Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
C. S.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Lewis once said that the value of prayer isn't in
trying to change God's mind, but in how it transforms
the person praying. So is prayer really just an anxiety
ritual or a self help exercise? Does God hear your prayers?
Or is that voicing your head? Just you know you?
What have you experienced? Does prayer do something beyond making
(00:21):
you feel better, reinforcing a need for more prayer? Or
is that part the whole point? Call us because the
lines are open and the show is coming right now. Okay, Well,
welcome everyone. Today is August third, twenty twenty five. I'm
(00:43):
your host, Christy Powell, and joining me again today is
Richard Jailver.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Hello, Yes, I am, and I'm very excited to be
here and I'm very looking forward, very much looking forward
to today's show. I'm wondering what kind of I've been
hitting a couple of new social media platforms with some
stuff this week, so I'm wondering if that's going to
translate into calls, But well we'll have to wait and see.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, new social media platforms is now like a trigger
phrase for me. I you're doing the Lord's work for
lack of a better word. Thank you for getting out there.
It's very brave.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, it certainly is on the slide. I'm taking that
and accepted it fully because yes it is.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, I'm excited to talk to all sorts of new
people from all sorts of new corners of the internet.
I think this topic, this discussion around prayer is going
to be very interesting for you and I. We've had
a number of conversations on this show before about meditation
and how meditation isn't prayer. Prayer isn't meditating. I don't know,
(01:46):
We're going to get into it. It's going to be
a good time.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, absolutely, And I'm very interested in the calls takes
on this as well, especially the theists. You know that
do you think the prayer is a supplementation to supplication
to God? Do you think it's only a psychological effect?
Do you think it's a mixture of the two. Let's
(02:09):
get into it. If you're a theist and you believe
that prayer works regardless of what aspect you think it
works in, give us a call and let's have that conversation.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, we're definitely interested in talking about prayer today. You know,
of course, on talking you. Then we're open to all
of your questions about religion, secular humanism, atheistic morality, cosmology, philosophy, science, history, life,
the universe, and everything. Richard, Is there anybody else that
you're hoping to speak to today?
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Oh? Yes, yes, there definitely is. So we've had a
couple of I've had a long standing kind of dialogue
with a couple of theists who have both been regular
callers to all of these atheist shows for many, many,
many years, and I have directly reached out to to
(02:55):
ask to call the show, and both of these guys
have made excuse after excuse after excuse for not calling.
One in particular, I'm going to tell you the names
that the names they go by when they call in,
so I'm not docsing anyone. It's Jimmy from Texas and
Howard from Spain. Howard from Spain. The last time I
invited him to call in stated point BLI like, the
(03:18):
reason that I haven't called you is because I don't
do calling shows anymore. Keen fans of the eighties community
of Austin will have noticed that he did in fact
call into the Artist Experience last week, and I left
out I pointed out this out to him. I feel
left out talked to. Both of these guys have talked
(03:39):
to every host on this network except me, and for
some reason, I don't know what that reason is. I'm
not casting any expersions out there. I don't know what
the reason is. For some reason, they both point blank
refused to call and talk to me. So, Howard from Spain,
Jimmy from Texas, you have been called out calling.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Well, we certainly hope to hear from you. Talk Heathen
is a live call in show and we do have
open lines, so get all of your calls in at
five one two, four to two or from your computer
at tiny dot c c slash call th And with that,
let's bring in our friend Kelly Laughlin for the Talk
Heathen to Me segment where we do our question of
(04:22):
the week. Hi Kelly, what you got for us?
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Hi? Christy? I got it? Actually, I got a pretty
good one. This week. Our Talk Heathen to Me segment
from or question from last week was why did Jesus
come back after he was crucified? And I could think
of all kinds of good answers, but we only wanted
the wrong answers. And here are the top three that
we picked. Number three from Matt Kay, Jesus came back
(04:45):
because he forgot his keys and wallet. He was heard mumbling,
can't wait till they invent pockets on his way out,
and to be fair, I have pockets and I still
leave my keys, wallet, phone everywhere. So number two from
the Life Set Faith, Jesus left money on the pool
(05:06):
table and he was next to play. I just got
the picture of all Jesus' quarters, the Holy quarters lined
up on the side of the pool table. And number
one from one of our favorite viewers, Miranda Rensberger, Jesus
came back because he was still pissed at that fig
(05:27):
tree and thought of a few more choice words to say.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Solid that's good work.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Yeah, that's that's pretty good. Thing always bothered me. That
was like the one story I think about Jesus that
really really bothered me. But let's go to next week.
The prompt for next week will be what prayer will
God always answer? Richard? Do you have an answer for that?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I absolutely do, and it seems to be the one
that he answers constantly. It's when theists pray to him
and tell him not to show up and show as
evidence of his existence. They must be praying this day
and night, and he's answering it constantly.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
That's a good one, Christy. What do you think?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, God, if you're real, if you're there, send me
a sign and prove it to me by doing absolutely
nothing for the next five seconds. Yeah, works every time.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Yeah. Great answers from you both, And I'm really anxious
to see what our audience comes up with. Remember to
put it in the comments section below, not the chat
on the side, and hopefully we'll bring read yours out
next week.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
All right, Well, thank you, Kelly, and to thank you
to everybody else who works behind the scenes, all of
the video operators and call screeners and hardworking engineers and
folks that make us look so good. Let's get the
crew cam up and going, Hey, good morning everybody. Thank
you so much for everything that you do.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
What a handsome bunch.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Okay, well, rich let's go ahead and jump into that
first call with Cow's our friend HATTI.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Good morning another Hi Christy, Hi Richard, thanks for taking
my car.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Absolutely what's on your mind to.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
They called in last week to talk about fate and Buddhism,
and during that call, the host rough line between aspects
of Buddhism like meditation that are empirically verified to work
in certain settings and therefore be seen as beneficial aspects
of Buddhism, and kind of delineating that from aspects that
are world is more in belief that are not empirically
(07:34):
verified and which therefore are not beneficial or even harmful.
And today I would like to kind of challenge that framing.
I believe that establishing views is also very much a
part of Buddhist practiced and not so much as dog mass,
not as epostomic grounds for truth, but skillful means to
(07:55):
bring about beneficial psychological change.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
And yeah, I think that you're in a really good space.
Like I work in a lot of Buddhist psychology, and
Richard has a very strong background in the history of
Buddhism and other aspects of it. So what is it
that you are, Like, what is your kind of ultimate
question here?
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Some my ultimate question is like, is there ever a
situation in which you would say that a holding a few,
even if a few is not like comparently verified, could
still be okay to hold for the benefity, Yeah, you
for the sort of psychological changes.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, I would definitely say that it is depending on
maybe how we define the idea of holding a belief,
you know, do we hold it lightly, do we hold
it with an attachment, with an unwillingness to let it
go in the face of new information. If I operate
under the assumption that every stranger I meet will probably
be a kind and decent person and worthy of my kindness,
(08:54):
I think that that is a unverified belief that is
a good one to hold on to. And if that
strange comes up and punches me in the face, I
think it's probably a good idea for me to keep
my distance.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah. No, I mean that that is also how I
see it. Views are beneficial or can be seen as
beneficial in general, and then in very specific cases that
they can clearly become harmful, or they can just be
shown as harmful in general. Like it could be that
you hope a few and it just turns out that
that view is not helping you at all, And I
(09:26):
think in that case it is good to dlp a few,
including I guess the sort of religious views that I'm holding.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, well, let's dive into that a little bit. When
we start talking about unverified religious views, what is it
that you're maybe concerned about or are kind of curious about,
whether or not some extra skepticism might be appropriate.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
So the kind of views I hold, I think the
one that is most on my mind is the view
of Karma, Karma and Reebert, which I hold as very
sentral to my Buddhist faith and which I obviously cannot
demonstrate to be true.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, so how does it offer you benefit?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
I think the way it provides me benefit is that
by really putting my actions and the consequence of our
actions so central, like it really puts agency first, Like
it really puts me in a position where I feel
like the best way to build on my own happiness
(10:31):
is to act today. That I shouldn't wait for others
to do it, or that I should just sort of
like take my lot in life and accept that for
what it is, but really that my actions is what
shapes my future.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah. No, I can definitely appreciate that viewpoint, and I
think that you are headed in the right direction, but
maybe adding some unnecessary steps when we throw in this
sort of magical play in reincarnation, Because there's plenty of evidence,
or at least some pretty logical arguments to dispute the
notion of reincarnation. We don't need to necessarily get into
(11:12):
all of that or debate whether or not it can
be conclusively disproved really depends on some of our terms
and how we're imagining reincarnation to exist, and all of
these kinds of things. But what I'm hearing you say
is that by being mindful and intentional about your actions,
you are working to the betterment of yourself and the
(11:33):
people around you. I think that you can just do
that without having to imagine any sort of like cosmic scorekeeping.
And I wonder if it wouldn't benefit you to let
go of that more magical component to it. How does
that framework strike you?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
I mean possibly, I guess I think that could be
separable possible basis for holding a particular article life set.
This is the one I have. And like, if you're
saying like I should reject this, then I feel like
there should also be a reason for that, Like this,
(12:10):
it should be shown like that it is more harmful
than some other way in which I could maybe reach
the same conclusion.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Sure, and I can definitely walk down that path with you.
I don't mean to feel like I can convince you
or force you to reject some belief that you hold Deer,
But I do think that there is a lot to
be said about what happens when we bring magical thinking
into our framework, and how by simplifying things, by maintaining
what we know to be true, we can get at
(12:38):
the heart of our goals rather than wrapping it up
in some of this mysticism that can potentially lead us
down the wrong path. But before I really dive into
all of that, Richard, I want to kind of get
you in here to see how this framework even lines
up with I don't know, maybe common thoughts on Buddhism,
or how reincarnation is a necessary or integral belief or
(13:01):
not in this space.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, I I've been quiet on purpose because I've had
plenty of conversations with Calcer friends, and I know you
would have somewhere to go with it, So I kind
of wanted to let you kind of take the lead
on this one a little bit, right, And I talk
a lot on the Buddhist calls as well. But yeah,
I think, look, there's the first part of your question, Christe.
(13:27):
You know, what is the kind of Buddhist consideration of reincarnation?
And that depends because in religious studies, there is not
a thing on the whole with any religion, and this
applies to Buddhism as well. There is not a Buddhism.
There are Buddhisms because we have to take into contact context.
It's movement through time and place as well. You know,
(13:50):
we don't kind of look at religions on the basis
of this is the religion. That's what gatekeepers do, that's
what people who commit they're not the true Scotsman fallacy do.
And there are lots of different ideas and you know,
a good example of this is in Tibet. Tibetan Buddhism
(14:11):
is a really really famous form of Buddhism. It's one
of the more famous schools of Buddhism. But Tibetan Buddhism
is conjoined, very much conjoined with the native Bond tradition
from Tibet. So a lot of aspects of Tibetan Buddhism
are actually aspects of the Bond tradition that predated Buddhism
(14:32):
in Tibet. And we see this as Buddhism moves We've
seen it as it's moved into the Western taken on
most secular aspects where in a lot of cases people
who call themselves Buddhists, who identify as Buddhists don't even
accept any of those supernatural elements of it. It's for me,
(14:54):
it's quite clear scripturally from the kind of early Buddhist
text which as the ones that I kind of look
at most. It's quite clearly scripturally that the Buddha believed
that reincarnation was a thing. It believed, it taught it
as a true thing, and it taught it as integral
(15:16):
to the Buddhist path to enlightenment. It is a supernatural element,
you know. It's quite clearly stated on a couple of
different occasions where the Buddhis tells the people around him
you should And this is what gives me the kind
of confidence to say that he's an integral part of
what he believed Buddhism to be, because there's a couple
(15:38):
of occasions where we say it's you should abandon the
religions of your ancestors, you should abandon the religions of
your family and your attachment to them. And when you
come into this this path is practice which calls our
friend correctly identified as a kind of you know, the
(15:58):
Buddhist moral system is what is beneficial to you, accept
what is beneficial and rejects what is not, as opposed
to the kind of hard good and evil of a
lot of kind of Western religions. And that is you
know it quite clear has the stated that you know this?
Accepting this is accepting the wisdom of the Buddha, It's not.
(16:21):
You know, through all your family stuff aside, and accept
the wisdom of the Buddha and practice this, and by
practice you will see that what I am teaching you
is true. And certainly reincarnation and other supernatural aspects, including
supernormal powers and things like that we're clearly stated by
him as being true. Does that mean that you have
(16:45):
to hold to those things as true to gain benefit
from Buddhist practice. That is a very very difficult and
nuanced question because it depends entirely what you think Buddhist
practice is an will give you. If you are of
the kind of let's say, traditional mindset where you think
(17:06):
that you are on this path, you will be reincarnated,
you will become enlightened, but it could take eons to happen.
Then yes, you can say it's an integral aspect. If
you look at meditation practice as a utility to gain
good things from. Then no, it's not necessarily necessary to
(17:30):
hold onto that because we can see the utility of
meditation practice. It's you know, the utility of meditation practice
is well known. It really really is well known. You know,
there's been plenty of scientific studies done on this thing
where it's vastly used, as you know yourself, in kind
(17:50):
of emotional health support and things like that, and it's
used in neurological a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, sorry, I'll watch you there for a moment, Richard
Cells our friends, How did you what did you get
out of all of that? Where are you at with
this conversation?
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Now? Well, I mean I would agree that there's a
lot you can get out of Buddhism without the supernatural views. Like, yes,
meditation very beneficial in other contexts than the one of
religious Buddhism. I guess my intent for this call was
to also point out that building up certain views is
(18:31):
also part of that practice, and that it is also
sort of within the framework of like it could be
beneficial or harmful to hold this or that view. Therefore
it can be good or bad to cultivate that sort
of view up to a point like not as like
this is the absolute ruth, not this is a dogmap,
but as like holding this view is psychologically beneficial. So
(18:54):
that's really where I want to get to, and then
maybe we can go into specific views like karmas No.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
And I feel like I'm very much on board with
what you're saying. But I would also suggest that one
of the criteria for whether or not a view is
beneficial ought to be your willingness to reconsider it in
the face of evidence. And to that end, I would
express that holding on to a view in reincarnation when
(19:21):
there is not any meaningful evidence to suggest it and
there is evidence to suggest against it would mean that
it would be in your best interest to let go
of that view and to embrace a worldview that is
willing to adapt to the evidence on hand. How do
you respond to that?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
So I would agree that if there was clear evidence
against the incarnation, I would have to drop to few.
I haven't seen it, so I mean, I've seen evidence
against very crude forms of conceptualized and the organation for sure,
but not necessarily in the oh like doctor spin or
(20:02):
baths of Buddhism.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
May I ask, cal's a friend if you've seen evidence
for reincarnation and I'm going to go down the path
with this, so just just kind of give me a
quick yes or no response, Right, So you've just kind
of stated, and please correct me if I'm wrong. You know,
why should you reject it if you've not seen evidence
against it? Is the general gist I got from you.
(20:26):
But why don't you do that with things like Christianity
or Islam or any other religion the belief in though
you've not seen evidence for them, but you've not seen
evidence against them, So why not just accept those as well?
What's so special about reincarnation that it leads you to
(20:47):
I think this I must set aside in this special
place where using the same criteria, I will throw other
beliefs away.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I'm not just picking up're not shown to be found,
specifically following a Buddhist part where I have confidence that
the things to Buddha thought are beneficial to me, and
so I am more willing to adapt those than a
belief in Toro. I believe in Jesus.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
So let's have a look at Jesus as one example.
What about Jesus's teachings do you not think are beneficial
as a means of practice, because bear in mind we're
putting the supernatural elements asidea. So regarding the actual practical,
utilitarian ideas that Jesus taught, love your neighbor and this
(21:38):
kind of thing, what is it that you don't agree
with with those that you do agree with in Buddhist teachings.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
I think putting your faith in salvation to the power
of someone else is putting yourself in a position of helplessness.
And I think that what.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
You're doing in Christianity though, because surely you're doing the
work health if you know, there are many many Jesus,
you know, and this is a thing in Christianity, this
is an actual thing where there's this argument against salvation
by works and by faith. You know, there are a
great many many Christians who think you do need to
(22:16):
do the work yourself to earn what that gift if
you like that Jesus was offering. Is that any different
to doing the work that the Buddha taught you to
attain enlightenment?
