The Atheist Experience 29.09 with Forrest Valkai and Jim Barrows

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What does the Bible say about skeptics.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
The Bible has an uneasy relationship with skepticism as a whole.
On the one hand, it warns against doubt. James one
six says that the doubter is like a wave being
tossed around by the wind. In John twenty, Jesus tells Thomas,
blessed are those who have not seen and yet still believe.
But then in First Thessalonians five, we're told to test

(00:25):
all things and to hold fast to what is good.
And then that same story about Thomas, Jesus allows Thomas
to put his fingers into the holes in his hands,
feet inside before he believes that it is truly him
who has been resurrected. So which is it blind faith
or critical thinking? Should we trust what we can't see
or should we withhold faith before we ourselves can finger

(00:48):
Jesus's holes. Skepticism is crucial because it's how we separate
truth from fiction. Without it, we all just believe whatever
we're told or whatever pops into our heads. The fact is,
if something is true, it will withstand scrutiny. If it
crumbles under questioning, then it was never worth believing in
the first place.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
But what do you think.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Do you think we're missing something or that there's some
merit to faith? If so, give us a call because
the show starts right now. Welcome one and all to
the Atheistic Experience. Today is March second, twenty twenty five.
I'm your host, Forrest Falci, and joining me today is

(01:30):
the lovely and charming Jim Barrows.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
How are you doing today, my friend, I'm doing really
really good. How about yourself? I'm doing really well.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Man, never had a bad day of my life. Before
we get started, there's a couple of things we got
to say. The first is that The Atheists Experience is
a product of the Atheist Community of Austin, which is
five' one c three nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion
of atheism, critical thinking, secular humanism, and the separation of
religion and government. The second thing that we have to
say is that we have a question of the Week
situation right now. We always do this share your experience thing.

(02:00):
We ask you to leave your opinions in the comments.
Last week we asked you what was God doing before
he created the universe? And here are the three favorites
of Johnny p. Angel himself. Number three says what God
was doing for creating the universe, furiously masturbating the Big
Bang was really the Big Oh. The second is before

(02:23):
creating the universe, God contemplated.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
His own existence. Where did he come from? Where did
he go? Cotton eyed God?

Speaker 2 (02:31):
And then finally number one, God was trying to figure
out what to create the universe out of, only to
realize through his horror that he had literally nothing to
work with. Love that, make sure to hoard of your
answers below to this question. The problem for this week
is what can you say in a sales pitch but not.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
At the pulpit. That's a pretty solid one.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
If you have anything you want to add to I
just my first time seeing that I have nothing prepared.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, I can't think. I think I'll top my head either.
Well not not. That is good for a family show.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Let's just say right right, yes, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
I mean, I mean, you made the finger in the
holes joke earlier, and I'm kind of going along those lines,
you know. Just just run your fingers up and down
this right.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Feel the quality. Gosh.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Fortunately, our audience is more clever and funny than we are,
and so they will surely give us some answers, and
Johnny Angel himself will be the one who decides what
the best ones are because he is also more clever
and funny.

Speaker 4 (03:33):
Than we are.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
More clever, but he's definitely funnier. He is a very
funny man.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
With that, we've got a great show for everybody today,
So I'm so glad that everybody's tuning in.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
We've already got like lines filling up like crazy. We've
got like ten people waiting on the line. As always,
we will be prioritizing theist callers. If you're a theist
and you're calling in, we're going to try to take
those calls first, talk about what you believe and why
you believe it, and then we might even try to
get a chance to talk to atheists or whoever else
before the end of the show as well. But for

(04:09):
right now, if you're watching this, if you believe in
a God or God's if you believe that faith is
a good pathway to truth, if you believe that the
Bible is true, if you want to talk to a
couple of people who don't believe these things in a
serious way, this is your chance to give us your
best shot and to talk to us about things that
matter and maybe who knows. If you're right, you could
save thousands, tens of thousands of souls who are listening

(04:31):
to this show, or.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
We could just have a pleasant conversation.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Number on the bottom of screen there is five to
one two nine nine nine two four to two, So
pick up your phone and give that a call or
use the link in description. I believe we have a
weblink you can call into as well as for right now. Jim,
do you have any preferences here? Because I see a
couple that I'm interested in, but I don't know if
you have any preferences.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
Well, I thought, yeah, I would the guy before. Yeah
that works too, I don't who's the guy that number two? There?
Number two? Oh yeah, sure I can do that too.
Yeah that sounds great.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
So let's do Tommy no prown uns given, calling in
all the way from Portugal. My goodness, who wants to
talk about the problem of suffering?

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Tommy?

Speaker 2 (05:17):
You are on the atheist experience of Forrest and Jim.
How are you doing today?

Speaker 5 (05:20):
I'm doing well, thank you, and thank you for excuting me.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah, so what do you want to talk about us?
Talk to you about with us. Those are words. Those
are all the words I was trying to say.

Speaker 5 (05:31):
So I do believe that the problem of suffering, and
in general, the problem of evil is the greatest challenge
to the Christian faith. I think it's very hard to
try to come up with any sort of answer, and
I often find that the answers many Christians come up
with are just not worthy of any respect, either morally

(05:51):
or rationally. I do respect to a great extent people
who reject out by some suffering. I think that's respectable.
I understand. I would like to try to give him
a different view, a Christian view on the problem of
suffering that I find you and there represents it.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
Okay, okay, So, just to be clear, the problem of
suffering and the problem of evil really is what it is,
because it's not suffering. Suffering is just something that happens.
But it really is the problem of evil, right, And
that is that if God exists, then God is omnipotent, omnipotent, omniscient,
and morally perfect. If God is omnipotent, then he has
the power to eliminate all evil. If God is omniscient,

(06:28):
then God knows when evil exists. If God is morally perfect,
then God has a desire to eliminate all evil. Evil exists.
If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn't
have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn't know
when evil exists, or doesn't have the desire to eliminate
all evil. Therefore God does not exist. That's the formal argument, right, Yeah, Okay, cool,

(06:50):
go for it.

Speaker 4 (06:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (06:52):
I think the understanding of the problem of evil relies
on assumptions about God, the world, and the relation of
God to the world that I would say, not only
are not the best that are not representative of classical

(07:12):
Christian beliefs. We can we can take it from a
specific angle if you'd like to attack it, or do.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
You want me to You're you're you're the one driving this,
I agree as the problem of evil, it means that
the Christian God, as the triomna God, right, the omnipotent,
omnition omnibenevolent God, can't logically exist. So if you're going
to make an argument, then you need to prove that
evil can exist with that triomnia God. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Basically, the only time I've ever like, I've talked to
a lot of Christians who struggle with this, and the
only arguments I've ever heard against it. And I know
you said that a lot of the arguments are bad,
so like you probably agree, But the only arguments I've
ever heard against it thus far are either that the
triomne situation isn't what we think it is, that one
of those omnis isn't real, or that evil is actually

(08:01):
a necessary and good part of the grand Divine plan
and so God is allowing this evil on purpose. Or
the third one is the cop out of saying, well,
it's all about free will, and like, you have the
free will to do evil, and God can't stop you
from having that free will can't sit which also goes
against the Bible and the concept of God in the
first place. But that's neither here nor there. Those are

(08:22):
the three ones that I get all the time. Is
either one of the omnies is not right, or evil
is actually good, or God must allow evil and still
can have the triomne situation, which kind of goes into
the second one as well. If you're offering us one
of those, I will be apocalyptically grumpy with you. But
if you're offering us something different, I'm into it.

Speaker 5 (08:41):
Well, my biggest problem with the second one you mentioned,
that's the one that I find most important.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
Evil is necessarily and good rights, right, My.

Speaker 5 (08:54):
Response, yeah, I have many problems with that. So my
response is either be the first in the third or
it will at least sound like them. So that the
understanding of God, the classical Christian tradition that I adhere to,
like the basic definition of God. It doesn't start at
the triomni properties. There are something that you conclude from

(09:16):
the idea of God being limitless and infinite, and so
he's limitless and infinite in every way, and you need
to start from that and to understand the omni properties
within that context. So when we say that God is
all powerful, it's because he's unlimited and so nothing can
limit his nature from expressing himself fully. And because God's

(09:40):
nature is good and goodness, the idea of God doing
something evil or bad would itself be a limitation of
his nature. The only way he forgot to do something
evil would be for something to limit God's nature from
expressing it.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Well, so it's the problem God is doing evil. So
the proble, well, it's not God doing evil. The problem
of evil is that God allows.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Evil to exist, which you could argue is doing evil.
Like if I don't stop somebody from being murdered, you
could argue that I'm culpable.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
You know, well, only if you're only I would say,
only if you're omnim benevolent. Right, if you're a human being,
your ability to interfere without risk to yourself means you're
by definition not omnibi. That's a good point.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, omni benevolent and omnipotent go along with that. So yes,
I think you're absolutely right. So like, yes's it's kind
of the my issue. Tell me from what you just said,
I I don't understand the difference between your statement about
God's you know, the omnipotent power, the unlimited power. I
don't understand the fundamental difference between that and any other

(10:47):
way that we could say that to say, if I
just say to you, there's nothing God can't do. God
is all powerful, God can do whatever he wants, And
you say God has no limits, nothing can stop God
from expressing his nature, which is to be good. Well,
I don't understand the fundamental difference between these two concepts
and why you're drawing a distinction.

Speaker 5 (11:04):
Because this understanding of God's nature is what connects to
the third response you mentioned as the idea that to God,
evil it is because of our choices, and forgot to
remove our choices would be forgot to do something bad.
Because choices, meaningful choices about morality are important.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
So, just to be clear, what you're saying is not
a limitation orp.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
So just to be clear, God sees somebody doing something evil, murder, rape, genocide,
whatever it may be, no matter how bad, no matter
how extreme it is. God sees this and makes a
moral judgment that either God can stop this evil taking
place or can allow it and preserve this person's autonomy.
And God values the autonomy of the murderer, rapist, genocidal, whatever.

(11:55):
That person's autonomy to do whatever they want is more
of a moral high ground for God than interfering and
stopping this evil thing from happening to innocent people.

