October 26, 2025 • 48 mins
This Breakfast with a Heathen episode covers a range of questions from faith and politics to parenting and personal belief. We start with how religion was never out of U.S. politics—Trump only made it obvious—and look at what happens when faith becomes a tool for control rather than reflection.
We talk about the idea that atheists “believe in nothing,” the emotional damage of teaching children about hell, and the isolation that often follows when you stop believing. There’s a discussion about finding hope without faith, why you don’t need all the answers to live meaningfully, and how religion has traumatized people who once trusted it.
Lighter moments include alternative swear words, the ethics of infant baptism, and how to respond when someone says “God is science.” We also look at the claim that most Nobel Prize winners believed in God, and why historical context changes that picture.
It’s reason over rhetoric, curiosity over creed, and coffee over communion.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:09):
Welcome back to another episode of Breakfast
with a Heathen.
My name is Mike.
I urge you to get a cup ofcoffee and settle in, maybe grab
a donut or a croissant orwhatever it is that you have for
your Sunday morning breakfastand hang on like a second and
get a cup of coffee here.
With my very worn-out Navy dadum cup I've had now for gosh, 10
(00:34):
years, I guess, when my son wentinto the Navy.
Very proud of that cup.
You ever notice that there arethings in your house that have
absolutely no real value?
But if your house was underthreat of a tornado or a
hurricane or a fire, there's ahandful of things you would
grab, and people will say, Whydid you why didn't you grab the
big screen TV?
It's like, yeah, I could getanother TV.
(00:55):
I can't get this cup with allthis wearing on it that I've had
now again for 10 years.
And it just it's a little pieceof, you know, my son and him
leaving.
He's my youngest and going offand joining the Navy and weird
things like that.
I remember seeing a video of aman uh who had a spool of wire,
(01:17):
and uh he was he was sitting ona bench or something, and he was
trying to show his wife he hadthis spool of wire that had come
down to where he only had youknow a small amount of feet
left.
And he said he had had this,well, gosh, like I feel like it
was for decades.
You know, he bought it when itwas a large spool of wire, and
he's used it over over time forvarious projects.
(01:39):
And you know, it was it was itwas not the wire, it was it was
the the life that that that theum the usage of that wire
represented.
And I always thought that's ayeah, I get it.
I think I think every man thatsaw that video got it.
It was just like, yeah, there'ssome things in life that have no
(02:00):
value, but they represent aportion of your life, and it's
uh it's very importantsometimes.
Oddly so.
I don't know how I got off onthat tangent, but I'm gonna take
another cup of coffee becauseapparently I need it to uh wake
up on a Sunday morning.
So hold on a second.
All right, let's get into someof the questions we have here.
We've got a handful of questionskind of all over the board this
(02:21):
time.
This first one, I'm gonnaqualify this a little bit.
Um, if you don't really know mepersonally, you've only known me
through this Atheistvillechannel and some of the
different shows that I do onthis channel, you would be
forgiven for assuming that I ama flaming liberal and always
have been.
Uh, you would be wrong.
(02:41):
You'd be partly right.
I am a flaming liberal, I guess.
Uh, but that was not always thecase.
In fact, growing up, I was verymuch a Republican.
As a young teenager, I guess.
And yeah, I say young, meaning ayoung person, and as a teenager,
uh, I was a Republican.
My first time voting, oh gosh,goodness, I was turned 18 and
(03:02):
88.
So that would have been GeorgeBush, the senior.
I think, I think that was myfirst vote.
And I don't think I votedReagan, right?
Because Reagan was going out ofoffice.
Uh, so I think George Bush wasmy first vote.
I voted Republican at the time.
Um, and up until um my 40s, Iwas hanging on and losing grip
(03:27):
with the Republican Party.
Meaning I uh stood for, and Istill associate myself with the
need for smaller government,smaller across the board.
That does not mean get rid ofevery single department in the
effort to make it smaller,right?
We all have things we we wastemoney on.
(03:47):
That doesn't mean we cut everysingle expense and cut it to the
bone, but there are someexpenses that are obviously
inflated.
I am um pro-military.
As I mentioned, my son is in theNavy, my father was in the Navy,
my wife's father was in the AirForce.
Um, I grew up in a Navy town inJacksonville, Florida.
So I have no problem in themilitary.
I think we probably do it alittle excessively, but at the
(04:11):
same time, I live in a countrywhere I feel fairly secure, have
complaints about the country,but I don't feel that we're
under attack.
Um, I've always worked in a sortof large white-collar financial
institution sort of environment.
So I'm a big business guy.
I did own a company, sotherefore, in the
entrepreneurial spirit, I owneda uh a couple of retail stores.
(04:32):
My wife and I did.
So I'm I'm a big business kindof person.
I'm an MBA.
So all that sort of thing thatRepublicans say they used to
stand for, I am, I'm with you.
But they lost me.
They I like to say they movedout from underneath me.
I didn't move away.
They did.
At some point, I started torealize, you know, I have lots
of gay friends.
(04:53):
I don't know why the Republicansseem to be so far against it.
I have lots of immigrantfriends.
I don't know why Republicansseem to hate that so much.
Uh, and they'll say they don't,but let's be honest.
Um, and more importantly, in ain a grand sense, the uh
evangelical, the the latching onand the promotion of evangelical
(05:13):
values um and the turning ofevangelical into a political
party that happens to bereligious, which is how I see
it, and them taking over the uhthe Republican Party, that was
it.
I was like, all right.
And those things I mentionedearlier, the immigration and the
LGBTQ issues and various otherthings.
I I just growing up in theSouth, I saw some of the worst
(05:36):
examples of that.
And unfortunately, they werevery often on the Republican
side, not exclusively in theSouth.
Um, racism and bigotry andthings of this nature do cut
across all political parties.
So I'm not gonna blamenecessarily one versus the
other.
But um, I don't think anybodywould accuse the GOP of being uh
(05:57):
small government oriented now.
That would that would beridiculous.
So that's a long way to go formy first question here.
But the first question I hadhere, uh, someone mentioned, or
this is more of a point, Iguess, than a question, a
question.
Religion was never out of the USpolitics.
Trump just took off its mask.
And that is partly true.
(06:19):
And again, all these things aremy opinion, and I make broad
strokes.
You're welcome to disagree withme.
In fact, if you disagree withme, that tells you I'm doing my
job, which means I'm notappealing to everybody.
Um, I don't want to do that.
That would be ridiculous.
But I don't let me see if I saythis right.
I don't blame Trump for theAmerica say.
(06:44):
I do blame Trump for emboldeningAmerica.
And again, I'm gonna go back toI was raised in the South
mostly.
I was born in Pennsylvania, butraised mostly in the South.
I raised my kids in the South.
I have a house in the South, soI'm very Southern in that sense.
Um, I can't tell you, I Iliterally could not tell you the
number of times I've beenstanding someplace, and this
(07:08):
used to happen in my shop.
I own again retail stores, butwe had a shop.
We did car and parts and stufflike that.
I've been standing in my shopand had a white man, almost 100%
man, just sort of you know lookaround and say blah, blah, blah.
Then it'd be the most racist,outrageous stuff in the world.
But they'd say it again with alittle bit of a look over the
(07:28):
shoulder, make sure no blackpeople are in the vicinity, and
they would just spit it out.
Why they felt that it was okayto say out loud, why they felt
it was okay to say to me, whythey felt that they should even
think those thoughts, let alonesay them, I will never
understand.
(07:49):
I I I don't get it.
I I just never got it.
The difference between what Ijust did, which is and then say
it, that part doesn't happennow.
That part is you can just sayit.
You know, if you're a bigot,you're a racist, um, you have
some outrageous comments to makeabout a person's color, a
(08:11):
person's sexual orientation,their their creed, you know,
whatever.
Um, the looking over theshoulder and the hushed tones,
it doesn't happen as much.
I'm sure it does to some degree,obviously, but there is
emboldenment that has happenedover this last 10 years that I
will blame Trump.
I will lay that at his feet forrecognizing that those
(08:33):
sentiments are out there andgiving um permission to
basically say them out loud.
And um it's unfortunate.
It's unfortunate, I dislike it,but Trump is not the he's not
the originator of that by anymeans.
So don't misunderstand me.
(08:55):
Trump, though, as a positionthat he holds, being the
president of the United States,um has made that easier.
If you're that kind of person,this Archie Bunker type, and
people forget that Archie Bunkerwas supposed to be satire.
A lot of people identified withArchie Bunker and they didn't
really understand it was satire,especially in the South.
(09:15):
But if you're that person whojust wakes up and thinks racist
thoughts and bigoted thoughtsall day long, you can see Trump
and say, Yeah, but look, look,this is this guy's a billionaire
and he's making money hand overfist, and he's the president of
the United States, and he hasall this power, and he's married
to this beautiful woman, andblah, blah, blah.
So why can't why isn't it why isthat bad?
(09:37):
I wish I had all of that.
Yeah, I it's really upsetting tome, but you know, what are you
gonna do?
There you go.
Let's start this conversationoff with a little bit of rant,
right?
Um, so the next question this isa very common sort of sentiment.
Um, and there's a this goes onwith a larger sentiment, which
(09:58):
is if you're an atheist, youknow, what's stopping you from
doing X, right?
Because if you're an atheist,you have absolutely no morals,
so you can do whatever you want,which is the most ridiculous
statement, but people make itconstantly.
So this person, I think theywere being tongue-in-cheek when
they say this.
Uh, so now that you believe innothing, why not be gay?
And again, I'm gonna assume thatthey were being uh again, tongue
(10:22):
in cheek and trying to, youknow, make a point, make a
satirical point with that.
Um, but that's sort of the samesentiment we get with a lot of
things.
You know, if you don't believein God, what's stopping you from
doing anything?
In this case, what's stoppingyou from being gay?
Why wouldn't you just be gaythat gay then?
As if that's the reason I lovewomen.
(10:42):
You know, I've been married for31 years.
I started dating my wife in highschool.
We didn't get married to her at25, so we had a we had some oats
to sew.
Um, but nonetheless, I've beenum, yeah, I've always been a
lover of women.
You ask my mom, I had a crush onBrenda Bardot in the fifth in uh
kindergarten.
We were five years old.
I'm actually friends with her onuh Facebook, and she would
(11:02):
probably never remember that Ihad an absolute crush on her in
1975 or 76, whenever it was thatI was in kindergarten.
Um beautiful little Italiangirl, and uh, she broke my heart
because she did not she did notreturn that uh infatuation.
So I'm still holding a littlebit of a grudge and uh carrying
a torch for Brenda.
