Talk Heathen 09.44 with Jimmy Jr. and ObjectivelyDan

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I opened the New Testament recently, and within only the
first few chapters of Matthew, I was reminded of how,
when reading it for myself, I am able to interpret
a side of Jesus that I never received from the
clergy members or other religious figures elsewhere when I was
growing up. Jesus is not an all loving, caring person.

(00:20):
He's a street thug, a playground bully, a spoiled daddy's boy,
walking around threatening people and using his power to uphold
age old traditions of oppression and subjugation. When the centurion
asks Jesus to heal his six slave, did Jesus free
that slave? No, He healed the slave so that they

(00:43):
could continue being a slave in a life of abuse, assault,
probably sexual assault, and in all likelihood dying of premature death.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus threatens his own people with eternal fire,
tells women their place is in the house serving their husbands,
and reminds slaves that they should be loyal to their oppressors.

(01:06):
He curses a fig tree for not making ripe fruit.
He mercilessly murders a herd of pigs by forcing them
off of a cliff. Into the ocean, all loving, all knowing,
all powerful, no all mythological, and if you disagree, you
should give us a call right now because the show
is about to start. Yes, all right, folks, my favorite beat,

(01:37):
my favorite theme in the world, has just played. You
know what time? It is? One pm Central on Sunday.
Today is November two, twenty twenty five. I am your
host today, Jimmy Junior, and I am joined by my friend,
the outstanding, the stupendous, the wonderful, Objectively Dan Objectively.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
How the heck are you today? I'm doing great. You know.
We're a fixus in a second. I think my video
is like way over here. I was like, this is
how it started. I was almost off camera. I could
just do the whole show like this, so you see
my face.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
But that's what you were going for, like an artistic take.
I think they call that the use of negative space.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah, this is a new this is a new thing
we're doing here. We're trying to create the distance between
myself and you right now is symbolic of the distance
we're feeling from each other in this country every day.
So yeah, there is obviously artistic intent behind what's going on.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
I love what you're doing. I love what you're doing,
and I'm so glad that you're here doing it with
me today, folks, Today November second, of course, Talk Heathen
is a live call in show. We have open lines,
so get your calls in right now. Call us at
five one two nine nine two four two are from
your computer at tiny dot cc forward slash call th

(02:47):
We are open to all of your questions about religion,
secular humanism, atheistic morality, cosmology, philosophy, science, history, life, the universe.
Anything you want to talk about, we could probably have
an educated, well and four conversation about it. Today we're
hoping to talk about alternative impressions of Jesus, as you
heard in the opening, so if you want to chime

(03:08):
in on that, please give us a call and give
us your thoughts. We air every Sunday at one pm
Central on YouTube. But remember if you cannot make it
for whatever reason, get us wherever you find your podcasts,
and that also includes Patreon. As a Patreon subscriber, you
get access to bonus content to include our lives that
we do on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So get over to

(03:30):
Patreon and make sure you get on there talk. Keithan
is a production of the Atheist Community of Austin, a
five o't one C three nonprofit organization dedicated to the
promotion of atheism, critical thinking, secular humanism, and the separation
of religion and government. I think the world needs more
of that, all of those things I just rang off.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
What do you think, Dan, I agree, I agree definitely
needs some more that. I want to go back to
this topic though, about Jesus. I think this is a
very interesting idea, and I think it's an interesting argument
to talk about Jesus not being a particularly moral person,
because in the biggest debates you'll see you'll often see
atheists at least positive position, Well, Jesus was at least
maybe a good person, but not the son of God. Right,

(04:10):
Usually you'll create that. I think you can make the
case that Jesus didn't really subscribe to like great notions
of morality. I would not make that argument unless you're
very familiar with what the Bible actually says about him.
But as you point out, it's very weird, like, for example,
like in the Book of Mark, the character of Jesus
is very different from the character portrayed in John Right
and This is because they're authored at different time periods,

(04:33):
with different people having different motivations and intentions on how
they want to portray Jesus. Jesus and Marcus like very
weird because he's like, hey, I did this cool miracle.
Don't tell anybody about it though, right, Like, don't actually
tell people. I'm like the Messiah. That happens like more
than once. Right, And of course, Mark famously at the
end like doesn't have that resurrection narrative that like the
other gospels have afterwards, and so you get these like

(04:57):
different portrayals of Jesus. But you're right in terms of like, hey,
I'm like the son of God and like everybody should
just do what I want to do. Like that happens
like a lot in John, which is the last gospel
written where that theology has kind of more been developed
about who Jesus was and like you know what his
abilities and powers and stuff are. So yeah, it is

(05:18):
really interesting. But yeah, like Jesus is kind of a
dick sometimes in the Bible for sure.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, And in discussion before this show, our Good Friend
crewmember Tim had mentioned, you know, if you have the
power to heal blind people and you're just walking around
telling people you can do it, but not doing it.
That kind of makes you a dick, doesn't it. And
I think in deconstructing the Jesus character and kind of

(05:43):
looking at how he's portrayed in the different gospels, you
kind of run into other conflicts, run into other dichotomies,
if you will. So, for example, go out and spread
the word about Jesus, right, But also, like you said,
in Mark, he tells people, well, don't tell anybody who
did this, And then Matthew, you know you should when
you pray, you should do so silently in the privacy

(06:05):
of your own home, right, But that is contradictory to
other commands he gives when he's telling people, you know,
go out and you know, kind of see the whole
of the region and spread the word. But you know,
surely you won't see all of Israel before I come back,
et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, different motivations, definitely. In fact,
I don't think it's any secret. But you know, Mark

(06:26):
being written first, probably the most incomplete of all the
thoughts when it comes to authors, and then the other
gospels coming behind it, trying to clean it up a
little bit, let's let's make those thoughts a little more complete.
Let's add a little bit more motivation for people to
believe in this kind of stuff. And so, yeah, I
think a solid understanding of the Bible, which I can't

(06:47):
claim to have, but it became more solid as I
became more of an atheist, if that makes sense. As
I deconstructed it coincided with me reading the Bible and
actually trying to understand it and questioning this person of
Jesus who is yelling at a fig tree at one point.
So I don't know what kind of person was supposed

(07:08):
to walk away from with, you know, what idea was
supposed to walk away with when we consider the whole
story of Jesus.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, for sure. And it's like not just with Jesus,
but this happens with other figures as well, like the
Buddha obviously, will you'd be surprised how varied Buddhism actually
is in comparison to like ud the Buddha was and
what he taught and stuff. There's all kinds of texts
that respond to that message. Laud Su has kind of
a similar thing. There are some like first books that

(07:35):
were kind of around but of course, teachings change over time.
Even Judaism is the same way. You know, people often think, oh,
well the Torah, the Tora is still the same, but
like there's so many commentaries on the Torah post that
that like change, you know, your interpretation of these stories
completely depending on which arguments you kind of follow. So like,
this isn't something that's completely unique to Christianity. This is

(07:57):
something Islam has the same thing too as well, with
like Muhammad and and text written post his life as well.
So like all religions have changed, and interpretation on who
these characters are and what they represent at period, like
it just always has pretty much happened. So it is
kind of interesting to think that, you know, Christians often
posit this idea that oh, this is who God is,

(08:17):
this is who Jesus is, this is who he always was,
and this is always the message, when it's like, no,
that has actually changed quite a bit, particularly of course
the earliest parts of Christianity. But you know, these these
interpretations are not stable, right, They are pretty dynamic and
are not as objective as people often make them out
to be. So yeah, pretty fascinating.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah for sure. And you know you bring up Hinduism,
and I know that our friend Kelly, who's hanging out
in the background, has some experience with the Eastern religion.
So crewe whenever you're ready, let's, you know, maybe we
can bring up Kelly to chime in on this conversation.
And you know what, Dan, you know, Kelly, Kelly, I'm
so glad you here. But you know, Dan brought something
up that I actually just want to I want to

(08:57):
pause it real quick. So do we only do that
with religion or is this something that we kind of
assigned to all of our heroes. Christopher Columbus, for example,
you know, Sail the Ocean Blue fourteen ninety two. They
don't tell you about the parts where he was actually
jailed by Spain for the atrocities right that he committed,

(09:19):
even by the standards of his own time, was still
committing you know, outrageous acts, sexual assault, murder, But we
don't hear that as kids. You know, he's he's the
guy who discovered it all. We owe it all to him.
And so it's really interesting the way that we take
we take these these hero characters of our own folklore,
and we want to avoid the bad parts. And I

(09:40):
think that there is plenty, plenty of things to dissect
when it comes to Jesus if you want to consider
bad parts. Kelly, I wanted to see if you had
a reflection on that, and maybe from your own experience.
You know, I know you moved from what I understand,
you moved out of Lutheranism into like the Eastern religions,
and so why don't you talk to us about that?

