Speaker 1: Happy Father's Day, or, as Yahweh's disciples might call it,
emotionally and physically abuse your Kid's Day because the Bible's
original dad has a parenting style straight out of a
psychological horror franchise Obey me or roast forever love me
while I drown every living thing? And how about the classic,
Hey Abraham, why not knife You're a little boy on
the mountain there, just to prove that you're my number
one fan. Nothing says paternal devotion like nearly turning your
kid into brisket because the voices in your head told
you to fast forward a few millennia and the Faith
will use Michael Pearls to train up a child, which
is basically a DIY guide for converting PBC pipe into
Holy trauma wand on their toddlers, Yahweh's playbook for parenting
is pretty simple. Keep them terrified, call it love, and
then remind them that your love is contingent upon perfect obedience.
Sprinkle in some Sunday school bedtime stories about Hell, which
is based an eternal torture chamber filled with pineapples and
bad decisions, and you've got a psychological warfare. Masquerading is discipline.
Teaching a seven year old that one wrong thought earns
them an eternity on a divine grill is emotional abuse,
full stop. It's cosmic gaslighting. If an earthly father said Jimothy,
I love you unconditionally, but cross me and I'll lock
you in the basement torture chamber forever, we'd call the
cops on that person. We would not invite them to
be the youth coordinator. The benefit of not being beholden
to some cosmic dictator is that you don't have to
traumatize your kids into acting the way that you want.
You have the option to set them up to succeed
rather than traumatize them into obeying. If you don't think
that God has taught a toxic, codependent parent, then we
urge you to call in because the show starts.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: That's right, everybody. Today's June fifteenth, twenty twenty five. Happy
Father's Day. I am your host secularity and joining me
today is the wonderful godless engineer. What is up, man?
Speaker 1: I'm doing pretty good. Just had a really good Father's Day.
I got some magic the gathering cans. So you know,
there's that that's totally normal for a forty year old
father to get right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, I don't see anything wrong with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah what Yeah, Honestly, like if you're not buying, if
you're not buying your father something like Magic the Gathering
cards or Pokemon games.
Speaker 3: Or I mean there's a lot of things out there,
Mario stuff. You know, I am not a father, so
I did not get celebrated today, you know, which is fine,
which is fair. But I can say, because I know
my dad doesn't watch this, he's not he's never going
to see this, so I can say directly to my father,
hey man, I love you. Also, could you like give
me that recipe for the family's potato soup already? Like
I don't know why, I know this is a weird
way to do this, but like we've been talking about
this for months now, and every single time I bring
it up, you're like, oh, yeah, I'll send it to you,
and then like you don't do it. So if you could,
that'd be great. But I do love your happy Father's
Day anyway. So with that, since start talking about like
fatherhood and parenting and all this, I gotta ask ge,
are you regularly are you regularly like giving your children
like weird, mysterious tasks that if they don't complete, you know,
to your satisfaction, you punish them to great degrees. Because
this is the father that I see in the Trinity,
and I don't know if I I don't know if
that is a good way to like raise kids or not. Again,
I don't have children, so I'm not sure is that
is that something you're doing or no.
Speaker 1: So if I if I were to like that, what
I would do is I would instead appear to random
people and then have them come and tell my child
how to do things. And then if he doesn't do them,
then I've got a button that I push that's just like,
you know, screw them over for life, and then hit
it and you know, it does something random. And he
doesn't know if I'll ever find out, but you know,
he's got random people coming to the house being like, Hey,
that said don't do that.
Speaker 3: I don't see why. I don't see why there is
anything problematic with that, you know, when you think about
it in the real world, you know kind of perspective.
I mean, it's obvious that this this father figure portrayed
in the Bible is clearly the best. No seriously, obviously
we're joking people. Look, I might piss some people off
when I say this, but because again I'm not a father,
I don't have kids, But get I get a little
annoyed when people will tell me things like people are
obviously doing things that are not beneficial for the well
being and health of their child. And then they'll kind
of get this whole like defense and like.
Speaker 5: Well, kids don't come with a manual like and it's like, well,
wait a second, We've had child psychology for quite a
fucking long time, now, Like, are you joking with me?
Speaker 3: Like we know, we know some things that are just wrong,
you know, like beating your child is not is not
conducive to their health and well being. I mean, am
I just am I completely out of again, I don't
have kids, man, am I am I just out of line?
You just have to beat them?
Speaker 1: I mean, no, no, no, I find that I can't
remember which comedian then I heard this from, but like, essentially,
little kids seem to be the one class of people
that can be rightfully abused in that way and not
and parents won't suffer the consequences for it. Like, of course,
if you go too far, you get you get you know,
charged with something, but like what people like, I consider
spanking your child to be child abuse any kind of
physical contact that you do in order to correct behavior.
I feel like his abuse and it's the only kind
of abuse that's that's tolerated, it seems, And uh yeah,
it really does kind of get me, get me really
really angry.
Speaker 2: Whenever I see that kind.
Speaker 1: Of of parenting. It just seems so cave man ish, right,
Like I feel like they should literally start off the
discipline with you do bad thing.
Speaker 2: And you know, walk away by dragging his knuckles across
the ground.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, it is. It's it's one of those
things that it you know again, like we've we've all
probably heard it where you're like, yeah I got I
got beat you know, as a child, and you know,
I'm perfectly fine. That's why I think it's okay to
now it's like, oh my gosh, no, do you not
do you not see what you're saying. You're you're currently
advocating for corporal punishment in public school, like this is
a stranger beating strangers children like, and you're saying that's
a good. Come on, folks, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: The thing that I think about anytime I hear somebody say, oh,
I got you know, whipped as a kid, and I'm fine.
I think of the meme that's popular from Thor Ragnarok,
where you know it's got It's got Bruce Banner that's
sitting there and he's talking to Thor and he says something.
I can't remember what the line was, but then Thor
looks back at him like, eh, you know, like are
you are you sure about that? Like if you get
beat as a kid, you're not fine? Like nobody is
finding beat as.
Speaker 2: A kid like that.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah it is. It is this weird It
is this weird space that we have we have still
not really wanted to talk about in a lot of ways,
and people get very very defensive about it. And so
you know, that's why I just wanted to poke a
little bit at it, because I'm sure there's somebody out
there that thinks to themselves, gosh, these atheists frickin' you know,
non religious, you know, secular or whatever. These these idiots
don't know what they're talking about about, Raisin Chill. And
you know what, maybe we don't, and maybe you are
the brilliant mind that will help us realize that the
only way to raise children with morals and compassion and
just I don't know knowledge at all is through the
love of Jesus Christ. I sincerely fucking doubt it. I
sincerely doubt it. Okay, but you have that chance today
because we have open lines. But before we get to that,
I am going to tell you some things like the
atheist experience. This show right here is a product of
the Atheist Community of Austin, a five oh one c
three nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of atheism, critical thinking,
secular humanism, and the separation of religion and government. I
think all of those things are great, and actually there
is some cool stuff that we are gonna be talking
about later on. So some cool announcements out there in
case you missed them on the last show and whatnot.
But I'm going to go grab a call because we've
got a call that I think is is going to
tie right into this here again, big fans of secular
humanism here, I think there's a lot of a lot
of value in that. And we've got a caller, Rob
Out in Texas is an atheist. He him pronounce and
says that secular humanism can't actually replace some of the
things that religion gives us. So I think this is
a pretty cool topic.
Speaker 6: Rob.
Speaker 3: So you are on the show with Seculararity and Godless Engineer.
What's up?
Speaker 6: Rob?
Speaker 7: Hello?
Speaker 8: So I'm actually an atheist ex Muslim, and you know,
famously on her CLI had an article kind of about it.
And I heard this article, heard about this, you know argument,
just tunking with friends and I couldn't really think of
a good reputation and you know, thinking of playing the
devils at a kid and seeing what you guys think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think this is a really interesting topic and
one that I think, you know, we we all kind
of come at this from a little bit of a
of a different angle. And you know, like Ge for instance,
has been you know, creating community online for I mean,
how many years have you had your channel now?
Speaker 8: Man?
Speaker 1: I mean since twenty twelve is when I started it,
But so I was doing stuff before then, so like
since twenty ten, so about fifteen years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So like you know, this, this show, for instance,
has been going on for almost thirty years now, and like,
I think one of the things that happens a lot
of times, especially when we're comparing like secular or non
theistic community to religious community. Oftentimes it becomes quickly obvious
that we don't have the same structures in place in
a lot of ways. And I mean that both in
a both in like a tradition and kind of like
unifying message. Sometime sometimes that in those senses, but sometimes
also in the sense of like we just literally don't
have a building, you know, Like I can't think of
any space in the area that I live that has
a secular daycare. Like every single one of them are Jesus,
this God, that Noah's ark whatever, right, you know. So
like sometimes it's a it's like a financial and it's
like a it's like a you know, a physical we
don't have enough chairs type of thing, you know. But
in other times it does it It can feel like
we don't have traditions that we can all kind of
get behind and do together. You know, all the Christians
know all the frickin songs, right, they all sing them
and they do the hand motions together and whatnot. We
don't really have that. A lot of times it feels
like I do think that it exists in a lot
of ways, we just have to kind of reframe what
we think of when we think of community. You know,
I say this all the time. You know, bowling is
a secular activity. You know, music concerts is a secular activity.
Pot lux are a secular activity going out, and you know,
helping people in your community, right, whether it's picking up
trash or whether it's you know, helping to mow lawns
in a neighborhood, all of those things are secular activities,
you know. And what we need to do is really
recognize that we're in a different space now, and we
have to shift how we build these spaces and how
we maintain them. And so, yeah, if we think about
it from the perspective of, man, we just can't get
one hundred and fifty people together every freaking Wednesday to
all sing the same songs and give you know, ten bucks, Like, yeah,
probably we won't have that, you know, But if you
think about it from a lot of other perspectives, I mean,
there are I mean, how many thousands of people that
show up and hang out in dozens and dozens of
different spaces online every single week, every other day on
some channels, right, I mean that that's pretty cool. I'm
really proud of that. You know, what do you think?
What do you think? Ge?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think that any any belief that doesn't
com with reality or that doesn't give you an accurate
view of reality has the potentiality to like harm you
and harm others around you. So, like, I guess I
understand why people might be saying that, like the myths
and narratives and like the community provided by religion are
sort of like.
Speaker 2: A necessary thing.
Speaker 1: That just says to me that, like, people think so
little of either religious people or or think so little
of people in general that they can't cope without some
kind of like controlling aspect to their life that distorts
their view of reality and distorts it in a way
that makes them easily controlled and easily manipulated. I feel
like I have, you know, I say this with an asterisk,
with a little bit of nuance. I feel like most
people can be smart enough and can be intel enough
to be able to find that kind of community or
to do those things with an accurate view of reality
instead of an inaccurate view of reality. So I've been,
like Secularity said at the beginning of this, I've been
doing this for fifteen years, and people here at the
ACA have been doing this community building for far longer
than that. I think that community building is not something
that we can't do. I just think that because of
the minority of atheists that are out there and a
minority of groups that are out there to provide similar
communities to religious communities, I think that's really the only
barrier at this point. I think that people can find all,
you know, all of the things that you can get
out of a religious community, you can definitely find those
in a secular community. It's just a matter of I
think the popular opinion of believing in some kind of creator,
this whole idea that, oh, if you don't believe in
a creator, you don't believe in Jesus, you don't believe
in God, then that has some kind of moral implication
to your life or anything like that. I just don't
think that's true.
Speaker 3: What do you think?
Speaker 8: Yeah, so both of you had I think, two very
different arguments, and I kind of made similar arguments as well,
and you know, playing devil down, we get someone to
respond to that. I heard was you know, if you
try to create anythist community, that's obviously possible, but you
can't replace the history and uh, you know, it's the
prevalence of religious imagery. For example, I've been a writer,
is you know, creating a movie or writing a novel,
there's you know a lot of times they make allusions to,
you know, the Bible, and you have like his imagery
or like build up these cliches, and I think, uh,
that's just like really hard or impossible to do with
secular humanism. And there's no like centric like centralizing figure
or myth or like stories regarding those.
