Speaker 1: If you need a reminder that separation of church and
state isn't just a polite suggestion, but a vital safeguard
for human life, look at the Pentagon right now. The
Military Religious Freedom Foundation reports that it has received hundreds
of complaints from service members alleging that quote gleeful commanders
are framing the war in Iran as not just a
matter of geopolitical strategy, but as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
For example, an NCO reported that their commander had quote
urged us to tell our troops that this was all
part of God's divine plan, and he specifically referenced numerous
citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to armageddon
and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that, quote,
the president has been anointed Jesus to light the signal
fire in Iran to cause armageddon.
Speaker 2: And mark his return to Earth.
Speaker 1: If you're surprised, then you haven't been paying attention when
people are praying over the president in the Oval office,
praising his divine warrant, and the Secretary of Defense is
hosting prayer meetings at the Pentagon with open Christian nationalists.
No one should be surprised when a religious fanatics in
our officer corps feel emboldened to declare to their troops
that their mission is no longer the national security of
the United States, but a Christian mission to bring about
the end of the world.
Speaker 2: None of this is surprising.
Speaker 1: It's all just alarming signposts confirming we have officially left
the realm of reality.
Speaker 2: Look, when you believe.
Speaker 1: Your leaders have a divine mandate, you stop seeking diplomatic exits,
You stop valuing the lives of the enemy because they're
just Amalekites in a script that was written two thousand
years ago, and you stop questioning anything you are ordered
to do. If you have thoughts about a death cult
running the most powerful military on the planet, where its
members are actively seeking to bring about the annihilation of
all life, give us a call.
Speaker 2: The show starts.
Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, everybody. Today is March fifteenth, twenty twenty six.
I am your host, the Cross Examiner, and I'm delighted
to say that joining me right now is Jmike.
Speaker 2: How you doing, man, I am doing awesome.
Speaker 3: I'm going to make sure I don't bleed audio when
I try to get people pulled in from the other platforms.
Speaker 2: That we have.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so I'm going to click this button and
if I did it right, we will hear nothing.
Speaker 2: We heard nothing, all right.
Speaker 3: Body praised me in the comments I didn't mess up
today because literally everything I've done today has been one
giant mess.
Speaker 2: Up after the next mess up. So I had to
It's a miraccle. Yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: No, I'm I'm I'm stoked, man. I haven't been on
the show in a while, so yeah, I had. I
saw in like a comment on YouTube, someone was like,
we miss you, and I was like, someone misses me.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 3: They're like they made it seem like I was gone
forever or something.
Speaker 2: I was like, no, no, no, they come.
Speaker 1: They threw a bible at you, and they missed you.
Speaker 3: I've talked with THESS now for I don't even know,
like eight years online or something, and I'm.
Speaker 2: Just there was a really nice break. I will put
it that way. I think that's good.
Speaker 3: I've been doing this a couple like a little small
breaks out of time. Yeah, but I'm back in this
out now, I think, oh, great fully back at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah, I know I've missed you. You're one
of my favorites to be with. You always have such
great insight, especially on the philosophical matters. I'm really looking
forward to taking some calls with you today.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, man, we we we had a blast in
person together.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, you're like homies now.
Speaker 1: That cruise time. Yeah all right, well let's get into it.
We've got some calls, so I'm just going to do
our an official declaration that the Atheist Experience is a
product of the Atheist Community of Austin.
Speaker 2: We are a five oh one c three organization.
Speaker 1: It's a nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of atheism,
critical thinking, secular humanism, and my personal favorite, the separation
of religion and government. We do have some calls, So
unless you got anything you wanted to die into chat about,
do you want to jump into some then.
Speaker 2: No, let's let this. Let's let this spark it up.
Speaker 3: I mean, I kind of told you before what I
was on my mind before the show, and yeah, I
don't want to I.
Speaker 1: Don't want to be take a minute, let's let's talk
about it.
Speaker 3: I'm just scared, man, It's just I just think there
needs to be more like conceded effort for people to
really have these types of conversations with other people. I'm
there's certain shows, one of which is like the most
popular show. It's like ever existed, and it just there's
a lot of platforming of just science denial, and it's
it freaks me out and I'm trying to get like
maintain a positive I want to make sure people aren't like,
oh man, Mike's putting me down today with this. So
I don't want to start off on a horrible note,
but yeah, I want to be frank that I this
scares me.
Speaker 2: You know a lot of what's what's going on, and I.
Speaker 3: Just urge people to have more conversations, get online, get
on the tiktoks, talk with people immediately around you have
these conversations. Don't have that pit in your stomach that
I do sometimes where I'm like, oh, I'm an atheist
and I don't want to explain this to coworker whatever.
You know, if well, maybe working might not be the
best scenario, but outside of that, if you have that
kind of feeling, just be honest because that might be
enough for someone to be like I don't really meet
very many atheists and you can change their perspective like
that they already probably have buried.
Speaker 2: In their mind.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, you know, it just reminded me. It
didn't really put two and two together until just now
I saw. I took my family, my son from college
is home from spring break, and my younger sons here,
and we took them all out to see the movie
Hoppers yesterday. It's a new Pixar film. I'd rank it
above average for Pixars, so it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: I'm so out of the loop. I've never even heard
of it. It's the takeaway is addressing.
Speaker 1: I think what you're talking about, which is the general
plot you'll get even from the marketing, is there's a
girl who's very concerned that this highway project is going
to put a belt weigh right through a little pond
that a lot of animals go to, and she's overwhelmed
by the fact that she can't stop that, Like it's
this big thing and she can't stop it. And the
overall message of the movie is you don't have to
stop it. You just have to focus on the little
stuff that you can control. And I think that's the
message of our modern era is you can hear me
with my dire. Like you know, I tend to focus on, hey,
this is a wake up call. We've got commanders in
the US military saying your mission is now to bring
about armageddon.
Speaker 2: That should worry and scare people.
Speaker 1: But then I'm hopeful that with millions of people doing
a little bit here and there, like you said, talking
to a neighbor, somebody brings it up at a party
of like, oh, you know this, that or the other
thing about the war or about religion, you can have
a gentle but firm conversation about that and hopefully moderate
somebody's view. If you moderate somebody's view to be non extreme,
you've done your part. So I recommend you know, go
in and seeing that movie if you look in for
a little pick me up, because it is very funny.
One of the funniest jokes I've ever seen in a
Pixar movie is and it's kind of people shockingly funny.
Speaker 2: People stay in all.
Speaker 3: Groups and all tribes, right, It's like, yep, you kind
of stay in your bubble a lot, and it's like
a very normal, like at least I think it's a
very like natural kind of feeling that when you go
outside of it, you're kind of nervous or you might
not want you might not.
Speaker 2: Want to see, you know what, what's.
Speaker 3: On the other side, right, it might make you really
fearful about the beliefs you have. And I think that
happens with like a lot of people. But I think
that's like that catalyst because I know for me, like
growing up and having you know, weird psychedelic experiences and
beliefs that you know, I I'm very anti the psychedelics
open you up to the spiritual world. Like I'm very
like the antithesis of that because of my past and
a lot of what opened that up, like was having
a conversation with some of my friends that were like,
this is the dumbest shit I've ever heard, Like you say,
like what are you?
Speaker 2: What are you saying and kind of calling me out.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know that's the best approach, but yeah,
I had never I was never even thinking beyond like,
I'm right.
Speaker 2: This is so true. I had an experience. I feel it,
you know.
Speaker 3: And it took someone kind of just bluntly saying like, look,
that's stupid for X, Y and Z, and I was
just like, shit, I can't really say anything back to you.
Speaker 1: Right, and if you're and if you're somebody having a
gentle conversation with somebody else, you don't know if it's
the first time they've heard this or you're the seventh
person who said it, and that's the straw that both
broke the camel's back. So it doesn't have to be
one person changing a person's mind. Some kids stop believing
in Santa Claus because they're teased. Some kids stop believing
because they start learning about science. Some it's just the
weight of like all my friends are coming to me
and like saying, hey man, you know a little bit
at the time. So exactly, you don't have to feel
the burden of the world on you. But if you
feel like helping, it can be as easy as volunteering
anything that you feel like will help you psychologically in these,
let's face it, troubling times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 3: Hard to like say this is the way to do
it because a lot of it's stumbled upon scenarios that
you know, you don't expect and then like I didn't
you know, I wouldn't expect for me to kind of
revert back into the you know, I thought I had
seen something more than you know, what what I had
started out with, which like agnostic atheists kind of vibe,
and I was like, oh, no, you know what I'm
there's something here or whatever. And I never thought for
a second i'd i'd be like, oh, go back to
this cynical kind of atheist or something that it was like, well, no,
I just had you know, I was just pissed off
kid initially, and then I got older and started experimenting
and stuff I probably shouldn't have probably explained why my
train of thought so wild sometimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, you just never it's.
Speaker 3: Almost when you kind of are like this has settled
for me, do you least you know, you least expect it.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the most opportune time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at least for me it was because it was
kind of like, oh fuck, I don't know anything, you
know that at least for me, it was real sobering.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you'll never know when you'll be that for somebody else,
like you'll you'll you'll spark that sort of both like
oh crap, I do need to question things with somebody
and that could be enough. Like it's it's very rewarding
to have somebody come back to you years later and mention, Hey,
by the way, you were one of the people who
said this thing and it really got me thinking, and yeah,
you know it doesn't have to be today.
Speaker 2: All Right, we do have some calls.
Speaker 1: Let's jump into it and have Michael he him from
New Mexico, wants to ask the hosts about their morals
concerning slavery, murder, et cetera. I know, uh, this is
right up your alley, j Mike. So Michael, can you
hear us? Do we have you write?
Speaker 2: What is it that you'd like to talk about?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I just wanted to call in and pretty much
talk about slavery, murder, torture, those things. We all disagree
with them, and oftentimes Christians will say they disagree with
those things, right, and then turn around and defend them. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm gonna let you talk.
I do. I'm going to disagree with you on one point.
Speaker 1: I don't think we all we all disagree with all
of the things you said. I think the big three
are typically murder, rape, and slavery. But we have seen
in especially in recent times, I've seen people who will
argue that sometimes those are justified and you mentioned torture.
I could probably find a whole bunch of people who
think that torture would be morally justified.
Speaker 2: But anyway, please do continue.
Speaker 4: Sure, I guess, I guess everything could be morally justified.
I mean, there's very few cases where they just justified.
But like most things, I guess I would say needless,
needless torture, needless murder.
Speaker 5: And you know a lot of the times, Christians.
Speaker 4: Will turn around and defend these things, defend the concept
as hell, defend slaving the Bible. But I noticed a
lot of atheists will try to defend the same things
if you ask them about doing the things to animals.
Speaker 1: Well, let's define then before I'd love to hear a J.
Mike on this, So let's define. Let's take murder, right,
the worst one. Probably slavery may be worse, but both
slavery and murder are in my definition. And just so
you know where I'm coming from, I am an attorney.
So when I think of murder, I go to the
open the law books, and it is the unjustified killing
of a human being by a human being. That's murder, right,
That's the law in every jurisdiction in the United States generally,
so that's something that we all agree on. The unjustified
killing of a non human by a human is not
generally agreed upon by far.
Speaker 2: In fact, I.
Speaker 1: Don't think it's it's illegal that particular act unless it
is called animal cruelty.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There are statutes for animal cruelty, and some of them
include killing of an animal as cruel but some don't.
So I think that we can have a conversation about
that difference, like why is it that we all agree
that the unjustified killing of a human is bad enough
that we're going to criminalize it. We're not just going
to find you, but we're going to criminalize it, but
we disagree on the other one.
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts? J Mike Oh, I.
Speaker 3: Want to say, what if he has a response to
you first, because I don't maybe he's got to YEA.
Speaker 1: So my question there is, how do you explain that
Do you at least acknowledge that we don't have agreement
on the killing of animals and that I would I
would assert that a significant number of people would very
much call those two different moral questions the killing of
a human versus the killing of an animal. Do you
agree that that is true. I'm not saying where you fall,
but do you agree that that's true?
Speaker 6: Yeah, like that definitely, it's true.
Speaker 4: There's a lot more division on whether or not it
is okay to do those things to end, and I
agree that legal, like not only legally, but ultimately people
drop distinctions.
Speaker 1: But yeah, okay, yeah, so J Mike, what's your take
on why that distinction exists or should or should not exist?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean when I hear those terms, I think
they're kind of there's already like baked in the wrongness
or something like that.
Speaker 2: So like, yeah, the.
Speaker 3: Use of the term murder, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's kind
of about this this it's like implied, you know, that's
unjustified at least the same kind of definition I have.
Speaker 2: I'm more so like.
Speaker 3: Interested in the because you had said something like, uh,
but they don't atheists want do this for like animals, right,
So you're like going on some kind of like a
vegan concern or something.
Speaker 7: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I don't I don't know that there's like
a great like you know, I have a lot of
friends that are vegan, and if they like run, you know,
name the trade on me. I'm like I don't fucking
know the trade. I I think it's maybe an unreasonable
demand to expect somebody to be able to like determine
what threshold or trait that that's you know, I don't know,
it seems like it could be unreasonable.
Speaker 2: Like, you know, I get it. I can't figure out how.
Speaker 3: To argue back with them, you know what I mean,
Like they they take me to task. So that's that's
always been like difficult for me because I don't want
sentient creatures to suffer, and so I don't know that
I have the best example for that, but I don't.
I just into it that like conscious creatures like animals
or certain animals are just like like I can have
well established projects and relationships and certain things that just
aren't privy.
Speaker 2: In the in the.
Speaker 3: The animal kingdom is to the degree at least that
I sympathize with. So, you know, for me, it's like
I want to be vegan. So it's a struggle that
I have, But I honestly couldn't give you you know,
I couldn't say I'm okay with it, like when I
eat a chicken sandwich, like I'm okay that a chicken
got you know, murdered or something, whereas like you know,
people that are defending slavery or or something like that,
like they're they're okay with it, like they seemingly are
okay with Oh they.
Speaker 2: Were indentured servitudes, and they this is something that they did.
Speaker 3: Like it's to me, it's a little different when I'm
you know, I'm actively like I don't want animals to suffer.
I'm very conditioned in my society, and I have very
limited options. I don't make a ton of money, so
I can't just go spend twice as much money on food,
you know, for vegan products, you know, so for for me,
I guess I don't really view those the same thing,
though I do kind of get your concern, if that
makes sense, Like I understand your concern. I just I
think that like Christians and other people that are, you know,
defending this, like they don't see it as wrong, right,
whereas I do, see I think we shouldn't.
Speaker 2: I think we should eat lab meat if I had
that option.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: I mean I do have to I do have to say,
like you don't have to spend twice as much money
on vegan food.
Speaker 1: I mean, hold on, hold on, hold on, let's let's
we might might might have been hyperbolic, but when I
have tried, have spent more money and been more hungry,
and it's been more of a like a nuisense than
me being happy.
Speaker 2: So you could just say I'm selfish. I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I want to keep this on the rails,
I guess before we get back to you, Michael, my
question for you is why did you call into a
show about religion and the separation of religion and government
about veganism. That's my real question, and you couched it
as I want to ask the host about their morals
concerning slavery murder, but what you really wanted to talk
about was veganism. I kind of feel like you were
very deceptive there.
Speaker 2: Can you explain that well?
Speaker 4: I mean, it truly is what I want to talk
about with slavery and murder, but just with regards to animals.
Speaker 6: I guess it was kind.
Speaker 4: Of like, I'm not trying to be I understand there
is a level of deception, and I don't. I thought
it was a good starting point to understand, like, hey,
we're out, okay.
Speaker 3: That's why I wanted to ask you about it because
that's what I had like suspected too. I was like,
you brought the animal thing, and I was like, I'm
thinking you want to make this a vegan thing, and
it's like I can't. And that's why I kind of
said what it says, like, I can't really give you
much man, like I would love to not eat animals
and and and be I would be happier in that
sense that I'm like, oh, I'm not contributing to this.
I've told like two of my really good friends about
like I don't know what it is. You know, I
eat a chicken sandwich. I don't like feel guilty or bad.
I can't like make myself feel bad. But if I
saw something like kick a puppy, I'd I can't reason
myself into being like what the fuck?
Speaker 2: But I would.
