The Atheist Experience 29.25 with Jmike and Seth Andrews @TheThinkingAtheist (With Special Guest Godless Engineer)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Suppose for a moment that we live in a world
where superheroes exist, and imagine one flying throughout the city
checking for evil when they come across someone harming an
innocent person.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
What could we expect from such a being?

Speaker 1 (00:13):
One who possesses the ability to stop the evil, has
the motivation and aims to stop the evil wherever necessary,
and knows that the evil will occur. We'd obviously expect
them to stop the event from happening. But what if
they didn't. What could we say then about such a being?
What if, in response, they just sit there let it
occur and claim that the free will of the evildoer

(00:36):
was a greater good than preventing the harm, or worse,
that the evil action itself leads to some greater good
down the line. Could we call that being good? Would
there even be any coherent sense of evil from their perspective?
I mean, imagine if I came up to you, punched you,
stole your wallet, and when confronted, I simply.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Said, it was really greater good.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
If it turns out that there is no evil all
things considered, then what exactly even is sin something that
should occur?

Speaker 2 (01:07):
After all?

Speaker 1 (01:08):
If that's the case, then original sin should have occurred,
it's not something that shouldn't have occurred. And if that follows,
then Jesus's atonement seems utterly meaningless because he didn't die
for anything that shouldn't have occurred in the first place.
So I guess my point is this, if we can't
expect such a being to stop evil because of free
will or some greater good excuse, then the entire notion

(01:31):
of goodness and the theology that follows from it can
virtually justify anything. And if you disagree with me, call
the show because it's starting now.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Welcome everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Today is June twenty twenty five. I am your host,
J Mike, and with me is the let's see the
Sultan of Skeptic.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
That is pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
On the top of my head, I was setting myself
up there for just what are some s words and
skeptic and stuff?

Speaker 3 (02:05):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
So no, no, I'm the guy that took thirty years
to figure out donkeys can't speak Hebrew.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
I'm not that skeptical.

Speaker 4 (02:12):
I came late to the party, but I'm here, and
I'm here on the show, and it's nice to be here.
Thanks for letting me play along.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah, I'm extremely excited.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
I think, like a lot of people in the audience
can just understand why completely.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
I did get to meet you in Atlanta. Briefly.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
I'm not sure you remember, because you get to meet
a whole bunch of people.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
But Atlanta was a whirlwind.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
I was doing a speech in front of the Arizona
State Capital on state church separation, you and I. It
was secular Arizona, Arizona.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, yeah, Arizona, and I met you in Atlanta.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Oh I thought, she said, I might have sat in
Arizona because my friend Aaron's there and I know you
met him there and so.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Whole other party.

Speaker 4 (02:51):
Okay, Well, I was in Arizona and I did a
speech about state church separation, the secular United States and
why that's what the Founding Fathers intended. And I actually
have that twenty minute outdoor presentation from in front of
the Arizona State Capital on my YouTube page if people
want to go. It's called Jefferson's Jesus and it's an

(03:12):
ice encapsulation of why we are not a Christian nation.
In case anybody in your circle needs to hear it.
If we get lucky wants to hear it, but no,
it's good to be here. Thanks for having me along.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, of course, and bear with me. I haven't been
in the host seat in a while. I'm usually in
your seat, which is like a breeze.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
You know.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
You get over here and you're like, oh, whow, I
got to press the buttons and do all this stuff now,
like it's crazy. But so bear with me as we
get through that. But I'll get through a few things
with everybody. Just reminded that the Atheist Experience is a
product of the Atheist Community of Austin. It's a five
oh one C three or non nonprofit organization dedicated to
the promotion of atheism, critical thinking, secular humanism, and the

(03:52):
separation of religion and government. And I'm excited to just
go straight into calls if that's what you want to do.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah, all yours, man, let's do it. Well.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Actually, before we do that, I want to because I
usually do this. So again, just proving my point that
I've been the host seat in a while. What is like,
is there anything that you've been up to that I
know you got backstageer telling me about some podcast stuff.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
I don't know if you want to talk about that now.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
But I was so interested that I felt like I
was just going to pull it out of you.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (04:19):
I know, for those who don't know who I am,
I came out of Christian radio is a Christian radio
broadcaster for a lot of years.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
And so we played Amy Grant and Michael W.

Speaker 4 (04:32):
Smith and Petra and you know, all those those groups,
and we thought we were awesome, man, because we were playing.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
This edgy music for Jesus. We're rocking for the rock.

Speaker 4 (04:41):
I was at a striper concert, second row at the
two Hell with the Devil tour. I mean, it's embarrassing,
but a lot of people are like, do you have
any old recordings of when you were a Christian radio host?
And almost all of them were on cassette, a few
were on mini disc, and I didn't have cassette or
a mini disc player. But I was able to find

(05:02):
in some boxes some old, old, old stuff and I
got them converted. And so on Tuesday's podcast, the Thinking
Atheist podcast, patrons already have it, but it goes out
to everybody else. On Tuesday, I play some of these
old blasts from the past, Christian radio clips and some
other ones where I'm doing like the you know ninety
two one Kiss at Van played another play on the Hicks.

(05:25):
You know, we all tried to sound like a radio DJ.
But I think the most interesting part is the last
part of the show. I was guest hosting on a
conservative talk show. They were like a Fox News affiliate.
I think they still may be. And this was back
when I was a Fox News Christian. And it's an
embarrassing segment. It just I literally blushed thinking about it.

(05:47):
But it's me with a co host and we were
bitching about the war on Christmas. These people are trying
to take Jesus out of the holiday that belongs to him.
We are a Christian nation and I I heard that
segment from twenty years ago and my head exploded, and
I thought, I don't know if I can play this
for everybody. I don't know if I can expose myself

(06:09):
to this degree because it's just so vacuous and sad
and wrongheaded and ignorant.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
But screw it. So you will hear on the show
this week.

Speaker 4 (06:20):
You're going to hear me essentially throwing out all the
Christian nation war on Christmas, you know, anti Christian bias
tropes that we've been now debunking for since whenever you're
going to see me back before I came out of
my coma, and so that'll be interesting anyway. That's that's
the one thing that I've got going on this week.

(06:40):
Thanks for asking.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, no, I'm excited, like that's going to be so helpful. First,
I mean, so my own background, to be selfish for
a second, I never was a Christian, So I'm kind
of imagining here. I mean, I want to hear it
from my own kind of personal just to hear this
like dichotomy of the of the Seth Andrews. But for
people that kind of look back on I imagine at
least right they look back on the way that they

(07:04):
reasoned about different things or the beliefs that they came to.
And I imagine a lot of people look back and
they're like, God, man, I was such adult, like I
can't believe I believe that or whatever. I deal it
with my own spiritual belief so I have it in
a different venue, so to speak, just not nearly as
culturally ingrained. And I wasn't really giving up a lot
when I left. It was very easy for me to
move on. I imagine that that's going to be just like

(07:24):
cathartic or just very like they're going to get a
lot out and be like, Okay, someone that I look
up to, they thought this way, and look where they
are now. There's like this kind of you know, milestone,
and you can see the progress in between, so to speak.

Speaker 4 (07:36):
So I will say that coming out of being deeply
immersed in the faith and understanding it from the outside
in and the inside out rather has allowed me to
give myself and a whole lot of other people a
lot more grace. We see in the meme verse a
lot of atheist content is very derogatory and demeaning and

(07:58):
superior and snobbish to work religious people. And I find
that pathetic and awful and unfair. You know, Christians are this,
and they are that religion is a mental illness and
all these other horrible, horrible claims that are being made,
and I'm like, no, I mean, I was a good person.
I was a believer. I wanted to do the right thing,
I had a moral center all those things. And I

(08:19):
think we diminish ourselves when we try to put believers
in a box and then crush the box. And I
have a great many people in my life who are
in some way God believers, and I love them and
they're lovable people, and they're smart and kind and they
would give you the shirt off their back. And do
they have some problematic ideas, absolutely, but you're not going

(08:42):
to describe them with a bumper sticker or a meme.
And I think if we're going to change the world,
we're not going to do it by shouting insults across
the internet. I think, you know, let's give each other
a little more grace as human beings whenever possible, and
it's not always possible, but you know, I think look
for opportunities and maybe that's a point where conversations can begin.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah, No, I absolutely agree.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
I think that sets us up pretty well for a
call coming out of California and Drew pronouns or he him.
I saw something earlier, so maybe Drew will, like can
elucidate on this.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Further.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
But I thought I saw some specific content there that
maybe they want to talk about. Let me see if
I can click a button talk there we go, like
I'm sitting there clicking, like did I click it?

Speaker 2 (09:25):
I got it?

Speaker 1 (09:26):
So we got Drew in California pronounced him says wants
to talk about wanting to talk about managing our temper
and emotions when dealing with people that disagree. Now, I
had saw something earlier, and I don't know if you're
comfortable with it around a specific topic and a conversation
that you had had. Did you want to talk about
that that thing specifically, because I kind of have a

(09:46):
very similar thing that happened to me.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
I'm just interested if maybe I.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
Don't know which conversation.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
I'm sorry, I'm talking.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
I'm sorry I'm referring to Drew right now.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
I should have been very clear that's.

Speaker 4 (10:03):
Yes, go ahead, thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 5 (10:07):
I could I could talk about the specific incident. But
there's been like a handful so and uh, like, I
guess I'm not like a super social guy, so I
value my and my friendships and yeah, so now they've
been dropping lately out of my uh, out of my wheelhouse.

(10:29):
The last one here that I wanted to that I
called in specifically about was a friend of mine who
you know, We spoke, we talked, We would make a
point to talk every day on the phone, and uh,
and she just went radio silent after our last just
talk because we actually got into a fight where she
knows my background. She knows and I know her background.

(10:50):
She used to be like Catholic, and at some point
in her life she kind of pivoted toward more like spirituality.
So I guess maybe she's kind of a gius more
than her.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
But she knows my.

Speaker 5 (11:01):
Background and and we've had debates about this before, but
she does believe in like WU and and and and
astrology in particular, and uh, it's kind of it's kind
of inconsistent because she has a kid. She wants to
teach her kid about, you know, being strong in stem
and took her to like, you know, JPL Catur And

(11:22):
one of the things I wanted to ask was like,
would you have the guts to tell them at JPL
that you believe in astrology and just see what they say,
because you're like, no, you wouldn't because you know you'd
be laughed out. But but then she, knowing my background
and what I feel, she sent me my astrology, uh,
something that she picked up from some publication and and

(11:45):
uh it was and it was something positive, so I
know she meant it. She met well, and she knows
about my struggles that i'd had just recently with you know,
finding it. I hadn't having to find a new job,
and so the thing was pretty positive about like how
I'm doing, like see the thing?

Speaker 1 (12:00):
No real quick, can I just real quick for the
for like the brevity of time. I just want to
just see if I got you so far. Like so,
you you have a friend, presumably there's like a fallout
and it's over this topic of astrology, right, and and
these would beliefs okay, and then presumably you feel like
you've overstepped some kind of boundary or you didn't go

(12:23):
at it the right the right way, because this is
kind of what I wanted to get the heart at
the heart of. But I wanted to understand the context
of like, you know, when when they when you kind
of pushed back, so to speak.

Speaker 5 (12:34):
Well, she kind of expresses being offended sometimes when I
push back on her belief system, and then I think
that what about me? Like she's just respecting my belief
system when she sends me things like this, and like,
you know how I feel about this. Don't send me this,
you know, I think it's I was offended. And so yeah,
I started in on that.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
I told why does it?

Speaker 1 (12:56):
I don't want to I don't want to hog. I
don't want to hog the mic or anything you here.
I want to pay this to seth. The two kind
of things I wanted wanted to at least say real
so far is what is it about sending you the
material itself that's threatening to you or that you feel like,
I mean, maybe it threatens not the right way or
the right word. Maybe there's a word here that describes it.
You say offended. I have, you know, Christian family members

(13:20):
and friends, and I guess less in the family members
are not giving me verses and stuff. But I have
friends that will send me text messages and you know,
stuff like that or you know, God loves you kind
of stuff, and it doesn't offend me or make me
mad in that sense. Someone, I'm trying to understand what
makes you upset?

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Here? Just just on just receiving that.

Speaker 5 (13:38):
It was because she knows how I feel about it,
and I think that she was kind of ignoring how I.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Feel when she What is it that you feel you
you just don't believe in it, or you have.