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yeah, I kind of moved into I kind of moved
into Buddhism, and as I got deeper into it, and
I you know, one of the things that I've noticed
with a lot of people in this country who get
into Buddhism, or Dan mentioned laudsaw Daoism earlier, they tend
to see it from a newage angle instead of its
actual traditional self, right, And that's exactly what I did

(10:21):
in many ways. It wasn't until later after I really
got serious and started discussing, you know, discovering Buddhism, that
I kind of really better understood it. But I kind
of got into zen because of the you know, all
the colons and stuff. Actually the deepties. Let's face it,
it's full of deep eaties. And I thought the deeptas.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
Were really cool back then.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
I didn't have as much experience with life at the time,
so that's what really kind of attracted me into Zen
And it's also what attracted me into the Daoism too,
And and American Daoism is nothing, nothing like real Daoism.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
So yeah, well, like nineteen seventies America is a peak
of new age spiritualism coming into the United States, and
it was all vibes. It was like here's all the cool, like, oh,
here's a different way of thinking from the traditional norms, right,
And it's it was more about these kinds of general
principles than it was like serious study of like these
texts interpretations, like what what more traditional Buddhists or or

(11:20):
or Dallas would would would want you to think about. Right.
So it's like, yeah, it's Christianity does the exact same thing,
you know that like the the evangelical movement that we
see today, they like to sell you on this idea
that this is a traditional version of Christianity and everybody
else is just doing it wrong. It's like no, this
actually also has his like roots in like American Christianity,

(11:41):
like this is its own Christianity. That's set from the
other Christianity. This isn't traditional, this is its own thing now.
So it's like it's it's constantly changing all the time,
and it's going to keep changing. There's no real stability
in a lot of these ideas, so.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
It's cultural and culture changes, right.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah. And the thing about that is the church having
to change to meet the culture of the time is
something that I think needs to have more light shed
on it to kind of demonstrate to people, Look, your
doctrine is not impenetrable. Your doctrine is actually dependent upon
the will of society, and if society decides that they

(12:19):
no longer accept your doctrine, then you're going to be
the one that has to change it. When we talk
about American Christianity, you know, we have to talk about
how women were affected in the early colonies. Right. So
women weren't allowed to be clergy members in the early
Protestant religions of the colonies. But then when they started
to lose participation in the various societies, many churches said,

(12:40):
you know what, we're going to allow women more leadership
roles in the church. Some of them granted full clergy rights,
other ones just gave them more responsibility, and we saw
the same thing happen with people in general in the colonies.
The half members, Right, oh, you don't you think you're
going to go to hell? You know, people kind of

(13:01):
just stop showing up, like, well, you know what am I?
What am I supposed to do? There's no saving me?
And they say, well, you know what, maybe you can't
be a full member, but you could be a half member,
which is kind of kind of strange if you think
about it, because it's it's along the lines of why
Lutheranism or Protestantism separated from Catholicism in the first place,
with all of these uh loopholes that you could jump

(13:22):
through the sale of indulgences and and and uh the
confession and the the the what do you call it?
The u when somebody is ostracized from the church and
they're not allowed in society anymore, and I'm drawing a
blank on what that's called excommunication? There you go, right, So, uh,
you know this idea that that the Lutheran Church and

(13:43):
the Protestants didn't really agree with those practices and then
employed them, you know, kind of on their own, uh,
to to bend to the will of society is pretty ironic,
and we still see that today.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
You know.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
That is where I think we get the non denominational stuff. Uh,
you know, let's make it as vague as possible so
that we don't alienate anybody. Let's bring them in. Let's
and then you've you know, I mean, I could probably
name instance after instance after instance. My favorite is the
pope uh saying that they can bless gay marriage. Well,
you still can't allow it in the church, and you

(14:17):
don't want anybody to be openly gay in church, but
you know, you'll be nice in the media.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
Right.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
So I think we see you know, we see a
lot of American Christianity, you know, and just Christian Christian
values changing in general because of the will of society.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yep, yep, it's true. That's that's a result of the
Age of Aquarius, by the way, which is what we're
in right now.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
So really I know nothing about the Age of Aquarius.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Well you should, yeah, give it the Times Jimmy?

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Am I not qualified? Am I now not qualified to
host the Jimmy?

Speaker 3 (14:51):
We have all the Indigo children born, right, that's right,
because we're in the Age of Aquarius.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
I think I count as an Indigo child. By the way,
I really hope I am, because that peak of that
was like the nineties, which is when I was born. Right,
it's like light colored eyes, you know, like you know,
I don't know, man, I think I'm about that.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
So I love this idea of dissecting and rethinking some
of not just Jesus, but the characters of the Bible. Right,
I like Abraham. Abraham's my favorite because he's so old. Right,
that story is like way old. Nobody really focuses on
the fact that Christianity and Judaism could be built on

(15:31):
a house of cards. And let's just like dissect Abraham
for a second. So this guy shows up theoretically in Egypt, okay,
travels up the Euphrates River valley, ends up in what
would then become the Levant, and then decides, you know what,
my economic situation is not that good. I'm going to

(15:51):
go see the Pharaoh. And does anybody really like think
that there was a likelihood of a stranger from a
foreign land kind of one wandering into Thebes, which would
have been the capital at that point, which is all
the way down the Nile River valley. I mean, this
is some journey of course, we don't know where the
capital was in the story of Abraham. We don't know

(16:11):
who the pharaoh was. But I mean, does anybody really
believe that this kind of vagrant or this migrant, I
guess you can call him a vagrant, he's going to
show up in the most powerful empire in the known
world at that time and just get an audience with
the pharaoh.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Jimmy, I'll tell you, last time I tried, it didn't
work out for me. I'll tell you that.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
So I would ask anybody to look at the status
of their own country and ask what the likelihood of
an immigrant getting me getting the audience of the national
leader is. And now transport yourself back in time and say, well,
we've got this guy Abraham. He showed up, and yeah,

(16:50):
let's just get the pharaoh to have an audience with him.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Right. You know here, he's got many sons. I hear
about his father Abraham. Maybe that matters.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
I don't know, Abraham have many sons.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
I don't remember father Abraham had many sons? Oh, okay,
and many sons had father Abraham or something afterwards, Sorry, Okay,
you're not in on the joke. That's fine.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
So Yeah, Abraham's children were not like clearly documented, right,
he had he had a few and then were they
were they Jacob and Esau or yeah, so those are
the ones that were like highly documented, right, And then
of course he had a bunch of other concubines and
and he had other children which didn't have the lasting

(17:33):
impact Jacob and Esau might have had. But yeah, so
so just taking a look at the way that.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
That depends because Muslims, that's like the entirety of Islam
out there is.

Speaker 4 (17:44):
But yeah, that is so interesting to me. That is
like so interesting to me because excuse me, my dryer
is going off poor planning if you hear a buzzing
in the background.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
But you know this rejection right of the of the
probably darker skinned slave person who came from Egypt. That's
the other thing too. Does anybody think that Abraham waltzed
into Egypt, got an audience with the Pharaoh, and left
with an Egyptian slave? Highly unlikely if you ask me,

(18:15):
but really convenient to bolster the canaan I tribe that
he belonged to at the time. Right, If we're going
to develop a mythology, let's tell our people let's tell
the generations that we waltzed in there, we were important
enough to meet the pharaoh, and we walked away with
an Egyptian slave. Shows them from messing with us for
the last few centuries millennia however you want to slice it.