Speaker 3: I would be like just initially, I can't really explain that.
I mean, I think being conditioned in the society I
I'm in, it's partly to blame. I'm not trying to
take all of it off or anything, but it's just
it's not as interesting of a conversation to me on
this platform as it is like outside of this platform.
Speaker 1: Right, That's That's my question is why are you calling
a show entitled The Atheist Experience to talk about this?
Speaker 2: Oh? Just oh I'm in the dark. Hold on, we
can hear you. That's okay, I'll talk to Michael.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Michael, why are you calling a show called
The Atheist Experience to talk about veganism?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, you guys discuss morality a lot on
the show, and I think I wanted to discuss a
little bit about your guys morality and I understand, I mean,
not necessarily religion.
Speaker 2: But it's so so my but.
Speaker 1: I think, Okay, I don't want to put words in
your mouth, but nothing you said just now changes my
mind to think you want a call to advocate for veganism,
and I don't see what that has to do with religion.
Can you be an atheist and a vegan, Yes, you
can be vegan, yes. Can you be an atheist and
support slavery for humans yes?
Speaker 2: Can you be Christian and supports ye?
Speaker 8: Yes.
Speaker 2: So I don't understand why you're calling this show.
Speaker 1: Instead of the U pro meat call in show or
the pro vegan call in show?
Speaker 2: Why not call those shows? Why call this one?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 4: I mean I'm not aware of those kinds of shows.
But I mean, if you want to point me in
the right direction, if you're uninterested in.
Speaker 3: TikTok people, is that vegan the bogle, TikTok all sorts
of stuff.
Speaker 1: So what I'm hearing is you want to preach. You
weren't aware of any shows that were on topic, so
you called us.
Speaker 4: I mean, I didn't necessarily want to talk about veganism,
and like, how how expensive it is to buy fake
me products? Like twice its expensive.
Speaker 3: I know. Look, you could like absolutely destroy me on
that with just some empirical facts, right. All you have
to do is just show me some stuff, and I
concede right away and I'd be very happy about it.
Probably not the best choice of words for me to say.
I mean, it was an experience I had where I
was like, damn, okay, this was a little bit more pricey.
It's not I probably shouldn't have even said it. The
main point is, like, I mean, look, I can be
a moral realist. I could be a moral anti realist.
I could be an atheist and.
Speaker 2: Say I want everybody.
Speaker 3: I could be a misanthrop I want everybody on animals,
want everyone to die, Like I could say that I
could do that, right, It's kind of a like I
don't see what it has to do with especially with
like the cold opening we started with.
Speaker 2: It's it's very unrelated to what we're doing.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's just so many permutations of like an atheist,
being a vegan, not vegan realist about it and not
and not a realist about it. Like I don't really
know that it helps. I tried to be transparent with
you with my own kind of anxieties about this, just
to to be like, hey, look, I struggle with this
and I don't know the right solution. But I just
don't find that the same as like, you know, me
not being able to like pinpoint this as like, oh, well,
I can explain to you what exactly I think is
wrong about this other thing like slavery or torture, like
you know, torturing humans or something like that. You know,
it might take me a minute to like explain that
to you. But I don't know that means I'm like
inconsistent because like I have an inability to like explain
one aspect about my value system, right, like what.
Speaker 1: Are your thoughts Michael? And for the record, I just
wanted to point that out. I'm not saying you're a
bad person, and I think you've been very respectful and
polite during the call. So I just wanted to point
that out, and I need to be transparent on my motives.
I've been a fan of the show for many years
and a host on this show for several years. We
do get a lot of very deceptive people calling because
they just want to call and talk about whatever they
want to talk about. And some number of those are vegans,
and they come in and just they want to hijack
the conversation and yell at us and tell us that
we're running away when we say, hey, this is a
show about religion.
Speaker 2: Can we talk about something else.
Speaker 1: So you've been very respectful, except for I think for
the initial sort of questionable way you can describe the call.
I do want to let you keep talking, So could
you please respond to J Mike?
Speaker 5: Sure?
Speaker 4: So I understand that you, like you think that when
people are against human slavy, human murders, like when people
are four of those things, it's like they're okay with it.
But this is something that you struggle with necessarily okay
with it? Yeah, you don't you don't necessarily feel bad,
Like that's kind of what I'm hearing.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I'm not okay with it, but I'm being
trying to be honest and go. But like when I
eat a chicken sandwich, I'm not like, you know, very
sad and.
Speaker 2: Mourning the chicken or something, you know.
Speaker 3: But when I reflect on it, like we talk about
it now, I'm like, yeah, you know, like I do
care about syndient creatures.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not gonna like lie like what I
What I.
Speaker 3: Really fucking hate is I'll go see some of my
friends who are Vegan's debate and then you'll see from
like the meat eater side, just like.
Speaker 6: Steak steak, Yeah, fucking steak and.
Speaker 3: All have like a steak profile picture, and it's like
it makes me. It's like as a meat eater, like
embarrasses the shit out of me. I'm like, God, like,
there's no and when I've seen some of the better ones,
I haven't seen like a cojuin argument or anyone make
these like good points. Uh So I struggle like philosophically
with it. Right, It's something that I want to change
about myself. I just haven't actively made that change. I'm
just trying to be transparent to you with like, you know,
my own anxieties with it, Like yeah, I mean, yeah,
I can be inconsistent hundred percent, but I don't find
that to be inconsistent with like, you know, other points
of my value system. You'd have to kind of show
me how it's necessarily related.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, I mean, no, I get it.
Speaker 1: I think I'm with you. I mean I haven't even
discussed my position yet. So my take on this is
very similar to Jay Mike's. It's like, if somebody asked me,
what's one moral stance you have now that you might
be wrong about, it would be sort of where that
line is now. I do think there's a line if
I'm asked, is there's two burning buildings and there's a
human baby and a tank full of tadpoles? Which would
you save? You can only save one, I'm picking the
human baby.
Speaker 2: Why.
Speaker 1: Well, I could describe a big difference between the potential
and all of that, but what it really boils down
to in the end, because I could ask that same
question between there's you know, ten chimpanzees and a human baby,
which are you saving? Well, now it's a tougher question
for me, and that's what morals are, right. Morals are
not an answer yes or no. It's like examining where
lines are and around that line there's a gray area
and you start having conversations. So it has something to
do with the level of sentience potential of what your
life could do for both you and for humanity and
for the world. And it has, if I'm honest with myself,
something to do with speciism, both conscious and evolved.
Speaker 2: Right, We've all evolved.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons we have morals in the first place,
in my opinion, is sort of this evolutionary trait where
altruistic behavior benefits the species and enables it to reproduce
and survive.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Put short, piranha don't eat each other.
Speaker 2: And there's a reason for that. Right.
Speaker 1: So there's a bunch of things I could point out
to say, I think there's a difference, and I think
there's a line where exactly that is. I think it's
different from person to person and case by case. So
I'm generally in the agreement with you.
Speaker 2: And j Mike. What are your thoughts on that? Do
you have any questions?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that makes sense to me.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of gray areas.
Speaker 4: We can talk about chimpanzees with babies, how many, how
many tied up on one side of the track, either
have to be if you pull the lever anyone over
this amount of mentally disabled babies, Like we can we
can talk about these things. But I mean, I guess,
I guess what I'm interested in is like kind of
if we were doing the.
Speaker 5: Animals what we did to humans for ExM you.
Speaker 6: Know, slaughtering humans.
Speaker 4: And I understand you bring up speciesism, bring up speciesism,
like altruistic behavior towards one zone species, you know, leads
the species to gribe.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, real quick, but real quick, I don't
know that he's saying he might. I don't think he is,
because I mean, you could just run some name the
trait kind of well it seems like equivalent to being
racist or something, which you know, friends that like make
that kind of argument.
Speaker 2: But I think he's saying.
Speaker 3: He understands how he has a nature and he knows
that Jay Mike has a very similar kind of nature
we share in nature as humans, and he knows what
it's like he has like a quality, right, a qualitative
experience of what it's like to suffer. And it's not
clear that that inference could I mean, maybe it's not.
It might not be clear to him that that inference
could be made about other particular species or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there's three different things related to speciism. One
was uh, and I use the word admittedly. I was
admitting there's some speciism in.
Speaker 2: There, right, Oh sorry, I must have no.
Speaker 1: No, no, But there's there's three. There's three different interpretations
that I meant all simultaneous. I tried to hit them all.
So there's speciism in the sense of I am a
product of billions of years of evolution that has encouraged
altruistic behavior towards your self, your kind, right, your your
your tribe, right, that has benefited evolution, So that instinct
is strong. I would argue it's very strong, beaten only
by the urge to eat and reproduce and those other things.
But I think it's a very strong and you see
it across all species, many many species. You see this
or not everyone, but it's it seems to be an
element of evolution. Now, does that mean I'm arguing that
anything that is produced through evolution is morally good?
Speaker 2: No, I'm not making that argument.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, admittedly, that's playing into who I am
and how I make that evaluation of Like, there's an
instinct in me that as between tadpoles and a human baby,
I'm gonna save the baby. And part of that comes
from billions of years of evolution that train me to
think that large heads on four limbed bodies with large
eye to head ratio are cute, scientifically proven like that.
It's it's a precious thing that it should be preserved,
it should be protected. So I'm admitting that, But also
I'm admitting that from a speciest point of view that
I understand I can relate to. As you were saying,
I can relate to a human, I can. I think
I can relate to a chimpanzee. We have a local
zoo I go to. I skip the chimpanzee exhibit because
I don't think that the chimpanzees should be there unless
there's a very good reason. And but I don't think
that same about the lizard exhibit or the snake exhibit.
So I'm just admitting that for many reasons, I think
I agree with you, But I think there's an interesting conversation.
And but I guess getting back to my main point
is I'm not sure this is the show to talk
about it one because really our audience is looking for
people who are calling in to talk about religion, and
whether you're religious or not, you can you can, you
can have those beliefs or not have those beliefs.
Speaker 2: I will say, I do think this is like a
very important topic though. Yeah, you're yeah.
Speaker 1: I think in the next generation or two it will
be the thing that changes the most. I think it's
sort of the next social thing to fall maybe or
one of the next few maybe that that will become
more prominent, especially with lab grown meat.
Speaker 2: I'm looking for you too, so.
Speaker 3: That, I mean, that would relieve a lot of my
especially if I know I'm not not like, you know,
carcinogenic or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, try to try to figure out
co labgrown meat by Jewel, Yeah, exactly. Like, let me
see who's making this first.
Speaker 3: No, I this is something that I have philosophical anxieties
on or moral anxieties, whatever you want to call it.
I don't know what I'm saying, so I I completely
get it, and I like, you know, like I said,
I have a lot of friends that have this position,
and I don't know how to argue with them. A
lot of times I think they're you know, it's a
really hard position for Uh. If if someone wanted to call,
like j Mike's running, that's a conversation I will actively
run from and be like, oh you're running. Name the
trade them out of your PC. You know, deuces, so
you know, like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think put a put another way.
Uh well, let me ask Michael. I don't want to
hug the conversation. Michael, what are your thoughts about what
we are saying?
Speaker 5: Well, what you.
Speaker 4: Said about the evolution of our species was very interesting,
and it is kind of it was basically an explanation,
you know, as to why we value our own species.
But I mean, I'm concerned with whether or not it's
moral to only value our species. And I think you mentioned.
Speaker 1: And that's what I said, right, I said, I'm not
arguing that because evolution produced an effect, it's a good effect.
Evolution is explains a lot of bad things, the desire
to dominate, to rape, to enslave. You could you can
tie that up and evolution as to tribalism and me
the ego has to be the most important thing in
evolution if you're going to survive, unless you're using some
sort of insect overwhelm metaphor where my ego doesn't matter.
It more matters that we overwhelm. But but just because
evolution produces a thing doesn't mean it's good, and I
pointed that out. So my point about that is it
is explanatory and it is one of those things that's
very hard to overcome, just like the sex drive and
the desire to eat and other things. It's so inbred
in us. And again I'm not a biologist, but everything
I've read on the topic, like tribalism, altruistic behavior amongst
your your fellows, comes from ell. So just wanted to
clarify that. Please continue, Michael, Sure, sure that makes sense.
Speaker 4: And I think I heard you say that. You said, now,
just because I'm saying this, that doesn't make anything explain
through evolution moral. But I thought that you were saying
that that kind of influences how you make the moral
judgment about whether or not it's a pay to do
a dute animals. I thought that's kind of what you
were saying.
Speaker 1: I think it influences how I make the judgment, I
wouldn't necessarily call that particular element moral. I would say
that influence is my decision making for sure.
Speaker 3: When you say a moral by the way, like, are
you like it's quitely not important? I'm just curious, are
you here ago do you believe in like objective morality
or or no?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean I I don't know as much as I
could on this, but I don't see a way to
bridge is the hot gap. I mean, I think that
if I say it's wrong to kill people, that's my opinion.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Oh well, I mean you can be you can be
a realist and then concede like yeah, like the isot is,
like there's this problem in like logic, Like I'm not
going to be able to just like smuggle in these
values that you know weren't anywhere in the premises, right,
But you could still be a realist and accept that
kind of distinction or whatever inability to bridge.
Speaker 1: J Mike for for our audience, define moral realism and
its opposite.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like a moral realist is I mean, I
guess you'll find anyone that might have a different position,
but like generally it's someone that believes that there are
stance independent moral facts. So by that you mean there
are facts independent of the opinions or stance that you
might take or like, you know.
Speaker 1: If humans didn't exist, for example, this rule would still
hold true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's in.
Speaker 3: It's like it's like if I shoved the ball in
your face and you close your eyes and you're like, no,
it's not there. I don't see what stance the ball
stance independently exist. I understand you, you have your other opinions,
but the facts are that despite your opinion.
Speaker 2: It exists.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a moral realist believes there are moral rules
first as a shorthand. It's complicated, but yeah, I use
rules exist as almost a property of the universe, whether
or not you believe they exist, or whether or not
you even exist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it's I don't think. I think
the worst thing to do is like be really precise. Yeah,
with philosophy on like on a platform where like not
everybody's trying to like oh I'm.
Speaker 2: Waking up to read philosophy.
Speaker 3: Today or whatever, because it's not everybody's thing and it
just confuses and I'm trying to do way better at that.
So I think doing it in the broader terms, like
does actually just help people generally understand that, But yeah,
somebody you like a better maybe a better term that
the phil bros might get mad at as a mind independence, right,
and there's there are some issues on why you wouldn't
say that, but yeah, just it looks independent of what
you think, and it's true. And if I was just
curious if you had that position, because most vegans, I know,
they're they're moral anti real lists. They don't think that morals.
There's like a fact about what we should or shouldn't
do independent of what what they think. They just they
basically think they can show like inconsistency in other people's
value systems and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it sounds like Michael, from your as and
where you said you couldn't bridge the is at that
tends to in my mind, put you in sort of
the anti realist camp that it is an exercise in
deciding what the game is and then what the rules are,
and then following those rules and saying, well, if the
rules are this, therefore then we shouldn't treat animals this way.
But if the rules are that, then it's okay to
treat animals that ways, is that kind of where you are?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm a moral anti realist,
and I would say that I think I would go
a little far further than saying I can prove an
inconsistency in someone else's position, and that's that's as far
as I go with veganism. You know, I would say
that if we're going to say that it's not okay
to kill mentally disabled children, or if like a genetic
disease wipes across you such that fifty one point side
of people were genetically disabled, or if black people developed
it with me so that they technically could an intergreed
with everyone else technically wasn't human. You know, if we're
going to say that all those things all right, hold on,
if we're going to say that all those things still
don't make it okay to kill people, that I mean,
I think that it we logically as to say that
it's not okay to kill animals, not okay to great animals,
not okay to like boist them by the billions into
gas shapeles, you know, or.
Speaker 2: It's okay to do it to everybody. Yeah, I mean
one of the other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, depending on who you're talked to. I mean,
you can get into like particularism and and all this
kind of stuff for our responses to this kind of style.
Speaker 2: Argument or whatever.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, I I think that is actually
a good conversation. And maybe people in the audience won't
agree with me here, but I think that is actually
a good conversational piece to have. Like you if you can,
if you have a friend that's willing, and I mean,
please do it, especially to the people that are like
meet me, meet me like dumb Vegan, like, because that's
just so irrational and stupid. And I love to see
those people just like watch I just love to watch
their eyes like, oh gosh, like man, I was not
prepared to debate this Vegan like it's very very fascinating
and uh satisfying, I'll say to see, but yeah, I would.
