Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists in this country is going.
Speaker 1: Through the rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred.
Speaker 3: If I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
not because 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 feels so much more happiness.
Truth Beausian 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 3: You know, of all the things that I get to do,
and I'm just so honored to be able to do it.
Speaker 2: I love hosting a show.
Speaker 3: I love being a part of this community, and I
love the interaction of speaking in front of a live audience.
And I don't know how many speaking events I did
this year is a lot. And so you're about to
hear the recording of a speech that I gave October
twenty seventh for the Rationalists of East Tennessee. And don't
we know that Tennessee needs all the rationalists it can get, actually,
the entire.
Speaker 2: Actually the planet needs all the.
Speaker 3: Rationalists that it can get and they were so gracious
to me, and so we all got together and they
made a cake for me to welcome me, and it
had the Thinking Atheist logo on it.
Speaker 2: It was awesome. I posted it on social media saying,
check this out. It was just such an honor.
Speaker 3: And then we had a full house the next day
and I talked about beliefs and the brain. The problem
is now, this is before the election, and everything's exploded
and the whole planet's on fire and all that stuff,
and afterwards people are so hot, and I'm talking about
myself too. I thought is it the wrong time? And
then I got really paranoid, and I said is it
the wrong message? And I couldn't decide. I was so
worked up. And you know, when you are highly charged,
this is the worst time to make decisions in most cases. Right,
You got to take a breath, You've got to get
some perspective. And so I sent the speech out a
private link to some people that I trust, and I said, look,
I hate to ask, but would you watch this and
tell me is it wrong or is it the wrong time?
And they said, You're not wrong. It is probably the
best time. To try to refocus ourselves, and so I
went back. I added kind of an opening disclaimer, like
thirty seconds with a voiceover which was done by a
third party, and then it goes into the speech itself. Okay, fine,
I'm just going to release this sucker out into the
whil now because I don't want to take a break
and split the speech. I'm going to play it uninterrupted.
Let me take my short break right now, and I'll
be back with The Brick Wall Brain coming up next.
Are you a fan of true stories, interesting history, celebrity trivia,
true crime, weird news? And you're going to love my
podcast True Stories with Seth Andrews and I'm your host,
Seth Andrews, releasing five minute podcast vignettes three times a week.
Search True Stories with Seth Andrews on Speaker and all
major podcast apps, or visit the website True Stories podcast
dot com. What you are about to hear is the
audio of a speech I gave for the Rationalists of
East Tennessee on the twenty seventh of October in Knoxville,
The Brick Wall Brain. Why aren't facts changing minds?
Speaker 4: Given today's supercharged political and cultural climate, and with so
much at stake. Some might consider the following message tone deaf, misguided,
or even untrue. Consideration feels like concession, especially when the
most dangerous beliefs threaten harm to the people and causes
we care about. Yet we are all human. Many of
us once held terrible beliefs from which we were rescued,
And while there are some who may not be reachable,
there are many others who are. If the best ideas win,
humanity wins, and if there was hope for you and me,
there is hope for others as well.
Speaker 3: What an honor it is to be a guest of
the Rational List of East Tennessee from Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: Got off the plane.
Speaker 3: I was talking to my host and I said, so
is Tennessee a particularly religious area? And when they stopped laughing,
we had a conversation about it. But there may be
believers in the room today, given the fact that we
are speaking on a campus area of the University of Tennessee.
Speaker 2: It's okay.
Speaker 3: You didn't need to wear garlic around your neck today.
I don't bite. It's all good today. We are all
human beings, and I think we're going to talk about
something that all people can relate to. Okay, I want
to start with the reiteration effect, thinking as power dot
Com has a lot of these, and I'm borrowing the slides.
We tend to believe information the more often we're exposed
to it. And here's the example. Napoleon was short. Wow,
that's interesting. Napoleon's shortness complex was massive. Did you know
Napoleon was short? You probably heard that a lot. But
it's a myth. It is untrue that Napoleon was short.
We grew up believing that his lack of height was
a thing and had made him the mockery of all
of Europe.
Speaker 2: That is a myth.
Speaker 3: The inch, as measured in France at that time was
slightly longer than the inch has measured in England. Historians
say Napoleon was actually maybe an inch or two taller
than the average height of a Frenchman at that time,
maybe five foot five.
Speaker 2: We never checked.
Speaker 3: We just assumed how many people here heard Napoleon was short.
Speaker 2: Almost all of us. We have always been told that
dogs are colorblind. They are not.
Speaker 3: Dogs have a much more compressed color range. Their eyes
evolved for distance and motion for hunting, usually in the
low light of dusk and dawn, so they didn't need
to locate bright things like fruits and flowers. This is
my hunting dog. This is Linus. He's my son, little
seven pound Maulti Pooh rescue, obviously a descendant of the
wolf right.
Speaker 2: And I was totally relieved when I learned that.
Speaker 3: He actually sees and experiences life in color.
Speaker 2: Now on the right is what dogs see.