So if you're out there, Brenda.
(11:23):
But again, I've always lovedwomen, I've always loved little
girls.
I've loved that sounds terrible.
I loved little girls when I wasa little boy, I loved teenage
girls when I was a teenager, andI've loved women since I became
a man.
I wouldn't turn gay simplybecause I don't believe a God.
What?
What?
Neither would a gay man turnstraight.
It doesn't work that way.
(11:44):
And I don't understand thepeople that can't understand
that, right?
I mean, if you don't understandthat you feel something,
whatever you are, if you feel anattraction to men because you're
a woman, or you're attracted towomen because you're a man, and
you just feel it.
It's not like you thought aboutit, not like you had to decide,
not like your parents came toyou at 11 years old and said,
(12:07):
Okay, Tommy, it's time todecide.
What are you gonna do?
You're gonna be gay, you bestraight, come on, we gotta have
an answer, we're running todinner later on.
No, you just feel what you feel,and why you can't assume that
other people could feeldifferently, it boggles my mind.
But God has nothing to do withthat.
It has nothing to do with it.
And telling a gay person thatthey're going to hell because
(12:29):
they feel what they feel, okay.
You might get them to stoptaking action on that.
You might get them to try tosuppress that and oppress that,
you know.
Um, but that's not the samething.
It's like tell I I'm wearing ablue shirt today, which is not
unusual because I love the colorblue.
(12:49):
Blue is my favorite color.
If you told me that blue wasagainst the word of God and I
was a believer and I have towear green, I might wear green.
I might buy a green car and Imight tell people I love green.
I don't, I love blue, but Imight tell you I love green.
And if that gets me into heaven,okay.
But the reality is I like blue.
They can't fake that.
(13:10):
And being gay and trying to turnthe person straight by giving
them a bunch of scripture, it'snot gonna work.
They're so gay.
And again, they might pretendthat they're not because they
fear what you're telling them,they're still gay.
This is one of the okay, here weare.
I'm gonna probably have somepeople disagree with me on um
the left or the um the atheistsor however group you want to put
(13:32):
me in.
Um, teaching children about hellis emotional abuse.
I don't go that far.
I know where they're comingfrom.
I've heard this before.
I don't go that far.
Um, I let me just say I disagreewith that as it stands.
So again, the the title of thatwas Teaching Children About Hell
(13:54):
is Emotional Abuse.
I don't think that's true.
I think you can abuse people byum teaching uh children about
heaven and hell and threateningthem.
You could abuse someone withthat.
Certainly, we just talked aboutuh people that are gay and
telling them they're going to goto hell and trying to make them
(14:16):
live a life that's not uh trueand sincere because you've
threatened them.
That obviously could be abuse,yeah.
But as a general rule, I don'tfeel like I was emotionally
abused as a child.
I grew up Episcopal, I thinkI've mentioned that uh on this
show and on this channel,certainly.
Um, was I emotionally abused asjust being told that there was a
(14:37):
hell and there's various sins umthat would put me there?
I don't think so.
You know, I no, no, I I again soI disagree with that.
It's a it's not an uncommonstatement that I have heard.
And I I also will allow for thisbecause I mentioned earlier that
I don't understand why somepeople don't understand that
(14:58):
other people's lives could bedifferent.
I do understand that otherpeople have had much more
traumatic, and I even use thatword because I didn't have a
traumatic experience withreligion.
I just don't believe it.
I was never traumatized by it.
I do know people that wereabsolutely traumatized by their
religious parents and thereligious upbringing they had.
(15:20):
And them leaving religion was aum was it was a tremendous
relief.
For me, it was just like alogical progression.
But for some of these people,when they left religion, it was
this unburdening and it's thisthis little weight lifted off of
them.
And for those people, theyprobably would agree with that.
So I'm gonna disagree with it asa statement, but I understand
(15:43):
where people come from when theysay that.
What's another one here?
All right.
So this is a question that hascome up, or statement, I
shouldn't say a question, it's astatement.
It's a statement this personmade.
And this has come up many timesactually, in in various forms on
uh a couple of our shows.
So we're doing a show tonight, alive stream.
(16:05):
And so it depends on when you'relistening to this.
So you you may have missed thelive stream, but I urge you to
check in on our live streams.
We do a show called The UnholyRoundtable, where we get
together three, four, five uhdifferent atheists from
different backgrounds and walksof life, and we go through
questions very much like this,but we do it as a group.
So we all have differentperspectives and and again
(16:26):
different backgrounds.
And some of us had very minimalreligious upbringing in the
sense that it wasn't overlytraumatic to leave.
Some of us had very strongupbringing, and it was very
traumatic to leave.
So there's all kinds of degreesof that, right?
So this question is um they theymade the point that being an
(16:46):
atheist is isolating.
And I'm gonna guess uh wherethis person was coming from.
I'm just kind of looking attheir the remainder of their
statement here.
When you leave religion, andI've talked to many people about
this, for many people, religionis not just the belief part, the
belief in God or Jesus or or uhor other religions, whatever
(17:09):
your religion is.
It's also very social.
Um, Cynthia McDonald's is uh isone of my friends, and she's
also in the Unholy Roundtable,and uh, she's a black atheist.
She runs a group here in town uhcalled the Black Nonbelievers.
And and she'll tell you veryclearly in the black community,
the church is the center of thecommunity, right?
(17:30):
I think we probably all knowthat.
Um so sometimes when people haveleft the church, uh they've been
asked, and I've sat in meetingswith the black atheists or the
black non-believers, wherethey've been, they've said
people have asked them um thatthey are made the point that
they're betraying theirblackness, right?
They're betraying their race bybeing an atheist because the the
sense of community and thechurch being the center of that
(17:53):
is so strong.
So when you leave it, and thishappens to white people too,
it's not just black people, butblack people are, it's the
different level of community interms of church-wise.
But when you leave thatcommunity, the the church
community, it can be veryisolating.
Um, my mother, who's 75-ish, 76,whatever she is now, um outside
(18:14):
of her children, and that'sabout it, that live near her,
children, grandchildren, thatsort of thing, everyone else she
talks to, for the most part, isfrom church, right?
It's a very social part.
My stepfather and her, they goto church, they go to the
pancake breakfasts, and they um,you know, he parks cars when
they have this once-a-year bigfeast that they do, and he parks
(18:36):
cars and uh she works at thechurch at part-time as a
bookkeeper or something.
Um, you know, they're at thechurch doing Bible studies and
they they socialize with peoplefrom the church outside of
church.
It is very, very social.
If she were to suddenly decidetomorrow that, you know, none of
this really makes sense.
I'm kind of with my uh two of mysons.
(18:56):
She has three sons, two of usare atheists, one's not.
Uh, if she decided she's morelike me and my younger brother,
my youngest brother, she wouldleave all that.
And I think mentally that wouldnot be very good for her because
that's that's what keeps hergoing.
I mean, again, she's 75, 76.
Uh, she was born in 49.
So uh 76, I think.
(19:17):
Um it would be very isolatingfor her to lose all of that.
And I understand that.
It's one of the reasons that westarted here in Chicago.
We have an atheist group.
It was started out as a Facebookgroup, just as a normal face
group group uh 10, 11 years ago.
And uh at some point we said,you know, we're all kind of in
(19:39):
this group and we'rechit-chatting back and forth.
Um, maybe we should all gettogether one night.
You just hang out at a bar.
And we did that.
And we've been doing it eversince.
That's 10 years ago.
Up until COVID, we did it almostevery single month.
Usually took November, Decemberoff because of all the holidays,
but we would do this everysingle month.
We would get together, hang outat a bar, hang out wherever.
(20:00):
Um, just in fact, last nighthere at my house, we had 15, 20
people or so from that groupover for a party.
No particular reason.
Those are the people I know herein Chicago for the most part,
but it was also they gettogether and we hang out and we
don't discuss atheism.
No, if it comes up.
(20:21):
It's just we know that when theit's like anything else, there's
a there's a shared interest.
We have a shared interest inatheism in the sense that we've
all left religion.
That's the interest.
It'd be no different if you werea Bears fan, or you were you
know a fan of making your ownpottery, or you are a car guy.
I have a four-wheel drive, uh,forerunner that I really enjoy.
(20:43):
And when I lived in Californiawhere I got that truck, I would
go to these forerunner groups.
Why?
No particular reason, but we allhad the same type of trucks and
we would drive out in the desertand we'd have a good time and
spend the day out there.
This is the same thing.
You know, we we have alike-mindedness in our atheist
group, so we hang out.
So if you're that kind ofperson, you're leaving religion,
(21:05):
look for a group like ours.
Look for an association like theAmerican Humanist Association.
Um, they might have meetings.
Sometimes their meetings areagenda-driven, but that's fine.
Go to one and listen to aspeaker, talk about whatever.
Um, it might be eye-opening justfrom an educational point of
view, but you'll also meet someadditional people that think
like you.
(21:26):
Or more importantly, this iswhat I say a lot to new people
coming to our group is you mightmeet someone who's further down
the road than you are.
And one of the reasons I startedthis entire channel was to show
people that there are othersjust like you.
In fact, I mentioned CynthiaMcDonald earlier.
She was one of the first peopleI had on as an interview because
(21:48):
there's a black person out theresomewhere who can watch me and
they're like, yeah, I get thatthat white guy, that middle-aged
white guy is an atheist.
But, you know, I'm a 33-year-oldblack man in some southern city.
He doesn't know my life and mycommunity.
I I can't just come out andbecome an atheist.
But he might see Cynthia andsay, okay, well, okay, now she's
(22:12):
a 40-ish black woman, and shewas raised um as an episcopal,
as an Episcopalian, and thenbecame a uh Pentecostal.
Um and now she's an atheist.
Well, he might see that personand say, Oh, okay, well, if she
can do that, maybe, maybethere's a path for me here.
So find those people.
(22:32):
Again, find groups like ours,find groups like the Humanist
Association, look in your inFacebook or Meetup or Reddit,
uh, put it in your city and finda location nearest you or your
biggest town, and try to try togo to a meeting or try to go to
a gathering or a meetup orsomething just to find other
(22:53):
people.
And if you go enough, you'rejust gonna meet people.
And you're gonna meet peopleagain that are there for the
same reasons.
So you're already gonna havethat in common.
That's a good, good way tostart.
Again, we've been having thesegroup group group meetings, my
mouth all mumbly, uh, thesegroup meetings now for over 10
years.
I mean, hundreds of these overthe past 10 years, right?
(23:16):
Um, this is the third one I'vedone at my house this year.
So, you know, and I'll I lovethese people.