Speaker 5 (12:06):
I think that would have to be. That seems to
be the only coach against response.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
So Levey proposed this to you. Let me proposed this
to you. A parent sees their child getting ready to
hit another child, should they allow that? Or is it
moral to allow that? Or is it more moral to
put a stop to that?

Speaker 5 (12:26):
I would say we should put a stop to that.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
How is that any different than God wanting to put
a stop to people doing evil?

Speaker 5 (12:31):
Because the idea that if God does not allow any evil,
that would essentially turn this into just robots doing this.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
The parent doesn't allow the child, then just substitute God
for parent allowing the child to hit another child. Just
make that substitution for me and tell me how that works,
because the actions are the same. Right, I could say
God knows one child is about to hit another child,
and you're saying it's okay for God to not interfere,
but it's not okay for a parent to not interfere.

(13:01):
What's the difference here? As we're doing is substituting the
subject to God for parent. Right, That's all we're doing.
It's the same situation, and you have two different moral choices.
You're claiming one's good, ones bad. I don't see any difference,
So what's the difference?

Speaker 5 (13:15):
Yeah, great question. I understand that it's hard to try
to respond. I would say, you know, when we stop
a child from hitting another child, we are not removing
the limits. We're not removing the the ability for the
child like deliberate.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
It doesn't have to God. God's in the exact same
situation with the child's ability to make a choice at all.
God's in the exact In fact, God isn't as an
omnipotent being. God is in a better position to stop
one child from hitting another child without interfering with that
child's free will than the parent is right, You're you're
making this assumptions. Is assumption that everybody who who comes

(13:56):
into this argument makes is that the only way for
God to prevent something from happening is to take away
somebody's free will. It's really he has many more options.
For instance, he could simply move the two apart. Right,
A parent would over and grab the swinging fist and
stop the fist and lecture the child. God could do
the same fact right, So anything that a limited power

(14:17):
person individual can do entity can do, God can do
better because He's not limited. So once again, you're limiting
God's ability to interfering the free will. So you're putting
a limit on your God. You're putting a limit on
your God that the parent doesn't have. Right.

Speaker 5 (14:32):
I think an important distinction is the idea of understanding
creation like all of creation, as one whole.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
That and that's what it does nothing to do with
It has nothing to do with what we're talking about, doesn't.
It's going off on a tangent because what we're talking
about is a part of the same thing.

Speaker 5 (14:51):
Are part of creation. God is the parts from creating.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
This I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
I frustrating to me is that, Like what's frustrating to me, Tommy,
is that you're trying to put God as this special
thing where like morality doesn't seem to apply to him
in the same way, and yet he is the final
arbiter of morality. Well by saying that he's different from creation,
so like all the all the evil and suffering that

(15:17):
happens in this world is different as different rules and
different implications because he's separate from creation.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Like, how is that not what you're saying?

Speaker 5 (15:26):
Because the suffering isn't suffering, It doesn't come from God.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
It comes from creation, not suffering. It's evil and we're
not talking about suffering, we're talking about evil. Ultimately it
also I'm sorry, but it ultimately does it come from God?

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Ultimately?

Speaker 3 (15:39):
It does? Right, because the think what you're missing is
that what I'm saying is that God and the parent
are both moral actors. So I don't care who the
moral actor is. If you clan that a moral actor
is acting morally when they stop a child from hitting
another child, then substituting in an actual person or entity,

(16:01):
God or a person doesn't matter. You're now changing and
you come up two different answers to the same scenario
depending on who the moral actor is. Then morals are subjective.
There's no objectivity to it, right, Objective two plus two
is always four. So I don't see how you're getting
around this very very simple fact that if a moral

(16:21):
actor performs an action that we claim is moral, it
doesn't matter who we substitute in for the moral actor.
Whether it's God, a human being, or a ring attack,
it doesn't matter.

Speaker 5 (16:31):
The difference in the point I was trying to communicate
is that the whole purpose of creation is for creation
to learn to recognize and to choose the goodness of
God by itself.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
So you say the wholeness of creation, do you mean
that God that rocks are supposed to because rocks are
a part of creation, or are you're just talking about
moral actors like humans.

Speaker 5 (16:53):
I'm an idealist. I believe that the world is fundamentally
as consciousness and matter is a derivative. Things are a
product of consciousness that will ultimately align with God.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
So rocks consciousness. Do we want to go off on
that tangent? I don't think we don't.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
I promise the whole other thing. I have a totally
different line of questions, Jim.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
If you're okay with it, unless you're in the middle
of something, I don't want to derail you.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
Go ahead. So really, he still has it addressed.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
No, he hasn't, And I'm hoping to attach it from
the other direction just for a second here, Tommy. Is
the Bible true and accurate and like a fair depiction
of God?

Speaker 5 (17:31):
It depends on how it's interpretive. I think we need
to be careful, especially Guild Testament is.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
A plain text reading of the Bible, an appropriate way
to understand God. No, okay, so then you would disagree.
I'm sure where in Exodus it repeatedly says that Pharaoh
wanted to let the Israelites go, but God hardened his
heart so that he would not let them go, which
would be a direct violation of the Pharaoh's free will.

(17:57):
I'm assuming you don't think that that is an accurate
interpretation of that part of the Bible.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, okay, so then let's try a different character.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
That's why I asked, right, let's try a different character.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
What about the character of Satan? Does is Satan real?

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Do you believe?

Speaker 4 (18:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (18:11):
I remember this question from a preach, So we have
to clarify if when we talk about Satan we're talking
about something like the spirit of sin, or we're talking
about evil embodied.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
I'm talking about maybe you have a different understanding of me.
I'm talking about the common Christian understanding of the word
Satan being another name for the fallen angel, Lucifer, the devil,
the person who was at the beginning who knew God
was created by God, met God personally, rebelled against God,
and is now in charge of Hell.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
That guy.

Speaker 5 (18:43):
Sure, I mean I have some issues with that characterisation,
but let's grant it for now because they're not for elevants.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Okay. Sure.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
So my question then, and maybe you have a way
of like to tell me why I'm misinterpreting this, is that,
like the big thing that Jim and I seem to
be hung up on here is that God could interfere.
God could show up and tell people, hey, quit murdering
each other.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
It's not fun.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
It's not a cool thing to do. God could physically intervene.
God could intervene, just like as a parent scolding us.
God could come in and say something. There's a million
ways that God could handle the situation of evil in
the world without violating free will. And you seem to
think that there's an issue there. My question to you is,
does Satan does Lucifer have free will? The dude knew

(19:28):
God personally knows beyond anybody's like understanding, who and what
God is.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
God.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Satan understands God better than you ever could hope to,
and knows God's rules, and knows God's personality, and knows
the punishments and the judgments and everything, and still makes
the free choice to rebel and to turn against him.
Why would God not afford us the same liberty as
he affords Satan to come down here and say, listen, y'all,

(19:56):
genocide's bad. Quit doing it, and we can choose whether
or not we want to align ourselves with this God
that we now know for sure exists.

Speaker 5 (20:04):
I don't think that's an accurate or kills Satan. I
think it's impossible for any rational spirit to fully know
God and to go against God when whenever anyone, a
human or otherwise goes against God is either because of
some ignorance or because they're enslaved to some vice or
something like that, whose fault is ignorance?

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Also, Yeah, that's a good question. I was going to say,
you're saying that Satan does not know God?

Speaker 3 (20:30):
Then not fully or I think it's not whose fault
is that? Cool? So so then there's your issue that
I also have.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
And that's that's exactly what Jim's asking is, Like, who's
that if Satan the dude who met God in person
and was there at the beginning, who was the witnessed?
You know, this whole thing was a birth of creation
and all the Satan is the best possible chance that
we can have, along with the other angels. I suppose
to be as close as possible to God and still

(21:00):
doesn't understand enough to make the right choices.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
What fucking hope do we have?

Speaker 3 (21:05):
Tommy?

Speaker 2 (21:06):
How is it fair for God to judge us when
we know him so much worse than Satan and Satan
still can't make the right choice.

Speaker 5 (21:14):
I don't think we know him much less than Satan.
I think Satan was in a similar position when he
went against God.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
Whose fault is our ignorance?

Speaker 5 (21:24):
Ignorance is the result of privation that comes from creation
ex nikolo, So.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Whose fault is the ignorance? Though God's right, God has
chosen to have us remain ignorant because God is omnipotent,
which means he has the power and he's omission so
he knows we're ignorant, and he knows that our ignorance
is going to force us to make bad choices, or
to allow us to make bad choices, and he's omnipotent,
so he has the power to educate us or see,

(21:52):
we're still coming back to the same thing, right, we
still come back to the same problem. God is omnipotent.
Therefore he has the power to educate us in such
a way that we would never want to choose evil,
and without taking away any choice from us at all.
God has that power because God is also omniscient, which
means he knows our hearts and our minds, and so

(22:14):
he can make this and it doesn't matter our intelligence level,
it doesn't matter anything other than God has the power.
So it's God's fault we're ignorant. Yes, So again we
come back to that if we're ignorant because of God,
God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not omnibentible,
right or right back to the same same three knots

(22:36):
that you claim are true. No matter how you can,
no matter how you slice this cake, it keeps coming
up God at the triomne. God cannot exist. It's logically
impossible with the world as it is today, with the
universe as it is as we know it.

Speaker 5 (22:49):
Can I respond? Yeah, the process you described of God
helping us know the truth and not the ignorant, that
is what the process of creation is that we are
going through right now.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
But that's Lord's but it's not benevolent. But it's not
benevolent right because right now there are people dead before
Christ was born who never had the chance to learn that.
And you repeat that, there are people dead before Christ
was born who've never had a chance to learn this.
There are people dying all over the world who don't
know any of this. Right There are Buddhists, and there

(23:25):
are Islamic folks, and there are Janus and you know,
all these people all around the world who are dying
without knowing anything because God has chosen to not do
the benevolent thing, or he doesn't know this is happening,
or he doesn't have the power to change it.