Speaker 1: I guess I just don't see the need for any
of that. Like you can definitely reference it in a
secular manner that's done all the time throughout it. And
I mean, I feel like there's often a misrepresentation, like
sort of a looking at these scriptures through like a
very Christ's colored lens, if you will, because people often
characterize these scriptures as being like oh so great and like, oh,
look at the wisdom that you can find in this
particular section. And I guess, maybe just because I've been
doing this so long, like anytime I hear somebody talk
about like the beautiful things about the scripture, I'm just
sitting there like, yeah, But if I turn to number
thirty one, here God is definitely telling Moses to go
in there and kill children along with innocent women and
other children, and then taking small virgin girls to force
into marriages, which is a type of sexual slavery. I
get that you want to look at the good parts
of this, but like I feel like the bad parts
overshadow these good parts. Like I just I can't get
past that. And I don't think that we should characterize
the Bible as being all roses and everything.
Speaker 2: I just don't think we should do that.
Speaker 3: No, I totally agree, And I think that that's one
of the points that I really really love to focus
on because you know, I've heard this phrase before by
different Christians. They'll say, like, well, you turned away from
religion because of the church, but did you turn away
because of Jesus? As if like as if, like I've
never looked into, you know, what the purported life of
this individual is, right, Like, of course I have. Of
course I've looked into the teachings that he says. Right,
And there are dozens and dozens of you know, people
and videos and places out there you can go. You
can go sit down and hear a fantastic breakdown of
all the nuances about the sermon on the Mount, you know,
and here a bunch of different really smart people tell
you all kinds of really cool thoughts you didn't you
didn't look at before you were like, Wow, I thought
Blessed are the Meek was a good thing. But now
that I think about this, now this is kind of
fucked up. I really do think when we look at
the things that come to us from religion, like let's
let's take one we don't often talk about on here, Hinduism.
There's this interesting story, and I'm sure I'm gonna get
some things wrong, and somebody's gonna yell at me in
the chat and tell me how much of a dick
I am. But if you read, if you read some
of those ancient texts, there's this moment where this one
guy is like really bummed out because he looks down
over the hill and he sees like thousands and thousands
of people being slaughtered because of this battle that he
is directing. He says, yeah, go army, go kill those people.
And for a moment he realizes that all of these
people are his friends and his family on both sides,
and he sees all of the violence and the hatred
and the destruction that's going to happen years and years
from now because of this one battle. And right before
he tells everybody to stop, a god comes down and
tells him like, nah, I don't worry about all that
shit man, heaven and afterlife and whatnot. And it's like, well,
wait a second, that's gross. That's terrible. Man. Like, at
the core of all of these ideas is something really
really disgusting. And I do think if if we reframe
our view on community just a little bit, I think
we can see that actually, the best community that we
have right now is a secular humanist community. The stuff
that goes on in the world around you that makes
up most of your day actually is non religious, actually
is focused on the betterment of humanity. We just don't
think about it like that. When we all go together
to go see some awesome sports savant and we're cheering
our city on and and yeah, our people are winning
and all this stuff. That's a secular humanist thing in
a lot of ways, we just don't label it as such. Now.
I know, I kind of rambled there for a little bit, Rob,
and I'm sure you've got some thoughts, So shout shout back.
At us before we uh we move on.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so I think I should have clarified earlier, like
it's not religion, it's like the these aspects provided by religion.
So if you imagine like the Jefferson Bible with all
the non scientific parts, and then if you also you know,
strip all the immoral parts or disregard them as progressive
Christian and easy like Alex O'Connor kind of makes this
argument that new atheism and I'm a big band of
Christopher Hitchins, but you know, they come in and try
like bring a wrecking ball to religion but don't have
anything you know, really solid to uh to back it up,
and you know, as we replace it. So it's like,
if there's not something you rally behind, I don't know.
Speaker 1: See I disagree with this because I feel like you
could definitely use like something that's written better and with
a with a richer backstory in order to derive a
lot of the same principles that you could get out
of the Bible, like, for instance, Lord of the Rings.
Totally use Lord of the Rings. You can, you can
look it up online. You can get comparable versus like
I just did the love your neighbors yourself. And I
got a couple of really good quotes like this is
from Sam Wise, Gangie. I can't think of a good
reference for this, But there is some good in this world,
mister Frodo, and it's worth fighting for. Isn't that something
that you can rally behind right there? Like, oh, praise
Sam Wise, just for Sam Wise, and then go to
the master himself, Gandalf. I will not say, do not weep,
for not all tears are an evil. I mean that
right there. Just think about Hollelujah.
Speaker 3: And all I might start dancing and shaking in the
eis man.
Speaker 1: You shall not pass with your bigotry. Oh see you can.
You can get behind. You could get emotionally behind, like
a lot of things right there.
Speaker 2: And I present the Gospel of the Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 6: I do.
Speaker 3: I do think like I understand you know that that viewpoint,
rob and I think there's a lot of people out
there that really like to push it. And if I
may offer just a slight, slight different look at that.
Here's why I think a lot of the religious people
will say that is because they recognize that for decades
and decades now, all of the science arguments all of
the philosophy arguments that don't work. They're not they're not
carrying water anymore. People are still walking away from the churches.
And now the only thing that they can do is
they can say, look how happy we are, Look how
much fun we're having it, our pot luck. You know.
But I again, I think, just like the scientific arguments,
just like the philosophical arguments, when you push back on that,
even in the slightest bit, what you find is that
the Southern Baptist Convention headquarters, a fifty plus million dollar
building downtown in my city, is being sold so that
they can pay for the legal fees for abuse victims,
legal fees, by the way, to defend their priests that
abused kids allegedly, allegedly right for decades. That's what they
That's what happens when you push back on these these
institutions and these communities. It is a facade, man that truly,
with the slightest of scratch, that gold leaf comes off
so fucking easily, like they are not providing spaces that
are actually benefiting people. Time and time again, there are
people that have been active members of a church for decades,
have blood, sweat and tears, have devoted their lives, have
given everything to those communities, and all of a sudden,
nobody calls, nobody checks up on them anymore. They go
ten years without hearing from people that they'd spent their
whole lives with. That is what the religious communities are
at the end of the day. I don't hear that
type of shit from bowling leagues. Man. I don't hear
that type of shit when people are getting together regularly
to study stoic philosophy on their own time and their
own free will. I just I don't hear that. When
I hear about the people that are getting together regularly
to go out there and try to raise some money
and get some supplies together for a building that was
recently purchased for unhoused teens in my area. I just
I don't hear that type of shit. Man. I hear
a lot better shit. I really do think. I really
do think the secular humanist community is already the bigger
and better community. We just don't see it like that yet.
Speaker 8: What do you think, Rob, Yeah, so, I think one
of the parts you guys said was, you know, we're
underestimating religious people. And I would say perhaps looking back,
even as the history of the colors to the show,
we might be overestimating you know, religious people in that.
And I think that you know, uh, for example, nationalism
is the replacement of you know, religious fervor and uh,
you know, the right of Trump and all of that.
You know, it's because they're losing potential community and you know,
that rallying crime, so they find another rallying crime and
you know, another group in politics. And people just need
that reassurance that they have this all powerful force behind them.
And you know that can come from like a very
deistic god that's very removed from uh, you know, all
also immoral actions and the pre established institutions. But if you,
for example, you guys use the analogy of Lord of
the Rings. But so I think, like our human it
is more of a critique of the approach and the
rhetoric of atheism and secular humanism, and that you know,
you can't convince people to start adopting another mythology. You know,
this is already so deeply embedded that you know, I honestly, Ali,
she makes like a very pragmatic argument in that it's
better to kind of try to strip the bad parts away,
and you know, maintains it's like an easier sell to
the religious people than to say, oh, no, your God
is not real and kind of like maintain the asist
stereotype of argumentative and like angry and you know, just
trying to change their.
Speaker 3: Whole So if I can, if I can just push
back just a little bit, And I think, broadly speaking, like,
I'm I think I understand where you're coming from, Rob,
and I'm again, I'm pretty much I feel like we're
all pretty much on the same page, you know, for
the most part. Right, I think that that particular thought
from Ion Hersey Ali, and I've heard that thought from
other non religious activists, whatever type of label you want
to give to those people. But I think I think
that's a bad focus. And here's why I say this.
I think what our focus should be is the stance
of unyielding, unwavering truth, skepticism, humanism, compassion.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: I don't think we should compromise on those things. I
think we can present them in a in a way
that isn't as argumentative or isn't as attacking in some times.
And I also think with that we should ourselves recognize, yeah,
we're probably not going to change the vast majority of
the people that we talk to all the way over
to the not believing in the God side, right, But
by us taking that stance and by us holding that
firmly and showing people that you know, not only is
there demonstrable truth, but there is there is benefit here,
there is value by taking these approaches to life in general,
like that will cause people to strip those bad things, right,
So we don't. We don't compromise and move in our stance.
We still hold firm you know, like I do not
have a good reason to believe that God exists, And
if you present one, fantastic I'll listen to it. But
otherwise I am not going to say like, yeah, well
I don't know, like maybe yeah, God is in your
pepsi or something. No, screw that. Your God that you've
talked about does not exist based on the criteria you've presented.
And if I can get you to understand at least
why that version is crappy and poorly formed, maybe you'll
incorporate some more logical thinking, some more skepticism, some more humanism,
and maybe you won't be on the street corners calling
for you know, queer people to be put in jail
and stuff. Right, I think that's the right approach.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: I might be wrong, but I don't think we should
compromise on our on our stances. You think round.
Speaker 8: I think so for for atheists, for people that think
like us, then you know that that becomes very easy
but very like common argument that uh so, you know,
when I was leaving it, for example, was where I
heard all the time, Oh so now you're you're atheists,
you don't believe in God, You're going to be murdering
and stealing from everyone. And so obviously the asist responsible,
we have a conscience that provides the prevents us from
doing it. But the very flast that they ask that,
and you know that's their way of thinking, kind of
reveals that, you know, they don't have that stop And
I certainly know of and could speak of a lot
of people that without you know, that constraint of God
would very much you know, act with me without that
external barrier. So you know, obviously, for a lot of
people that like you, who think, oh, if there's no evidence,
then I'm not going to believe it. You know, that's
completely you know, those people, we don't have to worry about,
But for the ones that we do have to worry about,
you know, religion is still like a very good pacifying tool,
you know, it's albeit of the massive And Voltaire also said, like,
you know, I'm not religious, but I would prefer my
maid to be religious or Christian or whatever, like I will.
Speaker 3: I will say, Rob, I'm sorry to cut you off
a little, but I do agree that there is a
negative view of atheists in this country, in this world.
We are when when we just go out there and
pull the average person on the street, apparently they don't
like atheists like we are. We are well low on
the list. You know, I totally totally agree, and I
do you did mention, you know, like the new atheists
like you know Hitchens and Harris and Dawkins and Dennett,
you know those guys and a few others, And yeah,
I think that that kind of attitude and that kind
of flavor has carried over into a lot of the
way that people view non religious people in general. But
I would also say that there's quite a lot of
other people out there, you know, that have been doing
this for for a long time, and you know, bring
in a lot of humor. Are are very compassionate, are
very knowledgeable, you know, And no I'm not. I'm not
setting you up to to you know, call you out,
ge I said, compassionate and knowledgeable and funny like, uh,
I mean, there's there's so many different people that I
can think of, you know that that truly are the
exact opposite of that go out there firebrand, I'm an
asshole atheist and stuff.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: And honestly, and I've said this for years, I I
think we need both sides, I really do. I think
we need that and everything in between, because the Christians
have that, the Muslims have that right for every I
believe you said you were you were ex Muslim rob.
For for every Mohammed hi Job that's out there. You know,
there's there's a Yah Sirkattie. You know, there's a there's
for for every for every scholar, there's the asshole that's
gonna yell and scream and say things. And honestly, on
the atheist side and the non religious side, we have
to recognize that without both of those, like, we aren't
gonna we aren't gonna make progress.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: Anyway we've been we've been kind of chatting a lot.