(18:38):
So we really need get old.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
Enough to have tried to have gotten an audience with
the Pharaoh. But I can assure you those tsar wouldn't
see me, the Tsar Kelly, we were reluctant to see you.
That's why you were the backup host today.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
That's you know. But yeah, So I mean this whole
idea of the Bible being in errant, which I think
a lot of people nowadays can't really stand on that argument.
So they have to kind of acknowledge there are interpretations
that it is in errands, that there are things that

(19:12):
can be falsified in the Bible while others can't. Then
they're forced to kind of figure out, well, where do
I draw the line. That's a completely and I think
entirely different argument, although they kind of have to go
that route because you can't look at these stories and
just believe what you were told your whole life, you know,
And it's like they say, and I don't remember who

(19:35):
first said this, but you know, Christianity is what you
get when somebody reads the Bible for you, and atheism
is what you get when you read the Bible for yourself.
And like I said in the opening, when you read
the Bible for yourself and you go, holy smokes man,
this guy's just walking around being like, you're going to
be tortured. You're going to be tortured, eternal fire, gnashing
your teeth. I am going to make sure that my

(19:55):
dad punishes you. It's really kind of disturbing that nobody
we had the wherewithal or the concern about forcing children
to worship this kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
So anyway, and you know, it's funny, you know, I
don't think, well, so I don't know these tax stats
because I don't know about Orthodox Jews across like the world,
but I know, like at least American Jews and lots
of Jewish people like don't literally hold the Tanakh or
the Torah, the Tora's first five books at the talk
as being literally true, like at least in today. I

(20:26):
don't know what that was like two thousand and three
thousand years ago, you know, but like they don't even
hold that to be literally true. It's like literally Christians
that are the ones beating the drum most of the
time about yeah, man, this floodshit one hundred percent real,
you know, all this other stuff like, and that's what's
so funny to me. I guess like the ones who
are probably much closer to that text than than we

(20:48):
are are the ones saying, yeah, no, actually we don't
really think about it that way. But there's still this
movement that says, yeah, we should take everything literally.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
And I don't want to generalize, but it seems like
it's a lot of can servative American Protestants that have
that view that they'll.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Ply, you don't have to generalize.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
It is that I think you're well within your right
to say that, ky, you know, but I don't know.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, And it's it's the the sections of our country
and and I don't know about the world statistics, but
certainly the sections of our country that have the worst
education rates by far, Okay, so Alabama, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi.
I mean they are the most conservative, right and and

(21:33):
the most Christian, I would say, but also have the
the worst rates of literacy education. Very high rates of
drug use, very high rates of poverty, and it's really sad.
You know that the the priorities are aligned that way.
You know, instead of taking care of your own health
and well being, there's kind of this focus on Christian

(21:56):
nationalism and by the way, you know, not health yourself,
and not only that, but not even reading it. You know,
how often do you come across a Christian who has
no idea what's in their own book? And it's really sad.
It's really sad. And so, you know, I wanted to
bring this idea of Jesus as something other than what
we commonly hear from and you know, from atheists, agnostic

(22:19):
secular humanists. I even hear people say, well, of course
you can learn a lot of really good things from Jesus. Hey, look,
there are plenty of messages that Jesus says, and I'm great,
But like I said, when faced with the opportunity to
free a slave, yeah, instead that heals the slave and
lets them continue being a slave. Dan, please go ahead.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah. Yeah. First of all, I want to say, we
have open lines right now if anybody wants to call
in add to the conversation. Doesn't have to be about
what we're talking about right now, could be about whatever
we usually talk about, but you know that out there,
yeah there what annoys me is Jesus. Talking about Jesus
as he was the most like moral person that ever lived,
or like was the creative the standard of objective morality,
or you know whatever people say about what Jesus is

(23:00):
and like how we should live our lives. Because to me,
that's just that's just means that you're ignorant of ethics,
Like you just don't know the feeling as well. And
I don't expect everybody to like have a detailed understanding
of like different ideas around the world, but you should
at least understand that there are other ideas out there,
some of which are pre date Jesus, right, Like you know,

(23:22):
like it wasn't like the guy came in and like,
oh I didn't know I wasn't supposed to hit my neighbor,
like unprovoked. You know, like people had like a sense
of it just because they're people, you know, and some
of that's kind of ingrained it, you know, not everything
has been formalized into a system, right, But like, you know,
he wasn't the first to do a lot of this stuff.
He was influential for sure, but wasn't the first, wasn't

(23:43):
the only guy. I think that's what pisses me off
the most, because it's like, man, there's so many people
that have not only written about ethics, but also in
a more concrete way than just the like third hand
accounts of what Jesus like may or may not have
said at any point in time.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
Right, So there was even a secular rentition of morality
with the code of Hammer Rabbi, which is like three
hundred and fifty years older than Judaism, right, yeah, yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Like the states in which Jesus lived on like they
had their own codes, like they had their own laws.
It's not like it was a completely lawless society either.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
So the code of Hammarabbie borrowed from an older code,
which the name of which escapes me right now, but
that even predated the Code of Hammarabie.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
I think that was your mom's codes.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Oh thanks, Dan, you fucker. You know, you know Dan crew,
we could get rid of Dan and Kelly and I
just finish this out, you know, we've got we had
a caller coming in. But but yeah, so actually I
want to give a super chat, super check. Yeah, we

(24:48):
had a super chat. So I want to give a
shout out to Anne Johnson. So Ann Johnson says, I
was raised Catholic and didn't know much about the Bible
at all until I started watching wonderful shows like this one.
Thank you so much. And I appreciate that acknowledgment. And
you know what, Anne sent us a super chat last
week for five dollars as well that said Talk Heathen
was her favorite atheist call in show on the internet period,

(25:11):
which I have to agree. Uh, yeah, we are the best. Uh,
And I appreciate Anne Johnson, uh, you know, putting that forth,
and you.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
Know, can I can I just jump in for a minute.
I think we're tied. We're tied for the best with
the show that's on Friday night.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Oh no, I wasn't. I wasn't gonna be that guy, Hi, Kelly,
because we do. But it's nice that you acknowledged that
the AC produces other wonderful content at different days of
the week, you know what.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
You know what on that on that we do have
an advertisement that I want to share. So this is
my way of prepping the crew that we're gonna we're
gonna switch to uh an image of the nonprofits, so
I can talk about the nonprofits just a little bit.
I hope I gave them enough prep time. They're probably like,
fuck Jimmy, that's not in the script. Uh, but yeah,
check out the nonprofits if you have not done that already.

(26:01):
This is the premier spot to get caught up on
the latest news articles pertaining to the separation of religion
and government, religion's impact on society and pop culture, and
you know, a crew, just leave that up a little
bit longer. I want everybody to do this with me.
For all of you who are watching, take out your
phones right now, go ahead and get him out. If
you're watching us on a computer, open the camera, scan
that QR code and check us out on TikTok. We

(26:23):
air six pm Central Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and so
you can catch new episodes. Actually tomorrow we have an
episode that is going to air and they'll be talking
about how a Utah football kicker came out and basically
apologized for not praying with his team before the game

(26:44):
and instead was practicing for the game. How dare he?
How dare he? But you know what, he went to
an incredibly religious school, and he played another religious school
and there was a lot of backlash. So anyway, tune
in check that out, and yeah, we got a great
on the nonprofit. So Dan, getting back to what we
were talking about earlier, the ethics. The ethics, you know,

(27:07):
you don't need Jesus to come along and say care
for the sick. I mean, we have archaeological evidence dating
back thousands of years that cave men, Neolithic people were
healing broken bones. We're taking care of sick, taking care
of the elderly, you know, taking care of people who
couldn't hunt or couldn't contribute in great in as great

(27:27):
a part as the rest of the members of their society.
But still they took care of people and they helped
them along. And we didn't need some guy walking around
threatening us with hell fire to do that. And so
I think when it comes to the ethics of it,
when a religious person a theis says, well, where do
you get your morals from? Well, I could say, well,
people in general didn't need to wait to the turn

(27:48):
of the millennium in order to have Jesus tell them
how to be moral. Right. They certainly didn't get it
from the Old Testament, but they certainly didn't need religion.
We've got a documented cases of humans caring for each
other doing things that are morally kind of I guess
what you would consider moral, you know, depending on how

(28:09):
you phrase that. But I think generally speaking, just caring
for each other is what we aim to do.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
So, you know what, what might even be a genetic
built in genetically to many social species. We see the
same thing amongst the great apes. Right, yeah, well that
there is a sense of morality. Sorry, didn't go ahead.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
No, So like the like one of the oldest I
want so, I don't want to be wrong. I thought
it was Denisovans, but it might be Neanderthal. I think
it's a Denisovans, which is another upright ape speed like
you know, like that shares lineage with humans. Like one
of the oldest we have was a was like seventy
or eighty years old, is what they proposed to say,

(28:46):
which like at that time could not have been a
thing unless you had a society that cared for people
that could live up to that long. Right, So it's like, yeah,
this has been happening beyond just humans, right, it's it's
our lineage. That as the capacity to jake care of
each other. So, you know, we talk about this idea
that annoys be that like, oh, like God, God gave
it to us and it's on our hearts or whatever.