Speaker 5 (23:42):
It's not impossible for those people to do good.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
I'm not saying that it is impossible, but it is
impossible for them to go to heaven because they have
not confessed with their mouths that Jesus's Lord or whatever
the weird scripture is like. So because these people live
in ignorance and die in ignorance of God, they will
not go to heaven.

Speaker 5 (24:01):
So I'm a universalists. I believe everyone will ultimately be safe,
everyone will come out very nice.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
So there's no point in doing good. If we're all
going to be saying there's no point in doing good.
Did you just say that good that's effect to what
you just said.

Speaker 5 (24:13):
As intrinsic value. So firstly two things, that good has
intrinsic value. And if you live your life doing very
bad things and only later has a change of heart
and choose the good, that will be very painful for
you to recognize all the evil stuff you've done.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
That's still not been evolent. Because it right a lot
of people to choose evil knowing they're going to feel
bad later. That is not manivolent.

Speaker 5 (24:38):
The alternative is not giving them a choice.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
No, it's not. Now you're saying, your God's not omnipotente, right,
That's it.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
We've been trying to make it very clear this entire time.
There are plenty of options God could has available to
him that could help us to understand him, to understand
good to do all these things, and would not result
in the violation of our free will and wouldn't doom
us to an eternity of damnation or of like whatever.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Heaven is or anything like that. It's just, at the
end of the.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
Day, like I can't get past this concept that like
the free will of the rapist is more important than
the protection of the victim because eventually the rapist will
feel bad someday, and that's that's morality.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
And it's just it's not good enough for me. This
God is not good enough for me. So, Tommy, it's
been twenty three minutes and we've got several other calls.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
I think it's about time we move on, but I
encourage you to call us back sometimes you want to
talk about this more. So far, you have not changed
my mind at least that this God is any less
monstrous than I thought it was, if indeed it is
real at all.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
But I do appreciate your time. You've been a very
pleasant person to talk to. Yeah, absolutely, Tommy. And you've
offered us nothing now, thank rejection God.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
All right, take care Tommy, good bye.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, and he offered us nothing now. And it's the
thing is this argument goes back prior, goes all the
way back to the Greeks and some you know, Epicurus,
and so it's not a new argument by any stretch
of the imagination. And like most of the arguments for God,
they predate Christianity in many cases. So yeah, nothing new there.

Speaker 6 (26:13):
Or unfortunately not unfortunately not really quickly before we move on,
I'm going to I swear to glob dude, I'm going
to figure this out where I make sure I do
the job.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
We have announcements before between calls that I'm supposed to say,
and the first one is this, all right, we got
oh exciting news about a thing that's going on. Play
the thing with Sophia, Go Colin, Sophie.

Speaker 7 (26:37):
Free thinkers. We are excited to announce that the ACA
is launching its first ever fundraising campaign amplify ACA in
partnership with amplify Austin. This is your chance to expand
our impact by making your voices heard and supporting the
shows that you love.

Speaker 8 (26:52):
We invite you to join us on March fifth, starting
at six pm, we're going to be doing a twenty
four hour fundraising event in camp out Live at the
Free Thought Library in Austin, Texas.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
We've got a.

Speaker 8 (27:02):
Great show in the work, so whole variety hour with
our hosts doing different things, not just taking calls like
you're used to, but we're going to have the fun
facts and playing some games and lots of different activities,
so be sure to join us from that again. It's
going to be really exciting and we're looking forward to
having as many people involved as we possibly can.

Speaker 7 (27:19):
Donating is easy on amplifyatx dot org. Just search the
word atheist and click the donate button. Follow us on
our socials from more information.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
This is important.

Speaker 9 (27:29):
We want to be able to amplify the voices of
reason and compassion worldwide, so we ask you please donate
on amplify Austin day to make a real difference.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
You should donate just because Jamie told you to that
beautiful bastard gave you a director and like, ah, how
could you say no to that face? Thanks so much, Ben,
Sophie and Jamie for that incredible commercial. This is our
first ever major fundraising campaign and we need your help
to make it a success. So marke your calendars from
March fifth at six pm for our fundraising kiit off

(28:00):
party and twenty four hour long live stream. Come down
to the Free Thought Library if you're in Austin, join
us online via the Athey Experience Channel, make a plan
to donate and amplify the ACA. Also, if you like
what we do, you can can become a member of
our Patreon. Given to our Patreon insures our ability to
continue to produce the content that you love. You can
also become a channel member for as little as ninety

(28:21):
nine cents a month. Just click the joint button down
below the video. Or you can buy some merch at
tiny dot cc slash merch a ACA and also, last
but not least, a big shout out to the crew
who make this show possible. The crew are magical, wonderful, beautiful,
fantastic people and I love them.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
All very much.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
Of them look at how great they are with that.
We've got so many calls left.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Do you see any that you like, because I'm looking
down at line fifteen and also maybe line three.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, line fifteen looks like it's just a continuation of
what we've already started. Maybe not, I don't know, but yeah,
either one of those.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Let's talk to line fifteen. Let's continue on where we're at.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Let's talk to Benjamin pronounce he him calling in from
Alligator Lips, who wants talk about the problem of free
will a little bit more, basically saying that Tommy's call
didn't really answer the question in the way that he wanted.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
So, Benjamin, you are on XPE with Forrest and Jim.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
How are you doing today? I'm good.

Speaker 4 (29:23):
I tried to call him last week, but I couldn't
get on because it was kind of late. I'm not
sure how much I got left, but.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
We've got about an hour left and we've got a
bunch of people who won't get on today as well.

Speaker 3 (29:35):
Well.

Speaker 4 (29:36):
I had to question about seism, so I talked to
some people last week and they said I would pretty
much be an atheist, but I'm not really sure. So
I was going to kind of ask on that. And
then also I was going to put a spin on this.
So if Lucifer, since you know, brought that up, but
if Lucifer was to step in instead of God, for

(30:00):
from my perspective, at least you know, has just as
much knowledge or possibly more knowledge, and there's just as
powerful as God. Otherwise you wouldn't have that whole problem
with to try only God in the first place.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
That's that's something we hear a lot when we talk
about the Trimney God and the problem of evil. People say, well,
do you know Satan? Satan is interfering with this world?
And it's like, okay, so with Satan more powerful than God,
because if not, then God should be able to stop
him as a loving and infinitely powerful being, but he doesn't.
So either Satan's part of the plan or Satan has
some ability that God can't control, Like there's an issue here.

Speaker 4 (30:36):
Yeah, well see Also if that is true, it would
actually disprove Christianity or at least tear a hole in it.
And I you know, in my mind, and I'm taught
about this before. I before, while you're always talking about
the Lucipher, time to that the guy and just a
hypothetical just to you know, kind of get an idea across.

Speaker 10 (31:00):
If Lucifer was.

Speaker 4 (31:01):
To intervene and try to help humanity instead of hurt
hurt humanity, and in my in my opinion, not everybody
on earth can be saved anyway, because some people just
can't be saved. So if if Lucifer was to step
in as a good guy, you know, hypothetical here and decide,

(31:21):
you know what, I'm gonna go ahead. If Lucifer, you know,
Tendantley speaking, can't do anything without God allowing it anyway.
So if you go that, well, Lucifer's powers come from God.
You know, that's what most people would say. But if
Lucifer was to step in and try to help humanity,
uh and save you know, the people that he could save,

(31:43):
would that blow a hole in as far as you know,
does that prove God won't as far as God.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
Being a good God?

Speaker 4 (31:52):
Or does that just with that you know, people they
might say, oh, well, God allowed him to help humanity,
But then you also have the problem of not being
able to say that everyone anyway. So I was just
going to get y'all's opinion on that, and then all
of a sudden you're trying to figure out a final.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
So first of all, I think you're asking the wrong
people these questions. You need to be asking yourself these
questions because like, at the end of the day, we
don't think this is real. And so like if if
you know, if Satan stepped in and did good things, cool.
I don't like the guy either, if he is truly omnipotent,
But if he isn't, then that is not a big
concern to me, and it doesn't save God from his

(32:31):
moral responsibility.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
We tried to talk to Tommy about this, but we
kind of got derailed.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
It's just like, at the end of the day, the
buck stops with God, no matter what the end of
the responsibility is God.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
If you believe in the.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Garden of Eden story, God knew what was happening. God,
you know, knew what was going to happen. God put
that tree there on purpose, knewing what was going to
take place. God put the serpent in the garden. God
knew what the serpent was going to do. God, you
just said, you can't save everybody. Presumably there are people
out there that will never be saved, and God makes

(33:04):
them anyway, knowing that they're going to go to hell.
You could take the universal approach that that Tommy said
and said, oh, well, we should just allow everybody into heaven.
But then what the hell is the point of this
existence in the first place, If it's not some divine
test or if there isn't afterlife, why don't we just
die to go there?

Speaker 3 (33:20):
Go ahead?

Speaker 4 (33:20):
Well, also, if God was to let everyone into heaven
with and in my personal opinion, I'd think that urs
is going to become the new you know, middle ground,
so to speak. But right, if you know, if God
was to let everyone, like if God snapped his fingers
and made everyone fall dead and just brought everybody into heaven,

(33:41):
then what would the points of hell be at that point?

Speaker 2 (33:44):
You know? And so I mean, and why does it
Why does a God that's supposed to be all loving
have a hell in the first place? What part of
infinite unconditional love involves the threat of torture? You know,
it just doesn't make any sense. So, like, to answer
your question about whether or not you're your theist, you're
an atheist? Hell, Yeah, to ask your question about whether
or not you're a theist or an atheist's it sounds

(34:06):
like you are a theist. If this is what you're
struggling with, I would say you're an atheist. The second
you say, you know what, this isn't fucking this doesn't exist.
That that is the real end. Whether you like God
or don't like God, or do or don't agree with
God or anything like that has no bearing. The question
of whether you're a theist or atheist is whether or
not you believe this God exists. And if you agree
with us that there's no evidence for this God, and

(34:27):
there's a lot of strong logical arguments against it, then
you would say that it doesn't exist, and we call
you an atheist.

