The Atheist Experience 29.16 with The Cross Examiner and Godless Engineer

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Well, well, well, happy Jewish lich Day, yet Heathens. It's
the magical day where Christians celebrate a Jewish Rabbi running
around with his pet rabbits, shitting out eggs, hiding them,
and then sitting on his little Messiah throne menacingly stroking
a fully grown buddy rabbit. He then chastises the Roman
government and the Jewish Sanhedron because they are too dumb

(00:24):
to find his eggs before time runs out on the
one special golden egg with the explosive surprise inside it. Now,
every year we remember the sacrifice of this Jewish lich
King Jesus by hiding eggs, blaming bunnies, and eating chocolate
and guilt tripping people into worshiping their passive, aggressive god king.
Nothing convinces people more than guilt tripping them into it.

(00:47):
You mean to tell me that God sacrificed his horrid
crux to save all of humanity from the six sadistic
shit he's planning on doing to us all because someone
ate a magical fruit salad after he told her asked
not to. Sounds more like some weird divine BDSM fetish.
If you ask me, oh, the only thing that'll change

(01:08):
my mind is if I clone and torture myself to
death while watching for the corner cuckchair. That's how Doddie
yahweh likes it. But I'm supposed to feel bad about that.
I'm supposed to feel responsible somehow. I didn't put that
boot liquor on the cross and a half eaten fruit
and salad, fruit salad didn't damn humanity. God is supposedly

(01:30):
all loving, But what is all loving about an all
powerful deity that needs excessive torture to change his mind?
Not only is that sadistic, but it also doesn't make
any pragmatic sense. How does the torture and murder of
his son slash himself absolve sin? Why does this blood
magic work but other blood magic doesn't. There aren't good
answers for these questions, and that's kind of the point. Ultimately,

(01:53):
I think that we can that we can conclude that
historically this shit never happened, and that makes Christian theology
pragmatically useless. And if you disagree, then give us a
call because the show is starting now.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Wow, all right, tell us how you really feel. God,
Bless my goodness.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, that's pretty close. I had to pare it down
because I know, you know we're on.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
The ACA, so I just hold.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Back, a little bit, back, a little bit. Well, well,
welcome everybody. Today is April twentieth, for twenty If you celebrate,
I am your host, the Cross Examiner, and with me
today as the always great, Godless Engineer. Thank you for
joining us.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Oh yeah, I'm glad to be here, and thank you
everybody for who's watching right now. I can't wait to
get into this whole Jewish lich King Day.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Absolutely, yeah, we should talk about that. Before we do,
I'll remind everybody that the atheist experience is a product
of the Atheist Community of Austin, the A five one
C three nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of atheism,
critical thinking, secular humanism, and the separation of religious and government.
Excuse me, religion and government. Today is Easter, the day,

(03:16):
if I understand my Christian theology correctly, on we traditionally,
I don't know if we know the exact day, and
somebody could probably tell me that we celebrate, or some
people celebrate the supposed resurrection of Jesus, which many Christians
I know say is the most important event in all
of Christianity. I think it would probably be the faull

(03:38):
which you described as the half eaten fruit salad, because
without that nothing would be necessary. But the resurrection is
I guess for Christianity, since it's all about Christ, would
be important. I know, Godless, you are very studied in
the sort of history or existing evidence. I guess we

(03:59):
have to whether or not Jesus even existed, sort of
a mythicist approach. What if your studies revealed about the
evidence that's available to us now that the resurrection took place,
or alternatively, that it was a legend of some sort.
Where do you fall on that spectrum?

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well, I definitely think that the evidence leans towards first
century Jews. What would become Jewish Christians receiving revelation from
the supposed resurrected Jesus. And so because of that, we
don't have any actual records or anything like that of
Jesus walking around on earth prior to his resurrection and

(04:39):
like having a ministry, having disciples even And so what
we ultimately end up with is Paul in the New
Testament saying that this resurrected Jesus has revealed his message
to him, revealed the gospel that he is to preach
to all Jews and Gentiles alike. And that's pretty much
it for the evidence about Jesus and his sacrifice and

(05:02):
all that kind of stuff. We don't any any of
the later like stuff like gospels. Those are either fabricated
or they're just so diluted with non historical things that
we can't sort out the historical items from the non
historical items. So ultimately, if we can't tell which which
one it is, then it's it's basically useless to us.

(05:24):
And then everything else, you know, past that and outside
of that, is based on like the Christian community at
the time, So we don't really have any good evidence
about like him being killed like on a cross or otherwise.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Gotcha, And if I recall correctly, Paul doesn't even place
Jesus on Earth necessarily. Is that correct? Like he sort
of alludes to a Jesus that might be mystical or
heavenly or something like that.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Well, yeah, so he doesn't mean.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
I ran into Jesus, right exactly.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
He never he never actually sees Jesus while he's walking
around on Earth, and he never allude to anybody otherwise
actually seeing Jesus while while on Earth. There are a
few passages that people have tried to use to say, oh,
this definitely means that the Romans crucified Jesus. But in
those situations he uses very vague language in order to
describe these entities. So like, these entities are called the uh,

(06:20):
the like the rulers of this world and everything like that.
And the weird thing about that is is that they
Paul uses that same language to describe Satan and and
you know, all of his demons, his demonic force and
so like for Paul that the primary opposition to both
Jesus and Christians alike, UH is going to be devil,

(06:43):
the devil, Satan and his demons and so like.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah, the Romans are.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Never directly mentioned by Paul, and Paul is very vague
about who is responsible for Jesus's death.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Fascinating. All right, Well, if our viewers have other information
that we've missed about the veracity of the resurrection claims
on this yasterday, we'd love to hear from you, and
you could educate us and maybe convince us that there's
more there than we think there is. Meanwhile, I do
have an announcement or too. We already have callers lined up,
so I'll do a few announcements and then we'll get

(07:13):
onto callers right away. First off, available on Atheist hyphencommunity
dot org are printable call in flyers. Post these if
you can, please, you can download them and print them
and post them with permission where if you're putting it
on privately held land to community bulletin boards and things
like that, so people know that they can call our

(07:35):
show and defend their faith. A second way to support
us is by sending superchats. We already have one. I'll
read in a moment. We'll read as many super chats
as we can. This is a YouTube feature. We assume
that as long as we excuse me, as long as
they are YouTube appropriate, so be careful with that one.

(07:55):
With that, I'll read the superchats we have, and then
we'll get onto a callers and do more announcements later.
First we have Jonathan France for five dollars. He says,
CE cross examin It's me. I met a lawyer who
says testimony is not the weakest form of evidence, is it.
I was always told witness memory is the weakest versus DNA,

(08:16):
et cetera. I think he means eyewitness Maybe eyewitness testimony
is not the weakest form because it is a common
thing that you will hear. Attorneys say to say eyewitness
testimony is the weakest form of evidence because I memory
is part of eyewitness testimony. I guess it was a subset.
Maybe they're confining it because if you're relying on your

(08:39):
memory when you are testifying you were an eyewitness to
whatever you remember, right, You're not going to be assuming
you know, there's no hearsay exception. You're not going to
be saying, well, I remember that Godless told me that
Dave said the blah blah blah. So you're presumably having
a memory about something you witnessed or experienced. That said,
let's talk just a little bit about this, because I
do think it's important. One of the questions, as we

(09:00):
always ask about the Gospel is what evidence do we
have to support any of this? John, you're an expert
in this, of course, but let's start with eyewitness testimony.
Is there any eyewitness testimony in the Gospel? As far
as I know, Church tradition for a long time said yes,
And now recently all scholars that are serious, even Christian scholars,

(09:23):
say no, that was church tradition. The Gospels were written
by anonymous authors. We don't know who even wrote them,
much less where they got their information. These were probably
all oral tradition carried down until the gospel authors wrote
it down, and the earliest Gospel was something like a
generation after Jesus's death, something like thirty years after his death.

(09:45):
So if we assume that, John, I don't know if,
first of all, you can verify if my understanding is correct.
But if we assume that, then then the question comes in.
If we don't even have any eyewitness testimony to ad
any super a natural event in the Gospels, why is
it that people believe? And that's why we have this call. So, John,

(10:06):
is my understanding of the status of eyewitness testimony in
the Gospels accurate? Are there any eyewitness testimonies in the Gospel?

Speaker 1 (10:14):
No, definitely not. The Gospels are not eyewitnesses. They're not
written like eyewitnesses, and they don't they don't read like
eyewitness reports and all this other stuff.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
So okay, good. So getting back to John France, A
question is is witness memory the weakness versus DNA et cetera.
I would put all all memory related including eyewitness testimony
in the quote unquote weakest category. I think the reason
that lawyers will say it's the weakest is because it
is given traditionally the most deference by a jury. If

(10:46):
you're a finder a fact, a judge, or a jury,
and you've got somebody up there who's confident and charismatic,
and they point at the defendant and say, I saw
that person outside the bank right before it was robbed,
They're going to believe it. If they have a cop
in there it says I wrote down on my notepad
that the guy said that he showed up at the
bank at eleven, but videotape shows that he showed up

(11:09):
ats ten. They're gonna believe that cop, even though the
eyewitness may be wrong, or the coat the cop may
have made a transcription error when he wrote down what
the guy said. All of that stuff. So I think
it's any sort of witness related testimony is given too
much credence in the courts. And that's with events that
you may have witnessed months ago, and then we're interviewed

(11:31):
about it immediately after the cops came to your neighborhood
and said, hey, did you see the shooter, what did
he look like like that day? And then you still
have mistakes. Regularly, We've had hundreds of people in this country,
innocent people locked up for either life or put on
death row, some even executed. Hundreds of people have been

(11:51):
executed that after the fact DNA evidence showed that they
were innocent. The innocence project is something you should go
look look at if you're passionate about this. But if
we have that today, when there are cameras, when there
are police interviewing you hours after the event you witness,
doesn't that show to some degree that eyewitness testimony is very,

(12:12):
very weak and memory is fallible. And if that's true,
and we don't even have that for the facts that
are claimed to the supernatural facts that are claimed to
the Bible, how much can we trust in that? I
guess is my take. So thank you for that, super
chattow you got your five dollars worth, Jonathan, Well, I.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Was gonna I was going to point out sort of
a pop level like example of this, and that's from
the movie my cousin Vinnie.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
Have you seen that movie?

Speaker 2 (12:40):
Every lawyer in the world loves that movie is super
realistic and good.

Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
Well, that's good, really good.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
I was going to ask you a very important question,
how long does it take to cook grit.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Are you telling me that the laws of physics don't
apply in your kitchen where.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
You could cook grits in five minutes?

Speaker 2 (13:00):
No self respecting Southerner makes instant grits.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
In that in that movie, like like one of the
lynch pins in the case that it was a murder trial,
one of the lynchpins is how long does it take
this guy to make grits? Because he sees them go
into the to the sacosids and then he cooks his
grits and then comes back to later, come back later,
and then he sees them fleeing from it right after
shooting the guy, and like it's like, oh, how long

(13:27):
does it take?

Speaker 3 (13:28):
I guess I don't know?

Speaker 1 (13:29):
Is what you end up doing on the stand, So
like that's it.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, no, it is. It is an excellent film. I mean,
the the procedure stuff is all bs right, Like there's
a bunch of you know, lawyers having arguments in front
of Jersey and stuff, but the actual examples that they
give in that is a perfect movie. Like if I
was teaching a class to maybe high school students about
what the loss of legal system is, about what trials
are like. I would take those scenes out of that

(13:54):
movie because you are showing the unreliability of people who
genuinely are not trying to run convict the defendants.

Speaker 4 (14:01):
Right.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
None of those people were like, oh, I'm going to
get those meddling kids. They were convinced, you know, they
saw a car and what are the odds of the
same car would come in minutes later? Et cetera, et cetera.
So they just went along with the system, which is
what happens. You can tell. I sort of empathize with
defense attorneys more. But yeah, it is. It is another

(14:23):
example of how well meaning people can just be wrong
and those and being wrong about something can actually have
very very serious consequences for people, you know, strangers, innocent people.
So don't put too much weight in that stuff. All right,
we'll do more super chats in a bit. We have callers,
so if you don't have anything else, let's jump right

(14:43):
into that. All right, sounds good. All right, I'm going
to talk to Vicky at this point, Vicky from North Carolina.
She her it says here Vicky, quote, I am wondering
if my belief in the Word holds up, so do I. I
understand that correctly. Why don't you explain to us what
you're interested in talking about, VICKI.

Speaker 4 (15:05):
For one thing, I'm nervous. But the other thing is,
I don't know. I've just gotten to where I cannot
listen to preaching insermons, and I've started listening to your
atist talks and a lot of things that y'all talk
about make sense, and I'm starting to see kind of
the not holding up on the other side, and so

(15:26):
that's concerning to me. So that's kind of where I
am that but I still believe God is good, you know,
And so I'm stuck because what y'all are saying makes
sense when you ask questions to people that call in.
And I've always had those beliefs too in the past,
about rapture, all these things that I believed in, But

(15:46):
now I am really starting to question all of those things.
And she asked me what I am like, Am I
a Christian or I don't know what I am?

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Sure that you do a kind of where I am. Well, A,
don't be nervous, we're just having a chat here, b
You are doing really well, so far, you're expressing your
position really well, and you're explaining to us your dilemma,
and then c you're not alone. This is a very
common situation for a lot of people, and to me,

(16:16):
it's a healthy situation. You should always question people who
are making claims. You know that the economy is getting
better or not worse, or this person is a criminal
or not, or this person Jesus was resurrected or not.
All of those should be examined right, skeptically. And I
think people cast the words skepticism or skeptic in a

(16:38):
negative light in our society and they misunderstand it a
little bit. Skepticism just means, hey, I'm not going to
accept a claim until I've become convinced through the proper
amount of evidence. And then sort of the follow up
question is, well, what's the proper amount of evidence? Right?
What's enough of evidence to believe that that guy's a

(16:58):
criminal or the economies getting better, or that Jesus was resurrected.
And it sounds like you're in that space of well,
I'm starting to ask for evidence in my head, like
what evidence do I have that my beliefs surreal? And
now you're wondering what to do with those questions? Am
I understanding you?

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Correctly?

Speaker 4 (17:14):
That is correct? But where I was, I thought God
was a tyrant male chosen I believed all those things
for decades to where I was even a housewife that
believed in certain roles. And when I started to pick
up the word, I was asking God, why do you
hate me? Is it because I'm a woman? I saw
how women were treated like cattle. I had all those

(17:36):
But as I read it, I saw a loving God
and I felt like I had been lied to all
my life about who he was. So now I'm stuck
in this thing where I don't believe what I've been
told about God. But in the same time, I hear
y'all asking questions to people just like me, So I
don't even I'm like so confused.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Understood, So let me ask John, John, and I think,
did you ever have a religious background?

Speaker 5 (18:02):
John?

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Were you ever in this situation?

Speaker 5 (18:05):
Well?

Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah, well never this situation specifically, because I always, I mean,
I definitely have a different sort of perspective on it,
being that, you know why, I was a white Christian male,
so like I didn't as a Christian, like I didn't
notice all the misogyny and everything in that. I'm just
kind of curious if I could ask a clarifying question there, Vicky,
Are you saying that you were being told that God

(18:27):
is a misogynist and that he's a horrible being and
everything like that, but now, after reading the Bible you
come to the conclusion that he's actually a good God?

Speaker 3 (18:37):
Is that? Is that the correct possession progression there?

Speaker 4 (18:40):
I know that that sounds crazy, but yes, it's like
getting away from what I was being told. It's like,
I know that sounds victory, but.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
So and that's numbers five.