(29:08):
It's like, yeah, it's kind of in us at least
in some way, because we're a social species, you know,
so that kind of comes out as a result of
naturalism more than anything.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
You know, we we actually have our first caller, So
we're gonna we are going to go ahead and bring
up Ann from California. And you are wait a minute,
hold on, did we drop now? Keep Kelly up, Keep
Kelly up. You know, we're not kicking Kelly out of here.
He's already contributed so much. Let's bring up and and
you are on with Jimmy, Kelly and Dan, and how

(29:36):
how can we help you?

Speaker 5 (29:38):
Well, how Jimmy and Kelly and Dan? How are you
all today?

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Great? Great? Thank you doing great?

Speaker 5 (29:45):
Did Like I said in my super chat, I was
raised Catholic, so I didn't really know much about the
Bible until I started watching your show and things like that,
and and I've learned a lot, but it's also brought
up a lot of questions for me. You know, I
know I'm a non believer. Maybe I don't even know
if this should matter to me as a non believer,

(30:07):
but I kind of feel like it does, because you know,
in life, you encounter a lot of people that really
believe this stuff, and they want you to believe it too,
to the point of even you know, legislating it. But
I don't want to get into that.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Part of it.

Speaker 5 (30:21):
But I had a question, and I know you're kind
of talking about the morals and everything, but I have
a question about the Adam and Eves story. Was there
a tree of knowledge in that story?

Speaker 2 (30:37):
So the so it's interesting you point that out because
so there's two different stories actually in the Book of Genesis,
and in those two stories, they kind of recount the
story differently. I know, that's kind of mind blowing, right,
What do you mean there's two stories. Yeah, there's two
different versions of the story. It's that you can look
it up, you can overvail your Bible right now, and

(30:57):
they kind of grand them together.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
So there is two trees.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
There's a tree of good and evil and there's like
a tree that kind of gives like you, eternal life, right,
And so the idea is that the I don't need
from the one tree which gave them knowledge of good
and evil to tree of knowledge, right, and so God
is kind of doesn't want them to eat from this
other tree, which would grant them eternal life, and so

(31:20):
he kicks them out of the garden. So so, yeah,
there is a tree that gives them knowledge of good
and evil?

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Oh okay, and which is the one they ate from?

Speaker 4 (31:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Right, yeah, did you say that? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (31:30):
Yeah, But just Claire friend, there is actually two trees
in the story, one that gives eternal life and one
that gives yes.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yes, so, and actually, piggybacking on that, there are actually
two accounts of how life was created. So not only
there are are there only two trees, but there are
two different stories not only about how God created the universe,
but then how God actually interacted with the universe. If
you consider the first chapter, God is kind of outside

(32:00):
of the universe, dictating to all matter how it's going
to arrange itself. Right, But in the second, the second
chapter of Genesis, God is actually inside the garden walking around,
and rumor has it, at least I would say scholar
scholarship has it that the second chapter was actually written first.
And then you know, the authors, for whatever reason, felt

(32:22):
like there needed to be a more orderly and more
supernatural version of God, so they rewrote that story and
put it first before the version of God that is
more human like. And so we see that not only
in the New the Old Testament, but in the New
Testament as well. As Dan correctly pointed out, you know,
when we opened up, when we open up the Bible,

(32:44):
we are not seeing the first account of Jesus, but
we are seeing kind of a replica of the first
account being placed in front of us first. And so
there is certainly an agenda that has taking place throughout
the Bible what people want you to believe, which speaks
to your point. You know, people tell you the things
that they want us to believe. So go ahead, how
do you uh, what do you have to say about

(33:04):
that so far?

Speaker 2 (33:05):
Yeah? Uh me yeah, yeah, what do you think? What
do you think?

Speaker 5 (33:09):
That's a lot to take in, because I did it.
I had heard before that there was two two stories
about you know, how how the universe was created in
the first people. But it's but like I always wondered
with with this tree, like why would why would God
not want them to know thing.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Well, it's it elicitly in the narrative talks about this
because he's worried about them eating from the tree of
eternal life. That's that's it does say that in the text,
at least in one of I don't know if it's
in both, but yeah, so, so that's an explicit word.
And so here's why it gets confusing, because the word
that is used in to describe God in Genesis is

(33:50):
different from what the word God has used in other
parts of the Old Testament. The word is elohem, and
eloheem can be actually described in some circumstances as this
being a plural. So in other words, there's this idea
that the Adam and Eve could be like the Gods,
is kind of like what they're saying here, being of

(34:13):
the same status of like godlihood if they eat from
the tree of eternal life of tree of life. Right,
So they in the narrative, and I'm not making this up,
you can read it in the Bible. It is there,
they kick them out, and the rational described there is
they don't want them to eat from the tree of
eternal life because they don't want them to be too
much like God. So that's what it says like in

(34:36):
the text, you know, most people don't read it. And
this idea of what's called doublets, by the way, is
not exclusive to Genesis, right, these two different narratives. It
happens with the story of Joseph, it happens with the
flood accounts for Noah. There's kind of two different stories
back to back. And this is because these books were
oral traditions before there were books, right, and so these

(34:57):
are sort of different, compiled, sort of tellings of these stories.
So this is why I was talking about earlier in
the show why there's like these interpretations are always going
to be sort of unstable because it changes over time,
and even in the earliest accounts, so we still see
like conflicting information as to why stuff is the way
that it is. So yeah, a lot of information there,

(35:17):
but hopefully that makes sense.

Speaker 5 (35:19):
Yeah a little.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (35:22):
As a person who wasn't really I was raised on
you know, Catholic teaching, and I'm not sure how much
of that coincides with the Bible itself. I feel like
since watching shows like yours, like, I'm kind of learning
things about you know, mild that I realized.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Yeah, yeah, well, you know that's the Protestant sort of
stereotype of Catholics, right, is that they don't read the Bible.
Truth is, most Christians don't read the Bible, but you
know it, Yeah, I have to wonder, how does this
happen for so long and people don't talk about It's because,
you know, Catholicism was Christianity for the majority of Christian history, right,
and liturgy happened in Latin, which was and descriptions of

(36:03):
the Bible happened for a class of people that could
read to a people that could not, you know, so
they do get to pick and choose parts of the Bible,
and they do get to explain and interpret this text
for other people.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
You know.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Part of the reason why the Protestant Revolution was such
a big deal is because it gave the Bible in
a common tongue that was not accessible to most people.
You had to be illiterate and you had to be
in a certain class of people to be able to
even read the thing. So most people for a lot
of human history could not read the Bible for themselves.
So when we look at it now where we have

(36:35):
access to it and we can kind of examine it
and scholarship has been able to be done on it.
We kind of see all this stuff that doesn't make sense.
So that's why you kind of have this gap where
it's like, how come people didn't like think about this war?
It's like, well, because most people couldn't even read it
for themselves for a big period of time, right, So
kind of interesting to see. But anyway, I'm talking a
lot here. I don't want to take up stuff for me.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
I want to see if Kelly's got something to add
I was thinking, I got.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
I thought of a bunch of different things. I don't
know if any of them are relevant. You know, one
of the things that I thought of right away?