Speaker 4 (34:33):
So I was gonna say this, what, Fritt, before I
forget the fact that there is a hell? This proves
the trustion of God being all loving. He can't be
all loving, yet he created hell, so exactly. The other thing, too,
is that you know now me personally, I believe in Lucipher,
I believe in God, I believe in Heaven, I believe

(34:55):
in Hell. I also believe in Limbo. I take kind
of nastic approach. Was not many people are nostitch anymore.
But when I got into this last week or I
sent the week before where uh doctor the I'm Eddie
or whatever, the Anian guy and and somebody else, and
they was based on well if I tak yeah, yeah,

(35:17):
and and so they was telling me, you know, I
can be an atheist and still believe in the after life,
which I told him, I said, I don't. I don't
worship God anyway.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
I do believe in God, but I.

Speaker 4 (35:27):
Think he's an asshole and so and and as far
as after life goes, I believe in you know, uh,
after life in the sense, but I don't worship any
of that. And the only reason I know about limbo
and stuff I've had, you know, personal experiences and stuff
like that. And I hang on to limbo because I

(35:49):
have a hope that my family is still you know,
somewhat watching me or whatever. But the the other thing too,
and and and uh uh the doctor God I brought
this up. He said, you know, he lost his family
to cancer, and I lost mine to cancer as well.
And I made the point to him that you know,

(36:10):
I'm holding on to the limbo idea and it probably
the other stuff too, because I want to. I want
there to be an afterlife after this so I can
be with my family and people that I've lost.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
Over the decades.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
But the the other thing too, you know. Uh, And
back to the hypothetical thing. If if Lucifer has just
as much power as God does, then not already. Plus
the fact that you know, if God created everything in
that sense, then God also created hell, which means that
he's not all of them.

Speaker 11 (36:43):
On the other hand, he.

Speaker 3 (36:45):
Doesn't a little bit. Uh, Benjamin, Because you said something
that I find kind of interesting you. I think you
said that you believe in limbo and heaven because you
want it to be Could you say that.

Speaker 4 (37:01):
No, I've had personal experiences with limbo in heaven. I've
died a few times and I've seen the stuff.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
But how do you know that it was heaven or
limbo and not brain chemicals doing brain chemical things.

Speaker 4 (37:14):
Well, when I was in limbo, it looked like limbo,
I mean the the surroundings, so like, for example, I
could see stuff that was close to me, and it
looked like I was surrounded in a fog.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
And people who are on hallucinogens will say the same thing, yeah,
people who are low on oxygen will say the same thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
It sounds to me Benjamin like you've you've got this
deep seated belief that you're holding onto for personal reasons
because it's more comfortable and it's more convenient, and I
think you're seeing the cracks and the flaws and the problems.
You even said, you know, I believe in the God.
I think he's an asshole. Like just it sounds like
you already have this concept of why this ship doesn't

(37:56):
make sense and why it doesn't work, but you have
some re and some personal reason hold on to it.
You say you've been to limbo in heaven, But as
Jim's pointing out, lots of people of lots of different
faiths claim to have been to lots of different extra
extra plane or extra dimensional places before or after outside
of life and all these things, and like it doesn't
make them any more true than what you're saying. You

(38:17):
can't rule out that you were hallucinating. You can't roll
out that your brain was start of oxygen. You can't
rule out that there was a gas leak. You can't
rule out that you were in a you know, having
a psychotic break. You can't rule out the idea that
the government had some multinational, multi billion dollar conspiracy to
slip you LSD for the sole purpose of fucking with you,
so you would call into this show and distract us

(38:38):
all from whatever is going on in Washington, d C.
At this moment, Like is there's a million reasonable explanations,
even unreasonable explanations, that are more likely than magic, and
so like at the end of the day, man, I think, yeah,
I would definitely call you a theist, But I think
you would agree with me if you really sat down
and hash it out, that you don't have a good
reason to be a theist. You don't have a good
reason to believe in anything supernatural. You have comfortable reasons,

(39:01):
and I hope that you will be as critical to
those as you are being justifiably critical to the concept
of this god in the very first place.

Speaker 4 (39:09):
Well, I so my reisms is pretty much postal experience,
and I can't demonstrate the personal experience because personal experience
is necessarily you know, first person.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
But time you know and then let me let me
address that with a let me let me give you
a personal experience. I had just just to cut all
the details real early short. When I was in the army,
me and a buddy went to uh go start a
test on whether we could diagnose a problem with the
radar or not? Why we're going through training? He said

(39:45):
a bunch of Latin sounding words, waved his hands. We
both laughed. We went to turn the radar on, and
the radar rotated backwards, making a huge droading sound. Now,
this radar is not supposed to It should be physically
impossible and electrically possible to have this thing rotate backwards,
and yet it did. We shut it down. We found
the reasonferd to do it. Our instructors foundaries and to

(40:07):
do that. Should I believe that my buddy cast a
spell to infect the radar with the demon, because that's
what he says he did, even though he says he does,
you know what the words are. Should I believe that
based on that personal experience?

Speaker 4 (40:21):
Well, if you conclude that there was a spiritual thing involved,
you would compare the reason so like, it's not just
that I've had personal spirit.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
Right, I don't know what spiritual reasons even means I
can't detect anything spirit Why should I conclude anything other
than that was weird. We don't know why that happened.

Speaker 10 (40:47):
You would need more knowledge to conclude that the thing
was spirit Yeah, I agree, And my my point was that,
and I.

Speaker 4 (40:58):
Have a lot of knowledge. But my point that I
was going to say, also, you know, if Lucifer is
on us now, and I've been watching keeping you up
with terns events and you know Trump, and not to
get political here because I don't really care one way
or the other, but it's in all these other countries,

(41:19):
don't you know, if they want to make peace good,
but they if Lucifer is actually you know, the one
that pulls the screens behind the curtains start of space
in the Sados, they would have to go through him
to create peace in the first place, because technically he's
the king of the oars. Anyway, at least they're going to.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
It's just a yeah, as just if is doing all
the hard work for you, Benjamin. Benjamin, It's it's been
thirteen minutes. I feel like we haven't gotten anywhere, and
we got pillenty of other people waiting. I just like,
I just want to reiterate, like what you're telling me
is the same thing that I've heard from a bazillion
other Christians and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and everybody

(41:57):
else who believes all sorts of things. For the exact reasons,
and none of them work. None of them stand up.
And I wish that you would be as critical of
your own beliefs as you are critical of the God
that you, unfortunately believe in. I also encourage you to
start giving a shit about politics one way or the other,
because that's very important. But that's beside the point, Benjamin.

(42:18):
We're gonna move on, but I appreciate your call. Man
a right, take care, goodbye. I'm sorry that was cut short.
I didn't feel like we were moving anywhere.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
He was going in circles, and I didn't know where
the circles were going. It's nice dude, genuinely.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
I nothing against him, nice guy, but just I feel
like he needs to critically analyze himself a little bit more.
Really quickly. We got some super chats here. Number one
here comes from Mayo Bytes, who sent six dollars and
ninety nine cents of their colorful ask Canadian money to say,
I think a radioactive cow licked Forest's head?

Speaker 3 (42:52):
Is that how you spelled my name too? It's written
on the bottom of the screen, giving him his super
brain powers. I don't like any part of that to yourself,
you know me, or what my parents were or what
their cow situation was.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Bigobyites also sent two dollars and seventy nine more cents
to say, I will never financially recover from this.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
That's fantastic.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
Luke Riley sent to British Money to say did someone
mention Sheese? No, they didn't, and they never will. Keep
your crown dollars to yourself. Pillow Punk sent five good honest,
hardworking American freedom dollars to say, does it even matter
if a libertarian free will is real or not?

Speaker 3 (43:37):
We experience making judgments and choices either way, So what's
the big deal? That is a good question.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Roger Winzel sent twenty dollars.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
My goodness, the patience of these hosts and the light
of some of these callers is is as or more
miraculous than anything found in the Bible.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
Is very kind of you to say.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
And fit Vacation sent four ninety nine and a supersticker
of is this okay? It's The supersticker is described in
text here as a video game controller poses triumphantly in
between the words critical hits.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
How does a controller pose triumphantly? What is it?

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Is it like a joystick?

Speaker 3 (44:10):
It goes last to everything in the universe has consciousness.
That's what it is. That's what it is.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Miranda Rensburgers sent ten dollars deeply important question Forrest, Why
does your stuff Uterus has eyes? Because it's accurate and
all youter i have eyes, as do all ovaries. Look
at how tiny and cute that little dude it is,
and they're magnetically attached because they're not actually attached.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
To these fimbree here, they're just suspended by uterinigmalis. They're
cute little guys. By bye bye overaryan ligaman's pardon me
was put.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
That stay there. Wow, that was a gift, by the way,
from giant microbes. Super nice people. And then Laren sent
two dollars say limbo is misspelled Jimbo where jim rules
love that?

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Thank you, thank you. I appreciate that, although I do
you hate Jimbo, So.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Everybody hashtag Jimbo.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
He loves it. It's right. You're in the mood today,
chorus all kinds of stuff. I am here to make
this channel a living hell, and I've been doing it
for years.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
We asked also in the chat, we asked you, guys,
if you could pick the next call, what would you
pick and it was a close race. But you guys
wanted to talk to somebody who says that we are
born believers, and so that's exactly what we're going to do.
We've got Cameron pronounce he him calling in all the
way from the frozen northern wasteland that is Canada, who

(45:43):
says that humans throughout cultures are born with a thought
of God. We'll talk about why that matters. Common you're
on the line with Forest and Jim.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
How are you doing today? I?

Speaker 12 (45:51):
Hey, I'm doing good. I'm gonna be arguing for more
of a deistic, monotheistic God. So I'm Christian, but I
feel like that'd be a bit more complicated. You'd have
to come at it a lot of different ways. But
for the sake of argument, more monotheistic, deistic that sound good? Yeah, yeah, Okay,

(46:13):
So it's kind of silly I have to say this. Well,
I'm a Christian who's not a creationist. I think that's silly.
I'm more of a Presbyterian. I don't know if you
know things that come along with that, but it's more
i'll say progressive in some ways, but I believe that
through cultures throughout the world really that humans. It's a

(46:36):
natural thing that we yearn for God, that we yearn
for an afterlife. Now, just because we want something doesn't
mean it's true. But through evolution, through natural selection, we
keep that existence of God. I don't know why we
would keep it if religion is false, if it harms people,

(46:56):
if it's all these terrible things. I feel like it
does a lot of good things to believe in God,
not just because you know I want to, but I
feel like it's true that God implanted us with that
natural human belief in Him.