I mean, I think it is good to be.
Speaker 2: Able to do that. I just think, you know, if
you run into I just.
Speaker 3: Think there's part of me that's like I think if
someone came up to me on the street and just
was like, at what point does like the value drop off?
And like when is it now permissible to like eat
this thing? It's like, I don't know. I mean, I
may have to sit down and reflect it just it
does seem like an unreasonable task for me to like
think about traits that I don't normally really think about
when my in my daily life and then do it.
But I think if once upon, once upon reflection, like yeah,
you could actually show that person that they're completely inconsistent.
I think a lot of vegans do successfully do that.
I think they successfully show that people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, Michael, we do have other callers.
Speaker 2: I do have one last question for you.
Speaker 1: I think it's fair play for me to ask this,
given we've given you all these answers.
Speaker 2: What is your religious belief.
Speaker 4: I'm an atheist.
Speaker 1: Okay, well there you go, atheist and vegan. Well, thanks
for calling in. I really do appreciate it. It is
it is a topic that's interesting. I think we gave
it a lot of airtime you because I think you
were so straightforward and honest and direct with us.
Speaker 2: So I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Feel free to call back if you do have any
sort of religious conversations you'd like to have in the future.
Speaker 2: Mike, I don't know.
Speaker 1: About you, but I've I've run into that call a bunch.
I'm reminded of the meme of the peta. I think
it was peta billboard that has a string of you know,
you know, chickens and cats and dogs and bunny rabbits
in some order, and then a horse and then a.
Speaker 2: Cow, and it says where do you draw the line?
Speaker 1: And that somebody had spray painted a line just above
horse and below cow and said right about there. And
I find that both just haha funny, but also it
speaks to sort of like when the rubber hits the road.
Speaker 2: I think that's how most people go about that issue, is.
Speaker 1: They're like, you know what, instinctually, I've been either indoctrinated
into a society or instinctually or a combination of a
bunch of things, that is about where I draw the line.
And if you want to change somebody's mind, you got
to do the hard work, which I think Michael is doing,
which is going to talk to a bunch of individual people.
Speaker 2: But this show, I think, I actually, yeah, I really,
I yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't think we'd like any issues with with with
with what he came, except for like the maybe initial
trying to discuis him. Yeah, yeah, but I will say yeah,
like that is the way you would do that. And
I know vegans that are very successful at you know,
running name the trade or something like that and getting
people to I mean, they might not turn to vegans,
but they It's hard for me to believe that person
didn't walk away going like, ah shit, maybe I am
a little inconsistent. I gotta figure this out or whatever,
and that's good. Yeah, maybe that's why I avoid that.
Maybe I don't want to. I don't want to be
I don't want to like have my own inconsistencies appear
in front of me.
Speaker 1: But you know, I've had my own evolution as well,
Like I no longer will eat any eggs that aren't
certified as being you know, range fed chickens. Like fighting
factory farming is a step along the way, and I'm
in favor of that through regulation and laws and all
of that stuff. Do I think we should blow up
farmers who are doing factory farming. No, I think we
need to educate, vote into office people who were willing
to regulate and overcome the farm lobby. And yes, it
will make that type of agriculture more expensive, but we
should also invest in science to counteract that and maybe
we can produce lab eggs and make it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would be great. All right, great.
Speaker 1: We have a few announcements. We also have other callers.
We do have lines open. If anybody's interested in calling,
please do give us a call the numbers at the
bottom of our screen. Love to talk to you about
anything related to religion and critical thinking, separation, church and state.
So my announcements are first, please like this video and
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Speaker 2: ACA meetup.
Speaker 1: Things like philosophy under the Stars, game nights, coming down
to the studio to watch broadcasts, and more.
Speaker 2: You can do all of that. I have been to
the studio. I met Mike there. It was great. We
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Speaker 3: We did it on the back crew. Hey, I get
spicy apparently right.
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That's every Sunday and the doors open at noon and
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this is my favorite part. You beat me to it.
The crew say, I'll put it back up. Put it
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a big thank out to you, the crew who put
this show together every week.
Speaker 2: You can see here we've got.
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Speaker 2: Chat moderator Tim Oh and then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tim, I can't I can't say enough about how
much they help. You may think that every week that's
just some sort of pro form of thank you that
we throw out.
Speaker 2: It is not just today.
Speaker 1: Before the call, they were solving problems like Mike a
Mike issue on j Mike and whether or not I
was centered, and whether or not Mike hold open would
meet their standards. Like we are having this conversation with
the crew right like two face or whatever. He had
his lamp all on one side and it looked like
we were filming a hostage video.
Speaker 2: We're so useless. We're so useless.
Speaker 3: Like Verne's like, hey, I just want to make sure man,
like you got the you're talking into the mic or whatever.
Speaker 2: He's like, you know you can hold up the.
Speaker 3: I'm like yeah, I turn it, I face around him
or whatever. Right, sorry for the extra noise. Audience that's
probably probably should.
Speaker 2: Have realized that we didn't hear it.
Speaker 3: This is why we need people like vern Uh And
he's like, dude, you're yeah, you're facing your talking to
the back of.
Speaker 2: Your marks backwards. Yeah, any that sounds he turned it around?
Yeah yah, so no we there. Yeah, we would get
on here and everyone be like, what the fuck happened
to the show? Why does it sound and look weird?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So please do drop a thank to them in the
comments as well. It would really go a long way.
And if you want to be one of those sexy,
attractive crew members you just saw uh, be a guest
on one of her shows perhaps, or even become a host,
you can contact us. We are always looking for people
interested in being a part of our productions. To ask
about any of that or more. You can always email
volunteer at atheist typhoncommunity dot org to get involved.
Speaker 2: How did you get involved, do you, Mike? That's a
very good question. I did TikTok for a while.
Speaker 3: I had like, I don't know, like thirty I had
gone up like a thirty thousand followers, and then I
lost all of it because I made some Islam content
and they had like discords I guess where they were
just mass banning at the time.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: Back then I was like, yeah, what the wild wild West?
I guess they say, right where you just you can
just get enough people and there you go.
Speaker 2: And I I think I made a video about Ayisha
that's probably worse. Yeah, I think it pissed off a
lot of people.
Speaker 3: And so I lost that permament and that was like
fifteen hundred videos I think I did.
Speaker 2: So I was so burnt out.
Speaker 3: I was like, I don't want to start making content again,
like that's just like the last thing I want to do.
And so I reached out to the ACA because I
was like, you've watched this show growing up, and I
want to be more like I'm more of a team
guy than I am like the leader guy, you know,
like I don't even want to be lead guitar when
I'm playing in a band, even if I'm even.
Speaker 2: If I'm like object better than I'm like no, no,
just let us be rhythm. We can both be lead
or something.
Speaker 3: I don't like that that much. So I reached out
through email. Was just like, you know, I'd love to
be part of it. Here's some some of my background
clips on X Y and Z show, so you you
know know that I at least have some knowledge base
and point a camera in the ratio, went through all
the processes made you know, they made sure I'm not
a crazy person.
Speaker 2: They don't know yet, but that's right.
Speaker 3: And then playing the long con, they invited me back,
and I just remember Greg was just like.
Speaker 2: I did, like a.
Speaker 3: Truth wanted, and Greg was like, I go back in
the studio and Greg's like the epistemology is why as
any of my son.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh man, I'm home. This is great.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, well I'm glad you did. That's that's great.
I've always enjoyed both listening to your calls as well
as just chatting with you.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I really really appreciate it. I appreciate I really appreciate you.
I we have to move on because I can't take
the okay I get so I get so uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk to Debbie then.
Speaker 1: Debbie from Florida pronouns not given wants to know why
religious people are so pushy about proselytizing. So let's let
me see if I can get her up into the
call line. Here, here we go. So, Debbie, are you
with us? Is that what you want to tell us?
Speaker 2: What you want to talk about?
Speaker 8: Well, I've been an atheist for several years, and I've
also been a fan of the show for several.
Speaker 9: Years, and as an atheist, I don't go around trying
to convert people to change the way they you know,
religious people, to change the way they think.
Speaker 10: Uh, you know, I have respect for them, even though
I don't agree with this what I call.
Speaker 8: The science fiction belief. That's what religion is basically. And
I don't go to people's doors and you know.
Speaker 10: Knock on the door and try to convert them and
leave them literature.
Speaker 8: Like the Jehovah's Witnesses and like the Mormons.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 10: I have been approached in like a parking lot when
I'm just walking to my car, minding my own business,
and somebody comes up to me and tries to hand
me this this religious literature, and you know, starts the
religious bullshit.
Speaker 8: Pardon my language, but you're good.
Speaker 2: We're past the two minute marker. Yeah, yeah, Google doesn't care, so, uh, you.
Speaker 10: Know, like, why are they so determined to change people
and convert.
Speaker 8: Them to really just thinking I don't get it.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you, Graham, you're a former You're a
former believer, right.
Speaker 1: I actually was not officially a form of believer. I
was about to ask you the same way that's right.
Speaker 2: We were.
Speaker 3: We were we talked to us. We were like cradle atheists, right,
we're like the only time. Yeah, I feel like it's
the kind of thing. It's enough compared to everybody else.
Speaker 1: There was a period where I was in elementary to
middle school where I attended.
Speaker 2: My dad was in the Navy.
Speaker 1: We're in Charleston, South Carolina, and we got this is
back in the early seventies, midst I guess late seventies
if it's middle school, where South Carolina public schools were
like forty ninth in the nation, right above Mississippi. So
we got we tested into and got scholarships to go to.
Speaker 2: A private school.
Speaker 1: But like most places in America, most private schools are religious.
So I went to a religious school, but it was
Episcopalia and it wasn't very.
Speaker 2: Dramatic.
Speaker 1: We had chapel once a week. My parents were not
very religious. They might have religious beliefs, but they didn't
take us to church regularly. And when I was asked
then at that age, do you believe there's a God?
I probably would have said yes, but that would have
been out of like that's what surrounds me.
Speaker 2: I hadn't really put any sort of thought into it.
Speaker 1: And then as soon as I started kind of thinking
about it and taking science and think using critical thinking,
I was like, well, this doesn't make sense. I actually thought.
I remember thinking at some point there's got to be
something I'm missing. I need you need to go read
this Bible stuff because all these adults really believe this.
And then when I eventually did read the Bible, I'm like,
that's it. Where's the big secret?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: It really is just nothing. So that's where I come from.
So how about you, J Mike?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mind is a weird thing.
Speaker 3: It's I guess sand It's like Sandwich atheists, like atheist,
weird spiritual you know, and.
Speaker 1: Then you're psycho psychedelic stuff you were talking about earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's a weird thing. I was like fourteen.
I I found like a was it why why doesn't
God heal amputees?
Speaker 2: Dot com? Or something? Oh? That site did so much
for me.
Speaker 3: Absolutely an evil Bible dot com yep. And yeah, just
there was some like like I guess the person running the.
Speaker 2: Side they had like the milk jug prayo, the milk juggy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the analogy you have all this kind of write
ups on the page and the other guy, and it
was they were so good yea point, it was as
like a fourteen year old kid, you know, you're just like,
you know, wide eyed, like what And I wasn't like,
you know, my parents are Catholic or you know, not
super probably similar to your situation.
Speaker 2: They never took me to church I had.
Speaker 3: I've said this on the show a million times, and
I'll say it a million more. My parents gave me
like the most freedom that's like possible, Like you couldn't
get more freedom from religious parents than I'm very blessed
so to speak, right, yes, yeah, and it's well, let
me ask you then, like fuck me for a second.
Do you not feel like you like so less clouded
on these types of time. I don't want to have
us both come off as like conceded, like we can
think properly. And doesn't it feel like when you talk
to people who are like had this going through their deconversion,
it's almost so foreign to you because of the freedoms
that you've been given, like you didn't have that roadblock.
I don't know what was your experience like with that.
I'm actually just genuinely interested.
Speaker 10: I was raised without religion.
Speaker 2: Oh oh you were raised?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so I guess then all I can report
is what i've heard a friend's family say and what
I've read. So I break it down into three categories. First,
you have to put your mindset into somebody who actually
believes this stuff. Like I said, when I was like
eleven and somebody asked me as their god, I probably
would have said yes, my brother was definitely from cradle.
He's like, no, that's crazy. But I probably would have
said yes, but I wouldn't have cared. But I think
you have to put your fun nine further into it
as to somebody who has been told from the cradle,
there's a god. He's the reason you're here, he's the
reason we're married. And if you don't do the right thing,
you're going to go to the bad place. And if
you do the good thing, you're going to go to
the good place. And you need to go tell all
of your friends about this. If you if that you
hear that every day and it's preached to you from
on high in a pulpit every Sunday, you're gonna believe it.
Speaker 2: So that's first.
Speaker 1: You sort of just have to put your head into
that that you have to accept that this is actually
true to believers, right, I'm going to take them at
their word. This is what they say they believe. And
then two, you have to put yourself into a mind
of believing that and watching very good friends of yours
say that they don't believe you, that they don't believe
in christian and you are certain that they're going to
burn in hell forever, so you are desperate to save them,
Like if I saw somebody. The analogy they'll use is
if there's a truck down coming down the street and
I can save you by pushing you out of the way.
I'm going to push you out of the way, even
if it skins your knee. That's what they think they're doing.
And then the third thing I've heard from many people,
especially among evangelical Christians, is that the industry, and I'll
call it that encourages the sharing of conversion stories that
people I've watched. There's a documentary called Jesus Camp. I'd
strongly recommend you watch that. It's all about kids going
to summer school, summer camp, but it's Jesus Camp and
it is It was eye opening for me as a
cosigns horrible. It's you have to watch that documentary. But
they sit around and they will share stories about I
went out and I got three conversions this weekend done.
Here's Debbie she's attending now. And that reportedly from people,
And this is not just from this movie. From what
I've read, is a form of a high, like that
moment when you save somebody, you know several things if
you really really really believe you just save somebody from hell.
Even if you don't really really really believe, but you
really believe, you know that you're gonna go back and
you're gonna get positive reinforcement from your parents, from your
pastor from your peers. It's almost like the snotty little
girl who comes in and did all her homework. You
come in and you're like, I save three people, and
here's one of them to testify.
Speaker 2: Praise the Lord.
Speaker 1: Debbie is saved three people, and you're gonna get that
positive feedback. So it's just like a high high.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if you've heard anything else beyond
that mic, but that, to me is what it's been
explained to me.
Speaker 3: Is I'm very very I don't know, do I want
to get pissed off though, like I need to stop.
Speaker 2: It's reality.
Speaker 3: Like we talked about the beginning of this show, I
just kind of sometimes want to turn my fucking head.
Speaker 1: But yeah, i'd watch it. Jesus Camp is really good
to watch. It's I used to think it was like, oh,
they found the craziest camp, and then I did read
and I'm like, no, this is fairly.
Speaker 2: I get a lot of my.
Speaker 3: Like experience of people's deconversions or that through like people
that are willing to talk about it, going through it
or have had gone through it.
Speaker 2: Right, So.
Speaker 3: It's it's always so still so foreign to me that mindset.
It's like it's like I wish I could peer in,
but also like.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, I don't no, no, no, I
don't want it for a second.
Speaker 1: I'm with I'm with it, I want to do it,
and I don't want to bring it back necessarily to
the top of the show. But because of things like
my cold open where the kids that went to Jesus
Camp are now in the fucking Pentagon telling soldiers that
they're on a divine mission to bring about the end
of the world. So I can't put my head in
the sand. I'm not saying that's what you're doing, but like, no, no,
that's I think there's a connection. So I think Debbie's
onto something. What are your thoughts at Debbie on have
you heard from other people anything other than what we've
said so far?
Speaker 10: Well, what you said makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 8: They think they are trying to save me, and you know,
I never realized that before. But what I say to
these people because I'm not going to share my beliefs
on religious beliefs with these people because you.
Speaker 10: Know, if I don't want them to, then I can't
do it.
Speaker 8: So what I say to them is just please keep
your religious.
Speaker 10: Beliefs to yourself.