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I mean it's different work, But like I would conceide
your point that this state is something that could motivate
someone to doing good things em bettering themselves.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Yes, okay, I have no further questions or honor.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
CHRISTI yeah, I mean I was curious where you were
looking to go with all of that, Richard, And I
guess I would just kind of go back to my
refrain around how there is a lot of danger in
holding on to beliefs that don't have good evidence, good
epistemiology behind them. I can appreciate you isolating some of
(23:05):
these beliefs and saying, well, I believe that following the
teachings of Buddha make me a better person or help
me to contribute to making a better world. And I
can absolutely appreciate that. I also want to stress that
when you accept any belief system whole cloth and without
a willingness to pick and choose or to recognize or
(23:27):
accept the pieces that don't make sense, that you are
putting yourself in a position to believe things that can
be incredibly harmful. So even if you can make the
claim that by continuing to believe in reincarnation that you
are becoming a better person, that you are helping to
make for a better world, one that I'm not really
(23:47):
convinced of. But even if you were to hold on
too that claim. If you are willing to accept all
things Buddhism TM because they're Buddhism, then you can find
yourself in some really dark path pathways where you're unwilling
to accept knowledge, where you're unwilling to let go of
things that are being proven to cause a lot of harm.
(24:09):
And so I guess I'm just not on board with
this idea that we can say, well, I think it's
good for me, and I can't prove that it's definitely
not real, so I'll just hold on to it anyway.
It just feels like a very dangerous ideology.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, I mean I can see the danger. I understand
your point of guarding the danger that that's like following
a particular view good gone with other views that are harmful,
but that you take in anyway because it's sort of
part of the same uh yeah, the same kind of
class of you. But I also think it can be
critical here, Like I hope I can't be sure. I'm
(24:48):
not perfect, certainly not, but I hope that if that
were to happen to me, if there was some view
that tried to sneak in along with this whole karma
vibut stuff that is actually harmful, I would be able
to see that that it's harmful.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, and that might be where I would continue to
leverage this just a little bit. I want to acknowledge
that there are many formulations of reincarnation, as you've already
pointed out, and we haven't spent a lot of time
unpacking yours. But I want to put forward that if
we are operating under these belief systems that certain actions
(25:23):
have a moral valance to them, or that there's some
sort of point system keeping track of things, we get
into a real dangerous position of trying to evaluate these
actions based on some rubric that is totally arbitrary, and
that causes us to divorce ourselves from seeing the action themselves,
(25:44):
from seeing the motivation behind them and the consequences behind them.
Whereas if we choose to be present in hey, I
want to make the world a better place, So therefore
I'm going to do things that work towards that end
and not worry about what category rating within. Without worrying
about what some rubric says, We're going to be much
(26:06):
more attuned to the needs of the situation and just
adding in that mystical element of this is going to
have an impact on my eternal soul can really get
us into a place where we're missing the point of
what we're doing and we're like looking for the score
rather than playing the game.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
So, first off, eternal soul not really a thing in Buddhism.
But also I think, sorry, what.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Is not really a thing in Buddhism. I didn't follow
the term you.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Used and the consequence of those actions.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Eternally eternal soul. I think Calcifriend was saying.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Sure, yes, I very much appreciate that it's a little
bit of a shorthand, but please help walk us through that.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I mean, I want to make more and make the
point that's like what you were saying about, like seeing
the intense behind actions and the consequence of actions, Like
I would say that that is the core, that is
actually what you should be doing when you consider karma
and the way it should guide your life. So I
do not really see the problem you're setting up here.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
I guess, Okay, So if I may jump in here
a little bit because I think I might have a
resource which might be useful for you, and it doesn't
it's not necessarily like anti Buddhist or anything. It's a
useful website for kind of thinking about the horms where
(27:31):
we employ a lack of critical thinking, which is essentially
and I don't mean, you know, to be aggressive when
I say that, but you know, it's essentially what we're
engaging in when we're saying we're going to accept this
belief because it's not being disproven. That is technically a
lack of critical thinking. So there's a guy called Tim
(27:51):
Farley who set up a website called What's the Horm.
It's What's the horm dot net. It's really really useful
because it actually goes into a lot of stories and
because we hear this all the time as educators in
this area. We hear people saying, well, what's the harm
of believing in Christianity if I'm only you know, donating
(28:13):
to my church and I'm not you know, I'm not
the one going out and blowing buildings up, So what's
the harmon you hear it over it over again in
your case, what's the harm of believing in reincarnation in
this thing that there's no evidence for? If if it's
not being disproven, and if it's I'm not engaging any
negative effects from it? So you know, this website goes
(28:35):
into a lot of stories surrounding why harm is caused
from having these beliefs in you know, in having these
beliefs and engaging in non critical thinking surrounding things and
giving the excuse, well, what's the harm in it? So
(28:56):
it might be a decent resource for you to look at.
But I've got to say, and I'm mentally with Christy
with this one. I think when, especially when you're aware
as you seem to be, and you seem to fully
digest this idea that there is no evidence for it,
and you know, you kind of seem to me to
be presented and correct me if I'm wrong, but you
(29:17):
seem to presenting it as this kind of utility position
and kind of push brushing aside this idea that well,
with absolutely nothing to substantiate that this is actually true,
but that doesn't really matter because I don't see bad
things coming from it, so therefore the utility of it
is by default beneficial. I think that's dangerous thinking. And
(29:42):
I think even if we don't see active bad things
coming from it in your particular case, we might look
at a larger picture of kind of beliefs in rebirth
and reincarnation, and we might actually find that there can
be negative effect from it. If not, and I'll give
you just one quick example, it doesn't apply to you.
(30:06):
It doesn't apply to Buddhist belief. There's a people who
are based in the Middle East have forgot the name.
They believe in reincarnation, but in their version of reincarnation,
there is no one allowed to kind of come into
the religion from outside and when you are reborn. A
lot of them take on this utility position that if
(30:31):
I say that I am from a higher class family
in my past life, then a higher class family. If
they accept that, that accept that claim, then they will
benefit my family by look at taking me, giving me
financial incentives because they feel I am part of their
(30:51):
direct family. That is one aspect of a negative attitude
like this. I'm not sure, and I'll state because I
don't want to misrepresent anyone, I'm not sure that occurs
in Buddhist reincarnation. I suspect if I dig hard enough,
I will find cases where that does happen. Certainly Intobetan Buddhism.
(31:15):
We've got cases where you know, rural people have been
confirmed to be you know, the reincarnation of certain high
class larmers, and they have been taken out of their
pole setting and put into you know, a family or
in a position where they are well well looked after,
and subsequently their family is well looked after. Is that negative?
(31:38):
That's that's a further conversation, I think. But I think
this goes beyond just simply saying, well, there is no
harm in it.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
You know.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
I think if we dig a little deeper under the
surface where we can find harm in it. We can
certainly find harm in Buddhism as a whole when we
just lightly scraped the surface, But you know, specific beliefs
like this, I think we might actually find that stuff.
Please respond to that.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
No, I mean there's a sense of like spiritual classism
or hierarchy that that's kind of inherent to a lot
of these philosophies. So I didn't mean to jump in
their cousier friends. Please respond that, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
I mean there are a lot of views that are
bad and wrong, and some of them are about the
incarnation of liebirds. I think it's a bit much, though,
to sort of say, like, therefore hold none of those
Like I'm sure we could look at lots of scientific
things like just just look at like various racist theories
(32:37):
that try to base themselves in forms of evolution, where
I mean, any well thinking scientists dealing with evolution would
be able to completely disprove that, but you would not
tell them, like stop believing in evolution because those crazy
guys over there are making it into this big racist thing.
So I don't think I can really follow in this
(32:59):
line of thoughts.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
That seems really kind of curious that I'm just saying,
and I'm going to touch a direct question, Now, are you
saying you're not willing to follow up on this line
of thought, You're not willing to kind of engage with
it and think about it and actually seek how to
see if this is the case.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
I'm willing to look in all sorts of things, but
I am not going to take responsibility in my views
because there's other people who hold other views. I think
that is a way to make an ask.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yes, no, I very much appreciate that, And yes, there
are perhaps good versions and bad versions of every philosophy
if we want to oversimplify it or be reductive in
that way. Again, I don't necessarily know all of the
particulars of your perspective on reincarnation, and maybe if we
(33:50):
were to assess some of that out and get a
better sense of what your philosophies are, we could be
a little bit more direct. But I think what Richard
and I are trying to do is just highlight some
of the common concerns that exist in this space and
recognize the fact that anytime we accept a belief without
good supporting evidence and we don't grapple with the epistemology
(34:13):
of a particular philosophy, we open ourselves up to vulnerabilities.
The vulnerabilities of your belief system are something that we
are not able to extricate because we don't know all
of the ins and outs of it. So if it
is benefiting your life, bully for you. You know, I
really do mean that and maintain that. There are people
in the chat saying things along the lines of like, hey,
(34:35):
it's always better to live in reality than to live
in a delusion, even if it's a healthful delusion, And
I would push back against that because I think that
it's sort of a fallacy to have any of us
believe that we are living in quote reality. We are
all experiencing a delusion and finding reality requires us to
recognize that that we are all having a veil between
(34:59):
us end quote objective truth. I don't think that that
means that we shouldn't we should give up on the search, though,
that we should be willing to accept things for bad reasons,
that we shouldn't be interested in what we can find
empirical evidence to support. I hope that that kind of
sums it all up here. Is there anything more that
needs to be added?
Speaker 3 (35:20):
I think just to tag on the end of that.
And you know this is based on what cows A
friends themselves said a little while ago about other people
doing bad things who have these beliefs. Doesn't necessarily mean
that you know, having those beliefs are bad if you're
not employing that yourself. If I'm representing what you said
(35:42):
correctly there, do you not think that if that's the case,
If you are completely convinced that karma, reincarnation is true,
rebirth is true, and you see all around you other
people who engage with this belief and they're doing it
wrong in your do you not think there is some
(36:02):
responsibility to perhaps correct them and kind of say to them, look,
I don't believe you're living you're living this out correctly,
you're interpreting this correctly. I think you're wrong, and I
think we need to reassess the way we or the
way you're evaluating this. And before you answer yes or
(36:24):
no to that, I kind of also want to present
the case of in certain religions there are people who
are really really anti gay based on that revision, and
people who are pro gay and in fact gay and
practice in those religions. And I see in a lot
of those cases those gay people, all those pro gay
(36:44):
people fighting against those kind of or doing the wrong
thing in their view. They are actively vocal about it
and want to correct them and correctly so as well,
regardless of any other beliefs that they hold. Do you
there's not a right or wrong answer to this. By
the way, I'm not trying to set a trap for you.
Do you think that there is a moral responsibility to
(37:07):
call other people out who you see and think are
in misinterpreting this belief?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yes, I do think there's that more responsibility.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah, well, I say it wasn't trap or anything. I
was just curious about your answer to that, and I'd
be interested in perhaps a future call on counter how
you might approach that. I've certainly known you know, Buddhist monks,
indeed abbots of monasteries who've seen things they disagree with
(37:40):
and that they've seen other Buddhist people doing, and they
have made a phone call and said, I do not
appreciate you doing that. I think you're doing it wrong.
Can we not engage in that behavior? And it doesn't
necessarily have to be a conflict thing, but certainly if
you hold that there is a right way to behave
(38:01):
or a right way to act when these things are mentioned,
I wonder how we could challenge that in your own
community and holds that thought. Because I think we're going
to get on another call in a minute. I do
appreciate your call, and Cal's friend always, we always have
really really great conversations. I'm going to let kind of
Christy have the last word, because I think this is
(38:23):
the first time he's possibly spoken to here, and I've
certainly enjoyed listening to you too dialogue.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
So Christy, Yeah, no, just I do appreciate the conversation,
and you are You're striking on issues that are very
near to my heart because it is important to me
that we all recognize that our quote worldview is somewhat
arbitrary and inevitably imperfect, and so sort of maximizing that
bringing some intentionality to that is a very important thing
(38:51):
to me. I do think that we have to not
only accept with humility the fact that our worldview is
not always quote rational or accurate, but that we can
maximize that by making certain choices about what we believe,
even in the absence of all of the data that
we would need in order to truly know something. That
(39:13):
being said, it's a dangerous world when you start to
accept things because they have a certain label attached to
them if you don't have any good evidence to support
that belief system. And while I very much appreciate that
you are very thoughtful and seemingly very introspective about your
experiences of reincarnation, I can't help but feel a little
(39:35):
bit squeamish about it. I would love to talk further
in the future about some of your specific philosophies or
understandings of that concept, because I would love to just
understand better how you protect against some of the dangers
that we've highlighted. But for now, I'm just really grateful
to you for calling.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Thank you for having Mike call and have a good
rest at the show.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Thank you so much, you as well. Yeah, well, Richard,
that was a good time. Forget the cheap segue here.
But speaking of good times, the Bat Cruise is coming
up August sixteenth. It's gonna be at seven pm. This
is our twenty twenty five Bat Cruise. As I understand,
there are actually still some tickets available, which usually they
(40:16):
are long gone by now I think we've had just
a few come up and some extras on hand, so
if you're interested, grab them all. You can. Forgive me
for that. I saw the way your heart broke just
a little bit as I as I admitted to that joke.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
It is great when when other people make by jokes,
it means I'm not going to get any flock from
making them.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
So it's old there, fair, I will I will take
some of that heat for you. Okay, Well, we've had
some super chats come in some other things, but I
actually want to jump right back into the phones because
I'm very excited to talk to Eric in Ohio. Eric,
what is on your mind this afternoon?
Speaker 5 (40:54):
How are you today? It's good to hear from me.
Thank you, absolutely well. We do for it and enjoying
your conversation. And I've got to say I can't agree
with you more that you know, we ought to believe
more in the things that are testable and repeatables, generally. Sure,
And I say that as a theist, believe it or not.
But the reason that I wanted to talk to you,
(41:16):
I appreciate your scientific perspective one thing. And my perspective
didn't start out scientific, but it did end up with
a good scientific base. And I've gone through everything that
I believe now and waited against the things that I
used to believe with science, and I'm very happy. I'm
a very happy theist. Now I'd like to share my
(41:38):
perspective with you please. The way I see things, one
of two things that have to be absolutely true. Either
there's always been a guy, or there's been a universe
or a little pinprick that evolved into a universe in
one form or another. One of these things have to
be true.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
And you know, I don't know that I can cosign
that it has to be one or the other, but
that's okay, Let's just keep moving. Tell me more.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Okay, Well, one of the two things has to be true,
then everything that sprang out that we have today, that
we see today had to come from one or the other.
So I look at things, and I asked myself, can
a dead universe evolve light and consciousness? And I look
at the things, I look at science, and I don't
(42:28):
see where we've ever been able to produce it in
a lab or ever sing observed it coming in naturally
naturally for me.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
So there, I mean we have not been able to
replicate or truly understand a biogenesis. I think that that's
a very broad statement, something we can largely all agree on.
But does that mean that it's impossible or that it's
never happened before? You recognize that those are not the
same claim.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
Well, if you'll bear with me one time, you'll see
exactly where I'm going with this. The truth is, we've
tried many times to replicate it and it's failed. And
I believe that the falsification procedure is what separates science
from science fiction or imagination from real science. The falsification procedure,
actual testing, that's the most important step in science. But
(43:17):
then let's look at something else. Okay, So if there
is no a biogenesis, if we don't see a cell
forming naturally then that would just and all might ever
arising at all, because of all life is cell you. Now,
step two, Let's give us that miracle of one cell
just falling together all by itself. Okay, let's give us
that one miracle. We've got that one cell. Now, our
(43:39):
next step in evolution is this, that single cell has
to become a multi cellular organism. And that never happens
in science. We never observed in laboratory, we never observed
in nature. Now there are.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Times, right, so things that could possibly happen are things
that we have not been able to make happen or
observe happen. It's still the same fallacy that we're pushing
up against.
Speaker 5 (44:02):
Well, this is pasifiability. This is science. This is testing science.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Okay, yes, this is testing whether or not this particular
procedure will have this particular result. And so far we
have had a number of procedures and we have never
had the result of creating a single cell organism out
of quote nothing. We're being very reductive here, but I
think you and I are on the same page with
(44:28):
all of that. Our ability to demonstrate our understanding of
how this has happened does not indicate that it cannot
happen or has never happened.
Speaker 5 (44:39):
Okay, I'll grad you that, but bear with me just
a little further. I'm taking us now from a single
cell organism to a multi cellular organism, because that's step
two in the process of revolution.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (44:52):
The only problem is we never observed this either the eater.
Can we make it happen in the laboratory? And what
we do observe, and some people will I misunderstood this.
We do observe single cell organism is replicating over and
over and over again and colonizing together, not creating a
multi cellular organism, but a colony of single cell organisms. Sure,
(45:13):
that's been mistaken for the same thing as creating a
much cellular organism, which isn't. So we never observed that happening.