Speaker 3: It's a dichromatic image here with the reds and the
greens compressed into a mix of blues and yellows.
Speaker 2: But he sees color. Dogs see color.
Speaker 3: And wow, you say I learned something new. I'm altering
how I think on this subject. It's actually a myth
that if you swallowed chewing gum, it stays in your
stomach for seven years.
Speaker 2: Who is told that by.
Speaker 3: Their parents you smallow your gum, it's gonna stick for
seven years. Nope, we assumed it. We believed it, but
we didn't check. If you swallow gum, it passes right
through like any other food would. It's a myth that
coffee dehydrates you. Caffeine itself is a diuretic, increasing urine production,
but you're still drinking something that is like ninety nine
percent water hydration and caffeination. I'm in, I'm in. I
love coffee. This is knowledge I needed. Did you know
there's no conclusive proof that sugar causes hyperactivity in children?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Oh uh oh, hang on, now some parents are potentially
sitting forward in their chairs. Everybody knows sugar makes you hyper,
the reiteration effect.
Speaker 2: We've heard it our.
Speaker 3: Whole live Yes, but are we reacting differently here than
we did with the color blind dogs and the swallowed gum?
Speaker 2: And yet this statement is true.
Speaker 3: The hyperactivity connection was made in a single study done
fifty years ago involving one doctor who removed sugar from
a child's diet, but his result was never conclusively replicated.
Sugary foods are part of other environmental triggers that might
be responsible, and while there are a few kids with
some sensitivities to sweets, the sugar hyperactivity connection exists mostly
here in our perception. Now we start to see the
personal stories kick in.
Speaker 2: I don't care what you say.
Speaker 3: If my kids eat candy, it's pandemonium. I've seen it,
I've personally experienced. Right, it's true for me? Is the
name of this defense? Okay, fine, let's look at some
other long held beliefs that probably won't get people all
hot and bothered like this one. Polygraph tests are bullshit.
They do not work. Polygraphs are debunked nineteenth century technology.
You cannot determine whether or not someone is telling the
truth are lying, just by measuring their blood pressure, they're breathing,
their pulse rate and perspiration. There's this guy, he's a
former NSA National Security Administration analyst named Russell Tye.
Speaker 2: And he came forward and he said.
Speaker 3: Look, even if the needle was telling a real story,
you can fool a polygraph. You can bite your tongue,
you can think exciting thoughts, you can do mental arithmetics,
some distraction, daydream alter breathing.
Speaker 2: You can even tighten your.
Speaker 3: Rectum over and over and over again. And I know
you're doing I know you're all doing it right now.
You're all like, what's that feel like? It's false that
you should never wake a sleepwalker.
Speaker 2: I always heard this, whatever you do, don't wake them up.
Speaker 3: It's actually more likely that a sleep walker is going
to get injured if you let.
Speaker 2: Them pinball around in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: The American Academy of Sleep Medicine advises that you guide
them gently back to bed.
Speaker 2: But if you have to wake them up.
Speaker 3: We don't want sleep walkers walking stairs, leaving their houses,
even driving cars, and this has been documented sleepers.
Speaker 2: Behind the wheel. Hell, yes, let's wake them up. Okay.
Speaker 3: It's a myth that if you touch a baby bird,
it will be rejected by its mother.
Speaker 2: I always heard this one. Don't touch it, it'll be rejected.
Speaker 3: Birds are bonded to their young. This whole idea links
to an old myth that birds can detect human scent.
Most birds actually have very limited smell functions. So while
we shouldn't be bothering the babies, if a chick falls
out of the nest, it is okay. In fact, it's
a moral thing to do to pick it up, scoop
it up, and put it back. It's going to be okay.
Good information to have. When I learned, I adjusted my
thinking on it. MSG motto sodium glutamate is not bad
for you.
Speaker 2: Uh oh, here we are again.
Speaker 3: The reiteration effect the it's true for me affect personal experience.
Speaker 2: But this claim is a myth.
Speaker 3: This flavor enhancer has been classified by the FDA as safe.
There's no discernible link between these supposed symptoms headache, flushing,
tightness in the face, numbness, fluttering heart, chest pain, nausea, weakness.
Researchers have found no clear proof of a link between
MSG and these symptoms. People have the same reaction when
given place ebos, So there's no reason to have the
no MSG sign on the door of the Chinese restaurant
unless you just want to try to alleviate people's fears.
Speaker 2: But it's not a thing now.
Speaker 3: Given what I've just said, have the anti MSG people
change their opinion. Hmmm, let's go deeper and find out.
MSG is not just in Chinese food. It's commonly added
to canned vegetables, catch up, mustard, salad, dressing.
Speaker 2: Deli meat, potato chips, soup.
Speaker 3: We eat it all the time and don't even realize it.
Glutamate is an amino acid. It's in almost all of
our foods. Monosodium glutamate is an isolated and purified form
of it, So glutamates are found naturally many cheeses, some
fruits and veggies, chicken, shrimp, chititaqi, mushrooms, broccoli, walnuts, cabbage.
