Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through the.
Speaker 1: Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not because.
Speaker 3: I put my hand on a book and made a wish.
Speaker 1: And working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
Truth Usian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 2: Hard to believe it's almost the month of June. Time flies.
I find that time travels faster as I get older.
Remember back when we were kids and we wanted to
do something, or we were waiting for the day we
get our allowance, or there was a special event on
the horizon or whatever, and we were like, can we
can we can we? And mom and dad would say, well,
we can do it next weekend, which seemed like an eternity.
Oh my god, it's five days. I have to wait.
It's prefer you know now, I blink. Five days gone.
Wait a minute, Wait a minute, It was just last weekend,
and now it's next weekend or this weekend. Wait, it's
almost the month of June. Wait a minute, what's happening.
Things are spending much too quickly. I'm already disoriented those
of you who were under the age of thirty. I'm
just saying, buckle up, because when you hit midlife, you
will wake up one day and go, hey, wait a minute.
When I fell asleep, it was January and now it's Thanksgiving.
That shit totally happens as we get older. Anyway, it's
been a wild month, you know. We had the god
awful movie Show late last week, a bonus broadcast, and
then before that, we had a show which I got
a lot of feedback on and a little bit of pushback,
as it was called Cholesterol. You Have One Job. We
were talking about the fatty deposits in the cells of
Captain gomb Over, the tangerine Palpatine of the White House,
Donald Trump, and how many of us are rooting for
his demise of natural causes, and some people thought this
is just base. It's been neath you. I can't believe
you speaking with Glee about the day that he finally
feels over, and I just can't apologize for it. I'm
just you know, every day when I log on, I'm like,
is he live? There's a website it's called Alive or Dead,
and people like to use it for celebrities that they
haven't seen in a while. So you just log on
and you're like this celebrity. You type in the name
dead or alive, eh, and it says dead or alive,
and it gives you their age. How many times have
we been in a conversation and somebody will be like, hey,
did you know that they just turned ninety eight years old?
Like Dick van Dyke is he's either ninety nine or
a hundred years old. I mean, the legendary Dick van
Dyke is still alive. Well, you can go to a
website and you can his name in every day and
find out it's maybe it's morbid. I don't know, speaking
of death. I went to it totally. This is what happened.
I woke up the other day and it was early
and I don't know if someone sent me the link.
But there's a website that will quote unquote predict the
date and the manner of your death. And so it's
a death date website. It's very dark, it's just right
up my alley. So I went to the site, and
of course, you know it's nuts. Nobody knows it's bullshit.
We all know that. But I still filled out the form.
What's your age, right, when were you born? What's your
lifestyle like, do you smoke, do you drink? Do you
get exercise? What's your height? What's your weight? It calculates BMI,
your body mass index, which I have heard is total crap.
I've heard that BMI is not actually like a useful thing.
That's a whole other convers But I typed in all
of my metrics and I said when and how am
I going to die? And lucky me, it popped right up.
I discovered thanks to the death clock, at the age
of fifty seven years and just under two months. Their
calculations say my death date will be the twenty ninth
of January twenty sixty four. It will be a Tuesday
when I suddenly keel over at the ribald age of
ninety five years and just under ten months, over fourteen
thousand days left. What a relief. I guess that's better
than you know, typing in all of your stats and
it says you will live to be fifty seven years
and four months, because you know, I would have a
lot to get done. I would need to get my
affairs in order pretty quickly. I'm just saying the cause
of my death, according to the bullshit website, is cardiovascular disease.
And somebody made the assalient point that you know, if
you're ninety five, your vascular system has had a pretty
good run. Degeneration is probably understandable. This is not too
big a leap anyway. That's how I started my day,
the death date thing. Somebody on the Cholester Wall show
was talking about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, and
we were talking about the conspiracy theories and how his
ear healed up awfully quickly. You know, remember when people
were walking around taping tampons to their ears. The magas
were taping tampons. But a lot of people were like,
this is staged, it's bullshit. So much stuff doesn't make
any sense. But I got uncomfortable because I don't like
the idea of I mean, when we got into we
don't assassination is not it's not what we want, it's
not who we are. You know what I'm saying, I
don't know what hellse to say, and it's just not.
So we were talking about how this needs to happen
organically and naturally. I mean, he's not a spring chicken.