Speaker 4 (18:52):
Yes, number five is about It's like a it's about
where the woman the love of jealousy and she has
to drink the bitter water. Well, the woman goes and
she's taken before the priest because she's thought to be
an adulteress, and they do all these ritualistic things like
putting it in a earthen vessel, making her drink. It's
very demeaning. And I would go outside and I would

(19:15):
just be like, who are you God? This sounds the
tanic of what you would think would be done like
in a back room somewhere, and it's in the Bible,
and I questioned that for like a year, like why
is this woman demeaned in such a manner that she
has to drink and if she's guilty or belly will
swell or thigh rot. But it wasn't until at the
end of it, where there's a woman that's proved not

(19:38):
guilty and she produces food and she conceived, And I'm like,
I thought that was describing the woman that's been made free.
So that's what's all of it, right?

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Well, well, I find I find it. I don't mean
to be combative or anything, but I find it rather
interesting that you've you've chosen the one story that could
conceivably be about abortion or you know, purity culture and
everything like that, but as opposed to like the slavery
that God commands in Leviticus twenty five forty four through
forty six, or what about how God, you know, specifically

(20:12):
commands Moses to go in and wipe out the Midianite
people all together except for all the virgin girls to
force them into sexual slavery. To me, the bitter water
or whatnot seems to be pretty mild as far as
like atrocities go. In the Old Testament, when compared to
like these other things of the Bible. So I'm kind

(20:33):
of curious as to how do you ration, like as
far as your current view now of God being good?
How are you rationalizing these Old Testament atrocities that are
all over the Old Testament and this good nature of God?

Speaker 4 (20:46):
I can tell I can tell you, and that's what
I'm saying. I'm not saying this is spot on. I'm
not going to be convinced that this is not right.
I'm wondering if I've convinced myself with something also to
be able to make it more palatable.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Did you let me ask what did you read specifically?
You said, hey, I was told this or I believed
the bad parts and then I read the Bible and
I saw a good God. What specific did you read
the entire Bible? Did you use a study guide or
did you read the gospels? What parts of the Bible
did you read to convince you that God is good?
The character of God at least in the Bible is good.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
It was it was just learning like different words, like
I think the first thing was I was going through
hav An MS and I went to the Bible and
I was looking at the verses about God promises to
heal you, promises.

Speaker 5 (21:33):
To give you this.

Speaker 4 (21:34):
Da da da da da. Had all the verses posted,
and I was convinced because what I was hearing people
tell me on the radio was that God would give
me anything that I wanted. So the end one day,
I sat down, I actually started to read them for myself,
and I'm like, well, that's not exactly what it says.
It's not promising me anything and everything.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
So if there are two or more of you ask
for anything in my name, you shall have it. Yea truly, truly,
like not a metaphor. Right, There's at least five that
I can think off off the top of my head
where God does say, or the or the characters in
the Bible of Jesus or whomever says, if you, if
you pray to move a mountain in real faith, you

(22:15):
will move a mountain. Anything you ask, or if there's
more than one of you, you shall get it. If
you ask sincerely, you shall get it. This is this
is a common I've gone over this on my show.
This is a common question that you ask people, And
I'm interested to see why you think any other interpretation
of that is true. Rather than the words that the

(22:36):
print on the page. The words that are printed on
the page say verily, hold on, hold on, verily, verily, truly, truly,
sort of literally. I'm not I'm not exaggerating here. You'll
get what you want. And so I say, I compare
that text with the fact that I've never seen God
heal an amputee, and I can't reconcile those two things.

Speaker 5 (22:56):
How do you?

Speaker 2 (22:56):
How did you reconcile those.

Speaker 4 (22:59):
It's been a long term. I'll give you one in
particular that stands out to me, and that is in
the New Testament with Paul. When Paul's talking to the
Corinthians and he tells them he says that he will
be weak, that they may be strong, and that he's
wanting them to be better to me. He's saying to
them that I trust that you will see that I'm

(23:20):
your brother, even though right now you're thinking I'm not
your brother, I'm a reprobate. They're like coming against him,
But he's saying, I trust that you will believe and
that you will see that I am a brother. I
want you to be made strong. I will be willing
to be weak to me. That's giving anything you ask
for in my name because it's to me everything's finder,

(23:43):
Gar loves right.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
So isn't that taking hold on Yeah, isn't that taking
one part of the Bible that's not related to Jesus saying, Hey,
if you pray for something, I'll give it to you.
Isn't that taking one part to use it to modify
another book that's written at a different time by a
different person. I'm very curious. This is a very interesting take.

(24:07):
It sounds like you've got sort of a spot you
want to get to, and you're searching throughout the Bible
for pieces to get you there, rather than read the
Bible cover to cover and come away with an opinion
as to the story it tells and the characters in
the book. Because when I read the Bible cover to cover,
I didn't use a study guide. I didn't go to
Bible study and read only the chapters of Church wanted

(24:30):
me to. I just read it cover to cover and
I realized, Wow, in the Old Testament, there's a God
character here that's like the most evil thing I've ever
seen in literature. And it doesn't get much better in
the New Testament. Because now we've got the concept of
hell and eternal damnation, which is infinitely worse than anything
that he was going to do in the Old Testament.
That's what I come away with, even if he is
occasionally saying, hey, while you own slaves, be nice to

(24:53):
your fellow citizens, while you are forcing young virgins into
sex slavery, give up your possessions. Right, just because you've
got some nice stuff that you find over here, doesn't
mean it dissolves you of all the evil stuff. Do
you understand where I'm coming from.

Speaker 4 (25:10):
I do understand, And that's what I'm saying, though, is
that you can't capture it and to me, and that's
what I'm trying to. Like maybe a little by little,
listening to what y'all have to say and your talks
has kind of helped me to kind of question some
of these things too. But I don't think I'm capitalized.
It's not just one book, it's not just one verse.

(25:32):
It's the overall of it all. I mean, like, like
what actually is a virgin? And I mean I could
go on and on about we say God was talking
about gender when he was talking about women, but there's
also a whole study of what a woman means in
the world there is a whole study about space.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
But let's be honest, Okay, there's not very much disagreement
amongst even Chris scholars about the things like, hey, the
Bible endorses slavery, right, that you could own people, you
could beat them to with an inch of their life,
you could pass them to their children. If there were women,
they were sex slaves, they were property, all of this

(26:14):
sort of stuff. Right, So let's give you your version
of the Bible. There's ten thousand, a million pages and
nine hundred nine, nine hundred and ninety nine pages say
be nice to each other and all that sort of stuff,
and then on one page it says, but while you
do that, you can own other people as property. You
can beat them, you can rape them. Women are worth

(26:34):
less than men. I'm not going to teach you about science.
I'm going to put stuff in there regarding hygiene that
would actually kill you. There's one page in there there's
just awful, evil stuff. What do you do with that?
Even if there's like ninety nine point nine to nine
percent of that is good, which is not the case
of the Bible. Doesn't that one section where this supposedly

(26:55):
omnipotent all knowledgeable God is telling you all of this
really horrible stuff to do. Doesn't that make that character
of that God at least you have to question their
understanding of the universe and humanity and morality.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
But I feel like, and I'm just being honest, And
this is why I'm confused, because when I called to Day,
I didn't want to go, and she asked me, which
want to talk about Day? I'm like, I don't want
to come on here with just one pet peeve. When
you talk about slaves instead, I get what you're saying,
But when I read it, when it starts to come out,
I mean, when he says I think that y'all have

(27:30):
quoted I'm not good at quoting, like the actual verses,
but about serve your masters, slave, serve your masters. But
when he says you can't serve two masters, I mean,
is he talking about slave what you're talking about or
is it me serving death and condemnation or is it
me serving life and forgiveness.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
I mean, let's clarify what we're talking about, John, John, Yes,
I understand. So you're talking about the New Testament. We
were talking about the Old Testament. We can get to
the New Testament in a second, so, John, you you
had mentioned that I don't remember the verses, but my
recollection is owning people as property, right, Exodus Deuteronomy. There's

(28:09):
multiple places where they talk about this.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah, So there's Exodus twenty one specifically says that you
can own slaves as property, and then there's also Leviticus
twenty five, forty four through forty six that talks God
specifically says how you can go and you can purchase
slaves from the nations around you. There's several different laws
in the Old Testament that talk about, you know, how

(28:32):
to treat your slaves and all this other stuff. I
feel like you're being a bit anachronistic with this whole
you can't serve two masters kind of thing, because I
believe that was Paul, if I'm not mistaken, in the
New Testament that talks about how you can't serve two masters,
and that's not talking about like that's not like an
anti slavery sort of thing. That's more of like an
anti idolatry kind of verse there, like you can't serve

(28:53):
you can't serve money like greed, you can't be greedy
and also serve God. And honestly, that's just a way
to separate the believers from their money.

Speaker 4 (29:03):
Okay, But I'm just saying that there is tons of
definitions for what and to say, and I'm just being
on the way I feel. What I was just thinking
about when you y'all were talking about, uh, you know,
you can own somebody as property and make them your slave.
But if we take account it just I was just
thinking about this. Now, wait a minute, if you take

(29:23):
into account that the slave where it says that the
slave is not in the house forever and it's the sun,
why would God be promoting slavery?

Speaker 1 (29:33):
You tell us slavery again.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Your pa, you're cherry picking a verse. You're cherry picking
a verse. Explain for our viewers. Hold on, hold on, VICKI,
hold on, hold on. You're cherry picking a verse we
are talking about there. It's okay, I just I understand.
And what you need to understand is the Bible is
sixty something books written by different authors at different times
over you know, many many, many eons. All right, So

(29:59):
what what we are talking about is in the Old
Testament it says you can own people as property, and
then it divides those people into two categories. Right, Hebrews
and non Hebrews. Hebrews, you have to treat nicer than
non Hebrews, non pre Hebrews. Beat the hell out of them.
As long as they live for one or two days.
After you beat them and then die, you're not guilty

(30:22):
of any crime. You can beat them to with an
inch of their life, you're fine. You can have the
women become sex slaves. You own them, You give them
to your children as property. They have no right to
refuse anything you want them to do. That's what we're
talking about, owning people as property. Do not try to
shift to some other definition of non biblical or in

(30:45):
another book. We're talking about those people, the non Hebrews
around you. We're treated like the slaves you see in many,
many popular movies about modern slavery, of just cruel inhuman
treatment of property. Our question is how do you reconcile
that that the Bible endorses that It doesn't say don't

(31:07):
do this, It says you may do this. And then
when the New Testament comes along, nothing Jesus says, says, oh,
remember those old laws about how you could own slaves.
We're not doing that anymore. He does the opposite. He
says I'm here to fulfill the law. Nothing will change,
not a jot or tittle of the law will change

(31:28):
until all has been fulfilled. And then we have the
phrase from the New sys Testament that says, slaves obey
your masters as you would obey Christ. So Old Testament
says you can be a cruel sort of Quentin Tarantino
esque slave owner character, and the New Testament does nothing
to say no. In fact, it has this one line

(31:50):
that slave owners in our Civil War times used to
read two Slaves to say. Even the New Testament, when
Jesus was around, is telling you obey your masters. How
do you reconcile that with a good God? That's our question.

Speaker 4 (32:03):
Yes, and I totally. I mean I read everything that
you all read, and I have all those same questions.
I've went through those questions, even pertaining to my marriage.
I had, you know, when I've lived in this like marriage,
to where I performed the wife role, when I was
the homemaker and all that. I see that I've struggled
with those same things that you're talking about. But that's

(32:24):
what I'm saying. I don't know how else to say it,
but I think that we can define it's just like fruit.
We can find it.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Let's stop talking. Let's let's stop using analogies and tell
me what you're defining. If you've gone to this definition
thing a bit, but we haven't gotten to a point,
what definition are you proposing in our words that we're
using to describe slavery being endorsed in the Bible. What
definition are you calling into question.

Speaker 4 (32:47):
The slavery I don't think that all was talking about
demeaning chaining.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Will you be my slave? Will you be my slave
under the rules of the Old Testament?

Speaker 4 (32:58):
Uh, while you want me to be, it's not the question.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
My question is would you want to be my slave
under the Old Testament rules for non Hebrew slaves.

Speaker 4 (33:07):
That's a good question that I have to think about that.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
I should just do. Really, I mean, I can't hear
you there, see Would I want.

Speaker 4 (33:15):
To be I would? I would not want to be
your slave.

Speaker 5 (33:18):
Of course not.

Speaker 4 (33:19):
I mean, of course that's not it. But I'm saying
I'm trying to see what you're wanting me to see.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
I'm trying to say that that's what morality's about. Do
unto others as you would do unto them. The Golden
Rule like don't own slaves because people who were slaves
would not want to be slaves.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
Well, so, vickiy do you do you understand.

Speaker 4 (33:38):
Do unto others as you had them do unto you.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
I mean, I'm comparing those two things, right, that's I'm
comparing those two Golden rule is found across religions and cultures, right,
many many cultures have come up with that rule as
an example of hey, don't do something you wouldn't want
done to you, or if everybody did it, it would
be awful, or those sorts of rules just sort of
shorthand bumper stipper logic for morality. And what I'm saying

(34:05):
is you just walked into that what by by thinking
about it? All you did was thinking, I congratulate you. No,
I really wouldn't want to be a slave under the
Old Testament rules. And then then my conclusion is, well,
neither did anybody else. Right, nobody wants to be a
slave under the Old Testament rules. And yet the Bible
says it is not only uh not horrible. It here

(34:26):
are the rules, here's the here's the how you do it.
So I'm sorry, godless engineer was gonna was gonna come
in I'd love to hear what he has to say.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
So, uh, I get the feeling, Vicky that you're trying
to say that because God didn't say to uh, treat
slaves horribly or or something like that, at least explicitly,
that somehow it was a different kind of slavery, it
was a better kind of slavery.

Speaker 4 (34:51):
And I just do what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
Okay, I'm sorry. I thought that you were going on
you don't believe in s It's.

Speaker 4 (35:00):
Not what I'm saying. No, I'm saying that if And
it's just like when I go to Christian board and
I talk to Christians, I get the same thing from them,
telling me that it cannot be a different term. It
cannot be a different type of slavery. It has to
be when you talk to them about certain words and say,

(35:20):
let's look at these words and can it just like
physical healing and spiritual healing and you they don't want
to talk about it. They want to talk about just
what it promises them. And they see it as one thing.
They see woman as one thing, they see slave as
one thing. And that's the way it is. And that's
what I'm saying, is that I feel like what I'm

(35:41):
defending is that what if I what if there's another definition?
And if that not okay to say there is another definition.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
Let's let's let's let's let's let's take that assumption. Let's go,
let's go with that. Okay, So let's assume that there's
a misunderstanding here, that there's a definition that's been lost
in time. Even though I just so we can agree
on this, what the popular people in the pews think
about interpretations of terms can be very different from the

(36:12):
people who actually study these languages, who go in and
look at translations of translations, of copies of transcripts that
were passed down by oral transition. They've gone and read
everything that we have, the originals on the actual clay
tablets or whatever. Okay, so those people inform our understanding.
But let's ignore that and say that there is some

(36:33):
sort of misunderstanding here. My question to you is the
story of the Bible is a story of possibly the
most important question in all of human existence, the story
of a potential afterlife, living as long as you want
to or living as long as God wants you to.
And even Christians, I think agree it's the most important message. Ever, so,

(36:55):
if you've got a god character that is all powerful
enough to have created this universe where the visible units has,
universe has two billion, two trillion billion galaxies and each
galaxy has four hundred billion stars in it, and they
did all of that. Don't you think it's a little
odd that the way they chose to convey this message

(37:18):
to you, Vicky is through misinterpretations of translations of copies
of copies of translations where we don't have any of
the originals written down by anybody. They were all written
by anonymous people well after the fact of Jesus. Jesus's life,
is that the best way to convey the most important

(37:40):
message in all of humanity to the point where we
could have a definitional misunderstanding about important terms.