Speaker 2: That's what I say.
Speaker 8: And I also say, there's Madeline Murray O'Hare, there's freedom
from religion, there's freedom of religion, and there's freedom from religion.
So please keep your religious beliefs to yourself. And that's all.
That's all I say.
Speaker 2: And gotcha.
Speaker 1: Well, let's turn it around on you. Let's say, yeah,
you had you had a friend that was feeding their
baby a small amounts of drain cleaner every day. Wow,
And you went to that friend and you told them, dude,
look at all the evidence. You're gonna kill your baby,
You're gonna give them brain damage, whatever, This is very unhealthy.
And they turned to you and they said, please keep
your religious beliefs to yourself. Would you feel compelled to
keep talking to them a little bit and try to
find a way to open their eyes?
Speaker 8: Yes, I would, because feeding uh drain cleaner?
Speaker 9: You said, uh, that that is?
Speaker 2: That is facts that it will it will argue so
is so is the point that your going to hell
in their mind.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to give you the analogy of what it's
like to them. They see you teaching your child not
to believe in God, and that's like putting drain cleaner
in their blood. And so they're trying to save the
baby and trying to save you. And it's just as
shocking or disturbing to them to see that and do
nothing about it as it would be for you to
see your friend feed their kid drain cleaner and not
do anything about it, even if they said, oh, please
keep your opinion to yourself. They they view it as fact.
The fact that you don't view it as fact is
irrelevant to their point of view, right.
Speaker 8: Right, And unfortunately they believe that it's factual when it's
complete bullshit.
Speaker 2: You know, that's the challenge of humanity, right.
Speaker 1: I used to work as an attorney for FDA regulatory law,
and I had clients in China that were importing regular
regulated goods to the US, and I swear I have
a point here, they would I just realized, I've been
looking at the notes and the images, and now at
the camera.
Speaker 2: I apologize. I do I look like below the camera,
like your face or like ivert my eyes?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I had clients in China all the time that were
importing FDA regulated goods, so they I was not part
of the FDA. I would argue against the FDAA even
though I respect the FDA. But we had one that
sent me a device to review. It was a head massager.
You put it on and massages electronic and high massages.
But on the outside they had made all these claims
like it lowers your blood pressure and it cures glaucoma,
and all of these medical claims that made it to
be classified as a medical device. And they had gotten
on the naughty list with the FDA, and they wanted
to be taken off the naughty list. And I was
advising them on how to do that, and I told
them what it would take, which is a lot of work,
a lot of effort, a.
Speaker 2: Lot of time, and a lot of money.
Speaker 1: And they wrote me back and said, is there a
expedited fee we can pay to get around this? And
I knew right away that they were saying, Hey, who
do we bribe around for this? And I wrote them back, Oh, well,
there's no fee. Oh can we pay you? No, I
can't do that. What can we do?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 1: Maybe we can pay more, Maybe we can pay you
and the government. So I finally reached out to our
employee in China, Shelley, and say, Hi, Shelley, if you're watching, Shelley,
what do I do about this?
Speaker 2: Look at this whole email chain?
Speaker 1: And she looked at me and almost on this you
could see her patting me on the head. She goes, Oh, Graham,
in China, we have this thing called a bribe.
Speaker 2: As if I didn't know.
Speaker 1: And if you say no, it just means that the
person hasn't offered enough yet. And so it raised this
point in my mind of if that is true to them,
and it is true to me, that I don't accept
bribes in the US government won't accept bribes. Mostly, how
do we communicate If no, in their language means you
haven't offered enough? How do I say really no other
than just stop talking to them? And I think it
relates to here. If they really, really really say this
is true, then you saying it's not true is not
a way to communicate. And you saying as fairy tale
or them if you don't think it's true, them saying, look,
there's a Bible with a bunch of claims and it
is not going to be How do we communicate with
each other? That's always fascinated me when that what you're
saying is literally treated as meaning the opposite or not true.
How do we get across that barrier? If you have
figured that out, let me know. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2: Jame, Like, No, I think that's like really, yeah, that's
a good point. I mean.
Speaker 3: I was wondering where you were gonna go, and I'm
not gonna lie.
Speaker 1: It was literally no Ah, this guy is very good
negotiated Like no.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean I because I think I echo what you
said a lot. Is that Look, in their mind, this
is a fact to them. They think that they're doing
the ultimate best. They're saving your soul. It's the most
important thing they.
Speaker 2: Could do, and they believe that.
Speaker 3: So puts you in this real weird gray area of like, well,
they're not intentionally like doing something to go out of
the way to harm you. And I think that kind
of gets misinterpreted sometimes like.
Speaker 7: That.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, hey, fuck off with your religious beliefs.
A lot of them genuinely like they just think they've
found the answer and I have. I don't get as
I wish I got more people coming to my doors
because I'd have the com for me in my scenerio.
Speaker 2: Is like I want to have a conversation with them.
Speaker 3: I want them to walk away from the conversation just
like I like.
Speaker 2: Not not thinking just a little bit rattled.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just not even like being not even being like
aware that people think like that outside of their bubble,
you know what I mean. I want them to like
really marinate on it, and then every time they come
up to someone else's door, they think twice before they
hit that knock, like is this gonna be another one
that's gonna just you know, answer all my questions and
then feed me questions that I can't answer shit because
that last experience was really bad for me. I couldn't
answer all these questions. I mean, if it's if it's
interesting to you, I would write down some questions you have, Like, hey,
when Jesus is chilling in the garden of simmecky right,
I can't remember it, and no one's there to write.
Speaker 2: Down him crying, Like how do we know that? Do
we know Jesus was crying? And why was he crying
to himself?
Speaker 3: Like you know, like these kind of questions are the
stuff that I want to ask like a bunch of
these people that come up to my door or bring
it up, you know, but you know, maybe maybe that
might be entertaining for you, and also it can help
like help them see something. It's just like if you
have these questions and you're like, man, I wonder what
a Christian would say, it's like the coachy door. It's like, oh,
ive been waiting for you, guys. I have a whole
bunch of shit that don't make sense to me. So
if you can answer a lot of these, I'll take
that pamphlet from you.
Speaker 2: Deal, what are your thoughts? Their Debbie, what.
Speaker 7: My thoughts?
Speaker 11: Yeah, well I like what Matt dyl Hunty says all
the time. He says, the reason I don't believe in
in God is because there's no there's no evidence.
Speaker 1: And there's insufficient evidence perhaps.
Speaker 3: Or in subvision that's been presented to you to leave it. Yeah,
for somebody, that's what I like to say. You know, Yeah,
it hasn't been presented to me, but maybe you're the
one today.
Speaker 2: It could be the call.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I have some I have some homework for you, Debbie.
I think they'll enjoy it. A was Jesus Camp If
you like that, that is that is a bit of
a negative, although I will say it was produced by
it was approved by at least if not produced by
the people running the camp. So they thought they were
putting out like a good documentary, which should tell you something.
So watch Jesus Camp. There's another movie that you reminded
me of called Letting Go of God.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a one woman show by Julius Sweeney who used
to be on Saturday Night Live, and she tells the
story of her deconversion and I think it relates to
what you're talking about. It starts with her story about
the famous ding dong of the Mormons ringing the doorbell
her doorbell. Yeah, And they tell her her story and
she's a Catholic and she thought, well, that's so silly.
You know that this happened, and that happened. That's ridiculous.
And for some reason that moment it clicked in her
brain to say, well, wait a second, I believe that
when I eat this wafer it literally turns into the
body of Christ. That's kind of kooky, and I also
believe this. And then she describes like this moment where
she says she was gonna take a moment after that,
after thinking that through, she was going to take a
moment and put on the atheist sunglasses for just a
second and look at the universe in the world, just
for a second. She gave herself permission to do it,
and when it happened, it was like a bolt of
lightning that hit her because everything made sense. And then
she took them off, and it was very scary and
all that sort of stuff. It really spoke to me
about two things. One that's sort of how scary it
is to deconvert, but two that even somebody ringing somebody's
doorbell can actually result in their deconversion.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 1: But if you if you are looking at somebody explaining
how they deconverted in the ways that made sense to
them one person. That's another good one is called letting
go of God. Any any homework that you have for
for her j Mike, any any content she might consume
or books she might read about trying to understand more
of the mindset of people that.
Speaker 2: On this one.
Speaker 3: I really on this one, I really don't with the like,
this is like the me and Debbie have the same
kind of vibe here with but like, I don't understand this.
Speaker 2: I wasn't part of this growing up. We're so divorced,
you know, we.
Speaker 3: Don't have that intimate type of relationship that a lot
of other people have, and it might just be a
fact that we could really never really understand it without
like having, you know, live, have that lived experience.
Speaker 2: So I think I'm like with Debbie, I'm like, hey, Jesus,
I want to watch this. You know, I'm kind of
on Debbie's side.
Speaker 3: I'm a caller right now, Graham, So you know, this
is this is this is this is actually good for me.
Speaker 2: I've been I've been kind of front row seat. Just
listen to you. So okay, okay, thoughts, Debbie, Yeah, so
thank you. Anything else you have any other questions for us? Yeah,
any other questions.
Speaker 5: That's good.
Speaker 8: You really shed some light on this and I appreciate.
Speaker 7: It very much.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I really appreciate you calling. Please feel free to
call back if you've had any good conversations or if
you've researched this more to try to understand and develop
a better understanding of people who are doing this. Let
us know if you find out anything new, because that
would be useful too, because we still run into them
as well.
Speaker 3: And by the way, everyone, I'm not being rude and
looking off to the side and now there, I'm just
checking for like guests for quick TikTokers.
Speaker 2: Yeah TikTok Yeah. All right, Debbie, you guys got to
get me a new xpie stick. Oh oh, what is that?
That's that's that's the old XP.
Speaker 1: It's the it's the ax, it's the that's how much
every night you rub it for good luck?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: This is my pocket. I don't know, I just you know,
all right, Debbie, thanks so much for calling in.
Speaker 5: Good appreciate it.
Speaker 7: I have a good age.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Sorry, maybe I apologize.
Speaker 3: I'm this is new for me, like look down at
the phone and stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm just not as used to it. I haven't so
I think I've missed.
Speaker 3: I think I've missed guests, and I do apologize if
you're in the guest request at all.
Speaker 1: I think Greg has signaled to us in the chat
that one of our calls is from TikTok, so you
may want to get some guidance from Greg there. While
while you're doing that, I will say two other things
out to Debbie. Are other people interested in this concept? First,
not everybody is a genuine believer that is coming to
convert you. In fact, three things. One is Mormon Stories podcast.
On my podcast, I interviewed the host of Mormon Stories
like a year or two ago.
Speaker 2: His named Dylann Jeff or James stilln.
Speaker 1: And on it he has long form deep dive interviews
with Mormons and or Mormon's on the edge and ex Mormons,
and it's all all about deconversion and all that stuff,
and many many of them talk about not really believing,
but because of the society they live in where it's
expected to you are expected to go out on a
mission and serve and then come back, and then you
are much more eligible as a bachelor that you just
go and do it, even if the numbers are being
fudged on the missions, or you don't really believe, or
you're homesick, or you're being told that it's being strongly
implied that if you go home early, bad things will happen.
And even if they take your work permits and your
passports away from you, one can question if you're trafficking labor,
but we'll get.
Speaker 2: Into that later.
Speaker 1: So keep that in mind that not everybody and something
that sort of demonstrates that is I'm a fan of
musical theater, so if you haven't seen it, I highly
recommend the Book of Mormon musical written by the guys
who do South Park. The main character is not motivated
truly by faith or exclusively by faith, but it is
more of the I'm the best one in the mission,
I'm going to out to everybody else type of thing.
And it's very funny. And then one other funny comment
before we get to the caller. I was reminded when
she started a call about like being prothetized to everywhere.
It's different than it was in the past. There was
a regulation that was passed that banned solicitation in airports,
and that didn't exist in the seventies.
Speaker 2: That came along in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Prior to that, you could be walking down through the
airport and have a whole bunch of people walk up
to you and try to get you to give them money.
It was so annoying that it was one of the
main jokes in the opening of the movie Airplane.
Speaker 2: If you've ever seen that.
Speaker 1: Movie, where the guy's walking through and somebody's like, Hey,
would you like to have a flower for the Hippies?
Speaker 2: No thanks? And how about the Jews for Jesus, no thanks?
How about this? And he's retaining it.
Speaker 1: To a kung fu fight, fighting his way through the
airport just to get through everybody.
Speaker 3: Every time we do a show, we always end up
back on Airplane. Airplane, because I think that's one of
both of our favorite movies, so we just like, somehow
get back. It's so good, it's so funny. I think, yeah,
I told you about the Like the intro scene. I
couldn't even get past like the beginning when he's just
like like paging doctor Ham or whatever. I just as
a kid, just that just doctor Ham or mister ham
for what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got the Mayo clinic.
Speaker 1: While I'm talking to Dake tr hiam and so he says, okay,
give me ham On five, hold the Mayo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, dude, I I for some reason as a kid,
like my parents played like as my friend's parents were like, you.
Speaker 2: Have to relax. Okay, you have to relax. You're trying
to watch the movie. It's funny. It's not that funny anyway. Great,
all right, do we have a TikTok?
Speaker 12: We do?
Speaker 3: I believe this is an old friend. I believe uh
oh for TikTok purposes?
Speaker 2: Are you over eighteen years old? Oh?
Speaker 6: I'm I apologize.
Speaker 3: Hey j Mike, Hey brother told before, we've talked before.
We're homies, okay, come on, yeah, well yeah we're friendly.
Speaker 2: So I don't know how Oh yeah, I miss well hey,
it's a good time to say I miss you. Come
around more often? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 13: How's things going? I mean we're not in a we're
not at an airport.
Speaker 2: I hope you're you're live on the air right now
on XP on YouTube. You gotta you gottah people. You
got a bunch of people watching your chapter. Well, all right,
so I've got I've deduced that your name is Chapter
and you're a friend of J Mike. How you doing? Yeah, thank.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I I go by the name Chapter. I've done it
for ten years or so. I never use a different name.
Speaker 2: This is me.
Speaker 13: I do not use even when I'm banned. I don't
use other aults. This is me early in the morning.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, Chapter, we're gonna, we're gonna. We're gonna move
to a guest because we're limited on time. But I
saw you said.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you had a question or if
you're always amusing, so I figured we'd all get a laugh.
Speaker 2: Ye, yes, if anything, what question do you have for us?
Speaker 13: Okay, uh, what do you No?
Speaker 6: I was gonna say something.
Speaker 3: No, don't I know what you're gonna say.
Speaker 2: Don't say it. I don't know what you're gonna say.
Speaker 13: No, No, I was gonna talk about, you know, what's
the best theory that you've heard from people who believe?
Speaker 2: Because you know I'm an unbeliever. Okay, Well, well sorry,
let me just wake you up.
Speaker 5: Brother.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, well why don't you take you we're
all off. Yeah, well we'll give you the answer. We'll
get you we'll get you off chapter. I do miss you, brother,
Thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Great to talk to you, have a great.
Speaker 2: Nice to meet you. It is a good question.
Speaker 1: We get that a lot actually, Like what do you
think the best if you're gonna steal ma'am? A religious
person's point of view? What do you think is the
best argument that has not convinced you? And I'm I
waver between a few. Do you have one that you
sort of go to?
Speaker 2: I just love chapter so much.
Speaker 3: So, Yeah, he's so every time I talked to him,
he's like, wait, because he's like a completely different time zone.
Speaker 2: What is it? How was I going to ask? Is
he New Zealander or Australian or maybe English? And I couldn't.
I should know.
Speaker 3: I should be a better friend. He's a online friend,
but I should be a better friend.
Speaker 7: Jeez.
Speaker 2: So I asked me that question because.
Speaker 1: He's as if you're in a sealman a religious point
of view, what do you think the best argument is,
even if it's a loser in your eyes? What's the
best argument, however, you would measure best to argue for
some sort of let's call it a supernatural being.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's gonna sound egotistical, but it's an argument that
I've come up with.
Speaker 2: I don't think it works.
Speaker 1: This is your book. Your book is it's not a
great one. But here's the solution that that I figured out.
Speaker 3: It takes a lot of like background knowledge on some things.
Speaker 2: Can you summarize it?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 5: Not really?