So step two of evolution I don't think ever occurs.
We don't see it in the laboratory, we don't see
it in nature, and.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
So there is a gap in our knowledge about how
these things might proceed. You know, five hundred years ago
there were gaps in our knowledge about the electromagnetic spectrum,
about the existence of radio waves and things like that.
And yet now we recognize that not only can we
create radio waves, but that they are a natural phenomena
(45:49):
that exists all over the universe. The lack of us
having knowledge of something doesn't indicate that that something can't
or won't or has never existed. This is very, very important,
whether we're talking about evolution or any other idea. What
you're seemingly doing here is taking all of those gaps
and squeezing in a god concept of help fill them.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
No, no, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
And those people, okay, help walk me through. What's the difference?
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Now?
Speaker 5 (46:19):
This is this is all a stability. Okay, it's it's
all testable when these tests have all failed, that's the point. Now,
let's let's look at a couple more things. You might are.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
There going to be a third example that has the
same problem as the first two, because having seventeen thousand
problems or examples that all have the same problem still
means that you have nothing. That's why I'm kind of
wanting to address the problem that I'm seeing.
Speaker 5 (46:46):
I'm almost okay, well, let me go just a little further.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Okay, just a little further.
Speaker 5 (46:51):
Then when we look at transitional fossils, Okay, I have
nearly every evolutionist on no point to transitional fossils and
ancestors has proved for revolution. For instance, they'll look at
the DNA of the chimpanzee and the DNA of the
human being and they'll say, well, it's obvious that we
(47:11):
have a common ancestor. Now, that's fine if they want
to believe that. They also say all fossils are transitional.
On it's fine if they want to believe that, But
there's two problems today I neither one have been tested.
For instance, if you're.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Eric, I feel I'm sorry for jumping in I feel
it's time that I jump in here because I'm not
a biologist. I don't know anything about biological science at all.
So I'm not going to argue with you on any
of these points because it's not my field of study.
One thing, the thing that is my field of studay
is PHILOSOPHYI I don't I have no intention of learning.
(47:49):
It is not my field of study. I have fields
of study that I don't feel I need to add
a further one on. So there are other people who
deal with this kind of stuff. I'm not that person.
I do deal with philosophy. And one thing you've done here, Eric,
One thing you've done here is you've jumped. You've set
up a false dichotomy to begin with, which is that
(48:11):
it's either God or this universe which has come into
existence from nothing, which you have not mentioned any possibility
of it being in eternal universe. That's your first mistake here,
because you've not demonstrated this dichotomy. It is a false dichotomy.
The second thing you've done is you've said, I have
problems with evolution and abiogenesis, and they may be legitimate problems,
(48:36):
they may not be. But even if we just say, right, look, Eric,
I'm willing to agree with you evolution and abiogenesis, none
of it has any evidence whatsoever. That still doesn't get
us to God. So we're not giving scientific evidence for
God here. All you're saying is that you disagree with
these other ideas. What is the sect you know you
(48:58):
called up with this idea, this claim that the scientific
evidence for God? What is the scientific evidence for God
that you have? Because simply saying you don't agree with
other things is not giving God scientific evidence. Everyka's still
with us.
Speaker 5 (49:12):
So the point is, yes, sir, and I will bring
them just right back around to God. Just a moment.
I'm just fishing out as last point. When we say
that we have a common ancestor, the problem is because
of the observation of the DNA similarity.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
Big. I'm not saying we've got a common ancestor. I've
already said to you. I am willing to agree with
you that we have no evidence for abiogenesis or revolution
at all. I agree with you. Yeah, let's say that
we have simply no evidence for either of those things.
So what is the evidence for God?
Speaker 5 (49:47):
Okay, pardon, but I would love to finish my point.
I'm not interrupting you, sir.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
I'm interrupting you because it's really really important that I
interrupt you, because we're not this. If you know, if
you want to talk about abiogenesis being false, if you
want to talk about evolution being false, you are more
than welcome to write a paper demonstrating these things as false,
(50:14):
giving your evidence as to why they are false, and
getting the majority of biologists on the planet to peer
review your stuff and say absolute. Eric is absolutely spot
on the money. We're going to reject evolution, We're going
to reject abiogenesis. That's fine, But you know I'm telling
you I agree with you you don't need to finish
(50:36):
your point. It's pointless finishing your point because I want
to hear your evidence for God, not your evidence against
something else that I already agree with you on. Then
present it, please.
Speaker 5 (50:49):
I think it's interesting that.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
We just we've heard so many versions of these scripts,
and when you're having when you're not having a conversation
with us, it does feel you're reading from a script.
When you're like, hold on, hold on, hold on, I
don't care about anything you just said. I have one
more point to make, it makes us feel like you're
not having a conversation with us. And we're very glad
that you're here to help us through some of these ideas,
(51:13):
to help us understand your point of view. But please,
let's not talk about it any further. Present for us
the scientific evidence that you have for the existence of God.
We're very interested to hear from you.
Speaker 5 (51:25):
Let's really not talk about my point any further. Are
you serious? The point is, you see, we've been brainwashed,
and the brainwatching is this, we're told that we have
all this evidence for evolution when none of it has
been falsified.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
Eric, do you have any evidence for God? And all?
Because you start integrates on me just a little bit.
Now you've told me you're going to present me this
evidence for the past three times I've spoken to you,
and then you've just gone straight back and see you
feel about evolution.
Speaker 5 (51:53):
Yes, I'm just about there.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
Wait, well, let's stop seeing just about that. Get to
this in line, fight the stall us pistol and give
it to us. Please.
Speaker 5 (52:05):
This point leads to my next one. This point leads
to my next one. You see, we don't have the
DNA of the common ancestor to test that, nor do
we have the DNA of any of the transitional fossils
like the archaeoptrics or the theropod dinosaur it's said it
evolved from. To put these things to the test.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Sure, I mean you're dramatically oversimplifying the field of evolutionary biology.
But again, no, can you stop criticizing evolution and start
building a case for the existence of God? Or is
that not where any of this is headed? Are all
of these points just to say that evolution as we
understand it is incorrect? Or did you call it because
(52:45):
you had some scientific evidence for the existence of God?
Speaker 5 (52:48):
Yeah? Now I'm about to present the scientific evidence for God.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
But I just that's the fifth time you said that, Sir,
I very much don't mean to be harsh with you,
but I have to point out that's a little bit frustrating.
If you have it, please please share it with us.
And now as the next thing that you say, please.
Speaker 5 (53:08):
I just wanted to make sure that I just wanted
to put us on the same page to agree. First,
see if we agree, you and I that there is
no DNA that's been testable to prove that any fossil
is truly transitional.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
We agree.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
No, I'm not there with you, but for the sake
of the argument, for the sake of getting to the point,
let's go ahead and fast forward through it.
Speaker 5 (53:31):
Okay, Well, which fossil would you say we've proven is transitional?
Speaker 3 (53:37):
Jesus Christ, Eric, please do you have an exist? I mean,
get to the evidence for God. Please just give us
the evidence for God.
Speaker 5 (53:46):
Yes, yes, yes, biogenesis and plasma universe. Biogenesis and plasma universe.
Speaker 3 (53:54):
You see what doing by biogenesis on the plasma universe.
Speaker 5 (53:59):
Well, I'm getting yes, I'm getting to that. Whereas we
don't have any proof that even one fossil is transitional
because we don't have the DNA of these fossils to
prove and the DNA that we do have, For instance,
might one might say that Neanderthal is a transitional fossil
when the very definition and species proves that Neanderthal is
(54:20):
the same. Pizzis I mek Eric.
Speaker 2 (54:23):
I feel like you're very dramatically misinterpreting common evolutionary theory.
You keep getting hung up on this notion of transitional
fossils or transitional species, and I think that even a
very fundamental understanding of evolution would tell you that, you know,
Neanderthals didn't evolve into humans, that instead Homo sapiens and
(54:45):
Homoneanderthal existed around the same time, and that there was
some interbreeding and we have picked up some traits from them,
but that even if we came dramatically after them, they
didn't evolve into us. They simply were and then some
members of their species mutated and continued on and so
(55:05):
on and so forth. But it's not a pokemon that
levels up as time goes on. And again we're hearing
you bash evolution, and that's fine, Like we can have
that conversation, but I'm trying not to push back on
everything that you say that seems irrational about evolution, because
I'm so much more interested in your final point, which
(55:27):
is my scientific evidence for the existence of God. If
that's not your final point, then I've dramatically understood, misunderstood
what we're doing here. And if it is your final point,
please don't keep us waiting any longer. Say that thing.
Speaker 5 (55:41):
Please, was my point was compared to two and to
show that you don't have what I was saying about
an anderthal is that we are the same speed. By
the definition.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
That's my head bouncing off my desk and the utter frustration. Please, sir,
if you do not mind, I would imploy you to
get to the fucking evidence for God because you are
really getting on my tity. Sir, I don't want to
hear another word about evolution, transitional fossils, or not all
(56:22):
the fucking thing you were talking about abiogenesis. Please just
tell us about your evidence for God.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Yeah, Eric, unless you in case you're missing it. Our
central point here is that saying that the current conveiling
operating theory that most of science relies on in order
to understand a concept. Even if you take that and
destroy it and say that it makes absolutely no sense,
that doesn't do anything to prop up another theory. We
(56:51):
are all looking for the best theory, the best organizing
principles for how we understand reality, and if you have
one that's better than the existing one, focus on that,
focus on putting forward. I believe that God created the
universe and all of the creatures in it because of
rather than all of these people who say that God
(57:13):
couldn't do it are crazy because they can't reproduce all
of these theories that they have or all these ideas
that they have. I have to say that I am
not an evolutionary biologist, but your understanding of evolution feels
really weak and does contradict with a lot of the
ideas that I am able to wrap my head around.
(57:33):
I've tried to highlight some of those as we've gone along,
but none of this seems to be getting us to Hey,
I have an explanation for why life exists, or I
have an explanation for where the universe came from. So
in absence of that, I'm struggling to understand where this
conversation might go or how much more time we're really
(57:55):
able to give it before I give poor Richard an aneurysm.
Speaker 5 (58:01):
Well, you know, I just find it really, really funny
that this bothers you so much, And.
Speaker 2 (58:08):
It's not your ideas, Eric that bother us. It really isn't.
We have heard so many more awful and disgusting ideas
than the ones that you're presenting. And what I mean
when I say that is I don't find your ideas compelling,
but I don't find them deeply upsetting. If you had
called in to say that there are no transitional species
and therefore there should be no intermingling among the races,
(58:32):
or something like that cause which I've taken by the way,
that would upset me. That would be a quote moral
evil that I might get worked up against. We are
not upset because what you were saying is terribly inflammatory.
We are frustrated because it is demonstrably inaccurate and out
of step with the scope of modern science and with
(58:53):
just good logical reasoning. And every time we try to
point that out to you, you don't seem to absorb
it or take it in. So I understand that, yes,
maybe there is a little bit of friction in the air,
but I want you to know it's not because you
called It's not because we disagree with you. It's because
we don't seem to be having a conversation with you
where we're getting through to you or where you're really
(59:16):
taking in some of the things that we're trying to express.
His concerns.
Speaker 5 (59:20):
Well, you keep telling me that I'm wrong about something education,
you are wrong. None of this stuff is and it
hasn't been tested, and the things that have been tested
has failed. Now that's that's the end of my conversation
with that part of I'm going to cool.
Speaker 3 (59:37):
Move on.
Speaker 5 (59:38):
First, Is there an what I said is demonstrably wrong?
Can you show me the one thing that I've said
that is demonstrably wrong?
Speaker 3 (59:46):
Yes, I mean it's altome, but I know it's a
jumping here.
Speaker 2 (59:51):
Yeah, because it is.
Speaker 3 (59:52):
A dichotome that there is either God. It's a false
die cultome that there is either God or this universe
which came from nothing. That was the very first thing
you said that was wrong. And I want to address
that because I am not a biologist. I do know
about philosophy, and I know a little Whency's tiny little
lemons bit about the universe as well. So Montreal, let's
(01:00:13):
talk about that and yet evidence for God.
Speaker 5 (01:00:16):
I didn't say anything came from nothing. I've said, well,
so things have to be true. Either everything came from
a universe, or everything came from.
Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
God, or everything came from some third thing that none
of us here know about or understand. It's the same
flaw that comes in when you say, well, we've tested
it and it didn't work. I mean, we're just finding
different ways to not make a light bulb. It doesn't
mean that it's impossible to make a light bulb.
Speaker 5 (01:00:43):
What third thing? If you can't put a third thing
on the table, then it's not a false dichotomy.
Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Right again, So what you're saying is because there is
a gap in our knowledge, because there is something that
we do not know, that it can't be true. And
that's the flaw in your thinking here. That's what I
pointed out maybe a few minutes into this conversation, that
you can't just say well, because we don't know something,
therefore God is the only answer. There are so many
(01:01:12):
things that we don't know. And the best way to
demonstrate that is to imagine yourself calling a YouTube talk
show in the fifteen hundreds, whatever that version is. Imagine
yourself going into a tavern in the fifteen hundreds, you yourself,
like modern you, with all of your modern understanding, and
saying to them, well, there's clearly no God because we
(01:01:33):
can't recreate the creation of life, And they'd be like, yeah,
you still can't do that five hundred years in the future,
and you could talk through it all. But imagine what
we might be able to learn in five hundred more years.
Perhaps aobiogenesis cannot be recreated, Perhaps the scale and scope
of it is too massive for it to ever be
(01:01:56):
something that we could recreate in a laboratory. Perhaps a
pick came out of nowhere and just shit out a universe,
and now we're all here. I can't demonstrate or prove
or test any of these ideas, but I can study
the hard work of incredibly brilliant people who have worked
very hard to take all of the bits of information,
(01:02:18):
all of the evidence that does exist, and form a
cohesive narrative around it, and then watch as other people
tear down that narrative and add to it. And then
new information comes to light, and we build, and we
build and we build, and at the moment we have
come to a particular understanding of the origin of species that,
by the way, doesn't really line up with the one
(01:02:39):
that you're tearing down. None of this gets us to God.
Speaker 5 (01:02:44):
You can calm down, you can calm down. I listen.
All I'm saying is you can't demonstrate one thing that
I said that's wrong. That's important to remember.
Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
It's important for you to take in that we have
done that again and again and again. Just to put
it in a super quick SoundBite, anytime you tell me
it has to be this or that, and then I
put forward, or it could actually be some third thing
that none of us have come to. That is me
telling you that you are committing a logical fallacy, or
(01:03:17):
in other words, that you are wrong. And we have
said that many times. And if you disagree with that, okay,
you can disagree with us when we tell you that
you're wrong or show you how you're wrong. But to
continue to insist that we haven't pointed out any flaws,
it's just not accurate.
Speaker 5 (01:03:32):
I believe you're a special pleading so we can disagree
on that. That's okay, that's all right. But now I'm
about to turn it around on God and let's book
from a different point of view.
Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Oh my goodness, you're buttering that biscuit again. All right,
for the eighth time, I will bite show us God.
Speaker 5 (01:03:48):
Okay, what does the scriptures tell us Genesis Chapter one,
where God brings forth the animals? How does he do it?
He brings forth the animals and they do what they
bring forth after their own kind. Let's look at biogenesis.
Do you know what biogenesis is?
Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Are you meaning to say a biogenesis?
Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
No, is meaning biogenesis and meaning life from life, meaning
called gave life to things. That's what it means.
Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:04:15):
Yeah, biogenesis is an observation that we observed. Louis Passire
observed it.
Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Yes, No, I understand the distinction. It was just in
the context of the conversation. I wanted to make sure,
with our shaky phone lines and everything else, that you
were intending to say biogenesis. I appreciate the concept.
Speaker 5 (01:04:34):
Yeah, okay, so let's look at this now. Everything brings
forth after its own kind now compared to a biogenesis
that things just fall together and evolved into everything that
we see today.
Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
I mean, we have to really play around with so
many of these words. What does it mean for something
to reproduce after its own kind? I mean, where do
we get broccoli and cauliflower from? If everything looks the
same as it's always looked.
Speaker 5 (01:04:58):
I didn't say everything looked the same as it's always
some things everything adapts, Okay, right?
Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
So did God bring everything about after his own kind?
Speaker 5 (01:05:09):
But what's that?
Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
Now? Did God bring about life after his own kind?
Speaker 5 (01:05:13):
What was your question? I'm sorry?
Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
Did God bring about life after his own kind?
Speaker 5 (01:05:20):
Not brought forth myriads of life? Okay?
Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
Was it after his own kind?