I love the people that came.
Uh, I love it.
So um it doesn't have to beisolating, but I understand why
you feel that way.
There's another question.
You don't have to have theanswers.
Um, that's absolutely true.
(23:36):
I just did a mic drop on this, Ithink it was a mic drop, might
have been a short, I can'tremember.
I do a lot of videos.
Uh, on the point that um a lotof people will ask us if you're
not an atheist, or let me put,let me spin this around.
If you are an atheist, someonehas come to you and said, Oh,
okay, well, you're not, youdon't believe in God then.
(23:57):
So explain the big bang.
How come you believe the bigbang?
And I always tell people, I haveno idea.
I I didn't I have an MBA.
I didn't study that.
I have no idea how the Big Bangreally works.
I know there's a lot ofscientists that say it's true.
I know there's a lot of sciencethat seems to support that.
Okay.
That seems plausible given thescience and the repeatable uh
(24:21):
studies that they can do andthey can show this and they can
deduce this.
I agree with that science.
Am I a scientist?
No, I am not.
Um, do I am I gonna be able toexplain it down to the seconds,
the microseconds that that theearth began?
No.
But I'm okay not knowing either.
I always tell people, I don'tknow who invented the wheel
(24:43):
either.
I'm happy to jump in my truckthough and drive to the store
with four of those.
Thank that guy.
I don't know how it happened.
It's okay to not know, I think.
This is where believers andnon-believers really are really
kind of go in differentdirections here.
A lot of non-believers are like,well, we don't know.
We'd like to find out.
(25:05):
And the people that study thatand that research that and go to
school for that and spenddecades of their lives uh
pursuing the the uh the truth onthat, we would love for them to
discover that.
And then they can tell usbecause I don't want to spend
decades of my life worryingabout it.
But we know that pursuing thattruth and pursuing that answer
(25:25):
is worthwhile.
Unless, if you're a believer,you look up the Bible right
here, and you flip to that, youknow, in Genesis, and you say,
Oh, well, there's your answerright there, Mike.
You don't need to study anythingabout the rocks and the in the
ground or the planets in theair.
(25:45):
You don't have to just don'tworry about any of that.
It says right here in six days.
God created it all, it's rightthere.
The firmament, and he tooksomeone's rib and made a lady
out of it.
And now it's it's crazy stuff,but just trust me, it's all
right here in this book and it'sbeen here for 2,000 years.
I don't even know why you'requestioning it.
(26:07):
Okay, well, you'll forgive me ifI don't uh if I don't accept a
2,000-year-old answer by peoplethat didn't understand where the
sun went at night.
So, but I can also tell you Idon't know.
I don't know a lot of things.
The list of things I don't knowfar outweighs the things I do
know, and I'm okay with that.
It really doesn't bother me notknowing.
(26:28):
I'd like to find out.
I only got X amount of years onthis planet, I'm gonna find out
X amount of things, and thenthat's it.
But um, I don't have to saythere is an answer, and I don't
have to read a book to say thisanswer they came up with 2,000
years ago and they couldn'texplain almost anything.
I'm not taking that answer.
Let's see, what do we got here?
(26:50):
Um this is actually a strangequestion.
Uh I I know where they're comingfrom.
And I mentioned earlier, I'mepiscopal.
So this person says, uh, youever think about how messed up
it is for infant baptism?
Yeah, it is kind of strange,even as a religious point of
view.
And if you're a religiousperson, actually, I would be
very interested in hearing thethe uh your explanation as to
(27:14):
why, say, in my religion that Igrew up in as episcopal, we
baptize people as infants.
Uh Catholics do as well.
And I'm sure there's other ones,it's just the two that I'm most
familiar with.
But uh, my, as I mentioned, mymother, my mother is now, having
been raised episcopal all of herlife and lived as episcopal most
of her life, she is now SouthernBaptist.
(27:35):
So is my niece.
And I went to her baptism, andshe was, I don't remember
exactly, I I can't remember ifshe was a young teenager, give
or take.
Um, but she was baptized at thatage.
That makes actually more senseto me.
Again, it's not the religion Iwas raised in.
I I wasn't raised as a Baptist.
(27:58):
Um, but it does make more senseto be baptized when you're old
enough to to uh make to makesense of it all and to
understand it and to accept thatand to to say yes, I I would
like to be to be baptized.
I guess it's sort of like takingcommunion for Episcopal.
You know, I took a communionwhen I was 10-ish, give or take.
(28:20):
Maybe it's similar.
And I and I'm just saying maybebecause I don't know.
Goes back to my last question.
I don't know.
So if you're a religious personand you have an answer to that,
let me know.
I'm I'm really very quitecurious, um, to be honest with
you.
So this is another question.
Um, this actually, my wife and Ijoke about this all the time
because it's so silly.
(28:40):
Uh, I don't swear a lot on thischannel just because YouTube
will shut me down, but in life,I swear probably more than I
should, um, which is a lot lessthan I used to.
So it gives you any indication.
I grew up a little rough, to putit uh lightly.
But the question is this, or thethe statement they made, uh,
they just said alternate uhalternate alternative swearing
(29:02):
question mark.
And it's the um the dang or uhuh we we my wife and I joke, um,
cheese and rice.
Instead of saying Jesus Christ,you're like cheese and rice.
She has a friend who lives in uhVegas area, and that's what that
person says.
Cheese and uh cheese and rice,because that's that doesn't go
against God.
I mean, if you said JesusChrist, and that's you know
(29:24):
taking his name in vain, Iguess.
Um, or H-E double hockey sticks.
That's the silliest one.
I say that just to be mockingand stupid sometimes.
But instead of saying hell, H-Edouble hockey sticks.
I saw someone on Facebook, a kidthat I grew up with or went to
high school with, um, he said,We're having a heaven of a time.
I was like, come on, man, calmdown.
(29:45):
You're having a heaven of atime.
You're having a hell of a time.
You can say it.
You're not gonna go to hell forsaying I had a hell of a time.
I find that ridiculous, quitefrankly.
Um, some words are just stupid.
Just, you know.
I I don't you can say darn andthings like okay, that's fine.
Um, but when you say I am havinga heaven of a time, because you
(30:06):
don't want to say the word hellbecause that goes against your
religion, aren't you pushing itjust a little too far?
Aren't you going too far withthat?
Um saying cheese and rice,saying H E double hockey sticks.
Are you fooling God?
God knows what you meant.
Uh and again, God knew what youmeant.
(30:28):
You're making a statement.
You know, if I smash my thumbwith a hammer, I'm gonna say
something.
It's probably gonna be colorful.
It's gonna come out of my mouth.
If I used the word dag nebut, isit better?
I'm just making sounds with mymouth.
I don't know that it makes adifference.
I I'm literally just making anexpression because I smash my
(30:49):
thumb with a hammer.
Um, or one of those sounds orthose groups of sounds gonna go
send me to hell.
That sounds ridiculous, but Idon't know.
Maybe I have to look in theBible.
I have to look up swear words inthe Bible.
I'm sure it's in there.
I'm sure someone has a sinthat's based on saying the swear
words.
But again, I'd be curious.
(31:09):
If you have an answer for that,let me know.
I'm I I don't know what whatbook or what uh chapter to look
up in the Bible that would mightaddress that.
I'm actually kind of curiousnow.
Uh, here's another question.
Where does hope come from now?
Meaning that now that you're anatheist, where does your hope
come from?
You know, this is actually areally interesting question.
(31:32):
And I guess I'm gonna confessthat my hope never came from
heaven anyway.
But I can see why people, whythat might be confusing for
people when they've left becausetheir whole lives they've said,
you know, if I do this, that,and the other, I'm gonna go to
heaven.
So they have hope that they'regoing to heaven and they have
hope that it's all gonna workout because there's a master
(31:54):
plan, and they have hope thateverything's gonna get better.
I just never really had that.
Even when I was a believer,that's part of it was never
really something that I reallyspent a lot of time on.
Um, so my hope was never quitetied to that the way that other
people's is.
(32:15):
And now my hope doesn't haveanything to do with after I die.
I think that's for me thebiggest difference, right?
I've moved it back, meaningthere's a lot of people out
there that believe in anafterlife of some sort.
And they think they're gonnalive, say, 80 something years on
this planet.
And if after that point,everything is gonna get better,
(32:35):
which I think I'm gonna put thatto the side for a second.
But everything's gonna be betterand they're gonna have eternity
in something grand and beautifuland wonderful and no pain, no
sin, no nothing.
It's just gonna be just peachykeen for all eternity.
And they have hope that it's allgonna come to them at some
point.
(32:56):
I tend to think a lot of timesthose people do not have maybe
the life that I have.
And I don't say that I have thebest life.
I'm not flying around in aprivate jet and you know, living
a lap lap of luxury, but I havea good life.
I have children that love me, Ihave a wife that loves me, I
have friends that love me, Ihave enough money in my pocket
that I'm I'm you know, I'm undera roof, um, I am well fed, you
(33:22):
know, I'm in knock on wood,pretty good health.
I, you know, there's not a lotto be hopeful for in the sense
that if I hope for anything,it's like I just kind of hope
that it continues.
But I place a lot of that on medoing the right thing.
I continue to treat my childrenwell, they will continue to love
(33:42):
me.
I continue to treat my wifewell, she'll continue to love
me.
My friends will continue to loveme.
Again, they came over last nightfor a party because they like
us, right?
They must enjoy my wife and I.
Um, I'm not really looking forit to get better all of a sudden
to solve some sort of ills.
Now, maybe you talk to me atsome point and I'm going through
cancer or something like that,and I'm just grasping at straws
(34:04):
and I want everything to getbetter.
Okay.
I mean, I always give people apass when it comes to grief and
that sort of thing.
I I consider like pain andillness.
That's the same grief in thesense they just they want to get
through it.
If that, if God's the one thatgets you through it, okay, fine.
It's not how I'm gonna do it,probably, but I I understand it.
So, hope for me is that I justcontinue to make good choices.
(34:27):
My daughter says this, she's 35,and she says this to a lot of
her young staff.
She has a lot of young kids thatwork for her.
And um, you know, they'llthey'll leave for the weekend or
whatever, and she'll say, Okay,make good choices.
It's just her sort of uh almosta mom sort of thing.
Um, but she means it.
It's like, you know, you're 19years old.
Make good choices.
You know, you're 19.
You got to make it to 20.
Uh, don't blow yourself up doingsomething stupid.
(34:50):
Make good choices.
If I continue to make goodchoices, I trust that good
things will come my way.