Speaker 3: I mean, do I have time to explain like extension
and intention and co. I mean, most people like biology,
they'll know like co extensive traits and ride alongs and stuff.
Speaker 2: But the idea is to.
Speaker 3: Take Jerry Fod's argument, which I don't think, you know,
I mean, I've struggled with this argument, but I think
from the years of listening to different philosopher's responses and
thinking about it, you know, I don't hold the view
like I used to as much. But he's an atheist philosopher.
He believes in evolution, but he doesn't accept natural selection.
I doesn't think it's like a predictive model. And so
I came up with.
Speaker 2: This like idea with a buddy where we would like we.
Speaker 3: Basically use this argument and if the argument is successful,
like you essentially the only thing that's going to give
you the intentional context or what you need.
Speaker 2: It's hard to I don't want to.
Speaker 3: Explain all this because it's kind to miss and bore people,
But generally the idea is the best type of explanation
that you would be able to go with. The most
probable would be an intentional cause of theism or a
god or something like that. But it's not because that's
a very standard kind of thing that people just say.
Speaker 2: It's more of the meat in the sandwich.
Speaker 3: That it's it's not a good argument, but it's the
most complicated.
Speaker 2: I guess it's like there's.
Speaker 3: A lot there that if I ran this on an atheist,
they'd be like, what the fuck I have to do?
So I have to not that like they should be scared.
But there's so much there. So it's probably the most
thought out that I've done for theism. And the reason
I prop that up over like other arguments is I
just don't genuinely don't find theistic arguments that good like ever,
like I never do, so the kind of tongue in cheek,
it's like this bullshit thing that me and my buddy
am Deer just kind of joked around about and then
we did this whole thing. At the end, we were like,
but scientific anti realism is true, which is this idea
that like, you know, we positive electrons. We don't look
electrons don't really exist, but we posit them as like
theoretical postulates or something like that. So I was like,
we could be scientific anti realists and at the end,
when we say God is the best explanation, we go
but also scientific anti realism is true, and we thus
we we don't have to be committed to all of
our postulates actually existing, even though it gives us a better,
a potential better explanation. So it's kind of this weird
flip where it was like atheism, you know, right, Yeah, No,
that probably wouldn't make sense to anybody, even if I
explained it for like three hours.
Speaker 1: Yeah, flow charts and education. Yeah, it's a lot of it.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of like you have to spend a
lot of time reading like this guy's book to really
understand what his argument is, and then then you'd have
to listen to my dumb ass tacking on top of
that a whole bunch of other esoteric garbage.
Speaker 2: Mainly designed to confuse people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think from my per I don't know
how to take the question sometimes when I say best,
I think mean most convincing.
Speaker 1: To me, versus is best, as in most effective at
converting people to your side of beliefs, as far as
the latter believe it or not. I think the look
at the trees argument is the most effective at coning,
convincing the whole highest number of people, like, ye, just
look at it, And by that I mean look at
how complicated the universe is. It seems to be kind
of fine.
Speaker 2: To reaction, kind of a thing. Yeah, oh you know what?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like that, like are you telling me that
every grain of sand and every ant if that was
out of position?
Speaker 2: And this that and the other thing.
Speaker 1: It ignores the anthropic principle, ignores a lot of things
that sort of answer it. But as far as convincing people,
because so many people come to us and when we
say give us your best answer, a lot of them
end up with a basically a version of look at
the trees, I think that that seems to convince people.
But as far as I think what the best argument is,
as far as like what.
Speaker 2: Should convince people, it's tough. It's tough. I don't say
fine tuning. I'll be coming up.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like fine tuning's in there. But the
problem is I've read too much on fine tuning and
know too much about it. I think, I mean, I
know enough on this religious point to realize that fine
tuning is overstated in the public's eye. Like you hear
about these distances. But it's sort of like saying, like, well,
if this was off by this many miles, well, that's
like saying Michael Jordan could still be a human if
he was seven hundred thousand months.
Speaker 7: I use this, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Used this example. If you heard me use the Michael
Jordan example on It's not like I may have gotten
it from you. I don't know, it's not I don't
know if it's unique to me.
Speaker 3: I think it's like Arvin ash or someone who does
a science channel.
Speaker 2: I think I lifted it from from Arvin.
Speaker 3: Where.
Speaker 2: Man, I'm not the deep back in the memory. I'll
probably mess it all up.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's like this this idea of when you
have like a certain thing like a I don't know
the mass of a neutrino or something is like ten
times thirty six to the whatever power or whatever, and
you change that factor or something by a little bit
it's it's like whoa, but you realize that factor of
like one is like you know the difference between it's
like me saying, like, you know, Michael Jordan is the
perfect basketball player, and if he was you know, ten
times whatever to the third.
Speaker 2: Instead of two, he wouldn't be.
Speaker 3: But it's like, yeah, when you analyze that, you're talking
about him being like eight hundred feet as opposed to
you know, six feet or five inches depending on which
you know, which way we go, And so really what
that signals is what are we using like kilograms, what
kind of measurement? Because that like a lot of this
changes when I go, yeah, he's ten to the twelve.
Speaker 2: My cat just walked by and that was a thing
that just happened apparently, you know.
Speaker 3: So like it's like I'm gonna have to come down now,
like this dang it cat and now she wants to
go out, so I'll have to get crude.
Speaker 2: There's your most convincing evidence for God. Yeah, that cat
doesn't want me to about it. No, No, I think
I probably got it from you.
Speaker 1: This concept, Like it sounds convincing, and then you look
at the orders of magnitude that you're talking you're talking.
Speaker 2: Light here and inches. You know, it's like it could have.
Speaker 1: Changed by point one value or a whole order of magnitude,
and you're you're, you, as the layman who's making this argument,
is treating that as a very small change, when in reality,
an order of magnitude is an order of man.
Speaker 3: And if you had the right like with the Michael
Jordan example, if you have the right like measurement like
inches and it was off by even just five percent,
not only would Michael Jordan's still be one of the best,
like in the NBA would be one of the best,
and the analogy there being not only would we get
like you know, bestowing of mass in higgs field or whatever.
Speaker 2: It might it could be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like there's this like range that isn't really talked about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and that five.
Speaker 3: Percent with the Michael Jordan case, like he could still
potentially be the best. So I think that analogy works
really well. If you're someone that's not like me and
forgets that after a few years, I gotta go back, Well.
Speaker 2: It landed on me for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have different objections, I guess to fine tuning.
So I've kind of like put that one away because
there's just so many. I find fine tuning to be
one of the worst arguments for theism, and I know
most people think it's a good.
Speaker 1: Fine tuning is in there as far as what people
think is good, Yeah, I don't credit it. And then
the worst one, I think is just presuppositionalism, which is
not an artist.
Speaker 3: Oh that's the worst one. There's not a worst one. Then,
before you can know anything, you must know guys. Like
it's just it's like it's literally heads, I win, tails,
you lose, Like you the coin. There's no there's no
winning based on how it's like the coin that they
give you. It's like, you know, it's like, yeah, I'm
not gonna win by your lights, because if my answer
isn't a mirror to Christianity, then it's the wrong answer
every time to you.
Speaker 2: So I should never win. Yeah, I could never fucking win.
Speaker 3: And instead of by the way, the easiest way to
deal with presuppers just go yeah, I understand that's what
you believe in the book that says a thing says
that thing, Yeah, can you demonstrate to me outside of that, like,
don't just presuppose it? Just fucking like, do something else
And they'll and they'll just every without fail every time. Yeah,
but what do you believe? What do you what's what's
what's up with you?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 2: How you doing? You know, I'm concerned about you right now. Man,
I'm not selfish. Shut the fuck up.
Speaker 3: Dog shit apologetics, absolute dog shit apologetics.
Speaker 1: So we do have another caller Before that, I wanted
to get back to super chats. We did get a
super chat some strange person named Kelly Laughlin.
Speaker 2: You may have heard of him.
Speaker 1: He's with the ACA member for two years two dollars.
He says, watch Truth Wanted Fridays at seven pm Central,
Kelly paying to spam his own show on the ACA.
I do agree with him. You should watch it. It's
a great show for those of you I'm familiar with it.
It's expands the what do you believe in?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 1: Outside of just religion and starts talking about things like
bigfoot or anti vaxxers or anything that's truth claim and
belief and why you believe or don't believe things. It's
a very good show and they do sort of focuses
as you do the shows, they'll focus on the topics.
Speaker 2: Do you have time for another call?
Speaker 4: There?
Speaker 6: J Mike.
Speaker 2: I can do a Yeah, I can do a short,
shorter one.
Speaker 5: I do.
Speaker 3: Okay, some things I gotta do. But if crew can
just focus on Graham for a minute, I'm a cat's no,
it's just scratching my the door to get out. And
all right, it's just gonna tear it's gonna tear up
my landlords.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna go talk to Pete.
Speaker 1: We have Pete from Michigan, no pronouns given, says wants
to talk the talk to the excuse me, wants to
ask the hosts about their beliefs, backgrounds and go from there.
Well that's not normally how this works, but I'm willing to.
Speaker 2: Give it a shot. Let's get him on. Pete. Can
you hear me? Is that what you want to talk about?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Well I guess so.
Speaker 5: I you know I'm calling about.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I don't.
Speaker 5: Even know why they call you guys. They see this,
they should call you Nancy.
Speaker 2: I don't care about the label as much.
Speaker 1: Arguing from dictionary definitions tends to be a loss for everybody.
So what I'll do is I'll just say what I
believe and the terms I'm going to use to describe
it and then we can actually talk about substance. So
the way I've heard it used typically online and around
and from the people I know who are atheists that
prefer to be called that are the If you answer
the question are you convinced there is a God? And
you answer that by saying no, I'm not convinced, then
we call that an atheist. That's what I would call
an atheist, a without theists, theism a belief in a god,
so atheism. There's also anti theism, where you would answer
the question are you convinced there is not a God?
And you say yes to that, that would be what
I would call an anti theist. Now that's not what
I am. I don't assert that. I don't claim that
I'm convinced that there's not a God.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: I just am not convinced that there is one.
Speaker 1: I am the jury member who has gone into the
jury box and is a waiting trial or is sitting
in trial, and we haven't found God guilty of existing yet,
but I'm still open minded and waiting for the prosecutor
to give me more evidence. So that would be for
me atheism, anti theism, non theism. I don't I don't
use that, so I would suggest we don't use it
for this call. J Mike, would you have any other
caveats to definitions before we get going.
Speaker 2: I mean when I say I'm an atheist.
Speaker 3: I just mean that I think gods and gods, gods
and goddesses do not exist.
Speaker 1: So so is that you're like, you're you what I
would define as an anti theist, that you know that
they don't exist or you just convinced.
Speaker 3: I guess I don't have the same usage of which
is this is it doesn't really matter, like you can
have this usages right, And I think this is a
common thing I see on the internet people of different
usages of anti theists, Like I take antithists to be
like a like against theism, like there's something in principle
wrong with your theism or a theist.
Speaker 2: Or something like that. It might not be there.
Speaker 3: I don't really look into anti theism much, so maybe
I'm skewed on that it's not as important to me. Yeah,
I'm an eight. When I say I'm an atheist, I
think there's two usages of the term that you could
be talking about. With that it's you just simply don't
believe that there's a god.
Speaker 2: Some people might say it's an agnostic.
Speaker 3: I really think that's the most boring fucking debate in
the world. And anybody that's having that debate is looking
really stupid. I don't care if you're like philosophically inclined,
Like I've seen philosophers that are way smarter than me
having this discussion, and it's fucking stupid. Terms have usages,
they have usages. It's not semantic realism. Okay, it's not
word like.
Speaker 2: This is so dumb. It's so dumb. People have different
usages of terms. So, yeah, so I think gods do
not exist? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You does that make sense to you? Pete to those
words like just you believe, you don't believe, you're convinced
of one thing or another. Can we use that or
can we use the shorthand of atheists just means I'm
not convinced that a god exists, whether or not I'm
convinced that they don't exist as irrelevant.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I think as will work with it.
I was kind of bringing it up because you look
at it, which says a theist.
Speaker 2: Inout not as a.
Speaker 1: Means without right, what without without you?
Speaker 5: Think if you want to say I want an apple
A is in without?
Speaker 2: Do you not know what a prefix is by the
car you want? Hold on, pe listen, are you absolute goober?
Speaker 1: Wait a second, Wait a second. We do have to
make sure that we're not.
Speaker 5: Getting me called I think you guys should be.
Speaker 1: Called Okay, fair enough, we don't care. My point is,
what is this whatever we're called? Right, So let's let
me let's take it from the legal profession.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: What's the first thing you do in a statute or
a contract? You define terms. So let's say I'm righting
up a definition to sell my house.
Speaker 2: I could say here and after.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't use that, but that's the old you know,
I'm when I refer to this house at this address
using these boundary lines, I'm going to refer to it
as blurb. And then for the rest of that contract
it says I'm gonna sell Blurb to Mike for this
much money, and Mike will take possession of Blurb at
this time. It doesn't matter what we call it, what
we what. What it matters is the concept underlying blurb.
So I don't care what you call me. I just
want you to understand what My concept is so we
can actually have a productive conversation if all you want
to do is call in and argue what a prefix
after after the before the word theist or theism the
root means I don't care, it's boring. I agree with Mike. Now,
does that make sense to you? Like the concept is
we have we are not convinced that a god exists?
Do you understand that? Do you understand that we don't
care what we call it?
Speaker 2: We're not worried about the grunts?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 2: Do you understand that?
Speaker 9: Pete?
Speaker 1: Okay, So what questions do you have for us about
our lack of belief in any gods?
Speaker 5: Well, I'm just goying. Okay, So where where did you
guys come out of?
Speaker 7: What?
Speaker 5: What religions did you guys come out of?
Speaker 1: I came out of a very mild Episcopalian, but I
was not raised very religiously, and I defer to Mic
on his background.
Speaker 2: I think it's similar. Is not very religious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, sorry, I'm still stuck on the last thing
we were just talking about. Yeah, I was an atheist
and then I took a trip to uh to beatles
Land and then can't come back for a while.
Speaker 2: That was with them and uh in India.
Speaker 3: You know, yep, No, I was really into the kind
of spiritual New Age kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: It's not like the way it is.
Speaker 3: My version of it was a lot, definitely different than
people I see on like TikTok Today it's gotten kind
of way more crazy than I thought it ever could.
Speaker 2: But so as the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe I just am blind to my own craziness
in the past.
Speaker 2: So Pete, what what are you? What do you believe?
Speaker 5: What do I I believe in? I believe in his Shem.
I pray to his Shem.
Speaker 2: Okay what why?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I believe.
Speaker 5: I believe in the One God.
Speaker 2: Now hold on? Hold on, Pete, Pete, Pete, Yeah, I'm not.
I didn't ask what you believe?
Speaker 1: Beyond that, I asked why why do you believe and
pray to his Shem?
Speaker 5: Because he he moves within my my own personal existence.
Speaker 1: That's meaningless to me. I don't understand that. What means what?
What evidence do you have that His Shem exists and
moves within you?
Speaker 2: My whole life story has ship waits ship. This has
to be a troll Hashim is hold on? Am I am?
I wrong?
Speaker 3: Like Hashim is like there's like this spiritual guru guy,
like bald guy, and he claims to get in contact
with I believe someone named Hashim?
Speaker 7: Is that?
Speaker 9: Not?
Speaker 2: Am I off on this? Is that what you're taking from.
Speaker 3: The Hebrew?
Speaker 2: Okay? Yeah, maybe I'm mixing something up all right.
Speaker 5: The Hebrew god for the name, it means.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: So when you say it moves within me.
Speaker 1: I've had lots of different people call in and say,
I believe in Yahweh, I believe in Allah, I believe
in the the Uh Postafarian God. I believe in all
these different gods because I sense them within me, or
they speak to me, or those sorts of things. How
how can I understand what you mean? Because everybody says
it and they all can't be right. So how do
I tell which one of you is is is accurate?
How can you tell if you're accurate? How do you
know you're truly sensing him her it?
Speaker 5: Because of what has happened in my own life?
Speaker 2: Isn't that?
Speaker 5: See? That's what?
Speaker 2: Let me ask you something. No no no no no
no no no no no.
