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Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
Speaker 1: I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
Speaker 1: not because.
Speaker 3: I put my hand on a book and made a wish.
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Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast, hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about an encounter that I had
Speaker 2: at the ARC protest in Williamstown, Kentucky. I engaged an
Speaker 2: apologist from the ARC and counter and we talked for
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes and it made my head explode. And I
Speaker 2: just want to vent about that, and I'll do it
Speaker 2: in just a second, but forgive me. I was just
Speaker 2: now browsing this article out of Newsweek that was talking
Speaker 2: about Jennifer Welch. She is one of the co hosts
Speaker 2: of the I've Had It podcast. She's fantastic and she
Speaker 2: takes no prisoners. I mean, she just goes hard and
Speaker 2: she was talking about homeschools, Christian homeschools. She said, homeschooling
Speaker 2: is a quote crazy Christian problem, trickled down stupidity and
Speaker 2: maga on steroids. Now you are listening to someone who
Speaker 2: was homeschooled in a Christian homeschool for about six months
Speaker 2: or so. I was private Christian schooled for most of
Speaker 2: my upbringing, but there was a big blow up when
Speaker 2: I was at Temple Christian School. My mother and one
Speaker 2: of the monitors they weren't allowed to call them teachers, right.
Speaker 2: The superintendent's wife was our monitor in the pace program
Speaker 2: at Temple Christian School. But she had no college education.
Speaker 2: She didn't have a college degree, which is kind of
Speaker 2: part for the course here. You know, maybe she's still teaching.
Speaker 2: Maybe she's like seventy five eighty years old, still teaching
Speaker 2: with no college education, no background in education. That would
Speaker 2: be on brand for what we're seeing out there. But
Speaker 2: my mom and this person had a big blow up,
Speaker 2: and Mom said, oh yeah, fine, I'm gonna yank my
Speaker 2: kids out. We're going to finish the school year home schooled.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure my mother, a theologian, felt more than qualified.
Speaker 2: And so I don't even remember much about the lesson plans,
Speaker 2: except we skated through them in about an hour and
Speaker 2: a half and we just spent the rest of the
Speaker 2: day doing whatever we wanted to. Maybe that was the
Speaker 2: plan all along, but I mean, our curriculum was a
Speaker 2: freaking joke. We'd done podcasts on religious homeschooling and private
Speaker 2: at schooling and how they totally, very often will hamstring
Speaker 2: students for the rest of their lives. They just throw
Speaker 2: minnows out into the world totally unprepared for reality. And
Speaker 2: so I think Jennifer Welch is absolutely right, and there
Speaker 2: are a few examples of homeschooling that is effective. Don't
Speaker 2: email me, don't get mad at me, all right, I'm
Speaker 2: not talking about every instance. I'm not speaking in a
Speaker 2: giant generality. I'm talking about when you hear homeschool, what's
Speaker 2: first thing you think? You think, there's a little clucking
Speaker 2: church hen who once her children to be separated from
Speaker 2: all them evil secular studies, and so they bring them
Speaker 2: home and train them to believe that there was a
Speaker 2: talking reptile who spoke to garden nudists, and that a
Speaker 2: five hundred year old guide captained a floating zoo for
Speaker 2: a flood that left absolutely actually the flood left only
Speaker 2: contradictory geological evidence, and that I don't know that people
Speaker 2: lived to be a thousand years old, and that all
Speaker 2: these crazy things in the Bible were true, and if
Speaker 2: they weren't in the Bible, then it's not science. And
Speaker 2: our distrust of science was remarkable. We really felt like
Speaker 2: that scientists were all out there and they were sort
Speaker 2: of chortling to themselves. There was a giant conspiracy because
Speaker 2: God is I don't know, he was the enemy in
Speaker 2: some way, and scientists were the enemy of God. And
Speaker 2: the only science that was legitimate was sort of the
Speaker 2: ken Hem kind of science, the kind of stuff that
Speaker 2: he in Canthoven and other tragic figures have been vomiting
Speaker 2: out to these little impressionable brains when they go out
Speaker 2: to Sunday schools and regular schools or whatever. So I agree,
Speaker 2: homeschooling it was terrible. I left my home school and
Speaker 2: I went back to a Baptist school and it wasn't
Speaker 2: much better. But Jennifer Welch was taking a call from
Speaker 2: a list and the listener said, I've absolutely had it
Speaker 2: watching some of the stupidest people I went to school
Speaker 2: with decide they're qualified to homeschool their children, and Jennifer
Speaker 2: Welch replied, this is MAHA make America healthy again, OURFK
Speaker 2: Junior's initiative. This is tradwife, This is unvaxed and unjacked
Speaker 2: and all that shit. This is the worst, worst, worst,
Speaker 2: and this shit is America has a crazy Christian problem.
Speaker 2: We have a fundamentalist, crazy Christian problem. I'm talking about
Speaker 2: the freaks of the megachurch. I'm talking about the ones
Speaker 2: that have schools that are these crazy indoctrination factories, hate academies,
Speaker 2: and then when that hit isn't strong enough, they go
Speaker 2: in homeschooling. I just think it's a huge problem. Wow.
Speaker 2: The Department of Education was not happy with her. The
Speaker 2: DOE posted on x and I quote the proven value
Speaker 2: of homeschooling should never be dismissed as trickle down stupid.
Speaker 2: The only thing that is stupid is your ignorance. By
Speaker 2: the way, the Department of Education is being run by
Speaker 2: a World Wrestling Federation magnet. Actually it's not WWF anymore.
Speaker 2: It's WWE is that World Wrestling Enterprise. What's the E
Speaker 2: stand for? She became she and her husband, right, Vince McMahon, who,
Speaker 2: by the way, has been clouded in sexual misconduct allegations
Speaker 2: using the Wrestling Federation to excuse abusive sexually abusive behaviors
Speaker 2: by the wrestlers, and that Linda McMahon, our doe director,
Speaker 2: was in on the cover up. This is also on
Speaker 2: brand for this administration. She got I think, a French
Speaker 2: degree in nineteen sixty six. Never one day, not ever, ever, ever,
Speaker 2: did she teach in a classroom, and yet she is
Speaker 2: determining what is taught in classrooms across the United States.
Speaker 2: But back to homeschooling and the ARK. So when I
Speaker 2: have toured the Ark Encounter, and I have been to
Speaker 2: both the Creation Museum and the Ark in Counter, and
Speaker 2: I produced two videos. Both run about ten minutes long,
Speaker 2: and they're kind of a tongue in cheek. They're really
Speaker 2: fun to watch, if I may say, but they're also
Speaker 2: tragic because you see the shit that they're ramming down
Speaker 2: the throats of impressionable believers. I'm going to link those
Speaker 2: in the description box. Atheists at the Creation Museum and
Speaker 2: atheists at the Ark Encounter. When I went to the ARC,
Speaker 2: Matt Dillahunty joined me so it was a tag team event.