Speaker 4 (47:12):
Do you have any takes on.

Speaker 12 (47:13):
That or anything.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
I have a huge amount of problems with what you
just said. I'm currently taking notes, Jim. Do you want
me to start it?

Speaker 3 (47:19):
Do you want to? The only thing I'm really going
to say now is go go gadget forest. Yeah, is this?

Speaker 1 (47:28):
Let me just put this thing so name of God.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
There we go.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Got my notes here.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
So, first of all, you talk about the is this
evolutionary reason and like how things change over the course
of evolution. We have maintained this concept of God. What
you were describing, as far as I can understand it
is this. There's a couple of phenomena here, number one
is that humans are really good at these things called
epophenia and paradilia, which are psychological phenomena that we are

(47:55):
able to derive meaning from meaningless data, see things that
are really there, and try to like make sense of
things that really just fundamentally make no sense. It's the
reason why you see shapes and clouds. It's the reason
why you see faces in things that don't actually have faces,
but they have two spots here and a spot in
the middle, and so it looks like something. It's the

(48:15):
reason why we tried drive meeting from dreams or from events.
It's the reason why we have so many logical fallacies.
I drank water and then I got sick. Therefore the
water must have been the thing that made me sick.
And just because that's the way our minds work, we
find these patterns. We create these patterns, we create meaning
where there isn't really meaning.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
We do it all the time.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
That fundamentally leads into this concept of God as well,
where we're saying I know that if I rub sticks together,
I make fire. But then this flash of light came
out of the sky and made fire on the ground.
There must have been some guy up there rubbing real
big sticks together, and that must have been what this is.
We ascribe agency two things that we don't understand, and

(48:56):
that there is an evolutionary reason you can make behind that,
because false positives are safer than false negatives in survival situations.
If you hear a rustling in the bushes and you
run away and it's the wind, you got some extra
cardio that day. If you don't run away and it
was a lion, then you are lunch. And so there's
always an impetus, there's always selection pressure for assuming that

(49:18):
there's something when there isn't. And so that kind of
for me sums up like the evolutionary history of like
these beliefs, and it doesn't give any credibility to the
truth of the beliefs, as you can demonstrate by the
vast majority, the vast number of these beliefs and.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
How incompatible they are.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
And I know you're not arguing for one in particular
spetifically arue for a deistic idea, but like it kind
of falls apart then, and it also falls apart when
you take into account all the other things that like
every human culture seems to have concepts of that certainly
you wouldn't be calling in to argue about You're not
calling to argue about ghosts. You're not arguing to call

(49:57):
about a spirit world. Not alling to argue about bigfoots
and the Jersey Devil and the lochaness monster and all
the other evil good the wind goes and all these
creatures that exist in the folklores of different cultures. Those
certainly don't exist. You're not worried about, you know, whatever
monster the Australian Aboriginals believed in, because there's some horrible

(50:18):
monster in every single culture. It's just a monster, it's
a boogeyman, and you're not concerned about it. And yet
you're willing to extend that to God because it's something
that's culturally comfortable for you to do. And then the
last thing you said, and then I'll shut up and
let you respond all of this. The last thing you
said is that religion and belief does a lot of good. Well,
it also does a shitload of bad. Because if somebody

(50:38):
can make you believe absurdities, they can also make you
commit atrocities. And so the amount of horrific things that
have been done in the name of gods, in the
name of religions in the name of popes and priests
and emperors who have told the people that if you
go out and slaughter enough people who don't look like you,
that you will gain absolution and paradise and virgins and
all these other things. All of those things I think

(51:00):
are more noteworthy than the acts of charity and service
that people do in the names of God, because there
is not a single good thing that an atheist can't
do out of the goodness of their heart, that a
religious person can't do in the name of God. But
there are plenty of fucking evil things that atheists would
never do in the name of atheism that you can

(51:21):
absolutely demonstrably see Christians, Muslims, Hindus and everybody else doing
in the name of their various gods and religions. That
is my rebuttal to you, sir, What do you think
about all those things?

Speaker 12 (51:32):
Yeah, one hundred percent, I think you know a lot
of religion just as a base, as a followship. One
hundred percent. I feel like that's in any ways, not
just because the belief in God. You look at the
communists in China like you look at They're not God,
but they're their own leaders but I would say, you

(51:56):
gave me a lot of things to go at. I'll
come at the religious is evil, right thing that you said.
I agree with that in some ways, a lot of
evil is like, oh my God is blah blah blah
blah blah. But I feel like that supports my argument.
If it's evil, if it's terrible, If you kill your
brother because he believes in the river God and you

(52:18):
believe in the sand God, why would we believe in God?

Speaker 3 (52:22):
Why would we have we have harry each other for
all the time. Yeah, yeah, Christians killing each other all
the time over even dumber things, right.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
Yeah, over forty thousand denominations of Christianity alone.

Speaker 12 (52:35):
Yes, I'm just trying to say, you know what I'm
saying that just because it does evil, just because it
does evil, it would make evolutionary less probable to keep
that great, to keep that God.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
Gee, No, it doesn't, because at the end of the day,
it's rooted in tribalism, which clearly was evil lutionarily advantageous
at a time when we were loose bands of people
that needed to be able to stick together and like
defend each other and protect each other from other people.
That wanted to come and raid our villages and things like.

(53:12):
There's arguments to be made that both that I do
and don't support from a bioanthropological perspective, there are arguments
to be made all over this that don't rely on Therefore,
actually there must be some fucking guy up there that
whipped up the universe like a space wizard.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Like, there's no, you don't need to take that jump.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
You can make logical arguments routed in what we do
actually positively know about cultural anthropology and biological evolution.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
Like I said, things that I do and.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
Don't agree with that are more valid and more meaningful
and more substantive than actually the madness that they believe
in was real. So I don't think that this supports
your point at all. I think that there are plenty
of better explanations that you could argue for that that
just don't rely on magic.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
And do you know who the Paraha tribe in the
Amazon Forest? Ess? No, sirch oh, then you should go
look them up because they have no concept of a god.
You should also go investigate Buddhism because Buddhism also does
not Buddhist don't believe in a god or God concept.
And I would make the argument that Shintoism does not

(54:22):
believe in a God concept, and that some Native American
beliefs also don't have a God concept. So when you
say that all humans have a God concept, you need
to do more than just listen to whatever apologist told
you that. You need to go and do some anthropological
studies of people, because there's two groups, for sure who

(54:44):
don't agree with you, of humans, which means your entire
argument falls apart just based on the evidence.

Speaker 12 (54:50):
Can I not depind you down on one belief? But
with Hinduism, as far as I know, they have concepts
of an afterlife, they have concept of the hell.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
Is we're talking about the concept of a god, which
is what you said, that all humans have the concept
of a God or one you believe in a god.
And I have just named two groups of humans who
do not.

Speaker 12 (55:12):
Did I say God an afterlife? Or did I just
say god?

Speaker 3 (55:15):
You just said God.

Speaker 12 (55:16):
I'm not saying, oh sorry, I more lump those two
together together. But I would say with afterlife, I'll look
at what tribes did you say I did?

Speaker 3 (55:30):
What's the other ones you said, Sir Praha, Buddhism the
Parahah like Piranha only Paraha. There's an ancient set of
an end. And then Buddhism is definitely doesn't have the
concept of a God. Whether or not Buddhism actually has
the concept of an afterlife and they have it a
hell or not is open to interpretation. I would say

(55:51):
that they don't.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
And also, like, even if they did, like that doesn't
do anything for me, because like you personally lumping together
the concept of God and the concept of after life
doesn't mean that other cultures do that or that it
is a necessary, constituent part of this belief.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
It's just, once again, it's the exact same thing as
the beginning of your.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Argument, which is this is something that you particularly find
comfortable and you feel like you can just smear across
the entirety of humanity and call it good. And what
you're doing is it's not really I don't want to
I'm not trying to insult you. It is not really ethnocentrism,
because you're not saying that this is like the right
way to be a human. You're just you're utilizing your

(56:29):
cultural heuristics and your religious understanding and kind of making
this blanket statement about all of humanity past and present,
and that's just not appropriate to do. And I guarantee
you there are plenty of cultures out there that would
even if they had a concept of a god or
an afterlife, they are very different than what you would consider.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
A god or an afterlife, and that wouldn't work for you.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
So it's just that's really And again I'm not trying
to be addict to you, because you've been very polite,
but like when I was studying anthropology, that was like
literally the first lesson was get out of the dualisms
of your culture if you were trying to understand especially
ancient humans, because it just doesn't work. It's not if
their brains did not work the way that yours does,

(57:15):
and nor would yours work if you were in that
culture for them. So overall, Cameron, I'm going to give
you a last word and then I'm going to move
on because we got a couple more calls. I want
to try to crank through what we have a little
bit of time left.

Speaker 12 (57:25):
Uh yeah, what were you saying? I would say that
obviously like the indigenous wouldn't know, or like oh no,
ancient Slavics wouldn't know what the Trinity is their minds
would blow up if you tried to explain it to them.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
It's less of as would yours if they tried to
explain their religion to you.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
And as would first century Christians if you tried to
explain the Trinity to them. That's also they would earn
you as a heretic.

Speaker 12 (57:53):
So I feel like that's a different I know, Ignacious
of Antioch believed in more of a Trinitarian view, but
that's a I don't want to hurt branch off into that,
but I would say with our current conversation that I

(58:15):
would agree that there are It's hard to just say
this is a blanket. You like, oh, you have to
believe in God, that just because we do now, and
that other cultures have similar concepts. But I feel like
that similar concepts, that naturalistic yearning for God is something

(58:37):
that's not as vague as you're trying to show, not
in a rude way obviously.