Speaker 5 (13:47):
Like, yeah, I don't believe in it. I just it
does make me angry when people bring it up. I
don't I guess that's kind of more idiosyncratic on my
on my part, but in this particular situation where she
expresses she's being offended because I pushed back on like
you know how I don't believe in it, and she
feels like I am disrespecting her belief system.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
I got you, sorry to keep sorry to keep cutting
you off. I'm trying to go this chunk out of
time and then pass it here to seth because the
thing that's like I'm not really that I can't really
move on from at this point is that like the
idea like that someone sends you something you don't believe
offends you, Like I can get it in certain content,
but astrology or something like that, I guess I'm not
really understanding that. Man, maybe I'm not privy to the conversation,

(14:30):
but like to give you a piece of like my
history on this, I've done something I guess similar in
the gist of what's going on that on Instagram posts
years back, you know, before I ever debated or did
any of this kind of stuff. So I'm posted some
astrology thing as like their story or a post, and
I messaged them was like, how can you believe this?
I mean, get into this whole thing. It was not

(14:51):
a good look on my part, right, I was just
being kind of emotional, and I you know, I had
this new shirt, you know, of skepticism, and I wanted
to show everybody this new shirt that I got. No
one really cared about seeing that shirt when you throw
it in their face. So before I pass it, I'm
gonna pass it to Seth.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
But I'm trying to.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Understand, like it couldn't clearly just be the belief that
the belief people have in astrology as opposed to something like,
you know, believe in Christianity. I could understand that if
you have some negative kind of connotations or that you
have trans friends.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
That are affected by that.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Right, there's just like you could pick anything to throw
a dart and find something that will legitimately offend you
for that. But I'm wondering if you just have this
general kind of hatred towards like hatred. But I'm trying
to find the word. I guess this disposition against these beliefs,
and I wonder a really easy way to go about
it is just to kind of curb that from the start,
because you're if you're building up a wall, they're going

(15:42):
to build up a wall right behind you, and there's
just no communication at that point. But seth, sorry, I
just wanted to kind of see, like what it is
about the belief itself that's bothering you.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
Well, if I can jump in, I think I'm sensing
something a little different through because I have gone through
this in my own life. I think it's not about
the specific claim itself and astrology claims and all those
Really they are damaging because they are selling pseudoscience and

(16:13):
solutions to.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
A world that will often buy into them.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
But I think what Drew is expressing, if I may,
and correct me if I'm wrong, my friend, is the
violation of a boundary that he set in place. Look,
my evangelical mother and father were devastated when the child,
the son they had raised. They had trained him in
the way that he should go, and when he got
older he departed from it. I realized I hadn't done

(16:39):
my own thinking, and I walked away. And so what
happened was is that a shit ton of religious people
in my circle decided they gave themselves permission to do
what has been done to you. They start throwing volleys
in your direction. Boom, boom boom, boom boom article and
sermon and read this book and do this and check
this evidence out, etc. And at some point you say,

(17:02):
you know, don't send this to me anymore. This is
not a productive conversation. This is a line that I
would rather you not cross. And then they cross it anyway. Well,
that is a show of disrespect, and I think you
have every right to say no, this is inappropriate of you.
I do not I've requested that you not do this.

(17:23):
Someone who respected me would not do this, and I
think your frustration over that is totally valid. I had
a conversation with my own mother. It's been almost two
years now, and we know we've kind of gone back
and forth, and she was the same way. Every time
I turned around, there was a new article telling me
why God was real and I'm wrong and I'm going

(17:44):
to help. So we had a conversation, probably like you,
it had do not do this again. Okay, I understand
your position. You have heard my position, do.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
Not do this.

Speaker 4 (17:54):
If you do this, I took it a step further.
I said, if you do this, a consequence is going
to kick in, and that is that I am going
to have to remove you from my circle. We will
not have communication because I don't have to live in
an atmosphere of disrespect. Three days later, another sermonet came
in and I cut that cord, and we haven't really

(18:15):
had a relationship.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Since it's not my fault.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
And I honestly think self respect is a big aspect
of respect. And I think, if I'm understanding you, Drew,
you simply want your boundary to be respected, and it
irritates you that it has been disrespected. Am I close?

Speaker 5 (18:34):
Yeah, you pretty much got it. I mean, she's the
one who sets the boundary in the first place. I
was always being my authnetical self, and whenever she raised
it in the past, I'd explain my position and I
wasn't rude about it, But then she would be too
a take offense to that I'm disrespecting the last And
so it seems like she sets the boundary that I'm
to respect her, and I respected that boundary, and then
she feels like she doesn't have to respect my boundary.

(18:57):
It was implied, but I didn't like explicitly explicitly stated.

Speaker 4 (19:01):
But okay, let me make sure I understand Drew. Please
forgive the interruption. So she was asking you to defend
your position. Why don't you believe in God? Why don't
you believe in spirits? And she was the one kind
of kind of who had started that conversation. And then
whenever you came back and you said, well, I disagree
with astrology and I disagree with WU because because because

(19:23):
she took offense at your response, Am I understanding that correctly?

Speaker 5 (19:28):
Well, she would say something in respect to like, here's
what the astrology says. I know that the stars are
aligned a certain way, so I'm expecting a lot of chaos,
and then I would say something like, well, you know,
you know, I don't believe that kind of thing, and
she would that's when she would like express that she's
taken offense to my you know, trying to push back.

Speaker 4 (19:50):
On like okay, well so she told you the stars
said this about your life, and you said I don't
buy that, and then she got irritated.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Is that what I'm hearing?

Speaker 5 (19:59):
Well, I mean the way it began, the whole thing all.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
Ultimately, I really don't think throwing facts at people is productive.
We understand that identity beliefs work differently. People are let
around often by their emotions and all tribes can be
guilty of in group and identity thinking blah blah blah.
I become more of a fan of de Socratic method.
If we engage, we do so lightly, try to use

(20:25):
this a lot of questions, a little street epistemology, and
you know, I think, hey, how would you know? Can
you explain this to me? I don't really buy it,
but maybe you've got a better I mean, I get
those types of engagements. But if you've said don't do this, please,
don't do this, and she's sending you your fucking star
charts anyway, that to me is crossing a line of respect,

(20:50):
and you have every right to say, look, I've asked
you not to do this, do not do this, or
we may not have much of a relationship moving forward.
I think that's fair. I don't know, check me on that.

Speaker 5 (21:00):
Yeah, no, I would I agree if it got to
that point. But the thing is.

Speaker 6 (21:04):
Like, for me, it's not a guil breaker.

Speaker 5 (21:06):
She can go ahead and believe what she wants and cheat,
but I need to be my inspect itself and express myself.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
To my opinion, it sounds like because you put in
the two things I've seen on the call screen that
you're talking about your temper and managing that. And now
I'm like, when I'm listening to you and I guess
seth a dialogue there, it sounds like you're kind of
unfairly putting this on yourself that you have you're losing
your temper or something, right, because it sounded like, well,
at least maybe I was reading too much into it

(21:31):
that like maybe you get anger from like just hearing
like the belief or there's something there.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Or something kind of detached or something. But the way you.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Kind of tell it there, it's not really clear to me,
Like why do you think you're losing your temper on it?
Because it sounds pretty reasonable at least the way you
express it then, right.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
So after wondering if you're kind of shitting on yourself.

Speaker 5 (21:51):
But it does end up it progresses into like me
losing the temper and pushing back.

Speaker 4 (21:59):
Really, I think I think managing that at the beginning
is very important. First of all, I really think those
conversations aren't necessarily about trying to change her mind.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
I doubt you're going to get there.

Speaker 4 (22:12):
You may be able to, in certain circumstances, help to
produce a crank that lets in some light and plant
to seed, if I can borrow that cliche.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
A lot of.

Speaker 4 (22:23):
Times we go in there and we like no, no, no,
and then they say this, well, I know that's wrong.
And then they say something else and that's stupid and
how dare you? And before you know it, we can
feel the vein popping out of our forehead. And I
think that is something we have to do, be a
force of will to be able to realize this is happening.
I think we keep those conversations shorter, and I think
we manage our language using the word I instead of you.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
You are wrong.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
No, I don't agree. I've got some challenges and problems
with that. Let me understand what my position is. You know,
there's a there are different linguistic tools to be able
to be used, but your limitations going in is an
important part of that equation.

Speaker 5 (23:03):
I think, Okay, I think I'll take that to heart.
You know that, I just I need to not lose
my temper when when when the discussion gets heated, and
and to try to see if I can like take
the Socratic I mean, I just I do do the
Socratic approach, and I do point out inconsistencies you know, like,

(23:25):
if you believe in science in this particular sense, then
why are you, you know, leaving this wu nonsense?

Speaker 3 (23:31):
Yeah, if someone's oh, forgive me, micaelhead Bro.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
No, I just wanted to.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
I think the language really does matter because like if
I'm I know you're saying that to us now, but
if you say like nonsense to them in the conversation
right through throughout that dialectic, it's gonna I think it's
like the youth thing. I know, in like baseball, if
like you go to an umpire and you say, like
you miss that call, like you're getting thrown out. But

(23:55):
like I feel like if you're like, hey, I don't
really feel I don't. I feel like I wasn't. That
wasn't like justic on my part. I feel like, you know,
if you don't do the youth thing right, like, it
really goes a long way. I mean it does, and
I guess not everyone's a sports person, so maybe that'll
go over.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
I'm not even a big sports person.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
But I think the language does really matter because if
you do throw the little cheap nonsense kind of thing
in there, which I'm not saying you do, that will
that gets anybody kind of like if I hear someone
just go, you're that atheism nonsense, I feel like it's
time for me to like, well, okay, let me give
you a little taste of you know, what we do.
It's not nonsense. If you think it's nonsense, then I'll

(24:31):
let you judge from this point. You know, but it
does pull people's guards up, So I think the language
is super important.

Speaker 4 (24:37):
Understanding the psychology beliefs important people. People have the same fight,
flight or freeze reaction to an ideological threat that they
do to a physical threat. So if she genuinely has
this as a cherished believe, she's got an attachment to it.
And we can all we're all essentially meat covered skeletons.
We're emotional primates, right, we're all guilty and that we've

(24:59):
all done this. But if there is an identity based belief,
something cherished, and it is attacked the same part of
the brain, the amigdal of fires up. That would if
we were threatened physically, and people change their minds from
a position where they feel more safe in most cases,
and the one on one, certainly in the macro level

(25:20):
is a whole different show. But I think, you know,
if she will engage in good faith. Everybody takes a
deep breath, using the word I, asking questions, genuinely assuring
each other, I'm not here to make you look stupid
or make myself look superior. You know that might be possible,
and there's a chance it's not. There's a chance she

(25:42):
may not even go there, and then it's not on
you to fix her change your mind. And if you
know that you've got these hot hair triggers and you've
got a temper issue, you know you might not be
the one to go into that conversation in the first place.
You might not have the tool set at this measure
to do that. And I think self awareness on that
is very important to well.

Speaker 5 (26:01):
I need to just keep my mouth shut when day
bring it up and say things you know that you
know it's.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Just maybe not there's ways that it's look I think
it's a hard skill to learn how to kind of
in a healthy way control the dialogue. You know, where
you're like, you're not letting it get heated. You can
kind of see those steps towards getting there, and you
pull back a little bit like it's it's a skill,
it's a total skill. And I don't know, you should
just refrain, right, just not engage. It's important. Those are

(26:27):
the people that you can, you know, add to the
collective of people that you know are trying to have
the same interest in the same goals. Right.

Speaker 4 (26:34):
So I also think it's about a double standard, right.
You don't want to be in a room where everybody
else is able to be their authentic selves and say
their opinions and you're the one sitting on your hands
trying to quote unquote keep the peace. That's not peace,
it's just an absence of conflict, right, And so I
do think you should be able to speak your authentic
thoughts and be your authentic self without being judged and

(26:56):
without feeling like you got to you know, zip it
to keep it. You're not on this planet to keep
everybody else comfortable. And there's a liberation and knowing.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
That, yep, that's true, and there's this weird kind of
game you play, you know, appeasing different people and packaging
it in a way, but also you know, not being
auauthentic about it.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
You know, Yeah, does that help it all? Drew?

Speaker 5 (27:16):
Yeah, I mentally thank you so much, just so you know,
you know that this person was I did try being
diplomatic at first, and then it just kind of escalated
because you know, he kept on bringing it up in
So that's why I.

Speaker 4 (27:31):
Think it's fine to decide if you have a line
to make clear where that is to say, maybe we
should talk about other things. Here's kind of my guideline,
please respect it. And if that guideline's disrespected, you know you,
I think you're going to need to make a decision
as to how much disrespect you are going to allow
in your uncircle. So hang in there, let us know

(27:52):
how it goes.

Speaker 5 (27:53):
Okay, yeah, well too, Thanks so much, guys.

Speaker 4 (27:56):
I'm hearing I was seeing in the chat that we're
hearing mouse clicking and type over what's going I think
I mentioned this earlier and we didn't think it was
going out over the broadcast.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
That could that could just be me. I got a
nice loud new mouse, so okay, yeah, somebody hearing my
new my new loud mouse.

Speaker 4 (28:13):
Hearing a lot of clicking over here, So somebody was
hearing it, and I wanted to throw that out to
the producers or whatever.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
So yeah, apologies, I can't hear it myself if that's
the case, And I didn't detect it at the beginning.
But but yeah, sorry to anyone. If that is annoying,
I will try to minimize the mouse clicks.

Speaker 4 (28:31):
It's all first world problems, man, it's all first world problems.
You know, you said something when you did your monologue.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
We were talking about.

Speaker 4 (28:40):
Jesus and God and sin and all those you know,
the sin nature and and the nature of the Almighty,
and you know, the nonsensical whole vibe of the biblical narrative.
And it was Tim Ward, who is State director of
American Atheists from my home state of Oklahoma, had posted,
I think today an interesting question along those lines, and.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
I wanted to throw it out.