Speaker 5 (01:05:25):
That is?
Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
Was it after his own kind? Please? What do you
mean by kind of after his own kind? Was it
after his own kind? Or not after his own kind?
Speaker 5 (01:05:36):
He said, let us bring forth man in our own image?
Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
Did God produce God?
Speaker 5 (01:05:41):
So?
Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
Did God produce God?
Speaker 5 (01:05:44):
We find that in now. If you don't want to
hear my argument, that's okay.
Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
I do want to hear argument. I'm asking you questions
to direct your argument. Did God produce God?
Speaker 5 (01:05:55):
After I've waid it out, feel free to ask me
anything you want to.
Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
I'm asking you now, sir, did God produce God?
Speaker 5 (01:06:03):
You're going to have to wait.
Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
No, I'm not. I'm asking you now. You're going to
have to answer the question. I'm afraid did God produce God?
You claimed? You have just claimed that the Bible specifically
specifically told us life comes after its own kind. You, sir,
are on the cusp of disproving your own argument. Did
God produce God?
Speaker 5 (01:06:25):
No?
Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
No, no, he didn't, So the Bible is wrong? So
why are you appealing to the Bible?
Speaker 5 (01:06:32):
And they don't want to listen. They don't want to
listen to me. You see, God is God. God can
do anything he chose to do.
Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
Oh can he? Now that's very interesting. Could you tell me, sir,
what reality is?
Speaker 5 (01:06:45):
See you don't think, sir, grow up? Would you please?
Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
I am grown up and I've had these conversations many
many times. That's why I'm not falling into silly, childish traps.
You've just disproven your own argument.
Speaker 5 (01:06:58):
And learn how to have a conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
I'm allowing you to have a conversation, sir. I'm asking
you direct questions. Now, would you mind asking answering the
question did God produce God?
Speaker 5 (01:07:10):
Do you believe every transitional?
Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
It's you right? So you are really really right. Listen,
this is going to work one of two ways. You
are either going to comply and we're going to have
an actual conversation, or I'm going to mute you and
I'm going to talk over you put all my points out,
which you keep interrupting, which absolutely, and I'll be really,
really polite, as polite as I possibly can here fucking
(01:07:35):
tear every single one of your shit, eh, philosophical and
scientific claims apart. So you've got two choices. We can
have a nice conversation or I'll just put you on
mute and I'll just talk. Which is your choice, sir?
Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
I'd like to point out there is a hypothetical third
option here where the Internet just stops working or the
Earth gets struck by an asteroid before this conversation ends.
You never know when there might be a third option. Sorry,
I just wanted to point that idea out.
Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
Okay, Then he did God produce God man after his
own kind, life after his own kind? Yes? He did?
So we we bear the same attributes as God? Do
we bear with the same attributes as godkind? The life
that God created does it bear the same attributes as
(01:08:28):
God mankind?
Speaker 5 (01:08:29):
Or all life?
Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
Any life? Does any life that God created bear the
same attributes as God himself?
Speaker 5 (01:08:36):
All life as our life was given as.
Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
Aul is God's attributes having a soul, That is that
the entirety of God's attributes. So you don't believe that
God is all powerful or maximumly powerful, or all loving
or all knowing. You don't believe any of those things
about God, which none of life on earth holds attributes.
Speaker 5 (01:09:01):
Well, not even all of God.
Speaker 3 (01:09:04):
So so what all the attributes you believe God holds
that make God God?
Speaker 5 (01:09:09):
Do you when you say God, do you mean the Father,
the Son of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
I'm saying the God that you believe in, sir, the
God that you believe in. What attributes make that being God?
Specifically God?
Speaker 5 (01:09:23):
Okay, well, the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 3 (01:09:26):
So the Father of the Son and the Holy Spirit
make God God? Is that what susation?
Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
They can cut through a little bit here, Eric, I
believe what Richard is trying to establish is that you
said that each creature recreates after its own kind because
God created it that way. You also said that God
created man after its own kind. And we're trying to
figure out how you're saying that this piece of ancient
(01:09:55):
poetry that would disprove evolution, or that would be a
better theory or that would replace evolution, actually is even
internally consistent when we consider the idea that God did
not recreate us after his own image or after his
own kind, or did he like what are the criteria
for that?
Speaker 5 (01:10:15):
Now, God didn't create a bunch of little gods, okay,
but everything he created he created to bring forward after
its own kind.
Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
This might be some of that special pleading that we
talked about earlier, But in any case, we have failed
to disprove evolution, and more importantly, we have failed to
prove evidence of God. And I think that next time
you give us a call, I would encourage you to
choose one of those missions and not both, and to
(01:10:43):
narrow the scope a little bit so that you can
feel very comfortable and confident that the thing that you
are ready to say is a thing you are absolutely
assured of and well versed in and able to very
efficiently explain to us. Again, disproving evolution does not prove God.
Disproving evolution is far from what happened here, Richard. Is
(01:11:05):
there anything else that you want to make sure to
hit on? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
I think look before we get to the evolution thing.
Because when I'm not, as I said at the start,
I'm not a biologist, I don't particularly enjoy talking about
evolution and aghborigenesis. It's not my field of study at all.
When I have seen it, it has been from places
like the Creation Institute, and when I've read their papers
(01:11:29):
on the subject, what they do is they always attack
evolution or a biogenesis. Never ever do they seek to
try and prove that God exists. And this is very
disingenuous to me. You know, you don't need to attack.
And here's the problem. Here's why. Let's say that we
(01:11:51):
don't just have as very often in science, we don't
just have a single theory of evolution and how life
evolved or how life formed on this planet. Let's say
that we have one hundred different theories. Now, the way
we get our theory into being accepted is not by
(01:12:12):
going through each one of those hundreds possible even thousands
of alternative theories and breaking down what you think the
problem is with them. The way we get our theory
as the accepted theory is by showing that it works,
it is repeatable, and it has explanatory power. And what
(01:12:33):
this does is it gives the people in your field
of study the means to go out and replicate this
and to test this for themselves and to say yeah,
actually this does have like this works, and it has
explanatory power. So you don't need to spend hours and
hours and hours trying to disprove something you don't agree with.
(01:12:56):
All you have to do is show that there is
a strong theory out there, and by default that thing
that you don't agree with will not be accepted anymore.
And you know, this is what happens all the time
in science, and it happens from the tiny, littlest, mundaneish
things to the great, great, big theories. Is people come
(01:13:18):
up with stronger ideas and those stronger ideas are tested
and found to be better than the competitors. And this
is why I don't hold Eric. It's not again, it's
not something against you, but I don't hold with this
idea of Well, I don't like the idea of that,
so I'm going to pull it apart because that proves nothing.
That doesn't prove God. You know, we've talked about two
(01:13:40):
different areas today which I would have loved to have
a conversation, and we've talked about philosophy and the universe,
and we could have had great, great conversations on those roads,
but just wanted to return to this thing, which is throwaway.
It doesn't matter in the conversation about whether God exists.
It really does. Doesn't matter whether evolution or abbiogenesis are true.
(01:14:03):
When we're talking about whether God exists. What matters is
that the God hypothesis is tested and shown to be
the strongest idea out there. And you failed to do that.
Speaker 5 (01:14:15):
Well, that's because you won't let me. Look. The first
thing I proved was you don't have any credible evidence
for either aenator evolution. But to even throw on the
table everything that you're saying.
Speaker 3 (01:14:28):
You may have heard a little beep there, sir, and
that was me muting you because I've just given you
a lengthy explanation. That's why I do not give a
fuck about either of those things. And the first thing
you returned to was that I'm going to leave it
in Christy's hands whether it unmutes you or ends the call,
because frankly, I am done with this conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
Yeah, I think I'm there as well. I do want
to say again, Eric, I know I've tried to kind
of sum up this call a handful of times, and
I really want you to kind of grapple with this
very core notion that disproving one idea does not imply
this other idea. I would also just kind of highlight
(01:15:11):
that your disproving process maybe lacks some meaningful rigor some
understanding of what it means to have a transitional fossil
and you know, some of these other points. But regardless,
I do very much appreciate your willingness to talk to
us and to work through all of this. I want
very much for you to understand that your ideas are
(01:15:31):
not inflammatory, even if a little bit your behavior kind
of is. And I hope that you're willing to go
back and rewatch this conversation and just recognize the ways
that you maybe failed to address some of our concerns
and to carry a back and forth conversation with us,
which is really what we're here to do, rather than
(01:15:52):
listening to you read a script or force us to
work through a certain series of points. With all of
that being said, very lad to have gotten to talk
to you, and I highlight some of our misgivings with
your thinking on all of this, And yeah, just very
much appreciate the bravery it takes to have this kind
of conversation. So with that, Richard, you and I can
(01:16:14):
certainly move on, but you know, it's kind of a
good time.
Speaker 3 (01:16:18):
You are way too nice, Christian. I didn't have a
problem with the guy personally. I just it frustrates me
when you start off. I'm going to go into a
bit of an explanation about a couple of things that
are very often misused by theists. One is this idea
(01:16:40):
that there is either God. And I'm going to clarify
this by saying, I am aware that he said this
was not his position, but we get very often get
this thing way say there is either God or this
universe which comes from nothing. He did say, that wasn't
what he said, and I accept that, but that is
not the only option. And we can have an eternal
(01:17:03):
universe into not necessarily an eternal universe, but eternal causes
into the past. And as much as they like to
say that's not possible, it is possible. There's no reason
why that is not possible. And after thousands and thousands
of these conversations have yet to hear a reason as
(01:17:24):
to why that is impossible. Nobody thinks that, Nobody who
studies this thinks that is impossible. And I'm clarifying this
here because I'm not saying that everybody who studies things
this thinks that this is the case, but nobody who
studies it thinks it's impossible. And there is also this
idea when we get onto necessary beings, God being a
(01:17:45):
necessary being, which in philosophy means that this thing has
to exist. There is nothing stopping the universe itself or
the pre state of the universe before it came into
what we call the universe, nothing stopping that being a
necessary being in and of itself. It is true that
(01:18:07):
we either have a necessary being or an eternal regress
a series of contingent things. This is true, and there
are lots of different tiny subtleties regarding all them, whether
they multiverse ideas or all these different things. There are
lots of different variations. But that is the dichotomy. There
(01:18:32):
is something that is either eternal, which is a necessary
being which has by necessity necessity to exist, or there
is a series of contingent things which may go on
forever or may get to a point where we get
to a starting point a contingent thing. Now this is
very very important. That's the dichotomy. That doesn't mean that
(01:18:56):
the dichotomy is either God exists or we have an
eternal regress. Because philosophers are not in agreement with what
in necessary being is, They're just not there. So we
shouldn't mistake this true dichotomy as well. Either God exists
(01:19:17):
or we have an eternal regress, because that's not the case.
That's not the case at all. That would have made
a very very interesting conversation. Unfortunately, that's not the conversation
we actually got.
Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
Yeah. Yeah, And I don't mean to belabor the point
or continue talking without Eric here, but I really want
to stress to Eric or any other future callers, pick one,
you know, pick one idea to discuss with us, one
thing that you want to really focus on, because the
fact that your argument is huge does not make it
(01:19:49):
more likely to be true, does not make it more compelling.
If you can prove one thing to be true, that
would honestly be fascinating to me and would meaningfully move
the conver station forward into a place it's never been.
The effort to call in with like seventeen different ideas
that all have the same central flaw to them is
(01:20:10):
not compelling in any way. Yeah, well, it's been a
fun show. We've definitely had some interesting conversations. I want
to make sure to take a quick moment to thank
our top five patrons this week. Number one we've got
oops all Singularity. Two Deanna Kerns. I hope I'm saying
that correctly. Three Dingleberry Jackson for Coleve Helvetti, and five
(01:20:33):
Ja Carlton. Our honorable mention this week is Mark Lagusker. Again.
You can find that at tiny dot cc slash Patreon
th if you'd like to support the show and receive
some of those extra tier benefits. And Richard, do you
have a I believe we have some super chats that
came in. You have those in front of you. They
(01:20:55):
are sorry, let me hit this quickly, A ten dollars
donation from our friend Miranda Rensberger, with the greatest of respect, Richard.
The chat collectively begs you to fix your headphone cord.
Maybe I should have read that one off a little
bit earlier. I don't know if you're dealing with some tangles.
I know I was at one point A five dollars
(01:21:16):
donation from some kind of dicky. That's fun. Another Buddhist caller.
Don't you ever attack Christianity? I love that critique. Actually, yeah,
five dollars from and I'm going to say this with
Gusto Daisy with three whys in an exclamation point, who says,
(01:21:37):
here's a couple solitary bucks for wrestling with the God
of the Gaps. It's good work if you can get it.
It's good work if you can get it. And then
another five from some kind of dicky offering if you
can't put anything else on the table. Wait, how did
God get on the table? I feel like I just
came in in the middle of that story and I'm
(01:21:58):
fascinated to learn more. All right, well, that is all
of our major points for today. I suppose there's nothing
left to be done but to bring Kelly back in
to help us wrap up the show. Kelly, what did
you think? How is your patience when you don't have
your microphone on and you're not able to like actually
(01:22:19):
weigh in and yell back.
Speaker 4 (01:22:21):
It was really hard listening to that. It really really was.
I'll tell you I was like pulling my hair out
at some points because I wanted to get involved in
some of those really bad takes on evolution and creation.
Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
So yeah, I have to say, like I know, I've
tried to be very level headed and nice. Some people
in the chat accusing me of being much too nice
as Richard did, and that's fair. But when I think,
the thing that probably gets under my skin the most
is when somebody says that they are under my skin
because I just can't handle their argument. Like ladies and gentlemen,
(01:22:56):
I have worked in a psychiatric hospital where I have
been bit on and pissed on by people who are
just really out of their mind. I have sat in
session and held space and offered compassion as people have
worked through the shame and the guilt that they experience
having assaulted miners Like I have been in the trenches
(01:23:19):
on some really challenging ideas and experiences, and ain't nothing
nobody got to say about evolution gonna get me down
into my feelings. If I'm upset with you, it's because
you're being a jerk about it.
Speaker 4 (01:23:31):
Yeah right. I don't get upset about the things they're saying.
I get upset about the fact that they just won't
listen or look at any facts or deny the facts.
Speaker 2 (01:23:40):
You know.
Speaker 4 (01:23:40):
It's one of these things like I always get with
Christians if they always get this idea that if you
don't understand what they're saying, then you obviously or if
you don't agree with what you're what they're saying, you
obviously don't understand it. Right, So they got to keep
saying the same things over and over and over, like
all of a sudden, you're gonna go, whoa, you're right
(01:24:01):
even when they're wrong. So yeah, I kind of and
I felt like that was what was kind of happening
just now.
Speaker 3 (01:24:05):
So yeah, yeah, and that's something I hate doing as well,
I actually and and I find it infuriate, and so
I apologize listeners. I find the infuriating when I'm listening
to a call and the whole say, look, just for
the sake of argument, I'm going to agree with you,
but it got to the point where it didn't see
any other line to go down with that.
Speaker 4 (01:24:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:24:28):
Yeah, fair to say.
Speaker 4 (01:24:30):
Well, sometimes if you do that, though, Richard, you can
like kind of stretch it out to the to the ridiculous,
you know. And I think sometimes you can pointing out
how you know, if you can just take it to
like complete satire and say, well if if you if
you're thinking that where you can also think this way
with the same ideas, right, So yeah, that's like a.
Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
Line of scripture that we're using to disprove evolution also
disproves the creationism that we were here to supplant it
with exactly. So, yeah, there can be some value in
holding off on some of those things, But in any case,
you can't fight crazy. I hate to even hear myself
say it, but that's a little bit where things got
there at the end. I appreciate y'all going through this
(01:25:15):
with me. I hope that somebody out there learned a
little bit of something. And yeah, with that, Kelly, remind
us what the question of the week is, so that
everybody can join in and participate in the chat and
look forward to seeing us next week.
Speaker 4 (01:25:28):
Of course I will. The question of the week this
week will be what prayer will God always answer?
Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
I think interested in your answers?
Speaker 4 (01:25:39):
Yeah, I think we get some really good, funny answers
to that one. That's a good question.
Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
All right. Well, we just want to say, as we
do every week, that whether you are well organized in
your arguments, whether you are rational in your beliefs, we
still want to hear from you. We want to have
those conversations to everybody out there who doesn't believe this
is your community and we appreciate you being here. And
(01:26:04):
if you do believe, we don't hate you. We're just
not convinced. We want the truth. So watch Truth Wanted
(01:26:28):
live Fridays at seven pm Central Call five one two
nine nine nine two four two, or visit tiny dot
cc forward slash call tw
C. S.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Lewis once said that the value of prayer isn't in
trying to change God's mind, but in how it transforms
the person praying. So is prayer really just an anxiety
ritual or a self help exercise? Does God hear your prayers?