Gee was there anything else you wanted to say on this.
Speaker 2: No, I don't have anything. I think we I pretty
much said everything I need to on it.
Speaker 3: Sweet Well, Rob, thank you so much for giving us
a call. I'm gonna rudely just drop you like a
hot potato. And uh, we do appreciate you seriously. Come
back and give us a call again and let us know. Uh,
let us know how how like community building goes in
your area. If there's any cool groups or things going on. Man,
there's there's an awesome discord fan run Discord. You can
go hang out and chat with a bunch of people.
So thanks so much, and uh, yeah, I'm dropping you
very rudely. I'm very sorry. But but we have other
calls and we still we'll have open lines you guys.
So if you have thoughts, if you think only religion
can provide morality, well let me tell you you're wrong. But
if you disagree, call it. You know, let me know.
If you think Ge and I don't know anything about parenting,
feel free to call and yell at us. I don't know.
What do you got?
Speaker 2: Gee?
Speaker 3: Is there something? Is there something you could It's Pride month.
We could talk about Pride month that pisses people off
for some weird and doesn't.
Speaker 1: It Oh yeah, totally. I posted up I've been posting
up a whole bunch of like, uh like pride infographics
about common talking points that a lot of religious bigots
basically use, and uh, you know, they've been going pretty
well on the pay on my Facebook page and everything.
So I mean, I I think that the current you know, uh,
you know, Christian nationalists, I guess sort of lines and
and and their efforts right now are really seeking.
Speaker 2: To persecute that group. So like, if you, if.
Speaker 1: Anybody out there thinks that that's not the case, or
that you think that the LGBTQ community does it deserve
equal rights, you're wrong.
Speaker 2: But let's call in and talk. I hope you call
in and.
Speaker 3: Talk about it, please, please do. I have heard a
couple of people say recently, you know, okay, look fine,
you know, gay people whatever, But do they need a
whole month? You know, can't we give them a day
or a week? I guess I don't know. I wonder
if they I wonder if they pay attention to anything
other than themselves. I don't feel like it's very difficult
to see why there is a reason for Pride Month, right, Like,
there was an individual that was recently assaulted in my
city at a storage facility because her and her partner
were simply asking for some help unloading a fucking truck
and somebody walked up to her and started beating her
her and and you know, yelling fucking homophobic slurs. And
it's like, I just like, I didn't try to find that.
I didn't like search for hours. I literally just woke up,
grabbed my fucking phone and looked at the very first
news feed that I saw. So I don't know, I
just I feel like I feel like some people are
very uneducated on it, and I'm confident that those people
will call and tell us how how wrong we are.
But before we get to that, I got to tell
you something that is really cool, because it is that
time of year, and some of you may not know this,
but there is a very large, very organized, very friendly
batcolmy that likes to hang out somewhere in this little
known place called Austin, Texas. And these bats in mass
will come out at night and will fly around, eat
a bunch of bugs, and poop on you just a
little bit. And so we're having the ACA Bat Cruise again,
So bring your ponchos or you know, don't, I mean
take the risk, you know, why not. There's no heaven,
there's no hell. Live your life as you want. But seriously,
the ACA Bat Cruise is coming back this year. It
is August sixteenth, twenty twenty five. Forest and j Mike
will be there, along with other hosts that you love.
So we're not sure who else that technically includes, but
we do know that Forest and Jay Mike will in
fact be there. You can get your tickets and all
the info at tiny dot cc slash Bat Cruise, and
I can tell you this, it is an absolutely incredibly
cool time. You can see me in a couple of
those pictures. You can also see that everybody else in
those pictures looks uncomfortable because I jumped in them right
at the end and they were like, hey man, seriously,
we were trying to this was just kind of a
private thing among friends, and I was like, yeah, we're
all friends here and just walked away uncomfortably. But anyway,
it's a great time. You should come. You should come
hang out if you've never been. Seriously, you guys, it
is super, super fun you're gonna want to be there.
It's a whole weekend of really really cool stuff. And
in fact, if you cannot show up but you still
want to help, there is a way that you can
do that. It is very very easy. Right below the
chat there is a direct fundraiser. All of those proceeds
go directly to the ACA. YouTube does not take a cut,
So click that donate button and support the mission of
the ACA. If you're looking and you're trying to make
a super chat right now and you can't seem to
do that, that is the reason, So go donate. Go
spend that money. I mean, what do you what else
are you doing with that like five or ten dollars?
You know, like you're probably going to make up some
bullshit excuse like what I don't even see? Are there
any good like movies out or anything? Like, there's nothing
else you're going to be doing today, Like, don't fucking
lie to me. I know you're sorry. That was for
one specific person, and that person feels very uncomfortable right now.
But anyway, I don't think I've pissed off the crew
too much this time. They're not sending me any mean messages.
You guys, so that's good. I'm very happy about that. Normally,
if anybody's been watching lately, I've me and the crew,
we've had kind of a kind of a difficult relationship.
I don't know. Do you get in trouble a lot
on here or is that just me?
Speaker 6: Am?
Speaker 3: I just is it something to do with me?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I normally don't. I've got a pretty good
relationship with everybody.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was just wondering, like I just figured maybe
it was just like a thing. It was just kind
of like how they talk to everybody or something. All right, cool? Anyway, Well,
we have another caller, and if you guys have thoughts,
please give us a call. We are here and we
want your spicy stuff. Man, I don't know. I'm ready
to fight. Are you ready to fight?
Speaker 9: Ge?
Speaker 3: I could do it? I could.
Speaker 1: My fisticuffs are ready to cuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, Well we are gonna go out to New Jersey.
We've got Abe. He him as a theist and once
talk about arguments for God. Well, Abe, that's what we're
here for. You were chatting with secularity and godless engineer.
What's up?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 3: How are you pretty good?
Speaker 5: How are you.
Speaker 7: You're doing good. So I have two arguments for the
existence of God.
Speaker 3: All right, give us one, Yeah, give us the first one,
all right.
Speaker 7: So the first one is the Mount Sina revelation. It's
not that it says that in the Bible. It's more
like it was passed down. I have a quick question.
If someone tells you that they went to a store
last week, would you believe them?
Speaker 3: It depends, I mean probably in general, but it doesn't
have anything to do with the actual truth of the situation.
Speaker 8: Right right.
Speaker 7: But if someone tells you that you went to the store,
and you know you didn't, would you believe them?
Speaker 3: Again? Probably, But it depends on the situation. Because, for instance,
I know for a fact I have done things I
do not have memory of. I know for a fact
that that happens on a regular basis, So it is
very much possible that I did that. But yeah, in general,
both of those things, I'd probably be like shrug my
shoulders in yeah, sure, but where are we going?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 7: So what I'm going with this is basically it was
passed down for the generation generation till today that there
were over six hundred thousand people. Six hundred thousand I
think men and then plus the women and children in
Mount Signer. So I'm wondering, if that's not true, how
it could have started, how people could have convinced to
other people. Let's say you give someone a book the
Bible that says you are a Mount sign and there
were three million or six hundred thousand whatever it is, witnesses.
So if you weren't there and you wouldn't believe it,
I mean most people wouldn't.
Speaker 10: I would think, abellabe, well, abe, I maybe secularity understands
like where this is going or how this relates to
like like God, But I'm simply not following you here.
Speaker 2: It sounds to me like.
Speaker 1: You're you're making an ad hoc claim that there was
some kind of prophecy, which is magical. By the way,
there's some kind of prophecy that supposedly was handed down
from generation to generation, and now we're apparently this prophecy
applies to today in some kind of way. But regardless
of all that, what does a let's just say the
population numbers are correct at Mount SINAI. I really don't care.
How does it prove anything like what I mean, how well?
So I get a lot of questions I guess, like,
how does it prove anything? Also, how do you know
that this quote unquote prophecy? Was it just something that
was made up after the fact to fit the circumstances
that this person already experienced. There's just a lot of
like historical questions that we got to ask, like, what's
your historical sourcing for this? Where are people getting this information?
If you're just gonna in an ad hoc manner say oh,
God gave this to some random fuck in the in
the Israelite nation or whatnot, and then they just passed
it down, this is going to fall flat for me.
I don't understand how this could ever hope to prove
anything about God.
Speaker 7: Well, it's really just that there are witnesses and it
was passed down, so we know that. Well, we it's
more evidence and proof. I'm not saying it's proof. I'm
just saying it's a little bit of evidence.
Speaker 3: Just to so real quick, Abe, when when you came, well,
I just just so I'm on the same page with you.
Are you a are you a follower of Christ? Are
you have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit? Oh
you're Jewish? Okay, awesome, awesome, awesome, that's great. Still still
Abrahammick though, that's good. That's good because if you're outside
of the Abrahamic faith, I might have I might have
some questions, you know. No, I'm kidding, no, But seriously,
when you when you converted to Judaism, right when you
went through that whole process, right, because it's difficult, it's
a very very difficult process. Judaism is not is not
one of those I'm sorry I say that again.
Speaker 6: I was.
Speaker 7: I was born Jewish.
Speaker 3: Oh, so this particular thing that you're bringing up, for instance,
had nothing to do with your belief. You were just
raised in My.
Speaker 7: Father told me, and his father told.
Speaker 3: Him, right, so you were just but hang on, but
hang on, but hang on like when you're father told
you that story, you already believed right, Like, this didn't
actually move the needle for you kids.
Speaker 7: So I just believe whatever I was told. Right now,
I'm not religious, but I'm still figuring things out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but hold up, but go back to that what
you just said, Abe, that was a really good point, man,
That's a really really good point. Is that, Yeah, when
you were younger, you just believed what people told you. Man,
And people told you that this was a really miraculous
story and really really interesting and special. A buddy of
mine was raised in the Hindu religion, and in that religion,
they also surprisingly have really miraculous stories and you'll never
believe it. They've been passed down from generation to generation,
from grandfather to father, from father to son, and there's
six thousand, hundred thousand witnesses and all of them saw this.
It's fascinating how how truly, like, point for point, every
single one of these stories are every single one of
these religions are like. I'm not saying saying that this
didn't happen for instance, I'm not saying that it wasn't
passed down from generation to generation. I'm just saying it
seems to me like there's nothing to distinguish between stories
like this for your religion and stories like this for
every other religion, and either we accept them all or
we don't accept any of them.
Speaker 7: Right, So it's more the question I have is more,
how would the first people that heard the story be
convinced of it? If all it was is a story?
But really, Christianity is on there's just one prophet. This
is a little different.
Speaker 1: Well, well, so what exactly is the story that you're
asking about here. The story is a bunch of Israelites
met at the bottom of Mount Sinai, and you're wondering
how people can believe that.
Speaker 7: How the first people that were told the story would
believe it if they weren't the people that were actually there,
if it didn't actually happen.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let me make a small callback here.
Speaker 2: How did you come to believe it?
Speaker 7: I came to believe it because is well because of
that really, because there was passed down from generation generation
And I don't know, well how anybody I would believe
it if it's not true at the begin.
Speaker 1: Well, right, right, But but I guess I was trying
to make a callback to you saying, well, I was
little and I just believed what I was told, people
just told me. And and considering that in the past, uh,
there was even less verification on stories that were told
that at the time that the Hebrew Bible was written,
people could just make up whatever and the fuck kind
of crazy shit and people would believe it. There's there's
you know, I'm trying to think of. I don't really
know the story the Israelite stories outside of the Hebrew Bible. Like,
I know this better for for the New Testament, but
I'm sure there's crazy stories around that time. But like
there's there's so many different stories that can that have
been told and people just believe them. Like how like
there's a long lineage of the ice an Osiris cult
that mimics a lot what's told about Judaism and Christianity.
How unless Isis and Osiris were real, why did everybody
believe it? Why was it a substantial cult in the
Mediterranean area? Why did it affect so many people? How
could so many people believe that if it didn't actually
happen or wasn't actually true, right.
Speaker 7: I mean, yeah, I guess I agree with that case.
There used to be everybody believed the earth was flat.
I mean, I don't know what you believe about that,
but you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: It's definitely not that the Earth is flat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I would say that neither of us believe that.
