shouldn't be
scared of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I totally agree.
Speaker 5: Okay, let's just say a hypothetical America embraces is what
we're talking about here?
Speaker 4: Ooh, Like, let's swin.
Speaker 5: Let's say that like three and a half four percent
of people embrace something like this, you know, humanist communities
where they're going to things in real life, they're interested
in political action that's based on protecting human dignity and
maybe some economic democracy as well as like tooral democracy.
Speaker 3: What is that?
Speaker 4: What do you think happens?
Speaker 3: So there is some research that says that when you
get to three and a half percent of a population
working collectively for something in some way, that's when you
get to a civilizational tipping point on an issue. I
think that ultimately, once humanists start to be able to
get together and build the same kind of trust and
closeness and mutual support that church offers to people, you're
gonna start getting people saying, wait a minute, I never
thought really seriously about what I believe, but you're telling
me I can get the same sense of community, the
same sense of meaning, the same sense of belonging, with
a different set of stories and a different set of
practices that aren't so top down. Maybe I want to
start taking a look at that. I think ultimately, a
lot of people stay in religious communities because it connects
them to family, it connects them to opportunity. You know,
when I was living in West Virginia, the church was
the food bank, and the church was the you know,
the clothing closet, and the church was childcare, and ultimately,
if you were opting out of that environment, you had
better have a lot of money.
Speaker 4: Being the church was probably the chamber of commerce too.
Speaker 3: The church was the chamber of commerce, and the church
was the dating app and the church with and so ultimately,
you know, what I'd really like to see is more
and more of these functions of taking care of each
other done, you know, societally, so that they're equally accessible
to everyone and you don't have to belong to a
church or a humanist group to know you can get
health care or food or childcare when you need it, right.
That's why humanists have come up with concepts like medicare
for all because like, we don't want people to be
dependent on, you know, the voluntary association to be able
to get the things they need. We want it to
be provided to people as a matter of right. But
you know, when we can create our own communities that
provide belonging and meaning and love in the same way
religion has for centuries, that's when I think we'll start
to see you might call it a mass migration to
something that can end up having some of that same
cultural power.
Speaker 5: How many people in the US like identifies humanist? Now
do you happen to know that figure or know it?
Like a rough estimate?
Speaker 3: So right now, when Pew polls, so Pew Charitable Trust
does these big poles thirty five thousand people and they
ask about religion, and they say less than one percent
of people, when you know, asked to state what they are,
identify as humanist. But when you go into the cross
tabs and you actually look at the answers people selected
and you add up all the people who say, you know,
I don't believe in God or I'm not sure and
I think science is the best way to explain the world.
And I believe in civil rights and the environment and
protecting all people equally, regardless of who they are. You're
looking at in America right now, we're about forty six
percent or I'm sorry, forty six million American adults. Sixteen
percent of people believe the same things we do, and
they are Here's what's interesting. They are just as likely
as religious people to want to be a part of
a community group or want to volunteer. But outside of
a couple places like Austin, Denver, Phoenix, there's not even
a space for them to go to, to say nothing
of the experience they have when they come into the space.
And so there's this sleeping giant in America right now
of so many people who share our belief that science
tells us what's real and compassion tells us what's right.
And there's also a sleeping giant of people who are
just like I am so tired of my entire life
being lived in my apartment mediated by a screen. And
I am old enough to remember as a kid what
it was like when people used to not spend all
their time on their phone. God damn it. I'm looking
for a community. I think that movement is coming whether
we like it or not, and it's up to us
to rise to meet that moment and give people a
place to belong.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, now, the religious right has really tried to put
out this totally bullshit story about, Oh, people are returning
to God, people are going coming back and flocking at churches,
and then they'll show like this footage of a relatively
empty youth group, and then somehow think that that's convincing,
and then you know, they'll fudge statistics to say that like,
the religious right is growing, and then you know, we're
in a religious revival, a Christian revival in America if
you look at the actual data, though.
Speaker 4: No, that's not happening.
Speaker 3: We are.