But as soon as I had that conversation about the
guy and the shooter and the ear and all that,
some weird shit started to pop up on my Facebook
feed about how it's all a big conspiracy and how
none of it makes any sense. The trajectory of the projectile,
the nature of the injury, even the gradient colors of
the blood. None of it looked real. So was it
all a big staged event so that he could put
his fist in the air and show strength in the
wake of a lethal threat. You know, I tend to
lean into Akham's razor. The simplest explanation is the easiest.
You know, Conspiracy theory speculation usually don't help us, but
it does bug me some of the stuff. I look
at it, and I don't want to become Joe Rogan either.
So I guess we know what we know, then we
don't what we don't. I don't know is that a
cop out? Anyway? F y, I'm going to be in
Wichita speaking for Wichita Oasis this Sunday. I love the
oasis model because it's kind of a come one, come all.
You don't have to be atheist, you can be religious, spiritual, whatever,
but it is very much a pro humanist and pro
science thing. And there are Oasis groups in cities all
around the country. Kansas City's we got one, Houston's got
a big one. And I'm going to be speaking at
Wichita Oasis Sunday morning, and it's totally free, so if
you're in the area, come on out. Going to be
a great time. Go to seth Andrews dot com slash
events for details on that. I also mentioned last week,
and I'll mention again that the Thinking Atheist store is back,
and I've got the thinking person icon now on mugs
and T shirts, and we've got the cat drawing on
mugs and t shirts, and new products are going to
be added over the coming months. But you can go
to the Thinkingatheist dot com and then there's a shop
button on the tab at the top, so go and
kind of browse and see if anything tickles your fancy.
It's a great way to have Thinking Atheist merch in
your house, get some swags, support the work. At the
same time Thethinkingatheist dot com click on the shop tab. Okay,
plenty of phone calls to get to on this broadcast,
and so we begin to zero two.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 2: What's your name?
Speaker 4: Name is Frank, Hi, Frank, Please forgive my speech. I
have some issues with autism, so my speech sometimes comes
out a little messy. I thought it would, thank you.
You were talking about the assassination attempt on Trump. I
don't remember where I saw this. I think it was
on one of the TV news channels that the bullet
didn't actually hit Trump, it hit the glass teleprompter and
the glass flew out, and that's what took his ear out.
Don't quote me on this, but that's what I heard,
probably the evening after the event happened. I really wanted
to talk about, Yeah, okay, what I really wanted to
talk about was an experience I had in your backyard.
About two years ago. I was having some work done
on my RB in Oklahoma City, and I started getting
some light pains in my chest and my left arm.
I'd had a heart attack before, so I decided to
go to the hospital and make sure. The closest hospital
was a major hospital on the south side of Oklahoma city. Well,
they came in. They put me in this little room.
People came in stuck the little sticker things all over.
You connected me to the machine, and they just connected me.
They left and I was left in the room with
a nurse to fill out the paperwork. And you know,
I was giving her my information, and then she asked
what religion are you? And I said, I'm an atheist.
I was watching her and her whole body jerked like
I had slapped her real hard. She didn't say anything else.
She finished up whatever the line was she was working
on and left the room. About twenty five thirty minutes later,
some guy comes and stands in the doorway and says,
you're not having a heart attack, you can go. There
was absolutely no thing of trying to figure out what
my problem was. I suspected his acid in digestion, but
I put my shirt back on. Walk down in the hallway,
and the entire emergency department was completely empty. There were
no nurses, no doctors, no patients, and all the doors
to the little patient cubicles were open, and I saw
about three or four of them where the bed had
been rolled out away. I had to figure my own
way out. I ended up having a walk all the
way around the hospital to get to my truck, which
I had parked in the front. But that is the
first time in my life I have ever actually had
something like that happened to me. It is stuck with
me pretty heavy.
Speaker 2: So your inference here is that once they knew you
were godless, they kept a distance, and.
Speaker 4: The fact that nobody tried to figure out what was
really wrong with me that hurt. Also.
Speaker 2: Have you noticed that when something happens to a believer,
God is using this light and momentary affliction to build
their faith, or if they die, some God called them
home it was their time, their work on earth was done.
I don't know they've got some sort of apologetic at
the ready, But if it was to happen to you
or me as atheist, God pulled the plug because we
had rejected him and he killed us or allowed us
to die. Have you noticed that the narrative changes based
on who believes what.