Speaker 4 (29:03):
So he said, if you know, why would God allow
original sin, meaning an inherited sin nature through the generations,
contaminating everybody, you know, the cancer of evil? Why could
you have original sin and not original salvation? If I
could be born with a sin nature, why could I
not then be born with a salvation nature. You know

(29:26):
where I'm already pre rescued. And I never thought of
it in that term before, But I want to throw
it out. And I don't know if you had any
thoughts on that, if it made any sense if I'm
missing something.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
No, I mean yeah, because like what a response like,
at least when I talk to some people about this,
like if you gave that, what I anticipate the responses
is that, well, look, having this original sin gives you
this ability to like, you know, wash it away. You
don't just start off, you know, you start off with
this thing and you got to work towards it. And
this is why this is important to me that I

(29:56):
think people really pay attention to what's going on when
people talk about evil and good good because it does
this really weird flipping where now that original sin, like
I'm saying in the monologue, that's something that's better, right,
should occur over the original salvation. Right, It's there's more
motivation according to God or his aims to have that

(30:17):
because by that, by those lights, that's a good thing.
I mean, now they're gonna.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Say, zoomed in.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
It's.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, it's a horrible thing to sin, but on the
grand scheme of things, it should occur, right, otherwise God
would have made the world that you're talking about. We
just have salvation and we freely choose the good. But
evidently there's something that's better than having just the good.
That's having evil. What makes no fucking sense. And that's

(30:42):
why I like rail home all the time that I
don't when people bring up problems of evil. A lot
of times, I'm not convinced that theists do have a
problem of evil in this sense. Now people always like,
what do you mean, clearly there's this problem. Yeah, but
when you talk with them, it turns out that they're
willing to justify any of those actions. The Holocaust, yeah
it was bad, but all things considered, it should have

(31:02):
happened because it's according to God's plan. You know, think
about ponscious pilot. You know, you're Jesus dying on the
cross that should have occurred. That wasn't a bad thing,
like he should have done that. You know, it's you
flipped this on its head where now it's like I
can't make sense of this. And then I was told
that original sin is something that shouldn't be done, right,
it's this normative notion shouldn't be done. But now hold on,

(31:25):
there's no evil, so now it's something that should be done.
So now Jesus came down here and died for something
that should have occurred. Wait, what it just makes no
fucking sense.

Speaker 4 (31:33):
Well, in my circle, it's more everything good is God
and everything bad is Satan, or it's a fallen world,
or free will, and this is one of my favorite ones.
Oh well, the reason you know babies dying childbirth, and
the reason that you know people are kidnapped in the streets,
and the reason there's war and famine and cancer and
COVID and all that stuff is because free will. And

(31:55):
that's why things are so shitty. And the exercise I
like here is okay. So, but when we die, we all.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
Go to heaven. And is there any pain in heaven?

Speaker 7 (32:03):
No?

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Is there any suffering? Is there? Cancer? Is there? Covid?
Is there? Are there plane crashes? Are there? Is there
any bad in heaven?

Speaker 6 (32:10):
No?

Speaker 4 (32:10):
Everything's perfect. Yeah, everyone's okay. Well, well then you're telling
me that there's no free will in heaven, right, and
they just wink out. You can literally see their eyes
go back into the back of their skull.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
Right.

Speaker 4 (32:22):
If the reason things went to shit is because we
were all supposed to have free will, then the only
reason they would not in heaven is because we would
no longer have free will.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
Lose their minds.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
That's kind of awesome and you can.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
You can even you can go further with this too,
before I get into these announcements where you can talk
about like well, hey, look do you think God could create?
You know, this is kind of like Jail Mackie's point, right,
it's like, can you can go? Do you think it's meta?
I mean some people want to say metaphysically possible. I
stilln't really know what that means. I don't think it
really actually means anything. I think it's so much as.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
Ye, yeah, it's a word.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Yeah, yeah, it's just a.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Bunch of gibberish. Now I understand, like logical possibility. Okay,
so maybe we get something concrete. You know, do you
think it's and that's what they're saying. God can do
anything logically possible. So is it logically possible for God
to create a world where agents just freely do the good?

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Always right?

Speaker 1 (33:10):
They come across a bad decision and a good decision,
and for each time they always choose the good, just
like a basketball player that always makes their shot. They
could miss it, but they always make it. Now is
that logically possible? It seems so right. But what they'll
say is, but then God create like robots and stuff.
But if you have the view that Seth is telling
me that they believe about being robots in heaven, that's
apparently valuable to you. But also God is a being

(33:31):
that can only do the good. He can't choose evil.
According to you, is he a robot? Is he have
freedom like they have to, Like my friend Aaron calls
it like cafeteria theis I mean, you got to like
pick some stuff out. I don't want that, put it back,
grab this, put it you know, it's this buffet table
of stuff that you put away and take back whenever.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
It's convenient for you, you know. So it's nonsense. That's
the way I would say it.

Speaker 4 (33:55):
Just last there's one last heaven and hell argument that
I've heard that I think is awesome.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
I'll just toss it out now, sure of course.

Speaker 4 (34:01):
But people are like, is there any pain or suffering
or angst or depression or anything anything negative at all
in heaven?

Speaker 3 (34:09):
And they're like, no, no, no, no, it's perfect, perfect, perfect.

Speaker 4 (34:12):
It's nothing but light and Yonnie music and the family
dog and green grass and rainbows and mansions and all
golden pearls and all that stuff. Okay, wonderful, nothing negative
do you believe I'm going to hell?

Speaker 3 (34:23):
Yes? Do you care about me? Yes?

Speaker 4 (34:26):
So if you know when you're in heaven, if you
know that I'm cooking in agony forever in hades, and
you are aware of that in heaven, how could you
experience perfect bliss? And then they're like, well, God, he
renews us, he wipes her, he wipes he starts this
sort of from square one. I'm like, well, then it's

(34:46):
no longer you. Now it's somebody else. Your identity has
been erased. That's a whole other anyway, you put that
in the put that one in the holster everyone for
the next.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Time you get into it.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
It's the difference between the brain and the vast at
that point, just systematically deceiving you. You know, it's just
like you know what I mean, Like you just put
yourself in this weird Cartesian demon.

Speaker 4 (35:06):
Now, by the way, apparently there's a little bit of
a lag between my video and my audio. That's not
a technical problem. I actually am like this in real life.
My voice actually does drag about a half a second
after my mouth moves. It's been a it's been a
thing since birth where I'm taking medication to try to
fix it my fault.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
Well, when I met you.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
That's why when I met you briefly in Atlanta and
just sheepestly came up. It was like hey, a big fan.
And then you started talking, I was like what and
I just walked away. I was worried out. So that's
why I was so brief. I was like, yeah, this
guy's weird.

Speaker 4 (35:40):
By the way, you guys have me, and I must
beg your forgiveness. You have me a little about five
thirty and then I have I have got to leave
everyone early. John's on standby. He's in the bullpen waiting
to pinch hit for me. Wait that's a is that
right bullpen? And so my apologies for having to do that,
but I got a hard stop coming up. So when

(36:01):
you see me disappear, I'm going to apologize in advance
and thank my gracious hosts for allowing that.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Okay, yeah, no problem.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yeah. If and that said, we do need call, So
if John gets up here and we have some more
calls to go through, please call five one two nine
nine two four two.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
We will take your calls.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
We always prioritize theist callers, but if you are an atheist,
we will take your calls. And before I get to
an atheist call, let me adjust my screen here minimize. Okay,
I want to get into some announcements before we get
into the call. So this is announcement I'm excited for
because I will be there, not that.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
I'm not excited about any of the other announcements.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Crew hold on, hold on there and say nothing if
this one in particular is going to be really fun
because it involves me. It's that time of year again.
We are so excited to announce the back Cruise. Tickets
are up for sale Forrest and myself will be there
alongside other hosts that you love or like. Join us
August sixteenth, twenty twenty five and get your tickets at

(36:59):
tiny dot CC slash back Cruise to get sell out fast,
So get yours now, and I can tell you it's
a blast. I was literally just because I was trying
to see if I had Actually I don't even know
if I should say this now, because I feel weird
saying this, Like I say, I wanted to see if
I had taken a picture with you at the at
the a Atheist Convention Atlanta Atheist Convention.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
I can't remember the.

Speaker 4 (37:19):
American atheists at ye that's yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
And I was looking through and I saw all the
post photos that I posted from the last back Cruise
and just like flooded back memory. So everyone that came
to the last back Cruise and got a picture and said, hey,
it's really awesome, really fun.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
It's like the one time in.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
My life that I feel cool, you know, and special
and and everybody else there. So's it really means a
lot to us to come out there and support It's
it's really cool seeing that. So I just wanted to
say how much I appreciate anyone that does decide to
come out.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
I've always wanted to do it.

Speaker 4 (37:53):
The things have never lined up for me to be
able to participate, but one day I planned to be
there for that because I hear it just remarkable.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
It's it's so much fun. It's so much fun. I
really got to the secularity last time and we had
a blast.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
It was real fun.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
If you like what we do, please consider supporting us
on Patreon. Giving to our patreon. Our Patreon ensures our
ability to continue to produce the content that you love.
Visit tiny dot cc slash Patreon, a XP and below
the chat we are running a direct fundraiser. All the
proceeds go directly to the a C. A YouTube does
not take a cut, so if you want to support
us there directly, please click the donate button to support

(38:32):
the mission of the ACA. And we also want to
send a big thank you out to the crew that's
probably mad at me for prioritizing announcements and how much
I like them over others.

Speaker 4 (38:43):
That's they really are beautiful people, aren't they. I mean
you've got to be born with that's that's just a
natural match.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yes, natural indeed.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
And you get to if you go to the backers,
you can go get to kind of see how it
all works in there, and it's really really interesting or
I like pulled up by Yeah, I was just like
immediately like whoa, Okay, this is really cool.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
I got like vern.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Sets up like the TV outside, I got the sprinklers
if it's really hot, it's really cool. Really, I'm really
wanting to sell it to anybody that's just kind of
like on the fence about it. Hop over that fence
and come hang out with us, and let's see if
we got some super chats and scroll down. We don't
have any super chats now, But if you want to
support us, that's another way you can support us by
sending a super chat and I will get Seth to

(39:25):
read it if he's still here. But we have since
we have eighteen minutes with Seth, let's try to get
to this call and just reminder to please call in
and if you're a theist, we will prioritize your call.
We got Jim and Missouri pronouns are he him and
I don't know. I mean, I tend to agree with
what the call screener has, but we hear it from
Jim wants to talk about the resurrection story and how

(39:46):
it is a complete fabrication. Just to be clear, you're
talking about the resurrection, not crucifixtion. Because I get in
conversations some people will like I've done this. We'll say crucifixion,
they mean resurrection or whatever, and so I just want
to make sure we're specifically on the resurrection.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (40:00):
And the reason I say it's a fabrication is if
you read the Bible, they say they lay Jesus in
a tomb, but in reality, if he was crucified, which
let's face a crucifixion was back then was as common
capital punishment as lethal injection is today. He would not
have been buried in a tomb. He would have been
left up on the cross for about a couple of

(40:21):
days before the for the buzzards to get him, and
then when he was taken down, he would have been
thrown into a pin.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, and that's actually like mine. I don't think there
was an empty tomb. I don't know what sets view was.
I don't really know that our like so this is
definitely like a godless engineer kind of topic.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
I'm sure that like he'd loves to talk.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
About this as well, but I'm you know, I'm not
convinced of an empty tune. I think like you wouldn't
have Joseph A. Vamathia been given some like provisional burial rights.
It just seems like, I mean, it could be right.
I'll say anything in history or you know, sure, but
I want evidence to kind of raise the probability. Speaking
of John by the way, he got his mug behind

(41:00):
maybe in a superhero I.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
Just want to throw that out there, but uh yeah,
I don't.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
I don't I agree with you, but I think are
like Crucifixion, like our sources for Roman crucifixion are pretty limited.
I want to say, it's only like two, but I'm
this is not my area, so.

Speaker 6 (41:17):
Okay, well maybe I should have called it in another week.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
But again, yeah, I was gonna say it might cause
all other problems.

Speaker 8 (41:26):
That's all good. But again, he would have been thrown
into a pit or cave, some sort of mass grave
with all the.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Other Well, yeah we're left yeah, we're left on as
part of the humiliation process or yeah, deterrent.

Speaker 8 (41:37):
Yeah, you know, and somebody you know where they say, oh,
you know, the Romans couldn't have found his body, didn't
find his body, so he must have rose from the dead.
It's like, no, he was putting again, being thrown into
the mass grave. You know, they would have had to identify,
had to find somebody who was there, who knew what
Jesus looked like, and they would have had to go
into the pit or cave or whatever.

Speaker 6 (41:58):
And let's be honest, he's seen one if you see them.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
All, Well, I don't even go this far into the story.
I mean, we're.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
Bringing a claim of Christ's resurrection out of the same
book that has humankind originating from a dirt man and
rib woman. In an enchanted garden with talking snakes and
nine hundred year old humans and giants and sea monsters
and blood magic and you know, God impregnating an unwed

(42:30):
teenager with himself for the purpose of ritual sacrifice, you know,
blah blah. I mean, I just think I don't even
go that far. I'm one of those guys where I
think there might have been a dude named Jesus that
the supernatural myth was based on. There may not have been,
so I mean, we can make that maybe one of
the larger pieces of the counter apologetics puzzle.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
You know, he wouldn't have been put in a.