Speaker 1: That's a good answer. But I want to hold on, Pete.
Let me ask you something if I asked you, how
do you know what the speed of light in the
vacuum is? Would you say, well, it's because of the
what's happened in my life?
Speaker 5: Well, I would say would you would you yes or no?
Speaker 1: Would you say I can tell you what the speed
of light is because of what has happened in my life?
Speaker 5: I'd say in my life. I would have to sit
down and calculate that. I would have answers.
Speaker 2: No, you would not tell you no.
Speaker 5: No, that would have to make that a mathematical equation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Pete, you're missing the point. Pete, you're missing the point.
Speaker 3: I'm really not you.
Speaker 2: You really are you?
Speaker 7: What do you?
Speaker 1: My point is you don't make these you don't make
these observations. You don't come to believe these observations because
of vague things that happened in your life. If you
were taking a test, you would write down why you
were convinced that the atomic weight of hydrogen is what
it is, or that the wavelength of red light is
this particular wavelength.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: You would say, because it's been observed and because of
these experiments. It's not this vague answer of well, things
have happened in my life, and that is why I
feel the spirit move within me.
Speaker 2: And my next question is why the difference?
Speaker 1: Why is it that people who call in and tell
me about their God talk about this vague, weird what
happened to them in their life. But when they ask
when I ask them about what the fucking drinking limit
is in my state, they say, oh, zero point zero
eight because that's what's written down the law, and there's
a whole bunch of evidence that people get convicted of
it every day. And like, why the difference? Why do
you have to revert to this vague woo when I
ask you why you've been convinced?
Speaker 5: Well, you look at it as a vague thing, and
and I don't look at it as a vague thing.
How do I'll go back to.
Speaker 2: My last question.
Speaker 1: I want to I want Mike to get in here.
Like I said, I've had lots of people call in
tell me the same thing, but they believe in contradictory ideas.
They can't be simultaneously both, right, So how do I
know that your will we experience? I'll turn this to
j Mike. I assume you've gotten people who have called
in and say I believe because of this weird abstract thing.
And if we apply that same rule to somebody else,
they believe in the exact opposite of that caller.
Speaker 2: How have you ever? Well, I was on the way
did this thing.
Speaker 3: I was gonna tell them, like, just look, experience in
my life tells me that naturalism is true, Like, you know,
would you want to know more about it?
Speaker 5: Well, if that's your experience in your life, I mean
it's that.
Speaker 2: So then I feel like we're just highlighting that you don't.
Speaker 5: Found from life's experience, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yes, but you're just look.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't even say yes to that. I mean, I'm
just want I just want him to. I just want
you to acknowledge that that. Look, we have an audience.
Do you think it's informative if you're just like I
had some.
Speaker 2: Experiences I don't like if I did that, like everyone
be like, what were they?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 2: I want to know what were well? To be fair
them off before he started.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hold on, hold on, Pete, I'm Pete, Pete. You
have this tendency to just start talking. Just give us
a chance, and I'll give you. If you've listened to
the rest of the show. I've given everybody a good
chance to talk, and I was about to defend you.
Say to be fair, to be fair, to be fair, Pete,
just listen for a second. I was just going to say,
to be fair. I cut Pete off before he told
me what the experience was. I was defending you a
little bit, all right, So give me a minute, give
j Mike a minute to ask his questions, all right,
and then I will signal when it's your turn to talk.
And as long as you are not going to assert
something that we have to immediately dispute and go on,
you know, maybe a five minute discussion, and then we
have to go back five minutes to say you said
X and we disagree with the premise. We can save
a bunch of time. So if we interrupt you, it's
for a good reason. We've done this a lot. We
know when we have to interrupt, and then we will debate,
just the way I interrupted a call earlier and said, well, technically,
I can find a lot of people that think that
torture's okay.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: I don't let those things go by and give it
implicit agreement, all right, So let's start off again. I've
seen other callers do this. Secular rarety does this. JA Mike,
what question do you have for have for Pete?
Speaker 2: Like, hey, Pete, welcome to the show. J Mike, what
question do you have for Pete about what he said
so far? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Look, look, I presumably you want to convince you know, well,
I don't know if you do, but like we, we
want to take callers and have reasons that are convincing. Right,
And if I came up to you and said, well,
I have these kind of experiences and they showed me
naturalism is true, your response was like, well, that's great,
because I think you take that from your experience or something.
But are you now convinced that naturalism is true by
me talking vaguely about these experiences.
Speaker 5: You're talking about naturalism like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: If I say, I say I had not naturalism is true,
and you ask me how I know that, and I'm like, well,
I've just had these kind of experiences, I leave it
kind of vague. Clearly at this at this point in
the dialectic, you aren't convinced by me saying.
Speaker 1: That, right, And to define for Pete, naturalism he means
basically all there is is things that are in nature.
Speaker 2: There is no sea natural yeah, or you can just
view it as like you know, make it easier. No God,
that's my.
Speaker 5: View, right right, If that's if that is your human experience,
if that's what you have experience to come about with
your own truth, arty, thank you and.
Speaker 2: Thank you. That's where I wanted us to get.
Speaker 1: So you just use this phrase that is meaningless to
me and a lot of pop culture people use it.
Your own truth. There is either do you agree that
there is either a something that meets your definition of
God exists or it doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: Do you agree with that it's true or it's not true.
It's not a trap.
Speaker 1: I'm just setting the stage. Do you agree that either
a god exists or one does not?
Speaker 2: Maybe make it easier. Either I stole from Graham's wallet
or I didn't.
Speaker 5: God is either going to exist or not exist.
Speaker 2: Okay, whether it exists or not, does that depend on
whether or not you believe in it existing or does
it exist regardless of your beliefs.
Speaker 5: It exists with regardless of my beliefs.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what you just said to Ja Mike doesn't
make sense because you said, oh you believe there's no gods.
That's your own personal truth, so that must be true.
Do you see how that doesn't make sense?
Speaker 5: No, it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what is the when I hear personal truth?
Speaker 1: Then then if that makes sense to you, then the
word personal the phrase personal truth is nonsense because what
it means is anybody can have their own truth and
there is no shared reality.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, if you're walking home and you see
a straight dog walking on the tracks, and the dog
gets up and bounces on two feet and hops over
all four rails of the track, say it's a double track,
and then you come to me and say, hey, this
is what I saw. Yeah, I mean that's what you saw.
Speaker 6: That's your Yeah.
Speaker 3: But okay, but there could be can well? First off,
I mean so it could there could there could be
candidate X. Like, first off, if you came to me
and said that or someone said that, I would I'd ask,
initially if you had an fMRI recently, That's initially what
I would say to you, right, Or I would or
I'd say, maybe maybe we should check.
Speaker 2: The water supply at your house.
Speaker 3: Make sure you know nobody's put some masst in it,
all right, cause uh, we don't have background information of
that type of thing, and that's very important these conversations, right,
I have like none of that support there. So if
we get behind these like these vague things and it
turns out to be like, you know, something we could
talk about like the dog jumping over the track, that
could be that could be something of substance. But you know,
you don't have like your truth and I don't have
my truth, like either one of us is right, and
I'm I'm I don't have much time, but I'm interested
in knowing, like like how you could get me to
your side, like could you give me a pitch and
argument or something like your experience? Tell you what your
experience was, Like I don't even I still don't even
understand what what the hell convinced you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will let continuing on for j Mike's and
your your hypo uh heat.
Speaker 1: Regardless of what I saw, either there was really a
dog that did that or there wasn't. Regardless of what
I saw, we agree with that, right, either what I
saw was universally.
Speaker 2: True or not right.
Speaker 1: Right, So if you were standing next to me and
you saw it, there would be more evidence in support
of that Oh, that's really true. But if you were
standing next to me and you didn't see it, that
would be evidence that I'm having some sort.
Speaker 2: Of like the water problem is Mike put it? Yeah,
well the ghast leak in my in my house, right,
that I'm having a delusion or something. Right, So you
seem to agree.
Speaker 1: At the same time, you'd be using this like, yes,
either really the dog exists, there isn't. But then you
use that as an example to tell me that we
all have our own truth. So again I'm left with
this sounds like nonsense, like why does my truth matter?
Speaker 2: Doesn't all that matter the objective truth?
Speaker 5: Well, well, just let's just start out with something small
on what happened, what would have happened to me in
my life with a witness. And I was a little
boy and I was watching TV. My mom was laying
on the chair next to me, sleeping, and I was
just watching the TV. And she woke up and she
looked at me and she said she's dead. And I
was a little boy. Man, I looked at her and
I'm like what, And right when she said that, the
phone rings.
Speaker 2: And somebody, Okay, that's the point. I got the point.
Pete I got the point.
Speaker 5: Pete, Pete, Pete, Pete, Pete.
Speaker 1: You've heard a hundred of time. I'm muting him, and
I was, so we've heard this one hundred meat. Nope,
nobody can hear you, Pete. We understand the stories. I
know he's but we've heard a hundred of those. Your
pastors cite these stories from But you're missing the point.
Either that really happened for some reason, like some mystical reason,
or it didn't, and you seem to not want to
accept that. You just seem to want to gravitate towards
Let's say it's true. First of all, let's say that
what you're saying is true. I have no reason to
doubt or believe either.
Speaker 2: So I'm willing to bet there was no further investigation
on it. That's the point. Let's say that what happened
was true. Okay, So what Mike, You hit the nail
on the head.
Speaker 3: You didn't do anything to like even find out. You
just accepted a feeling that you had. I have feelings,
and I'm fucking wrong about the feelings I have a
lot of the time. Who cares, it's just the way
you package it was really confusing. But it seems like
we got to the point, which is this really weird,
crazy thing happened.
Speaker 2: The coincidence I've had that happen too.
Speaker 3: I thought one time when I was a band practice
that I saw a station wagon fly over my head
like and I just I realized later I was like,
well it was really I was super dark. It's probably
just like a low like single engine plane. And I'm
an idiot, right, like that's that that? That right there
should be more convincing to you, like you know, prima
fashion off the bat, off the rip than like maybe
it really was this like station wagon that flies because
of all the background I have a lot of background information.
Maybe in an idiot, I have none a flying station wagons,
And I think in your case, like you have, you know,
weird things happen.
Speaker 2: They go unexplained. But I'll tell you what you didn't
do is you didn't go investigate it. Probably did you?
Did you go investigate?
Speaker 3: You call the paranormal people that are on season twenty
four of Never Finding a Ghost.
Speaker 2: So Pete, you get where we're coming at.
Speaker 5: Well, well, I did ask my mom like what was
that about? Because like she likes Pete.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna ask you to stop.
Speaker 1: Please please, Pete, Pete, what I'm just gonna ask you
to stop? I asked you a question. Do you understand?
Speaker 9: Argue to answer you?
Speaker 7: You said instigated?
Speaker 4: How did I know?
Speaker 2: No, Pete, Pete, I asked you a question. What question
did I ask you?
Speaker 5: Maybe? I?
Speaker 2: Maybe I maybe I do need to defend do the
same thing you did as I did. Ask a question.
Speaker 1: But but my question was, Pete, when I took you
off a mute, I said, do you understand where we're
coming from?
Speaker 2: Could you answer that question first?
Speaker 5: Okay, I understand where you're coming from. I yeah, Yeah, guys,
the children of the mute God should just mute me
all the.
Speaker 6: Time that we are we are that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are so so I mean that whining. Can
you answer the question?
Speaker 5: But what what's okay? Answer the question?
Speaker 2: What was the question?
Speaker 5: One more time?
Speaker 2: Do you understand the argument that J, Mike and I
are making? Now all of a sudden, I don't feel
so bad for muting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well I wasn't saying anything. You still had me
on mute.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, like a gold fish.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll give you one more chance, but hey, can
you please rephrase the argument we're making back to us
so we can understand.
Speaker 2: Okay, you understand what we're saying. What is our position?
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 5: What what what you're saying? Is you for for you
guys to believe in any way whatsoever as non theist,
you guys will have to have a crowd.
Speaker 6: You guys need a crowd.
Speaker 2: You guys need an experience too.
Speaker 1: But I would so that's not our position. The fact
that you dragged in non theists. My position has nothing
to do with theism. We were talking about your mom
saying she's dead or whatever, or a dog dancing on track.
Our position is belief requires sufficient evidence, all right, don't
you agree?
Speaker 5: I mean the evidence was that her mother had died.
Speaker 1: Like at that evidence that your mom said something coincidentally
with getting a phone call about something died. That's what
it's evidence for. It's not as God. It's not evidence
for the universe that wants you to feel loved. It's
not evidence for anything other than you you heard your
mom say something and a phone rang and you got news.
Speaker 3: Which and by the way, that that piece of like
that datum is like consistent if we do you know,
just grant you there, maybe there was some super spooky stuff. Yeah,
you would expect that on the hypothesis. You would also
expect the phone ringing and then it not being a
spooky thing. If it was just a coincidence, you would
expect that type of like that fact to be the case.
It's that fact is consistent with both of the hypotheses, right,
It's not like it's going to like edge one out
over the other. So I don't know why you would
call that evidence. But let me queue up Jamie, because
I know, real Fast, I'm sorry to do this to you.
Speaker 5: I have to.
Speaker 2: I have to bounce out.
Speaker 11: I have we do that.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I have some things that I have to take
care of, and I'm gonna get Jamie up here. But
I did maybe ended on at least.
Speaker 5: For my good.
Speaker 2: What I'll do then is, thanks Jamie for joining, say
goodbye to well real Fast. That was quite You're good,
I did. I don't know like it. It's a confusing call,
like the way that you speak about it.
Speaker 3: I want you to like examine like other beliefs that
you don't hold right, like I don't know, maybe atheism
or whatever, and then put yourself in a position of
going wuld I accept when presented the same case for
this belief, what I accept it, and your answer will
probably be no, and then ask yourself, like why you're
doing it in this case, like it just seems like, oh,
like I had this coincidence and I don't care to
But if I had said that and attribute it to
like any other phenomena in the world, you wouldn't accept that, right.
You wouldn't just be like, oh, okay, yeah it was
bigfoot that called clearly right. It's it's the things that
you're citing aren't even part of our background information, whereas
like a coincidence or things happening like that are.
Speaker 2: We do have those kind of things that happen, So.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have to just do more and be like,
I'm pretty sure it was this thing when the alternative
candidate explanations actually have like statistic data points of happening.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, but anyway, so I'll cue up Jamie at
just point being Jamie's on. Hi, Jamie, Yeah, you know,
point being, have have a have a good time, guys.
I'm more confused on this call than I've ever been
on any call.
Speaker 5: So have a good well, you should should Maybe you
wouldn't be so confused If you didn't.
Speaker 2: Are you just here? Is this you guys about being muted?
All you want to do? Complain about being used?
Speaker 1: You want to have a conversation, Pete, Pete, Pete, it's
our show. Just shut up and listen for a second.
Do you want to have a conversation or do you
want to complain about being muted when you talk too much?
Speaker 5: I didn't even say a word, and you guys are
muting me.
Speaker 2: Because you're not being muted. Okay, got it?
Speaker 1: Well no, no, okay, don't want to have a conversation,
then't just have a conversation. I don't want to hear
about complaining about being muted.
Speaker 2: It's our show. We moderated the way we want to.
Speaker 1: If you're going to call in and start going like
a cat running in twenty eight directions, we're gonna mute
you until we can get it back on track.
Speaker 2: That's what we do.
Speaker 1: So Jamie's here, Maybe he has some questions for you. Jamie,
you've been listening. Thank you for filling in and being
our backup. Do you have any questions for Pete?
Speaker 14: Well, okay, Pete, so I I the story about the
phone call coming just after you the announcement, like the
it seems like precognition, right, seems like, yeah, my mom.
Speaker 5: Woke up, she like woke up out of a dead sleep.
Speaker 2: And she was like he did. Okay. I was like,
ok pe started, we get it, we get it, we
understand the premise. I believe we've heard it a thousd.
Speaker 14: Okay, let's take let's take them to keep this on
track just a.
Speaker 6: Little bit, just a little bit. I believe you, Pete
in that. I believe that you.
Speaker 14: Felt that experience and you felt that it was true
and supernatural. Okay, So here's my question for you. Right,
you come to me with that story, and you are
and you're correct, Like literally, God, whatever God concept you
have reached down and gave your mom the power of precognition,
the power of extra sensory perception. You're right, God exists,
and that's proof of it. Another person comes to me
with a very similar story. They were sleeping at night
and then their dad came in and said, oh, oh
he's dead.