Speaker 2: He and I are going around these exhibits, and the
Speaker 2: ARC is as pathetic. I mean, they're both pathetic, but
Speaker 2: the ARC makes the mistake. It commits the crime of
Speaker 2: being boring. I mean, say what you will about Noah's Arc.
Speaker 2: It's not a boring story. It's crazy, but it's not boring.
Speaker 2: But the Ark encounter you walk in and there is
Speaker 2: some impressive architecture, but the whole thing is really sort
Speaker 2: of a big chasm. There's a lot a dead space.
Speaker 2: So as you walk in, you will see dinosaurs and
Speaker 2: more dinosaurs. And look, there's dinosaurs and they're in cages,
Speaker 2: you know, like you would keep a dog in a kennel,
Speaker 2: and they had the velociraptors in the raptor kennel. And
Speaker 2: we're supposed to take it seriously. And then I see
Speaker 2: more of these little clucking church hens walking their charges,
Speaker 2: young impressionable children, and they're like, oh my goodness, dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: We're on the Ark with nouise yam Mingen Yingen, just like,
Speaker 2: this is not science, this is not logical, this is crazy.
Speaker 2: I just want to talk to each of those children
Speaker 2: and say, your monitor is so full of shit that
Speaker 2: if you were to give her an enema, she would disappear.
Speaker 2: Ask some questions, Go find a secular science book, go
Speaker 2: do something other than this. I just want to save
Speaker 2: these kids. But you know, the Arc Encounter and the
Speaker 2: Creation Museum in fact much more than children. Man this
Speaker 2: obvious at the Arc protest July the twelfth, Williamstown, Kentucky. Now,
Speaker 2: just to sum it up, the Arc Encounter Kenham's one
Speaker 2: hundred and ten million dollar exhibits sold to the state
Speaker 2: as a tourist attraction. So they said, Hey, we're going
Speaker 2: to bring in hotels and restaurants and industry and tourism
Speaker 2: and we're going to be amazing for the state of Kentucky.
Speaker 2: And the State of Kentucky said, well, that'll be amazing.
Speaker 2: Let us invest in this tourist mecca that will benefit
Speaker 2: our state. So I was driving up to attend the
Speaker 2: protest and it's bear I mean, I saw a gas station,
Speaker 2: but a lot of just empty land. I think the
Speaker 2: one hotel that I happened to see is owned by
Speaker 2: the Ark Encounter. Where's the industry, what's going on here?
Speaker 2: And so they sold it to the State of Kentucky.
Speaker 2: But they also sold themselves as a church a ministry
Speaker 2: because they wanted all the tax benefits. Oh what a
Speaker 2: beautiful scenari We're a business when we want business benefits,
Speaker 2: and we're a church when we want tax free status.
Speaker 2: These people are slick. And we went out on the
Speaker 2: tenure anniversary of the opening of the art and we
Speaker 2: had a big protest that was going to happen near
Speaker 2: the entrance where people were getting off the highway. And
Speaker 2: there are a lot of people who were like, why bother,
Speaker 2: why would you do this? What's the matter with your people?
Speaker 2: Leave them alone? Doesn't do anything, doesn't change anything. And
Speaker 2: I disagree. I think sometimes the ridiculous must be ridiculed.
Speaker 2: The story of Noah's ark is actually part of a
Speaker 2: much more sinister story, which is that we do not
Speaker 2: have worth. There was no one worthy, no not one.
Speaker 2: That's according to the Bible. We are infected with a
Speaker 2: cancer of sin. We deserve to be horribly punished. This
Speaker 2: is a stripping away or an invalidating of human identity
Speaker 2: and worth and religion, fundamentalist religion Christianity uses them to
Speaker 2: control people and to threaten them and to scare them
Speaker 2: and to lock them away from the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: They were afraid. They were afraid of Satan, they were
Speaker 2: afraid of scientists, and they're also afraid of a bunch
Speaker 2: of other stuff, whether it's vaccines, or immigrants, or Muslims,
Speaker 2: or socialism or whatever. This idea that Noah's Ark is
Speaker 2: just a happy tale about rainbows and birds with olive
Speaker 2: branches and shit like that is monumentally naive. There's a
Speaker 2: really sinister undercurrent going on beyond I think all the
Speaker 2: grift and bullshit that can Hem has been guilty of.
Speaker 2: So we went out to protest, and as we were
Speaker 2: setting up, we saw a few cars arrive and people
Speaker 2: in brown shirts got out with their video equipment and
Speaker 2: lo and behold they were staffers from the Ark Encounter.
Speaker 2: They had come to documents our protests. Now, what are
Speaker 2: they going to do with the footage and a hover
Speaker 2: around the edges? Are they going to try to interview people?
Speaker 2: Are they going to take all that footage back and
Speaker 2: use it for their own nefarious purposes. I don't trust
Speaker 2: the Ark Encounter to fairly edit anything we say or do.
Speaker 2: Of course, all of those things turned out to be
Speaker 2: the case, or at least I think they're probably in
Speaker 2: an editing bay somewhere, or maybe they've already released the
Speaker 2: video interviews, and I ended up on camera being interviewed
Speaker 2: by this apologist, a guy that looks a lot like
Speaker 2: Douglas Wilson, that famous American pastor, who, as we speak,
Speaker 2: is petitioning that women should be stripped of their right
Speaker 2: to vote because it's a man's world. Man's the head
Speaker 2: of the house. There should be apparently one vote a household,
Speaker 2: and the woman has been made to serve man, so
Speaker 2: she follows his lead. I'm reminded of that line. Why
Speaker 2: did God make a woman's feet so short so she
Speaker 2: can stand closer to the sink? That's how Pastor Douglas
Speaker 2: Wilson thinks, and he's one of the most influential pastors
Speaker 2: in the United States. I just can't believe it. So
Speaker 2: this guy picture Douglas Wilson, and you'll see what this
Speaker 2: guy look like. He is in kind of this blue
Speaker 2: purple shirt, and he's got his camera crew and they're
Speaker 2: going around engaging, and I figure, Okay, eventually I may
Speaker 2: end up in a conversation. It happened, and I agreed.
Speaker 2: Now I didn't get a whole lot of good footage
Speaker 2: myself from the day. We had technical problems with their
Speaker 2: sound system for the first half, I just wanted to
Speaker 2: go back there and sort of take over. But you know,
Speaker 2: they meant well, but there were some problems, and then
Speaker 2: when they ironed those out, we had a torrent of rain,
Speaker 2: so we were scrambling. I had to scramble with my
Speaker 2: cameras and I ran out, and I only got two
Speaker 2: speeches recorded on video MANDSA Thomas of Black non Believers.
Speaker 2: I gave the footage and she posted it, I think,
Speaker 2: on her chain, and then I got Noah Illusions and
Speaker 2: he did a speech called why do you have to
Speaker 2: be so mean? And I will play that nine minute
Speaker 2: speech a little later on in the broadcast for you
Speaker 2: and linked to the video that's already out on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Noah refused to debate or engage the ark encounter people.