Speaker 4 (42:54):
Tomb unless they thought he was something really, really, really special,
which is going to be the apologetic you're.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
Going to hear.

Speaker 4 (42:59):
But you know, at the beginning of the story, I mean,
I just there's no evidence for me. I know Bart
Ehrman would disagree, but I don't. We don't think we
can be convinced there was even a crucifixion of a Christ.
We just simply cannot know. You can't quote the book
to source the book to prove the book, But.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
I don't know. It's an interesting angle on the resurrection.
Jim was there anything else.

Speaker 8 (43:21):
Well, I kind of want to agree with John a
little bit. It was a call I did a couple
months ago when I called in. It was with Cross
Examiner and Justin where I said that I have always
compared Jesus to guys like Robin Hood or King Arthur,
as they're all legendary characters. You know, maybe there was
a Robin Hood, but what we read about him is

(43:41):
probably a legend, you know, when they say robrom the
rich to give to the poor. For all we know,
if there really was a Robin Hood, he may have
stole from everybody and kept everything.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, I mean I leave a lot of this too.
My I have non mythicist friends that are really into
the Bible, getting in, getting into the weeds, and then
like my mythicist friends like John and you know, people
I know on TikTok like Cyber, and I I let
them go like I'm I think I go, I go

(44:11):
further than Seth. Did they go further than me? I'm
happy to like, you know. My My thing with it
is I like to take a position that I am
more more like, more convinced by than any other position.
And that's kind of the standard view in scholarship that
Jesus is a failed apocalyptic preacher. Now, a lot of
my motivations for doing that in a conversation with somebody

(44:32):
is that I if I talk to a Christian and
we want to talk about that, I think they're going
to put up a wall. If I was a methicist,
like even if I wasn't, even if I was a mythicist,
I would run the same kind of argument that I give,
because it's like more greed upon data. And if you've
listened to me on the show, the reason why I
take like a position that gods don't exist or like

(44:53):
I'm you know, more inclined if you know, gun put
to the head to answer that way is because the
way I look at is the kind of the best
way to talk with somebody from my perspective. When you
kind of get in the weeds with things, if you're
like really getting philosophical or whatever, you're really getting into
the history, I think it's a good point to just
look at, like, well, look, the view that I have

(45:15):
commits me to a lot less and explains that data.
And if I take data points that they don't agree with,
it's really hard to help them. They might just build
up that wall. So like, for example, when someone brings
up the klomb, I'm happy to accept the second premise
of the argument that the universe had a beginning. What
I'm not happy to do is accept the first premise
that everything that begins to exist as a cause, because

(45:37):
the universe could have a bit beginning such that it
doesn't have a cause, right, And so I know that
if I took a route of like an infinite regression
or something like that, they're just like, ah, that's impossible,
and then they'll never give the contradiction. And so that's
my kind of motivations for why I do that, at
least in the conversations. But I think if you wanted
to talk about the myths of stuff, you know, John

(45:57):
and those people are really going to talk to But
I only go so are as well.

Speaker 8 (46:01):
Okay, well, I may call back when when he's on
and talk about this a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
But I think that'd be good.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
I think we don't get enough of the mephasist conversation
on the on the show, so I think it would
be a good thing.

Speaker 8 (46:11):
Okay, yeah, I apologize, but you know, I just apologies.
I didn't know you guys were on, but I didn't
know you guys were going to be on today Listen Engineer.

Speaker 4 (46:21):
But again, we're the we're the substandard secondary hosts. We're
sorry to disappoint you, but when you return call down
the road, I'm sure you'll get the A listers who
can better address your challenge. So thanks for calling, though, Jeem.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
We appreciate you, brother.

Speaker 8 (46:35):
Good you guys are good.

Speaker 6 (46:37):
You guys. I'm not trying to be an ass.

Speaker 4 (46:40):
I was just having fun with you.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
That's all good.

Speaker 4 (46:45):
I received the spirit in which you called, and it's
it's all all good fun.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
Thanks for calling. Appreciate you all right, you guys.

Speaker 4 (46:52):
Later, I think one of uh, you know, when we
get into the Crucifixion and the resurrection, I I like,
you know, logistical challenge is have their place and counter apologetics.
We're like, well, how could this have happened? And why
wasn't this reported? Why are there three versions of that story?
And why are there four? Why are there four conflicting
versions of the Empty Tomb? Blah blah blah. But one

(47:14):
of my favorites has to do with the actual crucifixion itself.
So Jesus dies and he says it is finished, and
he gives up the spirit or whatever. The Bible says
that the graves of the saints opened up at that time,
and I believe it was on the day of the
Resurrection when all those saints came up out of the
ground and they walked through the streets of Jerusalem. So

(47:35):
we're talking about essentially a parade of undead people. I cannot,
in my mind think of anything that would have been
more remarkable, more noteworthy, more historic, and yet not one
contemporary historian thought it was interesting enough.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
To document that that had happened.

Speaker 4 (47:54):
And so I'll say, you have that conversation with that mean, hey,
you know, whenever all the dead saints became dead and
walked and paraded the you know, the streets at Jerusalem,
why why is it that there's no account anywhere other
than in this book here that that I why do
you think no other historian thought that was notable?

Speaker 3 (48:12):
And again and they just totally wink out.

Speaker 4 (48:15):
But it is an interesting exercise, So I think there
is utility in asking questions like that.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
So no, Jim's much appreciated. I think that's that's a
good question.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
So yeah, absolutely, so we do have another call, a
theist call, Seth, I didn't want to just not ask
you before before you head out here, since you're getting
to that. So it's six thirty my time. So if
I say six thirty, I'm sorry, I don't want to.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Freak you out. You're like, whoa, wait, hold on, what
time is it?

Speaker 1 (48:43):
But did you want to join this call? And then
when it's six thirty we can just swap you out
even made a call?

Speaker 2 (48:49):
Or no?

Speaker 4 (48:50):
I mean, I've got I've got eight minutes. Let me
give it a shot, and if I need to tap out,
I will. Let's let's go for it.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
Awesome, Yeah, let's let's uh, let's get Shabaz in here.
I'm saying that right, no pronouns given as a theist,
And I want to know a couple of things where
atheists get their morals and why does the average atheist
seem to be so disrespectful and condescending with other beliefs.
I'm going to pass it to Seth about whichever one
you want to answer on that man or both.

Speaker 4 (49:15):
Well, let me hear the question in your own words, Shabaz,
what are you thinking?

Speaker 6 (49:20):
Well, we'll started. You all are pronouncing it properly idiots jabayas,
and what I say it there exactly was where where
is it that any individual atheist draws their sense of
morality from the well?

Speaker 4 (49:33):
I see if alved ethics is making really good sense.
I don't need a third party. I don't need ten commandments.
I don't need an objective standard bearer to tell me
what is right and what is wrong. I can understand
and have evolved in understanding of pro social behaviors. Right
our ancestors, the primates on the African savannah, those of

(49:54):
us who engaged in pro social behaviors cooperation, even empathy
towards others, we were then safer. We were able to
create communities aka tribes. We were better at procuring resources
and warding off threats. Our survival rate increased when we
engaged in ethical behaviors.

Speaker 3 (50:17):
Now, certainly there are exceptions.

Speaker 4 (50:19):
But we know what harm is, we know what pain is,
we know what suffering is, and we know what it's
like for others to experience that as well. And I
think it makes perfect sense for evolved primates to not
only understand, but be able to participate in those types
of ethical systems. Far beyond any kind of religion.

Speaker 6 (50:39):
Right, Well, that makes sense to me, except I would
ask you, and I'm sure you've probably heard this question before.
Then it comes to agree and on what is right
and what is wrong, because like surely you know, to
one individual still and something might not be wrong if
you don't get caught, and to another one it's wrong regardless.

Speaker 4 (51:00):
Understand the imperfection of you know. So, I don't know
if there is even is such a thing as objective ethics.
But you and I both understand harm. We understand what
it's like to feel pain. We understand anti social behaviors
largely we do. And if someone was to come out
and say rape and murder are wrong, I would say
that the vast, fast, fast, vast majority of human beings

(51:21):
evolved primates would already know that that is incorrect. We
would understand and recognize harm. I think the larger implication
of your question is this that you and I wouldn't
know this if we hadn't been told, or in fourth,
the standard had not been put in place by some
other somewhere. Are you part of a specific religious tradition?

(51:43):
Do you believe in a certain deity? I'm a Muslim,
so it's allah. It was given you the standard by
which you would know right from wrong. So if I
know right from wrong and I don't believe in Allah,
where did I get the information?

Speaker 6 (51:56):
Well, the Muslim would argue that you know right from wrong,
that's of your opinion. And I'm sure that what you
would say is right for wrong or the things. Some
of the things that you would say was are right.
I'm sure dal Prraine would say those things are right.
Some of the things you would say were wrong, I'm
sure you would say they are wrong, because it's like
you say, it's not like we don't recognize right from wrong,

(52:16):
recognizing what we call the others pain, and so forth
and so on. It's just no standard. Nobody has to
stick to any of those things, and they can all
become objective instead of objectives.

Speaker 4 (52:27):
That's not true. I mean, you and I live in
social contracts where human beings have put together a literal
structure for ethical behavior. We have rights and wrongs, we
have dos and don't, we have laws that can be
made or broken, and so you know, we've actually done
it pretty good. I mean, it's very imperfect, but a

(52:47):
pretty good job of constructing restraints for those who are
engaging in anti social and even destructive behaviors. But I'll
tell you could say that Allah put that standard in place,
and then the Christian would say that Yahweh put the
standard in place, and someone of another religion to could
say it was their deity that put that standard in place.
Blah blah blah, all of you. Anybody who makes that

(53:11):
claim about a specific agent with a proper name, especially
one with supernatural powers, is going to have to meet
an exceptional.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
Burden of proof.

Speaker 4 (53:20):
Right, So where is the proof that Allah is responsible
for our moral standard?

Speaker 3 (53:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (53:27):
The individual is the personally. I can't give you proof.
I can only tell you what's proof to be.

Speaker 3 (53:35):
Well, no, but prove it to me.

Speaker 4 (53:37):
I mean, what good is it if only you can
prove it to yours You think you're proven it to yourself,
but you can't demonstrate it to anybody else.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Yeah, it's like if you wanted us to accept with
some view that we have to first accept the law
or whatever God's existence first.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
I mean me and me and Seth are just going.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
To like pull the cord on the bus and get
off when we were not being told anything that convinces
us or even anything at all.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
So it's it's important to get us to your position.

Speaker 5 (54:02):
Right.

Speaker 4 (54:03):
If I believe in God, why or God's ze? And
I say, look, I know god ze put the moral
standard in place. I know it for sure, but there's
no way for me to prove it to you. How
convinced would you be?

Speaker 6 (54:16):
Man, I wouldn't be convinced. Somebody telling me that there's
no way to prove something to them or to me,
then I would have no reason to be convinced. But
it's like I said, though, I can't. I can't tell
you what's proof to you because we don't necessarily see
things the same way. All I can do is tell
you what is proof to me, and then you can
do it that way you will.

Speaker 4 (54:36):
I think proof is proof. Now if gravity works for you,
it works for me, it works for Mike.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
You know. I'm just saying, though, but the proof Yeah.

Speaker 6 (54:44):
But but proof is not proof though, because everybody doesn't
think the same, see things the same, and feel the
same way about everything. So something that is proof to me,
could I could tell you that a woman buying me
flowers is proof that she loves me?

Speaker 2 (54:58):
I think.

Speaker 7 (55:00):
Think that's confused, though, No, I think it's well, I
mean look, you might disagree, and there might be issues
of like rationality, like someone who's like locked in a
box their whole life and comes out of it or something,
and like you know, if they didn't know what water is,
or they made some error and reason and we wouldn't
be like they're systematically irrational, like obviously we would.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
You can take things into consideration about people's upbringing and
how sheltered they were and that kind of stuff. But
so I mean, like I agree that like there might
be this this you know, spectrum of what somebody might
or might not accept versus you. But if we're looking
for anything, just something like just one thing, try us
try to maybe maybe maybe we have the same proof

(55:38):
detectors as you do, so just try us with it.

Speaker 6 (55:41):
Yeah, I do well. The reason that I believe, Yeah,
the reason that I believe.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
In real quick, I'm this is actually just for show's sake.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
So I'm gonna let you finish.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
I do apologize, but I got to get set out
of here because that Scott, we got to be.

Speaker 4 (55:59):
Thank you for your patience and so I'm going to
say thank you to everybody forgive my early departure. John's
going to do an amazing job. Mike was always it's
always good to see your work as a friend, and
good luck with the rest of the call.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Okay, yeah, you too, fun and that's fun, all right. Sorry,
I wanted to be considered. It sets time consideration, so sorry,
go ahead.