MSG increases saliva and that improves taste. It can be
a bit salty, but it has about a third of
the amount of sodium in normal table salt. So unless
you have a specific and rare sensitivity, you would not
feel any health effects with MSG until you had eaten
three grams or more on an empty stomach. That's about
six times as much MSG that is in most food,
and your symptoms would still be mild and they would
quickly disappear. This is the scientific finding. Now, this is
where everyone in the room stands and applauds. Thank you, Seth,
thank you for this scientific perspective. Oh stuf, right, let's
all get together. Let's pack the bus and get some
chalmine together. That's what you're all saying, right, Is that
the response I would get out there in the ether.
Probably not. They would say, look at what MSD has done.
Speaker 2: It was brain. I refuse to.
Speaker 3: Put that in my body. Well, what's that about? Why
the pushback? There?
Speaker 2: Even irritation? Oh you want to see irritation? Wat's this?
Speaker 3: Detox Diets are a scam. Detox is not a medical
term in the context of diet. The wellness industry stole
this term from legitimate addiction recovery programs to sell the
myth that you can eat and drink.
Speaker 2: Toxins out of your body.
Speaker 3: Interestingly, they never define what those toxins actually are. Are
we already have a detox machine the liver detox by
diet is a bogus claim. It is made by an unregulated,
fifty billion dollar a year detox product industry. But wait,
that's something that the FDA and big food would want
us to believe, right, it's all part of the conspiracy.
I'm convinced detox diets work. I don't care what he says. Well,
what's this about the trillion dollar wellness industry? Overall, trillion
dollars wellness industry has learned to manipulate us. They play
on fears about the pharmaceutical industry, about chemicals, Western medicine.
Speaker 2: Which is not a thing by the way.
Speaker 3: You know, you go into China, you know what they're
practicing medicine as they just call it medicine and then
sell the alternative, which is conveniently unregulated and unaccountable to
give results.
Speaker 2: Then there's the appeal to nature.
Speaker 3: Anybody heard this one natural good, unnatural bad, artificial bad.
Speaker 2: And there's plenty of.
Speaker 3: Dangerous things in nature that you don't want anything to
do with right. And there are many things in nature
that are dangerous that intervention, like chemical manipulation, has made
safer for us. Everything's made of chemicals. When somebody comes
up to me and they're like, well, I'm not going
to eat anything that's chemical, I'm.
Speaker 2: Like, well, good luck with that. Everything's chemical.
Speaker 3: And yet the appeal to nature fuels public distrust about
everything from vaccines to gluten to GMOs.
Speaker 2: Which are safe by other way.
Speaker 3: When emotions get involved, we're not engaging the rational mind
nearly as much. Marketers and manipulators know this. They have
long understood this. Where knee jerky emotional primates. Here's a
hot button that definitely gets people worked up out there.
When I say mother Teresa was not a good person, right,
didn't expect applause on this one. You think I'd get
applause if I went out to the rest of the
university and said it. Do people say, interesting, seth, tell
me what you know about mother Teresa so that I
can assess and improve my perspective.
Speaker 2: Now they do not do that. Instead, they look at
me and go, how dare you mother Teresa?
Speaker 3: This woman in our brains lovingly linked to notions of
purity and goodness? Why do people get so upset? And
I follow up usually with this question. I say, name
three things about Mother Teresa that I have nothing to
do with, where she was born or the fact that
she was Catholic. Just give me three, or I might
boil it down to one. Give me one thing.
Speaker 2: Nobody in a decade, nobody has.
Speaker 3: Been able to give me a specific piece of information
about her life, who she was, or what she did.
If I mentioned that she preached poverty while living like
a rock star, she thought suffering was a good thing,
she found it facilities where sick people were handcuffed to
their beds and often treated by unqualified non doctors, or
that her sainthood was a marketing ploy by the church.
Speaker 2: Very few want to hear it.
Speaker 3: They love the idea of this charitable mother saint, and
they defend the idea of her even though they have
no idea who she was. And since I'm hitting beloved believes,
I'll mention this one. The biblical Noah's Art story never happened.
All of biology, zoology, geology, incredible scholarship has debunked it.
The story refutes itself. Not only it didn't happen, but
it couldn't happen. The similar Mesopotamian flood myth, the Epic
of Gilgamesh, predates Genesis. It has a bunch of the
very same story elements. Flood myths were common throughout Sumerian
faith traditions. The whole scenario, a five hundred year old
guy builds a stadium sized boat out of trees and tars,
and then antarctic penguins walk eight thousand miles to stand
next to camels in the middle Eastern desert, and they
sit for a year next to giant pandas and anacondas,
and nobody else on earth owned a boat, and the
mix of rain water and seawater mixes and somehow doesn't
kill all water based life, and they're thousands of onboard
creatures and they're all shitting themselves every single day, And
somehow eight people shovel thousands of tons of waste out
of a massive with one window, and they don't die
of methane poisoning. God gives a specific blueprint instructions for
the arc in the beginning of the story cubits. Here's
exact cubits, and then he goes mute, forcing Noah to
send a bird to go out and do recon to
try to find land. And then the arc has no sail,
no motor, or no rudder, So it wouldn't have made
a hell a bit of difference because they couldn't have
steered it to land anyway.