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm not doing I'm not going to waste
Speaker 2: my freaking time, and we can have that discussion about
Speaker 2: whether or not it is a waste of time. Should
Speaker 2: we engage. I don't know the right answer. I have
Speaker 2: no illusions that this apologist was going to engage me,
Speaker 2: and immediately the light bulb would go off, and he said,
Speaker 2: you know what, You're absolutely right. You have such good
Speaker 2: points about the fallacies and the immoralities and the Christian
Speaker 2: Book of Genesis. I will now reverse my position and
Speaker 2: I will join you, and we will frolic off into
Speaker 2: Reasonville together. I mean, we knew that wasn't going to happen.
Speaker 2: But I will say, in the back of my mind,
Speaker 2: when I was looking at the people, young twenty somethings
Speaker 2: with the cameras and the microphones who were following this
Speaker 2: guy around like he was a prophet. They were documenting.
Speaker 2: They didn't say a word, but I thought, I wonder,
Speaker 2: if they're listening as they're filming, as they're recording, are
Speaker 2: they going to hear from a position of relative safety,
Speaker 2: two arguments or two positions being articulated, And is there
Speaker 2: a chance that they'll say, wait a minute, that atheist
Speaker 2: guy actually had a few really good points. And that's
Speaker 2: I think the reason that I did say yes when
Speaker 2: they say do you want to talk to these guys?
Speaker 2: I don't have good audio. The audio is horrible, and
Speaker 2: it grieves me. And it's because I was wired up
Speaker 2: with a lapel microphone. But I was not prepared for
Speaker 2: the rain, which was just coming down in buckets all
Speaker 2: around me. I did not have an umbrella. I stood
Speaker 2: for if we both stood for about fifty ten minutes
Speaker 2: in the rain, and it ruined my microphone. I heard
Speaker 2: the audio and it's like, so I'm guessing that thing's
Speaker 2: going to have to be replaced. That hurts my heart.
Speaker 2: Give me a second here before I go off on
Speaker 2: that ran. Let me take my short break here and
Speaker 2: I will be back and I will bloviate further about
Speaker 2: the ARC and counter bloviator at the protest one moment, okay,
Speaker 2: because my microphone got ruined in the rain when I
Speaker 2: was talking to this ARC and countiripologist. You're stuck with
Speaker 2: me giving a summation of that fifteen minute encounter, and
Speaker 2: it's pretty much what you might expect. So he starts
Speaker 2: in good faith, and he introduces his team and hides
Speaker 2: nice talking to you, and immediately he references this big
Speaker 2: banner that the ARC protesters like to put up every year.
Speaker 2: It says genocide and incest park. Okay, I mean I
Speaker 2: call it genocide and certainly call it incest. I saw
Speaker 2: one of their people doing a stand up with his
Speaker 2: microphone and a camera right in front of the banner,
Speaker 2: and I thought to myself, I wish I could hear him,
Speaker 2: because how's he getting around this? How do you get
Speaker 2: around drowning the entire planet except for a family of
Speaker 2: eight and then everybody having sex with mom and sisters
Speaker 2: to repopulate the planet. How does one get around that?
Speaker 2: We know the Creation Museum has an incest exhibit. We
Speaker 2: know that you can go through the Creation Museum, you'll
Speaker 2: see it in the video. And ken Him's take is, well,
Speaker 2: you know, back then God's plan, there were fewer of us,
Speaker 2: and I think perhaps our genetic code was purer and
Speaker 2: people weren't going to have all of the problems, and
Speaker 2: it was okay. And of course you and I are
Speaker 2: like and then we think, all right, incest, that's another
Speaker 2: reason we don't want Christian homeschooling, is it not. The
Speaker 2: apologist looks at me and he says, how can you
Speaker 2: even call it genocide? If you are an atheist and
Speaker 2: don't believe in the Christian God, how can you even
Speaker 2: call it genocide? And I'm like, well, it has something
Speaker 2: to do with the fact that God killed everybody by
Speaker 2: the millions, perhaps billions, I don't know. How many people
Speaker 2: lived four thousand years ago on this planet. But it
Speaker 2: was a lot of people. It was pretty much everybody. Right, Well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go with genocide on that score. But
Speaker 2: he says, how can you call it genocide if you
Speaker 2: don't really have a standard for morality to know that
Speaker 2: genocide would be wrong? And immediately I thought, here we go.
Speaker 2: How do you know that rape and murder are wrong
Speaker 2: if you don't believe in an objective moral standard and
Speaker 2: my specific standard maker And I said, well, I'm not
Speaker 2: totally convinced I believe in objective morality, but we understand
Speaker 2: that killing is bad. And then he said, well, is
Speaker 2: it always wrong to kill someone? And how would you
Speaker 2: know that if you're an atheist? And so I began
Speaker 2: to get into the fascinating idea of context. He says,
Speaker 2: somebody breaks into my house and they're threatening my life
Speaker 2: in the life of my family, and I use lethal
Speaker 2: force to stop them. Well, I would have killed them,
Speaker 2: but I would not have been guilty of murder. However,
Speaker 2: if I just go out and kill someone because I
Speaker 2: want to, that would meet the definition. But he's like,
Speaker 2: how do you know that's wrong? What about the people
Speaker 2: throughout history who have murdered and it has made their
Speaker 2: lives better, or at least enrich them, or made them
Speaker 2: more successful, or given them great power. He didn't say Hitler.
Speaker 2: He didn't say Hitler, but I heard Hitler. We all
Speaker 2: here Hitler because that's where he's going. Hitler was an atheist,
Speaker 2: which means he hasn't done his research on Hitler. But
Speaker 2: it's so insulting to be told that I wouldn't know
Speaker 2: the concept of harm. I wouldn't know that killing is wrong.
Speaker 2: Why in the world would you want to act ethically
Speaker 2: if you don't believe in my God. I get into
Speaker 2: the basics of pro social behaviors, cooperation, coalition, community, surviving
Speaker 2: and thriving on the African Savannah. What about those people
Speaker 2: who don't do those things? Well, society does have its anomalies,
Speaker 2: and they do great harm, and they get away with
Speaker 2: great harm, but historically they don't last all that long
Speaker 2: against everybody else. I mean, we have to admit Hitler
Speaker 2: was eventually defeated and overthrown. Right, there is a corrective
Speaker 2: Erica Gotzig Gibbon talks about this in the primate world,
Speaker 2: where there'll be some alpha for lack of a better
Speaker 2: way of saying it. Who goes in and he he's
Speaker 2: running his tree vibe of primates, you know, chimpanzees, gorillas, whatever,
Speaker 2: and he's beating up everybody, and he's abusing everybody. He's
Speaker 2: stealing all the resources, and he enjoys power for a while,
Speaker 2: and then finally his group gets fed up and says,
Speaker 2: screw a whole bunch of this. They turn on him,
Speaker 2: and they don't just kill him. They torture him, they
Speaker 2: kill him violently. They're just She had a video at
Speaker 2: a speech that she gave recently, and she wouldn't even
Speaker 2: show the video of a documentation of this group. What
Speaker 2: do you call it? Group of chimps? Is it a pack,
Speaker 2: a tribe, a flock of chimps? This flock of chimps
Speaker 2: turns on the abuser and they fuck him up. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's horrible. So there is a corrective that does happen.