Speaker 6 (56:20):
I understand and appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand
that and appreciate it. So I was going to say that, well,
for starters, the reason that I believe in some kind
of creator in the first place is because I don't
believe in luck, chance, or coincidence. So I don't believe
that an entire universe and in urge, full of life
and in this reality that we exist in, I don't

(56:41):
believe that it come. It could have come about by luck, change,
on coincidence. And then the reason that I believe that.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
I don't think it.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
I don't think it did either.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
So I don't think it did. I don't think it
came by a chance either. So I'm an atheist. So
that's I mean, there's gonna this is a kind of
a weird way to go about this, because there's gonna
be so many views that an atheist can take, and
you would just be you know, if I'm if I'm
being charitable and saying you're knocking them out as you go,
which we're not. There's still you're still like you're just
kind of doing this thing where you focus on someone

(57:10):
else's view. But you know, imagine we show all the
reasons for atheism, you know, they're just there's no good
reasons here. Well, you still have all of your work
left ahead of you about which specific god. You know,
maybe it's kind of like the Christian God, but maybe
it's not at all like the Christian God. It's not
very clear. So let's just do it this way instead
of having to like, you know, go one by one,

(57:30):
we you know, kill all the little birds with one
argument stone or one proof stone or something. Right, what
is like the rea like and don't worry about like
it like it's a dialogue, right, So don't worry about
like if I think it sucks or something like that.
I just genuinely want to know what it is that
convinced you, Right, what is the thing that you hold
onto and you go, yeah, it's really hard. And if
it's going to be something like, well I can't see

(57:52):
it in this other way, I might stop you because
that to me, is like, that's just like personal incredulity, right,
That's like I can't imagine next, So therefore it's why
and that's fallacious types of reasoning isn't really interesting to me.
So what's the reason why you believe in a law specifically?

Speaker 6 (58:08):
Yeah, actually I was coming to that. I was saying that. Okay, sorry,
but that was the reason that I believed in a
creator at all. And the reason that I believed that
a law is that particular creator is because of having
first lived twenty eight years of my twenty eight years
of life up to the point that I reverted to
Islam and then read the Quran, and then it was

(58:29):
ultimately Korean that convinced me.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
What about the Koran?

Speaker 1 (58:33):
The Qoran convinced you. I've never said the Koran like
that before.

Speaker 6 (58:36):
Well, a few things, you know. One thing is I've
come from a Christian background, and when I started reading
and studying the Bible, that led to me rejecting Christianity
real quick. And then every issue that I had with
the Bible hold on. I cleared up.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm confused. I'm trying to understand.
So you were a believer and you read the Koran
and it showed you all the stuff and Christian faith
was false.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
Why why?

Speaker 1 (59:03):
First off, why why I think it's true. That's the
part I'm trying to understand why I think, like I
can write a book and read a book. I can
write a pretty crappy book, you know. I don't think
the religious books are particularly good books.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
So I can write a book.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
What next, Like, there's not just like that, it's in
a book, Like you can give me some type of
like content from the book and this thing was what
convinced you.

Speaker 6 (59:28):
Yeah yeah, yeah, but look, dude, for starter, is my
bad about that because I do have a real roundabout
way of talking, and you didn't ask me a direct question,
and I didn't start answering it directly, like I said,
for that, and now let me let me try to
answer it directly.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
Apologies to you as well. I have these conversations a lot.
So it's it's like being a taxi driver that gets
cut off all the time. You get a little bit
more annoyed than probably the random guy that drives down
the street because you deal with it all day, you know.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
So apologies, yeah, yeah, uh.

Speaker 6 (59:58):
So uh, there's a uh, there's a verse in the Quaran,
for instance, because the Quuran has falsification tests, for instance,
and there's a there's a verse in there that says, uh,
basically that if if this book is not from a law,
then somebody just creates something like it, and then that
will prove that that it's not from my law. I

(01:00:18):
mean so. And then of course that that challenge is
only for the Arabic speakers because of course you have
to understand Arabic to be able to uh uh, to
be able to create something like something that's written in Arabic.
But nevertheless, that challenge you've been running for fourteen hundred
and fifty years, unmat you know, it's got those.

Speaker 9 (01:00:36):
Uh huh yeah, Sez, I'm just kind of curious, what's
the criteria for trying to determine whether or not you
could accurately impersonate one of the multiple authors of the Quran.

Speaker 7 (01:00:49):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (01:00:49):
Well that there aren't there aren't multiple authors of it anyway,
there's only one and uh, and the criteria is that's it. Well,
it's like I said, for starters, you have to understand
the ins and outs of you have to understand in
and out of Arabic. And one thing that Kuran did
was introduced a new word that the ancient a Rabs.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
I can only have to be to speak Arabic to
know to be able to be a real believer that
I'm not understanding.

Speaker 6 (01:01:15):
No, no, I said, I said, maybe this wasn't a
good example for me to bring up, because, like I said,
it's that you have to understand Arabic in order to
be in order to even be able to meet that challenge,
not that you have to understand Arabic.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
In order to be.

Speaker 9 (01:01:33):
Sebaz. So I'm not even asking about the Arabic I'm not.
Let's just you know, let's let's talk about this from
the perspective that the person who's trying to reproduce it
or trying to impersonate the Quran uh knows Arabic and
all everything like that. What is the criteria for determining
between the Kuran and this impersonation, Like does it just

(01:01:58):
not sound similar? I'm assuming that you don't. Maybe do
you think that God literally wrote the Koran or do
you think that man wrote the Koran for God? Because
there's a big difference there.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
That sounds a question.

Speaker 6 (01:02:12):
The Muslim. The Muslim believes that the Muslim believes that
a law spoke to Quaran to the angel Jabriel, and
the angel Gabriel recited it to the prophet Parment upon
home b Peace, and the prophet upon home b Pece
resigned it to Man. So we we think me and
wrote it down learn from the creator.

Speaker 9 (01:02:30):
So man, I mean, if man if, then we can
easily impersonate like somebody. I mean, there's ghost writers out
there all the time that impersonate authors.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
I mean, hell, I could, I could.

Speaker 9 (01:02:41):
I could cue up chat GPT, give them the entire
Quran and just tell it, you know, impersonate this, write
similar verses that say something new like you know, fuck
eight year olds like that. That would be some nine
year old. She was nine year old, right, So it's like.

Speaker 6 (01:02:58):
Yeah, somebody tries that would cat GPT of Muslim be
and and it didn't work, and and uh and as
far as uh, as far as the being able.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
Sorry, this is blown. This is all blown by me
real quick. I'm trying to pick up the pieces as
we go. It's this sounds like inherently question begging, like
do you know what I mean when I say that
the question Yeah, so like the thing in contention seems
to be assumed here, like right, Like it's parasitic on
me accepting this thing, Like like I wouldn't if I

(01:03:34):
already believed the conclusion that you have, Like then yeah, great,
right whatever, but you wouldn't have to convince me. But
you're trying to convince me. So the thing in contention, right,
It's like what you're saying is it has to like
you know, be like this thing. But what like why
think that that thing hosts truth in the first place?
If you just are saying, like if I try to
rival this text with some other texts and you just say,

(01:03:57):
but it's not the Quran, and just assume that truth
of the Quran to begin with, and it just sounds
question begging to me. It just sounds like you're assuming
the thing in contention, right, So like what I would
what I'd like to ask is why, like what is
the content of the book that's truth revealing or that
states propositions that are true that would like rationally commit

(01:04:19):
me into believing that a law exists because we're just
skipping over like the actual like semantic content the stuff
that like I need to you know, sink my teeth
into to understand what are these like true revelations in
there that I would look at and go, yeah, fucking
a law exists, man, what is that?

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (01:04:36):
So I'm not trying to convince you, because it's like
I say it from the start.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
It's fine, I'm just trying.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
I'm just trying to ask you what it is. We
don't worry about me being convinced. Most people aren't convinced
in a conversation between an atheist and a Muslim, and
it's a lot of times it takes progress or they
have to reflect on it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Stuff we're not. We're not.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
They don't have the expectation that you're going to convince
me right away. Maybe maybe I'll think about this tomorrow.
I know, convince me who knows?

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:04:59):
Yeah, I can't ever be convinced.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
If you don't tell, if you don't give me these answers.
These are the things that like, one way to look
at this is you're talking to somebody that you could
like save their soul or bring them to your view
or whatever. Now there's a requirement for you to do
something for that to happen. If they ask you like
a question, it seems like that's the thing that they
need in order to believe it. It's in your best
interest to try to answer that, because that's what they've

(01:05:22):
kind of spilled the beans. They've kind of told you, Hey, man,
this is what would convince me. I'm asking these questions
because they're important to me, and so what I'm asking
you is why I think that the things revealed in
there are truth tracking or true propositions. And if there
are those things, what are they and how do we
know that they're true?

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (01:05:38):
But man, I feel a lot more respected than the
last time I called it this line. But I really
would appreciate those because it's like, You'll ask me a
lot of questions and then I'll be on the verge
of trying to answer one. I'll be on the burde
of trying to answer the question.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
But the reason why, the reason why, the reason why
I interject is because it's I'm like asking you how
your day is, and you're like Tuesday. That's why in
our to and also like I talk with a lot
of theists throughout the week, my ability to predict that
they're not going to answer the question is pretty good.
It's not always good, and I mess up, but I'm
pretty confident if I let you go on. What you

(01:06:12):
were not going to do is give me some proposition
that stated in the Qur'an that's true and the method
how you know it's true. And the reason why I
want to get there is because I want to know
if we do this real big circle back to the beginning,
which is what I which is what I predict this
to happen.

Speaker 6 (01:06:26):
Yeah, yeah, So what one other thing other than the
challenge that's been running for fourteen hundred and fifty years
unmat other than that, well.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
Answering are you answering me right now? It's not clear
that you are you?

Speaker 6 (01:06:39):
Yeah, okay, okay, yeah, yeah, I was saying. I was saying,
other than that, other than the challenge that's been running
on met for fourteen hundred and fifty years. But Kouran
also has information in there. The questionable about how anybody
at all, let alone an illiterate man in the middle
of the desert, could have possibly known, for instance, about
the honey bee store in nectar in in one of

(01:07:03):
its stomachs. And that's of course something that we didn't
know until the well, I guess until we invented microscope
to human beings infinited microscope?

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Sean, is enough content?

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
Is that enough content for you to the chew on?
It doesn't sound like he knows the story. That is
very convincing and amazing, But he's like, it's like the
bees and stuff.

Speaker 6 (01:07:24):
I would be like, it's kind of like.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
The bees in the desert.

Speaker 6 (01:07:28):
Asked me about a book, y'all asked me about a
book that has three hundred pages, book.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
That you dedicated life book, A book, a book that
you dedicate your fucking life to.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
I would expect a little.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
Bit more than there's a guy in the desert and
how could he do the stuff with the bees and
the honey?

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
That's fucking what you said, dude.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
Okay, if I held something really like if I just
really cherished heavily cherished belief, I would hope John would
have a talk with me and be like, Bro, that
dude asked you and you started saying a guy in
the desert and bees and honey, what the fuck? What
was that answer? I'm asking for a legitimate answer here, man.
If you don't know the own text, how am I

(01:08:09):
supposed to be convinced When it sounds like you don't
even know the text you're supposed to be defending. Oh sorry, unmeded.

Speaker 6 (01:08:15):
And I'm not trying to convince you. I know it
quite well. And once again, I'm not trying to convince you,
like I've been saying the whole time. I'm telling you, dudes,
what was convincing and what was proof to me? And
these are the types of things that was proved to me.
And also it's like I said, man, the book is
a few hundred pages long. It's easy for you to
just listen to any one thing that I say and say, oh,
this is the problem with that, or that is the

(01:08:36):
problem with this.

Speaker 1 (01:08:37):
But it's a generic thing, a big thing, generic thing,
vague thing, generic thing.

Speaker 9 (01:08:42):
No, Sabez, Sabez, I still have yet heard, like going
all the way back, I guess let's try to hyper
focus in on this, right, What is your criteria for
actually distinguishing between somebody that just made shit up and
says that a lah wrote it versus the Qoran? Like,

(01:09:03):
what's the criteria is that the number of verbs use?

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
Is it?

Speaker 9 (01:09:06):
The frequency of verbs is at the distance of one
word to another word? Does he does God include like
I know that there are random letters or words or
something at the beginning of every chap of every book
or whatnot.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
But I mean, I can fucking write that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
So I'm just.

Speaker 9 (01:09:24):
Trying to get a sense of what is the criteria
that you're applying to other people that have tried to
impersonate the Koran and has been proven to fail this
supposed test.

Speaker 6 (01:09:39):
Plaining earlier where that particular thing is concerned. One of
the things that Korean did was introduced a new word.
And actually I can't remember if it was every chapter,
every verse. I know it was at least every chapter.
It introduced a new word that the ancient a Rabs
were somehow, somehow didn't know, but we're familiar with. And

(01:10:00):
they found that stunning. That was one of the that
was one of the reasons that they couldn't replicated. And
and you know, it's like I said, that's just one thing.
This is a whole book that we're talking about, though,
So it's like I said, it's easy to just take
any one thing and say, yeah, well this is what
I think about that, But that's just what you think
about it. Though.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
The way something is written doesn't question no, well you
can get there, but the way something this is just
really bad logic.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
The way that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
Something is written says nothing about its truth. Like the
syntax of how something is written says nothing. Now we
get into the semantic content. Right now, you could have
like a bunch of gibberish that I could ask the
speaker like, hey, it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
Clear what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (01:10:40):
Are you saying this? Could you rewrite it? And they
explain it to me and then be like, oh that yeah,
that is a true proposition. You're saying it rained on Tuesday. Okay, yeah,
that's that's true. Right, So you can have this varying
degrees of like legibility or maybe you need further in
query by the speaker because it's not really well written.
Maybe it's like amazing, it's written so well and it's
scar it's a lot of philosophy, right, So I don't

(01:11:03):
really know this, Like this criterion of like it has
to replicate this thing. Why the fuck should we care
about replicating it in the first place? What that assumes
that there's something like true or useful. Maybe it's a
utility thing. If it's a utility thing, I'm not interested in.