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Is it?

Speaker 3 (37:05):
In his later years, Mark Twain wrote and published a
lot of pretty irreligious stuff. If you never read read
any of his books, Get Ahold of the Mysterious Stranger,
it's freaking awesome. But he wrote an essay and he
used the Tree of Knowledge to prove that God was
a sadist. And I always thought when I read that
when I was nineteen, it blew my mind. And the

(37:28):
idea behind it was if God knows everything, then he
would have known that Adam and Eve would have eaten
from the Tree of Knowledge before he put the knowledge
the tree there, and he put it there telling them
he would punish them if they ate from it, knowing
they would eat from it. So therefore God is a sadist.
He put it there's just so he could punish them. Yeah,
you know, yeah, yeah, Mark Twain, the guy was a genius,

(37:52):
you know.

Speaker 5 (37:53):
Yeah. And it's called The Mysterious Stranger. I need to
read that.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
That's that's one of his that's that's one of his
last stories. I don't think that was published during his lifetime.
But this isn't from that. This was from an essay.
The Mysterious Stranger is Satan appearing in a medieval Austrian
village and explaining the horrors of morality and religion.

Speaker 5 (38:13):
Oh okay, okay, Well I always like I wonder sometimes
like if God is so all powerful, why didn't he
have the power to stop them from eating from the tree.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
Right, So this is why this and that's why it
gets interesting. And again sorry I'm taking up time here
because so Yahweh is the term that's used for the
majority of the Bible, but you see that in term elohem,
and it's used only in one of those stories in Genesis.
If you understand Judaism as a polytheistic religion before a
monotheistic religion, a lot of things in the Old Testament

(38:47):
make a lot more sense. Like, you know, there's a
couple of stories where like the story where they they're
praying to God or bail and they want to see
what happens, right, Well, if you only believe there's one God,
what's even happening here? How could do anything? Right? It's
because there was a time where this religion was polytheistic,
where there was other gods, and in other words, God

(39:07):
wasn't this sort of monotheistic, all powerful, all seeing entity.
God makes way more sense as a particular entity with
a much more limited capacity and limited ability when you
reread Genesis, it makes way more sense that way, because
what is God doing. He's like walking around in the
garden as his creation as like a physical being, right,

(39:30):
And that's not the only time that happens. God wrestled
with Jacob, like in a physical form in the story
of Jacob, right, which is like kind of crazy. He's
doing that before Jesus was a thing, but he's walking
around so like it makes more sense when you interpret
God as not this all powerful, not this all encompassing being,
but a particular being with powerful, yes, but with limits

(39:53):
to that. And so this this idea of a monotheistic
all powerful being that comes much later in the religion.
So yeah, it's it's why these stories can be so
confusing to read, because we're putting a much more developed
theological lens that what the people who actually first were
talking about these stories may have been talking about, if

(40:13):
that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
So I do want to add something to that. So
I'm sorry, Ann, but I don't want to put this
thought on the back burner. So if you, I know,
you're talking about reading and you wanted to read a
book by Mark Twain, but if you want to make
some sense of how this history kind of took form,
there is a great book called God an Anatomy, and

(40:36):
it's by Francesca Stave Rockapulu. That's a long name, and
I try so hard to get it right, so I
hope I'm saying it right. But God and Anatomy, And
in this book, and while this isn't exclusive to just
this book, she talks about the dichotomy between Yahweh and
El and so basically, so some some sources say that

(40:59):
Yahweh was is a child of L. But but many
sources say that there was like a northern Canaanite tribe
and there was a Southern Canaanite tribe Uh, and Yahweh
was worshiped by the southern Canaanite tribe L by the North,
and at some point they had merged and yelled, excuse me,
Yahweh and L kind of became synonymous names for God,

(41:21):
and yeah, Elohem would just be a plural of God.
And that aligns with this idea that when God was
creating the universe and creating Adam and Eve, that they
created them in their image, which I think is a
very significant line. In fact, one of the one of
the lines in Genesis that caused me to start rethinking things.

(41:42):
When I had that pointed out to me, I took
a literature of the Bible course, h, you know, in
my in my college years, and that's when my deconstruction
kind of took hold. But yeah, something to think about there,
you know, this is this this book, basically, just like
the New Testament, is kind of a decision of the
Council of Nicea in some way of what is going

(42:05):
to be included the Old Testament is very much kind
of a decision of the merging of some tribes that
all inherited the levant Uh, and they kind of put
their thoughts together, their beliefs together, and it came up
with these concepts that oftentimes don't align. And so there's
a lot of ambiguity when you read the Old Testament
and the Bible in general. So I just want to

(42:25):
posit that on you.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yep, yep, there we go a lot of thoughts from us, Anna, what.

Speaker 5 (42:28):
Do you think that is a lot to take in.
So so it's basically a Paul started out kind of polysiistic,
Is that.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
What that is? So none of us are Bible scholars,
but this has been positive by Bible scholars and has
been extensively written about by by Bible scholars. Yes, talking
about the cat. The cat, the Jewish people seen in
the Bible are descendants of the Canaanite people, right so
according to historians, right, so the warring tribes you always

(42:59):
hear about these Canaanites that they're always talking about. The
Jewish people themselves are descendants of the Canaanite people, and
thus their religion is also a descendant of the Canaanite religion,
and the Canaanite religion is a polytheistic religion. So so
that's sort of the etymology, the sort of history that

(43:19):
that that explains a lot of these strange sorts of
differences you see in the in the in the Hebrew
Bible or the tanak As, as Jimmy was kind of
pointing out, because it is sort of a blending of
culture there, there is a sort of synthesis that's happening.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
Right, And I think there was a lot of Zoroastrian
influences that got mixed out as well.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
Right, Yeah, just like any religion, it's a combination of things. Yeah,
and Judaism is an exclusive to this for sure.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
So and I have a question for you, actually, I'd
like to hear from you. You know, you're you're getting
us excited with these questions and we're like we're we're
competing with each other to show off about who who
knows more. But what I really want to do is
I going to ask you something. You know, you were
raised Catholic but never actually read your Bible. What was
your experience like growing up when you had to justify

(44:12):
your religion. Did you run into situations where people challenged you,
or was there ever a time where maybe you challenged
your clergy or or your you know, the scholars quote
unquote in your religious institution, tell us what you know
what that entailed.

Speaker 5 (44:29):
Well, I never really had any direct, you know, challenges
with anyone, but I mean even as a small child,
like you know, they would tell, you know, say things
that I just could not, like I believe because that
was the only thing I knew and I was told
to believe it. But even in my I think there
was a little apeist budding in me the whole time,

(44:51):
because like the whole you know, crucifixion and then coming
back to life. You know, you died on Friday night
and came back on Sunday morning, Like that's never happened,
you know who dies and comes back, But so you know,
that'll kind of I can never get past that and

(45:11):
the whole Like when they were doing the preps for communion,
they would hold up the bread and say, you know,
this is my body, and then hold up the wine
and say this is my blood. And I'm like, why
are we eating off of Jesus's body and drinking his blood?
I don't know that there was this little things that
I kind of felt challenged by inside because I'm like, well,

(45:32):
this isn't making sense to me. I mean I remember
even I went to public school, but even being five
years old in kindergarten way back in nineteen hundred and
seventy three, that when we would first said the Pledge
of allegiance and the under good part, that always made
me uncomfortable, even way back then, Like I just didn't
feel like God had a place, you know, at school.

(45:54):
And I was five, you know, I didn't know why
I felt the way I felt.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
Yeah, a lot of things there. You know, we're we're
we're a nation that where the rejects of religious zealous right.
You know, America was founded by you know what, what's
often described as, you know, we're oppressed. Really you know,
some people say they didn't want these Puritans around, right,

(46:20):
So so that Puritanism kind of is ingrained in American
culture and is the result of saying the Pledge of
Allegiance with God in it and stuff and you know,
this this kind of stuff, these rituals that seem kind
of sort of archaic. Now, yeah, I think a lot
of people are seeing that today and are realizing, Hey,
this stuff's kind of making sense because it doesn't make sense.
You know, we have the Internet, we're able to talk

(46:41):
about it. You know, we're able to kind of be
in a place where we can speak about it openly
because for the majority of time, and it still is,
it's these aren't conversations that are particularly welcomed, right, Like,
you're never going to have this conversation in a church, right,
It's not going to happen. So I'm at least thankful
that we can speak about it.