Speaker 2: But I'm not able to really get into all that.
Speaker 2: I'm just able to say, yes, we see them, but overall,
Speaker 2: human flourishing is best explained with pro social and cooperative behaviors.
Speaker 2: And I snock any question of my own. You're from
Speaker 2: the Arc Encounter book of Genesis. Who wrote the Book
Speaker 2: of Genesis, Well, it was Moses. He said, well, how
Speaker 2: do you know that? How do you know there was
Speaker 2: a Moses? Well, historians, an overwhelming documentation and blah blah
Speaker 2: love And then he managed to throw Aristotle. You know,
Speaker 2: at all these historical figures, philosophers, writers, their existence has
Speaker 2: been corroborated by a host hundreds, perhaps thousands of sources
Speaker 2: from the time period. And I just looked at him,
Speaker 2: and what I regret not saying is this. And you
Speaker 2: may have heard me say this before, but the Book
Speaker 2: of Genesis starts before spacetime. There are no humans to chronicle,
Speaker 2: before Adam and Eve, before the universe, before the cosmos
Speaker 2: and the earth and light and dark in the water
Speaker 2: and the animal and everything. It's not like Moses was
Speaker 2: hanging around in a tiny little space pod with a
Speaker 2: paper and pen documenting the creation of all things. He
Speaker 2: did not exist. He didn't come down until later on
Speaker 2: in the Book of Genesis. So how was he able
Speaker 2: to report what was going on? And I just wish
Speaker 2: I'd been thinking more on my feet to ask that
Speaker 2: question for the minions that we're all shooting and recording,
Speaker 2: not for the apologist and it goes on and on.
Speaker 2: As the rain is pouring down. He gives me the
Speaker 2: standard line about how we have faith in scientists and
Speaker 2: why is their belief any less valid than our belief.
Speaker 2: I think he may have challenged as to why we
Speaker 2: would bother to protest something we don't believe in. But
Speaker 2: here's the part that made my head explode. And even
Speaker 2: now I'm still pissed off about it. It should have
Speaker 2: been expected. Noah was just about to go on stage,
Speaker 2: and so I politely said, we're done here. Forgive me.
Speaker 2: You've been very kind to engage. I'm going to have
Speaker 2: to get back to work. I've got a couple of
Speaker 2: cameras under the tents. I'm going to try to get
Speaker 2: footage of Noah, and then I'm up on the podium last.
Speaker 2: But thank you for And I said, you know, I
Speaker 2: think as far as human goodness, you know, I think
Speaker 2: you and I may have more in common than we
Speaker 2: have in disagreement. And he said this. He actually said
Speaker 2: two things. He said, you have a secret. You have
Speaker 2: done something in your life that if anyone knew about
Speaker 2: it would ruin you. And we all have something about
Speaker 2: us that we keep in the darkest part of our
Speaker 2: hearts that no one else knows about. But it is
Speaker 2: a cancer that lives within us. And if people knew it,
Speaker 2: they would know what darkened hearts we have. It was
Speaker 2: something along those lines. God, I wish I had a recording.
Speaker 2: I wish it didn't sound like both so you could
Speaker 2: hear what he said. And I'm like, well, we all
Speaker 2: have made mistakes. Certainly, we all have little secrets, right,
Speaker 2: but we've all screwed up. You know, we're flawed people.
Speaker 2: But the perfect is the enemy of the good. If
Speaker 2: I've made big mistakes in my life, and haven't we all,
Speaker 2: I mean, my train has left the tracks, I've hit
Speaker 2: the wall, I've screwed up, I've heard people, I've done
Speaker 2: all it. We've all done it. We've all been human.
Speaker 2: And I said, you know, I'm not defined by my
Speaker 2: worst mistakes. And he was talking like we are like
Speaker 2: spiritual criminals who are holding onto in our minds and
Speaker 2: hearts our own criminal record. And if the world knew
Speaker 2: just how tainted we really were, well we would be
Speaker 2: exposed as harmful. We would be unworthy, requiring salvation of
Speaker 2: pardon from the great prison warden in the sky. Well,
Speaker 2: what do you do about that. How in the world
Speaker 2: do you get redemption for the wrongs and your life,
Speaker 2: the horrible deeds that you have done. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: if I have wronged someone in my life, my goal
Speaker 2: is to understand the wrong and then I find them
Speaker 2: and I admit that I was wrong, and I say,
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry for being wrong, and if there was
Speaker 2: harm done, I say, forgive me for being hurtful. I
Speaker 2: know you were hurt and that's my fault, and I
Speaker 2: have real regret about that and real heartache and grief,
Speaker 2: and I want you to know that I'm genuinely sorry.
Speaker 2: And then in my own life I make a commitment
Speaker 2: to do better next time. I was thinking of that
Speaker 2: Maya Angelou quote where she said when we know better,
Speaker 2: we do better. I thought that was a good answer,
Speaker 2: but he was not satisfied. And as I wrapped it up,
Speaker 2: I thought we were done. I'm stepping away with a
Speaker 2: thank you, and he steps toward me and says this.
Speaker 2: He said, I don't believe you ever had a covenant
Speaker 2: relationship with Jesus Christ. Excuse me, I don't believe you
Speaker 2: said you were a believer for decades, you were a Christian? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was a Christian. No, I don't believe. I don't
Speaker 2: believe you ever had a covenant relationship with Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: I don't believe that. And I just stared at him like,
Speaker 2: you have no idea who I am. You don't even
Speaker 2: know me. You weren't there when I walked up and
Speaker 2: dropped to my knees at the altar that Eastwood Baptist
Speaker 2: Church and said the Salvation prayer followed the Roman Road.
Speaker 2: If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord,
Speaker 2: and believe in your heart got raised him from the dead,
Speaker 2: you will be saved. I confessed my sins and I said, Jesus,
Speaker 2: come into my heart and save me. And I meant
Speaker 2: it with all my heart. I actually said that prayer
Speaker 2: more than once growing up. And that's a whole other
Speaker 2: story you talk about, s Saraty. I was all in,
Speaker 2: and I was all in for many, many years, and
Speaker 2: this guy just wants to invalidate me. I don't believe
Speaker 2: you ever had a covenant relationship. You're telling me that
Speaker 2: I wasn't a true Christian. That's not what I said.