Speaker 2 (58:44):
No, of course, and I would argue that there is
no naturalistic yearning for God as you are claiming.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
There is simply a naturalistic curiosity.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
And where there is curiosity when we can't find answers
because of who we are as humans, we're really good
at coming up with answers when we don't have a
good one, and because logical fallacies exist, because it takes
training to use your mind properly, early humans that are
first attempts at explaining the universe around us relied on
a lot of magical thinking and a lot of applying

(59:14):
agency to things that are natural processes. And because it
was our first attempt at explaining the universe, it was
also our worst attempt to explain the universe. And unfortunately,
that is a hostigial remnants that lasts with us to
this day. So I don't think there's a natural urge
to know God. I think there's a natural urge to
just know what the hell is going on, And when
we don't have a good answer, and when we don't

(59:35):
have good education, we come up with magical explanations. And
you can see that demonstrated in the sheer number of
different religions around the world and the sheer number of
different types of each one of those religions. There's forty
thousand flavors of Christianity alone, and it's all because it's
just what's more comfortable and more convenient and more palatable
individual people living within their own worlds, their own heuristics,

(59:57):
their own lives, their own cultures, their own comforts, and
their own ideal ideals, and then they just apply that
to the rest of the universe and declare it natural law,
as you are doing here. So, Cameron, I think you
are doing the same thing that every other religious person does.
You're just being a lot more kind about it, and
I appreciate that, but I still encourage you to to
evaluate this a little further.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
And thank you.

Speaker 12 (01:00:20):
I'll look up you know you said you want to
go on the other I'll call back another. Okay about
something else, maybe the trinitarian view that seems like it
would be fun but fun.

Speaker 3 (01:00:32):
Yeah, right, logically impossible.

Speaker 12 (01:00:36):
Thing anything else you would Is there something else you
would want me to look up or look into?

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
I got nothing for you right now that wouldn't just
be go like a textbook or some dumb shit, so I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
Not going to right now, yeah, or something very generic
like go study other cultures and get to know their
religions before you make claims like all or every human
believes or or wants to believe a thing, Because as
soon as you say the word, every all or none
or nobody or any of these absolutes. You should just

(01:01:07):
assume you're wrong when you say that, because all you
need is one example to be wrong. And if you're
building conclusions off of that claim that everyone or all
or none any of those absolutes, then your entire argument
falls apart and you're left with nothing but racks.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
That really is That is the truth, not only an anthropology,
but in just in biology in general. Absolutely, anyway, Cameron,
I appreciate your call. I appreciate you waiting for so long,
and it's been a pleasure talking to you. Please do
call us back sometime.

Speaker 12 (01:01:34):
Okay, no problem, Thanks, guys, have a good day.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
Take care one nice dude. We've got let me see here,
do we have more yes?

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Or do we have more super chats? And then I'm
going to go on to the next thing. I'm trying
to do better. I'm trying to do better at my
job of reading.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
Things between calls. Omega weapons set five dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Creation is still getting the creation and causation necessarily requires
space time in order to happen in the first place
to even be coherent. No, but what you don't understand
Omega weapon is Jesus something something Cartoon hero nineteen eighty
six said, I don't know how Forrest does these back
to back calling shows back to back in the same day,
and I and keep his sanity.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
You assume I brought some with me to begin with.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
I've got to show Immediately after this, Philip Mitchell said
twenty dollars, I was talking to this glowing cow and
he said that Forrest is that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Let me see what's on the screen for a second.
Is that how you spelled it? There as well? My
name is on the bottom of the screen, y'all.

Speaker 3 (01:02:35):
What's going on? Forrest's head tasted like cinnamon? You don't
know that for sure?

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
That is a faith based claim. And I come try it.
Maybe I'll be at the purple.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
What you ask for? Forrest? Want to do that the
back cruise this year, it's always gonna come.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
Lick my fucking head?

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
What to do?

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Nero sent The Paraha tribe of Brazil does not have
a concept of God.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
They are not born with one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
It is a naturally atheistic tribe because it was separated
from greater society. Yet they have like animism. They believe
that like everything has a natural spirit. But there's no
like higher power. It's which is a great example of
like the diversity of like spiritual concepts, because that's the
idea that everything has this animistic spirit. Is very close
to Tommy's argument of idealism, as much as it would

(01:03:27):
probably be to, you know, an.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
Idealist chagrin to say.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Bagel Byte says Sat two seventy nine. Forest, we're there now,
We're even silly autocorrect. You put an extra R in there, Forest,
I love that, Lara, Lara and Misha said, I sent
two dollars Paradoilia where the female reproductive system has eyes.

(01:03:53):
Nero sent another five dollars. Since Jim beat my super
chat read, I'll add when the paraha we're told about Jesus,
they're rejected as soon as they found out nobody has
met Jesus.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
It's a good reason to reject it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
And finally, Maximilian sent twenty five and tire dollars. Thank
you both for being here and for your time and dedication.
And then they sent some cool emojis.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Thank you very much for all of those lovely super chats.
I appreciate them sincerely. They're all very cool of you.
We we did another poll, and it was another close race.
It was tied thirty one percent. For faith is flawed,
but so is logic? Or Forrest should retire his question
Everything T Shirt? Because we are tied, Jim, I will

(01:04:36):
let you be the tiebreaker.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
Which one do you want to do? Let's do let's
find out why you should retire your question Everything T Shirt?
Because I think I know this call is going to
go me too.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
I'm going to take a second second.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
I'm going to just write down. I'm going to make
two bets. It's either about this, but more likely about this. Okay,
I have made my predictions. You want to make predictions too.

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):
I am now I'm putting it into our little boxcat.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
Okay, all rights, so if we got it, yeah, okay, okay,
we have different predictions. I made two predictions. You made one,
and I think I'm going to say my second one.
I'm gonna put a little star next to it. I
think it's actually this one, but we will see. All right,
We're gonna talk to Mike no pronouns given, calling in
from Scratchy Crabs, who says that I should retire my

(01:05:30):
question Everything T Shirt.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
Mike, you are on XPU with Forest and him, how
are you doing?

Speaker 11 (01:05:35):
Hey good, how are you guys doing? And I love
the fact you're placing a bet on this, that's awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
I want to know what it's all about.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
I want to know it's all about.

Speaker 3 (01:05:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
I've never had a bad day.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
Man, I'm feeling great today.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
So okay, settle the debate.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
Why should I require retire my question? Everything? T shirt?
All right?

Speaker 11 (01:05:51):
Well, I got a couple of reasons, but mostly okay,
set the stage here.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
We got Forrest is.

Speaker 11 (01:05:57):
An influencer, all right, and a good one.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
I hate that name, but thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
They are. They are.

Speaker 11 (01:06:04):
So you're an influencer, and just like Oprah and Beyonce,
I think your sponsors are sending you money. And then
you're doing talking points. And the reason I bring it
up is you're talking about the illegal aliens undocumented and.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
Handing out cards and all that, and I.

Speaker 11 (01:06:18):
Thought that was really odd and it just kind of
it was like, Wow, why would you even bring that up?
It was just going right down the talking point as
far as the Democratic Party goes, I guess even though
election's over, but that I just kind of perked my interest.
I was like, well, that's weird. I mean, I you know,
I thought you agreed with it, but that was very specific,
not very useful either because he became a card and
the ice people can't get in. Then they're going to

(01:06:39):
watch the place and come back later with a warrant
and then they're going to get I mean, it just
makes no sense. So anyway, so that's what piqued my
interest is it looks like you're getting sponsors not here
but somewhere, and.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
That's why she retire my question everything T shirt is
because I'm paid to have the opinions that i'm espousing influence.

Speaker 11 (01:06:55):
You're an influencer, and you're influenced by your sponsors, just
like Oprah and Beyonce were influenced.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
Damn it. Well yeah, damn it. All right, Well that sucks.
So I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:07:08):
No, I was betting that it was either about creationism
that I'm not questioning evolution, or it was transphobia and
that I'm not questioning trans but that's what I wrote down,
But a star nex transphobia.

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
Jim, what did you guess? I guess that it's because
you don't believe in God.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
You haven't questioned that. Yeah, yeah, we know this for
right at least it's interesting. At least it's a new
thing that's fun.

Speaker 4 (01:07:32):
Yeah yeah, yeah, is it true?

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
Yeah yeah, you haven't met Forrest, But his opinions are
fully formed a whole on his own. I don't think
you could pay him to say something he doesn't believe it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
In fact, I have, so I do get sponsorships for
videos and things. I have turned down tens of thousands
of dollars worth of sponsorships to sponsor, to be sponsored by,
and to say that I don't support and don't agree with.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
That happens all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
I have even turned down sponsorships of things that I
do like because I wasn't one hundred percent sure about
the company or about their mission or whatever else, and
I didn't want to attach my name and my credibility
to something that I wasn't certain about.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
So like, yeah, that's that's simply not true at all.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
As far as the cards are concerned, those cards that
I was passing out detail out people's constitutional rights. And yes,
if Ice comes back with a warrant and then arrest
these people, then that means that they are obeying the
Constitution and making sure those people's rights are preserved. Those
cards which remind people that they don't have to talk
to agents. They have a fifth member prediction. They don't
have to let those agents in their house. They have

(01:08:39):
a fourth member protection. They don't have to You know
that those people need a warrant in order to enter
their home, and that warrant needs to be accurate, with detailed,
accurate information, and be signed by a judge. They can
get their own things that look like warrants. It cannot
be that it has to be well, so that's that's
not my personal I guess my personal opinion is that
the constitution matters, and like civil rights matter, and so.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
That's what those are about. It's not a Democrat thing.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
I am not a democrat.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
It's just about protecting people's rights under the Constitution and
making sure that we aren't rounding up people for speaking
a different language in order to scapegoat immigrants, rather than
addressing the fact that all of the bullshit that the
current administration is doing to try to quote quote save
money could be done in spades. We would have so
much more money than the stuff that we have supposedly
saved if we would just tax billionaires one percent more. So, like, yeah,

(01:09:29):
I just none of this is Democrat talking points. These
are my ideas and my thoughts. I'm not paid to
say any of this stuff. The only thing that I
am currently sponsored to say is that you should go
to brilliant dot org's last forest Valkei and sign up
for a Brilliant membership so you can learn math and science,
ride on your phone with fun, interactive everyday lessons right
in the palm of your hand. That's what I'm sponsored,

(01:09:50):
currently in paid to say. And I'm paid to say
that in exactly one YouTube video month. So you don't
know what the fuck you're talking about, I'm afraid. And
the only reason I don't wear my question Everything shirt
is because the firm question Everything has been a little
bit co opted by anti vaxers and I don't like it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
And so that's all.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
That's the reason, and that's the reality of the situation.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
Mike, all right, that's interesting.