Speaker 2: There might have been fifty feet close by, and they
just kept on going.
Speaker 3: Eight people commit incest to repopulate the earth, creating up
to twenty thousand ethnic groups in four thousand years. The
entire story is a giant mountain of horseship.
Speaker 2: Okay, and I.
Speaker 3: Say this to people who believe the Bible, and it's
the same thing.
Speaker 2: We're back here, how dare you?
Speaker 3: Because people take the Bible and its claims personally. An
attack on these stories is an attack on their faith.
An attack on their faith is really like an attack
on a family member or themselves. And so the defenses begin.
Just a few the appeal to authority. God says that
I believe it the bandwagon fallacy. Billions of people agree
with me. It's the most popular religion in the world.
Are all of those people wrong? There's the sunk cost fallacy.
I believed in my whole life. I'm not going to
change now, or you're wicked and stupid.
Speaker 2: You're going to hell. God will judge you.
Speaker 3: I'm sure none of you have heard that when challenging
the Bible, right, we're not talking about an opinion. We're
not talking about data. We're talking about an identity. Here's one,
and I know you've heard this one in the state
of Tennessee. America is the greatest country in the world.
So you and I check the statistics and wait a minute.
According to surveys done by US News and World Report
and Statista and and other polling and research organizations, Switzerland
overall is the best country than Canada, Sweden, Australia. The
United States loses in almost every metric the economy, quality
of life, lifespan, happiness, crime rate, health care, education, cultural influence.
Statista says that we rank first in two categories military
spending national pride, meaning we're number one at saying we're
number one. If I wish to challenge this to a
weird number one American, would they budge in their opinion?
Speaker 2: In their perception, the.
Speaker 3: COVID vaccine is safe and has saved millions of lives.
Now you're taking the journey with me, but We can
all think of people who might hear that and walk
out of the room, yet imagine they're here, so I
thoughtfully present data. The Center for Disease Control reports, No,
you can't get COVID from the vaccine. There is no
live virus. The vaccines do not shed their components. The
COVID vaccine won't alter your DNAs.
Speaker 2: Anyone heard this one. We're going to become mutants, right? No, no, no.
Speaker 3: It never enters the cell nucleus where DNA lives. It
won't make you infertile. If you are a pregnant woman,
you can and should get vaccinated. Not only will the
COVID vaccine not microchip you, it contains no metals that
can even produce an electromagnetic feel. Bill Gates hasn't tagged
you so he can watch you sit on the toilet
and get your mail.
Speaker 2: Right now, we're seeing the reiteration of effect.
Speaker 3: We're seeing opinions that get tattooed onto personal identities. We're
seeing a lot of identity based biases kicking in group think.
In group thinking, COVID has become highly political. It's a
statement about us who we are, what our values are.
So accepting or Rejecting the reality of COVID has become
a statement about our identity. Resistors and disbelievers have often
been primed to see an evil scheme or an attack
on their freedom. So even if they thought COVID was
a danger, and many don't, but some do. More important
than the virus that could harm you is pushing.
Speaker 2: Back on these mandates. Nobody's going to tell me what
to do.
Speaker 3: For many of the US means rugged individualism, collectivist values,
working as a society. Uh oh, that sounds an odd
off a lot like socialism. Government mandates are tyranny, and
my identity as a free American says never. Now, I'm
going to show you kind of an intense photo from
decades ago. Smallpox killed over half a billion people in
the twentieth century alone. It was one of the most
contagious and deadliest diseases known to humankind. English scientist doctor
Edward Jenner proved that a mild dose of cowpox infection
would inoculate people against smallpox. Within five years, the vaccine
had gone global, but anti vaxers freaked and this was
around eighteen hundred, and they declared war on doctor Jenner.
Here's an eighteen O three anti vax depiction of doctor Jenner.
He's inoculating people, and look at the people they start
turning into caw. Here's another fear mongering editorial cartoon. It
as children being fed to a diseased cow like monster. Fear, misinformation, disinformation,
conspiracy theories, science denial, public endangerment. Does this sound familiar
to anybody else? And this was a nineteenth century movement,
a resistance culture, an identity.
Speaker 2: Here's another one.
Speaker 3: New seat belt requirements were introduced in the mid nineteen fifties,
and they.
Speaker 2: Met rabid opposition. Free America said belts, Nah, can't force me.
I'm not going to do that. You're not going to
restrain me. And then they came.
Speaker 3: Up with all these excuses beyond that, well, seat belts
are cut in half. They're actually more dangerous than being
in a car rack that kind of stuff. Identity beliefs
often lead into false equivalence claims. I'm resisting the man.
Mandates are like slavery. No one will enslave me, and
against the persecutors, I, the righteous rebel, will cry freedom.