Speaker 2 (01:11:16):
Right. This is like the lucky socks in.

Speaker 6 (01:11:19):
The point in being able to replicate it is that
if you could do that, then it would prove that
it's not from the creator.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
That's no, that's what that's question. That's just it's just
seemingly question begging.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
The thing in contention is whether or not this was
like God inspire something that lends credit to being like.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
God in any way.

Speaker 1 (01:11:40):
Now, one thing that's not clear on the table is
what the semantic content is that's like so profoundly amazing
that we couldn't replicate it. We just have this vague
thing that there's the courn and it can't be replicated
or whatever. I don't know why I should care about
it being replicated without some demonstration that the thing should
be taken seriously as like a device for truth. Right,
this just seems like I'm getting these vague things that

(01:12:01):
I could say about any other book, that it was
written this way, and how this only this book could
come up with a really good trinity that confuses the
ever living fuck out of people and they debate about it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
And that's that's part of the virtue.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
You know, I can do this stuff all all day
long and just go, it's not this thing. It doesn't
replicate this thing, So those things can't be true. But
that's assuming that the thing that I'm holding up is true.

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
In the first place. It's question begging. It's assuming the
thing to be true.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
If that's the thing in contention, I could never believe
it's not good.

Speaker 6 (01:12:32):
Yeah, I don't think. I don't think it is question
banging because it's not assuming you don't. You don't. I
don't think you need to. You don't need to assume
that the thing is true in order to be able
to replicate it. You can just travel. You can just
replicate it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
You okay, But then then you could just try to
give me these like the content that I'm looking for,
right like you know, in the Bible or something. It's like, oh, well,
you know, someone's gonna tell me that they know that
Jesus rose from from the dead because these people detail
their experiences and the five hundred witnesses right now, crappy arguments,

(01:13:08):
but there's something for me to chew on and go through.
I can talk about, how well, you know, there's only
this one guy writing about the five hundred people. We
don't have five hundred different accounts of it, or we
can systematically go through it. But it sounds like you're
like purposely avoiding putting something on the table, or that
you don't really know the contents of the Quran, because
when you tried earlier you said something about the desert,

(01:13:29):
the bees, and the honey.

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):
Now I want to get I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
Maybe there was a misfiring of words there, or you know,
there's nerves. But I'm trying to give you several chances,
either to give me that or just you know, answer
what was asked of you, to begin with the criterion
in which you would use to determine whether or not
this was written by, you know, someone in a chord
with God or God itself or divine person as opposed
to someone just making the shit up. Sorry, Johnny, if

(01:13:53):
you want to get in, I just can't. I can't understand,
like what I'm supposed to say my teeth into here not.

Speaker 9 (01:13:58):
Yeah, I'm gonna let you ship as respond to you,
and then I do have some notes on the whole
b thing, because that's not anything magical or astronaut like
novel that was produced by the Koran.

Speaker 3 (01:14:10):
But we can handle that here in a second.

Speaker 6 (01:14:11):
I'll let you.

Speaker 9 (01:14:12):
Respond to to Mike their shebez.

Speaker 6 (01:14:15):
But what is it you asking me again, you said
a whole lot.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
Yeah, I just want some type of proposition state, like
a statement that could be true or false. Right, that's
in the Quran, or set of statements that are very
convincing to you that you think, uh, raise the probability
that God.

Speaker 2 (01:14:32):
Exists rather than not existing. Right. I'm putting that like
a low bar.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
I'm not saying like, prove it deductively, just raises the
probability that it's more likely than not.

Speaker 6 (01:14:40):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
I don't think that this low bar can be met,
and so that's why i'm asking you now.

Speaker 6 (01:14:45):
I don't I don't know. I don't even know if
I can't answer that question because I didn't. I didn't
read the Korean and did start bleeding in a law.
Like I was already a theist before I ever read
the Korean. So you like, so there was nothing in
there that made me bleed to create it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
Yeah, that's so I should have used my language more
specifically instaid a law. But yeah, I can see how
you have the interpretation. I'm not saying, like God in general.
I understand you've been a feist because you're a Christian before,
but what I don't Yeah, I mean, I don't want
to hog up John's time, so I just I'll just
I don't. I don't think I'm going to get the
like the thing that convinced you. Just I get this
vague stuff that you read it like the way that

(01:15:20):
I interpret you before I passed it off your basz.
I apologize if this comes off offensive, But the way
I interpret it is that you read it you felt
ways about stuff, and now you believe it. But I
don't know what the feeling ways about stuff is, right,
That's what I'm trying trying to get there.

Speaker 6 (01:15:37):
Now. I mean you you you you you hit you
pretty much hit that nail on the head. If you
just if you just you know, vaguely described it something. Yeah,
I read it. I found there that I thought we're convincing.
And that's what. Yeah, that's what laid me to what.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
You just said.

Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
Notice what you just said to me. Notice what you
just said to me. If you vaguely put it that way,
that's been my problem the whole time, because that's just
repeating back to you how I've interpreted you this very
vague That's what if you listen back to the call
I've said the word vague probably fifteen times. That's why
I phrased it in the way I did, because that's
how I'm interpreting what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (01:16:08):
It's very vague. There's nothing that works.

Speaker 6 (01:16:10):
You want to I'm I'm sorry, Yeah, I'm mean, if
you want to. I didn't mean vaguely. I couldn't think
of the term I was looking for. I mean, if
you want to get something the shortest explanation, I couldn't
think of the term that I was looking for there.
But what I'm trying to tell y'all, though, is that
it's not just it wasn't any one thing in there,
you know, so like we could have the conversation about
any one thing to grab my attention the whole time

(01:16:33):
and talk about that all day. But it's just it's
not just one thing. It's a plethora of things, you know.
It's like there's all kinds of stuff that led to
my whole known to it after I because because I
didn't even read the Quran before I reverted to Islam,
I reverted to Islam on a concept, and I was
ready to reject to long if I had the same
problems that I had with it with Christianity.

Speaker 2 (01:16:50):
I hope we get that one there.

Speaker 9 (01:16:52):
But I guess I guess my claim then would be
that the things that you think are novel about the
Koran or are spectacular about the cran are not really
all that spectacular. So like, just take the bees reference,
which I think, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 6 (01:17:09):
That's one thing that you have though, that's one.

Speaker 9 (01:17:11):
Thing you mentioned it on well, So sorry, Chabez, you
just you mentioned the bees, and I just want to
use this as an example. I'm not saying that you
know that this should represent everything. I'm just saying I
have a sneaky suspicion that for any novel thing that
you could pull out of the Koran that you want
to say is, oh, they wouldn't have known this at
the time. It's going to be very poetically and metaphorically

(01:17:33):
like driven and everything like that. So like, if I'm
not mistaken, you're talking about Surrus sixteen sixty eight and
sixty nine in particular, and in the Qoran it actually says,
your Lord inspired the bee, take for yourself homes in
the mountains, the trees and what they raise up. Then
eat of every fruit and follow the paths of your

(01:17:53):
uh of your Lord made smooth from their bellies comes
a drink of different colors in which they're is healing
for people. So like that's the one, Am I correct,
that's the one that you're talking about.

Speaker 6 (01:18:06):
Can you hear me?

Speaker 9 (01:18:07):
Oh yeah, I can hear you now, Okay. So this,
for one thing, is a lot of poetic language in
here and is not as specific as we would like,
you know, the Lord to be in this particular case,
because this is a flowery description of where hives are built,
bees that collect nectar and honey as being useful, and

(01:18:29):
all three of these were obvious to any seventh century
like you know person at the time that like honey healing.
Egyptian medical PAPYRII list honey in more remedies than any
other single ingredients, so it was definitely known like that

(01:18:51):
honey heels and stuff like that. And then the bellies, Uh,
that's just a description of the fact that they witness
bees urgitating the honey coming from there from inside of them.
And then uh, them building hives in mountains, trees and
whatever else people raise. I mean, that's just them looking
around and noticing where bees build shit. So like none

(01:19:13):
of these things are like spectacular that seventh century people,
especially in the Middle East wouldn't have known about that.
So nothing here is novel, Nothing here would indicate that
God gave special knowledge to uh, you know, the prophet Muhammad.

Speaker 6 (01:19:30):
Well, one thing is I don't think I don't think
anybody can say what would have been obvious to any
people and especially uh, you know, over long periods of
time ago.

Speaker 9 (01:19:42):
And this is the This is a big distinction here.
And I'm sorry to cut you off so quick. So
after I just stopped, I literally cited Egyptian records that
for the most spectacular part of this, and that's I
guess that honey is useful for like healing and shit.
Like there are records prior to the seventh century of

(01:20:04):
people knowing that honey is used in for like healing,
for its healing properties and everything. So like, this isn't
just some like people didn't know that, they literally knew,
they literally used it prior to the seventh century CE.

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

Speaker 6 (01:20:21):
Man, I'm not saying that people didn't know that that
honey had healing capability, So that's not what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (01:20:28):
I'm talking about.

Speaker 6 (01:20:29):
The description that it gives of it. Keith, and it's
uh it's its nectar, the nectar in its belly. Now
you can say that, well, man, those people saw the
thing conect you know, collecting honey from flowers, so it
was obvious to them that the that the nectar was
in their belly. But like I said, I don't I'll
argue you any time what was or was not obvious

(01:20:50):
to even a person who's standing right next to you,
let alone some people thousands of years ago.

Speaker 9 (01:20:56):
So so you're telling me that a seventh century a
seventh century person, you know, even before that, just studying bees,
because bees were studied prior to the seventh century, they
noticed that bees consume nectar, right, and then they also
have to get that out they regurgitated out of them.

(01:21:17):
So like just them knowing that they have stomachs, they
assumed that bees also have stomachs. They consume the nectar
and then regurgitate it out like this is nothing fantastical.
And in fact, we didn't even know about the separate
bellies that bees have, like one for honey and and
another one for other stuff. We didn't even know about

(01:21:39):
that until the seventeenth century. So like they definitely did
not describe it in the Quranic passage that we read.
They just said bellies as if talking about a population
of bees in general, not like they have multiple bellies.
They wouldn't have known that, and they don't describe that.

Speaker 6 (01:21:56):
Well. I didn't say that. It said they had separate
bellies in and kept it in one of them. That's
not what I said. I just talked about. I just
said how it kept the nector in its belly at all.
But man, my response to that is, you know, you
can say that it's obvious that somebody to somebody at
a bee and saw that it was, you know, collecting honey,
so it must have been in it must have been
in its belly, it must have regurgitated. Man, I would

(01:22:18):
say that they didn't bear witness to any such thing,
and they could have just as easily thought that the
bee was carrying the in any other way.

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
Yeah, can you prove that outside of your own sorry,
outside of your own appeals to your own personal incredulity,
Can you actually prove that because you just this is
the second time you've now committed a fallacy of personal incredulity.
It's very interesting.

Speaker 6 (01:22:39):
No, No, I can't, No, I can't prove to you
what they thought, just like you can't prove to me
what they thought me.

Speaker 1 (01:22:46):
Why why do you think you're justified in saying that?

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
What gives you the right way? Like?

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
Why did you have the audacity to think you were
justified in saying that? I'm glad, I'm thank you for
admitting that you can.

Speaker 6 (01:22:57):
Why do I think I'm justified in saying what that
they know?

Speaker 1 (01:23:01):
Well, you just told me that you're not justified in it,
but you still thought it was true.

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):
And what I suspect.

Speaker 1 (01:23:06):
Because this is now the second, this is now the
second this is sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
This is now the second time that you've probably more,
but the second that I can that I've been able
to detect that you said, I can't imagine this thing
that way, so it must be the other way, which
is just to commit a fallacy of personal incredulity.

Speaker 6 (01:23:22):
Right now, I can't imagine something being one way, so
it must be this way. I never even implied such
a thing. I just said that, just like you say
it was obvious to them, I could say something is
not obvious to somebody who's standing next to you. You can't.
I don't think you can argue what was obvious to somebody.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
You said, no, they didn't do that. You said no
that they did that. You don't think that they did
do that?

Speaker 3 (01:23:44):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:23:45):
And godless, did I not? Did I not hear him correctly? Right?
Did he say no?

Speaker 1 (01:23:48):
Yeah, that's for justification. Then we asked for the justification,
the proof or whatever. Proof's like a pretty generic word
that can be used in multiple different ways, but everybody
understands what we're saying.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
We asked for proof.

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):
I'm not saying give me a deductive argument. We're saying, like,
some reasons to believe that's true, some justification. That's the
thing we're all interested in here. And you said you couldn't,
which I, by the way, I appreciate. I think it's
very honest of you, right. I think you sound like
you're trying to be honest in the cases that you
are right. But you get to these weird spots where
I'm like, Okay, you're admitting though, that you don't have
the justification you think it's true. I just wish you

(01:24:20):
would zoom out and notice your own personal incredulity, because
people do this all the time, Like I can't imagine
it that way. So it couldn't be or it has
to be this other way, right, And when faced with
a reason, there's nothing left on the table other than
that the reason is fallacious. There's no good reason. There's
a fallacious reason.