Or is that voicing your head? Just you know you?
What have you experienced? Does prayer do something beyond making
(00:21):
you feel better, reinforcing a need for more prayer? Or
is that part the whole point? Call us because the
lines are open and the show is coming right now. Okay, Well,
welcome everyone. Today is August third, twenty twenty five. I'm
(00:43):
your host, Christy Powell, and joining me again today is
Richard Jailver.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Hello, Yes, I am, and I'm very excited to be
here and I'm very looking forward, very much looking forward
to today's show. I'm wondering what kind of I've been
hitting a couple of new social media platforms with some
stuff this week, so I'm wondering if that's going to
translate into calls, But well we'll have to wait and see.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, new social media platforms is now like a trigger
phrase for me. I you're doing the Lord's work for
lack of a better word. Thank you for getting out there.
It's very brave.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, it certainly is on the slide. I'm taking that
and accepted it fully because yes it is.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, I'm excited to talk to all sorts of new
people from all sorts of new corners of the internet.
I think this topic, this discussion around prayer is going
to be very interesting for you and I. We've had
a number of conversations on this show before about meditation
and how meditation isn't prayer. Prayer isn't meditating. I don't know,
(01:46):
We're going to get into it. It's going to be
a good time.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, absolutely, And I'm very interested in the calls takes
on this as well, especially the theists. You know that
do you think the prayer is a supplementation to supplication
to God? Do you think it's only a psychological effect?
Do you think it's a mixture of the two. Let's
(02:09):
get into it. If you're a theist and you believe
that prayer works regardless of what aspect you think it
works in, give us a call and let's have that conversation.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, we're definitely interested in talking about prayer today. You know,
of course, on talking you. Then we're open to all
of your questions about religion, secular humanism, atheistic morality, cosmology, philosophy, science, history, life,
the universe, and everything. Richard, Is there anybody else that
you're hoping to speak to today?
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Oh? Yes, yes, there definitely is. So we've had a
couple of I've had a long standing kind of dialogue
with a couple of theists who have both been regular
callers to all of these atheist shows for many, many,
many years, and I have directly reached out to to
(02:55):
ask to call the show, and both of these guys
have made excuse after excuse after excuse for not calling.
One in particular, I'm going to tell you the names
that the names they go by when they call in,
so I'm not docsing anyone. It's Jimmy from Texas and
Howard from Spain. Howard from Spain. The last time I
invited him to call in stated point BLI like, the
(03:18):
reason that I haven't called you is because I don't
do calling shows anymore. Keen fans of the eighties community
of Austin will have noticed that he did in fact
call into the Artist Experience last week, and I left
out I pointed out this out to him. I feel
left out talked to. Both of these guys have talked
(03:39):
to every host on this network except me, and for
some reason, I don't know what that reason is. I'm
not casting any expersions out there. I don't know what
the reason is. For some reason, they both point blank
refused to call and talk to me. So, Howard from Spain,
Jimmy from Texas, you have been called out calling.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Well, we certainly hope to hear from you. Talk Heathen
is a live call in show and we do have
open lines, so get all of your calls in at
five one two, four to two or from your computer
at tiny dot c c slash call th And with that,
let's bring in our friend Kelly Laughlin for the Talk
Heathen to Me segment where we do our question of
(04:22):
the week. Hi Kelly, what you got for us?
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Hi? Christy? I got it? Actually, I got a pretty
good one. This week. Our Talk Heathen to Me segment
from or question from last week was why did Jesus
come back after he was crucified? And I could think
of all kinds of good answers, but we only wanted
the wrong answers. And here are the top three that
we picked. Number three from Matt Kay, Jesus came back
(04:45):
because he forgot his keys and wallet. He was heard mumbling,
can't wait till they invent pockets on his way out,
and to be fair, I have pockets and I still
leave my keys, wallet, phone everywhere. So number two from
the Life Set Faith, Jesus left money on the pool
(05:06):
table and he was next to play. I just got
the picture of all Jesus' quarters, the Holy quarters lined
up on the side of the pool table. And number
one from one of our favorite viewers, Miranda Rensberger, Jesus
came back because he was still pissed at that fig
(05:27):
tree and thought of a few more choice words to say.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Solid that's good work.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Yeah, that's that's pretty good. Thing always bothered me. That
was like the one story I think about Jesus that
really really bothered me. But let's go to next week.
The prompt for next week will be what prayer will
God always answer? Richard? Do you have an answer for that?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I absolutely do, and it seems to be the one
that he answers constantly. It's when theists pray to him
and tell him not to show up and show as
evidence of his existence. They must be praying this day
and night, and he's answering it constantly.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
That's a good one, Christy. What do you think?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, God, if you're real, if you're there, send me
a sign and prove it to me by doing absolutely
nothing for the next five seconds. Yeah, works every time.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Yeah. Great answers from you both, And I'm really anxious
to see what our audience comes up with. Remember to
put it in the comments section below, not the chat
on the side, and hopefully we'll bring read yours out
next week.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
All right, Well, thank you, Kelly, and to thank you
to everybody else who works behind the scenes, all of
the video operators and call screeners and hardworking engineers and
folks that make us look so good. Let's get the
crew cam up and going, Hey, good morning everybody. Thank
you so much for everything that you do.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
What a handsome bunch.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Okay, well, rich let's go ahead and jump into that
first call with Cow's our friend HATTI.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Good morning another Hi Christy, Hi Richard, thanks for taking
my car.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Absolutely what's on your mind to.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
They called in last week to talk about fate and Buddhism,
and during that call, the host rough line between aspects
of Buddhism like meditation that are empirically verified to work
in certain settings and therefore be seen as beneficial aspects
of Buddhism, and kind of delineating that from aspects that
are world is more in belief that are not empirically
(07:34):
verified and which therefore are not beneficial or even harmful.
And today I would like to kind of challenge that framing.
I believe that establishing views is also very much a
part of Buddhist practiced and not so much as dog mass,
not as epostomic grounds for truth, but skillful means to
(07:55):
bring about beneficial psychological change.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
And yeah, I think that you're in a really good space.
Like I work in a lot of Buddhist psychology, and
Richard has a very strong background in the history of
Buddhism and other aspects of it. So what is it
that you are, Like, what is your kind of ultimate
question here?
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Some my ultimate question is like, is there ever a
situation in which you would say that a holding a few,
even if a few is not like comparently verified, could
still be okay to hold for the benefity, Yeah, you
for the sort of psychological changes.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, I would definitely say that it is depending on
maybe how we define the idea of holding a belief,
you know, do we hold it lightly, do we hold
it with an attachment, with an unwillingness to let it
go in the face of new information. If I operate
under the assumption that every stranger I meet will probably
be a kind and decent person and worthy of my kindness,
(08:54):
I think that that is a unverified belief that is
a good one to hold on to. And if that
strange comes up and punches me in the face, I
think it's probably a good idea for me to keep
my distance.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah. No, I mean that that is also how I
see it. Views are beneficial or can be seen as
beneficial in general, and then in very specific cases that
they can clearly become harmful, or they can just be
shown as harmful in general. Like it could be that
you hope a few and it just turns out that
that view is not helping you at all, And I
(09:26):
think in that case it is good to dlp a few,
including I guess the sort of religious views that I'm holding.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, well, let's dive into that a little bit. When
we start talking about unverified religious views, what is it
that you're maybe concerned about or are kind of curious about,
whether or not some extra skepticism might be appropriate.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
So the kind of views I hold, I think the
one that is most on my mind is the view
of Karma, Karma and Reebert, which I hold as very
sentral to my Buddhist faith and which I obviously cannot
demonstrate to be true.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, so how does it offer you benefit?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
I think the way it provides me benefit is that
by really putting my actions and the consequence of our
actions so central, like it really puts agency first, Like
it really puts me in a position where I feel
like the best way to build on my own happiness
(10:31):
is to act today. That I shouldn't wait for others
to do it, or that I should just sort of
like take my lot in life and accept that for
what it is, but really that my actions is what
shapes my future.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah. No, I can definitely appreciate that viewpoint, and I
think that you are headed in the right direction, but
maybe adding some unnecessary steps when we throw in this
sort of magical play in reincarnation, Because there's plenty of evidence,
or at least some pretty logical arguments to dispute the
notion of reincarnation. We don't need to necessarily get into
(11:12):
all of that or debate whether or not it can
be conclusively disproved really depends on some of our terms
and how we're imagining reincarnation to exist, and all of
these kinds of things. But what I'm hearing you say
is that by being mindful and intentional about your actions,
you are working to the betterment of yourself and the
(11:33):
people around you. I think that you can just do
that without having to imagine any sort of like cosmic scorekeeping.
And I wonder if it wouldn't benefit you to let
go of that more magical component to it. How does
that framework strike you?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
I mean possibly, I guess I think that could be
separable possible basis for holding a particular article life set.
This is the one I have. And like, if you're
saying like I should reject this, then I feel like
there should also be a reason for that, Like this,
(12:10):
it should be shown like that it is more harmful
than some other way in which I could maybe reach
the same conclusion.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Sure, and I can definitely walk down that path with you.
I don't mean to feel like I can convince you
or force you to reject some belief that you hold Deer,
But I do think that there is a lot to
be said about what happens when we bring magical thinking
into our framework, and how by simplifying things, by maintaining
what we know to be true, we can get at
(12:38):
the heart of our goals rather than wrapping it up
in some of this mysticism that can potentially lead us
down the wrong path. But before I really dive into
all of that, Richard, I want to kind of get
you in here to see how this framework even lines
up with I don't know, maybe common thoughts on Buddhism,
or how reincarnation is a necessary or integral belief or
(13:01):
not in this space.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, I I've been quiet on purpose because I've had
plenty of conversations with Calcer friends, and I know you
would have somewhere to go with it, So I kind
of wanted to let you kind of take the lead
on this one a little bit, right, And I talk
a lot on the Buddhist calls as well. But yeah,
I think, look, there's the first part of your question, Christe.
(13:27):
You know, what is the kind of Buddhist consideration of reincarnation?
And that depends because in religious studies, there is not
a thing on the whole with any religion, and this
applies to Buddhism as well. There is not a Buddhism.
There are Buddhisms because we have to take into contact context.
It's movement through time and place as well. You know,
(13:50):
we don't kind of look at religions on the basis
of this is the religion. That's what gatekeepers do, that's
what people who commit they're not the true Scotsman fallacy do.
And there are lots of different ideas and you know,
a good example of this is in Tibet. Tibetan Buddhism
(14:11):
is a really really famous form of Buddhism. It's one
of the more famous schools of Buddhism. But Tibetan Buddhism
is conjoined, very much conjoined with the native Bond tradition
from Tibet. So a lot of aspects of Tibetan Buddhism
are actually aspects of the Bond tradition that predated Buddhism
(14:32):
in Tibet. And we see this as Buddhism moves We've
seen it as it's moved into the Western taken on
most secular aspects where in a lot of cases people
who call themselves Buddhists, who identify as Buddhists don't even
accept any of those supernatural elements of it. It's for me,
(14:54):
it's quite clear scripturally from the kind of early Buddhist
text which as the ones that I kind of look
at most. It's quite clearly scripturally that the Buddha believed
that reincarnation was a thing. It believed, it taught it
as a true thing, and it taught it as integral
(15:16):
to the Buddhist path to enlightenment. It is a supernatural element,
you know. It's quite clearly stated on a couple of
different occasions where the Buddhis tells the people around him
you should And this is what gives me the kind
of confidence to say that he's an integral part of
what he believed Buddhism to be, because there's a couple
(15:38):
of occasions where we say it's you should abandon the
religions of your ancestors, you should abandon the religions of
your family and your attachment to them. And when you
come into this this path is practice which calls our
friend correctly identified as a kind of you know, the
(15:58):
Buddhist moral system is what is beneficial to you, accept
what is beneficial and rejects what is not, as opposed
to the kind of hard good and evil of a
lot of kind of Western religions. And that is you
know it quite clear has the stated that you know this?
Accepting this is accepting the wisdom of the Buddha, It's not.
(16:21):
You know, through all your family stuff aside, and accept
the wisdom of the Buddha and practice this, and by
practice you will see that what I am teaching you
is true. And certainly reincarnation and other supernatural aspects, including
supernormal powers and things like that we're clearly stated by
him as being true. Does that mean that you have
(16:45):
to hold to those things as true to gain benefit
from Buddhist practice. That is a very very difficult and
nuanced question because it depends entirely what you think Buddhist
practice is an will give you. If you are of
the kind of let's say, traditional mindset where you think
(17:06):
that you are on this path, you will be reincarnated,
you will become enlightened, but it could take eons to happen.
Then yes, you can say it's an integral aspect. If
you look at meditation practice as a utility to gain
good things from. Then no, it's not necessarily necessary to
(17:30):
hold onto that because we can see the utility of
meditation practice. It's you know, the utility of meditation practice
is well known. It really really is well known. You know,
there's been plenty of scientific studies done on this thing
where it's vastly used, as you know yourself, in kind
(17:50):
of emotional health support and things like that, and it's
used in neurological a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, sorry, I'll watch you there for a moment, Richard
Cells our friends, How did you what did you get
out of all of that? Where are you at with
this conversation?
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Now? Well, I mean I would agree that there's a
lot you can get out of Buddhism without the supernatural views. Like, yes,
meditation very beneficial in other contexts than the one of
religious Buddhism. I guess my intent for this call was
to also point out that building up certain views is
(18:31):
also part of that practice, and that it is also
sort of within the framework of like it could be
beneficial or harmful to hold this or that view. Therefore
it can be good or bad to cultivate that sort
of view up to a point like not as like
this is the absolute ruth, not this is a dogmap,
but as like holding this view is psychologically beneficial. So
(18:54):
that's really where I want to get to, and then
maybe we can go into specific views like karmas No.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
And I feel like I'm very much on board with
what you're saying. But I would also suggest that one
of the criteria for whether or not a view is
beneficial ought to be your willingness to reconsider it in
the face of evidence. And to that end, I would
express that holding on to a view in reincarnation when
(19:21):
there is not any meaningful evidence to suggest it and
there is evidence to suggest against it would mean that
it would be in your best interest to let go
of that view and to embrace a worldview that is
willing to adapt to the evidence on hand. How do
you respond to that?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
So I would agree that if there was clear evidence
against the incarnation, I would have to drop to few.
I haven't seen it, so I mean, I've seen evidence
against very crude forms of conceptualized and the organation for sure,
but not necessarily in the oh like doctor spin or
(20:02):
baths of Buddhism.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
May I ask, cal's a friend if you've seen evidence
for reincarnation and I'm going to go down the path
with this, so just just kind of give me a
quick yes or no response, Right, So you've just kind
of stated, and please correct me if I'm wrong. You know,
why should you reject it if you've not seen evidence
against it? Is the general gist I got from you.
(20:26):
But why don't you do that with things like Christianity
or Islam or any other religion the belief in though
you've not seen evidence for them, but you've not seen
evidence against them, So why not just accept those as well?
What's so special about reincarnation that it leads you to
(20:47):
I think this I must set aside in this special
place where using the same criteria, I will throw other
beliefs away.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I'm not just picking up're not shown to be found,
specifically following a Buddhist part where I have confidence that
the things to Buddha thought are beneficial to me, and
so I am more willing to adapt those than a
belief in Toro. I believe in Jesus.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
So let's have a look at Jesus as one example.
What about Jesus's teachings do you not think are beneficial
as a means of practice, because bear in mind we're
putting the supernatural elements asidea. So regarding the actual practical,
utilitarian ideas that Jesus taught, love your neighbor and this
(21:38):
kind of thing, what is it that you don't agree
with with those that you do agree with in Buddhist teachings.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
I think putting your faith in salvation to the power
of someone else is putting yourself in a position of helplessness.
And I think that what.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
You're doing in Christianity though, because surely you're doing the
work health if you know, there are many many Jesus,
you know, and this is a thing in Christianity, this
is an actual thing where there's this argument against salvation
by works and by faith. You know, there are a
great many many Christians who think you do need to
(22:16):
do the work yourself to earn what that gift if
you like that Jesus was offering. Is that any different
to doing the work that the Buddha taught you to
attain enlightenment?