But yeah, Abe, I think this is something that happens
all the time in these types of traditions, right, and
especially especially with the Hebrew Bible, there is so so
much of that that is specifically about crafting a narrative
for a people group in a time and place when
honestly they were getting the shit kicked out of them
from every other person. Man. They were getting conquered left
and right by different fucking you know tribes across the river.
They were losing all their people, they were getting scattered
all this good shit. Man, there there is a reason
that a people group in that particular like historical context,
like geopolitical context. It makes total sense to me why
they would come up with a couple of different stories, right,
And it's not. This is the thing is a lot
of people, a lot of people will will come at
you know, me and ge and they'll be like, well,
you think they're just making it all up. You think
they're just no no, no, no, no, no, no no no.
Syncretism is this fascinating concept where we don't exactly make
up something brand fucking new, but it isn't. Also, it
also is not just this straight one for one matching
putting together. It's this beauty, beautiful thing that we as
people do where we take a little bit of the new,
we take a little bit of the old, we blend
that together in some ways, we keep some of it,
we throw some of it away. It's just what we do.
And I bet you, I bet you, if we go
back to Hinduism, if we go back to Zoroastrianism, if
we go back to the myriad of different tribal pagan
regional systems of belief that have existed for thousands and
thousands and thousands of years, I bet you there's similar
stories to this stuff, man, Because that's what we do.
We just kind of take the little stuff.
Speaker 7: We said about the Jews being conquered and all that
that could be some more evidence because it says in
the Bible or whatever that we will exist forever or
until the end of days or until whatever it is. Yeah,
we're still alive after all that bad. We're one of
the most.
Speaker 3: Think about that for a second. Just think about that
for a second. Name name a group, Name a group,
name an ideology, Name a person that ever puts out
as a prophecy, and one day all of our people
will be fucking destroyed and dead. Name one that exists that.
That's of course, everybody's gonna make the fucking prophecy about.
We're going to be around fore, we're gonna take back
our land. We're gonna be the strongest. Everybody says that
nobody's different in that space, come on, right.
Speaker 7: But in this case, it actually kind of happened.
Speaker 3: But it happens for everybody that's still around.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: The only reason that we have that shit from ancient
China is because, guess what, they're here because the rest
of the people that didn't win. After saying that same thing,
we don't know about them anymore. We don't talk about
him anymore. Of course, this is one of those things
that's like obvious. It's like, well, you know, if I
go buy ice cream, there's gonna be ice cream for
the ice cream Sunday tonight. It's like, yeah, because you
bought the fucking ice cream, Like of course, God, yeah, that's.
Speaker 7: Sound a lot better in my head. I guess no,
but no.
Speaker 3: But that's the thing, man, This is how this is
how so much of this stuff is. Man, this is
how so much of this stuff is. It's it. It
sounds really really good to us and other people. All
these people around us have been talking about this for years, man, Like,
have you ever abe, have you ever spoken in tongues? No? Me,
neither me neither. But I know a bunch of people
I know a bunch of people who grew up in
that space, and they were like, they were like eight
years old and their mom or their dad, or or
some church leader that they looked up to, right as
this person of authority, they came up to them and
they said, as an eight year old, they said, one day,
one day, you'll have the Holy Spirit inside you, and
you'll be able to speak in tongues, just like a
true believer of Christ. And for some reason, that's never
happened for them. They never felt it, they never spoke
in tongues. It never worked for them. Now. I think
it's because it was just a story to begin with.
It was never true. It was just a story that
people passed down from grandfather to father, from father to child.
And honestly, when we poked at it just a little bit,
it was a facade, you know. And I don't know
that every single thing that you believe is like that, right,
But I think there are some of these we talked
about a few. I think there are some of them
that they really are. Man, it's really just a story.
It's not a It could be a cool story, it
could be one that fills you with a lot of
pride about your who you are, your place in the world,
your family history, all of that, and that is good shit.
That is valuable shit. You know. I don't want to
take that away. But if you're telling me that part
of the story, let's say, involves like some dude holdness
staff in the air for you know, fourteen fucking hours
and the unstopped in the sky, you know that part's
not real. That's that's all I want to say.
Speaker 7: One last argument. This was really the second one. I
just when you said something about conquering the Jews being conquered,
I just thought.
Speaker 3: Of that one. But that's okay, go for it.
Speaker 7: Basically, this one, this one is that one thing we
can all agree on. If we don't agree about God,
we don't agree about lots of stuff. Are we in
the matrix? Are we this or that? One thing we
can agree on is that we exist? Right, I think
so or something something, something exists because we couldn't get
a mature I.
Speaker 3: Feel pretty good about that that there is a reality.
Speaker 8: So right.
Speaker 7: So I don't know if you're gonna like this one,
but basically is that the definition of God is existence.
So by believing in existence, we're believing in called God.
I don't mean like a man in the sky, I
mean existence.
Speaker 1: Well, so, so the the problem that I have with
this is that you you end up just equivocating uh
some words here, Like you're you're just reducing the idea
of God down to something that just doesn't make uh,
that isn't descriptive of of what people generally.
Speaker 2: Think of as God.
Speaker 1: So you're you're kind of doing a bait and switch
here with you know, defining God as existence. Okay, I
don't care where it comes from, it's still a bait
and switch, Like it's it's a bait and switch on
the idea of what existence is, how existence is defined, and.
Speaker 2: All that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So like, if you're just going to define existence as
God and just give existence the label of God, then
I mean you're just ad hot you're kind of ad
hoc changing it so that you're arguing so that you
know your your argument for God works because we exist,
but it's not actually proving anything about God.
Speaker 2: You're just redefining terms.
Speaker 7: But if that's what God is, then but.
Speaker 3: How would you know that, Abe.
Speaker 7: How do you know that? Well, we don't know, we
don't know that, But.
Speaker 3: But how do we know about existence. How do we
know about there?
Speaker 6: There?
Speaker 3: There seems to be we all agree there seems to
be something out here that we call reality or existence, right,
How do we know about that? How do we how
do we look into that shit?
Speaker 7: When we see, we see and we think there's got
to be something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's a system in there. We put together
this thing a while ago, right, called the scientific method,
And that's what helps us understand the reality around us.
That's what helps us distinguish the things that really do
exist and the things that don't. And if time after
time we go looking for this God and it doesn't
seem to be there, that seems to tell me it's
probably not there. And like like John was just saying,
I think there's a I think there's a lot of
stuff that we we really get. You know, a lot
of a lot of shit comes into our pudding man
when we start equivocating on stuff like this, when we
start saying that God is love, when we start saying
that all of existence, the universe, the fabric of reality
is God is the mind of God. I think the
problems that we fall into there, even though we don't
see them right away, I think they're some of the
most harmful things that are are kept in religions because
when we get real flowery about that shit, what happens
is a lot of stuff gets smuggled in, a lot
of things all of a sudden start to see more
into it.
Speaker 7: Really, I don't know all of it, but there's a
lot more to it, and oh so should. The problem
is that you're changing the definition of God.
Speaker 3: I mean, broadly speaking, Yeah, do you know what an
equivocation fallacy is? Have you ever heard that term before?
Speaker 7: No? Understand?
Speaker 3: Basically, it basically just means that, like, we've got a
bunch of different We've got a bunch of different words
out there that have multiple meanings, and in some context,
by using one of those meanings of the word, it
makes your argument makes sense, it makes it valid, right,
But in other contexts, a different, a different usage of
that same word makes it nonsensical, right, It doesn't, It
doesn't follow anymore. And so that's that's kind of what
Ge was saying. He's saying, like, man, you're taking this,
you're taking this definition that we have, and you're really
twisting it and warping it into a way that you know,
honestly does not work in this fashion, and I agree,
I really have a problem when we do the whole
like Spinosa's God, you know, and we have that whole
kind of pantheistic you know, panantheism type stuff, because I
just think, I just think that it feels a lot
better to people, It makes people feel a lot better,
but all of the harms are still inherently a part
of that. Honestly, I think one of the best analogies
I can give is lethal injection as a death penalty
in the United States. One of the reasons that we
do lethal injection in this country is because it makes
us feel good because we don't have to see somebody suffering, right,
And only recently, as more and more companies have started
stripping away the rights of these these prisons to use
these medications, we're starting to see the harms that are
happening to these people. There have been so many fucking
botched executions in the last decade it is disgusting. But
that was why we stepped away from the electric chair.
That was why we stepped away from the firing squad
is because it made us feel like we weren't doing
something super fucked up, but in reality, we are putting
a human being to death. Still, that's what's happening. And
the same thing in this concept where we say, man,
my God's just love, Man, my God's just energy, Man,
my God's the universe. No, at the end of the day,
you are still using the exact same pattern of thinking,
the exact same methodology that leads to all of the
same harms that I feel really confident, Abe, you and
I agree. We want to minimize that shit. We want
to get rid of that shit in the world, you know.
I think this pattern of thinking, unfortunately, is what leads
us to that stuff.
Speaker 9: Though.
Speaker 3: So we've been talking a lot with you, Abe too,
So wrap us up real quick and we'll move on.
Speaker 7: But so, what you're saying is that so you don't
like the idea that God could be like a creator
of personal and existence at the same time, or you
just don't like using different mords for different things. What exactly?
Have a little bit of a hard time understanding exactly
what you're saying.
Speaker 3: I think the creator God is in that version and
understanding of a deity that can be demonstrably shown not
to exist.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: I think when we put those types of criteria and
understandings on a version of a God. I think we
can show time and time again to your satisfaction, that
that God does not exist. On the flip side of
that spectrum, on the opposite side, where we are equivocating
between God and love or energy or whatever, I think
those things are still just as harmful.
Speaker 6: Again.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's more existence itself or unity and harmony together.
Speaker 3: I still put it in the same.
Speaker 1: Category we understand, like the that you're taking me through
your argument here, I think that what it gets what
it gets down to, is that it seems very ad
hoc in nature, meaning that there's no supporting evidence at
all to say that, oh, God is necessary for existence
or that God is existence. I feel like you're just
uh stating that, Like you're just stating God is existence
without actually proving that it is.
Speaker 7: It's not me, it's more in the Bible or that come.
Speaker 3: Up, so the Bible.
Speaker 1: I don't Yeah, sorry, A I don't care where it
comes from, Like it could come from a napkin that
you found in A seven eleven. It doesn't really matter.
It's still just an ad hoc claim that this God
is existence. What what I know we need to move
on because we do have calls lining up now. But like,
do you actually have any evidence that suggests other than
just saying the Bible says it or the Hebrew Bible
says it, whoever says it, do you actually have any
evidence or any arguments that actually establish that God.
Speaker 7: Is in existence? And I guess I don't.
Speaker 3: So yeah, Hey, that's that's great. Honestly, that's that's not
a bad that's not a bad place at all. Abe,
Like you said, you said earlier that you were still
investigating some stuff, you're looking into some things, you're you're
learning stuff like that's awesome, dude, that is the best
fucking place to be. Ever, don't ever stop doing that.
And uh, just give us a call back like in
a week or so and just tell us what you learned.
And yeah, thanks so much, man, we appreciate you.
Speaker 7: Say one more thing, Uh, yep, go ahead.
Speaker 3: You caught me right before I was about to rudely
click the button, so you got you got two seconds go.
Speaker 7: And what you said before about atheists that people dislike them,
I actually love it because it's skepticism, it's it's questioning things.
And also is it, you know a young show.
Speaker 3: Then yeah, yeah, Yeah, see the show.
Speaker 7: People love him. He's an atheist, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Hey, Hey, that's right, and that's what we need more of, Abe.
We need more. We need more cool atheists out there
living and showing people that it is. It is okay,
and not only is it okay, uh, but the water
is pretty damn nice. So thanks so much, Abe, I'm
gonna drop you real quick. I probably cut you off.