Speaker 5: The non religious group of Americans is the lion share
of the American religious experience at this point. There are
more people who don't identify with a religion, and there
are people who identify with a specific sect, any specific sect.
Speaker 4: Of like Christianity or any other religion.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, if you broke up all the different Catholic and
Protestant traditions, non religious people would be the largest religion
in America. Even if you lump it all together. We're
still the largest religious minority in America. Yeah, And you know,
and that has been a steady trend line over about
twenty years that that's been growing. And then there was
one year where it didn't grow, and the narrative was
everyone's coming back to church. Well, no, everyone's not coming
back to church. Nobody en mass moved away this year.
But also, you know, I read a study once that
said one in four people will tell you they go
to church every Sunday. But then when the sociologists went
and they actually went into church out of the number
of people in the pews, and they did this over
at a representative number of churches over a reasonable sample
of time, eighty percent of those people were lying. Yeah,
but it was actually one in twenty Americans who goes
to church every week. And it's the same phenomenon. You
do see more young men say self identifying as Christian.
This is offset by the fact that far more young
women in gen Z are saying they are not religious. Yeah,
but these young men are generally not going to church, right.
It is. It is a signaling tool to say like
I am part of this group, as opposed to active
engagement in a community. An active engagement in a community
is what makes identity sticky. Any anyone can put anything
in their Instagram bio for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I think that's I think that's totally right.
Speaker 5: And I you know, I think that that's also why
it's really important that we don't put humanism out there
as just a label to take.
Speaker 4: It's probably the least important part, you know.
Speaker 5: We don't want to fight the rise of the religious
rights power and their signaling strategy with our own signaling strategy.
It's ultimately not a signaling strategy. It's an organizing strategy
to protect human dignity at the most fundamental level.
Speaker 4: And so what we have to do, like we've been saying,
is we have.
Speaker 5: To actually organize in person rather than just convince people
take on the label of humanist. And having shared label,
shared identities. Obviously they're important, but at base, it's not
about the word.
Speaker 4: It's about the actions.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Humanism isn't something you can just call yourself. It's
something that you are because of what you believe and
how you behave. And I think right now, I think
people are tired of labels. I think people are tired
with the obsession of the signifiers that you use to
call yourself. I think people care a lot more about
how you show up and you know, so you know
when I say, like Thomas Pain is indisputably a humanist, right,
Like everyone who has studied humanism agrees like Thomas Pain,
Thomas Jefferson, we're humanists, but they didn't use that word
because the language of humanism came onto the scene and
evolved in like nineteen thirty three. You can be a
humanist even if that's not something you tattoo on your forehead,
if you focus on living your life in the way
a humanist would. And that's the thing, Like, we don't
need people to read loyalty oaths off to feel like
they're a part of the group. That's never what this
has been about. What we care about is helping people
live lives they can be proud of. And ultimately, I
think people are excited about That's why you're seeing such
growth at ACA. Right. People are excited about being part
of communities that support them to live in line with
their values. And nobody has to brand themselves as anything
to come here. You just have to say you agree
with the goals of the ACA, and you're ready to
work towards a secular society where people are treated well.
This to be is exciting.
Speaker 4: This is our power. I think. When I've you know,
advertised I'm going to be.
Speaker 5: At the ACA, super involved with the ACA, some people
have said like, oh, like, don't proselytize.
Speaker 4: That's just doing what they're doing. And I'm like, hey,
look at what I said. I didn't proselytize.
Speaker 5: I did not say you need to become this and
then join my community. What I said is you probably
already are this, and the community is here for you
and what you want already. The true power that we
have in this moment in history is that the crazy
shit that is going on in our world is pushing
people to think more in the way that we are
articulating right here. People are being converted to this way
of thinking by the material conditions that exist in the
country already. We don't need to proselytize at all. All
we need to do is build the communities so that
people can plug into them and have their needs met.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 4: They have to do both, and they're failing at both.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. People ultimately are sick of living in a world
where they have to work harder to afford less. They're
sick of living in a world where we're constantly being
divided from each other by algorithms or whatever culture war
issue the religious right wants to cook up. People are
sick of living in a world where they're told that
it being cruel is actually good, and being empathetic is
actually a weakness, and people are looking at things as
they aren't saying, my god, this is also screwed up.