Speaker 4 (37:46):
I think about that every single day, because that's why
I'm calling, and I'm telling you that even though I
may sound like, yeah, this is what I'm telling, I
still doubt everything I'm saying myself, because what you're just
saying and what I've heard from 'all like to be
afraid that there is no God. That's scary. That's sure scary.

(38:08):
And with me having hope, I tell my husband all
the time I get to pressed, it's going to make
me cry because I really am scared because the world
I don't feel like there's not a lot of stuff
to be like hopeful and happy for and I can't
find It's like I thought that was what I was
finding in God. But then if there is no God,

(38:29):
then I don't know what all this is even for.
And I get your question, that couldn't it. I mean
I think about that every day, that this is like
a crap show. I don't even want to go listen
to Christian or go to those sites. And that's why
I ended up at Yells because I'm like, I'm tired
of hearing the same debate.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
Well, so I just want to, like, I understand that
you know, you've been dedicated to God like a good
portion of your life, and so it seems very scared
this whole proposition that maybe God doesn't exist. But also
when I left religion and I stopped believing in God,
an entire world opened up for me because like I
was predicating a lot of my actions and everything like

(39:14):
that on this whole idea that I was going to
get to go to heaven or I was going to
have this afterlife and everything.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
Once that was.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
Taken away from me, I was able to really focus
in on like everything that I have now that I'm
experiencing now and really enjoying it, like really appreciating it,
because it's like, well, this is the only life that
I have. This is the only experience I'm gonna have,
so you know, I need to be like I want
to be happy. I want to do things in my

(39:41):
life that make me happy and that benefit other people
and all this other stuff. So like I feel like,
while it may seem scary now, this whole prospect of
God not existing, I think that if you try to
look at everything in your life without that lens of
God on it, you'll see like how how full of
a life you actually have, and how important it is

(40:02):
to like experience those things every day, and how the
thing that makes this life have meaning are the experiences
that you have, Like that this is the only life
that you're going to get, so like, you know, might
as well make the best of it, and you don't
need to worry about some misogynistic you know, God up
there and everything. To touch back on the slavery and

(40:23):
the definitions kind of thing, while there could be a
chance that we're missing some kind of understanding from the
Hebrew language about how they described slaves and all this
other stuff. What we do know is how slaves, how
the slave trade existed in the areas around Israel in
the ancient Near East. That's well documented, and the Israelites

(40:43):
actually were either on par or just slightly worse than
the surrounding ancient Near Eastern cultures. So when you're sitting
there trying to figure out, well, what does God mean
by slavery? What they meant at that time, it's going
to be the same kind of slavery that every other
person at that time, in that point in time in
human history meant by slavery, it was quite literally owning

(41:06):
another person as property. Now, the ancient Near Eastern cultures
they had laws that either protected slaves or afforded slaves
some kind of benefits, so that is still on par
like the Israelites implementation of that is still on par
with the ancient Near Eastern culture.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
So I mean.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Slavery in any kind of sense where it's chattel slavery
and not some ambiguous, like super weird, you know, kind
of definition, it's going to be owning another person as
slave and deriving benefit from their hard labor where they
do not derive any benefit from it directly. And so

(41:45):
that is how we define chattle slavery, and that's how
we define biblical slavery. So if you believe that God
in the New Testament is the same in the New
Testament as he is in the Old Testament, and as
he is now in the present day, and as he
will be in the future, then God is directly responsible
for some slave trade or all of the slave trade
really that was happening in Israel.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
Now, if you're not.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
Good with the slave trade, then I would say that
you should probably not consider God good. If God is good, omni,
benevolent and all that kind of good stuff, if he
is that thing, then he should have definitely in the
Old Testament said hey, don't own people as slaves. But
he didn't do that. So can you really consider him
to be a good God if he's going to mandate
things like sexual slavery, chattel slavery, genocide, all of these things.

(42:31):
Can you imagine any considering anybody a good person if
they order you personally to go to the next town
and slaughter everybody in it, including babies and small children.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Right, yeah, Vicky, we've been on a while. I really
really really like this call, but we do have to
get onto other callers. I would suggest that you call back.
I don't know when Godless is going to be on.
I'll be on in about a month where we try
to cycle through. But I really appreciate your honesty and
you being vulnerable and talking about your troubles. We are

(43:06):
right there with you. I've spoken to many callers who
were on the same path as you. Some have, you know,
went and found something that convinced them to stay with Christianity.
Many continued to say, hey, I need to be a
skeptical about these claims, as I do about the the
used car salesman, you know, telling me the car is good.
I need to be skeptical. This is the most important thing,
and I would continue to do that. I'm not going

(43:28):
to try to say one way or the other. We're
just sitting here telling you things that we think are
make it kind of obvious that this is made up stuff.
So thank you very much for calling in, and we'll
look forward to seeing you again next So bye bye.
Was a good call that took a while. But I
think that's a very common experience that people have.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
Yeah, definitely, Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Well, I do have a few more announcements. We've got
other calls. I'm going to try to get through them quickly,
So let's go through those. The ACA wants you to
know what is going on in our community, and for
that you can head to www Dot Atheist Hyphencommunity dot
org where you can learn about the organization itself, it's policies,
and how you can get involved. Also, if you would

(44:14):
like what we do, please consider supporting us on Patreon.
Giving to our Patreon ensures our ability to continue to
produce the content that you love. You can visit tiny dot,
cc slash, Patreon, AXP. And finally, as we always do,
we would like to thank the people without whom we
could not put on this show. Our crew, they put

(44:36):
this show together every single week. We have video operators,
audio operators, Hello everybody, note takers, call screeners, chat moderators.
Thank you so much for making all of this still
pretty amazing technological wonder that we can all be in
different locations and put out this show. What not twenty
years ago would have been a miracle, So thank you

(44:57):
so much. For doing that. We have received a few
more super chats, so let's go through those real quickly.
We've got Nero mal member for a year, five dollars
Happy Necromancy Day. Acolytes and authorized clerics are reminded that
raised dead spells are to be assumed failed until independent verification.
I feel like that's a person familiar not only with

(45:20):
the Gospel but also dungeons and dragons. I'm not sure. Definitely, Yeah,
thank you so much, pibblepunk, half dog, half canine. Five dollars.
Ah Easter, the day we celebrate the time Jesus laid
a bunch of eggs in the woods and made some
rabbits go find them more something. I think he's confusing
that with the little bunny fufu story, right fair and
knocked him on the head and.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, probably. But also what I would what
I would say is that now Jesus is the one
that's forcing the rabbits to shoot out the eggs, and
then Jesus is okay, he's done an army of rabbits
that are producing the eggs.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
I think you need to need to write a pilot
for this show. Get this produced right up there with
Sharknado Neromal member for a year. Another Neromu, thank you
five dollars. Paul's words are worthless. An uneducated gentile who
knew close to nothing of the Jewish religion. He knew
nothing about the Old Testament. I am ignorant as to

(46:18):
those claims. What is your take on that godless engineer?
Was Paul an uneducated gentile who did not know about
the Old Testament?

Speaker 1 (46:26):
No, I mean he definitely knew about Like he quotes
the Old Testament, he harkens back to it. He says
that he's the most learned Jew and I believe that's
Galatians one. So I mean no, he definitely knows the
Old Testament. That's where he derives this theology.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Chron Okay, all right, so there you Goniromal. If you
want a debate, ge, you gotta give us more money.
Another super chat omar Quimbaia new member. Thank you for
joining five dollars. I love hearing thoughts of genuine believers
and why they believe. I agree, Vicky was a great call.
It's hard to hear the gymnastics to justify slavery. Should

(47:00):
it be an Olympic sport? That is mental gymnastics is
a very common thing. You hear there, I think we're you.
It's a human condition, and what you're hearing is a
brain trying to resolve cognitive dissonance. I want to believe,
or I do believe the Bible is a net good thing,
or the character of God in the Bible is a
good character. We point out slavery and female stonings and

(47:26):
the genocide, killing of women and children and bashing children
on the rocks, and then we just ask the question,
does that sound like a good person? And then you
hear the brain going I can't hold these two thoughts simultaneously.
So I'm going to I'm going to try to say, well,
I'm going to be skeptical about the one that is
my disfavored position, right, the one that I think I
don't want. So I'm going to be skeptical about the

(47:47):
definition of slavery. I'm going to be skeptical about the
definition of rocks. Maybe rocks were meant mattresses back then, right,
who knows? So, yes, that that is trouble, but everybody's
been through it, and if Vicky's still listening, that's you
should recognize that in yourself that uncomfortable. Feeling right is
learning new information that contradicts older, previously held beliefs. How

(48:08):
do you resolve that? The honest way is to go research, read,
find out what the experts say, verify their research, and
then come up with your new position. Near Amal wrote back,
uh oh oh God, let's engineer another near Amal five dollars. Okay,
Nick's slave. Look at how they oh, okay, this is
about the slave. Nix the word slave. Look at how

(48:30):
they treat non Hebrew servants unacceptable either way. Refusing to
say slave doesn't make it better. That's true, that's true.
That's why I asked that question, and many people have.
Would you be my slave? Would you be my servant?
Under these rules? You know, you're a female, and I'm
the owner. I get to have sex with you, I
get to sell you to people, even if you don't
want to go, if you have, if you have relatives

(48:50):
that you care about, too bad, I'm shipping you off
to California. I'm going to die, but I'm going to
leave you in my will to my kids who are
worse than me. That's whatever you call that bad. And finally,
I'm iterator, I'm itierator whatever that is five dollars. I

(49:11):
am e Trader tell Vicky that she will know no
better freedom than the freedom from religion. That is true freedom.
I like to play on the word of freedom there
from slavery. Freedom from religion is a good thing, and
I guess that goes godless to her last sentiment of

(49:33):
to sum it up, I'm questioning, but I'm afraid, right,
is there nothing out there? Is life pointless? Did you
ever have to deal with that?

Speaker 1 (49:42):
Actually? No, I mean, like the whole meaning of life
and everything like that really didn't come into question for me.
I mean the really, I just believe because I was
told to always believe, and I just believe things without
critically thinking about them, and so I guess I never attached.

Speaker 3 (49:58):
Meaning to like, you know, believe in God.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Got it all right? I did not either from a
last would have said yes, I believe in a God,
probably when I was ten or twelve, but never really
thought about it. And as soon as I started thinking
about it, it was like, Okay, these stories are kind
of crazy. And then I went through this period of Okay,
I must be missing something, Like I looked around and
all these people they take this so seriously they're trying

(50:20):
to pass laws based on this to infringe on people's rights.
I must be missing something. There's a codex somewhere in
the Bible I haven't read. So that's when I started
reading the Bible. I'm like, nope, there's nothing here. It
really is just fan fiction. So yeah, I think that
going with that super chat, Yes, I agree that the
freedom that you get when you realize I am not

(50:43):
the puppet or toy of a divine dictator and I
get to go create the life I think I should
live and I am free to do that is a
very liberating thing.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah. All right, next caller, we have Shabbaz from Kentucky,
no pronouns give And the question here is what is
it about your ideology that leads you to atheism? What
is it about a creator that you find unbelievable? So
before I put you on the Airshabaz, I'm going to
ask godless two questions. Is atheism in your mind and ideology?

Speaker 1 (51:19):
No, it's an answer to a question of whether or
not you believe in God?

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Okay, And I'm not saying that that's what Shazad said.
He said, what is it about your ideology? That leads
you to atheism, But I just wanted to clear that,
clarify that point. And two, what is it about a
creator that you find unbelievable? I'll take that one first
by saying, the creators characters I've been presented with so
far have either defied the laws of physics, there's no

(51:44):
evidence for them, et cetera. So when I say, when
you say unbelievable, I would def I would ask you
your definition of that. But I'm going to assume it's
something like mine, which is I have not been presented
with sufficient evidence to convince me that they're real. So
given those two premises, Shabaz, I'm going to put you online.
Did did Given those I would like to ask you

(52:07):
to go ahead and give us your questions and tell
us your thoughts.

Speaker 5 (52:10):
Yeah, well you all laid the questions out pretty clearly.
And and and it's not necessarily a I mean, I
guess the ideology that needed to be the term that
I huge just what is it in general that leads
somebody towards atheism? And if you say it's that you
just haven't seen sufficient proof, I mean, well that's that

(52:31):
question answered. And but like my rebuttal, to that, or
my question to that answer would be what is it
that would be sufficient proof to someone like you? I
guess I couldn't say an atheist in general, but when
an atheist such as yourself, what would be sufficient proof
to right?

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Well, I don't I don't have to know that. I
don't have to know what would be sufficient proof for
what would convince me. But if if you're proposing a
god definition where your God is all powerful and and
all knowledgeable, then he should definitely know what would convince me.
So it's really not up to me to figure out
what would be convincing. I can tell you right now

(53:09):
all of the evidence presented so far by theists are
not convincing to me. That's why I can say for
sure if I were to try to formulate some kind
of criteria, I would say that you'd have to provide
some kind of verifiable suspension of the natural order of
reality that has no underlying cause or reason for it,

(53:30):
and the best explanation is not a natural one, but
is rather a supernatural one. I think that that would
be a good first step in coming to an understanding
of God. Do you have any kind of evidence that
would meet that definition?

Speaker 5 (53:47):
Man, the Muslim will always tell you there's nothing about
it that I can prove to you. All we can
do is tell you why it is that we are
in a state of belief.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
And so are you a Muslim?

Speaker 3 (54:01):
Yes, okay, okay, so you're a Muslim. That's fine.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Well, so you're basically saying that there's no point in
me asking you to give me evidence for your God,
like you're You're just supposed to sit there and point
to your to the Koran and be like, the Quran
says this, Therefore believe it is that what I'm getting
from you. I feel like that's what I'm getting from you.

Speaker 5 (54:22):
No, that's not what I'm saying at all.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
But explain I will tell you.

Speaker 5 (54:28):
Yeah, I will tell you that that the Quran to
some degree is evidence. Is part of why I'm a Muslim.
But that's not part of why I believe in a
higher power that I think created the universe in the
first place. I believe in a higher power because I
don't I.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Don't think that the universe was created. I don't think
that the universe was created. If you're starting from a
position where you're like, oh, the universe was created, then
you're you're you're you're doing question back.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
Yeah, let let's yeah, let's let's ask him that what
what convinced you that the universe is a creation?

Speaker 5 (55:01):
Well, it's exactly that, as I was just saying, I
don't believe in luck, chance or coincidence, Okay, and so
I don't believe that anything, including an especially entire universe,
could have come about by luck, chance or coincidence.

Speaker 3 (55:17):
And also.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
That's where I was going to go, let's let's define
let's stick to that luck, chance and coincidence. So we're
gonna what we're going to ask you to do is
define what you mean by coming about as of luck, chance,
and or coincidence. So, taking taking your words, I think
what your deal. What you're saying is that there's a dichotomy.
Either the universe was intentionally created by an agent, a

(55:44):
thinking mind created the universe, or the only other possibility
is that was it came about by what you call luck, chance,
or coincidence, And what we're asking you is or yeah,
or maybe it was eternal. Yeah, that's another option, right,
So what do you mean by luck, chance, and coincidence

(56:05):
as with respect to I guess physics and realizing none
of us are physicists here, What do you what do
you mean by luck, chancer, coincidence? Because I have a
follow up question to that.