Speaker 4: I actually haven't had any experience with it at all.
I've had some instances where I told us some I
was an atheist. I can't pull up at any particular
one or instance in my brain right now, but I
never had any kind of reaction, like they've got to
get away from this devil that has gotten into their facility.
I have a whole bunch of things wrong with me.
I'm now seventy three. I've had full blown AIDS since
nineteen ninety one. I am in the process of dealing
with prostate or anal cancer, have diabetes. Just the problem
is go all the way around. That's one of the
reasons I'm having some difficulty with my speech. But the
autism also causes that. I like your channel, I'm sticking
things in the wrong way.
Speaker 2: You're doing well. No, I'm totally tracking. This has actually
been a linear narrative, so I don't know, don't apologize
you're doing. I'm so sorry these things have happened to you.
I'm interested to that. You know, science made it possible
for people who were diagnosed with AIDS, especially in the nineties,
to be able to survive and live much longer lives,
and for that, I am very thankful to science. I'm
sorry that you know the infection happened.
Speaker 4: I am, you know, but.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you're still kicking still with us despite the challenge.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I actually we figured out who gave it to me.
There was a couple of guys this was in eighty
three that were doing stuff and they knew they had
it and weren't killing anybody. In my entire I had
sex with maybe six or seven people. Let's see. It
was in eighty three I met my life partner and
eventual husband. He passed away fix years ago now. But
I appreciate every day that I have because when I
was first diagnosed at ninety one, they gave me six
months and at the time I lived in Washington near Washington,
d c. Or just outside of town. And my HIV doctor,
which was my primary doctor too, when I told him
I was getting ready to move to Colorado, which is
where I'm at now, he said he was sorry to
see me go because I was the only patient that
he had from that period five So believe me, I
appreciate every single day that I've got.
Speaker 2: It's a good encouragement for the rest of us, all right,
seize the day, yeah, and be grateful despite the challenges.
That experience at the hospital is fascinating to me. I'd
be curious. I'd like to be a mind reader to
know what was happening inside the skulls of those who
sort of vanished in your hour of need, especially when
they have a duty of care to all of their
fellow human beings. But it is a fascinating story. Big
hugs for me and the audience to you and yours,
my friend. You keep kicking, Okay, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: This is the second time in my life I've ever
done a call in.
Speaker 2: You did great too, I mean you really did well. Oh,
there's no apology. Your smooth as silk, smooth like. Butta
you did good. Thanks for colling.
Speaker 4: Thank you all right, we'll seek the good work.
Speaker 2: I took a second and looked up the story about
the bullet striking the teleprompter and the fragments of glass
hitting the ear. According to the Associated Press, as published
in July of last year, the FBI confirmed it was
indeed a bullet that struck the former president's ear. This
was again before the election. They said both of the
teleprompters were totally intact after the shooting. Anyway, that's the
official word in from the a P. I've got Irene
dialing into the switchboard. Welcome to the show, Irene. What's up?
Speaker 4: Hi?
Speaker 3: Can you hear me?
Speaker 2: I can? Indeed? What's up?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm calling you from France. I've been living here
for forty years, but I've been listening to you as
American podcast for many, many years. I've been listening to
you for years, and I'm loving you. And if I don't
have a French accent, it's because I grew up in California.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, thanks for the kind words. I appreciate that somebody.
Speaker 3: Said something earlier. Maybe it was you about a president
needing to have a heart big enough to accommodate the
whole country. That a dollar on.
Speaker 2: The show who had that perspective.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And that's something that I've been thinking about
in conjunction with several things, but I'm going to narrow
it down to two. One is that ideally, in an
ideal society, what we would have is what Plato would
have called the philosopher king, that is to say, a
head of state who has the country at heart and
has the competence to manage all the workings of the state.
And I ideally that's what we should have. Unfortunately, I
don't think we will ever have exactly that. We've had
close to that sometimes, but not really that, and today
we're so far from that. That it's not even on
the radar.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you a question? I read Ye'll forgive
the interruption, But you living in France, what kind of
things are you hearing about the United States over there? Oh?
Speaker 3: God, well, first of all, I listened to US podcasts
all the time, so what I'm hearing isn't the same
thing as as French people. Because I'm still an American.