I'm so terribly sorry. But yeah, that's what we need
more of. We need more good atheist positive representation. There's
too many of these long haired, you know, beard fucking
dickheads on the internet, you know, yelling about shit. But yeah, no,
that's a good one. I have to tell you guys
about some ways that you can support this wonderful channel
and this incredible organization here, Like you can go to Patreon,
and if you're not familiar with Patreon, it's a it's
a really cool site. It's it's spelled pat reON. And
if you go to that link that is both in
the description and in the live chat right now, you
can send money directly to the ACA. That's right. Money
that you send will go to the ACA for all
kinds of wonderful things like helping keep this show happen.
That is, you know, I've also heard that some of
the money for the Bat Cruise fundraisers think will help
to get people out there, will bring people like Forrest
and j Mike there. So if you want more ACA
hosts at the Bat Cruise, you should do that. You
should do that. You can also become a channel member
for as little as ninety nine cents a month. But
why I do that? You're a baller, you know, your
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You're a badass, and you want to show everybody how
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money goes to a great cause, because there is a
bat Cruise coming up in exactly I did this math
Okay this please live chat check me on this, okay,
very exactly sixty nine days from now until the bat Cruise. Okay, now,
now I think for legal reasons, I am not allowed
to say things about like sixty nine like at the
bat Cruise. I don't know. I can't say. Look, I'm
gonna stop here. I'm starting to get messages from the crew.
But look, by the way, did you know that there's
ACA merch You can go to tiny dout cc slash
merch Aca. You can buy lots of things and there's
all kinds of great things there there. There is not
anything sixty nine related on there.
Speaker 1: You know what?
Speaker 3: This is a thought real quick, and I just I
know this is this is probably bad and I should
probably not have this thought on air. But I'm just wondering, like,
do you think we could do like ACA condoms? Do
you think that's a thing that would like be okay? Like,
is there any reason that we couldn't sell like? Okay?
So we're gonna go out too Hawaii. Charles, he is
a theist, doesn't follow the Christian God, but wants to
talk about the God of the Bible. Well, hate Charles,
get us back on track a little bit. You're on
the atheist experience. What's you go out for us?
Speaker 6: Okay? I was learned in the Bible there is a
god god in the Bible named Jehovah y h v H,
and this is the God of the Jews. Christians hate
this idea that god because Christians worship have their own god, Jesus,
and so they want everybody to accept Jahivah Jesus because
they are they have a strange religion, and their religion
basically is is basically Jesus is the devil, and they
worship the devil and say.
Speaker 3: Hang on, hang on just the second, Charles, hang on
just second for me, because I think there's a lot
of interesting things that other people believe. We can talk
about them some other time. But what I would love
to know is what you believe and do you believe
in Jehovah of the Bible. Do you think Jehovah is real?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Why, That's what I'd love to know.
Speaker 6: But Jehovah. The universe is weird. It doesn't really work. Sure,
something makes it work, and obviously it's.
Speaker 1: Well so so Charles, I'm not going to sit here
and say that we know how everything works in the universe,
because I don't think anybody knows that. But I mean,
I feel like there's plenty of processes and ways that
the universe works that we do understand, and we understand
those things without the need for Jehovah. So, I mean,
I just it seems like you're starting off on a
track going to a god of the gaps is where
immediately that's where my brain goes. I don't know if
that's where you're going, but you're basically saying, oh, we
don't know how all this works, and there's something that
I don't understand. Therefore it's magical. Therefore it's Jehovah because
this book that I like says that it's just Jovah.
Maybe I'm wrong about where you're going with this.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, the Bible has a God, and as God
is Jehovah. Hy hbh all who's the Bible?
Speaker 7: Jewey?
Speaker 2: Okay, the Jews right right right now. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I just want to cut through all of that. Because
we understand that we understand the Hebrew Bible, we understand
the Christian.
Speaker 2: By version of the Bible.
Speaker 1: What we want to know is exactly why do you
think that Jehovah exists outside of the Bible, Like what
kind of like real things in reality point to the
need for this God.
Speaker 6: Well, this God, Jehovah comes to each individual, everybody and everywhere,
puts out his hands. He says, take me in and
do Charles.
Speaker 3: Now, Charles, I know that what you just said sounds
really pretty to you. I know that what you just
said makes you feel really good. Okay, And I just
want to start off by saying, I'm not trying to
shit on all of that. I'm not trying to take
away your happiness here, Okay. What I am trying to
do is let you know that there's a friend of mine,
friend of a friend of this channel who's been dying
of als for over half a fucking decade and spent
his entire goddamn life seeking and serving and loving the Lord,
and he is dying from als. Every single day he
gets worse and worse. And you're gonna sit here and
try to tell me that the Lord opened up his
fucking arms to Dave. Fuck that man. You're gonna tell
me that that eight year old girl who was fucking
murdered in her sleep last month, You're gonna tell me
that the Lord opened up his fucking arms to her.
Come on, man, like, give us something real. Don't give
me that, Don't give me that bullshit. Like I again
I get it. It feels good when you say it
to yourself. You say, look, the Lord came to me
and loves me and all that shit. But come on, man,
give us something real, like what is it out there
that we can look at and go, yeah, there it is,
that's God. Because if you say something like that again, man,
I'm just not gonna let it go. I'm not gonna
have it. Man. I see too much of the garbage.
Speaker 11: So what is it?
Speaker 3: What do you got for us, Charles? Why? Why should
we believe Jehovah's real? Not the Bible, not because he
comes to all of us and gives us his fucking
love and shit? What do you got?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, everybody's an individual, and everybody has the mind.
Everybody can think, and everybody can really except that they want.
They don't have to believe that God exist. They don't
have to believe that God. But I do it.
Speaker 2: Do you think?
Speaker 3: Do you think there's a hell? Do you think there's
a hell?
Speaker 2: Charles?
Speaker 3: Do I get tortured for all eternity if I don't
believe in God?
Speaker 1: In your view?
Speaker 3: No, Well that's great. Let me tell you something. You're
a fucking minority, and that's awesome, Charles, join in with
all of us in the atheist camp, and let's tell
those Let's tell those hardcore evangelicals that are going out
there preaching to everybody that they're gonna burn for eternity
if they don't believe in you lock step with them.
Let's go tell them their shit is wrong. First, you
go convince them you're gonna have a better fucking chance
than I am. I don't believe in Jehovah at all.
They're not gonna fucking listen to me. Like, so you
go out there and tell them, hey, man, you're wrong
on all of this. Let me tell you why your
God's not real. Let me fix you. And then once
y'all are all on the same page, come back to us, man,
and we're we'll happily talk about it then. But like,
come on, man, don't don't tell me that you called
into the show. Don't tell me that you sat on
hold for nearly thirty minutes to just go like, nah,
y'all believe whatever you want. Hey, John, I don't care, man,
You do what you gonna do. Man, you wanna go
out there and make fun of Jesus and say he's
some zombie or what you do it? Like, come on, Charles, like,
give us something, man, we are here and ready. We
want to be convinced if there is good reason to
believe Jesus.
Speaker 6: Is the devil, Christians are evil a worship said devil constantly.
Speaker 2: No, look we're not.
Speaker 1: We're not here to talk about Christians because you're not
a Christian. So, I mean, I get that you have
this crazy idea about Christians being evil and whatnot, which
is kind of crazy to me. But we're just like
we've heard you in that God that Jehovah has revealed
himself to everybody, but that's obviously not the case. I know,
he hasn't revealed himself to me.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you know, I thought he froze for
a second. Gee sorry go ahead, Oh.
Speaker 2: Okay, sorry those those my bad.
Speaker 1: So I like, as a Christian, I thought that God
revealed himself through just normal happenstance, things that happened, Like
you know, I thought about I had a dream about
birds and then all of a sudden a bird landed
on like outside my school window.
Speaker 2: Or something like that.
Speaker 1: That's a sign from God, like something, you know, stupid
like that is what I thought.
Speaker 11: Now, whether or not.
Speaker 2: That's good theology.
Speaker 8: I was.
Speaker 1: I was taught you know, through my churches and everything
like that, that God spoke to you in the very
mundane kind of things that happened every day and so
like that's God speaking to you.
Speaker 2: So like, is that what you're talking about?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 2: Does God reveal himself or yahweh?
Speaker 1: Does he reveal himself just through mundane things that happened?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 6: Not, yahweh. Where did you get that from? There's no
such thing.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I met Jehovah. Jehovah.
Speaker 3: That definitely shouldn't have been the thing you took on
bridge with Charles. But please go ahead. Does Jehovah reveal
himself and just mundane, everyday ordinary things.
Speaker 6: Yes, he does, come right up to you, take me in.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, good, Well I'm right. I'm glad that you
believe that.
Speaker 1: So if you believe that, can you please help me
connect the dots here in the mundane things that happen
in reality, in everyday life, connect that too, Jehovah's existence.
Can you please connect those dots for me?
Speaker 6: Well, it's uh, eve invisible, so you can't see him.
You can't say, hey that there he is there over there.
Speaker 3: Do you feel like that's the problem, Charles like, like,
I look right off the rip man. That should make
you say like, ah, you know, hmm, I don't feel
good about this thing being real?
Speaker 1: Like sorry, well, And I also want to say that
we can't see X rays, we can't see gamma rays,
but we know that they're there because they are detectable.
You don't visual visual is Visually is not the only
way that.
Speaker 2: You can detect God.
Speaker 1: You can detect God in multiple different kinds of ways.
So I mean that's why I'm asking you to connect
the dots here. Can you connect the dots between mundane
things happening in reality to Jehovah causing those things to happen?
Can can you connect that for me?
Speaker 6: Well, I'm just saying that he is there. You can't
accept him, and he will come into you. He will
be with you and go about with good work.
Speaker 2: What if I don't want God coming into me?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't need Does he get elbowed deep? Or
like how deep does he get? Like you know, I think,
wasn't there was a story about somebody sixty nine ing
with God? Wasn't Jacob like grabbing God's dick or Jake
was it doesn't matter. Look definitely, Look Look Charles, Charles,
I know, always being silly there for a second, but
I want to be very direct. Okay, I really really
think that what you just said is a bit of bullshit. Okay,
And I think you, I think you agree with that.
And here's why I think you agree with that is
because if somebody else came up to you and said
all of this same shit, but it was about Muhammad
or Vishnu or Thor or Bigfoot or the fact that
the Earth is flat or that the moon isn't real,
or that the Earth is hollow, or that germs don't
exist or birds or fucking drones or any of these
other ridiculous things. Man, you would feel just as unsatisfied
as Ge and I feel right now. Because you gotta
be kidding me. Man, You believe this thing, and it
is one of the most important things. It radically changes
everything about your reality. If Jehovah is not real, and
yet with an opportunity to say, hey, guys, here's why
you should believe it, you.
Speaker 2: Fall back on.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, it's like, if you want, you
don't have to. I don't know what, Come on, man,
come on, like, that's BS, that's BS. You know, you
know there's a reason to bel leave this. You know,
you have a reason to believe it. And I guess,
I guess it's not that great of a reason, Charles.
And that's the thing, man, I want good reasons. I
want you to have a good reason to believe what
you believe.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 3: And it's a little selfish, like you might feel like
all I'm doing is trying to make you a better person.
I mean, that's a great byproduct. But honestly, what I
am thinking about is the fact that if more of
us are coming to reasoned conclusions, we are justifying our
answers based on solid skepticism and evidence, then I'm not
gonna have to deal with as much bullshit in the
fucking world as I feel like.
Speaker 8: I have to.
Speaker 3: So it's selfish, it's very selfish. But Charles, I'm gonna
let you go, man, unless you got anything else to say, ge,
you got any other thoughts.
Speaker 1: Well, I was just gonna follow up with the way
that Charles responded.
Speaker 3: It just sounds if you have your questions, man, yeah, yeah,
I'll bring them back. I won't let him go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh no, I was just gonna say that it
just sounds ad hoc, like, oh, he just you know,
he's you know, God just exists or Jehovah just exists.
It just I me personally, and I feel like a
lot of atheists and agnostics and skeptical people out there,
but we need actually something more than just an ad
hoc statement or claim that that got Jehovah exists.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, I think so too. But Charles, thank you.
We really do appreciate you. And I hope you'll watch
this back and give us a call back, man, because
I do. I want to know, Like, I don't want
you to just say to me, no, man, you can
believe it if you want or like whatever, or no.