Speaker 5 (56:14):
Yeah, well that I personally I would be fine. Uh,
you know each of those terms by extrast dictionary, you know,
but probably the same way that anybody else would sign them.
But when when someone says a physicist or an atheist,
for instance, says that that's how those are one of
the three reasons that the universe could have come about.

(56:35):
Stephen Hawkings, I think is named me a guy who's
in a wheelchair. He says, the universe is simply because
it can, you know, and nothing deeper than that. Well,
to me, that's.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Do you know what he meant by that? Do you
know what what Hawking meant by it? Exists because it can?
And again I'm not a physicist.

Speaker 5 (56:54):
No, not he had a deeper meaning than just what
he said. No, no, if he had a deeper meaning
than just what he said out right now, I don't
understand what he meant by it.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
Okay, So this is my novice understanding, and I'd love
to hear from physicists who tell me that I've got
it wrong. But I look to a couple of different
things that we know experimentally happen that I think would
fall under your definition by luck, chance or coincidence. So
are you familiar with radioactive decay?

Speaker 5 (57:20):
Man, I've heard the terminology anything about it?

Speaker 1 (57:24):
All?

Speaker 4 (57:24):
Right?

Speaker 2 (57:24):
So you've got a collection of atoms that are all
the same type, and some of them are radioactive. They
throw off particles over time, and they decay from one
form of an element to a different element, right, Plutonium
and those sorts of things are highly radioactive, and they
have what's called a half life.

Speaker 4 (57:43):
Right.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
So we cannot predict when any given particle will be
thrown out of an element, like when it will shed
that electron or whatever particle it's shedding, right, but we
know with a certainty that taken as a whole over time,
that it will lose half of its volume over you know,
let's say we're dealing with some form of uranium and

(58:05):
it's got a half life of one thousand years by definition,
and these are just example numbers, but by definition that
means if you start with one hundred grams of it,
then in one hundred years, because it's got a half
life in a thousand years, because it's got a half
life of a thousand years. Over a thousand years you
will be down to fifty grams instead of one hundred.

(58:26):
So while we cannot predict it seems absolutely random when
any given particle will be thrown off, we can be
absolutely certain that when you measure that as a whole,
by the time you get to a thousand years, pretty
much exactly half of that stuff will be gone. So
that's one example of each individual thing is random, but
over time it becomes a sure thing. Another example is

(58:49):
we have now proven that at the quantum levels, particles
are created and disappear apparently randomly i e. Without a cause.
Particles just blink into existing and then they blink out
of existence. This has been observed in the laboratory. So
when I think about the universe, and when Stephen Hawking
says it exists, because it can. If you think, if

(59:10):
you've got an infinite amount of time, not that time
existed before the universe, but if you've got an infinite
amount of potential to exist, then given enough opportunities to
exist i e. Given enough opportunities for that atom to decay,
it's going to happen. At some point. I think that's
what he meant. So, taking all of that information, the
fact that we observe random things happening that appear to

(59:32):
be uncaused, at least for the quantum stuff, particles appearing
and disappearing in an on case state, and the fact
that we see random things happening, but then when you
measure it at a higher level, it all is becomes
a sure thing. Doesn't that call into question your dichotomy
that the universe was either created by a creator, always been,

(59:54):
or just happened by quote unquote chance. Isn't chance in
that context of viable option?

Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
It doesn't to me if I can explain sure. Well,
the reason for that is because the example that you
gave of the things appearing and disappearing seemingly without a call, well,
I mean, you know, of course, my argument against that
would be that seemingly and us not understanding what's going

(01:00:23):
on there doesn't mean that there is no cause of it.
It doesn't even mean that they are appearing and disappearing
or randomly. I mean they're coming out of somewhere and
going to somewhere that we are unaware of. Hell, in
ten years we might know what's going on with that.

Speaker 4 (01:00:37):
Just like that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
That is an amazingly good argument. That is an amazingly
good argument, right, I totally agree with you. The best
answer we have right now as to why these things
appear apparently randomly disappear is we don't know. Right, that's
the answer. We don't know. Is that correct?

Speaker 4 (01:00:55):
Yeah? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Okay, So isn't that the same answer to where did
the universe come from? The best answer is I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:01:01):
Well, I don't think no, I don't think it's the
same Uh. I don't think it's the same answer, because,
for for instance, well, one of the reasons that I
believe in a creator in the first place is because
you know, we exist in a reality where I'm not
familiar with things simply popping into existence out of nowhere,
are creating themselves, are simply having always existed, And so

(01:01:24):
that that leaves me believing or thinking that I don't
have any reason to believe that the universe simply popped
into existence for no parent reason, or created itself, or
or or simply always existed.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
Because let's say, understood, let's say we agree with that
you just said, I have no good reason to believe
that the universe just popped into existing whatever that may be.
Let's say we agree on that hypothetically. Do you have
a good reason to believe it was created by an agent,
a thinking agent?

Speaker 5 (01:01:53):
Well, I have what I believe to be a good reason,
and and I think I may have said that a
little earlier because I don't believe that because like you
take anything that is complex, wich, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
You don't go to the dichotomy again, don't go to
the well. I want to warn you. I see where
you're going with this. Godless, I know you know where
he's going with this. I don't think you're applying the
same level of intellectual honesty to your answer about where
did the universe come from? Was it sort of did
it just pop into existence? Versus did it come from

(01:02:25):
a mind? I would propose the answer is I don't
know to both of them, because we have the equal
amount of evidence for both of those propositions. I have
never seen a universe be created by a person. I
have never create seen an agent demonstrate that they have
capabilities even close to creating a universe. I have never
seen anybody explain why quantum particles pop in and out

(01:02:48):
of existence. So my answer to why does all of
that happen is I don't know, Soge that's on your
screen right now, godless before we get back to Shabaz,
which I think, Chabbaz, you're doing a great You're doing great.
I just wanted to sort of cut you off the
pass there. It sounds like you're saying you've got different
levels of evidence demand or requirements standards of evidence as

(01:03:10):
we call it in the courtroom. What are your thoughts there?

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
Ge?

Speaker 6 (01:03:13):
So far?

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
Well, so, I'm wondering if so the natural explanation is
just going to be the universe is inflating from wherever
they inflate from, whether that be a quantum scaler field
or you know, a singularity. However you want to describe that,
it's going to be a natural process that happens. Right, So,
considering that it's a natural process, I usually like to

(01:03:36):
shift to something that's a little bit easier for everybody
to understand, because the beginning of the universe is rather
complex topic to talk about, with a lot of different
nuances and facets to it. I usually like to shift
to the water cycle. And I'm wondering, if Shabaz can
tell me, do you think that God is needed or

(01:03:56):
responsible for the water cycle to operate.

Speaker 5 (01:03:59):
Yes, I think a law is responsible for everything in creation.
So yeah, quite naturally I would think that, so.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
So you would you would think that God.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Every time it rains, God is directly involved in that
weather event.

Speaker 5 (01:04:11):
Any anything that happens in nature. I think a law
is that directly, not not directly involved.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
In You say a law is responsible for it. A
law is something that's written by humans. It's our description
of how reality works, and it definitely does not include
a god like coefficient or anything in it. So what
I'm asking you directly?

Speaker 5 (01:04:33):
I didn't say. I didn't. I didn't say a law.
I said a law.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
Yeah, sorry, A lot my ears were it was hearing
a law with you list.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
I'm like, I'm confused, but okay.

Speaker 5 (01:04:50):
When I when I say a law on my voice text,
it says a law. So it probably really does sound
like I'm saying that sometimes, so excuse me.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
No, I appreciate the clarific. Yeah, all right, so God.
Let's let's say God as a shortcut for some powerful being.
God is directly involved with making it rain on Tuesday?

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Right, What gives you the indication that God is directly
or a law is directly.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
Involved in making it rain.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Like how we understand the water cycle to operate, it's
all about a transfer of energy. Energy comes from the sun,
it heats up a puddle of water. That puddle of
water turns into water vapor because of the energy that
it absorbs, and it gets excited like with all the
energy that it's absorbed, and it turns into water vapor.
It then rises up into the into the air, making clouds.

(01:05:36):
Once those clouds get to a certain temperature that's lower
than an energy level than what it was when it
originally turned into water vapor, it then turns into some
kind of precipitation. Now depending on how much energy those
water molecules lose, it turns into rain, sleet, snow, hail, whatever, right,
and so it falls to the ground and then it

(01:05:59):
you know, it turns to a liquid state either like
if it was like sleet or snow or something like that.
It's it's gained enough energy to turn into water.

Speaker 4 (01:06:07):
UH.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
But eventually you're going to get back around to another
transfer of energy from the sun to the puddle of
water that then starts it all up up again. So
in this exchange and transfer of UH and transformation of
energy where is God in that equation?

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
Man?

Speaker 5 (01:06:25):
To me, Uh, the answer is as simple as any
cycle that is produced by anything that man creates. I
mean that that that's how a law meant for it
to be, like, that's how he said it to be.
I don't I don't understand.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Are you are you a Let me ask you a
question the real quickly? Are you a deist? I e
Allah set the universe in motion like a clockwork toy,
but then once it was running, he doesn't interfere.

Speaker 5 (01:06:54):
No, Muslims think that a law is always in control
and mindful of his creation.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
You can't point to the most cycle. You can't point
to a spot in the water cycle where God is
doing anything to make it rain on Tuesday at tea time.

Speaker 5 (01:07:08):
I can't. Yeah, well, of course I can't point to that.

Speaker 4 (01:07:13):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:07:14):
I can't point that out to you, no more than
I can point out to you anything. Uh that we
can't verify ourselves about what Korean say is. But my friend,
once you already believe on Korean the things in there
that are because of the things in there that are
verifiable that you can't verify.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
Well, no, So basically what I'm hearing from you is
that you have to already believe in a law in
order to understand the explanation for why God, why a
law makes rain happen? And and that uh, and and
that explanation is basically just an ad hoc stipulation that
a law is needed for Oh, I'm sorry, that's exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
What I heard as well, so that you explain it
to us. How is it? How is it? Let's let's go,
let's cut to the chase. Actually, rather than worrying about
quantum physics and water cycles, what is the best reason
piece of evidence that you were presented with that convinced
you that there was a god? Let's not even talk

(01:08:20):
about that it was Allah. What's the single best piece
of evidence that you became aware of that convinced you
that there was a god?

Speaker 5 (01:08:27):
That's great, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because my belief in Islam
versus my belief in a creator are two totally different things.
And it's not that there was any evidence presented to me.
Is just what my natural mind tells me. Is what
the Muslims called the fits for our natural inclination. Because
I even tried atheism ount once upon a time, I
was fourteen years old, found myself in a ridiculous situation,

(01:08:50):
A ridiculous, terribly situation again for the King's time, couldn't
believe it. Decide, I wasn't. I didn't believe in God
anymore because I kept finding myself in situations like that.
That and that lasted for a couple of days before
my not believing into before something happened that my not
believing in luck, chance and coincidence kicked in and I
was there and I've never been able to get back

(01:09:10):
to that that state.

Speaker 6 (01:09:11):
Of mind again.

Speaker 5 (01:09:12):
So yeah, I mean, yeah, I believe in I believe
in a higher power.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
Let's let's answer the question, though, what is the single
piece of evidence that you were presented with that convinced
you there was a god?

Speaker 4 (01:09:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:09:24):
But but my friend I answered that, I said, no
one presented me with any evidence. It's my natural inclination.
I don't like, I don't. I can't convince myself. You
know that that there is no that there's no creator
of all trees and grass and everything that I understand.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Hold on, a second, hold on, I got it. You
told me the answer. So my follow up is, is
that a good reason to believe.

Speaker 5 (01:09:46):
Something it's not in itself? I wouldn't say your natural
inclination is a reason to believe something, though not in itself,
because your natural inclination could be incorrect.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
Okay, well, so so you agree that you could be
incorrect your natural inclination, that there is that a lot
exists and controls everything that can be incorrect.

Speaker 5 (01:10:04):
It's not only do I agree that I could be
incorrect about that, but of course it's not just that
one reason that I believe in it. I acknowledge that
every reason that I believe in a law Islam and
al Khoran, I acknowledge that every bit of that could
be incorrect.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
Okay, that's good, that's great.

Speaker 5 (01:10:21):
I don't I don't think that it is incorrect, but
I acknowledge that it could be.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
Okay, that's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
Why don't you require evidence to believe in things about reality?
Because it seems like you're saying that you believe in
a law and you don't have evidence, you just believe
in it. Am I misunderstanding that?

Speaker 5 (01:10:39):
No, I don't. I don't feel like I don't have evidence.
My evidence is the main evidence that a law is
the creator of course to the Muslim is Quuran, and
and my evidence to myself that there's a say what
let's let's say I'm gonna go back.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
I'm gonna came back to the very beginning. I'm gonna
call back to the very beginning of our call here.
I literally said, your evidence that a law exists, as
you point at the Karan, is like, look, there's the
Koran that says a law exists, Therefore a law exists.
That's exactly like, that's exactly what you just said.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
You don't think so at the time that you observed that,
I wanted to get into a conversation about circular arguments
and things like that. But we have come full circle
to the circular argument. So let's give Shabaz's a chance. No,
I want to give you a chance to so explain
to us how this is not circular reasoning. If I've
understood you correctly, let me summarize, because one thing I

(01:11:38):
found on these calls is people can run with something
and not understand each other. So let me summarize my
understanding of your position to make sure I've got it right.
The best reason you have for believing in a god
is your natural inclination. You then say that another good
reason maybe not the best but a good reason to
get specific on a lah or whatever is the existence

(01:12:00):
of the Qoran and what it says. Am I understanding
that correctly?

Speaker 5 (01:12:05):
Just about? Yes, it's my natural inclination that has be
believing in a higher power at all. And the reason
that I believe that higher power is actually a law
is because I've been convinced by what Korean says.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
Okay, what in the Kurrent? What what about the crew?
Should we believe anything that's written in the Koran? What
what about it makes it convincing?

Speaker 4 (01:12:24):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (01:12:24):
Well, there are a few things. One thing is, uh,
the Quouran has a fossification tests, and I don't see
that in I don't see that in any other religious book,
especially when I was a Christian study and going through Christianity.

Speaker 4 (01:12:38):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:12:38):
The main one, as it says, uh, the blominishid throng
the regime. And if you are in doubt about what
we have revealed from time to time to our servance
the profit, then produce a sort or like one in
Korean and call your witnesses or helpers just there are any.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
And then it goes on.

Speaker 5 (01:12:53):
Later on to say yeah, and it goes on yeah,
cannot can I finish.

Speaker 2 (01:13:01):
Well, let's let's address that one. I've We've gone back
and forth. I was trying to clarify your position. We've
given you time to talk. Let us address it one
by one, because if we get twenty of them in
a row and we have to go back to the
first one, everybody's going to forget about it. So let's
let's go with this one. Go ahead, Godless, If I
understand correctly, it's hey, uh, if you think this is wrong,

(01:13:21):
produce your own evidence. Am I understanding that correctly? No?

Speaker 5 (01:13:26):
Okay, I think that it's No, it's not if you
think if you don't not, if you think it's wrong,
produce your own evidence. If you don't think this book
is from the creator of the universe. Right and first
it says, produce a chapter like it with some of
the chapters are only a few verses. And then later
on it goes on and say, just go ahead and
produce a verse like it. And that challenge has been
running for fourteen hundred and fifty years. Some people have

(01:13:47):
stepped up to the plate, but it sure.