Not always in a straight line,but I have hope that I that
things will work out for mebecause I will continue to
pursue them in a in the rightway.
I don't know.
Is that is that enough?
I think it is.
For me it is.
(35:10):
Maybe not for you, but for me itis.
And I know that when I die, itjust stops.
I won't know that I'm dead.
Like I didn't know that I wasn'tborn yet.
I'll be dead.
It'll just stop.
Hopefully, I don't even know it.
I just don't wake up one day.
That's how I would prefer it,right?
But every day between now andthen, no, I expect I'll just
(35:31):
continue to make better choicesand do better things and treat
people well, and that will comeback to me.
So I don't know.
It's kind of a good questionthere.
Um, this question, I'm gonna putit out to you, the uh the
listener and the viewer.
Have you ever gotten a goodanswer for why God doesn't heal
(35:51):
chronic medical conditions?
No, I have not.
I've not ever gotten a goodanswer to that.
I've gotten a lot of BS answers,you know, quite frankly.
You know, God works inmysterious ways.
Okay, that's not really helpingme.
That doesn't help me understandwhy God allows and sits back and
watches atrocities play out.
(36:13):
Um, why does God not cureamputees?
Apparently, God can cure yourtumor, but he can't seem to
regrow a limb, which makes mesuspect that God's not really
there.
But what's the good answer forthat?
If anything, you get the well,God's very mysterious and we
can't we can't question histhoughts.
(36:35):
Well, him not doing anything isa lot like him not being there,
right?
So I've never gotten a goodanswer.
Again, I just get the same tiredanswers over and over again, and
we can't really question him.
We don't know why he does histhings, he works in mysterious
ways, he has a plan for us.
That's all well and good, butthat's not really an answer, is
(36:57):
it?
So not one that I really buyinto.
A couple more questions, andthen we'll wrap up.
So these are both YouTubequestions.
This one I had to sort of lookup a little bit here.
Um, so this person and I werekind of going back and forth,
and that's being generous.
They were just launching intome.
(37:18):
They they left me like seven oreight messages on my YouTube
channel uh at Atheistville.
Um they don't like me or what Ihave to say.
That's fine.
Um, so that what is thisperson's name?
Uh Analogia entis.
Analogia entis.
That's a Latin phrase.
(37:39):
You look that up.
A-N-A-L-O-G-I-A, and then entisis E-N-T-I-S, a Latin phrase.
Analogia, uh, and I think I'msaying that right.
I didn't take Latin.
Um Analogia and Antes.
I'm gonna read this out andmaybe you have to summarize it.
Um, so they said I have a logicproblem because I said that uh a
(38:00):
lot of smart people don'tbelieve in God.
Not that all smart people don'tbelieve believe in God, but you
see where I went with that.
Anyways, over 65% of Nobel Prizewinners between 1901 and 2000
believed in God.
The statistics were taken fromuh Baruch Shalev's 100 Years of
Nobel Prizes.
(38:20):
I guess that was a book.
And the number of theists mayhave been higher still, as he
records that just over 65% ofoverall winners identified as
Christian, while over 20% wereJewish.
I'm kind of giving actually anemphasis because I feel how that
person wrote it out.
Okay.
Couple problems with that.
(38:42):
Um what and what the analogyhere or the implication here is
that well, if 65% of Nobel Prizewinners across all the different
uh categories believed in God,they are obviously very smart
people.
So believing in God is the smartthing to do.
(39:03):
And they go on and in anothercomment, they said basically, if
I'm calling them, you know, ifI'm saying that there is no God,
then I'm calling them all liars,which is kind of a jump.
I didn't say that, but okay.
Okay, but there's a coupleproblems with that.
And then they gave a time frame,and maybe this book was written.
It looks like they they do havea year of 2005.
(39:23):
I guess that was when the bookwas written.
So they went up to 2000.
By and large, the people thatwon a Nobel Prize in that time
frame from 1901 to 2000, uh, youknow, 100 years, give or take,
were raised in a time wherebeing an atheist wasn't a common
thing.
(39:44):
Um, being a religious person wasjust how you were, you were
societal.
Um what I did look up is thebook doesn't make a distinction
between the person who was bornand raised as a religious person
versus what they thought, say onthe day they won the prize.
So there's a little bit ofproblem with that.
(40:05):
But just culturally, a lot ofpeople are religious culturally.
They may not be strongbelievers, but they believe a
God.
They may not be something theyconsider overly overly,
something they really, reallyconsidered.
Again, the older you get, theless likely they were to be an
atheist.
Um certainly back in 1901, thatwas very unusual.
Certainly be an out atheist.
(40:26):
Um, it's more prevalent now.
Something I did find out is thatI'm reading here, look, it says
if you look at the last decades,the numbers shift sharply.
Surveys of leading scientiststoday show that the majority
scientists do not believe in apersonal God.
Um, the Nobel data reflectshistory and demographics, not
divine confirmation.
(40:47):
So that shift has changed.
But again, this went up to 2000.
We've had 25 more years.
The person who wins the NobelPrize 80 years from now may have
a very different uh perspectiveon religion than the one that
won it 85 years ago.
That's fine.
Life changes.
You take a lot of the greatthinkers of ancient history,
(41:08):
they believed in God.
That doesn't mean there was aGod.
That means they believed in God.
And just because they won aNobel Prize for this doesn't
mean that that proves God.
That's the correlation causationthing.
It has nothing to do with oneanother.
So they were trying to make anargument here, they were trying
to lure me into this battle, butI was like, all right, I'm not
(41:30):
playing.
But again, they left me likeeight comments across different
videos.
So they were they were on a rollthat day, but it's an
interesting statistic.
I'm not gonna read the guy'sbook.
I mean, I if that's the generalgist of it, okay, that's fine.
I'm not even disputed, I'm gonnatake the person's word for it
that 65% uh were Christian while20% were Jewish.
(41:53):
Alrighty.
Okay, that's fine.
Uh, let's see, what is this one?
Elwood Bromfeld.
Yeah, Elwood Bromfeld.
I like that name.
Atheism is mindless faith.
Faith in God is based onevidence and reason.
I have faith in science and God,and I have no faith in atheist
(42:15):
ignorance and stupidity.
So Elwood was uh was a littleramped up.
These are the comments I getsometimes.
I to be honest though, most ofmy comments are actually really
good uh on the YouTube channel,but um, you get some pushback
like that.
You know, I I I generally takeit with stride, but uh sometimes
(42:36):
I push back a little bit, but Itry not to get overly snarky
back because I try like they'rejust baiting me and I don't want
to give in to them.
Let them type away furiously intheir mom's basement.
I just don't want to give themthe time of day for that.
Um he makes it some strangetwist though.
He says uh God is based onevidence and reason.
(42:56):
Well, I disagree with that, butput that to the side.
But then his next line, I havefaith in science and God.
Well, that's a really strangechoice of words.
You have faith in science andGod.
And again, since he goes on tosay the atheists are ignorant
and stupid, I I would if yousaid you have faith in science
(43:20):
and you have faith in God, maybeI could see where you're going
with that.
But then he says, Well, atheistsare stupid.
Well, atheists are have donenothing more than say God hasn't
been proven.
That's generally what I say.
Full stop.
We haven't proven God.
And I always say, Elwood hasn'tproven God.
God hasn't come down.
I'm not rejecting God.
(43:40):
If God shows up, fine.
But Elwood hasn't proven God.
Elwood and people of his ilkhave not proven to me that there
is a God.
That's how science generallyworks, right?
You have to prove something,right?
And the effort and the pursuitof science is to say, you know,
I this we have a theory here,and we're going to try to prove
(44:01):
it, and we're going to doexperiments, and we can repeat
those and we study that, andthen we say, hey, this is what
we've concluded, and 15 otherpeople try to do the same
experiments, and if they get thesame results, that starts to
become the evidence, right?
Well, I don't see that for aGod.
I see people believing thatsomething happened or the lack
of something happened is proofof God.
(44:22):
That's not really the samething.
But that's not a scientific umconclusion.
It's a faith-based conclusion,right?
It's it's what the personbelieves, it's what they feel.
And that's fine.
I don't have any problem withthat.
But let's not say it's science.
The belief in God is is faith.
And faith, by definition, Iprobably should have looked up
(44:44):
the actual definition.
But faith is when you believesomething without the evidence.
You believe that there's a God.
Okay, we're gonna maybe disagreewith that, but that's fine.
You can believe that.
But that's not science.
So when the person says, I havefaith in science and God, but
they also say God is based onevidence and reason, we're gonna
(45:07):
disagree on what evidence andreason you're using, and that's
fine, because we can see twothings and come to different
conclusions.
That's okay.
I don't have a problem with it.
If you look at the same things Ido and you say, Well, God must
have done that, and I look atthat and say, I don't see it,
that's okay.
I have no problem with that.
But that's just an odd twist tosay I have faith in science and
(45:29):
God.
I don't think science is theproper word there to show that
there's a God.
Yeah, so I'm gonna ElwoodBromfeld, my old buddy old pal,
I'm gonna disagree with you onthat part because that just
doesn't really work for me.
But Elwood, if you are listeningto this, or uh maybe I'll let
(45:50):
Elwood know that I've added himinto this uh into this uh
discussion.
I'm very curious why he thinksuh that he has faith in science
and God.
Although, again, he does say Ihave no faith in atheist
ignorance and stupidity.
So I don't think Elwood is gonnacome to my uh next party.
I don't think we're gonna bebuddies.
(46:11):
So, anyways, so I am gonna go.
This would be my Sunday morninguh breakfast with a heathen.
Let me take another sip ofcoffee before it gets too cold.
I have a curry and I have like27 different flavors, so I never
know what I'm grabbing.
I sort of grab it.
It's like a dealer's choice ofcoffee in the morning.
Um, but again, thanks for tuningin.
(46:32):
I hope you do enjoy these shows.
I enjoy making them, I enjoygiving a kind of a quiet moment
to uh reflect before the my wifeand the cat get up and before my
day starts.
It's kind of a good way for meto unwind um and see what I've
had going on for the week andquestions that people had for
me.
So if you have a question, feelfree to throw me a message in
(46:56):
one of the my videos or on theuh podcast or leave me a message
at the Heathen Hotline.
Um, any of those things are afantastic way to reach out for
me.
And I am going to get you thenumber real quick here to the
Heathen Hotline.
You can leave a phone messagefor me.
And if you want, I'll play thaton the air.
(47:17):
But it's also just a quick wayfor me to, if you want to kind
of get your words out.
That number is 224-307-5435.
That's the Heathen Hotline.
And again, look out for our livestreams that we do.