Speaker 11 (01:10:11):
I mean, I really want to save money get out
of the Ukrainian War.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
I guess that would be a thing, But fighting I think.

Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
Fighting fascism is worth money, Yeah so do I. And
I think standing up the bullies is always a good thing,
no matter who the bully is, and that bully is
clearly Russia. We have seen this, We have seen this
play before, we know how it ends as recently as that,
you know, the twentieth century. So uh yeah, we take
care still railwaing talking points and actually like learn something. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Also, if you want to save money, maybe we can
stop doing government subsidies of oh I don't know, like
SpaceX and stuff, where we have literally the richest man
in the entire world who is receiving huge amounts of
government subsidies and money in order to run his already
multi billion dollar companies which he could completely fund all

(01:11:03):
by himself if he wanted to, and also end world
hunger and also end homelessness and also replace all the
water pipes in Flint, Michigan, and also own every sports
team ever and still have more money than he could
ever possibly spend on his own and refuses to pay
his fair share in taxes. Maybe instead of defunding schools,

(01:11:24):
maybe in fund instead of taking away school lunches, Maybe
instead of taking away usaid, Maybe instead of taking away
foreign aid to countries that need it. Maybe instead of
talking about which countries we should or shouldn't be supporting
in wars where they're fighting for their rights and their existence.
Maybe instead of blaming poor people and immigrants for the
problems of the country, maybe we should just notice the

(01:11:45):
fact that the only actual dangerous minority in the world
is billionaires.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
And if we were to take just.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
A tiny fraction of their gross money that they have,
the disgusting hordes of dragon wealth that they sit upon
every day as thousands of people starved to death around
the world, if we were to tax them just one percent,
not only would they not notice because there's no way
they literally wipe their ass with more money than that,
but we could also save a lot of lives and

(01:12:14):
maybe actually have a country worth calling the greatest in
the world because we could provide for people and have
decent infrastructure and education. But hey, that's just me and
nobody's paying me to say it. With that mic, this
was I'll be honest, I'm excited that it wasn't what
we thought, but it was still a little disappointing. So
we're going to move on to the next call. But
I appreciate you calling insincerely.

Speaker 3 (01:12:36):
End world hunger. The only thing we really need is
for Musk to keep his promise, because he made a
promise on Twitter that if somebody could give him a number,
he would donate that amount of money to end world
hunger and the World Food Bank. Give him the number,
and whoops, he he did what he.

Speaker 2 (01:12:51):
Always does, which is run away like a little bitch
and blame everybody else for his inadequacies. Because when when
you're a Nepo baby of a fricking another super rich
guy who owned a wasn't an emerald mind and a
part time South Africa, when you literally you are born
and raised from suffering, taking advantage and exploiting human beings,

(01:13:15):
and you were handed great wealth and you never invented anything,
You never made anything new. You just bought out companies
from people who were doing great work and then usually
ran them into the ground and made them just ten
times shittier. And your entire skill, your actual one thing
that you have going for you, the thing on your

(01:13:36):
business card is I have money. I don't know, man,
It's just it's not worth my time. People like Trump
and Musk and these they are what weak people think
strong people look like. And to me it just I
find it immensely boring and sad. But for people like Mike,
it's easy to assume that my opinion has bought and

(01:13:57):
paid for, because all the politicians worship their opinions are
bought and paid for. Yeah, and so it's just easy
to just flit that across the board.

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
I don't know, man. Doctor Richard Carrier has a really
good article on his blog about just how profoundly ignorant
and um Musk is and it's absolutely wonderful. The guy
has absolutely points, He has absolutely no curiosity about anything.
He refuses to change his opinion when the facts counter

(01:14:27):
what his opinion is. I mean, he is just yeah, yeah,
we talk about about safer than we can talk about
other folk.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
But yes, it's it's it's just disappointing that that that
dude's the president now.

Speaker 3 (01:14:40):
But there we are.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
We've got the next call that everybody asked for was
this one. It's Patrick, no pronouns given, calling in all
the way from miniature orders as who says the faith
is a flawed method of truth, but so is logic.
I can promise you will have a preference. Let's talk
to Patrick. You were on the line with Forrest and Jim.

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
How are you doing today?

Speaker 12 (01:15:03):
Hey, I'm doing great.

Speaker 4 (01:15:05):
Thank you for having me Number one.

Speaker 12 (01:15:07):
You guys are both my favorite hosts.

Speaker 3 (01:15:08):
So all right, talk to you.

Speaker 12 (01:15:10):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 13 (01:15:13):
Jim can I can I ask if I can get
an invite to one of your celebrity barbecues.

Speaker 3 (01:15:17):
Give you a big old hug if I had a
celebrity barbecue. Yes, yes you could. Since I don't have them,
that'd be difficult. Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:15:29):
Yeah, all right, I'm a longtime listeners. I wanted to
ask that, so uh but yes, okay, So sorry, I'm
trying to collect my thoughts. I wasn't expecting to get on.

Speaker 5 (01:15:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:15:41):
I think that kind of the same problem that that
people point out with faith, I think also applies to logic.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
Right, what do you say when you say logic? Can
you we would you say logic? Do you mean formal
logic where you say things like A N B A
or b if a and be that type of formal
logic or do you mean something else by logic?

Speaker 12 (01:16:06):
No, I mean that that sort of logic.

Speaker 3 (01:16:09):
I guess the point is, you know, if that formal
logic is all about determining what is true and false,
it is a methodology that has the same rigorous mathematics.
So I'm wondering how you get from faith, which is
an unjustified belief that may or may not be true
to logic which we use it. And when I say

(01:16:33):
it has the rigor of mathematics, that's that's not an exaggeration.

Speaker 4 (01:16:36):
Right, So how do you I understand that?

Speaker 3 (01:16:39):
I'm sorry, there's a delay a little bit. I think,
go ahead, Oh how do oh?

Speaker 12 (01:16:43):
Okay, how do I justify that?

Speaker 5 (01:16:44):
So?

Speaker 4 (01:16:45):
Okay?

Speaker 13 (01:16:46):
So the way I kind of stumbled into this, and
I'm more asking you guys your opinion on it is
I've heard the argument that because faith can either produce
a true or untrue results, it's an unreliable path to truth.

Speaker 4 (01:17:03):
Correct that I'm not trying to say that that's.

Speaker 3 (01:17:05):
Your very specifically, when we say it's an unreliable path
to truth, we mean that as a process for getting
to something that is true. It's unreliable. Logic, on the
other hand, is always is reliable to always return either
a false very true value.

Speaker 13 (01:17:24):
And and I want to I want to kind of
tell as a path and from the basis from okay, okay, uh,
from the basis. So I've done stand up for quite
a number of years, and one of the best descriptions
I've heard of a joke of what a joke is
is a logical progression to an absurd conclusion. Okay, so

(01:17:45):
if if you can make a logical progression that stands
you know, A to B whatever and arrive at an
untruth or something that is not true, then doesn't that
mean that you can use logic to progress to a
truth or an untruth And so therefore it has it
has the same problem as faith.

Speaker 3 (01:18:05):
No, because you're you're mistaking why not, You're basically saying
that because one plus one equals two, it's the same
as faith. Or to put it in logic terms, if
P or Q is the same thing as faith, and
faith is simply saying I believe this because I want
to believe this. Right, I believe in heaven because I
want to believe in heaven. There's no evidence. So when

(01:18:26):
you look at logic and we say P n Q, right,
we're saying that this statement and this statement both have
to be true in order for the whole thing, for
the whole thing to be tripped. So we're determining what
truth is, whereas faith is claiming what truth is without
any evidence and without any logic, They're they're not I

(01:18:47):
think you're actually making a category error, right, because you're
because you're basically saying faith is the same as math,
and that that's a category error.

Speaker 13 (01:18:55):
I'm not trying to say that, I'm What I'm trying
to say is if I can use a logical argument
to arrive at an incorrect result, you can't.

Speaker 3 (01:19:05):
You can't use logic, you can't. You can't use a
formal logic statement to come to something that isn't correct.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
I think what what what you're like getting caught up
on here, Patrick, is that you can make things like
that sound like logic, but are we so? Like for example,
if I were to say, like, uh uh, what you
say clownfish? Clownfish have gills, and clownfish are fish, therefore
fish have gills. Okay, that the conclusion is true, but

(01:19:34):
the progression to get there doesn't really work because I
could also say clownfish have stripes, and clonfish are fish,
therefore all fish have stripes, and that doesn't make any sense. Right, So,
like you can make something that sounds like a logical
argument and then come to a wrong conclusion. You can
have something that is like valid in its premise but
isn't actually a sound argument. But that's bad logic, and

(01:19:56):
you would learn about that if that's what you're studying.
And it sounds like you're you're saying because you are
capable of doing bad logic, therefore logic is bad or
in fact or is somehow like an issue.

Speaker 3 (01:20:07):
And I don't think that's a reasonable position to take.

Speaker 2 (01:20:09):
No.

Speaker 13 (01:20:10):
No, And that's why I kind of wanted to run
it by you guys, because it kind of like I
fell into this thought and I'm like, man, I don't know,
I'm not smart enough to figure out if this is
accurate or not, So I wanted to ask you guys
about it. So I appreciate you having me on, and
I think you might I think I agree with you.
I think I think I am making that error. So

(01:20:30):
thank you for correcting my thought process on that very much.
Appreciate everything you guys do, whether or not we have
the same beliefs or not.