I've put in my paperwork to request naturalization as a
French citizen. But it's all kind of you know, I'm
waiting to hear from them. But most French people I
talk to are just shocked at you know, I don't
talk politics with a lot of French people, but the
ones I do talk politics with just don't understand. They
don't understand how the American people could do this, and
I have to explain to them that it was only
you know, like, first of all, he didn't get a
majority of the popular vote. Second of all, everybody doesn't vote,
and so it comes down to I think he got
about a third of the voting public's vote, but he
did get more votes than Cambel Harris did, or more well,
he did actually get more docular votes, and of course
he got the electoral College.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you count the Democrat and then I
and the independent votes, he didn't get as many, but yes,
he got the popular votes by the letter of the law.
So you're saying that they're scratching their heads the way
many of us here are scratching our heads. Do they
know that we all haven't lost our minds? I mean,
I'm just I just want to apologize to the rest
of the world and say there, you know, there are
there is a resistance right there are dissenters here within
these borders. I just want to communicate that.
Speaker 3: I think people know that, but you know, to tell
you the truth. After two sixteen, I started gathering up
my documents to request naturalization over here. And then, you know,
there was so much resistance in the States, and I
was hearing so many things that gave me hope that
it was only a passage, you know, four years, and
then we'd be done with it and people would realize
the mistake and we'd move on. And then Biden was elected,
and I like, what Biden did? You know, personally I
like Biden. You know, I know he was old, but
so what. But then they did it again. They liked
that person again, and I can't. It's like I don't
understand it. I don't feel like I belong with the
American people anymore. So I've now completed my paperwork, submitted it,
and hopefully after forty living here for forty years, I
can become a French citizen. But anyway, you know, the
French people, of course, they know that it's not everybody,
because it's not everybody in France that likes Lapin, so
they understand that. But we tend to think of people
as monoliths. We tend to think of the French people.
There's no such thing. Really, there are people who are French,
but there's not the French people, because everybody's got their
own individual view of the world and so and this
is the same for American people and anybody else obviously.
So no, the French people, I don't know they I
would have said, like a few years ago, I would
have said, well, the French people love Americans, and it's
what's true. I don't know that that's true today because
they don't understand. They just can't. They don't get it,
and I don't get it.
Speaker 2: I haven't heard that French people love Americans, I've heard.
I've heard that, and then this may be true with
many of our allied around the world, you know, they
I think many see us as spoiled than coddled and entitled,
and a lot of a lot of other things beyond that.
Though your commentary about the type of person who should
be president, that is a person who would be one,
we don't put a punctuation mark on it, right.
Speaker 3: So okay, So yeah, So I was listening to a
recent Colbert interview of Bill Gates, who has decided to
over the next twenty years, give away eighty percent of
his wealth or to spend eighty percent of his wealth
on his causes. And I think that's laudable. I think
it's great. I think people who have a lot of
money should give it back, you know, they should find
something to give it to that's worthwhile and do that.
I also think people shouldn't be able to get that
much wealth in the first place. But here we are,
and I think that, you know, I have thought for
a long time that it's a horrible idea to have
the people who are wealthy decide but causes our worth
while and then put their money into those causes, Because
you know, then we have a world governed by the
wealthiest people, who aren't necessarily the most competent or the
smartest or most benevolent people. But if we've got Bill
Gates giving his money to eradicating polio and malaria and
the other causes that he's putting his money into, I
and I said, bravo, do that. And today, given what
is happening in the US government with you know, all
the people, the people that Trump has been putting in
place in all of the key positions that are taking
charge of all the American agencies and so forth, and
they're incompetence and the malevolence that is being installed. Now
I'm in a quandary because maybe we do need rich
people to take over and start doing the right thing
and just leave the government. When the government becomes so
corrupt and so incompetent and so evil, maybe what we
need is for people who have the means and the
intelligence to do so, to actually take away those decisions
from the government and do the good work themselves. So
and like I say, it's a quandary for me because
I really think that fundamentally it's a bad idea, but
today it might actually be a good idea, and I'd
like to have your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2: Let me think about that one for a second. Can
I chew on it and maybe give you my opinion
here in a second off the call. But yeah, you've
given me something to think about, but I need to
consider it for a second. Would that be okay?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 2: I appreciate you calling all the way from France, and
please tell everybody that we haven't all lost our collective
minds over here and that the resistance is rising.