Speaker 6: He's dead.
Speaker 14: And then they get a phone call and their best
friend just died in a car accident. And that's just
a coincidence. God didn't tell him that it was just
a coincidence. So I have two people, one who's been
touched by God and one who hasn't, and they're telling
me the same story. How do I externally tell the difference?
Speaker 5: Well, I think that would be through your own life experiences, Like,
what do you really look at coincidences?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's toppings happening at the same time. Yeah,
that's the definition of coincidence.
Speaker 14: My life experience tells me that every time I've gone
on intuition, made assumptions, or believed I was right without evidence,
bad things happen, and that being empirical and demanding us
appropriate evidence before coming to a belief has served me
far far better than just going by a feeling. Personal experience,
and take it from someone who's visually impaired, eyewitness account
is oh shit, your eyes and mind are fragile, easily
fooled things, and so I don't trust them.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I don't see how I couldn't trust
a truth that happened in front of me.
Speaker 2: That you're smuggling in the premise.
Speaker 1: Hold on, Pete, hold on, you're smuggling in the premise
that it is true. And when you say true, you
mean that for shorthand a god was involved. You haven't
established that that's true. You have established and we are accepting.
Speaker 2: Mom wokes up, says she's dead, got a phone called confirmed,
she's somebody probably she is dead. Those are what you've
were willing to grant you.
Speaker 1: And then you call it a truth that there's a
god or a supernatural or something mystic happened. You seem
to be accepting that as given without feeling like a
burden to prove to us that that's real, and distinguishing
it from Jamie's example of Okay, somebody else else has
that happened, but no god exists? How do I tell
the difference? And you keep going back to this comments,
this comment of your reality or your truth. We already
established early in the call that that doesn't make sense.
And you agree that there is an objective truth, either
there is a god or there isn't. You can't keep
falling back on your truth unless what you mean is
you don't give a shit what anybody believes, and you
don't give a shit what you believe as long as
it feels true to you. If that's what you're arguing,
I think that's very dangerous. So let me ask you
a question. I think the best approach is to believe
as many true things and as few false things as possible.
Speaker 2: Do you agree that that should be everybody's goal?
Speaker 5: Yes, we all want to be more truthful.
Speaker 1: No, not be more truthful, believe more truth things. I
just want to clarify that.
Speaker 5: I like to say, be alive in more truth. How's that? No?
That to me?
Speaker 2: That that fits in, because I think you like to
come to deal with reality.
Speaker 1: People who want to use words that don't really mean
as much use fuzzy words.
Speaker 2: They tend to want to avoid real discussion. So I'm
asking you a real question.
Speaker 1: Do you agree that we one of your primary, if
not the primary revejective of every human first and foremost,
is to believe as many true things and as few
false things as possible, because by believing false things, you
can hurt yourself and you can hurt.
Speaker 2: People you care about. Do you believe that? Do you
agree with that? That's all I'm asking? Yes or no.
Speaker 6: I'm alive in.
Speaker 5: The truth, that of who I am in the Jackson?
Speaker 8: Your answer unresponsive, Hold on the God that I follow.
Speaker 5: I take that from a truth that I am alive
and because what I just heard, Jeannie.
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to mute you because you just
want to get on and talk about you feeling.
Speaker 2: Janie. Here's what I just heard. Do you believe that
it's the best thing to do is to believe as
many few true things and this youth false things as possible.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah,
unresponsive like it was like, I don't know where to
go from here.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to give Pete the chance. We have another caller.
What are your thoughts, Jamie.
Speaker 14: It is quite frustrating to speak to you, Pete. I
would love to try. I don't want to keep this
call running longer than it needs to. But every time
we try and get to a salient point, you dodge,
and I find personal anecdote and personal experience thoroughly unconvincing.
So I could let you talk.
Speaker 6: I could.
Speaker 14: I could have Greg kick Graham off the stream and
give you the flaw for an hour, and you could
tell me every single experience and quote unquote truth that
you live in and I'd be completely unconvinced. I know
I would be, because it would all just be you
telling me stories. They're just stories, Pete. And I've experienced
a lot of wacky shit in my life too, things
I couldn't explain, but I would rather say I don't
know than fill in the gaps with a god or
a spirituality or some other kind of wu. And the
reason why not to get super serious is that people
are using the arguments you're giving us to justify things
like taking away people's human rights, putting into place laws
that hurt people, demonizing entire swaths of the population, such
as the LGBTQ. So when you come to me with
your innocence, I think that God exists because my mum's
because of a feeling, basically, and that's my truth. Other
people are coming to me with that exact same methodology
of thought, but they're not justifying precognition. They're just to
find genocide. So that's why I'm angry at this call. Okay,
do you understand that, Pete?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mute Pete and see if we did an
answer for so, Pete, will you please let me talk?
Speaker 2: The question is will you please respond to what Jamie
said directly?
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's painting me as a communist and I'm a
follower of.
Speaker 2: Right bye bye yea. I have a good day, boy,
that went on longer than I should have.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 14: We have a caller in the queue, and thank you
for your patience. Next caller, we will get to you
it presently.
Speaker 1: So it seems to be let me, let me give
advice to Pete and anybody like him who feel him.
I had a caller like this last time I was on,
who admitted, who was much more engaged.
Speaker 2: She was very honest, and.
Speaker 1: It's just like, well, all these people have, all these experiences,
got to be right, like it just feels right and
all of that stuff. And she was much more honest
than Pete was being. Pete wants to get on and
whine about this, that and the other thing. I have
questions about whether or not he was genuine. I'm going
to assume that he was.
Speaker 2: But it seems to me inherently like almost.
Speaker 1: Just a given that the best plan for everybody is
to believe as many true things and as hue false
things as possible. And it goes to exactly what you're
talking about and exactly what I mentioned in my cold open.
We have people in the US military now at very
high levels, the highest levels saying the war and Iran's
good because it's going to bring about the end of
life on earth.
Speaker 2: This is what we're dealing with. So it's all fine
and cute for you to.
Speaker 1: Live your lived life and live, laugh, learn and do
all of your wu shit. But in my experience as
an attorney and as somebody here doing a host, anytime
I ask somebody a question and they start using that
fuzzy word multiple times, all of that language that doesn't
address it means they really know deep down inside they.
Speaker 2: Don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 1: It's like somebody going up in front of Congress and
being asked a question and screaming that the Dow is
over fifty thousand a day and that's what we should
be talking about instead.
Speaker 2: Of the question.
Speaker 6: I was just yeah.
Speaker 14: And I work adjacent in the medical field. I work
for a charity that helps cancer patients in my day job.
And belief trust me bad. Belief kills people believe in,
like the certain thing they want to do certain treatments
because it's poison or evil, and they believe that these
other things are going to work for them, and it
costs lives, and that.
Speaker 2: You don't have to be dumb either. Look at Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, had treatable cancer, chose for the WU, chose for
what felt true to him, died.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Anyway, shall we?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Move on?
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you. So we have one
more caller.
Speaker 1: The name is markis from New Zealand wants to talk
about their belief in God and miracles from precognition. Sounds
very similar here, So Marcus, can you hear us?
Speaker 2: Are you online? Let's hold on, we're connecting, and what
is it specifically you'd like to talk about?
Speaker 5: Hi?
Speaker 7: What's your name again?
Speaker 1: I'm the cross Examiner. My name is Graham, and Jamie
is the other host. And the question is, I guess you,
what do you believe? And more importantly, why.
Speaker 7: I believe in God because of so much weird stuff
in the world. I mean, there's so much good stuff
in the world that cannot be that indicates from me
thataters of God. I don't like his belief. I'm I
used to be a Christian, but like I now am
more of a usual taste. I'm believing God but don't
like it.
Speaker 1: I don't like God, but okay, so let me break
it down for Jamie and I want to categorize some
answers here so we can understand this. You believe that
a god, whatever that means to you, is real and
it exists in reality somewhere.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, you also said that you don't like the
fact that this god exists in your belief system that
you think you think is it proper to say that
you that's because you think this god is evil.
Speaker 7: I think that this God is I don't know if
coming evil would be like correct, because if our moralitity
comes from him, then everything he does is good. But
I think you'll do damage to me and damage to
people I love, So I think I think he's bad
for me.
Speaker 2: So what evidence do you have that this person exists
or this god exists.
Speaker 7: Well, well, I come from a seventy Adventist family and
have a prophet. Alan Whitak claimed she was able to
see the future about a meeting that's going to occure.
It's an each topic. Sorry, it's an each topic. You
may not know about it because.
Speaker 1: I'm actually somewhat familiar with it. But let's cut to
the chase. Do you believe this because of a story
that was told to you? Is that a way to
summarize it. You were told the story about the profit
and a prophecy or multiple prophecies coming true.
Speaker 7: No, because there was written evidence. I mean, there is
a manuscript manuscript sixteen nineteen eight, nineteen ninety sorry, that
is written four months before the meeting and discusses exactly
what the meeting was going to be about.
Speaker 1: You realize that that is a story that I'm talking about, right,
the story You were told that this manuscript existed, that
it perfectly described what happened in the meeting, that the
meeting actually took place, that the meeting did match up
with the manuscript, that the manuscript was written before that That's.
Speaker 2: All a story that was told to you. And I'm
not trying to use that in a pejorative I e.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that that's a bad thing or that
that's something I want to sort of throw shade at that.
But you weren't there, You didn't witness it, et cetera,
et cetera. You were told this by a book or
a person, right, Yeah, Okay, Jamie had a comic question.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean that I always and again, if this
has been convincing to you, I mean, part of me
does want to go into the details of what was
the what was the prophecy, how was it fulfilled? Because
actual precognition has to be specific, unique and novel like
it has to it has to be like bang on uh.
And even at that, how can you how can you
know it's not just coincidence? I mean knowing what's going
to happen at a meeting before a meeting. I have
that power because I know I go into a meeting
at work, We're going to be talking about work related shit.
We're going to be talking about documents that we share
from We're going to be talking about policies that are
coming up here.
Speaker 1: And Benny from accounting is going to object and you
can get pretty specific. I agree, but I would avoid
getting into the deal. So yeah, Like, I don't think
what we need to know is it's what I would
call in legal profession hearsay. Somebody told you something or
you read something not firsthand, and you have decided to
accept it. Why did you decide to accept that it
was true?
Speaker 7: Or because there is a document that you.
Speaker 1: Can Marcus, I'm going to save you some time. You
just did a circular argument. I believe that the document
is true. And did this thing and predicted this because
there is a document. So you're citing the story to
tell me why the story is true. Do you have
anything outside the story to confirm that any of these
things happened. This is the same as somebody coming up
to say, I believe that Jesus Christ is God because
these people witnessed his resurrection.
Speaker 2: Okay, what evidence do you have that that it's true?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Well, these people witness the resurrection. Well, you don't even
know if those people exist. You don't know if they
were misled or seeing things like there's a whole bunch
of things. But so what Why do you believe the
story as a whole?
Speaker 11: Uh?
Speaker 7: Because if it was a fraud, why people could ease
the Bunket? But why didn't they? I mean why did
the Uh? There's a person in that building was later
turned against the church and made their magazine the Bunking
that the paramo Alma.
Speaker 2: Do you believe Do you believe that Mormonism is true?
Speaker 7: I mean, I mean Joseph Smith announced his weaknesses.
Speaker 2: Do you believe that's true?
Speaker 7: It's possible, Yeah, it's possible. He saw a name.
Speaker 2: Do you believe it's true?
Speaker 9: Not?
Speaker 2: Is it possible.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that it's true because their version of
God contradicts your version of God, so they both can't
beat right. Do you believe that the Latter day Saints'
version of God is true?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 1: No, Okay, they make the exact same claim you did.
Lots of people could have debunked the story about Joseph
Smith using the seeing stones in his hat to translate
the Golden plates, and nobody has, therefore it's true. Do
you see why that's not a good argument. First of all,
you can make claims that can't be debunked. I was
in the closet and I heard a voice and it
told me about this, and it predicted that when I
walked out, I.
Speaker 2: Would see this, and it did. You can't debunk that story.
Doesn't mean it's true.
Speaker 14: It's one of the major things that we come up
against that is very frustrating. And it's called an unfalsifiable claim.
God is real and I will believe in him until
you can prove he isn't real. And I'm like, that's
not possible. So you're so you just set us up
for a no win situation, not to find truth, but
to defend your feeling and your faith basically, And it's
a similar here, like believing something's true until it's proven
not to be true is a bad way to go
about truth because again that can you can believe a
load of really really harmful, untrue things. And if you're
waiting for someone else to come and debunk those notions
before you stop believing in them, that's a that's a
that's a dark road. Mark is you don't want to
go down that way?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 7: No, Like I said, I'm not a Christian and asty,
but like let's put in like evidence for and again.
Speaker 1: Hold on, I'm going to let you do the evidence,
but I want you to actually respond to the point
we just made.
Speaker 2: Do you agree that.
Speaker 1: Nobody's debunked it yet is not a good reliable way
to get to the truth?
Speaker 7: Um? I, it depends. It depends.
Speaker 1: It can't depend. It's either reliable or it's unreliable. It
can't depend.
Speaker 2: Nobody's debunked it.
Speaker 1: Nobody's debunked the claim about Allah splitting the moon, Therefore,
therefore Islam must be true. Nobody's debunked the claim that
the Buddha fell from wherever it was, Therefore Buddhism must
be true. Nobody's debunked the claim that the lackness monster
or exists, Therefore the block desk monster must be true.
You can believe anything as long as nobody's debunked it's
it's it's a circular argument. I'm going to believe something
until somebody's proved that it's not believable. Well, then you
believe everything, and you believe contrabiictory things. I can't be
Muslim and Christian and Seventh day Adventist and Latter day
Saints and Buddhists and believe all of the claims about
those religions simultaneously because many of them contradict So it's
not a reliable way to truth. Science doesn't use it,
and science is the most reliable way to truth we've found.
But I'm open to others. Have I convinced you that
nobody's debunked it yet is a poor way.
Speaker 2: To find the truth. It's not reliable. Are you convinced
by that?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 7: I mean, like in now examples you they make it
it's like obvious, like like I'm being display at the
moment because the mom is in spirit.
Speaker 2: Okay, Marcus, Oh, I can't magic that bit back together.
Speaker 6: Wait. Wait, wait, nobody's debunked.
Speaker 1: No, hold on, hold on, I can't magic that back together.
Come on that you're you're arguing about details. You're arguing
about details. I think this is a very core issue.
If you were on jury, if you were on a
jury trial for murder, and the medical examiner was asked,
how can you tell that your theory about the level
of oxygen saturation in this person's blood is right, that's
not in the textbooks.
Speaker 2: You just have come up with it.
Speaker 1: And he said, well, nobody's argued against me so far.
Would you be like, that's right, this guy is guilty.
Let's let's send him to the electric chair. I hope
to think you wouldn't do that, would you?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, So when it really matters, and when we're dealing
with reality, you agree, go ahead, go ahead, Jamie.
Speaker 14: I was going to basically make the same point, because
I'm saying, let's let's take it down to non supernatural beliefs.
And I was actually gonna use murder like, we know that,
we know that children exist, we know that murder happens.
How do you feel if I say I believe you
murdered a child, Marcus and I'm going to keep believing
that until you prove me wrong. How'd you feel about it?
I say, you have no evidence for it, And I say,
you have no evidence but for your belief at this point,
So shall we? Sabertis listen to what the actual evidence is.
Speaker 2: I think that's where he was going. Go ahead and Marcus,
go ahead.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So, like I said, there is evidence for it.
There's a manuscript that I was reading four months before.
Speaker 6: Okay, what is it?
Speaker 2: It was written four months before? Prove it?
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, yeah, prove that the woman.
Speaker 1: Really saw Jesus resurrected. You see the similarities. You're telling
a story and the background of the story hasn't even
been proven.
Speaker 2: You can't prove these things. It's just claims.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Would there be a way to prove all of this?
I don't know if at the time it happened that
there would, but you can't right now. That's my point.
But please do continue.