Speaker 3 (01:13:49):
Hasn't been What does it mean?

Speaker 2 (01:13:52):
I'm sorry, Godless, you go, you go first. We've got
a lot of questions here. That's a very I think
I've heard that one. I think I've heard it in
popular culture, but I know that's an interesting one. Think
about what You'll go ahead, God blesten.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
Well, so I would say like this, So the Koran states,
let me ask you this thing first, there, Shabaz, when
you look out at the night sky, do you see
one moon or one moon split into?

Speaker 5 (01:14:14):
Literally I'll see one moon?

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
Okay, Fine, the Koran is is false in what it claims,
and God is not the all knowing creator of the
universe because I've proven that that the verse in the Koran,
which I can look up the exact verse if you
want me to, where it says that that the moon
got split in two. Where I mean if the moon
is not split into, how does that make sense? Or

(01:14:37):
are you going to try to reccon that verse and
then it not literally being about that?

Speaker 5 (01:14:42):
Yeah, No, it literally meant that the moon was split
in two. And I mean, man, my dude, please, the
moon being split into doesn't mean that it still has
to be split into. A Law created the moon in
the first place. I think if he wanted to split
it into and put it back together, so it wasn't notable.
I think he would be able to do that, you know, considering.

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):
To clarify, just to clarify the splitting was notable, but
the mending doesn't have a mention? Is that correct? Like,
that's not notable? Oh okay, that's convenient.

Speaker 5 (01:15:14):
Obvious that it was mended if it's not steel split
is obvious.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
To anyone who accepts that it was split. To anyone
who accepted that it split, it must have been meanted.
I congratulate you on that logic. If if we accept
that it was split in the past and it's not
split anymore, then it must have been meted. You are
one uh accurate on that. But godless, do we have
evident any evidence that the moon was ever split other

(01:15:44):
than some person writing a book about something.

Speaker 3 (01:15:46):
No, no, definitely not.

Speaker 1 (01:15:48):
But also I love how this is giving, Like my
girlfriend lives in another high or you know, goes to
another high school, another school, because basically what you're telling
me is that, oh, look, the Qurans is that the
moon got split into two halves. Oh but it's not
split into two halves now, so it got put back
together by God.

Speaker 4 (01:16:08):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
Obviously there's no seam or anything like that that we've
been able to discover whenever we've went to the moon
or anything like that. So like, he split it and
then perfectly put it back together, so that we cannot
fucking tell that it was ever split. But also it's
notable to mention that no other civilization in the history
of the world has noted that the moon split into

(01:16:32):
two and then was miraculously put the fuck us back together.

Speaker 2 (01:16:37):
That bye, by Shabbaz's logic, that means obviously that meant
Allah hid that event from everybody else.

Speaker 5 (01:16:43):
I know that's not obviously by my logic. That's what
you are saying is obviously by my logic, But that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
Is your logic. Your logic says if the book claims
the thing, I'm gonna mute you because I want to
explain that because logic is what we're sorely lacking here.
Your logic for the last response was if this book
as something happened, and now we observe something that appears
to contradict that, then we must believe the book and
come up with some other explanation as to why we

(01:17:09):
don't observe that. And then Godless just said, well, the
book says that the moon split within recorded history. No
other population on Earth recorded seeing a split moon. Using
your logic, a book said a thing we no longer have,
we don't have. We have evidence that contradicts that thing. Therefore,
some other explanation must be come up with. We must

(01:17:32):
invent some other explanation to still believe in this book,
I e. God hid it from the rest of the world,
or or they're lying about it, right, They're they're lying.
So that's that's what I mean by that. So do
you understand that that that's the same reasoning.

Speaker 5 (01:17:47):
No, No, it's not the same reason in it at all.
And the only reason it even seems like that is
because the starters may you already looking for something wrong
with what I'm saying is just like y'all telling me
when I'm starting out, you know, shouldn't you that position?

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):
So wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait
wait wait wait wait, I got a bridge to sell you, man, Like,
if it's not your job to be skeptical of claims,
especially crazy claims like I got a bridge to sell you,
I got this million dollar bitcoin investment you should make.
You should be freaking looking for things that are wrong. Hey,

(01:18:24):
I can cure your daughter's cancer, right, give me a
billion dollars, I'll do that. Shouldn't you? Isn't it your
job as a thinking human being to be skeptical about
these things? Aren't we in a place, in this whole
goddamn point in history where we're seeing things happen that
are a result of people not being skeptical. We are
harming ourselves, We're harming the world. We're doing all of

(01:18:47):
this crazy stuff because people are not looking for contradictory evidence,
they're not looking for alternative hypotheses. They're not trying to
actively trying to disprove the claims of certain people. So
shouldn't you be looking for problems before you believe something?
That's my question to you. What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 7 (01:19:07):
Now?

Speaker 4 (01:19:08):
Man?

Speaker 5 (01:19:08):
My thoughts are, Man, I really don't appreciate how long
I have to listen to you all critique and criticize
and then when.

Speaker 2 (01:19:17):
I Okay, So we're going to put him on you again,
because anytime anybody says that, I'm going to say, go
get your own show. But you literally just said the
problem with our reasoning is we're looking for problems with
your reasoning. You called into a show where the main
question we ask every freaking week is what do you believe?

(01:19:39):
And comma more importantly, comma why. We want to know
why you believe things, and then we are going to
try to poke holes in that. That is how all
of science works, that is how all of common day
life works. When the guy comes to you and is
selling you something that sounds too good to be true
and has zero evidence. If a guy came to you
and says, hey, you give me ten thousand dollars today,

(01:20:00):
at the end of the year, I'll give you a
million dollars, trust me, this book says it's true, you
wouldn't do it, and yet you're risking your eternal life
on the same level of evidence. So I think, godless,
what is your take on this? Thank you Shabaz. Well,
we'll go ahead and in the call now.

Speaker 1 (01:20:17):
Yeah, I think that is rather hilarious that people call
in and they expect to be able to monologue like that.
I get that you have a response, and we definitely
want to respond to you and and and your thoughts,
but it's like one just doing a dish gallop and
just monologuing for however long you want to monologue. So

(01:20:38):
that you can monopolize the time here on the show
is not productive and it's not interesting, And I just
don't understand why people think that they can just call
on here and monologue the entire time.

Speaker 3 (01:20:49):
It's really crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
Second of all, I feel like what we were able
to show with Shabaz's view of a law and all
that is that he's got a very scial, pleading attitude
about it. He relies on his intuitions that there is
a god and then he was convinced by the Koran.
And then all he has to do to other people's
point to the Koran, and somehow the Koran can be

(01:21:14):
disproven if you can write a line that's similar to
the Korean.

Speaker 2 (01:21:18):
But we didn't get to that. I wanted him to
define like or whatever the Koran says, like, is there
a definition for that, like those exact words? Is it
something that's poetic? Like I'm sure people disagree, but that
I found fascinating. It's like I've read a lot of
really good books that inspired me in tears, Like I
don't know, and I.

Speaker 1 (01:21:36):
Mean, like I don't know the textual history of the Koran,
but I'm guessing that it all wasn't written in one sitting.
So you definitely have multiple different authors that are writing
in similar styles, and you can you could definitely write
in a similar style to the Koran, like I mean,
you could train I mean, in the in the age
of Ai that we're going through right now, you could

(01:21:57):
definitely train Ai to sounding exactly like the Qoran and
have it produce new verses to the Koran.

Speaker 3 (01:22:04):
Would be able to.

Speaker 1 (01:22:05):
To them out.

Speaker 2 (01:22:06):
That's an amazing point. Oh my god, I hadn't even
thought about that. That would be incredible. So, you know,
it smells of something I've seen a lot, and I
don't know if this is unique to Muslim apologetics. Let
me know if you've experienced this or if other people
have experienced this in other religions. There's something unique about
Muslim apologetics where they will get up and they will
make these claims and then not even try to address

(01:22:32):
the obvious sort of holes in it. Like a lot
of Christian apologetics, they've they've learned to abstract out so
they can have arguments about, you know, whatever, transcendental argument
from whatever they want. But the claim like try to
write something like the Koran, you can't, right, and then
they just say that like that wins the point. And
then you try to get into a conversation like it,

(01:22:54):
you get the claims he said, which is it's been
tried for a thousand years or whatever he said, nine
hundred years, and nobody's been able to do it right.
And then when you peel that banana and when you
pull that thread on that sweater, it's really just a
collection of people making that claim and there's no evidence
that ay what they mean to say, it was like

(01:23:14):
the Quran, they don't ever define that. And then when
you see people doing a very very good job, it's
discounted for some reason. Right, it's just this false test
that people are putting up. I don't there's something special
about that. The same thing where they get into a
lot of Muslim apologetics is like, oh, the Kuran predicted embryology,
and then you actually look at embryology and it's just empty.

(01:23:36):
It's like it's nothing. It's like, oh, there's water involved
in life or something is the biggest claim, and they
just take it so far and people just believe it
without question. And then they call our show and say, the
problem with you, guys is that you're trying to find
problems with my beliefs. Oh all right, so thank you
for the call, Shabazz went. It started off really well.

(01:23:57):
I think this the minute you say, hey, I don't.
I'm sick of listening to you guys, and you can
call into a different show things like that. I do
have another caller that's talking to you directly, Godless, and
I want you to be prepared here. This is r J.
He him from Colorado said, I wanted to offer a
correction to what Godless engineer said on a previous show.
Oh so now we're gonna have to hear the previous

(01:24:18):
show about the Midianite female slaves, so it's somewhat related.
So I'm going to put RJ on He him, r J,
what what do you think that? Godless claimed? Let's just
stick with that and then Godless can confirm he said that,
and then if we agree on that, we can then
hear your correction. So what do you think? Godless said?

Speaker 7 (01:24:38):
Okay, And this was January seventh. He was on a
caller on with with Justin I believe with a different caller.
It wasn't me that called in just but you know,
so there's two corrections. One if he said that they
were underage women.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):
Okay, So that's first one. Let's stick with the claims
first rather than the corrections. One, Godless Engineer said that
Midianite female slaves were underage. That's the first thing you
want to correct. Second, what was your second misstatement?

Speaker 6 (01:25:08):
Boy?

Speaker 7 (01:25:09):
His misstatement was that they could basically just rape these girls, that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:14):
They okay to marry them. Okay, So second second claim,
we'll get to the corrections. I want to make sure
that Godless Engineer agrees with his positions here with what
you say. He said. So second claim is for Midianite
female slaves, somebody assumingly their owner could have sex without
consent for them and did not have to marry them.
Those are the two statements. Ge, Does he have you right?

Speaker 7 (01:25:37):
Is that what you said underage was okay?

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
Yeah? Underage and raping female slaves without marrying them. So
Godless Engineer, what's your position on those?

Speaker 3 (01:25:49):
Right? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):
So yes, I said both of those things, and I
can explain them. Okay, So let's start with underage girls.
And I want to go through this step by step
because like I don't want to just gallop you or
just throw a whole bunch of stuff your direction. There
arej So let's start with underage girls. What number thirty
one says. And I've actually got it pulled up right
here so that I can read directly from it. Although

(01:26:12):
it is the NIV version, I don't have time to
go through and pull the one that I normally do.
But so the NIV says, now, kill all of the boys,
and kill every woman who has slept with a man,
but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept
with a man. So I mean, at that time, if
you're a girl and you're not married, and you have

(01:26:34):
not slept with a man yet, you're typically going to
be post pubescent, like just coming out of purbity. And
that happens between you know, ten, I'd say, between ten
and fourteen years old, So we're talking about a wide
range of girls at this point in time that would
be like considered children between ten and like, let's say,

(01:26:56):
is seventeen eighteen years old. Normally in the society at
this time, in Israelite society especially as well as a
general thing in the ancient Newestern culture is that girls
would be married as soon as they could right, they
would be married off, they'd be sold off by their fathers,
to men that were around twenty twenty to thirty years old.

(01:27:20):
And because of this fact, that's why I say that
they were underage girls. They were postpew, they had just
entered or just came out of puberty, or even before puberty.
So it was a it was a all, you know,
all range of girls as long as they have not
known a man, which would limit the age to you know,

(01:27:41):
under twenty, I would say, And so what we're looking
at is, well, maybe a small segment of them were
not underage. A good portion of.

Speaker 3 (01:27:51):
Them would be underage.

Speaker 1 (01:27:53):
So do you wanna do you want to respond to that?

Speaker 2 (01:27:55):
R Jay?

Speaker 7 (01:27:56):
Yeah? So okay, So the n I V I think
you said you're reading l V is as a bad translation.
It's kind of flo okay.

Speaker 1 (01:28:06):
Good, No, look, no, that's fine, that's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:28:09):
Look I'll look it up.

Speaker 1 (01:28:10):
I'll read it from the.

Speaker 3 (01:28:11):
N R s uh n R s v U E
I believe n R s v U E version.

Speaker 1 (01:28:18):
Let me hold on, since you have a problem with
an IB that's perfectly fine.

Speaker 3 (01:28:21):
That game does have its flaws. So huh, he wants.

Speaker 2 (01:28:25):
The Kings, he wants the King James one. That's like
one of the worst.

Speaker 3 (01:28:30):
Right, the King King.

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
So first of all, First of all, there are j
King James is a really shitty version to read from
UH to the n R s v U E, which
is the updated division. Addition to the n R s
v UH version of it is actually trying to faithfully
translate from the original language into modern English, and so
that's actually a better translation. I'd suggest you actually read

(01:28:53):
that one. But let's look, well, we'll go to the
kJ V King James version.

Speaker 3 (01:28:58):
There we go.

Speaker 1 (01:28:59):
It's not going to be any fuck it better hold on,
I'm not done yet.

Speaker 3 (01:29:02):
Let me read.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
Since you have a problem with it, I want to
be able to, you know, provide you with a good one. Okay,
So now therefore, kill every male among the little ones,
and kill every woman that hath known man by lying
with him. But all of the women children, let me
let me repeat this really loud so that you can
hear the words that are used.

Speaker 3 (01:29:24):
But all of the women show.

Speaker 1 (01:29:29):
That have not known a man by lying with him,
keep alive for yourselves.

Speaker 3 (01:29:33):
Why why let me ask you this?

Speaker 7 (01:29:36):
Does him does it say to have?

Speaker 2 (01:29:39):
What do you think it means? What do you what
do you think it means? RJ? Tell us what you
think that means.

Speaker 7 (01:29:45):
Okay, okay, hold on, he let me let me respond you, guys,
let me.

Speaker 5 (01:29:49):
Read you a question.

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
Respond, don't don't.

Speaker 5 (01:29:52):
Prologue, don't prologue.

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
Don't soliloquy. I asked you what do you think about that?
And your first words out of your mouth was let
let me respond.

Speaker 7 (01:30:00):
Okay, go yeah, that's right. For okay, first Corinthians seven
three six?

Speaker 2 (01:30:07):
Wait what what?

Speaker 5 (01:30:08):
What?

Speaker 4 (01:30:08):
What?

Speaker 2 (01:30:08):
Whoa wait a second? No, no, no, no. The question was
you objected to the age definition, and I'm sorry you
objected to the fact of why were the men keeping
the chill child girls and women quote unquote for themselves?
So my question is, what do you think that was

(01:30:32):
for servants?

Speaker 7 (01:30:33):
That is a servant?

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
Okay, okay, let me ask right hold on, Godless is
going to assume that's true. Go ahead, doc, don't even
give him.

Speaker 7 (01:30:42):
I haven't even stated my case, and you're already coming
out at me.

Speaker 6 (01:30:45):
Let me.