Speaker 2: I never said that you wored a true Christian. I
Speaker 2: said you never had a covenant relationship with Jesus. Well,
Speaker 2: what's the difference. You're saying I didn't do Christianity correctly? Then, No, no, no,
Speaker 2: I didn't say that. I didn't say you didn't do
Speaker 2: Christianity correctly. I said you never had a covenant relationship
Speaker 2: with Jesus. And I actually looked at the guy with
Speaker 2: a microphone who was holding it up to my face.
Speaker 2: This kid from the arcan counter. I'm like, like, so
Speaker 2: I didn't have a proper covenant relationship, which I should
Speaker 2: have had to do Christianity correctly, which means I wasn't
Speaker 2: doing Christianity correctly. That's what he's saying. I've never said
Speaker 2: that you never had a covenant relationship. And I beg you,
Speaker 2: I implore you to go to Jesus and drop to
Speaker 2: your knees and confess your sins and receive the saving
Speaker 2: power of my God. So now now it's evangelism. And
Speaker 2: I think it was performative because the camera was rolling
Speaker 2: and I say, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not broken. I
Speaker 2: do not need to be fixed. I'm not your pet project.
Speaker 2: He's like, no, no, I implore you to meet the
Speaker 2: risen Jesus where you are and accept his saving grace.
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah. He was still talking when I walked away,
Speaker 2: and I could feel my blood boiling. And this is
Speaker 2: yet another reason why I was there to protest the
Speaker 2: arc encounter. I'm supposedly the product of my worst mistakes.
Speaker 2: There was some evil core deep down within me, and
Speaker 2: it's always there, and apparently it defines me. It has
Speaker 2: robbed me of my worth to such a degree that
Speaker 2: only a third the third party, can come down and
Speaker 2: fix me. I have to die to myself and essentially
Speaker 2: be replaced with the identity of someone else. His whole
Speaker 2: narrative is that the drowning of the world isn't genocide,
Speaker 2: it is an act of love and justice. And even
Speaker 2: all these thousands of years later, a guy like me
Speaker 2: is still defined by evil and needs to be saved.
Speaker 2: In the speech that I gave, which was ruined by
Speaker 2: a bad microphone, I was talking about the comedy of
Speaker 2: the Old Testament. I mean, for a divine master plan,
Speaker 2: we have to admit it's kind of jacked up whenever
Speaker 2: it fails. In the third chapter of the book in
Speaker 2: the first book of sixty six, the third chapter of
Speaker 2: the first book right at the beginning of the story,
Speaker 2: shit goes bad. When people ask about me being an
Speaker 2: atheist activist with a biblical name, I always say, oh, well,
Speaker 2: I was the son of Adam and Eve that was
Speaker 2: not involved in a homicide. There was a homicide in
Speaker 2: the third chapter of Genesis, right, this is was it
Speaker 2: after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the guard?
Speaker 2: I can't remember if it was before or after, So
Speaker 2: that way wrong immediately, it is a joke. And then
Speaker 2: the whole planet I mean, by Genesis chapter six, everybody
Speaker 2: on Earth, everybody is so evil they have to be
Speaker 2: horribly drowned alongside all the animals, and every other resource
Speaker 2: is destroyed. It's that bad. Well, that's not humankind's fault.
Speaker 2: That's an indictment of the intelligent designer. That's an indictment
Speaker 2: of God. He didn't have any idea how to put
Speaker 2: together and implement a plan that actually worked. And the
Speaker 2: entire Bible is all that God says, do this by command,
Speaker 2: and as children say, screw that, We're going to go
Speaker 2: do something else, God gets pissed. There is smiting a plenty.
Speaker 2: There's all this kind of smiting. We've got swords and wars,
Speaker 2: and we've got plagues and blood and sulfur from the sky,
Speaker 2: and we've got all these starvation and infanticide. It's all shit.
Speaker 2: Shit's always going wrong. And then God's children are like,
Speaker 2: we're really sorry, please if you would stop smiting us,
Speaker 2: and then always says, okay, all right, well, if you
Speaker 2: promised to be good next time, I'll stop the smiting.
Speaker 2: It's a joke and the message is so freaking sinister.
Speaker 2: I think the Book of Genesis through revelation has to
Speaker 2: be protested, it has to be condemned, and I think
Speaker 2: inappropriate occasions must be ridiculed as ridiculous. I left there
Speaker 2: soaking wet thinking about that apologist, that interview in some form,
Speaker 2: possibly unfairly edited. It is probably going to end up
Speaker 2: where did they have a YouTube page? Will it be
Speaker 2: on their social media? I will say ever since that encounter,
Speaker 2: I have had a total influx of ARC encounter apologists
Speaker 2: and promoters and defenders on my social media pages. Apparently
Speaker 2: I'm a pet project now. I posted the image of
Speaker 2: the banner genocide and Incest Park with me standing next
Speaker 2: to it, and they're coming, you know what, let me
Speaker 2: read a couple of these hang on let me read
Speaker 2: a couple of the arc encounter defenders, and I promise
Speaker 2: I will play the speech from Noah uh seth Facebook,
Speaker 2: Hang on, hold on just a second, just like two
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty comments on here. Oh wow, there's someone
Speaker 2: who's breaking down the arc logistically. That looks interesting. I
Speaker 2: may have to come back and read that. Rachel jumped
Speaker 2: in with a huge diatribe and a weird reference to
Speaker 2: the Guild Christ. I don't know what a guil Christ is.
Speaker 2: Gil have you heard of this? This may be a
Speaker 2: gap in my knowledge if it's part of Christian tradition
Speaker 2: or scriptures. She said, I have seen him, the scars
Speaker 2: on his hands and the crown on his head, and
Speaker 2: before he returns the Elijah Isaac Gilchrist will come. She
Speaker 2: goes on and on and finishes with I tell you
Speaker 2: ahead of time, so you might believe well good things.
Speaker 2: She showed up to tell me on Facebook. Jeff said,
Speaker 2: the Bible said all this would happen. It told us
Speaker 2: that in the final days people would raise up against
Speaker 2: the people of God. It said good would be considered evil,
Speaker 2: and evil would be called goods. The mocking of God
Speaker 2: in the twenty first century somehow proves God. Ben chimed
Speaker 2: in and said, it has been said that an atheist
Speaker 2: does not find God for the same reason that a
Speaker 2: burg blerd does not find a policeman. Oh he wins.
Speaker 2: I am now convinced. Okay, I'm going to come back
Speaker 2: and read this breakdown from a skeptic named Devin his
Speaker 2: It's actually a relatively long comment. It reminds me of
Speaker 2: an article that was published forty some years ago. It
Speaker 2: is posted still at the National Center for Science Education
Speaker 2: the NCSSE. It is called The Impossibility of Noah's Ark.
Speaker 2: He was written by Robert day Moore, and it is,
Speaker 2: if you will, almost a comprehensive dismantling of Noah's Ark.
Speaker 2: So I was looking at Devon's comment and it kind
Speaker 2: of reminds me of that. But I'm going to go
Speaker 2: ahead and narrate it for you, and then we'll go
Speaker 2: back and we'll vet his details.