Um, that's a good way to get asense of what uh I think, plus
three or four other people thinkon questions just like this.
And if you have a question forus, throw it out there and we'll
(47:38):
get to it on the next call.
So hope that help you guys havethe great rest of your Sunday,
no matter where that takes you.
Could be to church, could be toplay, play or watch some
football or just do some yardwork, whatever it is you're
doing.
Hope you have a great time doingit.
Take care.
Welcome back to another episode of Breakfast
with a Heathen.
My name is Mike.
I urge you to get a cup ofcoffee and settle in, maybe grab
a donut or a croissant orwhatever it is that you have for
your Sunday morning breakfastand hang on like a second and
get a cup of coffee here.
With my very worn-out Navy dadum cup I've had now for gosh, 10
(00:34):
years, I guess, when my son wentinto the Navy.
Very proud of that cup.
You ever notice that there arethings in your house that have
absolutely no real value?
But if your house was underthreat of a tornado or a
hurricane or a fire, there's ahandful of things you would
grab, and people will say, Whydid you why didn't you grab the
big screen TV?
It's like, yeah, I could getanother TV.
(00:55):
I can't get this cup with allthis wearing on it that I've had
now again for 10 years.
And it just it's a little pieceof, you know, my son and him
leaving.
He's my youngest and going offand joining the Navy and weird
things like that.
I remember seeing a video of aman uh who had a spool of wire,
(01:17):
and uh he was he was sitting ona bench or something, and he was
trying to show his wife he hadthis spool of wire that had come
down to where he only had youknow a small amount of feet
left.
And he said he had had this,well, gosh, like I feel like it
was for decades.
You know, he bought it when itwas a large spool of wire, and
he's used it over over time forvarious projects.
(01:39):
And you know, it was it was itwas not the wire, it was it was
the the life that that that theum the usage of that wire
represented.
And I always thought that's ayeah, I get it.
I think I think every man thatsaw that video got it.
It was just like, yeah, there'ssome things in life that have no
(02:00):
value, but they represent aportion of your life, and it's
uh it's very importantsometimes.
Oddly so.
I don't know how I got off onthat tangent, but I'm gonna take
another cup of coffee becauseapparently I need it to uh wake
up on a Sunday morning.
So hold on a second.
All right, let's get into someof the questions we have here.
We've got a handful of questionskind of all over the board this
(02:21):
time.
This first one, I'm gonnaqualify this a little bit.
Um, if you don't really know mepersonally, you've only known me
through this Atheistvillechannel and some of the
different shows that I do onthis channel, you would be
forgiven for assuming that I ama flaming liberal and always
have been.
Uh, you would be wrong.
(02:41):
You'd be partly right.
I am a flaming liberal, I guess.
Uh, but that was not always thecase.
In fact, growing up, I was verymuch a Republican.
As a young teenager, I guess.
And yeah, I say young, meaning ayoung person, and as a teenager,
uh, I was a Republican.
My first time voting, oh gosh,goodness, I was turned 18 and
(03:02):
88.
So that would have been GeorgeBush, the senior.
I think, I think that was myfirst vote.
And I don't think I votedReagan, right?
Because Reagan was going out ofoffice.
Uh, so I think George Bush wasmy first vote.
I voted Republican at the time.
Um, and up until um my 40s, Iwas hanging on and losing grip
(03:27):
with the Republican Party.
Meaning I uh stood for, and Istill associate myself with the
need for smaller government,smaller across the board.
That does not mean get rid ofevery single department in the
effort to make it smaller,right?
We all have things we we wastemoney on.
(03:47):
That doesn't mean we cut everysingle expense and cut it to the
bone, but there are someexpenses that are obviously
inflated.
I am um pro-military.
As I mentioned, my son is in theNavy, my father was in the Navy,
my wife's father was in the AirForce.
Um, I grew up in a Navy town inJacksonville, Florida.
So I have no problem in themilitary.
I think we probably do it alittle excessively, but at the
(04:11):
same time, I live in a countrywhere I feel fairly secure, have
complaints about the country,but I don't feel that we're
under attack.
Um, I've always worked in a sortof large white-collar financial
institution sort of environment.
So I'm a big business guy.
I did own a company, sotherefore, in the
entrepreneurial spirit, I owneda uh a couple of retail stores.
(04:32):
My wife and I did.
So I'm I'm a big business kindof person.
I'm an MBA.
So all that sort of thing thatRepublicans say they used to
stand for, I am, I'm with you.
But they lost me.
They I like to say they movedout from underneath me.
I didn't move away.
They did.
At some point, I started torealize, you know, I have lots
of gay friends.
(04:53):
I don't know why the Republicansseem to be so far against it.
I have lots of immigrantfriends.
I don't know why Republicansseem to hate that so much.
Uh, and they'll say they don't,but let's be honest.
Um, and more importantly, in ain a grand sense, the uh
evangelical, the the latching onand the promotion of evangelical
(05:13):
values um and the turning ofevangelical into a political
party that happens to bereligious, which is how I see
it, and them taking over the uhthe Republican Party, that was
it.
I was like, all right.
And those things I mentionedearlier, the immigration and the
LGBTQ issues and various otherthings.
I I just growing up in theSouth, I saw some of the worst
(05:36):
examples of that.
And unfortunately, they werevery often on the Republican
side, not exclusively in theSouth.
Um, racism and bigotry andthings of this nature do cut
across all political parties.
So I'm not gonna blamenecessarily one versus the
other.
But um, I don't think anybodywould accuse the GOP of being uh
(05:57):
small government oriented now.
That would that would beridiculous.
So that's a long way to go formy first question here.
But the first question I hadhere, uh, someone mentioned, or
this is more of a point, Iguess, than a question, a
question.
Religion was never out of the USpolitics.
Trump just took off its mask.
And that is partly true.
(06:19):
And again, all these things aremy opinion, and I make broad
strokes.
You're welcome to disagree withme.
In fact, if you disagree withme, that tells you I'm doing my
job, which means I'm notappealing to everybody.
Um, I don't want to do that.
That would be ridiculous.
But I don't let me see if I saythis right.
I don't blame Trump for theAmerica say.
(06:44):
I do blame Trump for emboldeningAmerica.
And again, I'm gonna go back toI was raised in the South
mostly.
I was born in Pennsylvania, butraised mostly in the South.
I raised my kids in the South.
I have a house in the South, soI'm very Southern in that sense.
Um, I can't tell you, I Iliterally could not tell you the
number of times I've beenstanding someplace, and this
(07:08):
used to happen in my shop.
I own again retail stores, butwe had a shop.
We did car and parts and stufflike that.
I've been standing in my shopand had a white man, almost 100%
man, just sort of you know lookaround and say blah, blah, blah.
Then it'd be the most racist,outrageous stuff in the world.
But they'd say it again with alittle bit of a look over the
(07:28):
shoulder, make sure no blackpeople are in the vicinity, and
they would just spit it out.
Why they felt that it was okayto say out loud, why they felt
it was okay to say to me, whythey felt that they should even
think those thoughts, let alonesay them, I will never
understand.
(07:49):
I I I don't get it.
I I just never got it.
The difference between what Ijust did, which is and then say
it, that part doesn't happennow.
That part is you can just sayit.
You know, if you're a bigot,you're a racist, um, you have
some outrageous comments to makeabout a person's color, a
(08:11):
person's sexual orientation,their their creed, you know,
whatever.
Um, the looking over theshoulder and the hushed tones,
it doesn't happen as much.
I'm sure it does to some degree,obviously, but there is
emboldenment that has happenedover this last 10 years that I
will blame Trump.
I will lay that at his feet forrecognizing that those
(08:33):
sentiments are out there andgiving um permission to
basically say them out loud.
And um it's unfortunate.
It's unfortunate, I dislike it,but Trump is not the he's not
the originator of that by anymeans.
So don't misunderstand me.
(08:55):
Trump, though, as a positionthat he holds, being the
president of the United States,um has made that easier.
If you're that kind of person,this Archie Bunker type, and
people forget that Archie Bunkerwas supposed to be satire.
A lot of people identified withArchie Bunker and they didn't
really understand it was satire,especially in the South.
(09:15):
But if you're that person whojust wakes up and thinks racist
thoughts and bigoted thoughtsall day long, you can see Trump
and say, Yeah, but look, look,this is this guy's a billionaire
and he's making money hand overfist, and he's the president of
the United States, and he hasall this power, and he's married
to this beautiful woman, andblah, blah, blah.
So why can't why isn't it why isthat bad?
(09:37):
I wish I had all of that.
Yeah, I it's really upsetting tome, but you know, what are you
gonna do?
There you go.
Let's start this conversationoff with a little bit of rant,
right?
Um, so the next question this isa very common sort of sentiment.
Um, and there's a this goes onwith a larger sentiment, which
(09:58):
is if you're an atheist, youknow, what's stopping you from
doing X, right?
Because if you're an atheist,you have absolutely no morals,
so you can do whatever you want,which is the most ridiculous
statement, but people make itconstantly.
So this person, I think theywere being tongue-in-cheek when
they say this.
Uh, so now that you believe innothing, why not be gay?
And again, I'm gonna assume thatthey were being uh again, tongue
(10:22):
in cheek and trying to, youknow, make a point, make a
satirical point with that.
Um, but that's sort of the samesentiment we get with a lot of
things.
You know, if you don't believein God, what's stopping you from
doing anything?
In this case, what's stoppingyou from being gay?
Why wouldn't you just be gaythat gay then?
As if that's the reason I lovewomen.
(10:42):
You know, I've been married for31 years.
I started dating my wife in highschool.
We didn't get married to her at25, so we had a we had some oats
to sew.
Um, but nonetheless, I've beenum, yeah, I've always been a
lover of women.
You ask my mom, I had a crush onBrenda Bardot in the fifth in uh
kindergarten.
We were five years old.
I'm actually friends with her onuh Facebook, and she would
(11:02):
probably never remember that Ihad an absolute crush on her in
1975 or 76, whenever it was thatI was in kindergarten.
Um beautiful little Italiangirl, and uh, she broke my heart
because she did not she did notreturn that uh infatuation.
So I'm still holding a littlebit of a grudge and uh carrying
a torch for Brenda.
So if you're out there, Brenda.
(11:23):
But again, I've always lovedwomen, I've always loved little
girls.
I've loved that sounds terrible.
I loved little girls when I wasa little boy, I loved teenage
girls when I was a teenager, andI've loved women since I became
a man.
I wouldn't turn gay simplybecause I don't believe a God.
What?
What?
Neither would a gay man turnstraight.
It doesn't work that way.