I want something different. And the truth is that when
they go looking for a lot of people, humanism will
be what they find where they belong, and it won't
be for everybody, and that's okay. But people are never
going to know that we're out here doing this kind
of work at ACA doing this I mean, we've got
two hundred and fifty chapters around the country. Not all
of them are as big as ACA, but they could
be of more people going. The only way people are
going to know that this different way of thinking is
out there is if we tell them. And if that
feels like cross litization, I don't really care, because the
truth is I would be I would happily make this
train if the Christian. If the evangelical Christians proselytized twice
as much and worked to and spent half as much
time working to end abortion, that would be a good
deal for me. It's not proseatization that bothers me. Right,
If you think that your worldview is good and you
want to go shout it from the mountaintops, you know what,
Maybe I might find that annoying, but that's the price
you pay for living in a country with free speech.
I think that ultimately we shouldn't be scared of going
out and saying what we believe. We're not denigrating people
who believe differently. We're trying to show the people who
are out there like us and alone that there are
people like them who want to invite them in. Because
I think there are a lot of people who are
feeling hopeless right now, and not having hope comes from
not having community. And I think the value of going
out and saying, hey, if you felt these things and
you felt the world is screwed up in these ways,
there are people just like you, and they want you
to come and meet them and we can get through
this together. I think that's the only thing that is
going to lead us out of the wilderness.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm right there with you, and I will be
with you on whatever the AHA's next projects are. Do
you want to say anything about what might be coming up,
what the AHA.
Speaker 4: Wants to do?
Speaker 5: What does the future of humanism in America look like?
If you guys have anything to say about it?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: The AHA has been around for basically eighty five years.
It's our eighty fifth anniversary this year, and we are
larger than we've ever been because we've been growing tremendously,
in part Drew, because of you and I teaming up
to build this Creator fund that has been bringing lots
and lots of new young people into the AHA. So
we've almost doubled our staff in the last year and
a half. We've you know, fundraising about seventy five percent
more than we used to, and we've seen close to
a you know, about a twenty percent jump in membership
over for an or organization that's been around a long time.
People are coming on board because we're talking openly about
humanism as something new that people can belong to, and
we're going out as we did with the American Empathy
Project and fighting to solve people's real problems. Now we're
going to be taking this group, this larger group of
people that we've built through the American Empathy Project, and
using that to push back on what the religious right
is trying to do in the halls of power. Because
the whole point of building community so you can organize
that community to win power. Right a. Philip Randolph who
was one of my favorite humanists. He was the chairman
of the March on Washington. He said, power is the
product of organization. Organization is the product of unity. Unity
is the product of understanding of a common interest. So
we're going to take this group of people and we're
going to fight for We just helped push out school
vouchers in Nebraska and Kansas, and that we're talking about,
Like we have members of the AJA that we've trained
to go bother their state senators and state representatives, and
we're building that group. We're building the Congressional Free Thought Caucus,
haven't Meta just had an article this week about the
two new members we've recruited to join. It's now bigger
than the Freedom Caucus. Like, we are building real political
power because that's what happens when you have a big
movement and The next step will be working to undermine
the religious rights legal arguments. One thing we're working on is,
you know, a cool thing about humanism is in a
Supreme Court case in the sixties, Justice Hugo Black was,
you know, affirm that humanism in a legal sense is
a religion. And you know, of course we're not, you know,
we're we're definitely not Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam.
But humanism ultimately is a belief system that thinks certain
things about truth and morality, and we deserve the same
legal protections for our beliefs that were you know that
Christians have. Yeah, so if they have a religious right
per the Supreme Court to ignore anti discrimination law and
discriminate against gay people in their businesses, who's to suggest
that we don't have a religious right to an abortion right.