Speaker 4: Overall.
Speaker 2: I think, if you'll pardon the expression it really holds water,
Speaker 2: we'll come back and do that next. Nois arc on
Speaker 2: every level. The whole idea of it just sinks. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to read for you a comment that was
Speaker 2: left on my Facebook page by a skeptic. His name
Speaker 2: was Devon, and he broke everything down for us. There
Speaker 2: are an estimated eight point seven million species on Earth,
Speaker 2: give or take, because taxonomy is messy, about two point
Speaker 2: two million ar marine, which means, unless we are suggesting
Speaker 2: fish needed rescuing from water, roughly six point five million
Speaker 2: species are land dwelling and air breathing. Now let's be generous,
Speaker 2: ignore insects entirely, even though that quietly collapses ecosystems, and
Speaker 2: round way down to just one million terrestrial species at
Speaker 2: two of each. That's two million animals already unreasonable, But sure,
Speaker 2: let's keep going, be charitable with mass and call it
Speaker 2: twenty five pounds per animal. That's fifty million pounds or
Speaker 2: about twenty five thousand tons of animals. For contexts, the
Speaker 2: USS Enterprise displaces not the not the spaceship, the USS Enterprise.
Speaker 2: The sea vessel the USS Enterprise displaces about ninety three
Speaker 2: thousand tons, So we're already loading a wooden vessel with
Speaker 2: over a quarter of an aircraft carrier's displacement before adding
Speaker 2: anything else. Now add food, because animals insist on continuing
Speaker 2: to be alive at two point five percent body weight,
Speaker 2: per day. That's about one million, two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand pounds daily, or another fifty million pounds over forty days,
Speaker 2: another twenty five thousand tons, So we're sitting at fifty
Speaker 2: thousand tons without water waste or the ship itself now water,
Speaker 2: which is where it really falls. Apart the evenet of
Speaker 2: very conservative zero point five gallons per animal per day,
Speaker 2: that's a million gallons daily or forty million gallons over
Speaker 2: forty days. At eight point three pounds per gallon, that's
Speaker 2: roughly three hundred and thirty three million pounds or about
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty six thousand tons volume wise, about
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty one thousand cubic meters. The arcs
Speaker 2: total volume, based on biblical dimensions is about forty three
Speaker 2: thousand cubic meters, so the water alone requires more than
Speaker 2: three times the ARC's entire volume before you add a
Speaker 2: single animal or piece of food. At this point we
Speaker 2: are at roughly two hundred and sixteen thousand, eight hundred
Speaker 2: tons of animal's food and water alone, over twice the
Speaker 2: displacement of the USS enterprise on a wooden vessel, and
Speaker 2: that wooden vessel is supposedly made of gopher wood, which
Speaker 2: has confirmed botanical identity, We don't know what it is,
Speaker 2: what its properties are, or whether it corresponds to any
Speaker 2: real species of tree on top of that Wooden ships
Speaker 2: at this scale run into hogging and sagging, where the
Speaker 2: hull flexes under its own weight and fails. This is
Speaker 2: a known engineering limitation. So even if everything else worked,
Speaker 2: the ship itself is already pushing past what the material
Speaker 2: can handle. Then there's the flood itself. The cover the
Speaker 2: earth up to the height of Mount Everest about eight
Speaker 2: point eight five kilometers, you need roughly four point five
Speaker 2: billion cubic kilometers of water. The oceans today contain about
Speaker 2: one point three billion cubic kilometers, so you need over
Speaker 2: three times all existing ocean water to appear, sit there,
Speaker 2: and then disappear. There is no known mechanism for that.
Speaker 2: If that water came from rain over forty days, you're
Speaker 2: talking about roughly one hundred twelve million cubic kilometers per day,
Speaker 2: about one hundred thousand times current global rainfall. The atmosphere
Speaker 2: only holds about thirteen thousand cubic kilometers of water vapor.
Speaker 2: You can't scale that anywhere near what's required to even try,
Speaker 2: atmospheric pressure would have to rise into hundreds of atmospheres,
Speaker 2: pushing toward hundreds to near one thousand psi. At that point,
Speaker 2: the air is unbreathable and temperatures become lethal. Everything dies
Speaker 2: before the flood even matters. Even if you ignore all that,
Speaker 2: biology still doesn't cooperate. Two individuals per species creates several
Speaker 2: genetic bottlenecks, and there's no fossil or ecological evidence of
Speaker 2: a global redistribution of species from a single point afterward,
Speaker 2: behavior carnivores do not stop being carnivores. You're placing predators
Speaker 2: in prey together in confined stressful conditions for over a month. Actually,
Speaker 2: I thought they were on the arc for almost a year,
Speaker 2: weren't they. I mean it range for forty days and
Speaker 2: forty nine. But anyway, stress increases aggression, not decreases it.
Speaker 2: So either you massively increase food requirements to continuously feed
Speaker 2: every predator, or you assume supernatural behavioral changes. Otherwise, predation, panic, injury,
Speaker 2: and disease start collapsing the population almost immediately. And that's
Speaker 2: before you get into territorial behavior or the logistics of
Speaker 2: separating millions of animals in a confined space. Then you
Speaker 2: hit the edge. Cases. Koalas require eucalyptus, which does not
Speaker 2: exist anywhere near Mount err Rat or along any plausible
Speaker 2: migration route. Sloths are not crossing continents in any reasonable
Speaker 2: time frame. There is no fossil trail showing either species
Speaker 2: spreading outward from the Middle East after such an event.
Speaker 2: Even the text itself can't quite keep its own instruction straight.
Speaker 2: Genesis chapter six, verses nineteen and twenty says two of each,
Speaker 2: while Genesis seven two and three shifts to seven pairs
Speaker 2: for certain animals. At that point, that's less a contradiction
Speaker 2: and more just another loose threat. Now I've heard the
Speaker 2: apologetic on this. The extra animals were sacrifice animals for
Speaker 2: when they I don't know why you had to save
Speaker 2: animals to kill them, but that's one of the excuses.
Speaker 2: Then there's history. Civilizations were not conveniently wiped out and rebooted.
Speaker 2: Ancient Egypt shows continuous records through the supposed time frame.
Speaker 2: Early Chinese civilization shows continuity. Mesopotamian cultures develop without inter
Speaker 2: In other words, the people who were writing things down
Speaker 2: at the time do not appear to have noticed the
Speaker 2: total destruction of all life on Earth, which is notable.
Speaker 2: And then there's the human side of this. Eight people
Speaker 2: as the source of all modern human diversity requires extreme
Speaker 2: genetic compression followed by implausibly rapid divergence. Historically, later interpretations
Speaker 2: tried to map different populations onto the descendants of Noah's sons,
Speaker 2: especially through ideas like the Curse of Ham, which were
Speaker 2: then used to justify racial hierarchies and slavery. By the way, Ham,
Speaker 2: you know this, but Ham is one of the sons
Speaker 2: of Noah. It wasn't Ham, Like, there wasn't cursed Ham.