Speaker 3: Okay, ok, thank you sir, and thank you for taking
the call.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're bad. Thank you. I think the question
starts with is there such a thing as an ethical billionaire?
And I'm not sure the answer is yes. I do
see Bill Gates, etc. Who have done a tremendous amount
of charitable work. And I don't begrudge anybody great success,
even in the millions of dollars. But where I used
to think, Well, this is America, and you can get
as rich as you want, and then it's all trickled
down and look at all the industries you've created, and
look at all those things that you can accomplish. Blah
blah blah. I'm not convinced that any one human being
should have that much money and power in a world
with this much suffering. I also think that many of
the CEOs of very powerful corporations are in fact psychopaths.
They have tendencies towards psychopathy. I would like a psychologist
to weigh in on that one. But you do not
get to where you are usually without exploitation. You do
not get to where you are as a billionaire without
stepping on the heads of the commoners. Do I think
that's always the case? I don't know all the billionaires.
Somebody made money in the market, somebody built a better
mouse trap, blah blah blah. But at some point, in
a world with this much suffering, how many thousands of
millions of dollars should one person have? And then they
get to construct an alternative universe where they have totally
different rules. They skate on stuff that you and I
would maybe go to jail for. They can manipulate stock
markets and be influences to foreign powers to shift world events.
Should any one person have that kind of power? And
if you were going to make your billions as part
of a society, do you not then owe an obligation
a debt to that society to pay it back. And
at this point, I've got Mags screaming socialism. He wants
to turn us into Russia. Everybody wants to talk about freedom,
nobody wants to talk about obligation. I worry that in
so many cases, the characteristics that made someone that filthy rich, dirty, rotten, filthy,
stinking rich, those characteristics are not those of benevolence, because
I'm not sure someone that benevolent wouldn't have already allocated
resources to the society that they grew up in to
benefit planet Earth. But then I think, well, you know,
Mark Cuban is a billionaire, but he seems to be
a on the side of progressive values. I mentioned Bill
Gates how Taylor Swift is a billionaire became rich by
providing something that people wanted. Lover or hater. She is
a tremendously savvy business person who did it her way,
rose from pretty much nothing to become one of the
most successful pop artists in the history of music. So
I don't begrudge Taylor's swift success, but at some point,
how many thousands of millions does one person need when
there were so many people who are sick and suffering.
I struggle with the idea of an ethical billionaire, but
Irene may have a point where if this is the
scenario that we are stuck with, if the world's richest
person is doing this much damage, and we've got a
billionaire in the White House who was doing that much damage,
then maybe the other billionaires are a corrective force or
could be mobilized activated to use their massive amounts of
wealth to try to stop the tide of cruelty and absurdity.
If this is the handw're dealt, I these are the
chess pieces we're playing with. Would I rather have a
powerful chess piece to take out the oligarchs? You damn right,
I would. It's messy. It is so messy. What would
you do with a billion dollars? I mean if you
gave away most of it, if you gave away ninety
nine percent of it, you'd still be a millionaire, right,
I mean it's my mind cannot process all of this.
You tell me what you think in the comments section,
and we will hear more of what our listeners think
after this. It is the final broadcast of May of
twenty twenty five. Summer is on the horizon. We can
look and see summer approaching, and then, of course is fall,
which means October, which means Halloween. And I'm one of
those guys who is counting down the days to Halloween
even though it's not yet. Summertime drives people crazy. I'm
already planning my Halloween decorations. Big deal in my house. Well,
it's a big deal to me. Natalie endores it. She
likes it more than she says. So I have options
this year. I'm either I can't believe I'm telling you
this in the month of May, but it's on my mind.
I'm either going to do an alien theme because I
bought kind of a cheap xenomorph costume, which is fun
and funny. I thought about doing maybe the eggs, the
alien eggs all over the yard and having the alien theme.
I thought about squid games. My fantasy is to have
one of those giant dolls from the game I forget
what do they call it? Stop or Go game where
when she looks the other way, you can run, but
if she looks at you, you have to stop and
freeze or else you die. What's the name of that game?
I can't remember. But there's this big statue fifteen feet tall.