Speaker 2 (01:30:47):
Said, I'm not going to have sex with them because
they are being kept for servants, right right, right, okay,
that's all we need right now. You will have a
chance to talk in a minute. I assume Godless has
another point to make that I like to address his
point before we go through the motions of having you
cite some other book, because he's got a point to make,
and then we'll come back to you. If there's a
debate as to whether or not the usage of the

(01:31:10):
idea of servants is legit or not, so godless, how
do you respond to that that this was the purpose
of keeping young girls and women who have not had
sex with anybody else only as servants? Go ahead, godless?

Speaker 1 (01:31:24):
Okay, So if that were the case, then why would
they specifically only want to keep the girls who have
not had sex yet the virgin girls? Why would they
put such a heavy emphasis on the virginity of the
girl as far as you know, if it wasn't for
sexual purposes Number one, Number two, if that were the

(01:31:46):
case for servants, why would they Why would they kill
the small boys and other and other boys that were
there that could also be used as servants? But also,
why does the virginity preclude other women from being servants?
If they're just going to be used as servants in
a slave capacity, then it kind of seems moot to say, oh,

(01:32:10):
don't take the don't take the non virgin women that
they can't be servants for whatever fucking reason because they've
touched a dick. That doesn't make a whole lot of
sense to me. But if you go to numbers, uh oh.

Speaker 2 (01:32:22):
Wait, wait wait wait wait, we promised RJ he could
he could co respond, So RJ. So what we have
so far, just to summarize it, RJ, I'm gonna summarize
and let you speak. Okay, pretend this is a courtroom.
If a judge monologues, and then it's my term to speak.
I don't sit there and complain that the judge monologue.
I start speaking because it's my chance to make my case,
all right, And it makes me look foolish to sit

(01:32:43):
there and complain when somebody just said, please give your case.
So here we go. You said the girls would not
be used for sex, they would just be servants. Godless
then said, okay, so why is the delineation of who
can be kept as a servant amongst these prisoners only virgins?
How do you respond to that?

Speaker 7 (01:33:04):
Okay, because male servants can grow up and they're more
powerful than female servants, and they can rise up against
the tribe of Israel versus a female servant. As female
servant wasn't the question.

Speaker 2 (01:33:17):
I'm not interrupting, I just want to redirectal that's not
the question though. The question was not as between the
boys and the girls. That was a second question. The
first question was what's the difference between the virgin and
non version girls. That's the that's the important question. What's
the difference there?

Speaker 7 (01:33:32):
Because then, okay, because the non virgin women usually have children,
usually have had.

Speaker 2 (01:33:38):
Children, that's not what they said. They didn't say take
only the non mothers. So why did they say they're virgin?

Speaker 7 (01:33:45):
They were not. It's an impure So if they if
they were not virgins, then they're impure according to the
laws of impure.

Speaker 3 (01:33:54):
Impure for what purpose?

Speaker 1 (01:33:55):
Impure for what purpose?

Speaker 2 (01:33:57):
If you are carrying, for carrying my hay, If.

Speaker 1 (01:34:01):
A woman's if pure, does that prevent her from washing
fucking dishes?

Speaker 7 (01:34:05):
You guys, don't unders And then they use the servants
to clean the temple, to the servants in the temple.

Speaker 2 (01:34:13):
Oh wow, okay, all right, okay, this is understood. So
here's what's going on in my mind. Okay, I need
you to understand our jay. You have stated enough of
a case at this point. If this is your best answers.
All right again, when you're in trial and they say guilty,

(01:34:33):
you don't go wait wait, I had more. You know,
you present your case, all right, So I'm gonna mute
you and give you some information and let you reflect
upon this. What this sounds like to us is you
make a claim, Hey, this wasn't about sex. We point
out a few things that seem to call that into
serious question, and then you engage in sort of what

(01:34:54):
I call just so stories. If you're familiar with Rudyard
Kipling who explains how the giraffe got a lot neck
and how the snake is long as lyric, they're these
stories that are obviously concocted to create a set of
rules under which this conclusion could exist. Right, So that's
what it sounds like you're coming up with, Like, well,

(01:35:14):
they didn't say take don't take mothers as servants because
they said virgins, and so virgin not being a vision
often leads to motherhood, so they just said virgin. Anyway,
let's ignore the fact that that's inaccurate and would cause
a lot of, you know, categorical problems that God has
to answer for. But then we say, okay, well, what
is purity when you brought that up. Have to do

(01:35:35):
with being a servant. Oh well, sometimes they would clean
the temples. A I don't know about that, but be
even if they did, then you use the unpure girls
for other things. Right, So you're creating these just so
stories that smell to me like rationalization. So I'd love
to hear your I'm just being honest with you of
how it sounds to me. Why should it sound any

(01:35:55):
different to me? Go ahead, R Jay?

Speaker 7 (01:35:57):
So you put me on me then and third time.

Speaker 2 (01:36:00):
But yes, I said I was putting on you mout
and if you just now realize it, I mean you
were talking the whole time or what?

Speaker 4 (01:36:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:36:07):
Okay, all right, obviously you're not interested in listening, So
have a good day. We're gonna ho and drop that call.
We get this all the time, Godless. We get a
call where where Here's how conversations work on the show. Right,
you come in and you make your case, you make
a claim. I was very careful at the beginning of
the call. I said, you state what the claims are.

(01:36:28):
We'll have Godless agree whether or not he said that,
and then we'll hear what you say. And I think
like you said earlier. People want a monologue, they want
to say a bunch of stuff, and you start going
down these paths. The first words out of your mouth
weren't even about the chapter and verse that we were
talking about. We had to reel you in there. And
then we ask about why use the word version if
it doesn't matter. Oh, well it does matter because of motherhood.

(01:36:50):
Oh and then we address that, well it does matter
because some girls might clean the temple. This is just
making up shit to justify this obviously barbaric story. I
can't think of another explanation for it. How about you, godless, No, I.

Speaker 1 (01:37:03):
Can't think of an explanation like the fact that he
just kept talking.

Speaker 2 (01:37:06):
Is just glad you admitted it. Like I said, I'm
gonna put you on mute. I'm going to tell you
what it sounds like to us and then ask you
to respond. And we come back and you didn't hear
a damn word we said. That speaks a lot. So
thank you for your call. Call back if you get
a better sort of again. You know you're calling into
a show where we have limited time, limited calls. I

(01:37:27):
want my callers to be ready to make your case again.
I'll use the courtroom analogy. I don't get to go
in and represent a client and then when it's my
turn to speak, give anything other than my best evidence,
my best argument, all of my arguments and things like that.
So I try on this show to break them down
one by one. I will let you make your claim.

(01:37:48):
I will react to it. Yes, oftentimes we will speak
more than the caller, because you are giving us an
idea and we are expanding upon it and reacting to it,
explaining something. It's easy to make the claim, it's a
hard to go in and rebutt it, expand upon and
all that stuff. But then I will always go back
to you and say, what do you think about that?
Is there anything wrong with that? And that's your chance

(01:38:09):
then to say, oh, well here, here, here, and here,
and if you're not very good at being succinct and
coming to the point and saying, well, here are the
three things I find wrong with it, A, B, and C,
and then we can continue with a conversation. Maybe a
call in show is not the best spot for you,
but it sounds like you've called in before.

Speaker 1 (01:38:26):
Hope, I got this, yeah, uh, and and so with
with this, I didn't want to address the whole rape
allegation because he did have a comb y's in case, yeah,
just in case he's he's listening and he wants to
call in another time and try to learn how to listen.
So basically, if you get this from doctor Jennifer R. Bird,

(01:38:49):
she's got a great book on marriage in the Bible,
and it's it's a very fascinating uh sort of read
there because, uh, what we find out from the actual
verbiage that you use, like the words that are used,
is that there was no like modern concept of marriage.
So when we talk about these girls getting married, we're
not talking about the kind of marriage that occurs to day.

(01:39:13):
What we're talking about is forced sexual contact. And they're
basically forced into a marriage through sex. And so the
women did not have like the ability to choose, like
they didn't have bodily autonomy at this time, right, And
so because they didn't have the bodily autonomy and the

(01:39:34):
ability to choose, all this stuff in any of the
marriages or anything like that in the Old Testament is
going to be rape because it's a forced marriage. And
as we've seen with I forget the scholar's name, but
he wrote a commentary on the Roman Roman society, forced

(01:39:55):
marriage is a form of rape. It's a controlling one
one's ability to control their own sexual encounters and their
sexual lives. And so because of that fact, it's considered rape.
So if somebody else wants to argue us beyond it,
let's try not to get too gross about it. But
in my experience, people normally get really gross about it.

Speaker 2 (01:40:18):
Yeah they do. I've gotten lots of calls about this.
And not only is it forced marriage, but you keep
in mind who's forcing it. This was oftentime, if my
understanding is correct, a financial transaction. Right, I've got a
daughter to sell. You give me a dowry. This is
where dowriies come from. Right, you give me money to
take my daughter off my hands. And the ceremony or

(01:40:38):
the event will be a marriage where you will consummate
it right then and there. In fact, there's rules in
the Bible that say, hey, if you get married, you
have the girl. And the man comes out and says, hey,
this woman wasn't a vision because she didn't spill blood
upon the bedsheet, and the elder bring or the parents

(01:41:01):
or the family brings the bedsheet out to the family
or to the town and proves that yep, she didn't bleed,
she's put to death, right, she's put to death. The
guy if he lies and says he wasn't a virgin
and he gets married and has sex, he gets a fine. Okay,
this is what your Bible says, So how in hell
is that fair? And keep in mind, this is something

(01:41:23):
that I think it was justin pointed out the last
time on other show. We now know through study that
only something like forty percent of women bleed the first
time they have sex. So if you combine all of this,
you've got a book. Let's ignore the whole. Hey, by
the way, there's this term that's vague about keep the
virgin women for yourselves. How the hell do we know
that means? Let's ignore that and just say, okay, let's

(01:41:44):
go to the actual laws. The laws say we're going
to murder a bunch of innocent women because they didn't
bleed on their wedding night, because they are property that
must be pure, like you said, and the fact that
you brought up the whole purity thing is very scary too.
So thank you, God list, I know time is short
for you, Godless, we do have a few more calls.
We also have been on backup. Are you hanging around

(01:42:07):
for one more call or do you have to go?

Speaker 3 (01:42:09):
Yeah, I've got I've got one more call.

Speaker 1 (01:42:11):
I think that we should probably take that next call
into and that'll probably round it out for me.

Speaker 2 (01:42:16):
Yeah, I think. So are you talking about Jeff? Yeah, yeah, Jeff.
I was iying that call too. So Jeff from North
Carolina pronounced he him Jeff. Your caller note says the
message of slavery in the Old Testament is being misunderstood.
So we've already talked a little bit about this. So
what is in your understanding the message of the true

(01:42:38):
message of slavery in the Bible? Go ahead, Jeff, Can
you hear me?

Speaker 6 (01:42:45):
I can can you hear me?

Speaker 1 (01:42:47):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
Then hear you? Jeff?

Speaker 6 (01:42:48):
Go ahead, Okay, Okay. What has to be understood is
this Moses was an Egyptian. He was raised in the
House of for forty years, and we all know that
the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, he would be the one.
He would be the I guess, the general lawmaker of
the whole territory. Okay, they wrote.

Speaker 2 (01:43:08):
Okay, so I'll let you keep going, but I'm not
sure on point here, But go ahead.

Speaker 6 (01:43:12):
Oh, I know, I'm sure it's hard to convey this mess.
But okay, Moses was raised in his house for forty years,
so for forty years he was under the influence of Egypt,
so of course he would know all the laws of
Egypt correct.

Speaker 2 (01:43:27):
Then jump to the chase. I just want to make
sure I understand you. Are you going to say that
Moses used the laws of Egypt when he wrote the
Laws of the Old Testament? Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 6 (01:43:36):
Absolutely?

Speaker 2 (01:43:37):
Okay, So the Laws of the Old Testament are not
from God and not divinely inspired, not at all.

Speaker 6 (01:43:42):
It is, okay, but it's.

Speaker 2 (01:43:43):
An interesting take. I've never heard that one before.

Speaker 6 (01:43:45):
They are symbolic. And what's really going on in this
world is what the whole of scripture is about. Is
Christ coming in the first century and reconciling man the
God and showing them that this God of the Old
Testament was not a true god they had Wow, it

(01:44:08):
was a god the way that they had formulated to
encourage their evil deeds, their geographical conquests. Actually, what's going on,
and that's what all the New Testament is about, is
fleeing Judaism, religion because it was a hideous religion. Wow,
we have is actually you guys don't realize it, but

(01:44:30):
you're the Christians. Who's the Christians and the religion is
you guys are.

Speaker 2 (01:44:35):
Okay, so we're obviously he was using two different definitions
of Christian. The definition of Christian, I use, is somebody
who believes that Christ is either God or the son
of God, that there are supernatural claims in the Bible,
and that they are true. Is that what you mean?

Speaker 6 (01:44:52):
Christ was a man?

Speaker 2 (01:44:53):
Christ was a man, So the supernatural claims in the
New Testament are also not true? Is that correct?

Speaker 6 (01:45:00):
Need to you the super What do you mean when
you say.

Speaker 2 (01:45:02):
Super supernatural claims? The stuff that today we would think
are crazy. That he went to heaven and he's living eternally,
that God, that he turned water into wine, he walked
on water, he resurrected people. These are all supernatural claims.
All the things the resur it's today is Easter. He
himself was resurrected. Like, did all of that happen in
your belief system or is that all just allegory?

Speaker 6 (01:45:22):
It's it's all allegory.

Speaker 2 (01:45:24):
Okay, So that's interesting. Do you believe in any supernatural claims?

Speaker 6 (01:45:29):
Do I believe in any supernatural claims?

Speaker 2 (01:45:31):
Yeah? Like, is there something you would call a god?

Speaker 4 (01:45:33):
Oh?

Speaker 6 (01:45:33):
Absolutely, there's a God.

Speaker 2 (01:45:36):
Okay, so you're not a Christian. You believe that Judaism
was evil and that there is a spirit God. What
evidence do you have that there is a spirit God?

Speaker 6 (01:45:47):
The fact that you and I are having this conversation
right now.

Speaker 2 (01:45:49):
Okay, godless? You want to do? You want to ask
some questions? You look very confused.

Speaker 1 (01:45:54):
Yeah, yeah, I am confused because he talked about how
the New Testament was fulfillment of scripture to refute the
Jewish religion. I specifically brought up Matthew Frive eighteen that says,
for truly, I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear,
not the smallest letter, not even not the least stroke

(01:46:15):
of a pen, will by any means, disappear from the
law until everything is accomplished.

Speaker 3 (01:46:20):
So, I guess I don't understand.

Speaker 1 (01:46:22):
If you're saying that the Old Testament is a bunch
of lies and everything like that, made up to do
something or another by an evil God, then why does
Jesus in the New Testament reaffirm the Old Testament laws?

Speaker 2 (01:46:32):
Well, let me get I think, if I get this,
I think what you're saying, Jeff, is the Old Testament
is just false. The New Testament is allegory. None of
it relates to God at all. Your God is separate
from the Holy Bible altogether. Is that correct?

Speaker 6 (01:46:48):
It allegorically relates to whim.

Speaker 2 (01:46:50):
Okay, but it's not like the God of the Bible,
the literal God of the Bible. That character is not
what you believe in. You believe in something else. Presumptive.
You don't believe in a literal Garden of Eden, a
literal resurrection of Jesus, the literal miracles that are performed
on his behalf. Correct, I do.