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I mean it's different work, But like I would conceide
your point that this state is something that could motivate
someone to doing good things em bettering themselves.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Yes, okay, I have no further questions or honor.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
CHRISTI yeah, I mean I was curious where you were
looking to go with all of that, Richard, And I
guess I would just kind of go back to my
refrain around how there is a lot of danger in
holding on to beliefs that don't have good evidence, good
epistemiology behind them. I can appreciate you isolating some of
(23:05):
these beliefs and saying, well, I believe that following the
teachings of Buddha make me a better person or help
me to contribute to making a better world. And I
can absolutely appreciate that. I also want to stress that
when you accept any belief system whole cloth and without
a willingness to pick and choose or to recognize or
(23:27):
accept the pieces that don't make sense, that you are
putting yourself in a position to believe things that can
be incredibly harmful. So even if you can make the
claim that by continuing to believe in reincarnation that you
are becoming a better person, that you are helping to
make for a better world, one that I'm not really
(23:47):
convinced of. But even if you were to hold on
too that claim. If you are willing to accept all
things Buddhism TM because they're Buddhism, then you can find
yourself in some really dark path pathways where you're unwilling
to accept knowledge, where you're unwilling to let go of
things that are being proven to cause a lot of harm.
(24:09):
And so I guess I'm just not on board with
this idea that we can say, well, I think it's
good for me, and I can't prove that it's definitely
not real, so I'll just hold on to it anyway.
It just feels like a very dangerous ideology.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, I mean I can see the danger. I understand
your point of guarding the danger that that's like following
a particular view good gone with other views that are harmful,
but that you take in anyway because it's sort of
part of the same uh yeah, the same kind of
class of you. But I also think it can be
critical here, Like I hope I can't be sure. I'm
(24:48):
not perfect, certainly not, but I hope that if that
were to happen to me, if there was some view
that tried to sneak in along with this whole karma
vibut stuff that is actually harmful, I would be able
to see that that it's harmful.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, and that might be where I would continue to
leverage this just a little bit. I want to acknowledge
that there are many formulations of reincarnation, as you've already
pointed out, and we haven't spent a lot of time
unpacking yours. But I want to put forward that if
we are operating under these belief systems that certain actions
(25:23):
have a moral valance to them, or that there's some
sort of point system keeping track of things, we get
into a real dangerous position of trying to evaluate these
actions based on some rubric that is totally arbitrary, and
that causes us to divorce ourselves from seeing the action themselves,
(25:44):
from seeing the motivation behind them and the consequences behind them.
Whereas if we choose to be present in hey, I
want to make the world a better place, So therefore
I'm going to do things that work towards that end
and not worry about what category rating within. Without worrying
about what some rubric says, We're going to be much
(26:06):
more attuned to the needs of the situation and just
adding in that mystical element of this is going to
have an impact on my eternal soul can really get
us into a place where we're missing the point of
what we're doing and we're like looking for the score
rather than playing the game.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
So, first off, eternal soul not really a thing in Buddhism.
But also I think, sorry, what.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Is not really a thing in Buddhism. I didn't follow
the term you.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Used and the consequence of those actions.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Eternally eternal soul. I think Calcifriend was saying.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Sure, yes, I very much appreciate that it's a little
bit of a shorthand, but please help walk us through that.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I mean, I want to make more and make the
point that's like what you were saying about, like seeing
the intense behind actions and the consequence of actions, Like
I would say that that is the core, that is
actually what you should be doing when you consider karma
and the way it should guide your life. So I
do not really see the problem you're setting up here.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
I guess, Okay, So if I may jump in here
a little bit because I think I might have a
resource which might be useful for you, and it doesn't
it's not necessarily like anti Buddhist or anything. It's a
useful website for kind of thinking about the horms where
(27:31):
we employ a lack of critical thinking, which is essentially
and I don't mean, you know, to be aggressive when
I say that, but you know, it's essentially what we're
engaging in when we're saying we're going to accept this
belief because it's not being disproven. That is technically a
lack of critical thinking. So there's a guy called Tim
(27:51):
Farley who set up a website called What's the Horm.
It's What's the horm dot net. It's really really useful
because it actually goes into a lot of stories and
because we hear this all the time as educators in
this area. We hear people saying, well, what's the harm
of believing in Christianity if I'm only you know, donating
(28:13):
to my church and I'm not you know, I'm not
the one going out and blowing buildings up, So what's
the harmon you hear it over it over again in
your case, what's the harm of believing in reincarnation in
this thing that there's no evidence for? If if it's
not being disproven, and if it's I'm not engaging any
negative effects from it? So you know, this website goes
(28:35):
into a lot of stories surrounding why harm is caused
from having these beliefs in you know, in having these
beliefs and engaging in non critical thinking surrounding things and
giving the excuse, well, what's the harm in it? So
(28:56):
it might be a decent resource for you to look at.
But I've got to say, and I'm mentally with Christy
with this one. I think when, especially when you're aware
as you seem to be, and you seem to fully
digest this idea that there is no evidence for it,
and you know, you kind of seem to me to
be presented and correct me if I'm wrong, but you
(29:17):
seem to presenting it as this kind of utility position
and kind of push brushing aside this idea that well,
with absolutely nothing to substantiate that this is actually true,
but that doesn't really matter because I don't see bad
things coming from it, so therefore the utility of it
is by default beneficial. I think that's dangerous thinking. And
(29:42):
I think even if we don't see active bad things
coming from it in your particular case, we might look
at a larger picture of kind of beliefs in rebirth
and reincarnation, and we might actually find that there can
be negative effect from it. If not, and I'll give
you just one quick example, it doesn't apply to you.
(30:06):
It doesn't apply to Buddhist belief. There's a people who
are based in the Middle East have forgot the name.
They believe in reincarnation, but in their version of reincarnation,
there is no one allowed to kind of come into
the religion from outside and when you are reborn. A
lot of them take on this utility position that if
(30:31):
I say that I am from a higher class family
in my past life, then a higher class family. If
they accept that, that accept that claim, then they will
benefit my family by look at taking me, giving me
financial incentives because they feel I am part of their
(30:51):
direct family. That is one aspect of a negative attitude
like this. I'm not sure, and I'll state because I
don't want to misrepresent anyone, I'm not sure that occurs
in Buddhist reincarnation. I suspect if I dig hard enough,
I will find cases where that does happen. Certainly Intobetan Buddhism.
(31:15):
We've got cases where you know, rural people have been
confirmed to be you know, the reincarnation of certain high
class larmers, and they have been taken out of their
pole setting and put into you know, a family or
in a position where they are well well looked after,
and subsequently their family is well looked after. Is that negative?
(31:38):
That's that's a further conversation, I think. But I think
this goes beyond just simply saying, well, there is no
harm in it.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
You know.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
I think if we dig a little deeper under the
surface where we can find harm in it. We can
certainly find harm in Buddhism as a whole when we
just lightly scraped the surface, But you know, specific beliefs
like this, I think we might actually find that stuff.
Please respond to that.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
No, I mean there's a sense of like spiritual classism
or hierarchy that that's kind of inherent to a lot
of these philosophies. So I didn't mean to jump in
their cousier friends. Please respond that, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
I mean there are a lot of views that are
bad and wrong, and some of them are about the
incarnation of liebirds. I think it's a bit much, though,
to sort of say, like, therefore hold none of those
Like I'm sure we could look at lots of scientific
things like just just look at like various racist theories
(32:37):
that try to base themselves in forms of evolution, where
I mean, any well thinking scientists dealing with evolution would
be able to completely disprove that, but you would not
tell them, like stop believing in evolution because those crazy
guys over there are making it into this big racist thing.
So I don't think I can really follow in this
(32:59):
line of thoughts.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
That seems really kind of curious that I'm just saying,
and I'm going to touch a direct question, Now, are you
saying you're not willing to follow up on this line
of thought, You're not willing to kind of engage with
it and think about it and actually seek how to
see if this is the case.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
I'm willing to look in all sorts of things, but
I am not going to take responsibility in my views
because there's other people who hold other views. I think
that is a way to make an ask.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yes, no, I very much appreciate that, And yes, there
are perhaps good versions and bad versions of every philosophy
if we want to oversimplify it or be reductive in
that way. Again, I don't necessarily know all of the
particulars of your perspective on reincarnation, and maybe if we
(33:50):
were to assess some of that out and get a
better sense of what your philosophies are, we could be
a little bit more direct. But I think what Richard
and I are trying to do is just highlight some
of the common concerns that exist in this space and
recognize the fact that anytime we accept a belief without
good supporting evidence and we don't grapple with the epistemology
(34:13):
of a particular philosophy, we open ourselves up to vulnerabilities.
The vulnerabilities of your belief system are something that we
are not able to extricate because we don't know all
of the ins and outs of it. So if it
is benefiting your life, bully for you. You know, I
really do mean that and maintain that. There are people
in the chat saying things along the lines of like, hey,
(34:35):
it's always better to live in reality than to live
in a delusion, even if it's a healthful delusion, And
I would push back against that because I think that
it's sort of a fallacy to have any of us
believe that we are living in quote reality. We are
all experiencing a delusion and finding reality requires us to
recognize that that we are all having a veil between
(34:59):
us end quote objective truth. I don't think that that
means that we shouldn't we should give up on the search, though,
that we should be willing to accept things for bad reasons,
that we shouldn't be interested in what we can find
empirical evidence to support. I hope that that kind of
sums it all up here. Is there anything more that
needs to be added?
Speaker 3 (35:20):
I think just to tag on the end of that.
And you know this is based on what cows A
friends themselves said a little while ago about other people
doing bad things who have these beliefs. Doesn't necessarily mean
that you know, having those beliefs are bad if you're
not employing that yourself. If I'm representing what you said
(35:42):
correctly there, do you not think that if that's the case,
If you are completely convinced that karma, reincarnation is true,
rebirth is true, and you see all around you other
people who engage with this belief and they're doing it
wrong in your do you not think there is some
(36:02):
responsibility to perhaps correct them and kind of say to them, look,
I don't believe you're living you're living this out correctly,
you're interpreting this correctly. I think you're wrong, and I
think we need to reassess the way we or the
way you're evaluating this. And before you answer yes or
(36:24):
no to that, I kind of also want to present
the case of in certain religions there are people who
are really really anti gay based on that revision, and
people who are pro gay and in fact gay and
practice in those religions. And I see in a lot
of those cases those gay people, all those pro gay
(36:44):
people fighting against those kind of or doing the wrong
thing in their view. They are actively vocal about it
and want to correct them and correctly so as well,
regardless of any other beliefs that they hold. Do you
there's not a right or wrong answer to this. By
the way, I'm not trying to set a trap for you.
Do you think that there is a moral responsibility to
(37:07):
call other people out who you see and think are
in misinterpreting this belief?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yes, I do think there's that more responsibility.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah, well, I say it wasn't trap or anything. I
was just curious about your answer to that, and I'd
be interested in perhaps a future call on counter how
you might approach that. I've certainly known you know, Buddhist monks,
indeed abbots of monasteries who've seen things they disagree with
(37:40):
and that they've seen other Buddhist people doing, and they
have made a phone call and said, I do not
appreciate you doing that. I think you're doing it wrong.
Can we not engage in that behavior? And it doesn't
necessarily have to be a conflict thing, but certainly if
you hold that there is a right way to behave
(38:01):
or a right way to act when these things are mentioned,
I wonder how we could challenge that in your own
community and holds that thought. Because I think we're going
to get on another call in a minute. I do
appreciate your call, and Cal's friend always, we always have
really really great conversations. I'm going to let kind of
Christy have the last word, because I think this is
(38:23):
the first time he's possibly spoken to here, and I've
certainly enjoyed listening to you too dialogue.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
So Christy, Yeah, no, just I do appreciate the conversation,
and you are You're striking on issues that are very
near to my heart because it is important to me
that we all recognize that our quote worldview is somewhat
arbitrary and inevitably imperfect, and so sort of maximizing that
bringing some intentionality to that is a very important thing
(38:51):
to me. I do think that we have to not
only accept with humility the fact that our worldview is
not always quote rational or accurate, but that we can
maximize that by making certain choices about what we believe,
even in the absence of all of the data that
we would need in order to truly know something. That
(39:13):
being said, it's a dangerous world when you start to
accept things because they have a certain label attached to
them if you don't have any good evidence to support
that belief system. And while I very much appreciate that
you are very thoughtful and seemingly very introspective about your
experiences of reincarnation, I can't help but feel a little
(39:35):
bit squeamish about it. I would love to talk further
in the future about some of your specific philosophies or
understandings of that concept, because I would love to just
understand better how you protect against some of the dangers
that we've highlighted. But for now, I'm just really grateful
to you for calling.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Thank you for having Mike call and have a good
rest at the show.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Thank you so much, you as well. Yeah, well, Richard,
that was a good time. Forget the cheap segue here.
But speaking of good times, the Bat Cruise is coming
up August sixteenth. It's gonna be at seven pm. This
is our twenty twenty five Bat Cruise. As I understand,
there are actually still some tickets available, which usually they
(40:16):
are long gone by now I think we've had just
a few come up and some extras on hand, so
if you're interested, grab them all. You can. Forgive me
for that. I saw the way your heart broke just
a little bit as I as I admitted to that joke.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
It is great when when other people make by jokes,
it means I'm not going to get any flock from
making them.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
So it's old there, fair, I will I will take
some of that heat for you. Okay, Well, we've had
some super chats come in some other things, but I
actually want to jump right back into the phones because
I'm very excited to talk to Eric in Ohio. Eric,
what is on your mind this afternoon?
Speaker 5 (40:54):
How are you today? It's good to hear from me.
Thank you, absolutely well. We do for it and enjoying
your conversation. And I've got to say I can't agree
with you more that you know, we ought to believe
more in the things that are testable and repeatables, generally. Sure,
And I say that as a theist, believe it or not.
But the reason that I wanted to talk to you,
(41:16):
I appreciate your scientific perspective one thing. And my perspective
didn't start out scientific, but it did end up with
a good scientific base. And I've gone through everything that
I believe now and waited against the things that I
used to believe with science, and I'm very happy. I'm
a very happy theist. Now I'd like to share my
(41:38):
perspective with you please. The way I see things, one
of two things that have to be absolutely true. Either
there's always been a guy, or there's been a universe
or a little pinprick that evolved into a universe in
one form or another. One of these things have to
be true.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
And you know, I don't know that I can cosign
that it has to be one or the other, but
that's okay, Let's just keep moving. Tell me more.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Okay, Well, one of the two things has to be true,
then everything that sprang out that we have today, that
we see today had to come from one or the other.
So I look at things, and I asked myself, can
a dead universe evolve light and consciousness? And I look
at the things, I look at science, and I don't
(42:28):
see where we've ever been able to produce it in
a lab or ever sing observed it coming in naturally
naturally for me.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
So there, I mean we have not been able to
replicate or truly understand a biogenesis. I think that that's
a very broad statement, something we can largely all agree on.
But does that mean that it's impossible or that it's
never happened before? You recognize that those are not the
same claim.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
Well, if you'll bear with me one time, you'll see
exactly where I'm going with this. The truth is, we've
tried many times to replicate it and it's failed. And
I believe that the falsification procedure is what separates science
from science fiction or imagination from real science. The falsification procedure,
actual testing, that's the most important step in science. But
(43:17):
then let's look at something else. Okay, So if there
is no a biogenesis, if we don't see a cell
forming naturally then that would just and all might ever
arising at all, because of all life is cell you. Now,
step two, Let's give us that miracle of one cell
just falling together all by itself. Okay, let's give us
that one miracle. We've got that one cell. Now, our
(43:39):
next step in evolution is this, that single cell has
to become a multi cellular organism. And that never happens
in science. We never observed in laboratory, we never observed
in nature. Now there are.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Times, right, so things that could possibly happen are things
that we have not been able to make happen or
observe happen. It's still the same fallacy that we're pushing
up against.
Speaker 5 (44:02):
Well, this is pasifiability. This is science. This is testing science.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Okay, yes, this is testing whether or not this particular
procedure will have this particular result. And so far we
have had a number of procedures and we have never
had the result of creating a single cell organism out
of quote nothing. We're being very reductive here, but I
think you and I are on the same page with
(44:28):
all of that. Our ability to demonstrate our understanding of
how this has happened does not indicate that it cannot
happen or has never happened.
Speaker 5 (44:39):
Okay, I'll grad you that, but bear with me just
a little further. I'm taking us now from a single
cell organism to a multi cellular organism, because that's step
two in the process of revolution.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (44:52):
The only problem is we never observed this either the eater.
Can we make it happen in the laboratory? And what
we do observe, and some people will I misunderstood this.
We do observe single cell organism is replicating over and
over and over again and colonizing together, not creating a
multi cellular organism, but a colony of single cell organisms. Sure,
(45:13):
that's been mistaken for the same thing as creating a
much cellular organism, which isn't. So we never observed that happening.