What a rush to be the hero in your own
story and to join tribes of fellow heroes. And the
more you're reposed, the more you're contradicted, well, the more
right and righteous you are. How do you feel about
this guy? I used to buy into the boy genius
narrative a few years ago I did today. I call
him phony Stark. I mean, Tesla's are great. I think
Tesla's are great cars. SpaceX has done some cool stuff.
Speaker 2: But he is not a good man.
Speaker 3: I'm amused by this sticker that some people are putting
on their Teslas. So I bought this before we knew
Elon was crazy. But all right, let's talk beyond the
Tesla the EV. All right, the EV, and I dig
the electric car in general. There's the Hyundai Ionic and
the Ford Mochi and the Chevy Voult.
Speaker 2: I mean they're cool. I don't kid myself.
Speaker 3: The driving and EV turns you into this guy, you know,
mister environmentalist. You know, we know the grid still charges
the cars. We're still figuring out lithium mining and lifespan
to the batteries recycling disposal.
Speaker 2: Well, you know whatever. But I mean, when it.
Speaker 3: Comes to the gas versus electric conversation, I've noticed something different,
at least where I live in the oil and gas
state of Oklahoma. There's a lot of Oklahomas who apparently
equate car and truck exhaust with freedom.
Speaker 2: That is not just what they think, it's who they are.
Speaker 3: So let's say I meet this guy out on you know,
the street, and driving is f one point fifteen, and
he's got eagle decals and a lift kit or whatever,
and so I start talking about electric cars. And it's
fascinating to see many people talk about gas cars like
they are so linked to the United States, an American invention.
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: The German inventor Carl Benz first patented the gas vehicle
back in eighteen eighty five, hashtag Germany, not the United States.
But tell me that these gas power trucks don't just
look like America America.
Speaker 2: How about this one, Oh yeah, America? Or this one.
Speaker 3: We got the flag, we got the Constitution, the Eagle, red, white,
and blue, Donald Trump, America.
Speaker 2: This is an identity.
Speaker 3: So many will just make this connection electric car equals environmentalism.
That's Biden Harris, emissions laws, government oppression, tyranny. They make
these connections in their brain a slippery slope. Notice anything
about those freedom convoys. Anybody see a Tesla in there.
I don't see a Tesla in there. Now, here's the
scenario that some people are going to call a stereotype.
And I may be guilty of stereotyping, but just go
with me.
Speaker 2: I'm in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to toss this out based on my observations.
Once I see a guy with this emblem on his truck,
I'll bet I can tell you maybe twenty other things
about the guide driving in. Would this person ever buy
an ev political party Republican?
Speaker 2: Ethnicity? Probably white, religion?
Speaker 3: Favorite news channel Fox News? Did they get the vaccine Vegan?
Speaker 2: Oh? Hell no?
Speaker 3: Do they accept the science of climate chain, reproductive choice?
Speaker 2: Gun owner?
Speaker 3: Probably a pistol in the glovebox right or under the seat.
Immigrants at the border, he's like, I'll get my gun.
Probably nationalized healthcare. That's socialism. And again, these are guesses,
maybe stereotypes, but it's also I think totally legitimate to
observe and address trends and tendencies. I'd like to say
I've got enough Oklahoma equity to be able to make
this observation that that guy will likely be a white
Christian nation, free market oil and gas, gun toting love
it or leave it. American conservative weird about LGBT people
distrustful of foreigners, would love to bomb the whole Middle East,
just nuke them, turn it to glass. Probably owns an
equal number of firearms and Bibles. Here's a guy who
fits that profile, as posted on the patriot Takes page.
Christian white, straight, unwoke, unvaxed, gun owner, meat eat or
in mail.
Speaker 2: How else can I piss you off? Today?
Speaker 3: Now, what we're seeing are not just his opinions, they're
his identity, They're who he is. He might as well
display this symbol somewhere else in his life. And this
symbol is actually partially at least a response to another
symbol of another identity group. I'm talking about Black Lives Matter.
Now this is not an equivalence argument. As I speak
about tribes and identities, I think one definitely has more
merit than another here. But BLM is an example of
an identity belief that we feel very strongly about. Condemning
racism and abuse within law enforcement and the culture, and
the very true claim is that black people face greater
danger against police brutality. The system is broken, it needs
to be fixed. The bad cops need to be fired
and or prosecuted, and education and procedures must evolve. We
identify as agents of advocacy and equality. In the wake
of BLM, the thin blue line symbol became a tribal response. No, no,
you are vilifying police. The men and women in blue
need our support. Back the Blue, Blue Lives Matter. Interesting
this symbol has also become the darling of many white
supremacist groups. The Back the Blue Identity group makes this
blanket statement that whatever happens, we stand behind cops because
whatever they do, they are unfair, vilified, and they enforce
law and order. In that light, Black Lives Matter protests
against police racism are actually a betrayal of all the
men and women in uniform. This is binary thinking. It's
tribal thinking. We are just, they are unjust. How much listening,
conversation and mind changing takes place between those two groups,
the blue line in the Black Lives Matter groups? How
often do they thoughtfully exchange information for better understanding so
that the best ideas might win the day. No, No,
everybody's in defense mode. Everybody's on lockdown. This is what
makes flat earthers so maddening to talk to. Has anybody
gotten into a conversation with a flat earther. I'm at
a flat earther at a Free Thought event in Chicago.