Speaker 2: Ham was a person. Okay, that's not required by the
Speaker 2: text the Curse of Ham, but it's a very real
Speaker 2: outcome of treating this story as literal human ancestry. So
Speaker 2: what are we actually being asked to accept here? A
Speaker 2: wooden ship of unknown material exceeding known structural limits, carrying
Speaker 2: over two hundred thousand tons with more than three times
Speaker 2: its volume require just for water, while billions of cubic
Speaker 2: kilometers of water appear and disappear under atmospheric conditions that
Speaker 2: would make the planet uninhabitable, all while ecosystems collapse and
Speaker 2: somehow reassemble, predators behave unnaturally humanity, bottlenecks to eight individuals,
Speaker 2: animals disperse globally without leaving evidence, and multiple civilizations somehow
Speaker 2: fail to notice any of it. At some point, this
Speaker 2: stops being a flood narrative and becomes a scenario where
Speaker 2: every physical, biological, behavioral, historical, and social system fails at once.
Speaker 2: You can lower the numbers, you can be generous at
Speaker 2: every step, and it still doesn't work. Not structurally, not biologically,
Speaker 2: not atmospherically, not behaviorally, not genetically, not historically, and not mathematically,
Speaker 2: and certainly not all at once. If the only way
Speaker 2: the story works is by overriding every constraint at every step,
Speaker 2: then it isn't a description of reality. It's a story
Speaker 2: that only functions if reality is optional. Devin ellen Wood,
Speaker 2: that is impressive. Now, obviously we've got to go back
Speaker 2: and check the numbers, and there are a lot of them.
Speaker 2: But if you'll pardon the expression, I think the spirit
Speaker 2: of the piece it's spot on. I'll link to I
Speaker 2: guess I'm gonna have to link to my original Facebook
Speaker 2: photo of me in front of the genocide a incest poster,
Speaker 2: where Devin was commenting and you can just scroll down
Speaker 2: if you want to copy and paste and go check everything.
Speaker 2: Devin has no idea that he's that his work has
Speaker 2: become featured in this week's broadcast. I'll try to go
Speaker 2: back and let him know. I don't know if he'll
Speaker 2: be happy. Hopefully he'll be appreciative of that. Now, Noah
Speaker 2: Illusions the second to last speech at the ARC encounter.
Speaker 2: I mentioned that he went hard at ken Hammond Company,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to play you the audio of his speech.
Speaker 2: It runs just under ten minutes. Again, the video of that,
Speaker 2: it's surrounded by rain, he's under attend and he's having
Speaker 2: to almost shout even with the sound system to be heard.
Speaker 2: But you know, the video is good, and I think
Speaker 2: the audio is good. Let me play it for you
Speaker 2: here and you can decide what you think. Here we go.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: So let me tell you the dilemma that I find
Speaker 3: myself in here today. A couple of weeks ago, I
Speaker 3: was on with the Kentucky Atheists doing a fundraiser for
Speaker 3: this event, right, thank you, And during while we were
Speaker 3: in between records, Joe told me a rumor that one
Speaker 3: Ray Comfort was going to be here. For this protest. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just another lie from Ray Comfort. He's nowhere to be found.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing. When I heard that, I went
Speaker 3: ahead and wrote myself a ten minute roast of Ray
Speaker 3: Comfort to deliver as my speech.
Speaker 4: Anyway, it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: If he's not here, unfortunately, so I have to give.
Speaker 4: Don't worry.
Speaker 3: I did write a different speech. I don't have to
Speaker 3: add lib here or anything. I'm not gonna say I
Speaker 3: was more excited about the Ray's speech, but I will
Speaker 3: say that if Ray Comfort was here, I wouldn't have
Speaker 3: to work off of my notes. So instead of Ray Comfort,
Speaker 3: I want to talk to you about something that's almost
Speaker 3: as bad.
Speaker 4: I want to talk to you about the comment section.
Speaker 3: Right. So, when this event was first announced, everybody talked
Speaker 3: about it on Facebook and they tagged me on it.
Speaker 4: I talked about it on Facebook, so I had plenty of.
Speaker 3: Opportunities to see what the online commentary was about the event,
Speaker 3: and I will say most of it was very supportive.
Speaker 3: Most of the people that heard about it were actually
Speaker 3: really glad that somebody that was out here taking it
Speaker 3: to the art park, telling people about the violations of
Speaker 3: church state separation that made it possible telling people about
Speaker 3: the homophobia that undergirds their hiring practices, tell everybody about
Speaker 3: the prejudice that undergirds their entire park. That was most people.
Speaker 3: There was a minority, however, that took issue with what
Speaker 3: we're doing. Some of them were Young Earth creationists. Some
Speaker 3: of them were the people that were just there to
Speaker 3: tell us how much they were going to enjoy.
Speaker 4: Watching us burn in hell.
Speaker 3: Apparently there's a window in heaven or a porthole or
Speaker 3: somewhere you can drop in a quarter and watch the
Speaker 3: skin melt off of all the people who beat you
Speaker 3: in arguments on Facebook.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, that's their vision of paradise. People be afraid.
Speaker 3: But there were also a couple other types of commentaris,
Speaker 3: people who weren't directly supporting the art park, but we're
Speaker 3: more of tertiary supporters. There were two types of them,
Speaker 3: and I want to address both of them from the
Speaker 3: podium today. The first were the what's the harm people?
Speaker 3: People would hear that we're coming out here, and they go, oh,
Speaker 3: what's the harm of the art part? Those people out
Speaker 3: there having fun with their family and they're just doing
Speaker 3: their thing, They're just you know, practicing their religion. What's
Speaker 3: the harm in it? You know, that's a dumb, damn question. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, but if you weren't paying any attention to
Speaker 3: the news at all, I can understand formulating that question
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety three. But today today you're gonna ask
Speaker 3: me what's the harm of lying about how the world works?
Speaker 3: You can ask me, what's the harm of lying about
Speaker 3: the very foundations of biology in a world where we
Speaker 3: have an anti vaxxer in charge of public health?
Speaker 4: What's the harm? Really?
Speaker 3: You can ask me what's the harm about lying about
Speaker 3: how global weather patterns work in a world that's dying
Speaker 3: of climate change, where we can't do a damn thing
Speaker 3: about it because of the deniers.
Speaker 4: What's the harm?
Speaker 3: They asked me, what's the What's the harm of lying
Speaker 3: about how geology works? In a world where we can't
Speaker 3: convince grown ass adults that the Earth is round?
Speaker 4: What's the harm?
Speaker 3: But of all the ologies they get wrong at the
Speaker 3: art part, the most dangerous one, of course, is epistemology.