Speaker 6 (01:24:37):
This is what I'm confused about. This is what I
don't understand. You keep saying. I'm saying that I can't
imagine it being another way, so it must be this way.
I'm trying to understand what you are getting that from,
because I'm actually I'm very open minded. I'm a very
open minded individual, I think. And I'm not saying that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):
Let's walk through the dialectic again. Let's walk through the
dialectic again. You couldn't me.

Speaker 1 (01:25:01):
I'm not saying, you're saying the words I can't imagine, right,
the form of like committing that doesn't require like, it
doesn't require like a specific like the specific semantics. But
this gist of what's being expressed, right, which is that
I don't have the concent or I don't have the
justification for X.

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):
I can't believe that it's X.

Speaker 1 (01:25:20):
That's how that's when you responded, no, they didn't do that,
and so it's this other thing, right, It's a miracle.

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
It's the god stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:25:27):
That's saying that's literally taking the exact form of I
can't imagine it's X, so therefore it's not X or
it's Y. Right, it's the same form. I can change
the words that I can. I mean, I speak a
little Hindi. I can try to say in Hindi. It
doesn't matter, right, it's it's what's going on here that matters.

Speaker 6 (01:25:46):
What did I say that somebody didn't do?

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
Sit well?

Speaker 9 (01:25:49):
So if I could clear this up, you said that
there's no way you think that they didn't know, Like
the seventh century authors of the Koran did not know
about bees gurgitating honey. But I mean I just did
a quick search and it says Aristotle wrote about it
in three fifty BCE, then implying you the Elder wrote
about it in the first century CE, and then there

(01:26:11):
are some other Roman manuals in the fourth century CE.
So like there's multiple times in the past where where
they have have you know, written written about it?

Speaker 6 (01:26:22):
They wrote about bees regurgitating.

Speaker 9 (01:26:24):
Honey, Yes, Aristotle and three fifty.

Speaker 6 (01:26:27):
By Yeah, well if they.

Speaker 1 (01:26:31):
Is I just never understand the Quronic like prophecies and
these miracle things there were still weird to meings like
the waters don't mix, and it's like, well they do,
and technically they do.

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
But even if not, you like someone can go there
and just look at it and go miracle. Because that's
how all of these come off to me, is.

Speaker 6 (01:26:52):
That if if somebody wrote about bees regurgitating honey. Uh,
but before it was written out.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
It doesn't matter if it was written about it or not.

Speaker 1 (01:27:03):
It would be impressive if they were locked in a
box the whole fucking life and said.

Speaker 2 (01:27:07):
Right here in the present of ocean and the bees.
But they not like that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:11):
They can go walk up off well I guess not
a door, but they can go walk outside right wherever
they are.

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):
They can go walk outside and fucking observe it. If
you like bees that fucking much, you can observe it.
You can watch it, you can spend time.

Speaker 1 (01:27:26):
There's not some atheist principle in the world preventing you
from doing that, or what's the law gives it to you?

Speaker 6 (01:27:32):
What the fuck?

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
I'm sorry, you sound like a nice guy.

Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
It should not be yelling towards you. But the the
stuff going up here is frustrating the hell out of me.
I don't understand how you can think like this and
think it sounds good like that you have justification for
what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (01:27:48):
Maybe we don't play the same game of justification.

Speaker 6 (01:27:50):
Yeah, yeah, man, that's that's the perfect segue into what
my second question was. And I wanted to ask the
long time ago, cause I don't know how much time
y'all have for just one individual.

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
But yeah, you want to know.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
Why things started disrespectful and condescending and the reason why
I'm disrespectful, And because I'm giving you giving you several chances,
several chances you were played this call. It was very
nice at the beginning. I gave you several chances to
give me the semantic content, the propositions, the bearer of truth,
the thing that's that that's going to make me believe it.
I told you it was vague. Several times you didn't
do that. It's frustrating. So him me give you an analogy. Right,

(01:28:23):
someone that like someone had mentioned this, and I thought
it was brilliant. Right, you go out like outside to
get in your car and someone cuts you off, you
can get a little pissed off about it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:31):
Right, You're gonna pull in wherever you're going. Man, that
kind of pissed me off.

Speaker 3 (01:28:35):
Whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:28:35):
Now imagine you're like a taxi driver or uber ubie driver,
an uber driver, and you go around getting cut off
all day long, just constantly cut off, right, I mean
some people I get numb to it, but a lot
of people are just like, God, damn it, this happens
all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:28:50):
People suck. These people suck.

Speaker 1 (01:28:51):
And so when you do stuff like with me and
John do me and I mean me and Joe, me
and godless, we go on TikTok and talk with like
it could be twenty feists in a day, and then
twenty the next day, and then twenty the next day,
to be like we can talk to one hundred fists
in a day, and then we're constantly going. So, if
you want to know why some atheists get pissed this
because we feel like we lend this rope to you
and we're like, come on, come here with us, and

(01:29:13):
you're just like, n I don't want it. It's just
it's really frustrating to try to go through a dialectic
with somebody and ask them for reasons why they believe,
and then what they do is just like oh, well
there's the bees and the stuff, and it's like, bro,
just there's no way the most important question that could
ever be answered to you is this vague. I would
be telling somebody a fucking book about people can't shut
me up?

Speaker 2 (01:29:33):
Already. If I believed in God, I would never shut
the fuck up. I would be.

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):
Telling everybody about it and giving the reasons and going, no,
you are rationally committed to this. Sorry, Just that's why
I'm That's why I'm frustrated. I don't think that's generally
the case from astatheists, So satheists will try to work
with you.

Speaker 6 (01:29:52):
Yeah, man, dude, Like if the situation were vice versa
and I we're talking to the atheists about their beliefs
because I think the same thing about the atheists that
they think about me. But I would still not ever
address them like that with a bunch of screaming and
hollering it even if I was frustrated, just because I'm
an adult man, I can just be mature and respectful

(01:30:14):
even if I'm in agreement.

Speaker 1 (01:30:16):
Well, it'll make a good short that will make more
people's eyes get on it, and then they'll honestly answert
answering these questions.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
So if I have to yell and scream and put
on a.

Speaker 1 (01:30:25):
Little bit of a little show at any point, that's
fine because the content that I'm saying out of my
mouth is not something that I that I don't hold dearly, right,
It's it's it's I hold this very dearly to me, right.

Speaker 2 (01:30:37):
This is something that I dedicate my time to. I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:30:40):
I don't do anything in this realm that pays me
to do any that.

Speaker 2 (01:30:44):
I like to do this, right.

Speaker 1 (01:30:45):
But if I can talk to you in a way
and put that in a package and understand how the
world around me works, right, and understand that people like
to be entertained and stuff like that, yeah, I might
ham it up a little bit, right, because that's going
to get more eyes on an important conversation and one
that I think is more important right now than ever.
So I don't If you want to get mad that

(01:31:06):
I scream and shout, that's fine. I think it's going
to be more beneficial that I'm that I'm asserting something
to you that you should listen, You should actually take
and stride and listen to. Right, And then other people
can judge that for themselves. I really don't care what
people think about me. I care about the content that
I say, and if they agree.

Speaker 6 (01:31:21):
With that, I'm not I'm not. I'm not really upset
about it. I just don't think much about it. That's
all because I think you could accomplish the same thing
I am upset about.

Speaker 2 (01:31:29):
It affects it affects people around me, So I am
upset about it.

Speaker 6 (01:31:32):
Yeah, I can dig it. But man, I was gonna
say though, and then it's a it's a reason that
you have to be more patient because I was in
the I was in the process of conceding on a point,
and then then you had your blup session.

Speaker 1 (01:31:45):
What I was about to say, I'm not really interested
in the meta. So we can just go to John
or you can just you can give the reason because
we're just going in a circle. I don't really care
about the meta anymore. Right, you want to ask some
meta question, But what is the average atheist? You don't
have statistics to show that the average atheist does that.
You don't have case study to show you that there's
no like like data hierarchy system of like this case
studies like we should listen.

Speaker 2 (01:32:07):
To that more than these.

Speaker 1 (01:32:08):
You don't have anything like that you're just doing some
generic things. Isn't even a serious point. I gave you
more than I should have even given you, right, so
was John.

Speaker 2 (01:32:15):
If you want about well.

Speaker 9 (01:32:18):
Yeah, sorry, I was going to say, like on on
the whole idea of like on on, I guess the
general demeanor of atheists. I have to say that I've
I've had very unfortunate encounters with Muslims out there for
for no good reason.

Speaker 1 (01:32:35):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:32:35):
I mean I run a Facebook page.

Speaker 9 (01:32:37):
Where I've got like over one hundred and thirty thousand
people following it, and uh, whenever I do post criticisms
of Islam, I get messages that are just like deplorable.
Like I don't know why why some people are so
quick to like go to, oh, well, I'll fuck your
mother after I rip her insides out like it. It's

(01:32:59):
not normal ship that gets thrown like my direction whenever
that whenever I levy a criticism against you know, Islam
or Muslims, Uh, it just it seems to me like
they just they go all out with the weird fucking
insults and stuff. I don't really see that coming from
from the atheist side all that much.

Speaker 1 (01:33:20):
I mean, yea death threats, I've gotten just by talking
about someone's religion, you shouldn't see it.

Speaker 2 (01:33:28):
Yeah, it shock you, and I think that you really characteristics.

Speaker 6 (01:33:33):
You really just answered that question for me though, because uh,
and I think this is good why, this is why
it's good for people to to talk and have conversations,
no telling what you might learn, because well, for starters,
I wasn't just talking about atheists in general.

Speaker 3 (01:33:46):
I wouldn't.

Speaker 6 (01:33:46):
I wouldn't put everybody in the same category like that.
I was just talking about atheists that I've that I've
known and I've dealt with personally. But somehow, as well
as I was already familiar with this, it took me
hearing you to say, I mean, well, Muslim through the
same thing to me, like I've never heard anybody say
that before. It took you to say that for me
to realize that the answer to that question of why

(01:34:07):
the atheists like that is the same answer that I
have to so many questions. That atheists are human beings.
That's why some of them are so condescending and disrespectful,
because they're human beings, and human beings are I mean,
we vary from one.

Speaker 3 (01:34:20):
End of anything to another. That's fine.

Speaker 6 (01:34:22):
I agree exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:34:23):
Sure, I agree.

Speaker 1 (01:34:24):
And then the first one I didn't answer for you
is that where atheists get their morals? And we can
you know, we're getting close on time, and I wanted
John to be able to want John to be able
to speak on this, So I want to hand this
to John if John wants to answer this.

Speaker 2 (01:34:39):
And because he wasn't here for this first part of
the call.

Speaker 6 (01:34:41):
So answered that, Oh it was guy.

Speaker 2 (01:34:45):
Yeah, but I can answer. I can answer either.

Speaker 3 (01:34:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34:48):
I didn't answer either, but I want to. I'm talking
too much. I want John to go first.

Speaker 2 (01:34:53):
Sorry, Sorry, what what was the question again? Yeah, I'm sorry.

Speaker 6 (01:34:56):
I thought, yes, right, apists to draw where does the
individual atheists draw their sense of morality from?

Speaker 3 (01:35:03):
Yes?

Speaker 6 (01:35:04):
Right?

Speaker 9 (01:35:04):
Okay, yeah, So I mean I draw my sense of
morality from secular humanism. I apply that, you know, to
my daily life, and I pretty much just you know,
do what's best for my family and my community and
the human human.

Speaker 2 (01:35:21):
Beings in general.

Speaker 9 (01:35:22):
Like I put human health and well being above you know,
supernatural well being or supernatural wants and needs. And it's
a you know, it can be a complex situation of
give and take and everything. But I feel like secular
humanism provides us with the best model for building a society.
And so that's how I that's that's what I used

(01:35:45):
to come to moral conclusions.

Speaker 6 (01:35:47):
Yeah, I see, and man I think, and of course
it's anybody would argue, but man, I personally, I'm forty
three years old. I've been living in this country my
whole life, assuming that we are all in America, and man,
having read my book cover to cover and studied it much, Man,
I'll guarantee you if this country was being run by

(01:36:08):
what Qurean said, it would be a much better place
than it is.

Speaker 2 (01:36:12):
A secular Oh, so we should I'm so cern it
should be.

Speaker 1 (01:36:17):
We have reasons to beat women with a with like
a hair comb, right, is that I guess? Or I
guess should we deploy Anissa thirty four among amongst women
in your view?

Speaker 2 (01:36:29):
That's what you think is better for them to funk
out them?

Speaker 1 (01:36:32):
Yeah, before I drop your ass, what I asked you was,
do you think that we should legislate something very similar.

Speaker 6 (01:36:40):
To You're not going to talk to me like that,
then I'm gonna answer it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:44):
You know what's awesome about this, I can mute the
fuck out of you. It's really easy to do that.
You like that you're on mute, So if you want
to run like a coward, you can hide.

Speaker 3 (01:36:51):
I'll give you.

Speaker 1 (01:36:52):
I'll give you a second, I'll anmute you. But yeah,
you said something pretty deplorable right. First off, the irony
of you asking where I get my fucking morals from
and then like.