Speaker 2: My brain melted flat Earth. So we do what we do.
Speaker 3: We present the science, the data, and it doesn't work
because flat earth is not just an opinion, it's an identity,
a culture, a family. And the more attack they feel,
the more they dig in and shut down. With the
fallacy known as the Galileo gambit, somebody says, you know what,
you can go ahead and mock me. Right, this revolutionary
person had an idea that was called outrageous and people
called him crazy.
Speaker 2: They call me crazy.
Speaker 3: I'm like that revolutionary person. We've heard this with Galileo
and with Einstein, right, they called Einstein nuts, and yet
look how smart he was.
Speaker 2: I'm like Einstein.
Speaker 3: There's an amazing documentary on Netflix came out in twenty eighteen.
It's called Behind the Curve, and it's about flat earthers
that came up with an experiment and to prove that
the Earth was flat, and they used a laser and
they had a point A and a point B. They
come over here and they've got the laser, and then
they've got a receiving point over here, and they said,
all right, this is going to prove it once and
for all. And you know what happened with the laser.
It was way over the target area because, wait for it,
the Earth is not flat.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Did these flat earthers have an epiphany and change their minds. No,
they said, we're going to go back and we're going
to make another experiment that gives us the results we want.
This is the twenty eighteen Flat Earth International Conference at
Crown Place Airport Convention Center in Denver. And the MC
told the crowd, I'm not ashamed of ridicule. I'm not
ashamed of mockery. I'm not ashamed of insults. And the
crowd cheered this hero, this martyr for the cause, who
had put himself in the crosshairs of public scrutiny and ridicule.
Interesting what he said, I am not ashamed. This ring
familiar to anybody else. Nine eleven truthers say it was
all an inside job. I believe it with all my hearts,
and I am not ashamed.
Speaker 2: Aliens live among us. I believe it with all my heart,
and I am not ashamed.
Speaker 3: Kem trails our government, mind controlled drugs. I believe it
with all my heart that I am not ashamed there's
a secret cabal of Satanist Democrat blood drinkers trafficking our
children out of the basements of pizza parlors. I believe
it with all of my heart, and I am not ashamed.
We are a Christian nation founded by Christians, four Christians.
I believe it with all my heart, and I am
not ashamed. Christianity the planet's biggest in group, the biggest tribe,
quoting proudly and defiantly from scripture.
Speaker 2: For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.
Speaker 3: I believe, we believe we are unwavering, solid, faithful. So
you and I engage with specific data points. We talk
about the Bible, its failures, We talk about the founding fathers,
the nature of the Constitution. We get into the Pledge,
we get into all of these other things. Do the
believers open up to these new ideas like they might
have with dog seeing color and coffee hydrating you?
Speaker 2: No, No, don't bet on it.
Speaker 3: I used to think I could walk into a room
with facts, make my case, change somebody's mind, and we
would all lock arms and we would just frolic off
into reason built together.
Speaker 2: There would be.
Speaker 3: Light and confetti from the sky, and there would be
Enia music and it would just be.
Speaker 2: A moment, right, no, no, no no.
Speaker 3: Instead, they'd either get in my face, go blank, or leave.
Speaker 2: And I couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 3: Why am I not only not getting traction, but why
is everybody leaving even more fortified in their opinion. The
amigdala is the part of our brain that processes emotion.
This is the center for physical threat response, fight, flight,
or freeze. The same part of our brain fires up
at an ideological threat as does with a physical threat.
This is why people lock down, shut down, or blow up.
So you and I get in somebody's face and we say,
on this highly charged issue, you're wrong. People feel pushed around, attacked,
and then all of a sudden they say I'm out
of here or screw you.
Speaker 2: Right when we were.
Speaker 3: Hoping they would say, I'm interested. Let's exchange perspectives and
figure this out. With a perceived or a real attack,
people will retreat to a place where they feel safe,
usually with those who have their backs. So the anti
vaxer retreats to the anti vax Facebook group. The flat
Earther goes back to the flat Earth conferences, clubs and tribes.
Christians retreat to Christianity churches, Christian social groups. It's because
they're that they feel safe, They're validated, protected, not attacked.
And I really feel like if you and I are
going to make a dent and the one on ones
out there, we have to become, in a.
Speaker 2: Way a safe space.
Speaker 3: A lot of people push back against this, they argue
with me about it, and maybe they're right, maybe I'm wrong.
Roasting bad ideas and bad people people has.
Speaker 2: Its place on the macro stage.