Speaker 5 (46:58):
Freely, right, Yeah, yeah, but there are parts. I know
you were talking about Jesus earlier, and you know what
hear people say, oh, these people are fate Christians because
they don't follow Jesus's teachings. And I guess what they
mean by that is, you know, is you know, feed
the poor and close people and take in people. But
he did say a lot of bad things, didn't he

(47:20):
he did?

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (47:21):
Yeah, I think it's more like what my interpretation of
Jesus's teachings are too.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Right, Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
And you know that is like a straw man argument
or not strong man argument, excuse me, no, true scotsman
argument that Christians like to use on each other, and
they will rely on that to the max extent possible.
You know, you can point out anything you want about religion,
about a religious leader and say well what about this person,

(47:49):
and they go, well, that's not a true Christian. I
had a discussion. Excuse my voice today, folks, man, I
apologize to the viewers, but I had a discussion recently
with somebody who, you know, was talking about the morality
of Christianity, and I said, you know, the the not
the current Pope, but not even the Pope before him,
but Pope Benedict. You know, there is record of him

(48:11):
knowing about child Essay and moving offending clergy members around
Europe so that they were not held to the legal
standards of those state and local societies or the you know,
the legal systems of those countries. And my friend said,
you know, well that that was not a true Christian
and I said, this is the Pope. This was the

(48:31):
Pope not a true Christian. You know, there there are
clearly flaws in your religion that you cannot just explain
away with the no true Scotsman fallacy. And that is
I think one thing that Christians rely on often as
a crutch when explaining, you know, the the dichotomies, the
contradictions of their religion. Well, this person says this about Christianity,

(48:54):
but they're not a real Christian. They don't understand it
the real way. And you know, my country or my conclusion,
there were be there just there's no real way, there's
no solidarity.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
You know.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
I think I think this idea that Christians or you know,
religious people in general, pertain in any religion, but you know,
for for our premises, Christians can't agree. Is why Kelly
considers himself an igtheist, right, not just the atheist, but
he takes it a step further. Kelly, would you did
you want to talk about atheism a little bit?

Speaker 3 (49:23):
Yeah, Dan's and teists too, Yeah, of course, okay, Yeah.
And it's the idea that because nobody has an unambiguous
definition of what God is, that we can't really have
a substantial conversation about the existence of God because nobody
seems to know what God is.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Right, Yeah, So that there's a lot of problems with
even starting that conversation defining God. But I want to
offer one quick correction for you. And because you mentioned
Jesus said told people slaves obey your masters. That actually
comes from Paul, and Paul talks about that in the
Book of Ephesians. But but Jesus doesn't say much about
the commentary of slaves. That's that's kind of what Jimmy
was pointing out earlier, because there is a story where

(50:00):
Jesus does heal a slave, and he doesn't say, oh,
let the go, let the slave be free. He's just
kind of healing the slave and so keeping to the
status quo. But you know, like Christians did use the
Bible to endorse the argument of slavery. You can go
back and read text from the Civil War period from many, many,
many pastors, many religious people saying hey, not only is

(50:24):
slavery okay, but it's biblical and this as an institution
is okay. As long as you treat your slave correctly,
you are fine. And this is why America we don't
we think of America as a pretty Christian country. That's
why we had slavery for so wrong for as long
as we did in parts, because it was okay for

(50:45):
a lot of people. So, you know, you can definitely
make the argument that Christianity has actively endorsed slavery that's
just that's fact, right, People use it for that, so
you know, yeah, there's a lot of problems when it
comes to interpreting morality from the Bible. For sure.

Speaker 5 (51:00):
Jesus never said anything against slavery though, right, No.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
He was pretty agnostic to the institution of slavery. He
doesn't have any direct sort of commentary on slavery itself.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
I have my book from it was published in eighteen
fifty one, and I don't know if it's going to
come out really good on the camera because it's very worn.
But it's the Bible defense of slavery. It was written
in the antebellumselves. It's a book thicker than the Bible
explaining why the Bible thinks slavery is Okay.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
Yeah, the abolishment of slavery is a pretty that's an
enlightenment idea, you know that that is something because as
people will point out, well, slavery has always been a
thing in a lot of cultures, and that's definitely true. Right.
It's not exclusively that Christian's own slavers, right, that's crazy, right,
lots of people owned slaves. But Christianity has absolutely at

(51:50):
least Christians in the past have defended the institution of slavery,
obviously quite vigorously, which is why, in part, why the
Civil War occurred. But yeah, so it's not it's not
the best arbiter of morality. The Bible, you know, not
the best doesn't actually tell us what we should really
be doing in our opinion.

Speaker 5 (52:09):
So well, yeah, I mean because I I you know,
I hear you know, you guys on these shows, you know,
and you're reading directly from the Bible, and and you know,
the more the more I learned, the more I'm like, Okay,
where did this idea come from that God is an
all loving god? Because he sounds narcissistic and that's interesting.

(52:33):
He has anger management issues.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
And yeah, well he wasn't an all loving god. He
only loved the Jewish people for a while. I mean,
that's that's the fact of it. He was. He was
an ethno nationalist God. There's many times in the Old
Testament where he says, I'm the Jewish people are my people.
Can you imagine people saying that today? What if I
said white people are God's people? Right, Like, that's not

(52:57):
a great concept, but that was to differentiate themselves from
the cultures around them. You know, it's very much tied
into the ethnicity of Judaism. This idea of God being
all loving and caring about everybody. That's a more Christian
idea that comes later than the original texts. Right, you
concur with that, Kelly, what are you gonna say?

Speaker 3 (53:13):
I let's say, like, I'm pretty sure that like early
on even the Christians thought it was only for the Jews.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
Yes, there was debate about the.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
Message of Jesus was right, and it was Paul who
who came along and said, no, we have to spread
this to everybody else.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Right, Yes, and that's that's not the speculation of historians either,
and that's in the Bible itself. If you read the
Book of Acts, you will see that Paul and Peter again, Peter,
the guy being that actually met Jesus right, was hanging
out with him, and Paul just being this rando. They're
fighting about who Christianity is for, whether it's for just

(53:46):
Jewish people or for everybody. So like this, you know,
already from the beginning of Christianity there's this idea that
God's love or what God wants from people that does
not extend to everybody. So yeah, just another or you
know fact that gets put into this pile of oh,
this interpretation of we have of God, it's just it's
very it's a very synchronized idea. It doesn't exist by

(54:11):
itself in a vacuum. It comes after much, much argument
from Christians.

Speaker 5 (54:17):
You know, is that why there's like thirty or forty
thousand different denomination.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
That's part of it for sure. If you look, let
me and let me give this fact to you. Have
you ever heard of Gnostic Christianity? Do you know about this?

Speaker 5 (54:31):
I think I've heard of it, but I'm not sure
exactly what it is. I'm not a very well educated.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
That's okay, No, I would love to talk about this
with you. Gnostic, first of all, comes from this idea
of secret knowledge. Right, It first existed in Judaism. There's
sects of Judaism that basically claimed to have that. There's
some texts, there could be some divine sort of different translations,
different understanding, secret interpretations of what the doc says and
what other Jewish writings say. Right, Christianity has a similar thing.