And so, you know, we're planning to Our legal team
has grown significantly. We're planning to work on a lot
of creative litigation. And the goal throughout all of this
is we do this work and our hope is it
helps us get attention so that we can bring more
people into these thriving communities. I mean, ACA, how much
has it grown in the last year.
Speaker 5: It's hard to say exactly the membership because I definitely
would want to get with Ben and Vern about those
specific numbers. But I will say that there was a
time when our Philosophy Nights had a very dedicated group
of about eight people, and now we fill up the
building to the point where we are talking about really needing.
Speaker 3: To expand our building. So you've gone from eight people
to having this whole place packed, and like are we
brought in twenty seven new humanist groups to the AHA
last year? Nice there is demand for community and it's
happening as we go out there with a powerful, hopeful
message about what humanism is. We do real political work
that makes people feel like they're part of an organization
that's achieving something, and we provide a place to belong
that is welcoming and that helps meet the needs that
people have to feel like they're part of a community
and feel like they're doing something meaningful in a time
of total nonsense.
Speaker 5: Okay, I have to make sure that we shout out
the places where people can actually go to get involved
with this, because if people are still with us at
this point, they're probably pretty interested in actually being involved themselves.
So as far as the Atheist Community of Austin, we
are a you know or five oh one c three
educational nonprofit. We do have places for you to you know,
donate in all of those great things, but the best
thing that you can possibly do is to actually go
and get a membership. That's I am sure that we
have all those links down in the description. Maybe the
mods can post those things. And it's not just about
your financial support, but it's also about your energy and
the time that you can spend helping us increase our
capacity to bring people in in real life, do real
political work and organizing, making sure that we are protecting
people's basic human rights and dignity here in the Austin area.
Speaker 4: Remember, like, yes, while Austin.
Speaker 5: Is a liberal city in a sea of you know,
the blue dot in the sea of red, we are
surrounded by a and still under the authority of a
completely hostile political regime, let's say, both in the state
level and national level. So getting involved with the Atheist
Community of Austin is a great way to make your
voice heard, amplify your own voice so that we can
do the great work we've been talking about together all
those links in the description. Being a part of the
atheist community of Austin has been transformative in my life,
and I think it can be for other people. And
the AHA is it kind of a national version of
what I think that at least the best parts of
the ACA are well.
Speaker 3: I'd like to hope. So, and if you're interested in
the work that the American Humanist Association does, whether it's
our political work, our legal work, our work to promote humanism,
our work to support communities like the ACA and two
hundred and fifty of them across the country, go to
Americanhumanist dot org. You can sign up, you can get
our newsletters for free, you can get a lot of
free educational resources on humanism. We've got a program called
Dose of Humanism where we'll text you humanists quotes three
times a week. So if you want more humanism in
your life, you can get that for free. But if
you want to become a member, you can join our discord,
you can vote in our board elections. You can even
get our magazine if you're into that kind of thing.
So again, that's American Humanist dot org. And let's build
a community that really has not just the numbers and
the power, but also the joy to take on the
religious right and finally win.
Speaker 5: The way that we cultivate joy in a moment like
this in history is only by as I think, the
LGBT movement in the nineteen seventies often said, we protest
all day and then we dance all night. And we
definitely do a lot of dancing here at the ACA
and at the AHA.
Speaker 3: Right, I saw some pretty good dancing yesterday.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 5: All right, Well, Fish, thanks for coming on. This was
a joy to be able to co host with you
like this is I love this, dude.
Speaker 3: This was so much fun. Yeah, I've been waiting for
this day. Good and we're gonna do it again sometime, right,
Hell yeah, thank you all for tuning in, and thank
you guys for being either humanist or humanist curious. And
we're gonna keep going out there and fighting for you,
all right, Yeah, market.
Speaker 6: Light, we start already stop around. Welcome Ellen.
Speaker 4: Watch Talkie than Live Sundays at one pm Central. Visit
tiny dot c c slash y T t H and
call into the show at five one two nine nine
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