So step two of evolution I don't think ever occurs.
We don't see it in the laboratory, we don't see
it in nature, and.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
So there is a gap in our knowledge about how
these things might proceed. You know, five hundred years ago
there were gaps in our knowledge about the electromagnetic spectrum,
about the existence of radio waves and things like that.
And yet now we recognize that not only can we
create radio waves, but that they are a natural phenomena
(45:49):
that exists all over the universe. The lack of us
having knowledge of something doesn't indicate that that something can't
or won't or has never existed. This is very, very important,
whether we're talking about evolution or any other idea. What
you're seemingly doing here is taking all of those gaps
and squeezing in a god concept of help fill them.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
No, no, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
And those people, okay, help walk me through. What's the difference?
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Now?
Speaker 5 (46:19):
This is this is all a stability. Okay, it's it's
all testable when these tests have all failed, that's the point. Now,
let's let's look at a couple more things. You might are.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
There going to be a third example that has the
same problem as the first two, because having seventeen thousand
problems or examples that all have the same problem still
means that you have nothing. That's why I'm kind of
wanting to address the problem that I'm seeing.
Speaker 5 (46:46):
I'm almost okay, well, let me go just a little further.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Okay, just a little further.
Speaker 5 (46:51):
Then when we look at transitional fossils, Okay, I have
nearly every evolutionist on no point to transitional fossils and
ancestors has proved for revolution. For instance, they'll look at
the DNA of the chimpanzee and the DNA of the
human being and they'll say, well, it's obvious that we
(47:11):
have a common ancestor. Now, that's fine if they want
to believe that. They also say all fossils are transitional.
On it's fine if they want to believe that, But
there's two problems today I neither one have been tested.
For instance, if you're.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Eric, I feel I'm sorry for jumping in I feel
it's time that I jump in here because I'm not
a biologist. I don't know anything about biological science at all.
So I'm not going to argue with you on any
of these points because it's not my field of study.
One thing, the thing that is my field of studay
is PHILOSOPHYI I don't I have no intention of learning.
(47:49):
It is not my field of study. I have fields
of study that I don't feel I need to add
a further one on. So there are other people who
deal with this kind of stuff. I'm not that person.
I do deal with philosophy. And one thing you've done here, Eric,
One thing you've done here is you've jumped. You've set
up a false dichotomy to begin with, which is that
(48:11):
it's either God or this universe which has come into
existence from nothing, which you have not mentioned any possibility
of it being in eternal universe. That's your first mistake here,
because you've not demonstrated this dichotomy. It is a false dichotomy.
The second thing you've done is you've said, I have
problems with evolution and abiogenesis, and they may be legitimate problems,
(48:36):
they may not be. But even if we just say, right, look, Eric,
I'm willing to agree with you evolution and abiogenesis, none
of it has any evidence whatsoever. That still doesn't get
us to God. So we're not giving scientific evidence for
God here. All you're saying is that you disagree with
these other ideas. What is the sect you know you
(48:58):
called up with this idea, this claim that the scientific
evidence for God? What is the scientific evidence for God
that you have? Because simply saying you don't agree with
other things is not giving God scientific evidence. Everyka's still
with us.
Speaker 5 (49:12):
So the point is, yes, sir, and I will bring
them just right back around to God. Just a moment.
I'm just fishing out as last point. When we say
that we have a common ancestor, the problem is because
of the observation of the DNA similarity.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
Big. I'm not saying we've got a common ancestor. I've
already said to you. I am willing to agree with
you that we have no evidence for abiogenesis or revolution
at all. I agree with you. Yeah, let's say that
we have simply no evidence for either of those things.
So what is the evidence for God?
Speaker 5 (49:47):
Okay, pardon, but I would love to finish my point.
I'm not interrupting you, sir.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
I'm interrupting you because it's really really important that I
interrupt you, because we're not this. If you know, if
you want to talk about abiogenesis being false, if you
want to talk about evolution being false, you are more
than welcome to write a paper demonstrating these things as false,
(50:14):
giving your evidence as to why they are false, and
getting the majority of biologists on the planet to peer
review your stuff and say absolute. Eric is absolutely spot
on the money. We're going to reject evolution, We're going
to reject abiogenesis. That's fine, But you know I'm telling
you I agree with you you don't need to finish
(50:36):
your point. It's pointless finishing your point because I want
to hear your evidence for God, not your evidence against
something else that I already agree with you on. Then
present it, please.
Speaker 5 (50:49):
I think it's interesting that.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
We just we've heard so many versions of these scripts,
and when you're having when you're not having a conversation
with us, it does feel you're reading from a script.
When you're like, hold on, hold on, hold on, I
don't care about anything you just said. I have one
more point to make, it makes us feel like you're
not having a conversation with us. And we're very glad
that you're here to help us through some of these ideas,
(51:13):
to help us understand your point of view. But please,
let's not talk about it any further. Present for us
the scientific evidence that you have for the existence of God.
We're very interested to hear from you.
Speaker 5 (51:25):
Let's really not talk about my point any further. Are
you serious? The point is, you see, we've been brainwashed,
and the brainwatching is this, we're told that we have
all this evidence for evolution when none of it has
been falsified.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
Eric, do you have any evidence for God? And all?
Because you start integrates on me just a little bit.
Now you've told me you're going to present me this
evidence for the past three times I've spoken to you,
and then you've just gone straight back and see you
feel about evolution.
Speaker 5 (51:53):
Yes, I'm just about there.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
Wait, well, let's stop seeing just about that. Get to
this in line, fight the stall us pistol and give
it to us. Please.
Speaker 5 (52:05):
This point leads to my next one. This point leads
to my next one. You see, we don't have the
DNA of the common ancestor to test that, nor do
we have the DNA of any of the transitional fossils
like the archaeoptrics or the theropod dinosaur it's said it
evolved from. To put these things to the test.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Sure, I mean you're dramatically oversimplifying the field of evolutionary biology.
But again, no, can you stop criticizing evolution and start
building a case for the existence of God? Or is
that not where any of this is headed? Are all
of these points just to say that evolution as we
understand it is incorrect? Or did you call it because
(52:45):
you had some scientific evidence for the existence of God?
Speaker 5 (52:48):
Yeah? Now I'm about to present the scientific evidence for God.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
But I just that's the fifth time you said that, Sir,
I very much don't mean to be harsh with you,
but I have to point out that's a little bit frustrating.
If you have it, please please share it with us.
And now as the next thing that you say, please.
Speaker 5 (53:08):
I just wanted to make sure that I just wanted
to put us on the same page to agree. First,
see if we agree, you and I that there is
no DNA that's been testable to prove that any fossil
is truly transitional.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
We agree.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
No, I'm not there with you, but for the sake
of the argument, for the sake of getting to the point,
let's go ahead and fast forward through it.
Speaker 5 (53:31):
Okay, Well, which fossil would you say we've proven is transitional?
Speaker 3 (53:37):
Jesus Christ, Eric, please do you have an exist? I mean,
get to the evidence for God. Please just give us
the evidence for God.
Speaker 5 (53:46):
Yes, yes, yes, biogenesis and plasma universe. Biogenesis and plasma universe.
Speaker 3 (53:54):
You see what doing by biogenesis on the plasma universe.
Speaker 5 (53:59):
Well, I'm getting yes, I'm getting to that. Whereas we
don't have any proof that even one fossil is transitional
because we don't have the DNA of these fossils to
prove and the DNA that we do have, For instance,
might one might say that Neanderthal is a transitional fossil
when the very definition and species proves that Neanderthal is
(54:20):
the same. Pizzis I mek Eric.
Speaker 2 (54:23):
I feel like you're very dramatically misinterpreting common evolutionary theory.
You keep getting hung up on this notion of transitional
fossils or transitional species, and I think that even a
very fundamental understanding of evolution would tell you that, you know,
Neanderthals didn't evolve into humans, that instead Homo sapiens and
(54:45):
Homoneanderthal existed around the same time, and that there was
some interbreeding and we have picked up some traits from them,
but that even if we came dramatically after them, they
didn't evolve into us. They simply were and then some
members of their species mutated and continued on and so
(55:05):
on and so forth. But it's not a pokemon that
levels up as time goes on. And again we're hearing
you bash evolution, and that's fine, Like we can have
that conversation, but I'm trying not to push back on
everything that you say that seems irrational about evolution, because
I'm so much more interested in your final point, which
(55:27):
is my scientific evidence for the existence of God. If
that's not your final point, then I've dramatically understood, misunderstood
what we're doing here. And if it is your final point,
please don't keep us waiting any longer. Say that thing.
Speaker 5 (55:41):
Please, was my point was compared to two and to
show that you don't have what I was saying about
an anderthal is that we are the same speed. By
the definition.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
That's my head bouncing off my desk and the utter frustration. Please, sir,
if you do not mind, I would imploy you to
get to the fucking evidence for God because you are
really getting on my tity. Sir, I don't want to
hear another word about evolution, transitional fossils, or not all
(56:22):
the fucking thing you were talking about abiogenesis. Please just
tell us about your evidence for God.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Yeah, Eric, unless you in case you're missing it. Our
central point here is that saying that the current conveiling
operating theory that most of science relies on in order
to understand a concept. Even if you take that and
destroy it and say that it makes absolutely no sense,
that doesn't do anything to prop up another theory. We
(56:51):
are all looking for the best theory, the best organizing
principles for how we understand reality, and if you have
one that's better than the existing one, focus on that,
focus on putting forward. I believe that God created the
universe and all of the creatures in it because of
rather than all of these people who say that God
(57:13):
couldn't do it are crazy because they can't reproduce all
of these theories that they have or all these ideas
that they have. I have to say that I am
not an evolutionary biologist, but your understanding of evolution feels
really weak and does contradict with a lot of the
ideas that I am able to wrap my head around.
(57:33):
I've tried to highlight some of those as we've gone along,
but none of this seems to be getting us to Hey,
I have an explanation for why life exists, or I
have an explanation for where the universe came from. So
in absence of that, I'm struggling to understand where this
conversation might go or how much more time we're really
(57:55):
able to give it before I give poor Richard an aneurysm.
Speaker 5 (58:01):
Well, you know, I just find it really, really funny
that this bothers you so much, And.
Speaker 2 (58:08):
It's not your ideas, Eric that bother us. It really isn't.
We have heard so many more awful and disgusting ideas
than the ones that you're presenting. And what I mean
when I say that is I don't find your ideas compelling,
but I don't find them deeply upsetting. If you had
called in to say that there are no transitional species
and therefore there should be no intermingling among the races,
(58:32):
or something like that cause which I've taken by the way,
that would upset me. That would be a quote moral
evil that I might get worked up against. We are
not upset because what you were saying is terribly inflammatory.
We are frustrated because it is demonstrably inaccurate and out
of step with the scope of modern science and with
(58:53):
just good logical reasoning. And every time we try to
point that out to you, you don't seem to absorb
it or take it in. So I understand that, yes,
maybe there is a little bit of friction in the air,
but I want you to know it's not because you
called It's not because we disagree with you. It's because
we don't seem to be having a conversation with you
where we're getting through to you or where you're really
(59:16):
taking in some of the things that we're trying to express.
His concerns.
Speaker 5 (59:20):
Well, you keep telling me that I'm wrong about something education,
you are wrong. None of this stuff is and it
hasn't been tested, and the things that have been tested
has failed. Now that's that's the end of my conversation
with that part of I'm going to cool.
Speaker 3 (59:37):
Move on.
Speaker 5 (59:38):
First, Is there an what I said is demonstrably wrong?
Can you show me the one thing that I've said
that is demonstrably wrong?
Speaker 3 (59:46):
Yes, I mean it's altome, but I know it's a
jumping here.
Speaker 2 (59:51):
Yeah, because it is.
Speaker 3 (59:52):
A dichotome that there is either God. It's a false
die cultome that there is either God or this universe
which came from nothing. That was the very first thing
you said that was wrong. And I want to address
that because I am not a biologist. I do know
about philosophy, and I know a little Whency's tiny little
lemons bit about the universe as well. So Montreal, let's
(01:00:13):
talk about that and yet evidence for God.
Speaker 5 (01:00:16):
I didn't say anything came from nothing. I've said, well,
so things have to be true. Either everything came from
a universe, or everything came from.
Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
God, or everything came from some third thing that none
of us here know about or understand. It's the same
flaw that comes in when you say, well, we've tested
it and it didn't work. I mean, we're just finding
different ways to not make a light bulb. It doesn't
mean that it's impossible to make a light bulb.
Speaker 5 (01:00:43):
What third thing? If you can't put a third thing
on the table, then it's not a false dichotomy.
Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Right again, So what you're saying is because there is
a gap in our knowledge, because there is something that
we do not know, that it can't be true. And
that's the flaw in your thinking here. That's what I
pointed out maybe a few minutes into this conversation, that
you can't just say well, because we don't know something,
therefore God is the only answer. There are so many
(01:01:12):
things that we don't know. And the best way to
demonstrate that is to imagine yourself calling a YouTube talk
show in the fifteen hundreds, whatever that version is. Imagine
yourself going into a tavern in the fifteen hundreds, you yourself,
like modern you, with all of your modern understanding, and
saying to them, well, there's clearly no God because we
(01:01:33):
can't recreate the creation of life, And they'd be like, yeah,
you still can't do that five hundred years in the future,
and you could talk through it all. But imagine what
we might be able to learn in five hundred more years.
Perhaps aobiogenesis cannot be recreated, Perhaps the scale and scope
of it is too massive for it to ever be
(01:01:56):
something that we could recreate in a laboratory. Perhaps a
pick came out of nowhere and just shit out a universe,
and now we're all here. I can't demonstrate or prove
or test any of these ideas, but I can study
the hard work of incredibly brilliant people who have worked
very hard to take all of the bits of information,
(01:02:18):
all of the evidence that does exist, and form a
cohesive narrative around it, and then watch as other people
tear down that narrative and add to it. And then
new information comes to light, and we build, and we
build and we build, and at the moment we have
come to a particular understanding of the origin of species that,
by the way, doesn't really line up with the one
(01:02:39):
that you're tearing down. None of this gets us to God.
Speaker 5 (01:02:44):
You can calm down, you can calm down. I listen.
All I'm saying is you can't demonstrate one thing that
I said that's wrong. That's important to remember.
Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
It's important for you to take in that we have
done that again and again and again. Just to put
it in a super quick SoundBite, anytime you tell me
it has to be this or that, and then I
put forward, or it could actually be some third thing
that none of us have come to. That is me
telling you that you are committing a logical fallacy, or
(01:03:17):
in other words, that you are wrong. And we have
said that many times. And if you disagree with that, okay,
you can disagree with us when we tell you that
you're wrong or show you how you're wrong. But to
continue to insist that we haven't pointed out any flaws,
it's just not accurate.
Speaker 5 (01:03:32):
I believe you're a special pleading so we can disagree
on that. That's okay, that's all right. But now I'm
about to turn it around on God and let's book
from a different point of view.
Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Oh my goodness, you're buttering that biscuit again. All right,
for the eighth time, I will bite show us God.
Speaker 5 (01:03:48):
Okay, what does the scriptures tell us Genesis Chapter one,
where God brings forth the animals? How does he do it?
He brings forth the animals and they do what they
bring forth after their own kind. Let's look at biogenesis.
Do you know what biogenesis is?
Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Are you meaning to say a biogenesis?
Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
No, is meaning biogenesis and meaning life from life, meaning
called gave life to things. That's what it means.
Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:04:15):
Yeah, biogenesis is an observation that we observed. Louis Passire
observed it.
Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Yes, No, I understand the distinction. It was just in
the context of the conversation. I wanted to make sure,
with our shaky phone lines and everything else, that you
were intending to say biogenesis. I appreciate the concept.
Speaker 5 (01:04:34):
Yeah, okay, so let's look at this now. Everything brings
forth after its own kind now compared to a biogenesis
that things just fall together and evolved into everything that
we see today.
Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
I mean, we have to really play around with so
many of these words. What does it mean for something
to reproduce after its own kind? I mean, where do
we get broccoli and cauliflower from? If everything looks the
same as it's always looked.
Speaker 5 (01:04:58):
I didn't say everything looked the same as it's always
some things everything adapts, Okay, right?
Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
So did God bring everything about after his own kind?
Speaker 5 (01:05:09):
But what's that?
Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
Now? Did God bring about life after his own kind?
Speaker 5 (01:05:13):
What was your question? I'm sorry?
Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
Did God bring about life after his own kind?
Speaker 5 (01:05:20):
Not brought forth myriads of life? Okay?
Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
Was it after his own kind?