Speaker 3: I'm talking here about one on ones. You and I
are face to face, eye to eye, voice to voice, right,
making people feel safe on the larger stage. Honestly, mockery
helped me to see that maybe some cows need to
be roasted, right, some sacred cows definitely need to go
on the grill. And it was me watching in the shadows,
not feeling personally attacked, but I was watching it happen.
Speaker 2: I saw Christopher Hitchen's debate Holy s Nikes.
Speaker 3: That guy went hard at religion, but he wasn't coming
after me as a human being, right, So I will
go after and sometimes mock and ridicule ideas because quite frankly,
I think it's sometimes healthy to do so. But I'm
not pointing at an individual who might be a good
person with a bad idea right.
Speaker 2: There in my zip code.
Speaker 3: How often have we responded to pointing and mocking.
Speaker 2: And shouting in the one on ones?
Speaker 3: And what did that produce besides a feeling of superiority
As this humiliated person doubles down runs off, we might
have been talking about their belief, but we were declaring
war on their identity and we didn't even know it.
Speaker 2: Good luck changing minds that way.
Speaker 3: Maybe there's no interest in changing minds because they are them.
Speaker 2: They can't be reasoned with.
Speaker 3: They're too stupid or too evil to even warrant meaningful engagement.
Speaker 2: Just crush them.
Speaker 3: Doctor Arthur Brooks is a social scientist and a contributor.
Speaker 2: To The New York Times.
Speaker 3: He wrote an article called Our Culture of Contempt, which
addresses a study published in twenty fourteen by the National
Academy of Sciences dealing with motive attribution as symmetry. Each
side is convinced it is driven by benevolence. The other
side is evil motivated by hatred, and is therefore an
enemy with whom one cannot negotiation or compromise. He'll never
talk him out of it, so crush them utterly. Battling
bad people has another function. It signals to our in group,
our tribe, that we're worthy to be in the group.
So we're always running for office, right, We'll go on
Facebook and make a claim or do something and get
involved in a battle or just whatever, and we look
around and say, ah, everybody, you see, see how worthy
I am? I qualified to remain in the club, maybe
even for promotion. And let's say I'm in that in
group or tribe, and I'm starting to question in doubt,
and maybe i was wrong about something, and I'm not
sure this jibes, and hang on, I've got new information.
Speaker 2: I'm going to evolve my position.
Speaker 3: We risk consequences, We betray our group, and we risk
social death, shunned, vilified, even threatened by the people that
used to have our backs. Our tribe turns on it.
David McGraney has written about this. He wrote a book
called How Minds Change about those who had an epiphany
and then were punished by the people who used to
have their backs. They changed their minds the in group
then said you're an out grouper, kicked them out and
destroyed them, or committed themselves to destroy them. They cram
them into a box, crushed the box. How often are
identity beliefs reductive because many things can be true at
the same time. It's a crazy, complex world. It can
be true that racism, corruption, and the abuse of power
is a cancer in law enforcements, but a great great
many of the over seven hundred thousand American police officers
are men and women doing their best instead of difficult, dangerous,
and usually thankless job. This complicated issue doesn't fit in
a binary model. It doesn't fit in the box. This
is a gun culture. For many, guns are a statement
of identity. Personally, I hate.
Speaker 2: The National Rifle Association. I hate the NRA.
Speaker 3: I think it's insane civilians can buy AR fifteens. But
I own a couple of handguns I shoot for targets,
guns that I am licensed and trained with a keeping
a gun safe. I would give them up if there
was a federal mandate. They're not part of my identity.
I just have them. That's a nuanced take. So which
box do I fit in?
Speaker 2: A my pro gun or anti gun. Wait a minute,
how's that work.
Speaker 3: I go hard at fundamentalist claims and dogmas in religion.
I fight against Christian nationalism's war on democracy, but I'll
fight for somebody's right to be privately and personally religious.
And my religious friends are wonderful people. They're wonderful some
of the best people I know fit that in a box.
I am married to someone who is not an atheist.
Natalie calls herself spiritual. I think she used to call
herself Christian, but now I think she's more of like
I think there's something out there, and she talks about maybe,
you know, our grandfather's looking down in on her and
that kind of thing. She spiritual is a good word
for her.
Speaker 2: She is not an atheist.
Speaker 3: She is the best person I know and my best
friend in this world.
Speaker 2: Which box does she fit in?
Speaker 3: I think bands on the hijab are a bad idea.
I think banning the hijab is bad, But I also
know how the veil has been used to oppress and
enslave and dehumanize women, So I don't think it'd be
celebrated like as part of these diversity marketing campaigns. I
don't think the hijob should be used in that way
because it validates the oppressors. So in the all nothing world,
would I be pro hijob or anti hijob.
Speaker 2: I watch some.
Speaker 3: Atheist and religious people talk about each other. You're an idiot, No,
you're an idiot. You're a sheep, No, you're a sheep.
We reduce, we label, we dehumanize because it's easy to
want to see the destruction of the enemy the other.