I don't have the money or the skill to build
something like that, but oh my god, in a perfect world,
I would have that. And then some squid games, uniformed
figures all around, and we let people play the game,
you know, for fun. We wouldn't actually shoot them. And
then the one I'm probably gonna do because it's cheapest,
is I'm thinking about doing a skeleton bande. I've got
the skeletons already, I've accumulated them over the years. Build
like a I don't know, a fake drum set. Buy
a couple of old plastic toy guitars and hang them
around the necks of the skeletons, and put a dance
floor out and then we just play music while the
skull band stands there and everybody can dance to Halloween music.
That might be kind of fun.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: These are the things that occupy my brain in late
May of twenty twenty five. But what occupies your brain?
Let's find out. Nathan is calling from area code nine
two zero. Hi, thanks for waiting, are you there?
Speaker 4: Yep?
Speaker 5: I am here, Thank you.
Speaker 2: Let's talk what's on your mind?
Speaker 5: Pardon just moving from one room to the other, I
add a question. I got to dust off my Bible
to one of these days. I'm an atheist, but looking
back on the past salvation, I think according to Catholics
and Christians, I think with Abraham it boils down to
believe obeyed some form of repentance through sacrifice or asking
for forgiveness directly from God. Noah, same thing, Moses, same thing,
but with a lot more rules to obey. And then
it comes to Jesus, which is supposed to be this
like new covenant, something brand new, and it feels like
it's the same thing. Believe, obey, repents through some form
of forgiveness or maybe a sacrifice through martyrdom.
Speaker 2: Are you asking me if I see similarities from religion
to religion?
Speaker 5: I think this probably would have been a better question
for doctor Bohen or a pologia, but I had time.
I'd rarely get to calling.
Speaker 2: For somebody who was.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'd like to talk about faiths the major funding
of religions, especially like Mexican food. Like you walk into
a restaurant, you say, I would like a taco. What's
on a taco? You got tortilla, meat, lettuce, cheese, and tomato. Well,
I would like a tostata instead. What's on that? Well,
you got a tortilla, meat, lettuce, cheese, and tomato. Right,
I would like it an ininchulada. What's on that?
Speaker 5: Way?
Speaker 2: You got a tortilla, meat, lettuce, cheese, tomato. I think
that the major religions have the same ingredients, they're just
served up in different ways. Right, You've got a holy book,
You've got a dogma, you've got a paradise, you've got
damnation or potential punishment, posthumous existence. You've got your clergy
and priests, and you know, I see a lot of similarities.
I don't know, what do you think of my Mexican
food analogy? Is that just lame?
Speaker 5: It makes me a little bit hungry. It's on the
treadmill before I called in.
Speaker 2: You know, I may have to I would door dash it,
but I don't think I want to pay thirty five
dollars for an enchilada, which is kind of You got
to be super lazy to use door dash, and I
have been guilty as of late. At the end of
a long day. It's a totally different conversation, Nathan, Was
there anything else about the similarities between the religions that
you wanted to speak about.
Speaker 5: It was mostly just focusing on Christianity in the various sects.
As I think according to what I've heard from some
Jewish people, salvation is kind of a revolving door. I
don't quite understand it. I'd have to read up on
the tour I have, but all my religious books are
in a storage locker collecting dust right now.
Speaker 2: Nathan. If we're talking about the different splinterings or denominations
of Christianity, you're saying that even though they split, they
have much more in common than they have in disagreement.
Speaker 5: It was mostly just focusing on the paths to salvation,
starting with Abraham going to Jesus, because they all seem
to be the same thing, although they seem like they're
being presented as something new, and when you get to Jesus,
he seems pointless because it's the same damn thing. Whether
you believe that Jesus is half divine or fully divine,
you're still asking God directly for forgiveness, and you still
have to believe, obey, and repent. Whether you're talking Jesus
as divine, then you're just talking directly to God. If
it's a divine Jesus, I guess, is kind of serving
as a concilieri. But still you have to obey God.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I misunderstood. I think I thought you were making
a comparative religions comment, but you're making a comparative denominations comment.
With tens of thousands of different denominations of Christianity, I'm
not sure we can use the word all, but I
take your point that many are. They seem to be
serving the same ingredients, only in slightly different orders.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm kind of taking the denominations out of it
all together and just focusing on like the paths as
they are in the Bible, because when you just look
at the paths as they're presented, not I know, the
translations are going to be a little bit different, but
the ingredients for the salvation through each one, whether it
be Abraham, Noah, Moses, and Jesus, they all seem to
be the exact same thing. And it baffles me when
I think about it, why we would even need anything
beyond Moses, because Jesus doesn't present anything new. Whether half
divine or fully divine, you're still petitioning to God. You
still have to obey all the commandments and you still
have to ask for forgiveness or have some sort of
sacrifice or repentance. That's what's kind of baffling, mild autism.