Speaker 5 (01:05:25):
That is?
Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
Was it after his own kind? Please? What do you
mean by kind of after his own kind? Was it
after his own kind? Or not after his own kind?
Speaker 5 (01:05:36):
He said, let us bring forth man in our own image?
Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
Did God produce God?
Speaker 5 (01:05:41):
So?
Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
Did God produce God?
Speaker 5 (01:05:44):
We find that in now. If you don't want to
hear my argument, that's okay.
Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
I do want to hear argument. I'm asking you questions
to direct your argument. Did God produce God?
Speaker 5 (01:05:55):
After I've waid it out, feel free to ask me
anything you want to.
Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
I'm asking you now, sir, did God produce God?
Speaker 5 (01:06:03):
You're going to have to wait.
Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
No, I'm not. I'm asking you now. You're going to
have to answer the question. I'm afraid did God produce God?
You claimed? You have just claimed that the Bible specifically
specifically told us life comes after its own kind. You, sir,
are on the cusp of disproving your own argument. Did
God produce God?
Speaker 5 (01:06:25):
No?
Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
No, no, he didn't, So the Bible is wrong? So
why are you appealing to the Bible?
Speaker 5 (01:06:32):
And they don't want to listen. They don't want to
listen to me. You see, God is God. God can
do anything he chose to do.
Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
Oh can he? Now that's very interesting. Could you tell me, sir,
what reality is?
Speaker 5 (01:06:45):
See you don't think, sir, grow up? Would you please?
Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
I am grown up and I've had these conversations many
many times. That's why I'm not falling into silly, childish traps.
You've just disproven your own argument.
Speaker 5 (01:06:58):
And learn how to have a conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
I'm allowing you to have a conversation, sir. I'm asking
you direct questions. Now, would you mind asking answering the
question did God produce God?
Speaker 5 (01:07:10):
Do you believe every transitional?
Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
It's you right? So you are really really right. Listen,
this is going to work one of two ways. You
are either going to comply and we're going to have
an actual conversation, or I'm going to mute you and
I'm going to talk over you put all my points out,
which you keep interrupting, which absolutely, and I'll be really,
really polite, as polite as I possibly can here fucking
(01:07:35):
tear every single one of your shit, eh, philosophical and
scientific claims apart. So you've got two choices. We can
have a nice conversation or I'll just put you on
mute and I'll just talk. Which is your choice, sir?
Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
I'd like to point out there is a hypothetical third
option here where the Internet just stops working or the
Earth gets struck by an asteroid before this conversation ends.
You never know when there might be a third option. Sorry,
I just wanted to point that idea out.
Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
Okay, Then he did God produce God man after his
own kind, life after his own kind? Yes? He did?
So we we bear the same attributes as God? Do
we bear with the same attributes as godkind? The life
that God created does it bear the same attributes as
(01:08:28):
God mankind?
Speaker 5 (01:08:29):
Or all life?
Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
Any life? Does any life that God created bear the
same attributes as God himself?
Speaker 5 (01:08:36):
All life as our life was given as.
Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
Aul is God's attributes having a soul, That is that
the entirety of God's attributes. So you don't believe that
God is all powerful or maximumly powerful, or all loving
or all knowing. You don't believe any of those things
about God, which none of life on earth holds attributes.
Speaker 5 (01:09:01):
Well, not even all of God.
Speaker 3 (01:09:04):
So so what all the attributes you believe God holds
that make God God?
Speaker 5 (01:09:09):
Do you when you say God, do you mean the Father,
the Son of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
I'm saying the God that you believe in, sir, the
God that you believe in. What attributes make that being God?
Specifically God?
Speaker 5 (01:09:23):
Okay, well, the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 3 (01:09:26):
So the Father of the Son and the Holy Spirit
make God God? Is that what susation?
Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
They can cut through a little bit here, Eric, I
believe what Richard is trying to establish is that you
said that each creature recreates after its own kind because
God created it that way. You also said that God
created man after its own kind. And we're trying to
figure out how you're saying that this piece of ancient
(01:09:55):
poetry that would disprove evolution, or that would be a
better theory or that would replace evolution, actually is even
internally consistent when we consider the idea that God did
not recreate us after his own image or after his
own kind, or did he like what are the criteria
for that?
Speaker 5 (01:10:15):
Now, God didn't create a bunch of little gods, okay,
but everything he created he created to bring forward after
its own kind.
Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
This might be some of that special pleading that we
talked about earlier, But in any case, we have failed
to disprove evolution, and more importantly, we have failed to
prove evidence of God. And I think that next time
you give us a call, I would encourage you to
choose one of those missions and not both, and to
(01:10:43):
narrow the scope a little bit so that you can
feel very comfortable and confident that the thing that you
are ready to say is a thing you are absolutely
assured of and well versed in and able to very
efficiently explain to us. Again, disproving evolution does not prove God.
Disproving evolution is far from what happened here, Richard. Is
(01:11:05):
there anything else that you want to make sure to
hit on? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
I think look before we get to the evolution thing.
Because when I'm not, as I said at the start,
I'm not a biologist, I don't particularly enjoy talking about
evolution and aghborigenesis. It's not my field of study at all.
When I have seen it, it has been from places
like the Creation Institute, and when I've read their papers
(01:11:29):
on the subject, what they do is they always attack
evolution or a biogenesis. Never ever do they seek to
try and prove that God exists. And this is very
disingenuous to me. You know, you don't need to attack.
And here's the problem. Here's why. Let's say that we
(01:11:51):
don't just have as very often in science, we don't
just have a single theory of evolution and how life
evolved or how life formed on this planet. Let's say
that we have one hundred different theories. Now, the way
we get our theory into being accepted is not by
(01:12:12):
going through each one of those hundreds possible even thousands
of alternative theories and breaking down what you think the
problem is with them. The way we get our theory
as the accepted theory is by showing that it works,
it is repeatable, and it has explanatory power. And what
(01:12:33):
this does is it gives the people in your field
of study the means to go out and replicate this
and to test this for themselves and to say yeah,
actually this does have like this works, and it has
explanatory power. So you don't need to spend hours and
hours and hours trying to disprove something you don't agree with.
(01:12:56):
All you have to do is show that there is
a strong theory out there, and by default that thing
that you don't agree with will not be accepted anymore.
And you know, this is what happens all the time
in science, and it happens from the tiny, littlest, mundaneish
things to the great, great, big theories. Is people come
(01:13:18):
up with stronger ideas and those stronger ideas are tested
and found to be better than the competitors. And this
is why I don't hold Eric. It's not again, it's
not something against you, but I don't hold with this
idea of Well, I don't like the idea of that,
so I'm going to pull it apart because that proves nothing.
That doesn't prove God. You know, we've talked about two
(01:13:40):
different areas today which I would have loved to have
a conversation, and we've talked about philosophy and the universe,
and we could have had great, great conversations on those roads,
but just wanted to return to this thing, which is throwaway.
It doesn't matter in the conversation about whether God exists.
It really does. Doesn't matter whether evolution or abbiogenesis are true.
(01:14:03):
When we're talking about whether God exists. What matters is
that the God hypothesis is tested and shown to be
the strongest idea out there. And you failed to do that.
Speaker 5 (01:14:15):
Well, that's because you won't let me. Look. The first
thing I proved was you don't have any credible evidence
for either aenator evolution. But to even throw on the
table everything that you're saying.
Speaker 3 (01:14:28):
You may have heard a little beep there, sir, and
that was me muting you because I've just given you
a lengthy explanation. That's why I do not give a
fuck about either of those things. And the first thing
you returned to was that I'm going to leave it
in Christy's hands whether it unmutes you or ends the call,
because frankly, I am done with this conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
Yeah, I think I'm there as well. I do want
to say again, Eric, I know I've tried to kind
of sum up this call a handful of times, and
I really want you to kind of grapple with this
very core notion that disproving one idea does not imply
this other idea. I would also just kind of highlight
(01:15:11):
that your disproving process maybe lacks some meaningful rigor some
understanding of what it means to have a transitional fossil
and you know, some of these other points. But regardless,
I do very much appreciate your willingness to talk to
us and to work through all of this. I want
very much for you to understand that your ideas are
(01:15:31):
not inflammatory, even if a little bit your behavior kind
of is. And I hope that you're willing to go
back and rewatch this conversation and just recognize the ways
that you maybe failed to address some of our concerns
and to carry a back and forth conversation with us,
which is really what we're here to do, rather than
(01:15:52):
listening to you read a script or force us to
work through a certain series of points. With all of
that being said, very lad to have gotten to talk
to you, and I highlight some of our misgivings with
your thinking on all of this, And yeah, just very
much appreciate the bravery it takes to have this kind
of conversation. So with that, Richard, you and I can
(01:16:14):
certainly move on, but you know, it's kind of a
good time.
Speaker 3 (01:16:18):
You are way too nice, Christian. I didn't have a
problem with the guy personally. I just it frustrates me
when you start off. I'm going to go into a
bit of an explanation about a couple of things that
are very often misused by theists. One is this idea
(01:16:40):
that there is either God. And I'm going to clarify
this by saying, I am aware that he said this
was not his position, but we get very often get
this thing way say there is either God or this
universe which comes from nothing. He did say, that wasn't
what he said, and I accept that, but that is
not the only option. And we can have an eternal
(01:17:03):
universe into not necessarily an eternal universe, but eternal causes
into the past. And as much as they like to
say that's not possible, it is possible. There's no reason
why that is not possible. And after thousands and thousands
of these conversations have yet to hear a reason as
(01:17:24):
to why that is impossible. Nobody thinks that, Nobody who
studies this thinks that is impossible. And I'm clarifying this
here because I'm not saying that everybody who studies things
this thinks that this is the case, but nobody who
studies it thinks it's impossible. And there is also this
idea when we get onto necessary beings, God being a
(01:17:45):
necessary being, which in philosophy means that this thing has
to exist. There is nothing stopping the universe itself or
the pre state of the universe before it came into
what we call the universe, nothing stopping that being a
necessary being in and of itself. It is true that
(01:18:07):
we either have a necessary being or an eternal regress
a series of contingent things. This is true, and there
are lots of different tiny subtleties regarding all them, whether
they multiverse ideas or all these different things. There are
lots of different variations. But that is the dichotomy. There
(01:18:32):
is something that is either eternal, which is a necessary
being which has by necessity necessity to exist, or there
is a series of contingent things which may go on
forever or may get to a point where we get
to a starting point a contingent thing. Now this is
very very important. That's the dichotomy. That doesn't mean that
(01:18:56):
the dichotomy is either God exists or we have an
eternal regress. Because philosophers are not in agreement with what
in necessary being is, They're just not there. So we
shouldn't mistake this true dichotomy as well. Either God exists
(01:19:17):
or we have an eternal regress, because that's not the case.
That's not the case at all. That would have made
a very very interesting conversation. Unfortunately, that's not the conversation
we actually got.
Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
Yeah. Yeah, And I don't mean to belabor the point
or continue talking without Eric here, but I really want
to stress to Eric or any other future callers, pick one,
you know, pick one idea to discuss with us, one
thing that you want to really focus on, because the
fact that your argument is huge does not make it
(01:19:49):
more likely to be true, does not make it more compelling.
If you can prove one thing to be true, that
would honestly be fascinating to me and would meaningfully move
the conver station forward into a place it's never been.
The effort to call in with like seventeen different ideas
that all have the same central flaw to them is
(01:20:10):
not compelling in any way. Yeah, well, it's been a
fun show. We've definitely had some interesting conversations. I want
to make sure to take a quick moment to thank
our top five patrons this week. Number one we've got
oops all Singularity. Two Deanna Kerns. I hope I'm saying
that correctly. Three Dingleberry Jackson for Coleve Helvetti, and five
(01:20:33):
Ja Carlton. Our honorable mention this week is Mark Lagusker. Again.
You can find that at tiny dot cc slash Patreon
th if you'd like to support the show and receive
some of those extra tier benefits. And Richard, do you
have a I believe we have some super chats that
came in. You have those in front of you. They
(01:20:55):
are sorry, let me hit this quickly, A ten dollars
donation from our friend Miranda Rensberger, with the greatest of respect, Richard.
The chat collectively begs you to fix your headphone cord.
Maybe I should have read that one off a little
bit earlier. I don't know if you're dealing with some tangles.
I know I was at one point A five dollars
(01:21:16):
donation from some kind of dicky. That's fun. Another Buddhist caller.
Don't you ever attack Christianity? I love that critique. Actually, yeah,
five dollars from and I'm going to say this with
Gusto Daisy with three whys in an exclamation point, who says,
(01:21:37):
here's a couple solitary bucks for wrestling with the God
of the Gaps. It's good work if you can get it.
It's good work if you can get it. And then
another five from some kind of dicky offering if you
can't put anything else on the table. Wait, how did
God get on the table? I feel like I just
came in in the middle of that story and I'm
(01:21:58):
fascinated to learn more. All right, well, that is all
of our major points for today. I suppose there's nothing
left to be done but to bring Kelly back in
to help us wrap up the show. Kelly, what did
you think? How is your patience when you don't have
your microphone on and you're not able to like actually
(01:22:19):
weigh in and yell back.
Speaker 4 (01:22:21):
It was really hard listening to that. It really really was.
I'll tell you I was like pulling my hair out
at some points because I wanted to get involved in
some of those really bad takes on evolution and creation.
Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
So yeah, I have to say, like I know, I've
tried to be very level headed and nice. Some people
in the chat accusing me of being much too nice
as Richard did, and that's fair. But when I think,
the thing that probably gets under my skin the most
is when somebody says that they are under my skin
because I just can't handle their argument. Like ladies and gentlemen,
(01:22:56):
I have worked in a psychiatric hospital where I have
been bit on and pissed on by people who are
just really out of their mind. I have sat in
session and held space and offered compassion as people have
worked through the shame and the guilt that they experience
having assaulted miners Like I have been in the trenches
(01:23:19):
on some really challenging ideas and experiences, and ain't nothing
nobody got to say about evolution gonna get me down
into my feelings. If I'm upset with you, it's because
you're being a jerk about it.
Speaker 4 (01:23:31):
Yeah right. I don't get upset about the things they're saying.
I get upset about the fact that they just won't
listen or look at any facts or deny the facts.
Speaker 2 (01:23:40):
You know.
Speaker 4 (01:23:40):
It's one of these things like I always get with
Christians if they always get this idea that if you
don't understand what they're saying, then you obviously or if
you don't agree with what you're what they're saying, you
obviously don't understand it. Right, So they got to keep
saying the same things over and over and over, like
all of a sudden, you're gonna go, whoa, you're right
(01:24:01):
even when they're wrong. So yeah, I kind of and
I felt like that was what was kind of happening
just now.
Speaker 3 (01:24:05):
So yeah, yeah, and that's something I hate doing as well,
I actually and and I find it infuriate, and so
I apologize listeners. I find the infuriating when I'm listening
to a call and the whole say, look, just for
the sake of argument, I'm going to agree with you,
but it got to the point where it didn't see
any other line to go down with that.
Speaker 4 (01:24:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:24:28):
Yeah, fair to say.
Speaker 4 (01:24:30):
Well, sometimes if you do that, though, Richard, you can
like kind of stretch it out to the to the ridiculous,
you know. And I think sometimes you can pointing out
how you know, if you can just take it to
like complete satire and say, well if if you if
you're thinking that where you can also think this way
with the same ideas, right, So yeah, that's like a.
Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
Line of scripture that we're using to disprove evolution also
disproves the creationism that we were here to supplant it
with exactly. So, yeah, there can be some value in
holding off on some of those things, But in any case,
you can't fight crazy. I hate to even hear myself
say it, but that's a little bit where things got
there at the end. I appreciate y'all going through this
(01:25:15):
with me. I hope that somebody out there learned a
little bit of something. And yeah, with that, Kelly, remind
us what the question of the week is, so that
everybody can join in and participate in the chat and
look forward to seeing us next week.
Speaker 4 (01:25:28):
Of course I will. The question of the week this
week will be what prayer will God always answer?
Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
I think interested in your answers?
Speaker 4 (01:25:39):
Yeah, I think we get some really good, funny answers
to that one. That's a good question.
Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
All right. Well, we just want to say, as we
do every week, that whether you are well organized in
your arguments, whether you are rational in your beliefs, we
still want to hear from you. We want to have
those conversations to everybody out there who doesn't believe this
is your community and we appreciate you being here. And
(01:26:04):
if you do believe, we don't hate you. We're just
not convinced. We want the truth. So watch Truth Wanted
(01:26:28):
live Fridays at seven pm Central Call five one two
nine nine nine two four two, or visit tiny dot
cc forward slash call tw
Popular Podcasts
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!