And again here at the end, I'm not saying that
opinions and beliefs and values, communities, groups, group ideas are
all equivalent, not remotely. I'm not saying we shouldn't take
our values personally. I add, like you have deep feelings,
I have deep convictions that are part of who I
am when it comes to changing minds out there. After
fifteen years in activism, I can just tell you this.
Speaker 2: That is not working.
Speaker 3: Screaming in the streets, screaming on the internet. God an
outrage is the currency, the oxygen of the internet. That
is not how we fix the world. How many good
people have had bad ideas, how many were rescued from
bad ideas? And if you and I are interested in
not just cursing the darkness, but maybe spreading a little light.
We have to ask ourselves do we treat people like
people with personalities, families, dreams, lives? Are they a good
person with bad ideas? Have we ever been a good
person with bad ideas? Did that make us less than human?
Am I arguing to win? Or am I trying to
change a mind or expand a conversation so that the
best ideas?
Speaker 2: When? Oh, we know how good it feels to win?
I love this meme. This is how I feel when
I went an argument.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a rush. It's a rush to win. What
language am I using? Am I turning the temperature up
or down? Your opinion is idiotic? Is not going to
produce the result you probably want?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: Am I sending but not receiving? Maybe they're not the
only brick wall. Intellectual humility is so critical and that
includes sincere listening and how much of what's happening here
is about them defending an identity and me defending mine.
I like what research professor and author Brene Brown said.
She said, people are hard to hate close up move in.
There are genuinely horrible people out there. I have to
put these caveats out because someone's going to quote mind
me and say Seth says we should sing Kumbaya with Nazis.
I'm just like Jesus, that's not what I'm saying. Okay,
Most often people are just people. And I'll offer this
little observation. If your first reaction to these comments I've
made today is forget it. They're all rotten, stupid bigots, unreachable,
they're all lost causes. I'm gonna blast and block without hesitation.
There's a fair chance you might be feeling a little
more than your thinking. Sometimes it's understandable, especially if we've
been wounded. You want an example of somebody who's just unreachable,
Christian nationalist, anti gay bigot Fox News watching Goden Gun's
evangelical conservative tethered to dangerous mythology and really bad ideas.
Speaker 2: You want to see that. You're talking about me.
Speaker 3: Thirty years ago, a naive, indoctrinated younger me. I was
both a perpetrator of bad ideas, but I was also
a victim of bad ideas.
Speaker 2: I was good. I was a good person. I was
trying my best to be a good person. I was
a human being. I had humanity.
Speaker 3: I just needed a chance to discover the larger, better world.
Sometimes we draw the hard line and take the hard stand. Okay,
sometimes we got to do battle, but we're often bad
at choosing which battles to engage in. And many identity
believers can be reached.
Speaker 2: If we slow down.
Speaker 3: We first appeal to their humanity and also to our own.
A great resource for civil conversations is street epistemology. This
is a method for engaging people using the Socratic method.
You ask questions, lots of questions in goodwill. You're not ambushing,
you're not setting up, you're listening sincerely.
Speaker 2: You're engaging in good faith. Man, this world needs more
of that.
Speaker 3: There's a whole YouTube channel where the street epistemologists like
Anthony Magdabosco and many others go out and they just
engage people every day on the street and they'll just
start talking to them on camera.
Speaker 2: Would you speak with me for a moment while I roll?
Is that? Okay? And it's amazing. Believers come in.
Speaker 3: Nobody's throwing stuff at each other, nobody's shouting or insulting.
It's good faith, goodwill, but it's meaningful conversation. And some
people have come back later and say, because of the
seed that was planted there, I started to challenge what
I was thinking and I.
Speaker 2: Escaped from my dogmatic belief. It happens, and they've got stories.
Speaker 3: I've already mentioned this wonderful website Thinking is power dot com.
The site helps us to understand how beliefs are formed.
It explains how even smart people can get fooled and
provides great resources for being better thinkers.
Speaker 2: I cannot recommend this site enough.
Speaker 3: You know, on my own education, I learned that this
little guy Linus is able to see the world in color.
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to do the same.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to surrender my values, but I am
going to adopt a little more dog philosophy in my
own approach out there as an activist in a human being,
I'm going to bark less and wag more, you know,
no matter how frustrated I get. And it's an exercise
and it's imperfect, and I blow it all the time,
and I have to go back and reset, and it's
just a daily, hourly, minute by minute challenge. I don't
always know which battle to pick. I don't always know
when to go hard and when to soften up. I
don't always know who's reachable and who's not.
Speaker 2: I have no idea, so I don't have the ant.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying in my own life, I want to
bark less and more.
Speaker 2: I want to.
Speaker 3: Try to de escalate, rehumanize, soften my approach.
Speaker 2: Let's give it a shot.
Speaker 3: Let's not guarantee failure right off the bat. Let's see
humans as humans because we are humans trying to become
better humans. I think that is something worth identifying with.
Thanks for having me out today. It's been an honor.
Speaker 2: Speaking to.
Speaker 1: Follow The Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter. For a
complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
t shirts featuring the Thinking Atheist logo, links to atheist
pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com.