This is one of the most fucking important things ever.
There's a reason that you believe this and you care
about this. This matters to you in your life, Charles,
and I want to understand that reason, and if it's
a good reason, I'm going to accept it and I'm
going to join your fucking side. But we did not
get that today. That's okay, though, you know, because we
do have some other great calls and we are going
to go right to them. But before we do that
I have to shout out a wonderful group of people.
There is, week in and week out, some people that
devote their time and their efforts to making this show
happen and all of the other amazing shows on this
great network. So can we see the crew? Can we
see those amazing, amazing faces? They are so so kind.
I can see a few of them are looking a
bit disappointed. They don't look angry yet, they just look disappointed.
So we will find out what exactly I have done.
I can't think of anything I might have done something
I don't Was it the sex toys thing? Do you
think it was talking about ACA sex toys?
Speaker 2: Do you think I was saying?
Speaker 1: Honestly, I think it was the It was the whole
ACA condom thing. I mean think, I mean, where are
you going to get those from? And everything you're gonna put? Like?
Speaker 3: I mean, are you allowed as a as a as
a nonprofit to sell condoms? I don't know if that's it.
You could give them out right and you don't. It
doesn't matter because we are going to go out to Texas.
We've got Reverend Van Kush he him wants to talk
about Hinduism a little bit it sounds like, well, hey, Rev,
we are I'm secularity. That's godless engineer what you got for?
Speaker 9: All right? So I know y'all want to talk about
like yahweh and everything existing, but so I want to
talk about like what the aighties kind of called little
g gods. So first I would say, there are these
things called ragori, all right. And usually when these are
talked about, they're talked about the mostly the invisible ones.
But I'll start with the ones we can see, just
so that everybody can kind of grasp this. Right, There
are stuff like the sun and the planets, right then,
we can all see them, and they're there whether or
not we're there, and they exist outside of us. But
there are edgrigoria that exists between us, all right. Another
word for egrigoriya is poltergeist. All right, And then so
these things exist, and.
Speaker 3: Hang on real real quick, hang on real quick. I'm
not trying to push back. I'm not trying to I'm
not trying to shot on anything, just trying to understand
just some clarity. Okay, are you saying that the sun
and the moon and like Mars, like are those agrigori?
If I'm saying that right, is that what you're saying.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's why the ancient religions would personify
them and everything is because of their their quality.
Speaker 3: Okay, what are the what are the characteristics of agrigori?
Because I would say between the sun and the moon
and Mars alone, I don't know that all three of
those things exactly fit into the same category. Right, There's
a huge difference between what's going on with the moon
and what's going on with the sun.
Speaker 9: The thegrigori part of it is the non physical part
of it, the thing that we can't see. That, yeah,
that is part of it. So the sun, for example,
we can't see. Even light is almost one of the
things we can't see, and it's a titan, and great
mythology and other mythologies, it's a the light is a titan, right,
So that it's so is an example of something that
we almost can't see.
Speaker 2: And then I'm confused.
Speaker 3: I'm confused, and I'm not again, I'm genuinely just trying
to make sure that I'm I'm following the trail of
breadcrumbs that you're leaving for me here, but currently I
have no fucking idea where I'm going in the forest. Okay,
so help me out just a little bit, which is
hang on, hang on just a second. I'm gonna I'm
gonna try and direct it a little because without some
of these things being answered, I don't feel like ge
and I are ever going to be able to follow
you on this journey very far. But when you say
when you say, like there's some things going on with
the sun, for instance, that are non physical, Like what
like what like what's happening that's non physical? I have
no idea what that means.
Speaker 9: Well, I mean, so the like how light comes to
Earth and then like we have plants growing, we have
all this stuff going on because of non physical things
that are happening.
Speaker 2: Like all those things are physical.
Speaker 3: Yeah, photosynthesis is like really physical. It's like extremely physical,
you know, like the rain cycle is like really physical.
Speaker 9: Man, So like because of the non physical, what's non.
Speaker 2: Physical about it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, so the electromagnetic spectrum, hold on, hold on, So
the electromagnetic spectrum is a very physical thing. How how
photons are emitted from the Sun is a very physical
process of fission that happens in the center of stars.
There's an intense heat and pressure that causes atoms to
fission together, uh, creating heavier elements and everything like that's
how you get heavier elements. That particular process right there
causes photons and energy to be emitted. That's then emitted
from the Sun going to the surface uh of the Earth,
where then in the particular example you gave, like it
interacts with plant life on Earth, which stimulates uh you know,
uh the biological nature of plants, uh, and through various
very physical chemical processes and uh physical structures in the plant. Uh.
It it turns that that electromagnetic uh radiation which we
call light into energy. And so all this entire energy
transformation coming from the Sun going all the way to
the Earth to the plants, it is a completely physical process.
Speaker 2: So what part of that process?
Speaker 9: So if we can get into that being physical, could
we get into that words are physical?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry?
Speaker 9: What when you say something, When you say something and
it vibrates from my ear to your ear, my mouth
to your ear, your mouth to my ear. I we're
now saying that is a physical process.
Speaker 3: It sounds like it sounds like you're trying to talk
about like thoughts and concepts and things.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So so so there's there's a lot of different discussion
on this. There's a lot of different people and you know,
very high academic philosophical circles that have talked about this
shit for a really long time. I am not that person.
I am not that I am not that intelligent. Rev
don't don't don't don't you know, check me on all
of this. Go look into shit like that. Like Patricia Churchland,
for instance, is somebody that I have looked into and
have enjoyed some of her stuff in the past. She
talks about She's talked about like memory and like where
that is in the brain. And memory is another one
of those things that seems to fit into this space
of non material right, just like thoughts, right, just like concepts,
memories seem to all fit into that same kind of space.
But as we are studying more and more about the
science of the brain, about how we are able to
actually do things with the squishy substance up here in
our head, we're coming to find out there is more
and more physical correlation between those. Right. So you might
be familiar with like the corpus colosum, the split brain
experiments from the past. You may have heard about some
dudes called Phineas Gauge. All of those are really fascinating
things that we have from the past, and the most
recent stuff we've got so far seems to continue to
point in that direction in a really really hardcore way.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 3: So like, I get that it's a little bit weird
when we talk about, you know again, like love, you know, happiness.
You know you can't give me a couple of happiness. Yeah,
I get you, man, But it is all it is
all this thing that is a subset under material stuff.
All of the material stuff has to be there. We
gotta have the vocal cords, you gotta have the ear drum,
you gotta have the medium for it to vibrate. I know,
I know, I said a bunch. I know I rambled
a little. Apologize, Rev, and give you a second to
say some stuff back, but go ahead.
Speaker 9: All right. So, actually Ergrigor's or Ergrigori, most of the
time they do have multiple people involved, like a seance,
you could even call it like an orgy, an edgergor.
But there's not just the people that are there. There
are invisible entities like we were talking about, and feel like.
Speaker 3: To what I said, no he didn't.
Speaker 1: Also, I'm very intrigued by an orgy of Poulter guys
like to like after seeing the Poultergeist movie, Like, I
feel like that is just a horror show.
Speaker 3: Like think about from the perspective of ghosts. Though, if
you think about it from that movie, like that could
be a good one you could do alright with that.
It's like Debbie Moore and shit, man kidding it. No,
I don't feel like. I don't really feel like you
were listening to me at all. I know I kind
of ramble and my voice is not particularly fun to
listen to. But I really do feel like I gave
at least a decent response to the idea that, like,
you know, non physical things like you know, thoughts or
memory or whatever. I thought, I gave a decent response
to Hey, those actually are rooted in matis real shit,
So any any thoughts on that?
Speaker 11: Man?
Speaker 3: You know, whether they're physical or not.
Speaker 9: So what I'm saying is that these these non physical
entities require physical things most of the time, right, It
requires multiple people to come together to perform something to
create these non physical entities. That's how most of them exist,
all right. But if you look at the company like that,
but but but you have.
Speaker 1: Yet to point out anything that's actually non physical, right,
Like you're just claiming the non physical. See, this is
the problem with all of the callers today there, Van Kush,
is that you're you're you're talking about things without actually substantiate,
Like you're making claims that substantiating these claims. So like
you have yet to give us something that's non physical.
And I'm just gonna because I know that you say
poultry geist and all this sort of stuff. We haven't
proven poultry geist or the Gregori orgies. We haven't been
able to there's nothing that substantiates those things. If you
cannot detect something in reaction, does that mean that that
thing actually exists in reality?
Speaker 9: Well, okay, so the example given was memory, right, So
memory is one these are most of these are thought form.
Speaker 1: Memory is a physical process, Like it's something that's contained
in your brain. It's it's, uh, you know, the physical
structure of your brain controls like memories. Like there's a
whole physical process for like converting short.
Speaker 2: Term memory to long term memory.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 1: Memory itself is stored in your in brain cells in
different in different ways, and it's accessed through chemical processes.
So all of that's very very like physical or it's
a it's a mergent from uh physical processes and physical structures.
Speaker 2: So like that's you need something better, I guess, is
my point?
Speaker 9: Well, if I store, if I store a physical memory
on the stone and then somebody reads it two thousand
years later, and that memory is released by being I mean,
through that person reading it in their brain, what the
fuck does this mean?
Speaker 3: You're using some of those words incorrectly. Okay, you are
not storing memory when you take a rock and you
scratch another rock with it, and you put symbols on
that that you and your tribe understands, and then one
thousand fucking years some other tribe digs that shit up
and tries to read it. You're not storing memory on
the rock.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: That's a really poetic and flowery way to say it,
because we as people love poetic and flowery things, right,
But that is not actually what's happening there.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 3: What you're doing is you're making an intention in the rock, right.
You're transferring maybe some of the quartz crystalline structure onto
some other blah blah whatever fuck it, right, but you're
not storing memory in that same capacity, right, and same
thing with a computer, like when you are actually storing
memory on a computer, that's physical as fuck. Man, I mean,
like Ge was saying, with memory. The reason why I
brought up memory is because it's often used in this
same category where people say, oh, we just you can't
point to it in the brain, there's no physical correlation.
But as we continue to study that shit, we absolutely
seem to find it seems to really really involve the
physical shit. And all the time we get this, Man,
every single time we get this where somebody comes on
and says, man, I agree, there is physical stuff. It's
out there. You see it, I see it, We all
interact with it. But then there's this extra shit, and
that's what we are interested in. That's what John and
I want to know about. If you've got a good
reason to believe in that extra stuff, help us out, like,
show us the non physical things. But so far, every
single time, and this isn't just you, Reverend, this this
is everybody today. So far we're not getting anything. So
help us, help us see what we are missing? Right,
how do we detect these aggregory things? How do we
know that something is non physical?
Speaker 9: Okay? So how do you know something non physical? I mean,
it's the same as words and stuff. I mean, do
you just you can't see it and it's there.
Speaker 3: You can't see you can't see. Hold up, but you
can't see, like diseases and they're there. You can't see
germs and they're there.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Also, if you really wanted to get pedantic about words
and everything like that, and you're not talking about the thoughts,
the emergent thoughts that are caught that represent are represented
by these words, if you're talking about the physical process
of words and processing words, that's literally just pressure waves
in the air, pressure waves in a fluid medium that
is traveling to your ear drums, which then convert those
pressure waves into something that is supposed to make sense
to your brain. And some people's brains have problems, you know,
processing auditorily. Me sometimes I have problems with auditory processing,
and sometimes it takes me a second to really understand
what somebody is saying. So, like, this is all a
very physical process, and just because like the whole idea,
like ideas in general, are more emergent properties of a
complex central nervous system that doesn't detract from the physical
nature and the physical grounding of these things.
Speaker 9: Well, they do have to have some kind of physical thing,
because like, okay, if the Sun didn't exist, if Mars
didn't exist, if Jupiter didn't exist, that then we wouldn't
have those two ground those things on. There is always
some kind of physical thing. And as I was saying,
with the orgies and the seances, there's between people, right.
Speaker 3: So hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on,
hang on, hang on. The reason I'm jumping in is
because I mean, I'm just laughing about the orgies thing.