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:20:39):
So I don't know if you want to move on
to the next.

Speaker 2 (01:20:42):
Caller or if this was actually our last one of
the show and you ended it like beautifully. The problem
I have Patrick right now is that we've done an
entire show and we haven't gotten upset with a single person.

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
Can you be a dick so we can be.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
Mad the show.

Speaker 1 (01:20:57):
Corporate shill, take care Patrick. Oh what a great way
to end it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
Literally, it's just all nice calls.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
Even the one guy who believed silly things about me
was pleasant about it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
So like flip dude, that's the show, y'all. It's been great.

Speaker 2 (01:21:22):
Let me really quickly go through our last super chats
because these people paid money and I'm gonna make sure
they get the thing. We got pimple Punk, who sent
two dollars to say my two favorite hosts.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
Jimbo and Forrests.

Speaker 3 (01:21:34):
That's awful. That's awful.

Speaker 2 (01:21:40):
Miranda Rensburger sent ten dollars is high for at f off?

Speaker 3 (01:21:46):
Artam Is sent. We had this one show that still
cracks me up to this day.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
I was on with Arman and we had this caller
who was like, I don't know where that other guy is,
Ahman or something, and then was talking to me and
he was like, you know, I forgot your name Jeremy
or something, and we just signed off this like it's
been Akhmann and Jeremy. What a great show.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
So fucking stupid.

Speaker 2 (01:22:10):
Artemis sent four ninety nine of British monies I'm wearing
the question Everything shirt now.

Speaker 3 (01:22:15):
He is my absolute favorite.

Speaker 1 (01:22:16):
It's my favorite shirt too.

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):
I used to wear that shirt all the.

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
Time, and I stopped wearing it because I got sick
of people making the claim I thought that guy was
gonna make.

Speaker 1 (01:22:25):
I got so many comments on TikTok, like you say
question everything, but you don't question evolution. Some scientists you are.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
I'm like, do you really honestly think that we've never man?
Atomic Punk thirty one sent two dollars loving his foreassd.

Speaker 3 (01:22:41):
In Jimbo episode. We've started something terrible and by we,
I mean me and I'm not sorry for it makes
everybody laugh. We're okay God when sent four ninety nine.

Speaker 2 (01:22:55):
If I'm not mistaken, I recall the Baraha's logic and
questioning converted the Christian mission who tried to save their
souls to atheism.

Speaker 3 (01:23:03):
Should look up condiaronk I believe was his name. There's
this this dude.

Speaker 2 (01:23:11):
There's a guy here, and he's a Native American guy
here in the US. And when like the first like
Jesuits and Christians and everybody came over here.

Speaker 3 (01:23:19):
I forgot what tribe he was with.

Speaker 2 (01:23:21):
But he just tore Christianity apart, tore capitalism apart, like
just every tore apart, like the entire concept of like
kings and like everything in all of the same ways
that I and many people like me. I'm a socialist
and like lots of socialists like me, same exact arguments,
lots of anarchists who have anarchist police that I do

(01:23:42):
same things because they had this anarchist construct that they
they believed in and their framework was just so different.
And it's fantastic. It's all written about in this book
over here a brief The Dawn of Everything, The New
History of Humanity by David Graver and David Wingrow. They
talk about the indigenous critique quite a bit in this
and like it's all the exact same arguments that I

(01:24:03):
make today. And let me tell you, when I started
reading that book, I was like, just for like three chapters,
I was just like, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:24:10):
Right, I'm just screaming at this book, like I get it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:12):
Yes, it's great. The Connor Kane Ie sent five dollars.
I want for us to send read me my rights
before bed if you know what I mean. I don't
know what you mean, and I don't like to explain
it to you. It is it, man.

Speaker 2 (01:24:30):
I'm sure it's like a last right's like like a
prayer thing, but in my head it's sexual and I.

Speaker 3 (01:24:37):
Where you go. Yeah, that's why I was taking it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:39):
Yeah, it's absolutely something dirty, and like that's just the
nature of the internet, man, you know, like that's part
of our job. As I hate this word influencers, is
that at the end of the day, no matter what
we do, somebody's rubbing themselves silly for it. And I, man,
I don't want to be a part of that. For you,
I'm not here to help you. Splork it on ex

(01:25:00):
Shroom sent five ass dollars. They could tax the churches
if they want more money. They fucking could, and they
fucking should.

Speaker 3 (01:25:09):
Punk referring to your last comment, aren't you the guy
who made the fingering holes joke in the the opening?
Don't fucking don't.

Speaker 1 (01:25:17):
Don't don't at me, Barrows, You don't.

Speaker 3 (01:25:20):
You don't want this smoke.

Speaker 14 (01:25:23):
That's that's between me and Jesus. I would think the
vickery Jesus hole is quite personal. It is, it's my
personal faith journey.

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):
Sent five dollars the money that could have ended rule hunger,
isn't even a tenth of what he paid for. I
know what means X slash Twitter, but I want to
call it shitter like with the like the between Mandarin
and an X is like an sh.

Speaker 1 (01:25:51):
Sound, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:25:53):
Miranda Renzberger, uh sent ten dollars. All the Duggers kids
names start with jay, J.

Speaker 1 (01:25:59):
Mike starts with J.

Speaker 3 (01:26:01):
Mike is the secret twenty dug art kid See logic
works every time. I feel like I should know what
that is. I don't know anything about pop polters or anything. Yeah,
they've got like twenty some odd kids. The oldest boy
has been charged, I believe, convicted of uh uh pedophilia

(01:26:22):
with his sisters. Oh well, fucking stop it, get some help.
They're Mormons and they I think I forget what they
are anyway. They've got dozens and dozens of kids. There's
a TV show with them on. That's how they got famous,
and they did the TV show so they could support
the number of kids that they have.

Speaker 2 (01:26:41):
I know I've heard of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
think I think I know what that has. I heard
about that on TikTok Uh. Call in and tell us
more about all the good that religion does y'all uh.
And then finally Amy Noser says, a great show, thank
you and sent to European money to do so, thank
you very much. Ciate your dollars and we will put

(01:27:01):
them to good use. And with that, I think that's
the end of our show. Jim, do you have anything
to sign.

Speaker 3 (01:27:06):
Us off with? No, No, I don't think so. I mean,
it was a great show. I love the callers, even
the one who thought you were a shill. It's odd
how often people accuse other people of doing what they
themselves are doing well, the people that they support are doing.
So it's very weird.

Speaker 2 (01:27:27):
You can tell me that I'm a shield because I
say what I'm paid to say, and you're going to
support literally any person in Congress at this moment.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
I'm sure there's a couple.

Speaker 2 (01:27:38):
I'm sure there's a couple that don't take major corporate
donors and that actually have their own thoughts and their
own beliefs. And for every one of them, there's fifty
that are just literally, here's the dollar amount for an
opinion in a vote, and it just sucks.

Speaker 1 (01:27:55):
We actually call in biology, we have a word for that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):
We call it corruption, and I'm weird now that we
don't call it that in America as well, but there
we are.

Speaker 1 (01:28:04):
Yeah, yeah, anybody.

Speaker 3 (01:28:06):
That's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:28:06):
If anybody's gonna ever talk to me about like politics
and stuff and they're like, oh, you the Democrats.

Speaker 3 (01:28:11):
Believe these evil things.

Speaker 2 (01:28:12):
What if if you don't also support the idea that
we should disallow politicians from trading stocks when their job
is to manipulate the stock markets?

Speaker 3 (01:28:21):
You know what I mean? Like, I just I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:28:23):
I can't take it, seriously, I can't. But you know me,
I'm a woke leftist, socialist, anarchist atheist, so what.

Speaker 5 (01:28:30):
Do I know.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
Also, I want to say thank you to Jamie the Blindlimey,
who's been our backup host today and has been hanging
out just being cool and handsome this whole time.

Speaker 3 (01:28:42):
We appreciate you always.

Speaker 9 (01:28:44):
Excellent show guys. Just a few quick notes. Tommy, I
see your free will and I raise your childhood leukemia. Jim,
your friend obviously angered the machine spirits of the radar
system and needs to pay penance to the OMNUS Science
and forest. Your obvious demigration of my homeland and currency

(01:29:06):
would bother me if I gave one to one hundredth
of the themto shit. But I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:29:13):
Thank you for bringing the word themto ship into the
show more than anything else.

Speaker 3 (01:29:20):
That's a great Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:29:23):
Speaking of ship, last night, I had a couple of
biologists friends over uh and we all drank and beaded bracelets.
And my friend Katie, who's a botanist, made me this
uh beaded bracelet which is piston shit colors. She specifically
made it with variety of yellows, browns, and a little
bit of green uh to make it as as accurate

(01:29:45):
and disgusting as possible. Uh. So I'm wearing my this
this piston ship bracelet all day to remind me that
piston shit is funny.

Speaker 3 (01:29:53):
You have that obsole prime. She's great.

Speaker 2 (01:29:57):
Great.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
Biologists aren't normal, y'all.

Speaker 2 (01:30:00):
If you ever want to become friends with the biologists,
it'll change your life for the weirder.

Speaker 3 (01:30:03):
I promise you, Like we we're just not normal people.
I can definitely agree with that. You people wouldn't believe
with that.

Speaker 2 (01:30:16):
Thanks so much, everybody tune in. Thanks so much for
our mods. Thanks much to our call screeners. Thank as
much to the crew. Thank you so much to the
people in the chat, even the ones that suck. Thank
you much for our callers, even the ones that suck,
and thank you for watching it.

Speaker 3 (01:30:27):
Awesome. Rest of your day and never stop learning. By bye.

Speaker 2 (01:30:33):
To stop.

Speaker 3 (01:30:37):
Stop the bullshit, watch Talk E Than Live Sundays at

(01:30:58):
one pm Central. Visit tiny dot c c slash y
T t H and call into the show at five
one two nine nine one nine two four two, or
connect to the show online at tiny dot c c
slack Haledstenshit

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