(54:58):
There was this idea of Gnostic Christianity, and and here
was a main point of argument for the Gnostic Christians.
They said, well, the God of the Old Testament is
so violent and so so different than this God that's
depicted in the New Testament. They have to be different gods,
like they have to be different beings. The God of
the Old Testament basically must be like some sort of

(55:21):
devil like creature, some sort of evil incarnate. That was
an early Christian heresy because the people who are actually
getting involved in Christianity were like, hey, this this already
does it make sense? Right? And you don't hear about
this interpretation now because it's a it's a heresy that
was you know, basically called out for and on the
council and I see another sorts of ecumenical counsels came together,

(55:43):
you know, they kind of put that idea aside. They
shot it down. But yeah, already from again, from the beginning,
Christians were fighting about what how do we synchronize these
texts because they're all kind of all over the place,
They're all kind of saying different things.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
There were there was there was a whole stash of
these NaSTA scrolls that were found in Nagamadi, Egypt, which
I know are published online. If you were interested in
finding out more and learning and reading some of those
they're they're online.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
Yeah, yeah, so you know, in short, the Bible is
a mess. Christianity is a mess. It's all over the place.
As you mentioned, there's a billion denominations because nobody can
make heads or tails of this thing. And it's always, always,
at the end of the day, going to be up
to human interpretation. God doesn't seem to be interested in
correcting the record, at least he hasn't yet.

Speaker 5 (56:28):
So yeah, they we don't even know if God's he
for that, you know, for that people say he.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
But yeah, like.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
I like the idea that God has nipples and a
belly button, you know, if people are made in God's image,
does God have nipples and a belly button? That's one
for Christians because I need them to explain now that
we know what nipples and belly buttons, And I say, now, uh,
you know, but but I you know, go back millennia.

(56:58):
I don't think, of course, nobody can plane exactly what
the belly button and nipples or how they developed, or
what the purpose was. Maybe maybe there was some point
where they couldn't do that. But to explain that humans
are made in God's image, he would have to be
an exact or we would have to be a replica
of him, So why have the nipples and belly button?

(57:18):
So yeah, I mean I love the idea of picking apart,
dissecting even the smallest detail, because you could really open
a can of worms on almost anything you pick out.
And the counter to that by the believers is, well,
it's a matter of interpretation. Well it's got to be.
It's got to be a matter of interpretation because now

(57:39):
we've got science. And just like Dan mentioned earlier, you know,
there was a there was a time in history where
you just took what you were told because the smart
people knew what they were talking about well, and because
they could read it well. Then the printing press came out,
and then Bibles were printed in local languages, and then
people were able to figure stuff out for themselves. So

(58:01):
now we needed new justifications, and therefore we had the
splintering of the Catholic Church into Lutheranism and then Calvinism
and the other forms of Protestantism. And so, you know,
again going back to what we talked about, you know,
religion is malleable as long as society is changing, and uh,
you know you're gonna run into all kinds of different

(58:22):
justifications for why interpretations are wrong, why they're right, and
why they have to change. And so you know, with that,
and I think unless you have something else to posit,
I think we're gonna we're gonna head out, head out
and move on. Did you want to say anything else?

Speaker 5 (58:37):
Well, just just one last question, because I did get
confronted sometimes a childlike because Christian children would come, you're
not Christian, You're Catholic, that no true Scotsman fallacy.

Speaker 3 (58:50):
Or yes, yes, yes, and that's why I'm an atheist.

Speaker 2 (58:54):
Yeah, that's sort of the ignorance of Protestant Christians who
grew up in a particular faith tradition that don't actually
understand what Catholicism is or its own sort of sense.
If anything, Catholics are the real Christians. You can make
a strong case for that in some regards, but yeah,

(59:15):
of course, you know, Protestantism is a separate Christian tradition
to Catholicism, which is the oldest, like are you? I mean,
they may claim to be the oldest. There's a dispute
with that with the Orthodox Christians, right, and then they
say they're the oldest, but that's another that's a whole
other interpretation game. There is no here's here's here's my

(59:35):
takeaway for you, And there is no real Christian there,
never has been, there never will be. It will always
be subject to the people of the times to figure
out and therefore completely subjective.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
So and as culture changes, the belief has changed too.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
So yeah, so leave you with that.

Speaker 5 (59:53):
So let's yeah, it's all a big mess. And you know,
you know, they can't prove that God exists and get
it all together. But yeah, it's a big mess. And yeah,
that's that's that's pretty much why I'm an atheist because
everyone's all over the place, you know. So there was
a lot of things that's turned the atheist.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
But yeah, and here's what I say. You know, if
you're practicing the wrong, you're not a Christianity Moore. But
I would to say, you know, I'll let God tell
me what's right. That's what you tell people, You say,
I'm an atheist for now until God tells talks to
me about it, and then we can figure it out
from there. But until then, I'm not going to let
humans tell me what's what's right about it? Right, I

(01:00:32):
don't know that's one option for you. But we'll go
ahead and let you go because you got you know,
I think we're at a time for this call. But
thanks so much for calling. We really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Thank you, and thank you so much for contributing to us,
you know, giving us a super chat last week, saying
such kind words about us, you know, calling in giving
us a super chat this week. I really appreciate your support.
We do have some other super chats. I'm actually going
to read before I do that. You know, we got
somebody in the in the chat, a guy by the

(01:01:03):
name of Earth. Earth. Why are you beefing with our moderators.
Why aren't you just calling us? I mean, you're sitting
here saying that atheism is not logical? I mean, why
don't you just call We have a show about this.
You you turned on the show, you got in the chat,
and then you're sitting there and you are ignoring every

(01:01:23):
invite to challenge us. Look, three atheists right here probably
don't agree on h on a lot, you know. I mean,
the one thing we could say is that Kelly was
something I didn't say before, is actually a Canaanite, and
so that that's why we brought him in to talk
about you know, have this conversation, but you know, we
agree on that and that God's not real, and then

(01:01:45):
I want to know you know, or or God. You know,
we're not convinced that God is real. But then I
want to know how we're logical. I would love to
get an explanation on that. And while we wait for
your call, I would like to say that we have
some super chat and I am going to read them.
And we got one from Space Barbarian for ten dollars.

(01:02:06):
Thank you, Space Barbarian. Real Christians are those who exist,
not the platonic ideal of some denomination. I appreciate that. Yeah,
real Christians.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Why, by the way, I get pissed off when people
say Morbons aren't real Christians. I hear atheists say that too,
and I'm like, no, man, there is Christian as any
other denomination. Absolutely, like there's there's no good standard for
that that you could argue for. I don't think you know,
I agree, and other like minority Christian faiths right like
black Heeber Israelites. Yeah, I mean maybe they wouldn't say Christians,

(01:02:39):
but you know, you could argue that's Christian denomination. I mean, absolutely,
there's so many. Why not add to the pile with Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
With all of the with all the denominations that are
out there, how is anybody a real Christian denomination or
a real Christian? You know, it's so watered down.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
The definition of what that means is that the most
successful organizations, or at least the the the burgeoning ones,
are non denominational. Right, they're just taking in everybody. Like,
let's let's get away from the definition. Just bring me
your money, Josh Everett gives us five dollars. Most of
my morality, at least the ability to verbalize it, came

(01:03:17):
from reading Spider Man comics growing up. Okay, all right,
well you know I love I actually love the Spider
Man analogy. Like, you know, are there true things in
the Bible? Well, yeah, I mean New York City is
a real place. That doesn't make Spider Man reel, you know,
just like you know Cannon or or Nazareth was real.

(01:03:38):
Doesn't make Jesus reel.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
Doesn't make a real place you know that's where all
the gods are. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
So we got some kind of dick or excuse me,
some kind of dickie gives us five dollars. Uh, I
want to hear Dan singh the Father Abraham song choreography
optional but recommended h So you know Father.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
Okay. So the reason why I felt because we have
a very strict policy about songs Father Abraham. I'm like,
one hundred percent sure is public domain. Let me, but
I didn't check it before. Let me we double check
that it is. Uh, you know, let's see how many
versions of the traditional historical Yeah, okay, this this stuff
is real. I think I think we can do it.
I won't. I won't do it until I get full

(01:04:23):
authorization from our Okay, they're saying they don't want me
to do it. That's fine. That may and and that's
not That doesn't mean that it's not public domain. It
can still there may be versions of the song that
are right that are sorry, aren't public domain right, So
expecific specific expressions may not be and sometimes that can

(01:04:44):
be caught and stuff. So anyway, I'm gonna play it
safe and I'm gonna listen to my career and they're
telling me not to do it. But it's a good
idea and I appreciate and spirit and thank you for
the super chat. Sorry about that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
I'm gonna back up that to the crew did say,
yeah it, we'll talk about that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
I have a I have a cut off today. I
don't have time to spend after the show. But maybe
we can we can do something for that, because I
do want to if you're going to donate, I want
to respect the donation, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
I want to be.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Able to do it. But I'm gonna listen to the
crew right now. Well, maybe we can revisit that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Oh ridiculous demands give us an episode that we can
stick our teeth into.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
I know, yeah, wouldn't that be great?