Just sixty nine days left for the bat cruise, folks. Anyway,
here's here's the thing. Here's the thing. When you tell
me that these non physical things, when you tell me
these on material things have to have a grounding in
the material and the physical stuff, this is where you
lose me, man, because this is where I feel like
I'm getting told that the ice cream Sunday in front
of me is shit because it doesn't have magic sprinkles.
And the other person is telling me that their ice
cream Sunday has magic sprinkles. But I'm looking back and
forth at are fucking cups and they look exactly the same.
And so this is where I'm at. Again, You're saying
to me, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. The
ghosts have to have a correlation to the physical realm.
And I'm like, okay, well, so then show me the ghosts.
If you're telling me that these eggrigor I have to
be connected to a fucking moon or a bunch of
people getting it on late on a Friday night or whatever. Like,
if that's the case, then all you have to do
now is show me where's the ghost? Like, where is
it in all of this? It between somebody's butt cheeks?
Is it somewhere in the calm? Just help me out, man.
Speaker 9: The creator there's there. There is a creator of all
of it. This is your word speaking about a creation,
and that's that's where that's that we're talking about a creation.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, there is then ven cush.
Speaker 1: I'm going to propose that this creator is actually an
invisible pink unicorn. That's an idea that's been floated around. Uh,
how how would you refute me in just ad hoc
stating that this creator that you're talking about that loves
orgies and all that kind of stuff isn't just some
kind of sadistic pink unicorn that likes to violate people
in their sleep, like it was a scene from Ghostbusters.
Speaker 9: Well, first off, because you can't see it. And God
did tell David that his son was going to have
sex with all his wives, and then God had his
son have sex with all his wives because of what
he had done. All right, so it's not like outside.
Speaker 2: Don't know what what what what does that have to
do with anything?
Speaker 3: No idea that point was brought up.
Speaker 1: Man, I don't feel like he was God said he
was gonna fuck all your women and guess what he.
Speaker 2: Didn't look back what it exists?
Speaker 3: Back to what Ge was was asking if he says
to you just same words, the exact same sentence and
thought that you just said to us, The only thing
that he changes is God to a invisible pink unicorn.
I mean, like, what do you say to that? Man, Like,
what's your response?
Speaker 9: You can't say it's an invisible pink unicorn if we
haven't seen the pink unicorn. I'm saying it's an invisible
not pink unicorn. And I mean maybe it is a
pink unicorn, but right, and what and.
Speaker 1: You're just claiming another yet invisible fucking thing that you
cannot actually refute me and saying that it's an invisible
pink unicorn. You don't know these these egg gore I
while they're sitting there fucking each other. Could really just
be pink unicorns fucking each other?
Speaker 2: Could they not?
Speaker 9: I mean, they're not pink because they're visible, right.
Speaker 6: So what is what is a heng on?
Speaker 3: Thank God, Reverend. Look, look, this is not the first
time this has happened today. Okay, but twice today a
caller was asked a question and their response focused on
the thing that was not at all important in the question. Okay,
the fucking the fucking color of the unicorns, Okay, is
not the thing that John is talking about. That is
not what matters here. Like fuck a man, I don't
give a shit what color they are. The point the
reason that he brought that up is all of us
are in the same boat when it comes to ad
hoc assertions. We can pull them out of our asses
for eternity, but there is nothing behind any one of
them to back them up. And it is just as
simple as us going, yeah that that doesn't have any
good reason for me to believe that, And it's done,
it's over. If that is all that is backing up
your belief, please, Reverend, please get get a better theology,
get more evidence.
Speaker 9: What have you heard of an oracle before? Have you
heard of an oracle?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 2: I have, Yes, I have.
Speaker 9: An oracle is not a person. An oracle is when
eggregory comes together with groups of people and create a
larger entity called an oracle. Now right, it's no longer
just one eggregory.
Speaker 3: Why why do you why do you accept that that
is the case. When I think about an oracle, what
I think is that an individual incorrectly attributes certain experiences
in their lives to them having the ability to channel
the divine or transcendence or spirits or whatever. I think
those people are wrong, and I believe I can demonstrate
that to you. You what about think? Hang on, hang
on just a second. I just want to lay out
my position. Now you know where I'm at, and I
am offering you the chance for me to demonstrate that
position to you. But what I'd really love, since you
brought it up first, is if you would go first,
Rev and tell me why you believe that an oracle
is a person a vessel that a bunch of Egrigori
came together and is now working through them. Why do
you think that? What's the reasoning?
Speaker 9: That's not what I said.
Speaker 3: An oracle more like help me out a board.
Speaker 9: An oracle is like a chessboard or a Wigi board
where there are several people and it all comes together
to create an answer.
Speaker 3: Right, Why do you think that?
Speaker 9: Because that's how human society and everything works. I mean,
that's how civilization's only been around for like six thousand years.
It's because of this.
Speaker 3: If Ge said to you, he believes that actually what's
going on is pink unicorns are fucking each other when
people are playing with ouiji boards, and their jizz is
what causes their magic. Jizz is what causes the thing
to move. And then he responded when you said, hey,
why do you think that?
Speaker 6: John?
Speaker 3: And he responded with because that's just the way the
world works. On a scale of not at all to fuck?
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 3: How satisfied are you with that answer? Man? Like, there's
no way, It's very high.
Speaker 9: But that's that's like me saying like uh, like uh,
you know, I mean like atheists they can go talk
about what they don't believe in, and how are how
are you supposed to have a discussing with each other
about religion, if you all just say that you don't
believe in.
Speaker 3: Things like you know what I mean, I don't think
I don't think that that is a response to anything
that I have said today at all, Rev, not even
with other fucking callers. Which I'm not expecting you to
watch the whole show, but I am expecting you to
follow along with the discussion that you're trying to have.
So I'm going to back up just a second, Hang on,
just a second.
Speaker 6: Rev.
Speaker 3: You've been doing great this whole time, so we're going
to go back just a second, Okay, And I'm going
to say it again, which is if Ge says to
you the reason that Ouiji boards work, the reason that
magic crystals or whatever it is, the reason that those
things work is because of invisible unicorns fucking each other,
and then you say, hey, why do you believe that?
And he says, Ah, that's just the way the world is,
man like, that's how that's what brought all of civilization
to this point in time. Are you satisfied with that answer?
Do you feel like Ge has a robust reason for his.
Speaker 9: Belief if he if he's going to say, like the
Titan Phoebee was an invisible pink unicorn. Maybe maybe he
could say that, but he's just like, now he's giving
it a physical limitation and he's giving it a color, right,
So like, and how how is this invisible thing giving
a physical limitation to the color? We supposed to be invisible,
supposed to color.
Speaker 3: The color is definitively not the most important part of
that discussion. I believe, I believe rather I'm talking about
that you have Hold on just a second, Hang on
just a second, because I'm going to rudely drop you
right after this. I believe you have better reasons. I
believe you have thought about this more than what you
have present today. I really do. I think that you
have in your head, whether it is physical or not,
you have thoughts and memories and arguments that you can bring,
and I think you can do a better job. And
I would love to hear from you in the future,
because I think the arguments you've brought today are really unsatisfying,
and I don't think you'd be satisfied with them. That's
the whole point. So I am rudely dropping you. I'm
very sorry. I am just kind of a dick. But yeah, man, fuck,
that's just the way the world works. It's like, what
that is?
Speaker 8: Not?
Speaker 3: Oh my god? Like old fairies are stealing my teeth
and giving me quarters? Like why do you think that
I'm just how society formed?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, I still I don't understand why people are
convinced by just whatever ad hoc statement seems to I
guess maybe appeal to them.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. I don't either. I don't either. But
here's here. I do have this thought. We have this
wonderful backup post we have with us today. Jamie the
Blind Blimey himself. I'm wondering, Uh, hey, Jamie you uh
do you want to take a call with us?
Speaker 12: Yeah? Yeah, I'm happy to do that.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. We are going to go out to Mississippi.
We are going to talk with Hannah. She her wants
to talk about materialism and physicalism. Well, Hannah, we have
been steeped in that sauce today. So you've got three
of us. We're going to try not to gang up
on you too much. But it's sr Ge and the
Blind Limey. What you got for us, Hannah?
Speaker 11: So I would like to continue what I've touched about previously,
But why I think materialism and physicalism are not logical
ways to go about the ones you could say is
either if theismology or methodologist studying existence, or or you
could say metaphysics, like I don't believe materialism or physicalism
metaphysically is kinnibal Wiser. But to minus Sending, you said
in the past that you are more of a methodical
logical or you could also say astemological materialist and a
ontological or metaphysical materialist.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I think that's I think that's pretty fair,
Jamie or Ge. If you guys feel differently, please jump
in at any point.
Speaker 12: So, now I got as a materialist empiricist, I'm not
too up to speed on all of the philosophy words
I've heard them before. I might need you to explain
them to me. Hannah, Please do assume that I don't
know what you're talking about unless I indicate otherwise.
Speaker 3: Speak to us all like we're five. Honestly, it's it's
it's a good way. It's a good way to talk
to fit. Uh. Yeah, please go ahead, tell us tell
us your thoughts. Why why why not materialism or physicalism
what are those having that are problematic?
Speaker 11: Well, just just just before I did that, could I
also ask just from gelf identifies as a methodological as
a post to methodological materialist, a methodological as a post metaphysical.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would definitely say I'm a methodological naturalist.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So just real quick, Hanna, I'll just help anybody in
the audience that isn't totally up to speed. Just basically,
what all three of us are saying is we are
not categorically ruling out immaterial or non physical things. But
what we are saying is currently, when it comes to
investigating the things around us, when it comes to generally
operating from day to day, we are going under the
assumption that the answer is not going to be any
one of those things. We haven't We haven't gotten there
just yet. But I think I think that's a decent
I'm sure somebody's gonna yell at me about that, though, Hannah,
So what do you think? Where are we going?
Speaker 11: So there's several problems I think. So the first is
I would like the first to be the problem with
trying to define a rigid, rigid rigid methodology. And the
second thing I think is problems from cognitive science against
materialism and physicalism. I think I should first start with
the epistemological one, because we talked a lot about the
cognitive science part last time, and I would like to
get more to mythological logical problems. So one of the
problems I have with materialism and physicalism, especially when I
was talking about using it in scientific theories, is that,
so are you familiar with Sir Carl Popper and his
theory of falsification as a demarcation between science and non science.
Speaker 12: No, the only popular I read was the three world's theorem,
and that was for a cognitive science essay I did
in universities. I've almost forgotten all of that. And also
I don't only get on the board with that because
the third world, the immaterial world, I've never seen any
evidence for it. So while I used it as as
the backbone of an essay I wrote once, I'm not
entirely certain that I would agree with Popper that there's
a third immaterial world. But maybe I'm getting off track.
Speaker 11: Here, so Popper's I'm not necessarily arguing ing Popper's point
about the three world the more I arguing his methodological point,
because I said like, we're going to make this distinction
between the metological and then the arguments from the metaphysical methodological.
Problem with materialism physicalism is that Popper had argued, and
I think this makes sense because of the problem of induction,
pointed out by people like David Hume, is that you
can never be certain that a scientific theory is true.
But what you can say is that we can falsify assertions.
And the problem with methodological materialism methological physicalism, especially if
it's used in scientific theories, is that I don't believe
it can become the scientific using Popper's criteria falsifiability because
I don't know what I can't even conceive of something
that would falsify materialism or physicalism and a scientific Ah.
Speaker 1: Okay, go ahead, go ahead, John, Yeah, Well, I was
just gonna ask, like, what are you offering some kind
of competing thing, because like, here's how I view science
and empiricism and methodological naturalism. It's an effort to try
and figure out or build a worldview or a view
of reality that is most closely aligned to the actual
reality that exists. And so this scientific effort constantly needs
to update itself because the fact is that we are
human beings where the world, our reality is filtered through
our senses and how we view things. And so with
us being so limited in that way, we have to
constantly update and change our view of reality.
Speaker 2: So are you offering a better way to figure things out?