(11:44):
And I don't understand thepeople that can't understand
that, right?
I mean, if you don't understandthat you feel something,
whatever you are, if you feel anattraction to men because you're
a woman, or you're attracted towomen because you're a man, and
you just feel it.
It's not like you thought aboutit, not like you had to decide,
not like your parents came toyou at 11 years old and said,
(12:07):
Okay, Tommy, it's time todecide.
What are you gonna do?
You're gonna be gay, you bestraight, come on, we gotta have
an answer, we're running todinner later on.
No, you just feel what you feel,and why you can't assume that
other people could feeldifferently, it boggles my mind.
But God has nothing to do withthat.
It has nothing to do with it.
And telling a gay person thatthey're going to hell because
(12:29):
they feel what they feel, okay.
You might get them to stoptaking action on that.
You might get them to try tosuppress that and oppress that,
you know.
Um, but that's not the samething.
It's like tell I I'm wearing ablue shirt today, which is not
unusual because I love the colorblue.
(12:49):
Blue is my favorite color.
If you told me that blue wasagainst the word of God and I
was a believer and I have towear green, I might wear green.
I might buy a green car and Imight tell people I love green.
I don't, I love blue, but Imight tell you I love green.
And if that gets me into heaven,okay.
But the reality is I like blue.
They can't fake that.
(13:10):
And being gay and trying to turnthe person straight by giving
them a bunch of scripture, it'snot gonna work.
They're so gay.
And again, they might pretendthat they're not because they
fear what you're telling them,they're still gay.
This is one of the okay, here weare.
I'm gonna probably have somepeople disagree with me on um
the left or the um the atheistsor however group you want to put
(13:32):
me in.
Um, teaching children about hellis emotional abuse.
I don't go that far.
I know where they're comingfrom.
I've heard this before.
I don't go that far.
Um, I let me just say I disagreewith that as it stands.
So again, the the title of thatwas Teaching Children About Hell
(13:54):
is Emotional Abuse.
I don't think that's true.
I think you can abuse people byum teaching uh children about
heaven and hell and threateningthem.
You could abuse someone withthat.
Certainly, we just talked aboutuh people that are gay and
telling them they're going to goto hell and trying to make them
(14:16):
live a life that's not uh trueand sincere because you've
threatened them.
That obviously could be abuse,yeah.
But as a general rule, I don'tfeel like I was emotionally
abused as a child.
I grew up Episcopal, I thinkI've mentioned that uh on this
show and on this channel,certainly.
Um, was I emotionally abused asjust being told that there was a
(14:37):
hell and there's various sins umthat would put me there?
I don't think so.
You know, I no, no, I I again soI disagree with that.
It's a it's not an uncommonstatement that I have heard.
And I I also will allow for thisbecause I mentioned earlier that
I don't understand why somepeople don't understand that
(14:58):
other people's lives could bedifferent.
I do understand that otherpeople have had much more
traumatic, and I even use thatword because I didn't have a
traumatic experience withreligion.
I just don't believe it.
I was never traumatized by it.
I do know people that wereabsolutely traumatized by their
religious parents and thereligious upbringing they had.
(15:20):
And them leaving religion was aum was it was a tremendous
relief.
For me, it was just like alogical progression.
But for some of these people,when they left religion, it was
this unburdening and it's thisthis little weight lifted off of
them.
And for those people, theyprobably would agree with that.
So I'm gonna disagree with it asa statement, but I understand
(15:43):
where people come from when theysay that.
What's another one here?
All right.
So this is a question that hascome up, or statement, I
shouldn't say a question, it's astatement.
It's a statement this personmade.
And this has come up many timesactually, in in various forms on
uh a couple of our shows.
So we're doing a show tonight, alive stream.
(16:05):
And so it depends on when you'relistening to this.
So you you may have missed thelive stream, but I urge you to
check in on our live streams.
We do a show called The UnholyRoundtable, where we get
together three, four, five uhdifferent atheists from
different backgrounds and walksof life, and we go through
questions very much like this,but we do it as a group.
So we all have differentperspectives and and again
(16:26):
different backgrounds.
And some of us had very minimalreligious upbringing in the
sense that it wasn't overlytraumatic to leave.
Some of us had very strongupbringing, and it was very
traumatic to leave.
So there's all kinds of degreesof that, right?
So this question is um they theymade the point that being an
(16:46):
atheist is isolating.
And I'm gonna guess uh wherethis person was coming from.
I'm just kind of looking attheir the remainder of their
statement here.
When you leave religion, andI've talked to many people about
this, for many people, religionis not just the belief part, the
belief in God or Jesus or or uhor other religions, whatever
(17:09):
your religion is.
It's also very social.
Um, Cynthia McDonald's is uh isone of my friends, and she's
also in the Unholy Roundtable,and uh, she's a black atheist.
She runs a group here in town uhcalled the Black Nonbelievers.
And and she'll tell you veryclearly in the black community,
the church is the center of thecommunity, right?
(17:30):
I think we probably all knowthat.
Um so sometimes when people haveleft the church, uh they've been
asked, and I've sat in meetingswith the black atheists or the
black non-believers, wherethey've been, they've said
people have asked them um thatthey are made the point that
they're betraying theirblackness, right?
They're betraying their race bybeing an atheist because the the
sense of community and thechurch being the center of that
(17:53):
is so strong.
So when you leave it, and thishappens to white people too,
it's not just black people, butblack people are, it's the
different level of community interms of church-wise.
But when you leave thatcommunity, the the church
community, it can be veryisolating.
Um, my mother, who's 75-ish, 76,whatever she is now, um outside
(18:14):
of her children, and that'sabout it, that live near her,
children, grandchildren, thatsort of thing, everyone else she
talks to, for the most part, isfrom church, right?
It's a very social part.
My stepfather and her, they goto church, they go to the
pancake breakfasts, and they um,you know, he parks cars when
they have this once-a-year bigfeast that they do, and he parks
(18:36):
cars and uh she works at thechurch at part-time as a
bookkeeper or something.
Um, you know, they're at thechurch doing Bible studies and
they they socialize with peoplefrom the church outside of
church.
It is very, very social.
If she were to suddenly decidetomorrow that, you know, none of
this really makes sense.
I'm kind of with my uh two of mysons.
(18:56):
She has three sons, two of usare atheists, one's not.
Uh, if she decided she's morelike me and my younger brother,
my youngest brother, she wouldleave all that.
And I think mentally that wouldnot be very good for her because
that's that's what keeps hergoing.
I mean, again, she's 75, 76.
Uh, she was born in 49.
So uh 76, I think.
(19:17):
Um it would be very isolatingfor her to lose all of that.
And I understand that.
It's one of the reasons that westarted here in Chicago.
We have an atheist group.
It was started out as a Facebookgroup, just as a normal face
group group uh 10, 11 years ago.
And uh at some point we said,you know, we're all kind of in
(19:39):
this group and we'rechit-chatting back and forth.
Um, maybe we should all gettogether one night.
You just hang out at a bar.
And we did that.
And we've been doing it eversince.
That's 10 years ago.
Up until COVID, we did it almostevery single month.
Usually took November, Decemberoff because of all the holidays,
but we would do this everysingle month.
We would get together, hang outat a bar, hang out wherever.
(20:00):
Um, just in fact, last nighthere at my house, we had 15, 20
people or so from that groupover for a party.
No particular reason.
Those are the people I know herein Chicago for the most part,
but it was also they gettogether and we hang out and we
don't discuss atheism.
No, if it comes up.
(20:21):
It's just we know that when theit's like anything else, there's
a there's a shared interest.
We have a shared interest inatheism in the sense that we've
all left religion.
That's the interest.
It'd be no different if you werea Bears fan, or you were you
know a fan of making your ownpottery, or you are a car guy.
I have a four-wheel drive, uh,forerunner that I really enjoy.
(20:43):
And when I lived in Californiawhere I got that truck, I would
go to these forerunner groups.
Why?
No particular reason, but we allhad the same type of trucks and
we would drive out in the desertand we'd have a good time and
spend the day out there.
This is the same thing.
You know, we we have alike-mindedness in our atheist
group, so we hang out.
So if you're that kind ofperson, you're leaving religion,
(21:05):
look for a group like ours.
Look for an association like theAmerican Humanist Association.
Um, they might have meetings.
Sometimes their meetings areagenda-driven, but that's fine.
Go to one and listen to aspeaker, talk about whatever.
Um, it might be eye-opening justfrom an educational point of
view, but you'll also meet someadditional people that think
like you.
(21:26):
Or more importantly, this iswhat I say a lot to new people
coming to our group is you mightmeet someone who's further down
the road than you are.
And one of the reasons I startedthis entire channel was to show
people that there are othersjust like you.
In fact, I mentioned CynthiaMcDonald earlier.
She was one of the first peopleI had on as an interview because
(21:48):
there's a black person out theresomewhere who can watch me and
they're like, yeah, I get thatthat white guy, that middle-aged
white guy is an atheist.
But, you know, I'm a 33-year-oldblack man in some southern city.
He doesn't know my life and mycommunity.
I I can't just come out andbecome an atheist.
But he might see Cynthia andsay, okay, well, okay, now she's
(22:12):
a 40-ish black woman, and shewas raised um as an episcopal,
as an Episcopalian, and thenbecame a uh Pentecostal.
Um and now she's an atheist.
Well, he might see that personand say, Oh, okay, well, if she
can do that, maybe, maybethere's a path for me here.
So find those people.
(22:32):
Again, find groups like ours,find groups like the Humanist
Association, look in your inFacebook or Meetup or Reddit,
uh, put it in your city and finda location nearest you or your
biggest town, and try to try togo to a meeting or try to go to
a gathering or a meetup orsomething just to find other
(22:53):
people.
And if you go enough, you'rejust gonna meet people.
And you're gonna meet peopleagain that are there for the
same reasons.
So you're already gonna havethat in common.
That's a good, good way tostart.
Again, we've been having thesegroup group group meetings, my
mouth all mumbly, uh, thesegroup meetings now for over 10
years.
I mean, hundreds of these overthe past 10 years, right?
(23:16):
Um, this is the third one I'vedone at my house this year.
So, you know, and I'll I lovethese people.
I love the people that came.
Uh, I love it.
So um it doesn't have to beisolating, but I understand why
you feel that way.
There's another question.
You don't have to have theanswers.
Um, that's absolutely true.
(23:36):
I just did a mic drop on this, Ithink it was a mic drop, might
have been a short, I can'tremember.
I do a lot of videos.
Uh, on the point that um a lotof people will ask us if you're
not an atheist, or let me put,let me spin this around.