Speaker 1: I just want you to acknowledge you just asserted as
true something that may be in dispute. Was it really
written that long ago? You're just repeating the story that
it was.
Speaker 7: Go ahead, yeah, I mean I can get into this
sort of sketicism. But like if like the guys at
the White State where they keep up the documents are professionals,
and yes they are by you could say there.
Speaker 14: Okay, Okay, for the sake of argument, we'll say the
document was four months before is and is not forged,
and it has not been tampered with.
Speaker 6: What does it actually say?
Speaker 7: I tell you that's the document?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what Jamie saying. Okay, let's give you all the
toys to play with. Let's say the background of the
story is true. There was a document.
Speaker 2: What does it say?
Speaker 1: This is going to lead sort of talking about the
So what about a coincidence? But go ahead, where does
the document describe? Give us the top three most amazing
things they predicted?
Speaker 7: He predicted that the editors at a at a Viral
Creek location would drop the Sabbath from the American Sentinel
magazine four months before they they actually sat down and
discussed this.
Speaker 2: Okay, it was the next most amazing thing. It predicted.
Speaker 7: It predicted the pressure for dropping the Sabbath at the magazine.
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 14: Was this a sentiment that was that was being discussed casually?
Speaker 1: If he said no, we don't believe him. He says yes,
you know, like it doesn't matter, like when you start
getting in. The most amazing thing is, hey, a magazine's
gonna drop a feature, Like I'm waiting for it to
predict that on Tuesday, February tenth, nineteen ninety seven, at
the intersection of State and Elm, there will be a
red camera running through at seventy two miles an hour,
and it's gonna hit this van that's a silver Honda,
and two of the right hip caps on this particular
car are gonna fly off and hit a squirrel that's
in the tree. Both headcuts are gonna hit this squirrel
and it's gonna knock it dead. But then when people
walk up and touch the squirrel, it's gonna come alive,
and it's gonna run off, and then it's eagle's gonna
swoop in and capture.
Speaker 2: The squirrel and fly away with it.
Speaker 1: That would be impressive if somebody wrote that all out
and could even manage to make that happen, trying to
make it happen much less have it be a coincidence.
And you're coming to us with a magazine drops a
feature from its coverage and four months ahead of like
after we predicted it in this document. That's that's your
evidence for God to quote to quote a few good men. Please,
these men are lives are on the line. Please tell
me you've come to me with more than phone calls
and foot lockers. Do you have something more impressive then
a document predicted a thing, And I can't even prove
that the document was actually written ahead of time.
Speaker 14: And that very mundane thing. Like, if I took that logic, Marcus,
then there are plenty of people I follow in the
video game space. You have like seemingly slope your wild
theories predicting what's going to be made next, what's going
to be happening, nixt just because they have a bit
of an innate sort of feeling about the industry because
they've been in it for so long. Like the fact
that Patava is his name predicted that there'd be an
English remake of the obscure Japanese game Metal Wolf Chaos
and then it was made. Does that make him a
profit of God? Or does that make him be a
bit savvag about the politics behind video game production? Because
it's the same amount of prediction, predictive power, and compulsion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are your thoughts Marcus, you know what do
you think?
Speaker 7: Like I said, I don't want you to same God
because I don't like him.
Speaker 14: But if someone proved to be without a shadow of
a doubt, that the Christian God was real, I still
wouldn't like him. It's not about whether we like him
or not, it's about whether he's actually real.
Speaker 1: Right, If Valdemort was real from Harry Potter, he'd be
an evil bastard. But if I was convinced he exists,
and then I'd treat it very seriously a real problem.
Speaker 2: But I don't think that a document And this.
Speaker 1: Ignores the dilemma we're dealing with now and the top
of the show where we talked about are called open.
It ignores the fact that a prediction that exists ahead
of time, that people are aware of and have access to,
can then be brought about the analogy that Matt Dilla
Hunt would always use. My version of it is I
tell my friend, Hey, I'm going into this deli. They're
going to serve me a ham sandwich. Watch and then
I go into the deli and I ask for a
ham sandwich. Was that a prophecy? No I worked to
bring it about. It's you know, like I predicted it
would happen. Sure, but maybe they were going to be
out of ham that day. I could say, right, maybe
I predicted it. It's the same level of sort of
yawn when you come to this is just a magazine
dropped a feature.
Speaker 2: Do you have anything else? Any questions there? For Marcus?
Speaker 14: I would also the only other thing I would I
would I would encourage you is that a lot of
these calls we've had today is people counting the hits
and disregarding the missus. How many documents were written about
upcoming meetings that didn't predict what was going to be
there or were inaccurate, I would wager a significantly larger
number than ones that sorry that last time.
Speaker 2: I would also say, don't discount you. You gave credit.
Speaker 1: Hey, these people who manage the records are professional.
Speaker 2: I agree with you.
Speaker 1: We have seen enough of humanity, both Charlatan's and very
serious people who will do what it takes to promote
their own religion. The story I tell all the time
is go look up and see how every state in
the United States except for one, put an exemption to
manslaughter into their laws because they wanted a loophole for
Christian science. Two people, Halderman and Erlikman I think it was,
were both Christian scientists. Under Nixon, Mondale was producing his
big signature. He was a big senator. He produced a
national legislation that said there was anti child abuse. We
were finally going to do something about child abuse. And
Eric Halderman and Erlickman saw that that law, if enforced,
would be the end of Christian science because by definition,
what they do is abuse to children that causes death,
and they would all go to jail. So they went
behind the scenes and put in a clause had had
the somebody introduced an amendment that puts in a It
wasn't even amendment. They promulgated rules that included an exception
for religious beliefs. If you deny your child desperately needed
medicine because you genuinely believed in Christian science or whatever,
that you had a firmly held religious belief that that
you should just pray over them rather than give them
all care, and the kid dies, under the law, you
would have been guilty of manslaughter because they acted. The
parents were not guilty of manslaughter. Do you know how
many kids died because they did that? Dirty trick, and
they were firm believers that everybody thought were great. Of
course until Watergate and they sort of lost their jobs.
But people will go to great lengths that you think
maybe are over the top to try to further their
cause because it either gives them personal setsisfaction see people
becoming trolls online, or because they benefit it financially see
Charlatan selling bullshit, or because they are religious fanatics see
Erlichmann and Hulderman. What are your thoughts, Marcus before we
wrap it up?
Speaker 7: It's just I come with arguments like nobody the bunket
yet that there could be the front, because it's interesting
that like, uh, skeptics don't interact much with the world
of Seven day Adventism, Like.
Speaker 2: Are you a skeptic?
Speaker 7: I'm not. I don't have the mentality to be one.
I like you, guys, sol what do you?
Speaker 5: What do you?
Speaker 2: What is yours? What do you think skeptic means? To
be a skeptic?
Speaker 7: It means that you kick out clam claims and even
evidence with a bit of thought that.
Speaker 1: You that's not my definition, Jamie, do you have a
definition of skepticism?
Speaker 14: Basically, a skeptic is someone who withholds their belief until
they are presented sufficient evidence to compel that belief, and
do not believe in anything outside of those circumstances, if
it's all possible. I'm not saying that I'm one hundred
percent skeptic. I have irrational thoughts and beliefs, but at
least I'm self aware enough to know that they are irrational.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I would tend to agree with that.
Speaker 1: I withhold belief until I'm presented with and here's the keyword,
sufficient evidence, and then the argument just just over what's sufficient.
I think you're probably a skeptics, Marcus. You just you
think that evidence, some evidence is sufficient.
Speaker 2: And we don't.
Speaker 6: Yeah, raise you, Bob.
Speaker 1: You don't believe a guy that comes up to you
and says, hey, give me ten thousand dollars to day.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go put it in the back of
this van.
Speaker 1: I'm going to drive around for a week, and when
I come back, you'll have a million dollars because I'm
going to invest it. You wouldn't believe that, right, No, Yeah,
so you are a skeptic. You would demand evidence. You
would want to see show me your portfolio. I want
to watch this being done. Take me on van rides,
show me your papers. I'm going to go talk to
the local authorities and see if you've ever been investigated.
I'm like you would demand a shit ton of evidence
before you put your ten thousand dollars at risk. You're
not demanding the same amount of evidence when you put
your eternal soul and those of your families at risk.
Speaker 2: And I don't know why.
Speaker 14: I mean not to be a little bit cynical, but
I think it's because a lot of people, while they
say that the soul is the most important part of it,
because it can't really easily be proven, it's easy to
gamble with invisible money.
Speaker 2: That's a good way, wouldn't it.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Marcus, I appreciate I hope we gave
you something to talk to think about that you are
a skeptic, it's just that your sufficiency seems to be
out of whack. I think you should demand more evidence,
and you should not consider it rude. You should not
consider it improper or ownersome, or as a bad take
east or any of those adjectives or synonyms. It is
the proper way to go about your life if you
don't want to be harmed. And you can be harmed
big ways, like hey, I believe to this darker and
need cut my leg off by accident, and you can
be harmed by small ways. I've wasted an hour every
Sunday going to church for my whole life, like you
can still be harmed. Yeah, final thoughts there, Jamie, Jamie.
Speaker 6: Nothing really.
Speaker 14: Thank you for being Marcus. Thank you for being more
calm and accepting of the of the conversation. Marcus, we
appreciate that. I would also, I mean, I'm push my
invisible lessons. I'm actually I would say that Marcus engages
in skepticism, but like to make your worldview, to be
a skeptic is a conscious choice.
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 14: I think everyone engages in skepticism, does a skepticism and
every so often. But to declare yourself a skeptic is
to say this is my guiding principle, and I'm going
to put it of like intuition as much as I
can wherever I can. I think Marcus is basically saying
that he goes with feelings as often as he goes
with skepticism.
Speaker 2: And yeah, therefore agree with that. I agree with that
fair point.
Speaker 6: Being pignatic, But then again, you're a lawyer.
Speaker 1: That's kind of you know, it's very true. I think
me saying everybody's a skeptic is not true. It's in
one sense it is. I don't I don't know anybody
who's truly not skeptical about it's just the sufficiency of
evidence is what they and usually they'll they'll lower their
requirement of sufficiency for things that they emotionally like or
attached to.
Speaker 14: And thank you, Marcus, Thanks Marcus. And I would say
that that it should be that should be the inverse.
The more emotionally attached you are to something, the deeper
the scrutiny should apply to it, because holy crap, you
don't want to be wrong about stuff that's part of
your you're in a being that that's what that's that's
a paradigm shattering if if you believe something so so
much it becomes part of your sort of being in personality,
and that it's proven to be false.
Speaker 6: Oh the fuck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If that's one message for everything I do online, it's that,
like you, we're seeing it play out. We've watched this
slow motion avalanche for the last twenty years, ever since the.
Speaker 2: Last time we were at war, and.
Speaker 1: Rumsfield was giving daily briefings to Bush the second, the Junior,
and on the binder of those briefings every day we're
biblical quotations. And this was the last time we were
in the Middle East with potentially now again boots on
the ground, and it was all this biblical view. We
keep going in there thinking, oh, there's an added bonus
to going in there.
Speaker 2: It's not just the oil, it's not just this other bit.
Speaker 1: But God wants us to because God wants there to
be a confident in the Middle East so we can
bring about armageddon. And we have hundreds and hundreds of
people on record to day complaining, active military personnel complaining
that their superiors are preaching this to them. And that
is one of the scariest moments of my life. I've
never heard of that actually happening. I was pissed off
during Bush two when they favored hiring Christian pastors to
be chaplains, right, they were favoring evangelicals.
Speaker 2: That was sort of it was a quaint day where mild.
Speaker 1: Scale tipping, putting their thumb on the scale in favor
of Christian chaplains in the service. Was really pissed me
off and scared me. And I can't imagine of being
able to go back to that quaint time these days.
I don't know what about you, Jamie.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean, I know it's fiction. But the scene
Informat or Jacket where Ali Marie's stomping down singing Happy
Birthday Jesus to the troops, and I'm like, there's a
very similitude in this scene. I wouldn't be surprised if
that happened. And in the in the Vietnam War and
the like and yeah, and in the same breath, these
people will say, oh, yeah, but the Crusades were bad
because that was obviously perversion of Christianity. Great for personal
gain and to pull the pull the Byzantine empires, faltering
irons out of the fire and whatever.
Speaker 6: It's like, it's it's the same doing it again.
Speaker 1: And even as gritty as the masterpiece of Full Metal
Jacket was, in that scene, you've had something propping that
probably wouldn't happen today. When Joker says, no, I don't
believe in the god you're professing. I don't believe in
the Virgin Mary, he gets hell from the sergeant, but
then the sergeant rewards him for that attitude, for sticking
up for his beliefs, that fucking doesn't happen. Now you
disagree with the command, and you're you're out. You're relegated
to be the shields of Americas.
Speaker 14: I would, I would, I would refer to the stories
of actual veterans on that we know if you and
and and we and some of the higher ups in
in the a C are have served, and they have
had they have told stories about about how religion and
military come together in not the best ways.
Speaker 6: So yeah, but yes, thanks for thanks for having me up.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Do you have any observations about the prior callers before
real quick, before.
Speaker 14: We go the first the first call regarding oh I'm blanking,
oh yeah, with veganism, Yeah, yes, moral superiority. It can
seem like hypocrisy that I'm so vehement against the denigration
of humans in a religious context. And I will then
go and go to the pe terries around the corner
from from from the freethought that I pick up a
double double.
Speaker 6: And so there's that.
Speaker 14: But on the on the same thing, saying oh, you know, slaver,
when will say, well, slavery is analogous to eating meat.
I'm like, yeah, I have canine teeth, like I have
physical evidence that I was evolutionarily developing to be omnivorous,
like I am designed to well designed designed, I'm not designed,
but I evolved to eat a variety of foods, including meat.
And yes, fighting our natural imperatives is often the way
to morally superior standpoint. But I don't think I would
counter that. I would, and I'd ask, you know, we
know biologists.
Speaker 4: I might.
Speaker 14: I might ask friend of the show Forest Valka next
time I gets talk to him, Hey, is there any
evolutionary emphasis to owning people as farm equipment?
Speaker 1: And then with the well, the South thought of war
over and over here, they thought it was pretty important
to their survival.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 14: And then there was the second call about about talking
about the proselytizing I am. I mean again, some people
might call the hypocrites because we're up here talking and
and inviting people to talk to us about.
Speaker 2: This is a call in.
Speaker 14: Yeah, the equivalents, We don't. We're not going door to
door saying have you have you thought about how she
this is a load of crap. But yes, I do
actually enjoy engaging with people who try and puselotize with me.
But then again, I'm a freak who enjoys that kind
of thing, and I like, I understand where a lot
of people just don't want it shoved in their faces.
And unfortunately, because I'm slightly vindictive when there are street
preachers on the corners. And I've told the story about
when I when I went over to England and met
up with again excellent show hoster Richard Gilliver and we
kind of sort of slightly may have bulleted some jos.
This is a little bit with with like it was
blood in the water because two well versed anti apologists
are going up to.
Speaker 6: These just nice people who talk about.
Speaker 1: They were giving the mildest of armament before being shoved
under the Yeah, so.
Speaker 14: You know, I have I feel that's a guilty pleasure.
And then the last few calls, yep, just evidence, woo
woo woo. Evidence please and please don't believe things without evidence,
because that is a dark, dark path.
Speaker 6: You're great, that can kill people.
Speaker 1: I agree, kill people. You know, there's a measles outbreak
in the United States. Let's move that way. So so,
yet another show in the history of the atheist experience.
Where we haven't become convinced, but I am still optimistic
that sooner or later somebody will come up with at
least an argument that makes us really think about it.
So please, next time we're on, give us a call.
We're here every Sunday at four thirty pm Central Time,
once again, thanks to the crew, Thanks to j Mike,
the host who had to leave early. I'm sorry to
hear that, and a special thanks here to Jamie for
being our backup and filling in when we had an
emergency host need.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. It was great to be on
the show again with you.
Speaker 6: Always a pleasure, Dave always all right.
Speaker 2: Have a great time, everybody, See you again next time.
Bye bye, say dot albody, y.
Speaker 12: Stot questen the bull shit everyone around you, your buys
the shit, say y'all walk, it's fast, all.
Speaker 7: Under m David of y'all.
Speaker 2: Watch Talking Than Live Sundays at one pm Central. Visit
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