Speaker 11: Well, so I'm not necessarily saying that. So, first of all,
I would like to say, in response to medicine metological
naturalism when I'm criticizing them as metological materialism, metological physicalism,
not naturalism and naturalism and physicalism and materialism aren't.
Speaker 6: The same thing, right.
Speaker 11: All naturalism is that everything operates according to clause of nature,
and are naturalists who pose the existence of non material
entities which are natural here. But what I'm trying to
argue is more so that not necessarily that there's a
better alternative. My argument is that there shouldn't be a
rigid methodology that science more the empirical method operates under,
because I don't believe you can ever induce even probability
of the scientific area. Instead of what we can do
is we can create models, and those models can involve
material or immaterial things.
Speaker 1: But whatever ythes okay, okay, hold on, So Hannah, Listen.
The thing that I'm trying to get to is that
the scientific method is our best way to formulate a
view of reality that best comports with the actual reality
that exists.
Speaker 2: It's the best way that we found to.
Speaker 1: Inform ourselves about what is real and what is not real,
what is fabricated? What if not the scientific method and
the achievements of science, but scientific reasoning, what is the
other way that we are to form an accurate view
of reality? Like what I guess I'm just not understanding,
Like I get it. The scientific method is is, you know,
can be limited. It's definitely limited to reality. You know,
silly of scientists to only be concerned was real shit.
But if you have a better way of determining what's
actually real, I'm sure everybody in this call would love
to know that. And for all the flaws that science
can have, does have, or possibly has, what's the better
way to do it?
Speaker 8: Well?
Speaker 11: So, perhaps Unsinning, you're assuming that there is a better way,
And what I'm arguing here is there is no quote
unquote better way. What I'm arguing is there are different
meth methodologies for how to propose hypothesis. None of them
will comport to reality. Well, you can do is you
can propose a hypothesis and then prove it wrong in
some limited context, but you can never prove anything about reality.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're not but you're not saying But you're not saying, Hannah,
that we can't have any understanding of the world around us, right,
you're not saying that. So we have talked about a
lot on this platform, on other platforms about the fact that, yeah,
at the center of all of our methodologies, at the
center of all of our understandings of everything, it all
has this gigantic, gaping.
Speaker 13: Hole in it.
Speaker 3: But we can still build and make progress and actually
understand things and come to come to reasonably held conclusions.
You're not saying that all of that venture is just
completely worthless, no, no, Okay, so it doesn't.
Speaker 6: So hang on.
Speaker 3: So the the issue that you're bringing up is not
one that that actually is a problem for this methodology,
because it is the same issue that every single methodology has.
Everything falls back down to that black hole of nothingness
where we go, well, it's either ad infinitum, it's either
a presupposition, or it's fucking circular. That's it. That is
the answer at the end of the day, and all
we can do from there is then start to evaluate
both of those in the real world. And that's where
the science of it comes into. And that's what ge
was getting at. Like if you and I both have
different ways of building this car, and I get in
my car, started up and drive to the end of
the fucking block and you never move, Man, I don't
care what's at the whole the center of my you know,
methodology that's fucked up. We both have it, and apparently
mine still builds cars.
Speaker 12: Yeah, And I've got just quick question. If you feel
so critical of materialism and physicalism, can you give me
an example of something that is both immaterial and real.
Speaker 11: Well, first of all, we're talking about the methodology and
where you're asking more of a question of metaphysics. But
I believe as are just misrepresenting what position on the
scientific method help me out? Which is one I think
was that helped me out.
Speaker 3: I don't want to misrepresent, so please correct.
Speaker 11: Me so to be as precise as possible. What I'm
saying is that is not that there is a truth
which we can come close to that is corresponds to
the external reality, because I don't believe you can ever
correspond to the external reality with certainty, with the exception
of mathematics.
Speaker 3: Perhaps so, but I don't I don't care about I
don't care about certainty. I don't care about whether or
not we know that it corresponds with one certainty. That
is not a problem.
Speaker 11: Right, finish my position before you'd like continue, because I've
let you like explain, like your buddle to my point,
and then like.
Speaker 3: But ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 11: But what I believe what we can do is we
can become We can propose models which don't correspond to
reality per se, but because they have enough predictive methodology,
they have enough predictive power. They're not true, but we
treat them as true in a sense that we'll use
them in the way we construct technology, we'll use them
in the.
Speaker 3: Way we live.
Speaker 11: And so something like does bit a certain medicine cure
a certain disease or not? Well, I don't believe you can.
I agree that induction certain induction is impossible. But what
I believe is you can take that even create a
hypothesis about how the medicine works and the causal relationships
that the medicine has to the human biology, and if
it's not proven wrong and it has enough predictive power
that when people take the medicine a curious disease, we're
not necessarily posing an absolute causal relationship, but we still
treat it as true.
Speaker 3: So tentative truth, tentative truth based on scientific data and evidence,
is where we sit, is what you're saying. If I'm
following correctly, how is that a pushback in any way,
shape or form on materialism or physicalism? Hannah? Everything I
just sat through and let you explain had nothing to
do with what we're talking about. So please help me out.
Since you so so desperately to let me know that
you had to get this thought out, I want you
to get your fucking thoughts out, Hannah. I want you
to clarify. But if you're gonna do that every time,
I am not gonna let it go because I'm telling
you what you just said had absolutely no bearing on
the conversation. So connect it back for me. What's the
problem with materialism and physicalism when it comes to holding
tentative truth?
Speaker 11: Well, so the problem with materialism physicalism as methodology, And
first of all, it's not about evidence, I said, It's
about falsification or proving wrong. It's not about giving evidence
for theory, but creating predictive power, which is not falsified
when it comes to materism physicalism. The problem I have
with this methodology is it's not falsifiable, so I can't
think that I can't conceive of evidence that you could
present to a metological materialist or metrological basically.
Speaker 3: So this is what I wanted to go back to,
because this is where you got off the track from
the beginning, and I was trying to help you out
with this. What you're doing is you're trying to find
scientific evidense for a philosophical problem. You're not going to
find a You're not going to find a test tube
or a beaker or any type of methodology that can
be run okay in a physical, tangible scientific, in a
lab sense, to help you out with the paradoxes like
the grim reaper paradox or anything, because they are they
are in a separate category. So what you would have
to do is you would have to use other philosophical justification,
which we can do, which is why I went through
the whole time of talking about Munchausen's trilemma again, Hannah,
because that's the way you play that game. My theory
has a hole, your theory has a hole. Nobody's fucking perfect.
But then from there we have to go out into
the real world and see how it comes back to us.
And so far we don't have anything from the non materialist.
We don't have anything from the non physical. It is
all one hundred percent in our camp and that's where
we need to go.
Speaker 11: But you made a mistiken point there, and I think
that's where the misrepresentation of my position comes in about
the methodology and my Christian materialsm physicism and reparting this
because you're asking, am I trying to provide evidence or
something that I'm here, I'm saying there is no such
thing as evidence. There is no such thing as something
which you can provide which confirms or verifies a theory.
Speaker 8: There is no evidence.
Speaker 3: There is logical argumentation. That's what I'm saying. You're mixing
up the categories. You're not understanding, You're not understanding what
you're looking for. You're digging in the sand and you're
hoping to find gold, but you have no idea what
the fuck gold looks like or the properties of it.
You know what to do when a philosophical argument sounds
kind of wonky, and it's to go and argue the philosophy.
You're not going to find it. You're not going to
find the evidence in that. You're telling me something that
is like yeah, man, of course, not like you're walking
up to me saying like, hey, you just made all
these us But do you know what you're not gonna
find in those cupcakes? Chili? You're never gonna find a
nice fucking meaty chili in those Yeah, I know that, bro,
I ain't worried about that. We move on to the
next thing. We actually try to get some answers on this,
but I'm sorry, I'm rambling. Please, Jamie, I know you had.
Speaker 12: The thing that really blew my mind was using the
example of testing medicines as a as a as a
counterpoint to physical, physical, physical, and material methodology for testing,
because we absolutely must use a physical we're physical creatures.
Speaker 2: I'm a human being.
Speaker 12: Like, we test these medicines and we can know whether
like falsify the theory that this works, if it doesn't
cure the disease or worse, kill someone, then we can
pretty definitively say that we have falsified the hypothesis that
these medicine works like and it's all done through materialism.
It's not. There's no there's nothing outside the material when
it comes to medical science.
Speaker 3: And if you want to argue, if you want to
push back on that methodology, you don't do that by saying, well,
there's no test you can run to prove it, of
course not. That's not where the falsification is problematic. The
falsification is problematic in the philosophical sense. It is problematic
because it is a non sequitur. It doesn't follow, the
logic doesn't work. That's where you have to push back.
So you're not gonna you're not gonna be able to
push back on materialism or physicalism this way, just like really,
it is not pushing back on dualism to say, yeah,
well you can't find any evidence for blah blah blah,
that does not actually disprove dualism, right, because because that's
just not what you do in that arena. It would
be like, I'm not gonna give another example. We're already
over time hand. I'm just gonna drop you real abruptly.
I'm so sorry. I do appreciate you calling. I really
do enjoy these conversations. I don't get them enough, so
thank you so much, and I apologize if I was rude.
I don't know if you're watching or listening or whatever,
but sometimes I just get a little frustrated when I
am trying to help us make progress and then somebody's like, no, no,
fuck you, you're taking us off track, and then takes
us off track. So yeah, what do you guys?
Speaker 12: It did feel kind like Hannah wanted me to falsify
this mug.
Speaker 6: How do you?
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, if you could, though, if you
could just real quick, you know, just no, I'm kidding, Please,
don't look. I don't know if we I don't know
if we got, you know, many good arguments today. We
did have, though, a couple of people. They're really focused
on the wrong pig, like, oh, invisible unicorns can't be pink.
It's like, oh my god, man, yeah, come on.
Speaker 12: The whole show. You just titled that which cannot be
can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without thought.
The show and an Orgy oft is the name of
my death Core, a flop of Seagulls cover band.
Speaker 3: I love that orgy of Poltergeis. I think that is
an absolutely awesome, awesome thing that we learned about today.
If you out there in your in your life ever
are feeling sad or bummed out, just remember that all
around you, Eggregor I are fucking constantly, and it might
be invisible pink unicorns as well. There's no way, there
is no way that I don't get yelled at at
the end of this. Hey, gee, it's good hanging out
with you, man. We had a fun time as I
don't know if you have any thoughts you want to
wrap everybody up with or you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, I mean, I think that today's callers were
kind of interesting. I wish that we got more direct
answers to things. And I'm I'm really sad that you
know that he couldn't falsify my pink unicorn orgy, like
just you know, thinking about you know, three pink unicorns
doing a spitfire, you know sort of thing, roast spit
roast on.
Speaker 2: One in the middle. I mean, that's I mean that
that would make my day right there.
Speaker 3: I think it's the only way unicorns have sex.
Speaker 12: Fire is what happens when you mix up the loop
with the deep Europe.
Speaker 13: Yes, yes, yes, yes, Oh my god, Well Jamie, thank
you so much for jumping in on that last call
with us and hanging out the whole time.
Speaker 3: We always appreciate you, man, I love I am. I'm
going to try to be down there for the bat Cruise.
I'm gonna try to be down there August sixteenth of
this year, which is exactly sixty nine days away. Okay,
and you know, before the crew cuts me off or anything.
As always, I'm just reminding you Sunday's four thirty pm Central.
But I really do think we should have like condoms
or sex toys or something. I really think at this
point like we could. We can do a lot with them.
You know, I don't know what the crew thinks about, right, Yeah,
you're right, christ On a cracker sr.
Speaker 2: What the hell are you thinking?
Speaker 3: Come on those magical chips kidding?
Speaker 9: Is that what comes?
Speaker 3: I mean, I thought it was funny. I mean it's
good marketing.
Speaker 2: I have read here, you know that, right right.
Speaker 9: Creditors were lived.
Speaker 11: Some of them.
Speaker 3: Watch Talking Than Live Sundays at one pm Central. Visit
tiny dot c C slash y T t H and
call into the show at five one two nine nine
one nine two four two, or connect to the show
online at tiny dot c c slash call th H