If you are an atheist, someonehas come to you and said, Oh,
okay, well, you're not, youdon't believe in God then.
(23:57):
So explain the big bang.
How come you believe the bigbang?
And I always tell people, I haveno idea.
I I didn't I have an MBA.
I didn't study that.
I have no idea how the Big Bangreally works.
I know there's a lot ofscientists that say it's true.
I know there's a lot of sciencethat seems to support that.
Okay.
That seems plausible given thescience and the repeatable uh
(24:21):
studies that they can do andthey can show this and they can
deduce this.
I agree with that science.
Am I a scientist?
No, I am not.
Um, do I am I gonna be able toexplain it down to the seconds,
the microseconds that that theearth began?
No.
But I'm okay not knowing either.
I always tell people, I don'tknow who invented the wheel
(24:43):
either.
I'm happy to jump in my truckthough and drive to the store
with four of those.
Thank that guy.
I don't know how it happened.
It's okay to not know, I think.
This is where believers andnon-believers really are really
kind of go in differentdirections here.
A lot of non-believers are like,well, we don't know.
We'd like to find out.
(25:05):
And the people that study thatand that research that and go to
school for that and spenddecades of their lives uh
pursuing the the uh the truth onthat, we would love for them to
discover that.
And then they can tell usbecause I don't want to spend
decades of my life worryingabout it.
But we know that pursuing thattruth and pursuing that answer
(25:25):
is worthwhile.
Unless, if you're a believer,you look up the Bible right
here, and you flip to that, youknow, in Genesis, and you say,
Oh, well, there's your answerright there, Mike.
You don't need to study anythingabout the rocks and the in the
ground or the planets in theair.
(25:45):
You don't have to just don'tworry about any of that.
It says right here in six days.
God created it all, it's rightthere.
The firmament, and he tooksomeone's rib and made a lady
out of it.
And now it's it's crazy stuff,but just trust me, it's all
right here in this book and it'sbeen here for 2,000 years.
I don't even know why you'requestioning it.
(26:07):
Okay, well, you'll forgive me ifI don't uh if I don't accept a
2,000-year-old answer by peoplethat didn't understand where the
sun went at night.
So, but I can also tell you Idon't know.
I don't know a lot of things.
The list of things I don't knowfar outweighs the things I do
know, and I'm okay with that.
It really doesn't bother me notknowing.
(26:28):
I'd like to find out.
I only got X amount of years onthis planet, I'm gonna find out
X amount of things, and thenthat's it.
But um, I don't have to saythere is an answer, and I don't
have to read a book to say thisanswer they came up with 2,000
years ago and they couldn'texplain almost anything.
I'm not taking that answer.
Let's see, what do we got here?
(26:50):
Um this is actually a strangequestion.
Uh I I know where they're comingfrom.
And I mentioned earlier, I'mepiscopal.
So this person says, uh, youever think about how messed up
it is for infant baptism?
Yeah, it is kind of strange,even as a religious point of
view.
And if you're a religiousperson, actually, I would be
very interested in hearing thethe uh your explanation as to
(27:14):
why, say, in my religion that Igrew up in as episcopal, we
baptize people as infants.
Uh Catholics do as well.
And I'm sure there's other ones,it's just the two that I'm most
familiar with.
But uh, my, as I mentioned, mymother, my mother is now, having
been raised episcopal all of herlife and lived as episcopal most
of her life, she is now SouthernBaptist.
(27:35):
So is my niece.
And I went to her baptism, andshe was, I don't remember
exactly, I I can't remember ifshe was a young teenager, give
or take.
Um, but she was baptized at thatage.
That makes actually more senseto me.
Again, it's not the religion Iwas raised in.
I I wasn't raised as a Baptist.
(27:58):
Um, but it does make more senseto be baptized when you're old
enough to to uh make to makesense of it all and to
understand it and to accept thatand to to say yes, I I would
like to be to be baptized.
I guess it's sort of like takingcommunion for Episcopal.
You know, I took a communionwhen I was 10-ish, give or take.
(28:20):
Maybe it's similar.
And I and I'm just saying maybebecause I don't know.
Goes back to my last question.
I don't know.
So if you're a religious personand you have an answer to that,
let me know.
I'm I'm really very quitecurious, um, to be honest with
you.
So this is another question.
Um, this actually, my wife and Ijoke about this all the time
because it's so silly.
(28:40):
Uh, I don't swear a lot on thischannel just because YouTube
will shut me down, but in life,I swear probably more than I
should, um, which is a lot lessthan I used to.
So it gives you any indication.
I grew up a little rough, to putit uh lightly.
But the question is this, or thethe statement they made, uh,
they just said alternate uhalternate alternative swearing
(29:02):
question mark.
And it's the um the dang or uhuh we we my wife and I joke, um,
cheese and rice.
Instead of saying Jesus Christ,you're like cheese and rice.
She has a friend who lives in uhVegas area, and that's what that
person says.
Cheese and uh cheese and rice,because that's that doesn't go
against God.
I mean, if you said JesusChrist, and that's you know
(29:24):
taking his name in vain, Iguess.
Um, or H-E double hockey sticks.
That's the silliest one.
I say that just to be mockingand stupid sometimes.
But instead of saying hell, H-Edouble hockey sticks.
I saw someone on Facebook, a kidthat I grew up with or went to
high school with, um, he said,We're having a heaven of a time.
I was like, come on, man, calmdown.
(29:45):
You're having a heaven of atime.
You're having a hell of a time.
You can say it.
You're not gonna go to hell forsaying I had a hell of a time.
I find that ridiculous, quitefrankly.
Um, some words are just stupid.
Just, you know.
I I don't you can say darn andthings like okay, that's fine.
Um, but when you say I am havinga heaven of a time, because you
(30:06):
don't want to say the word hellbecause that goes against your
religion, aren't you pushing itjust a little too far?
Aren't you going too far withthat?
Um saying cheese and rice,saying H E double hockey sticks.
Are you fooling God?
God knows what you meant.
Uh and again, God knew what youmeant.
(30:28):
You're making a statement.
You know, if I smash my thumbwith a hammer, I'm gonna say
something.
It's probably gonna be colorful.
It's gonna come out of my mouth.
If I used the word dag nebut, isit better?
I'm just making sounds with mymouth.
I don't know that it makes adifference.
I I'm literally just making anexpression because I smash my
(30:49):
thumb with a hammer.
Um, or one of those sounds orthose groups of sounds gonna go
send me to hell.
That sounds ridiculous, but Idon't know.
Maybe I have to look in theBible.
I have to look up swear words inthe Bible.
I'm sure it's in there.
I'm sure someone has a sinthat's based on saying the swear
words.
But again, I'd be curious.
(31:09):
If you have an answer for that,let me know.
I'm I I don't know what whatbook or what uh chapter to look
up in the Bible that would mightaddress that.
I'm actually kind of curiousnow.
Uh, here's another question.
Where does hope come from now?
Meaning that now that you're anatheist, where does your hope
come from?
You know, this is actually areally interesting question.
(31:32):
And I guess I'm gonna confessthat my hope never came from
heaven anyway.
But I can see why people, whythat might be confusing for
people when they've left becausetheir whole lives they've said,
you know, if I do this, that,and the other, I'm gonna go to
heaven.
So they have hope that they'regoing to heaven and they have
hope that it's all gonna workout because there's a master
(31:54):
plan, and they have hope thateverything's gonna get better.
I just never really had that.
Even when I was a believer,that's part of it was never
really something that I reallyspent a lot of time on.
Um, so my hope was never quitetied to that the way that other
people's is.
(32:15):
And now my hope doesn't haveanything to do with after I die.
I think that's for me thebiggest difference, right?
I've moved it back, meaningthere's a lot of people out
there that believe in anafterlife of some sort.
And they think they're gonnalive, say, 80 something years on
this planet.
And if after that point,everything is gonna get better,
(32:35):
which I think I'm gonna put thatto the side for a second.
But everything's gonna be betterand they're gonna have eternity
in something grand and beautifuland wonderful and no pain, no
sin, no nothing.
It's just gonna be just peachykeen for all eternity.
And they have hope that it's allgonna come to them at some
point.
(32:56):
I tend to think a lot of timesthose people do not have maybe
the life that I have.
And I don't say that I have thebest life.
I'm not flying around in aprivate jet and you know, living
a lap lap of luxury, but I havea good life.
I have children that love me, Ihave a wife that loves me, I
have friends that love me, Ihave enough money in my pocket
that I'm I'm you know, I'm undera roof, um, I am well fed, you
(33:22):
know, I'm in knock on wood,pretty good health.
I, you know, there's not a lotto be hopeful for in the sense
that if I hope for anything,it's like I just kind of hope
that it continues.
But I place a lot of that on medoing the right thing.
I continue to treat my childrenwell, they will continue to love
(33:42):
me.
I continue to treat my wifewell, she'll continue to love
me.
My friends will continue to loveme.
Again, they came over last nightfor a party because they like
us, right?
They must enjoy my wife and I.
Um, I'm not really looking forit to get better all of a sudden
to solve some sort of ills.
Now, maybe you talk to me atsome point and I'm going through
cancer or something like that,and I'm just grasping at straws
(34:04):
and I want everything to getbetter.
Okay.
I mean, I always give people apass when it comes to grief and
that sort of thing.
I I consider like pain andillness.
That's the same grief in thesense they just they want to get
through it.
If that, if God's the one thatgets you through it, okay, fine.
It's not how I'm gonna do it,probably, but I I understand it.
So, hope for me is that I justcontinue to make good choices.
(34:27):
My daughter says this, she's 35,and she says this to a lot of
her young staff.
She has a lot of young kids thatwork for her.
And um, you know, they'llthey'll leave for the weekend or
whatever, and she'll say, Okay,make good choices.
It's just her sort of uh almosta mom sort of thing.
Um, but she means it.
It's like, you know, you're 19years old.
Make good choices.
You know, you're 19.
You got to make it to 20.
Uh, don't blow yourself up doingsomething stupid.
(34:50):
Make good choices.
If I continue to make goodchoices, I trust that good
things will come my way.
Not always in a straight line,but I have hope that I that
things will work out for mebecause I will continue to
pursue them in a in the rightway.
I don't know.
Is that is that enough?
I think it is.
For me it is.
(35:10):
Maybe not for you, but for me itis.
And I know that when I die, itjust stops.
I won't know that I'm dead.
Like I didn't know that I wasn'tborn yet.
I'll be dead.
It'll just stop.
Hopefully, I don't even know it.
I just don't wake up one day.