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
Though, so so Earth Earth has been muted. Earth your
commentary in the chat is no longer welcome. But I
will say this, you can call us here if now.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
Just because you're just because you're ban from the chat
don't mean you're man from the show. Baby, come on,
bring it on.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Ready, Three people who are willing to engage you right now.
But until that happens, we are going to go into
the top five patrons because we do have people that
give to us and donate on Patreon, and we are
super supportive of everything you do for us. And I
want to remind people that When you are a member
on Patreon, you get access to exclusive content such as

(01:06:05):
our talk Heathen Lives from TikTok, which we do every
Tuesday at three pm Central and Thursday at seven pm Central,
and so those get uploaded there. But you also get
early access and things like that to some of our episodes.
But our top five patrons are does somebody want to
take this away? I say, we give it to Kelly. Kelly,
you got this.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
Up, man, I can have it up. Just give me
one second.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Here, oh Kelly, I get on him man.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
Number one, number one Oops All Singularity, number two, dingle
Berry Jackson, Gotta Love It, three Kleevi Helvetti, number four
Ja Carleton, and number five Casey Kickindall and an honorable
mention to Steve McDougall. Thank you all so so much,

(01:06:51):
and thank all of you who donate to us through Patreon.
We really appreciate it and it keeps the show going.
We don't tell you the money. We're all volunteers, so
it keeps this show going. Guys don't get paid, Oh shit.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
Do you? No?

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
No? I don't either, you know no, I don't even
yah h none of us. You know what you know
what Casey Kikendall is killing it because she was in
or excuse me, he or she apologized. But but Casey
Kikendall was in honorable mention a couple of weeks ago
and now has moved up to the number five slot.
You know, Casey, I think you can beat j Carlton, Coleevi, Helvetti, Dingleberry,

(01:07:26):
Jackson and Oop's all Singularity who have been hovering and
trading places in the top four for like, I don't know,
three years or something aparent.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
Sort of a call to action there, Jimmy, But I
appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
I'm not doing a call to action. I am just
saying I think it can be done, just making a suggestion.
That's just you know, if you needed somebody to believe
in you, Casey, I believe in you. I just don't
believe in yahweh or any other god. Uh, But I
believe in Casey, and I appreciate that Casey moved up
into the top five having said that. You know, we

(01:08:01):
didn't do something today and we're gonna do it right now.
The crew cam who makes this all possible. We need
to go to the crew.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
Look at them all.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
Oh wait a minute, I thought, Hey, you know what,
thank you to the crew first of all, the Heathens
behind the scenes. You know, we're gonna recognize somebody very
special to us. Lee. Let's bring up Lee. You know
Lee lied to me.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
First of all, Lee Lee.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
Is our token bearded guy.

Speaker 3 (01:08:33):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
That's not Lee Lee. Lee was supposed to be wearing
all black today and solidarity with his team that lost
the uh the uh what do you call it? World
series last night? Lee is our token Canadian, uh, token
bearded Canadian. And you know, not only is he upset
about the the Toronto Blue Jays losing, He's also upset

(01:08:56):
he has a lot to be upset about. He is
the secretary of the ACA board and he is the
chat mod coordinator. If Earth is still listening to Earth,
this guy right here, this is the one that was
challenging you directly, and so you have cowered away from
our very special Lee the chat mod coordinator and secretary.
So thank you Lee for everything you do. It's been

(01:09:17):
great working for you, working with you these past two
and a half years that I've been part of the ACA,
and looking forward to more so. Yeah, I mean, gentlemen,
we have had great, a great conversation with Ann, a
longtime supporter and fan of the show. I had a
good time today. Looks like we are gonna be wrapping
it up this Sunday. And did you guys have anything

(01:09:38):
that you wanted to leave our audience with Kelly, We'll
start with you.

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
You know, one one thing I just wanted to point
out is I personally had the really really good fortune
to have lunch with me in person, and it was
freaking awesome. So he is, I really appreciate everything he's
done behind the scenes here.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
I hugged him once. I hugged him on. I hug everybody,
but I definitely hugged Lee once.

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
And then and as a and to everybody else, I
just want to say, keep thinking critically, go out there,
learn things. There's a ton of knowledge out there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):
I used to think I knew stuff, and then I
realized I didn't know ninety nine point nine percent of
the things in the world, and I started working on it,
and I'm up to about ninety nine point seven percent.

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
Still I have to.

Speaker 3 (01:10:19):
Learn, So get out there, learn stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
It's fun. Yeah, excellent, Dan, leave us with wisdom.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
Well, I was just thinking about Ant's conversation I wish
I gave because you gave a book like for people
to dive further, and I like being able to do that.
So what I came to mind was, Karen Armstrong has
a book called.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
A Wit I gave a recommendation, not an endorsement. I
recommend that book because it was helpful to me.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
Good point. I will all save a recommendation because and
was asking about the polytheistic origins of God, and I
first learned about these arguments in a book called A
History of God by Karen Armstrong, who writes about religion,
And to me, it is like absolutely fascinating because I
don't think it's talked about enough the origins of the

(01:11:01):
religion and the because we always think of these things
as monotheistic. But no, they're definitely polytheistic, and there's a
very very strong case to be made for it. It's
it's it's it's not even questioned in my mind at
this point. So, yeah, religion, religion is always in history
with people, it's not it's not in a vacuum. And
Christianity is not a special exception to any of the

(01:11:23):
rules that other religions have in pretty much any respect. Whatsoever.
So never can see that Christianity is somehow more admirable,
more more special, or more significant than other religions that
have come before it, because it wouldn't exist without those
other religions. That's my wisdom said excellent.

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
Uh yeah, so I really had This was a nice conversation.
We covered a lot of ground today. I hope we've
caused some people to kind of rethink, uh, the preconceived notions,
the indoctrination that they have experienced in their lives. Maybe
open their book for the first time or for the
hundredth time and kind of rethink some of the lessons.
Really read it for yourself without the outside influence, and

(01:12:07):
you know, I could I just encourage you to keep
questioning those things. You know, Uh, You're never going to
be wrong for saying, well, you know, how else can
I look at this? And it's just good practice. So
with that, we're going to move into lover rings all right,
and I want to send lover rings out to Anne Johnson.
Shout out to Anne again, thank you for making our
show successful today and thank you for your support. Kelly,

(01:12:29):
who you sending lover ings out to?

Speaker 3 (01:12:31):
You know what, that's awesome I like to send them
out day and too. I'm so glad you got better
and keep on the same path. Well, Dan, if you
don't send lover rings to Anne, you're just an asshole.
So you want to send it out.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
Yes, and then I don't know a shout outs to
my mom, like, I don't know what else to give
it to you? Honestly, yeah, I will, Jim and I will.
Thanks Thanks for that, everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
Thank you for tuning in today. Remember don't forget that
The Nonprofits airs Monday Wednesday Friday, six pm Central. On Friday.
After you watch the Nonprofits, you can stay on YouTube
to catch Dan and Kelly on Truth Wanted. Don't go anywhere,
get your popcorn. You're I'm not going to endure drinking.
But I had a bottle of wine when I watched
Truth Wanted the other night.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
Not a whole bottle, just some need it. Honestly, I'll give.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
You that sometimes. Yeah, but remember, if you don't believe,
then this is your community and we appreciate you being
here with us. If you do believe, we do not
hate you. Earth, We don't hate you.

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
We just don't agree.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
We're just not convinced. We want the truth. So watch

(01:13:55):
Truth Wanted live Fridays at seven pm Central Call five
one two nine nine one nine two four two, or
visit tiny dot cc forward slash call t W