So I'm kind of like focused, no on that thing,
just Jesus himself being the whole advent of him, or
the whole religion being formed around him just being completely pointless.
Speaker 2: That's deep. I'm gonna have to think about that when Nathan.
Apparently I need more coffee always. I don't have enough
ram to process this one immediately, Nathan. But it's interesting
and I'd be curious to hear what the comments have
to say about it as well. So thanks for all.
Speaker 5: I'm a over the road trucker, so most of the
time I hear the programs I'm at work and can't
call in. I just listen on the drive.
Speaker 2: No, it's an interesting approach. Let's chew on that one.
Save travels out there. Thank you for calling.
Speaker 5: Yep, you have a good day there, Bye bye.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I guess we could go further toward
the beginning the genesis literal genesis of the story. If
God is omniscient, why would he have implemented a plan
that he foreknew would fail a riff on that is,
why would God create anyone that he foreknew would end
up in hell. We don't have hell until the New
Testament depart from me, you who are cursed into a
lake of everlasting fire and damnation. So the scenarios are
a little bit different. Where the Old Testament seems to
be a little more focused on works, obeying God directly,
where the New Testament is more You've got to have faith,
but faith without works is dead. So works are important,
but it's not about works.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I need, I need. I need a topper on the
coffee to be able to process. I don't have the
bandwidth to be able to properly address this. You deserved better, Nathan,
you deserved more from me. I leave it. I stand
on the shoulders of giants, the greater skeptics who were
watching and listening to the show today. Michael is calling
from two zero seven high.
Speaker 6: Oh hello, fancy meet you here.
Speaker 2: What's going on? What's on your mind?
Speaker 6: Well, we're supposed to be a lot of our problems
right now are because of breakdown of our rural law.
Right this is why I see anyway, Okay, and I'd
like to present the idea that I think lawyers should
be civil servants because we're a nation of laws. The
law is supposed to work for everybody, and you can't
have equal access to the law when it takes money
to access it. Just like we provide cops, prosecutors, district attorneys,
all those things, lawyers should be right there too. You
got a problem, you go to the courthouse or the
Civil Service building or whatever and present your problem to
a panel two or three judges or lawyers or whatever,
and they hear you out. If they think you get
the case, Excuse me, I'm reasing hard that I just
ran upstairs.
Speaker 2: You're fine.
Speaker 6: If they think that you get a case, you get
to sign a lawyer, and whoever you get a problem with,
they get to sign a lawyer. That way, you can't
one party can't hould you out because they can afford
a battery of lawyers and you can't hardly afford one,
you know.
Speaker 2: I think some would argue that the public defender model
meets this need. I think your larger point stands where
we don't want the lowest times right, we want the
highly skilled, the greatest in their field to be available
to those who normally wouldn't be able to pay four
hundred dollars an hour for a qualified attorney.
Speaker 6: Right, that's only works for criminal cases. I'm talking about
if you've got an issue with the law, If you've
got a problem with somebody that's a corporation, you want
to go up against a neighbor or whoever. If you've
got a problem, it's not criminal, it's civil, and it
still takes money to deal with a civil case. And
if you haven't got any you can't make your complaint
in the first place, because you just can't access the system.
And if you do have a legitimate complain about somebody,
they can ride you out by hiring more attorney and
running postponements. And they don't care about the legal bill
they're racking up because the point is to win. You
can't beat that.
Speaker 2: I feel the same about healthcare. I feel like a
society absolutely as an obligation to take care of its own,
not those who can simply afford the policy. And it's
stupid to live in a culture where even those who
have full health insurance, full coverage, can still go bankrupt
with one major medical event, and the people can cry
them all they want, But I envy Canada because their
healthcare system, despite its imperfection, seems better than what we've
got here.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, our healthcare system is a mess, but so is
our legal system. We wouldn't be here now.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 6: I think Biden's biggest failing was not taking care of
the Supreme Court while he was.
Speaker 2: In I love Ruth Vader Ginsburg and admired the hell
out of her, and I'm pissed that she did not
step down when she was in poor health so that
a non Zealot could have been appointed in her place.