Speaker 6 (01:47:09):
But at the same time, they're allegorical. This is the
fact that they.

Speaker 2 (01:47:13):
Are either true or their allegories. It can't be both.

Speaker 6 (01:47:16):
Well, an allegory can't be true.

Speaker 2 (01:47:18):
If it's true, then it's true. It can also serve
as a demonstration of something, but you wouldn't call it
an allegory. An allegory is a story of a made
up story you tell somebody to teach some other lesson. Right,
I wouldn't call E equals mc squared an allegory.

Speaker 3 (01:47:34):
He's not listening to us?

Speaker 6 (01:47:35):
What is his name? Cross examiner? Was he the one
that answer asked the question?

Speaker 2 (01:47:41):
Yeah, Heaven, that's me.

Speaker 6 (01:47:42):
That's the way. Okay, here's my answer. According to Paul,
Heaven and earth did pass away.

Speaker 2 (01:47:49):
And we should listen to Paul?

Speaker 6 (01:47:50):
Why things in Carinthians?

Speaker 4 (01:47:52):
Which?

Speaker 2 (01:47:52):
Why should we listen to Paul?

Speaker 6 (01:47:54):
Listen?

Speaker 4 (01:47:54):
Okay?

Speaker 6 (01:47:54):
Here's here's where the allegory becomes a truth, because heaven
and Earth is a ref rights to us, because that's
because that's what we're made in them?

Speaker 2 (01:48:03):
Why should we Why should we listen to Paul? Though
that's the claim? Why should we believe the claim? What
evidence do you have that any of what you're saying
is actually true?

Speaker 6 (01:48:12):
Because just like you saw, that's a.

Speaker 2 (01:48:14):
Claim that is not evidence. Evidence is something you can
point to, a test, You've run, some testimony from people,
even though it's not great. You try to pile up
the evidence before you accept something is true. I went
and bought a car because of the tariffs. I shopped around.
I went and read reviews on which car was the
best car. I went and talked with salesmen, I negotiated.

(01:48:37):
I then looked at the VIN number on the model.
I was buying to make sure this was the model
I had negotiated with online and made sure I had
all the features. I gathered evidence with my eyes and
my ears and through testimony and through documentation. Do you
have any of that that shows that your God is real?

Speaker 1 (01:48:54):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (01:48:55):
But what's your best evidence, your single best piece of
evidence that that your God is real? And we should
listen to Paul.

Speaker 6 (01:49:01):
The Book of Philammon.

Speaker 2 (01:49:03):
The Book of Philammon. I'm not familiar with that one.
Are you godless?

Speaker 3 (01:49:10):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:49:11):
What is that? I'm ignorant? What is that book?

Speaker 6 (01:49:14):
By Lehman? Well, it's a book where this man is
in the church, the body of Christ, in that century,
in that era, that age. He has a slave that
runs away and he does something that's not really you know,
it's not fully told in the in the book what
he does. But when he runs away from this master Philammon,
this man, or nisis with Paul, like in prison, and

(01:49:39):
Paul sends him back to Philammon with a letter, and
Philammon is advocating to or Paul is advocating Philammon to
release this slave and receive him as and receive him
as a brother. And that's the evidence.

Speaker 1 (01:49:53):
It's the spirit of youlvery.

Speaker 2 (01:49:57):
Okay, got you. Jeff Godless wants to address that, and
I want to let him. So my question to Godless
is is that evid answer is add another story and
does he even have it right?

Speaker 3 (01:50:07):
Well?

Speaker 1 (01:50:07):
Yeah, so, I mean in that story, I mean that's
what Paul does. But that is a very specific situation
that Paul is, you know, asking about that particular person.
He's not making a generalized statement about whether or not
slaves should be kept or held or anything like that.
In fact, I believe the purpose of that was that

(01:50:29):
Paul wanted Philemann as like, you know, his traveling partner
or his helper or something like that. So like he
sent them back and this is like a courtesy for
like between Christians and everything like that. So this is
not a broad statement about slavery or anything like that,
and twisting it to be about slavery on the whole
is just disingenuous.

Speaker 2 (01:50:51):
Yeah. And my follow up to that is I asked
for evidence, and you gave me another story. I don't
know where the story exists. Is it in the letters
of Paul or is this a separate book that's not
in the Bible. I don't know, but it's just another story.
I'm asking about what evidence you have that any of
this is real? Why should I believe any of this?
What are your thoughts, Jeff?

Speaker 6 (01:51:10):
What is real?

Speaker 2 (01:51:11):
You claim that there is a spirit God? What evidence
do you have that there is and in fact a
spirit God? That's what I'm asking. Why do you believe that?
And what evidence do you have to support that belief?

Speaker 6 (01:51:21):
Well, it's harmony.

Speaker 2 (01:51:23):
Okay, So look at the trees? All right?

Speaker 6 (01:51:25):
Got it with one another?

Speaker 2 (01:51:27):
Is there? Okay? We got to go, But I'll ask
you one more question. Is it possible that the love
that you feel and experience, which I agree is real,
It's a real experience. I've experienced a lot of love,
a lot of loss, all sorts of emotions. Is it
possible that that could happen without a God?

Speaker 6 (01:51:45):
I don't think anything in this reality that we live
in can happen without a God.

Speaker 2 (01:51:50):
All Right, I thank you for the call. Do you
have any other questions?

Speaker 3 (01:51:52):
Godless? Nothing that's going to get us off this call?

Speaker 2 (01:51:56):
Quicker? Okay, sounds good. Thank you so much, Jeff. I'll
call back if you have something more evidence. I think
Jeff's been smoking too much of that easter grass. If
you ask me, he soundinitely. It was a bit all
over the place. So I know, Godless, you have to go.
We have one other call. We can take that after
you leave. I wanted to thank you so much. Unless

(01:52:17):
you have time, I don't want to press your time,
but I've.

Speaker 1 (01:52:21):
Only got about fifteen minutes before i can go, and
I don't think that that can probably be handled in
the mines.

Speaker 2 (01:52:28):
Okay, So I wanted to thank Godless. I'm going to
hang out one more and take this call. We also
have our backup caller, Ben can come on and help
me out. But I really wanted to thank you. Without
you here, I don't think any of these calls would
have gone the way that they did because you've got
such extensive knowledge of this stuff. You have been researching
this for so long. It's really impressive, especially because when

(01:52:48):
you think about the fact that other people that come
close to your knowledge have gone to seminary and things
like that, and I don't think you ever did anything
like that. Is that correct?

Speaker 4 (01:52:58):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:52:58):
No, I just I've read a lot of journal articles
and everything, and I've read a lot of books on stuff,
so like, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:53:04):
Yep, it's impressive. It is impressive. I don't think I've
ever been on a show with you where we've had
a call where you weren't knowledgeable about something that was
the call was about, especially as it relates to the
historicity of Jesus or what the Bible actually says, like
all of these calls were about today. So thank you
so much. I know that you have been hard at

(01:53:26):
work all over the place, and I know that generally
if people want to find you, they should just google
godless engineer, right all right, I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:53:34):
You could google it, but I'm pretty much jollnless engineer everywhere,
so yeah, perfectly be able to find me.

Speaker 2 (01:53:39):
All right, Well, thank you so much. Anything any closing
things you want to say to our viewers on this
good Easter.

Speaker 1 (01:53:45):
Not just you know, praise the Lynch King Lord, and
I guess I will see all of you heathens next month.

Speaker 2 (01:53:51):
All right, thank you so much. I will see you soon.
All right. I am going to read a super chat here.
I don't know if Ben's available, but Ben, come on,
we could take this last call from Alex. We have
a super chat from Miranda Renzberger member for one year
for ten dollars it says, but you're not sticking to
the caller's scripts. How can they prove you wrong if

(01:54:15):
you say something they didn't want you to say. That
is a very very common experience we have, and I
will I will, I will tell our audience now. One
of the things that we get as feedback, and it's split,
why do you let these callers rant so much? Why
do you cut these callers off? We get those inn
equal measure, which I think means we're in some sort
of sweet spot about that particular issue. My goal is

(01:54:41):
to try to work in as many calls as possible,
but for the ones that I think are special, the
first one we had today, for example, I try to
go longer and more detailed. If somebody's calling in with
the eighth time, they say, look at the trees, that's
why I know there's a god that's not as interesting
to me, and I don't think that's as interesting to
our view. So sometimes I hear people veer off into

(01:55:04):
areas where they're trying to avoid the question and start
talking about something else without answering the question. I will
cut them off then, or if they're trying to monologue,
or if all it was was a yes or no
question and they don't answer that question. So that does
happen sometimes. But on the other hand, I do want
to let people, want to let people make their case.
My ask of my callers is, if you're getting onto

(01:55:26):
the air, be ready to make your case, be ready
to be cross examined, to be ready to have people
who don't believe the same thing you ask for evidence
and ask what about this that seems to contradict your claim?
Be ready for those and if you are, I think
we'll have a very productive conversation.

Speaker 5 (01:55:43):
Hi.

Speaker 8 (01:55:43):
Ben, Hi, how's it going, cross examiner. Good to see
you doing great.

Speaker 2 (01:55:47):
I'm so glad you're able to come on. Ben is
a longtime ACA person. He is a backup on a
lot of calls. He's been on other calls as well,
and it's good to have people around for situations like
this where we're run in a little long. But I've
got a caller that I think would be interesting. So
thanks for coming on. How are you doing? What are
you up with you on this?

Speaker 4 (01:56:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:56:07):
Just doing good.

Speaker 8 (01:56:08):
Just been enjoying my time sitting in the studio listening
to you and godless engineer to such an awesome job
on all those calls that you've had some ones and
I wanted to say to the thing with from the
comment from Miranda Ronsberger, I think this you hit it
pretty spot on it. A lot of people call in
they don't seem to understand that. Like, and you can
do this in your real life too. Is if people

(01:56:28):
are wanting to monologue or they have this big, long
explanation for things, but you recognize that there's something you
disagree with early, it actually expedites time and it creates
It can make for better conversation. If you hit that
right off the bat and you say, hey, hold on,
before I let you keep going, we got to deal
with this thing, because you can build a whole house
of cards, but this one thing can still reckon. I
might agree with everything else that happens, but this thing

(01:56:51):
right off the bat, we have a problem there. So
we need to talk about that.

Speaker 2 (01:56:54):
Yeah, if you come in and you say, premis one
everything that exists began to exist, I need to stop
right there. We need to talk about that. You can't
let you cite that premise and then go on all
to the rest and your conclusion and say okay, now
let's go all the way back to the beginning. And
I think it's a function of people not being used
to having these types of conversations, the conversations where you say,
hold on, let's go about this incredibly slowly. Premise one

(01:57:17):
is X, do we agree on that, Let's explore it,
let's define it, let's make sure we understand it. And
if we can agree on that, then we'll move on
to premise too, with a caveat of if we redefine
or change terms or come to a different understanding, we
may have to go back anyway. People don't normally have
those conversations in their lives, and I think that contributes
to people not being as participatory in conversations where skepticism

(01:57:40):
is the rule, right, that you are not given social
permission to slow down, wait a second, to find terms.
I'm not sure I agree with you there. There's a
social pressure to just nod and let the person keep speaking.

Speaker 4 (01:57:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:57:51):
People like to just dominate things and roll forward, and
then if you don't address something, or you do address something,
it gives them the flexibility to try to hit on, oh, well,
you didn't talk about this thing, or you're focusing on
this other thing, When real dialogue is that breaking things
down and it's a back and forth on every point.

Speaker 2 (01:58:06):
Yeah. Absolutely, Well are you ready to talk to Alex?

Speaker 8 (01:58:09):
Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 2 (01:58:09):
Absolutely all right. We're talking to Alex who says this
is he him from Britain. It looks like Birmingham Biblical
accuracy and trustworthiness, but there's no opinion there. So Alex,
if you're still on the line calling from Britain at
this hour, or maybe you're not in Britain, are you
with us and what do you have to say about
Biblical accuracy and trustworthiness?

Speaker 9 (01:58:30):
Yeah? So first time calling it. Can you hear me? Fine?

Speaker 2 (01:58:34):
We can. Thank you so much, Alex.

Speaker 9 (01:58:35):
Great. I've just recently began deconstructing around New Year time
from being a Christian for like two or three years,
and I just wanted It's not like I'm not trying
to like argue or prove anything. I've just got some
questions and I want to see what your thoughts on
it are.

Speaker 2 (01:58:51):
About it sounds good show. Give us your first.

Speaker 9 (01:58:54):
Question, So my first time, I do.

Speaker 2 (01:58:58):
Have one question before you get going. I know there's
a little bit of delay here. It sounds like you're
on speaker phone. If that's true, can you pick up.
I think we'll get a little better sound because I'm
I'm finding a little hard to hear. There's a bit
of an echo. So with that said, please do continue, Alex.

Speaker 9 (01:59:12):
Yes, sorry, I don't know what the Steaks phone things about,
and I'm techie, so I'm not sure what that problem is.

Speaker 4 (01:59:17):
Sorry.

Speaker 9 (01:59:17):
So yeah, So with the Biblical trustworthiness, when I used
to be Christian, I'll only accept everything and I wouldn't
like question things as much, and when big questions did
come up, I'll just try and use mental gymnastics to
justify it or I'd ignore it. It's uncomfortable, and you know,
sometimes you lose that kind of motivation to critically think

(01:59:38):
about things. And that's why I wanted to call on
this show with the deconstruction. So my first question was,
what do you really think of I guess the interpretations
of Biblical text because you know, sometimes things are seen
as literal, and then as time goes on, when science
or history challenges that, they make it metaphorical. And obviously
in some context when you look at the different content

(02:00:00):
for the Bible, because it's a collection of books that
can work, but when it attacks things like the idea
of a global flood or original sin or human origin,
and they start saying that's metaphorical or whatever a kind
of a core doctrine of Christianity. So that's what I think.
It's fall apart under that scrutiny, sort of want to
know what you think of that.

Speaker 2 (02:00:18):
I have some ideas, but I'd love to hear Ben's
thoughts on that.

Speaker 8 (02:00:21):
Sure, Yeah, there's especially from the atheistic perspective, there's whereas
from an outsider looking in, there's thousands of interpretations. We've
actually done studies that indicate that most people's interpretations or
their understanding of what God's saying is actually just their
own mind and their own opinion. So there's arguably as
many interpretations and as many gods as there are people
that believe in them. But when looking at these different

(02:00:44):
translations or interpretations, I don't know how much if you've
taken the time and studied logical fallacies, there's a lot
of them out there, like the no true Scotsman fallacy
or the Texas sharpshooter or cherry picking fallacy that come
up a lot in those interpretations, and it's basically picking
in using or defining something as oh the things I
disagree with that's not the true version of that. And again,

(02:01:07):
as an outside person looking in at Christianity, when I
see any kind of faith or any kind of doctrine
or ideology, those are kind of the things I'm looking for.
If you're saying, oh, well, no true person would believe
that or would take it that way, that's kind of
a red flag. It doesn't mean they're necessarily wrong, but
it's indicative of something that doesn't have consistency, or it's
really just coming down to a person's opinion rather than

(02:01:29):
actually having empirical or objective evidence behind it.