Speaker 3: The beauty of science, as many of the speakers have
Speaker 3: already pointed out, is not that it teaches us a
Speaker 3: series of facts, although that's very nice of it to
Speaker 3: do The beauty of science is that it teaches us
Speaker 3: how to interrogate the world, how to tell what is
Speaker 3: true and what is false. And if you need to
Speaker 3: know what's the harm of country losing the ability to
Speaker 3: tell what's true and what's false, you need to look
Speaker 3: no further than the White House, thank you, or maybe
Speaker 3: they're reflecting pool. It seems crazy to me that anybody
Speaker 3: has to come out here and defend the concept of truth,
Speaker 3: but that's where we are. We have so many people
Speaker 3: out there asking how do we get here? How do
Speaker 3: we wind up in this post truth world of alternative facts. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the atheists are saying, hey, we've been answering it is
Speaker 3: streaming the answer to that question from the rooftop for decades.
Speaker 3: Nobody has a more vested interest in lying about reality
Speaker 3: than religion. Nobody has more motivation, nobody has more experienced,
Speaker 3: nobody has better funded. That's what happened to truth. What
Speaker 3: happened to truth is ken Ham got a hold of it.
Speaker 3: And you might think that epistemology is the worst thing
Speaker 3: we could possibly lie to their children about, but it's not.
Speaker 3: Because they also lie about ethics. They lie about how
Speaker 3: morality works. There's a homophobia minimum. If you want to
Speaker 3: work at the art part, right, there's a bigotry minimum
Speaker 3: to work there. And the only way that you can
Speaker 3: get there, the only way that anybody would be willing
Speaker 3: to accept that, is that they've been lied to about
Speaker 3: how ethics work.
Speaker 4: As atheists, we're constantly asked, where do we get our morals? Right? Well,
Speaker 4: the truth is, of course we get our morals the.
Speaker 3: Same damn place everybody else gets them.
Speaker 4: But they don't seem to realize that.
Speaker 3: They say we get our morals from the Bible, yet
Speaker 3: they somehow know which parts of.
Speaker 4: The Bible are immoral.
Speaker 3: Right, But of course they've been convinced that suffering comes
Speaker 3: from a lady eating the wrong apple.
Speaker 4: And wolves come from old books.
Speaker 3: So it's easy to lie to them. So that's my
Speaker 3: answer to what's the harm? Truth matters, and it's crazy
Speaker 3: that anybody even has to say it. But there was
Speaker 3: one other question that I wanted to address, and those
Speaker 3: are the people who are always asking, and they asked.
Speaker 4: Me this about a lot of things. Why you gotta
Speaker 4: be so mean?
Speaker 3: Why you got to be so mean to those people
Speaker 3: while they're out on vacation with their kids, they're just
Speaker 3: having them trying to have fun.
Speaker 4: Now, of course that question sort of assumes that we
Speaker 4: don't have a good answer for the first question, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're lying to people in a dangerous way,
Speaker 3: and you're charging them sixty dollars a ticket to do
Speaker 3: it plus parking, and I'm out here trying to tell
Speaker 3: them the truth.
Speaker 4: For free in the rain, who's being mean?
Speaker 3: Who?
Speaker 4: You remember? You?
Speaker 3: You know we talked about how this purg was built
Speaker 3: on lies. We're not just talking about the lies that promotes.
Speaker 3: We're not just talking about Young Earth creationism. It was
Speaker 3: literally built upon lies. You remember the vision of prosperity
Speaker 3: that ken Ham sold this area when they mortgaged their
Speaker 3: future to get the park into this place. Remember the
Speaker 3: numbers of you, all that talking had about all these
Speaker 3: new hotels and these restaurants and these businesses that we're
Speaker 3: gonna open up to serve all the customers that were gonna.
Speaker 4: Come flooding into his art park. An An you guys
Speaker 4: see them?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: Did I scare them off?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: I didn't even have to say fuck? Wow?
Speaker 3: All right, So no, I don't want to have any
Speaker 3: kind of civil conversation with you. You lie to children for
Speaker 3: a living, and that's disgusting, thank you. Speaking of lying,
Speaker 3: they also he says, I'm scared. Hey, how want you
Speaker 3: shut the fuck up and let us do our things?
Speaker 4: So okay? So anyway, so.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the lies they told, I was looking on
Speaker 3: my way and did anybody see any of these new
Speaker 3: hotels and businesses because I came in the backway. Apparently
Speaker 3: didn't notice any of those. There's also you know, he
Speaker 3: also lied about the projection numbers. They actually put a
Speaker 3: number on that. They said, ten years on they would
Speaker 3: have they would be servicing two point eight million guests
Speaker 3: per year.
Speaker 4: Yo.
Speaker 3: They didn't even get the point eight Okay, I mean
Speaker 3: they don't open until one o'clock today. That's not what
Speaker 3: a successful theme park does, right, So okay, so that's
Speaker 3: a lie. Here's another one. You remember all the new
Speaker 3: jobs that they promise. Again, they put a number on it.
Speaker 3: They said, ten years on, the art park's existence would
Speaker 3: have created the equivalent of three thousand new full time
Speaker 3: jobs in this area. They never got a third of that.
Speaker 3: And when they promised that there would be new jobs,
Speaker 3: they never mentioned the homophobia minimum. They never mentioned that
Speaker 3: those jobs will be restricted to biggots, or people who
Speaker 3: at least pretended to be biggots for the purposes of
Speaker 3: their employment. That is a lie. Everything they told this
Speaker 3: town is a lot. He didn't bring them prosperity. He
Speaker 3: brought him increased taxes. He brought him increased strain under
Speaker 3: municipal services, and says they mortgaged their.
Speaker 4: Future to get him here.
Speaker 3: He's not even contributing to the taxes of the community
Speaker 3: the way any.
Speaker 4: Other for profit business would so.
Speaker 3: And of course, as Joe pointed out, when they tried
Speaker 3: to recoup even a small fraction of the money that
Speaker 3: this park was costing them, they fought them tooth and
Speaker 3: nail and tried all kind of crooked shit to get
Speaker 3: out of pay in their fair share, because that is
Speaker 3: who they are. They are liars all the way to
Speaker 3: their core. So let me just say in conclusion that
Speaker 3: the Ark and Counter theme park is dangerous, it's disingenuous,
Speaker 3: it's dishonest, it's homophobic, is transphobic, and it is woefully
Speaker 3: under taxed, which, by the way, was the same clothes
Speaker 3: that I had for the Ray Comfort roast.
Speaker 2: Thank you, big shout out to the Tri State freethinkers
Speaker 2: and Kentucky Atheists. They put the entire ARC protests together
Speaker 2: and it was a lot of fun. I think it's
Speaker 2: a worthy protest. I'm so glad that you made it
Speaker 2: through my rant today, and it was kind of fun
Speaker 2: to go back to Noah. You know, it's always fun
Speaker 2: to go back to the Bible from time to time
Speaker 2: and just take it apart bit by bit. I will
Speaker 2: see you back here next week and we will podcast
Speaker 2: all over again.
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