You know, It's just one of those things.
Speaker 6: The appointment system for the past few judges has been
broken anyway. They've all broken their oaths of office. They've
lied and perjured themselves. They're an illegitimate Supreme Court as
far as I'm concerned. And Biden's bigger the steak was
not fixing that. If they had done that, we wouldn't
be here now.
Speaker 2: All right, Michael, I got you my.
Speaker 6: Opinion.
Speaker 2: Thanks for calling and giving your opinion. I know a
lot of folks will have opinions. Okay, well your opinion.
Speaker 6: Oh I could give you a lot of opinions, but
I know you ain't got time to hear that.
Speaker 2: I don't have time this time. Be safe out there, Okay,
we'll see you later, all right. You know, I'm still
thinking about healthcare. When I was a devout Christian, I
opposed universal health care or government provided or government funded healthcare.
I don't even know why, except that we were scared
with the S word socialism.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Uh, small government good, big government bad. Jesus was a
las a fair capitalist. It was that kind of thing.
I mean, it's the most unconsidered approach, especially when we
look at societies and the responsibilities that those societies have
to care for their citizens, which is what we were
talking about with the billionaires. You know, I've totally switched
my perspective. I think about how I wasn't overtly trying
to be cruel, but I was so dismissive. Well, you know,
get a job and buy your health insurance, or get
a job where the employer will pay for your health insurance.
Plenty of opportunities out there. I mean, you just gotta look,
you gotta be committed, you gotta want it. I mean,
how naive was that? How privileged was that? Now I
see these stories on the news and they're presented as
feel good stories. In broadcast terms, they called to kicker.
They often play these sort of warm, fuzzy stories at
the end of a newscast, after all the doom and gloom,
to leave you with kind of a sugary taste in
your mouth. And they're like Little Timmy was thirteen years
old when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Timmy
started his own lemonade stand at five a glass. The
school mobilized, his community rallied around him. The word spread
on the media. He has sold five hundred glasses of
lemonade and helped to pay for his mother's healthcare. What
a beautiful story. Twenty years ago, I'd have been like, Wow,
that's really sweet. Right now, I think Jesus Christ, why
in the world is a kid having to sell freaking
lemonade to save his mother. These aren't feel good stories.
They are indictments of a broken system. And yet somehow
Christians who say that Jesus fed the poor, he divided
up the loaves and the fishes are multiplied the loaves
and the fishes, and he fed the five thousand, and
he told the rich man, sell everything you have and
give it to the poor and follow me. There's this
notion I think, well, if the government is meeting your
needs and you rely on the government, maybe you're not
relying on Jesus or you worship the state. That's one
of the narratives out there. Is healthcare a right or
is it a privilege? Something that has to be earned?
Do we really want to dole out a bunch of
free stuff to people? Takers out there, not providers, not producers,
but takers, and all they're going to do is drain us,
dry us wordy you. The Christian faith is infected with
this kind of thinking, even as many of the people
who are part of that faith are being financially devastated
as they go through their own health crises. And then
a side note, they go in and they get science
based medical care. When they have a good day on
chemo or they recover from a wound of some kind,
they often ignore the doc and thank Jesus. That's a
whole other pet peeve of mind. But when did we
as human travelers on this planet, brothers and sisters, primates
who have evolved together and must share this rock in
a trillions of galaxies universe, when did we decide that
maybe the weak should die out. Maybe the unfortunate did
have it coming. How ironic is it that this fundie religion, Christianity,
has in some ways adopted a kind of social Darwinism.
Or maybe it's that they simply believe the church has
to meet all those needs. The government's role is to
be small and allow citizens to own bibles and guns.
I guess maybe that's what they're thinking. It's a private
issue that should be solved in the free markets. Maybe
I don't know. It's messy anyway. My mind spins on
this idea that you and I live in ostensibly a
first world nation with more resources than anybody else on
the planet, and we've got people who cannot afford the
basics of their healthcare. And if the best version of
Jesus Christ showed up in five minutes and tried to
do something about it, Maggi, evangelicals would point at him,
call him a socialist, probably throw him in a black
van and ship his ass down to El Salvador. Okay,
I'm done venting. That's all we're going to do this week.
Always a pleasure to spend some time with you. Thank
you for spending part of your day with me. Hang
in there, I'll see you soon.
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