Speaker 2 (02:01:32):
Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I come at
it from a similar position. I also come at it
from I think another thing that Alex was alluding to
was a bit of a moving the goalposts, like, hey,
this was literal until it was proven it couldn't be literal.
It's kind of like a previous caller, well the moon
was split, Well why is it not split now? Well,
obviously it must have been mended, right. It's this post

(02:01:55):
hawk rationalization of what we're dealing with. I think. So
what I see in that area is people are raised
I think a good number of people are raised to
believe in the premise. The premise is there's a good God,
and he loves you, Jesus loves me, Yes, he does.
You know, all of those sorts of things. And then

(02:02:17):
when they start reading scripture, they go to Bible class,
and Bible class teaches them, oh, well, we're going to
talk on this verse and this version, this verse and
this verse, none of the controversial ones, all the ones
that say love, peace, and happiness. And then later people
start bringing up the problem ones, and early on there's
a rationalization. It's that cognitive dissonance. Well, everybody around me

(02:02:38):
says God is good and the Bible is true. All
the things I've read in the Bible so far tell
me that God is good and it's true. And now
you're bringing up this one thing, so there must be
an interpretation problem. My go to response to all of
that is what I said earlier on this show. If
this is allegedly the most single most important message to
your existence and the existence of all of humanity and

(02:03:00):
the purpose of the creation of the entire universe, wouldn't
the book have been clearer about which passages are metaphors
or allegories and which passages are literally true That's what
I come down to, is like, I can make all
the other observations, but you chose this. God supposedly chose

(02:03:21):
to write a message at a time when there was
no cameras, there was no DNA evidence, there was no
science developed. It was all eyewitnesses who then told these stories,
if they were witnesses at all, for generations until somebody
wrote them down in now dead languages, and then we
don't have the originals of any of this stuff. And

(02:03:42):
then after that they were translated and mistranslated and copied
by scribes that we know inserted all sorts of errors
by accident and on purpose, and then translated again. We
just had a caller who wanted to use the King
James version instead of the NIV, instead of the NRUV.
That's the best way to convey this message. And I

(02:04:03):
have chapters in the book where the character of Jesus
is saying verily, verily, truly, truly, that's what I would
say if I meant, I'm not kidding. This is literal,
you know, ask for what you want and you'll get
it type of thing. So when I take that approach,
I'm like, what's more likely? What is more likely in
my experience, that that is how the omnipotent creator of

(02:04:28):
the entire universe chose to convey the most important message
to all of mankind and the reason the entire universe
even exists. That's how we chose it. Or some guys
wrote a book and people took it a little too
seriously and now are trying to rationalize it. Does that help, Alex?

Speaker 9 (02:04:44):
Yeah, I mean I'm quite interested with what you said
is the obviously it's been it's meant to be a
book of universal truths, and there's it's probably been shaped
that some of overarching narratives, or you've put about it
being a bit inconsistent and a bit vague for being,
you know, something to do with eternity and morality and
human origin. I see what you're saying there. I appreciate

(02:05:05):
the response.

Speaker 2 (02:05:05):
Thank you absolutely. And you said you had multiple questions,
what's what's your next one?

Speaker 4 (02:05:10):
Right?

Speaker 9 (02:05:10):
So I don't know how much you really argue about
like the morality of the Bible. I mean, I've sat
through a lot of argues about slavery, so I assume
that's a comfortable propit.

Speaker 2 (02:05:21):
Yes, we do, we do. I take exception with what
is portrayed to be the quote unquote good book when
I can point to lots of things in it that
I've I find to be a moral under any yardstick,
the biggest of which is the concept of hell or
damnation or some sort of punishment for existing, and that

(02:05:43):
the fact that that that punishment is supposedly eternal, eternal
punishment for finite crime, goes against everything I can possibly
imagine if you really take seriously the idea of eternal punishment.
So I think the entire book portrays a morality of
bronze age goat herders who didn't know where the sun
goes at night. They came up with these stories, told

(02:06:05):
them to each other, and eventually these stories were written down,
and that's your Old Testament. Then later on we get
the New Testament, where people were like, well, we need
to love too. It can't be six hundred and whatever laws.
That where the answer to violating most of these laws
is we stone you to death. Why don't we add
some love stuff? But then add a part that says, verily,
verily again, I come not to do away with the laws,

(02:06:28):
but to fulfill them. The laws they're talking about is
the old Testament and it was godless you read it
earlier like nothing will change in the laws, not a
jot or tittle. If we want to use the King
King Jain's language, until all is fulfilled, which most people
agree it means until I you know, everything is at
the end of times. So I don't know about you, Ben,

(02:06:49):
what your take on the morality of the Bible is.
I suspect you have some issues. What are your thoughts?

Speaker 6 (02:06:55):
Oh?

Speaker 8 (02:06:55):
Sure, yeah, as just saying to Alex, we we only
get to take the calls that we get. Yeah, oftentimes
slavery ends up coming up, and that is kind of
the topic through which morality or how do we determine
our morality comes from? But there are older episodes where
people called in to say how can you be moral
and be an atheist? And we have our hosts responding
to that. I think some really great resources if you're

(02:07:17):
wanting to look into that is look up the Divine
command problem with the Uthafro or care guard with fear
and trembling, and those were some older philosophical texts that
are assessing like where does morality come from? Is it
divinely inspired? Can it be divinely inspired? Can you trust
it if it's divinely inspired, because we don't know the
mind of God. And yeah, most of especially we're talking

(02:07:38):
about the interpretations. Oftentimes those interpretations are based on what
that person feels morally inside themselves, and then they're going
to basically impose their own morals on what's in this book.
And we see that all the time with like the
interpretations of the Ten Commandments. I think one of my
favorite examples is in New Orleans or a Louisiana right now,
they recently passed a ten Commandments bill, but the Christians

(02:08:01):
couldn't decide on which ten or what interpretation of those
ten they would have up on the walls and all
their schools. So there's actually eleven Ten Commandments in the
state of Louisiana. And I think that's really funny.

Speaker 2 (02:08:11):
Yes, it's one of my favorite examples as well. It's
horrifying that they're doing it, but the fact that it's
eleven Commandments in the state where previously they passed a
law or they introduced a bill excuse me, saying we're
going to make the Bible the official book of Louisiana,
and then during a committee or during debates, they couldn't
agree on which version of the Bible, so they dropped
the issue altogether. So what are your thoughts there, Alex, Yeah.

Speaker 9 (02:08:34):
I mean, obviously with different people interpreting things because people
like adhere to what very difficult to put into words,
but humans n actually seek to create narratives and patterns
out of things. It's part of evolution. But I was
thinking more about less about specific arguments and more about
moral objectivity and subjectivity, because I feel all the time

(02:08:55):
people claiming in support of the Bible that it's like
we need moral universal grounding, or we don't know what's
good and bad, or it's in human nature. But when
I've read through the Bible or watched debates like this,
or listen to other people speak about what they think
of it, I think it kind of just, in my opinion,
disproved their own claim. Because when you say things like

(02:09:16):
the difference between the New and the Old Testament, they
say our world of God working with the culture of
the time or coming down to their.

Speaker 4 (02:09:22):
Level, or yeah, objective or reality.

Speaker 8 (02:09:27):
Yeah either morals morality is objective and God is conveyed
it to us or God can change his mind, And.

Speaker 2 (02:09:32):
Then is it still objective in that tale or or
with response is often said regarding slavery, and the reason
we go to slavery so often is it's the easiest one, right,
it should be the most obvious to the most people,
and it's a way to shortcut all the others. Ben,
you're you are a bald man. And if children came

(02:09:54):
up and uh and tease you about being your bald
would you want an angry God to s and bears
after them to maul them to death.

Speaker 8 (02:10:03):
This may become surprising to a lot of theists out there. Yeah, yeah, no, no, because.

Speaker 2 (02:10:07):
No, So there's lots of examples in the Bible, but
we go to I mean, that's like, that's a simple one,
the bearded guy, But it sounds like fairy tale and
all that. Slavery is very objective. So yeah, I think
that when we get into this morality question objective versus subjective,
they don't really have a leg to stand on because
they have to go to well, it's objective because it's

(02:10:28):
what God wants. More like, Okay, so it's subjective with
whin respect to what God's wishes are. Well, God can't
help do anything other than what is good because goodness
is the nature of God. Okay, so it's something that
morals come from somewhere outside of God. God is constrained
by the morality that he's dictating in the Bible. He

(02:10:48):
has no choice to do this. Well, that's not exactly
what we meant. And then they get caught in this
loop of trying to be subjective and objective at the
same time. I will give another resource. So Ben gave
a lot of good ones. Matt Dilla Hunty gave a
presentation of speech ten twelve years ago. There's a video
of it called Superior a Superiority of Secular Morality. It's

(02:11:09):
a really good take on this issue. It gave me
an interesting framework for framing this discussion and it has
helped me in having this discussion with other people. And
if you have not seen it, I recommend you do
go watch it. So what's what are your thoughts on that.

Speaker 9 (02:11:23):
Alex, Yeah, well, I'll definitely check that out. I've just
written it down.

Speaker 2 (02:11:27):
Yeah, it's Matt Dilla Hunty. You just google superior Superiority
of a Secular Morality and you'll come up with his presentation.

Speaker 9 (02:11:34):
Yeah, I mean it's I mean, this is interesting because
there's obviously a lot of mental gymnastics that go into
entertaining different ideas, and obviously it's even if there is
a bit of consistency. It's a compilation of like sixty
six seventy something books, so there's going to be different agendas.
I mean, you could argue the books in Exodus to

(02:11:55):
do with I guess survival of that primal society, like
the social needs of the time, And then you look
at the New Testament and it seems like an highly
different story.

Speaker 2 (02:12:05):
It is. It definitely is different authors, different time, different era.
It's it is very different. But the secular morality piece
abstracts higher than that and says, hey, I'll give you
the ten cent version, all right. I get accused. This
is sort of the presentation I get accused of saying, hey,
your morality is subjective, And to that, I would say,

(02:12:28):
the rule of Maria morality is subjective. I think that
my rule should be every decision should consider whether or
not every action should should consider whether or not it
increases well being of humans. Right, And we could just
take that as an abstract like that's the goal. That
choice of that being the goal is somewhat subjective. I

(02:12:49):
am agreeing with that goal. That is my choice. However,
I think there is a natural law of things that says, hey,
you know, maybe that is implicit in our nature, that
you know, life is preferable to death, is preferable to pain,
those sorts of things. And if you take that as
the subjective choice of what your moral rule will be,
then everything that flows from it can be evaluated sort

(02:13:11):
of like a game of chess. Is the analogy he uses.
The rules for the game of chess were invented by men,
They're subjective, they're arbitrary to some degree. And then now
that we have the rules, we can say, okay, is
this move pond to E four? Is that a good
move a bad move? How good is it? How bad
is it? And we may not agree on every move.
It could be a gray area. Even computers can be
like it doesn't really change the bar too much. So

(02:13:34):
that's the gist of it. But I encourage you to
go listen to that presentation because he really dives through
every argument, every counter argument, and gives you a framework
to say, you know what, not only do I think
my morality is subjective, I think all a morality is subjective.
So within that framework, Here's why I think the secular
morality is better than this divine command stuff that we
see in the Bible and other books. All right, we're

(02:13:56):
way past time, Alex. Do you have any last comments
or questions.

Speaker 9 (02:14:00):
I won't keep you. I know this quite I mean,
I've had a long way, and you guys are probably
very tired after all the mental gymnastics that I'm just
going on.

Speaker 2 (02:14:11):
Ben Ben's Ben says he's just getting started. I I
do apologize for the long wait. We definitely had a
lot of calls today, so but I was really glad
I could get you in. Please do call back again,
either when I'm on or anybody else's on if you
have other questions. It is totally natural to have a
lot of questions when you're sort of starting to question
things or well along your journey. I still have questions
today that I will bounce off of people of like, WHOA,

(02:14:33):
this seems interesting? What's going on here? And I'm open
to being convinced. I just haven't yet, So thank you
very much, Alex. Go ahead check out our other shows.

Speaker 8 (02:14:41):
They tend to get slightly less call volumes sometimes, so
it can be easier to get on because like XP,
we've tried to prioritize theist callers or even just like clarify,
if you're currently deconstructing your belief we try to prioritize
those two. So we have truth wanted, we have TALKI
than are are two other options. You can try to
call in on Friday and then before this show on Sundays,

(02:15:04):
so there's other opportunities for you to try to call in,
so maybe you don't have to wait. You've been on
two hours.

Speaker 2 (02:15:09):
Thank you for that, all right, So thanks so much, Alex.
I'll drop you now, look forward to hearing from you again. Ben.
I want to thank you our listeners. I want to
thank you. Let me check and see if we've have
any more. It doesn't appear we have any more super chats.
We're going to wrap it up here, Ben. Yeah, are
you going to be on a show again sometime soon?

(02:15:31):
I love being on with you. I appreciate you're always
there in the background ready to fill in. I want
to do more shows with you.

Speaker 4 (02:15:39):
So.

Speaker 8 (02:15:41):
I think that's up to the faiths. I'm on the board,
so I'm not I'll never know you're on board.

Speaker 3 (02:15:49):
Have we got in the show?

Speaker 8 (02:15:50):
I leave there. Yeah, the experts when they do and
don't need me.

Speaker 2 (02:15:53):
On, so gotcha. Yeah, from a legal perspective, just so
our audience knows, if you're on a board of a
thing and you start becoming being a person that's managed
by the board because you're on the show, there's a
conflict of interest and all that stuff. So I get
it now, you just need to quit.

Speaker 8 (02:16:10):
It's always such a dray and privilege I've been. I
was a fan of these shows for years before I
have had this opportunity to work with the organization, So
it's always it feels like a gift every time I
get to be on here.

Speaker 2 (02:16:21):
Absolutely same, absolutely same. I was a huge fan, still
am of all the old old hosts, all the new hosts.
It's amazing how it's evolved. And I think for our audience,
thank you for continuing to listen and supporting us. I
know there's a lot of stuff going on out there.
Some is for profits so they can get into other
stuff that we don't get into. But as a charity,

(02:16:41):
you know that we're doing good, trying to especially work
on separation of church and state, especially these days when
we have policies by governments, officials who may not obey
court orders, and if they decide to set up the
Church of the United States, nobody's going to stop them.
So organizations like ours and other charities that are work

(02:17:03):
hard on spreading the word about atheism is not what
you think it is. It's just not being convinced of something,
and it's not a bad word. And we shouldn't have
only one set of people with one set of religious
beliefs controlling our government. I think that's a good thing.
So please do continue to support the ACA as well
as other organizations around the country that do this. If

(02:17:24):
you are in another area of the world where you
run into similar problems, I'm sure you've got those local
organizations too, And I'll let Ben have the final word
for our audience.

Speaker 8 (02:17:33):
Well, yeah, if you are looking to get involved and
you're in the local area, check out our website. I
think Graham mentioned it earlier in the show, but I'll
say it again. Atheistsifeocommunity dot org. We have a calendar
on there, so we do have events in the building.
I recently stepped in to be the volunteer coordinator for
the organization, so we're starting to build out additional volunteer
opportunities around here. We're going to try doing tabling. We're

(02:17:53):
doing different events like potlucks and things like that to
bring in people and give them a place where they
can find solidarity in French ship and community. So check
that out. We have a lot going on. It's been
fun to watch this slowly build and develop.

Speaker 2 (02:18:06):
Thank you so much, Ben, I couldn't have said any better.
Get involved if you can, even if you're not around here,
get involved. You'll have local meetups. So thank you, Ben.
Always a pleasure, and we'll see everybody next week. We're
always here Sundays at four thirty Central. See you next week.

Speaker 3 (02:18:21):
By bye.

Speaker 4 (02:18:26):
To start opening, stop questing the bullshit everyone around you
buy it.

Speaker 2 (02:18:39):
Welcome, Ellen, Will David watch Talk Ethan live Sundays at

(02:19:09):
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
slash call th H

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