That's how I would prefer it,right?
But every day between now andthen, no, I expect I'll just
(35:31):
continue to make better choicesand do better things and treat
people well, and that will comeback to me.
So I don't know.
It's kind of a good questionthere.
Um, this question, I'm gonna putit out to you, the uh the
listener and the viewer.
Have you ever gotten a goodanswer for why God doesn't heal
(35:51):
chronic medical conditions?
No, I have not.
I've not ever gotten a goodanswer to that.
I've gotten a lot of BS answers,you know, quite frankly.
You know, God works inmysterious ways.
Okay, that's not really helpingme.
That doesn't help me understandwhy God allows and sits back and
watches atrocities play out.
(36:13):
Um, why does God not cureamputees?
Apparently, God can cure yourtumor, but he can't seem to
regrow a limb, which makes mesuspect that God's not really
there.
But what's the good answer forthat?
If anything, you get the well,God's very mysterious and we
can't we can't question histhoughts.
(36:35):
Well, him not doing anything isa lot like him not being there,
right?
So I've never gotten a goodanswer.
Again, I just get the same tiredanswers over and over again, and
we can't really question him.
We don't know why he does histhings, he works in mysterious
ways, he has a plan for us.
That's all well and good, butthat's not really an answer, is
(36:57):
it?
So not one that I really buyinto.
A couple more questions, andthen we'll wrap up.
So these are both YouTubequestions.
This one I had to sort of lookup a little bit here.
Um, so this person and I werekind of going back and forth,
and that's being generous.
They were just launching intome.
(37:18):
They they left me like seven oreight messages on my YouTube
channel uh at Atheistville.
Um they don't like me or what Ihave to say.
That's fine.
Um, so that what is thisperson's name?
Uh Analogia entis.
Analogia entis.
That's a Latin phrase.
(37:39):
You look that up.
A-N-A-L-O-G-I-A, and then entisis E-N-T-I-S, a Latin phrase.
Analogia, uh, and I think I'msaying that right.
I didn't take Latin.
Um Analogia and Antes.
I'm gonna read this out andmaybe you have to summarize it.
Um, so they said I have a logicproblem because I said that uh a
(38:00):
lot of smart people don'tbelieve in God.
Not that all smart people don'tbelieve believe in God, but you
see where I went with that.
Anyways, over 65% of Nobel Prizewinners between 1901 and 2000
believed in God.
The statistics were taken fromuh Baruch Shalev's 100 Years of
Nobel Prizes.
(38:20):
I guess that was a book.
And the number of theists mayhave been higher still, as he
records that just over 65% ofoverall winners identified as
Christian, while over 20% wereJewish.
I'm kind of giving actually anemphasis because I feel how that
person wrote it out.
Okay.
Couple problems with that.
(38:42):
Um what and what the analogyhere or the implication here is
that well, if 65% of Nobel Prizewinners across all the different
uh categories believed in God,they are obviously very smart
people.
So believing in God is the smartthing to do.
(39:03):
And they go on and in anothercomment, they said basically, if
I'm calling them, you know, ifI'm saying that there is no God,
then I'm calling them all liars,which is kind of a jump.
I didn't say that, but okay.
Okay, but there's a coupleproblems with that.
And then they gave a time frame,and maybe this book was written.
It looks like they they do havea year of 2005.
(39:23):
I guess that was when the bookwas written.
So they went up to 2000.
By and large, the people thatwon a Nobel Prize in that time
frame from 1901 to 2000, uh, youknow, 100 years, give or take,
were raised in a time wherebeing an atheist wasn't a common
thing.
(39:44):
Um, being a religious person wasjust how you were, you were
societal.
Um what I did look up is thebook doesn't make a distinction
between the person who was bornand raised as a religious person
versus what they thought, say onthe day they won the prize.
So there's a little bit ofproblem with that.
(40:05):
But just culturally, a lot ofpeople are religious culturally.
They may not be strongbelievers, but they believe a
God.
They may not be something theyconsider overly overly,
something they really, reallyconsidered.
Again, the older you get, theless likely they were to be an
atheist.
Um certainly back in 1901, thatwas very unusual.
Certainly be an out atheist.
(40:26):
Um, it's more prevalent now.
Something I did find out is thatI'm reading here, look, it says
if you look at the last decades,the numbers shift sharply.
Surveys of leading scientiststoday show that the majority
scientists do not believe in apersonal God.
Um, the Nobel data reflectshistory and demographics, not
divine confirmation.
(40:47):
So that shift has changed.
But again, this went up to 2000.
We've had 25 more years.
The person who wins the NobelPrize 80 years from now may have
a very different uh perspectiveon religion than the one that
won it 85 years ago.
That's fine.
Life changes.
You take a lot of the greatthinkers of ancient history,
(41:08):
they believed in God.
That doesn't mean there was aGod.
That means they believed in God.
And just because they won aNobel Prize for this doesn't
mean that that proves God.
That's the correlation causationthing.
It has nothing to do with oneanother.
So they were trying to make anargument here, they were trying
to lure me into this battle, butI was like, all right, I'm not
(41:30):
playing.
But again, they left me likeeight comments across different
videos.
So they were they were on a rollthat day, but it's an
interesting statistic.
I'm not gonna read the guy'sbook.
I mean, I if that's the generalgist of it, okay, that's fine.
I'm not even disputed, I'm gonnatake the person's word for it
that 65% uh were Christian while20% were Jewish.
(41:53):
Alrighty.
Okay, that's fine.
Uh, let's see, what is this one?
Elwood Bromfeld.
Yeah, Elwood Bromfeld.
I like that name.
Atheism is mindless faith.
Faith in God is based onevidence and reason.
I have faith in science and God,and I have no faith in atheist
(42:15):
ignorance and stupidity.
So Elwood was uh was a littleramped up.
These are the comments I getsometimes.
I to be honest though, most ofmy comments are actually really
good uh on the YouTube channel,but um, you get some pushback
like that.
You know, I I I generally takeit with stride, but uh sometimes
(42:36):
I push back a little bit, but Itry not to get overly snarky
back because I try like they'rejust baiting me and I don't want
to give in to them.
Let them type away furiously intheir mom's basement.
I just don't want to give themthe time of day for that.
Um he makes it some strangetwist though.
He says uh God is based onevidence and reason.
(42:56):
Well, I disagree with that, butput that to the side.
But then his next line, I havefaith in science and God.
Well, that's a really strangechoice of words.
You have faith in science andGod.
And again, since he goes on tosay the atheists are ignorant
and stupid, I I would if yousaid you have faith in science
(43:20):
and you have faith in God, maybeI could see where you're going
with that.
But then he says, Well, atheistsare stupid.
Well, atheists are have donenothing more than say God hasn't
been proven.
That's generally what I say.
Full stop.
We haven't proven God.
And I always say, Elwood hasn'tproven God.
God hasn't come down.
I'm not rejecting God.
(43:40):
If God shows up, fine.
But Elwood hasn't proven God.
Elwood and people of his ilkhave not proven to me that there
is a God.
That's how science generallyworks, right?
You have to prove something,right?
And the effort and the pursuitof science is to say, you know,
I this we have a theory here,and we're going to try to prove
(44:01):
it, and we're going to doexperiments, and we can repeat
those and we study that, andthen we say, hey, this is what
we've concluded, and 15 otherpeople try to do the same
experiments, and if they get thesame results, that starts to
become the evidence, right?
Well, I don't see that for aGod.
I see people believing thatsomething happened or the lack
of something happened is proofof God.
(44:22):
That's not really the samething.
But that's not a scientific umconclusion.
It's a faith-based conclusion,right?
It's it's what the personbelieves, it's what they feel.
And that's fine.
I don't have any problem withthat.
But let's not say it's science.
The belief in God is is faith.
And faith, by definition, Iprobably should have looked up
(44:44):
the actual definition.
But faith is when you believesomething without the evidence.
You believe that there's a God.
Okay, we're gonna maybe disagreewith that, but that's fine.
You can believe that.
But that's not science.
So when the person says, I havefaith in science and God, but
they also say God is based onevidence and reason, we're gonna
(45:07):
disagree on what evidence andreason you're using, and that's
fine, because we can see twothings and come to different
conclusions.
That's okay.
I don't have a problem with it.
If you look at the same things Ido and you say, Well, God must
have done that, and I look atthat and say, I don't see it,
that's okay.
I have no problem with that.
But that's just an odd twist tosay I have faith in science and
(45:29):
God.
I don't think science is theproper word there to show that
there's a God.
Yeah, so I'm gonna ElwoodBromfeld, my old buddy old pal,
I'm gonna disagree with you onthat part because that just
doesn't really work for me.
But Elwood, if you are listeningto this, or uh maybe I'll let
(45:50):
Elwood know that I've added himinto this uh into this uh
discussion.
I'm very curious why he thinksuh that he has faith in science
and God.
Although, again, he does say Ihave no faith in atheist
ignorance and stupidity.
So I don't think Elwood is gonnacome to my uh next party.
I don't think we're gonna bebuddies.
(46:11):
So, anyways, so I am gonna go.
This would be my Sunday morninguh breakfast with a heathen.
Let me take another sip ofcoffee before it gets too cold.
I have a curry and I have like27 different flavors, so I never
know what I'm grabbing.
I sort of grab it.
It's like a dealer's choice ofcoffee in the morning.
Um, but again, thanks for tuningin.
(46:32):
I hope you do enjoy these shows.
I enjoy making them, I enjoygiving a kind of a quiet moment
to uh reflect before the my wifeand the cat get up and before my
day starts.
It's kind of a good way for meto unwind um and see what I've
had going on for the week andquestions that people had for
me.
So if you have a question, feelfree to throw me a message in
(46:56):
one of the my videos or on theuh podcast or leave me a message
at the Heathen Hotline.
Um, any of those things are afantastic way to reach out for
me.
And I am going to get you thenumber real quick here to the
Heathen Hotline.
You can leave a phone messagefor me.
And if you want, I'll play thaton the air.
(47:17):
But it's also just a quick wayfor me to, if you want to kind
of get your words out.
That number is 224-307-5435.
That's the Heathen Hotline.
And again, look out for our livestreams that we do.
Um, that's a good way to get asense of what uh I think, plus
three or four other people thinkon questions just like this.
And if you have a question forus, throw it out there and we'll
(47:38):
get to it on the next call.
So hope that help you guys havethe great rest of your Sunday,
no matter where that takes you.
Could be to church, could be toplay, play or watch some
football or just do some yardwork, whatever it is you're
doing.
Hope you have a great time doingit.
Take care.
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