Speaker 10 (01:37:00):
Oh, think, what's the best thing to do is have
the thing I believe in that oppresses women and allows
reasons to like beat them, and oh yeah thirty four
So good, shit, man, it's real good.

Speaker 3 (01:37:10):
Well that's what I think.

Speaker 2 (01:37:11):
You're a clown and you drop you're a clown, Like
you asked about this moral like about my morals?

Speaker 1 (01:37:17):
Okay, does it really like does it matter to you
where I even get my morals? If the thing that
I'm going to be doing with my moral system is
treating your mother better than you treat your own fucking mother,
fuck yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:37:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:37:30):
I feel like there's there are Islamic theocracies that exist
out there, and I think that we can use this
as a pretty good model for how a society run
by the Quran or or by Islam would actually function.
I mean that would include you know, executing people in
the LGBTQ community. It would include imprisoning atheists like us.

(01:37:53):
I mean it would be it would be pretty bad.
I mean we're facing, you know, a Christian nationalist threat
now and that that is of similar extreme that would
take you similar extreme measures.

Speaker 1 (01:38:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, John, I have like a massive apology
to give you for like, just I can't shut up now,
you know, maybe I'm just I was doing show stay
by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:38:16):
I don't know if you saw what I was doing
a show with Seth Andrews earlier.

Speaker 1 (01:38:19):
I don't know if you thought that I'm pretty cool,
Like it's official, I'm pretty cool.

Speaker 6 (01:38:23):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:38:24):
I still got a little bit of time, John, I
don't know if you want to actually ship. There's one
here right for you. Historical Jesus may have existed.

Speaker 2 (01:38:31):
This is great. Do you want to take this? Sure?

Speaker 3 (01:38:33):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
And before we do that, though, I want to just
check on a few things and make sure that we
don't have some super chats that I need to read. Oh,
we can't do we can't do them.

Speaker 2 (01:38:41):
I got you. So my mistake, guys.

Speaker 1 (01:38:44):
This is why I'm putting the host seats sometimes in
the co host seat more often you know they got
they gotta like really hold my hand across the street here.
So and that leads me to the point that I
wanted to actually say the other thing I wanted to
say before we move on to this call, which is
audio issues on my end today. All me, I the
cliky mouse. I apologize. I got a new gaming mouse

(01:39:04):
thing that's got these cool little buttons on the side
or whatever. I thought i'd be really good for recording
and just programming some stuff. Here it's really loud, apparently
not like my other mouse. So I really apologize if
I've made a whole bunch of noise. So that's all me,
not the crew. Send your hate mail to it to me,
not the crew. In fact, let's get the crew up
there if we have time, real quick, get the crew
up there, because these people are not responsible for me

(01:39:28):
making the mistakes that I'm making. There, you go, all right,
look at you. Even God's even God's mad at me.
In the left corner there, We're gonna go to John
in New Hampshire pronounced he him says that the historical
Jesus may have existed. Response to the new chat pol,
I am not a mythicist, but I want to sit
in the front seat of this conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:39:48):
So I'm ready for it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:52):
Sweet, how you doing. I'm John too, John's mythhysist, John versus.

Speaker 6 (01:40:00):
Engineer.

Speaker 3 (01:40:01):
Pretty good.

Speaker 9 (01:40:01):
How are you doing?

Speaker 3 (01:40:02):
So listen?

Speaker 6 (01:40:03):
Good, good, good.

Speaker 11 (01:40:04):
So I'm an atheist and I'm a long time listener
to the show. And when I saw the poll question
of do you think Jesus existed on the poll, I
answered yes, because sure a guy named Jesus might have
existed then and then I went to keep diving deeper
into my train.

Speaker 6 (01:40:22):
Of thought and I said, well, what does Jesus mean?

Speaker 11 (01:40:24):
I guess after the you know, the biblical Jesus, or
you know, a guy named Jesus who.

Speaker 6 (01:40:29):
Happened to be a you know, tailor whatever.

Speaker 11 (01:40:31):
So I just hit yes, and I decided to call
the show and shout out to the screener because she
was great, and here I am talking to you guys,
so mad respect to both of you.

Speaker 9 (01:40:41):
Yeah, so, typically with the historical Jesus, like if you're
an atheist, you're talking about the minimal historical Jesus, So
that would be just itinerant rabbi that collected a group
of guys or just followers that then was you know,
executed by the Romans, and religion popped up around him

(01:41:01):
after the fact. That's generally what atheists mean whenever they
talked about a historical Jesus. Is that the one that
you're talking about?

Speaker 11 (01:41:07):
I suppose I would have to say, yes, the Christian
Bible historical Jesus that we all think about in you.

Speaker 6 (01:41:13):
Know, the the movies and and all that stuff. Yeah, Jesus.

Speaker 2 (01:41:16):
Funny how culty that sounds?

Speaker 6 (01:41:18):
Jesus?

Speaker 1 (01:41:19):
It's funny enough, culty that sounds when it's so vague
like that, there's this guy and had a bunch.

Speaker 2 (01:41:24):
Of fault of and.

Speaker 9 (01:41:28):
All right, So I mean, why do you think that
he actually existed?

Speaker 11 (01:41:32):
I think he existed in the same way that all
of us exists. His name happened to be Jesus, and
he happened to Uh.

Speaker 9 (01:41:39):
I'm sorry, John, but that's not the question I asked you.
I'm sorry, Go ahead, Well, the question I asked was
why do you believe he existed? Like typically, you know,
we have evidence for believing in the things that that
we think are true, even for historical claims. We're talking
about evidence that makes it more likely than not. So
I'm asking for, like, what references or what evidence do

(01:42:01):
you have that makes Jesus' existence more likely than not.

Speaker 11 (01:42:05):
The only evidence I have is that I asked Alexa
about fifteen minutes before I got on the phone with you,
because I was thinking the same thing, is what am
I asking here? Why am I on the phone?

Speaker 6 (01:42:15):
And all your pole.

Speaker 11 (01:42:16):
Said was do you think Jesus existed? And my answer was, yeah, yeah,
a man named Jesus probably existed. And I think the
evidence is, uh, you know Alexa's answer. In the first century,
Jesus was the most common one of a very popular name.

Speaker 9 (01:42:30):
Okay, yeah, but that's not what we're talking about here.

Speaker 3 (01:42:33):
We're not talking about real.

Speaker 2 (01:42:34):
You're doing my camp a disservice right now.

Speaker 9 (01:42:38):
We're not talking about random ask Jesus is like like, like, well,
just to give you it. For instance, here there was
Jesus been an Aonius that was in the first century too,
that was written about by Josephus, I believe. And the
curious thing about him is that he's got a similar
like progression as Jesus does in Mark's Gospel. When I'm
talking about his passion and and and a sorry TikTok

(01:43:02):
language and his execution. So I mean, so there were Jesuses,
then there were messiahs that were claiming to be messiahs
at that time, like Josephus even records the Egyptian who
collected a number of like rebels around him and tried
to take on the Romans, but he eventually failed and
wandered off, you know, a complete failure. So I mean, like,

(01:43:24):
there are there are instances of these, but I feel
like this just proves that we should have some kind
of evidence of this minimal historical Jesus walking around and
doing things, if he actually did those things. So that's
that's what I'm at. Like, so, so obviously there's gonna
be Jesus walking around. Yahweh or sorry, Yeshua is a

(01:43:45):
very divinely connected name to yahweh uh, And basically Jewish
mothers were naming you know, their kids Jesus because they
thought that they were, you know, the second Coming or whatever,
and so like, yeah, that was a common name. But
that we're not asked for just random ass Jesus. We're
asking about the Jesus that collected a group of people

(01:44:06):
who was eventually executed by the romans under conscious pilot
and uh, you know, the religion popped up around him
after the fact. That's the Jesus that we're talking about.

Speaker 11 (01:44:17):
And that's a lot to try to put into a
poll question.

Speaker 9 (01:44:21):
Also a lot for Alexa to respond with.

Speaker 3 (01:44:24):
I would agree, oh.

Speaker 11 (01:44:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So can I ask you one question
if I may? Because I was wondering this about you,
and it's a tough one for me when people ask,
you know, especially with the priest up the pre suppositionist
word salad, I find myself struggling to try to think
of how I would answer some questions.

Speaker 6 (01:44:43):
Uh, you know, keep up with the BF.

Speaker 11 (01:44:45):
Have you either of you ever you know, run or
I'm sure you probably have. Would you mind telling me
about and telling the audience about a time where you
you had a pause moment where you want that kind
of put a little uh you know, you can't respond
quite as quickly, but you want to. And I guess
I'll end the call from there and thank.

Speaker 6 (01:45:03):
You for your time.

Speaker 10 (01:45:04):
Is it is this?

Speaker 3 (01:45:06):
Are you so there?

Speaker 2 (01:45:06):
John?

Speaker 10 (01:45:07):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:45:08):
Is there some I might have missed a bit of it? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:45:10):
What's specifically towards the Jesus stuff or just like in
general kind of.

Speaker 11 (01:45:16):
Stuff both, you know, because we're we're on we're on
a we're on an atheist talk show. So I suppose, uh,
you know about about religion. You know when when you've
come up like a street uh uh, let's say, an
Anthony Magnabosco of the other side comes up to you
and just make you think about something for a second.
Has that ever happened to you? And you know how
the strength Yeah, your your your belief system.

Speaker 2 (01:45:40):
Yeah, I mean, on John, if you want to go first.

Speaker 1 (01:45:42):
I have a few things, but they're like more like
nuanced philosophical positions that I held on to, uh that
kind of tied to my spiritual past in a way.

Speaker 2 (01:45:51):
Maybe I don't know right well, I mean I.

Speaker 9 (01:45:53):
Would just say that, you know, the the historicity of
Jesus is one thing. I mean, it wasn't like a
street epistemological.

Speaker 3 (01:46:01):
Thing, but it was more like I.

Speaker 9 (01:46:05):
Was engaged in like Facebook commentary, like a Facebook group,
you know, talking about the historical nature of Jesus, and
I said, of course Jesus existed, and they were like, oh, okay,
well what evidence do you have to prove it? And
so I'm like, okay, I'll just go and I'll quickly
google it.

Speaker 2 (01:46:19):
It's got to be there.

Speaker 9 (01:46:20):
And that sent me down a rabbit hole where I
eventually became a mythicist because I just couldn't find any
evidence that was convincing to me.

Speaker 2 (01:46:29):
That there actually was a Jesus that existed.

Speaker 9 (01:46:33):
And so you know, I kind of I got challenged
on it, and I didn't have a good answer at
the time, and it took me a long time to
really suss out how I felt about the question.

Speaker 2 (01:46:43):
Yeah, it's kind of weird for me.

Speaker 1 (01:46:45):
For in terms of theism, I've never like I've never
heard an argument that like just even comes close to
convincing for me.

Speaker 2 (01:46:55):
Like I mean, because when you don't, when I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:46:59):
Not talking with somebody, I'll like to philosophy about it,
like when they're like clinging to philosophy for their beliefs,
and it's just like I had this experience and this
kind of stuff, they're like those are like really bad
to me. Like sometimes I'm not sure if the person's
lying to me about this experience. And I've talked with
like I bring Aaron up all the time, but I
shoot the ship with him about these topics a lot
because he was a former Christian, and I told him,

(01:47:19):
I was like, sometimes I talk to these people, I
feel like they're just like lying to me about their
experience or whatever. And you know, he assured me, no,
it's not the case. Like, look, I came from this background.
You genuinely, you know, believe these things, and you genuinely
believe that you have these experiences. You just kind of
interpret them different later along along the road. But when
I get into like some meat on the table or
some promises.

Speaker 6 (01:47:39):
What's that?

Speaker 11 (01:47:40):
What's that book? I'm sorry to interrupt you, but.

Speaker 2 (01:47:44):
No, it's fine.

Speaker 6 (01:47:45):
What's that book?

Speaker 11 (01:47:46):
That the Proof of Heaven or whatever? This guy that
you know, the doctor that died that he saw a
picture above the bed while he was being operated, YadA, YadA, YadA,
yeadh y, I'm not sure.

Speaker 6 (01:47:55):
I try to explain to people.

Speaker 11 (01:47:56):
I try to explain to people that while there could
be a little bit of lying, there could be a
little bit of a memory that they don't remember.

Speaker 6 (01:48:02):
You know, when they were four year old.

Speaker 11 (01:48:03):
They visited their grandmother's house and they saw this picture
that they always kind of remembered for some other reason,
and Whatever's it's much more likely that that's the truth
than you know that this person actually died and remember
the death experience.

Speaker 2 (01:48:16):
Yeah, I have this thing where it's like sometimes go ahead.

Speaker 1 (01:48:20):
Oh yeah, No, I just I have this this thing
where on the realm, I'm just kind of on the
realm of theism. It's just I've like wanted some argument
that gets me there, but like you know, I've always
just detected these like like crazy kind of metaphysical assumptions
that can't get off the ground unless you accept these
other things.

Speaker 2 (01:48:38):
Like if you're a Tomist and you.

Speaker 1 (01:48:40):
Lay out this view about change and there's actualization of potential,
and you start to realize like, okay, there's this whole
notion about like sustaining causes in the universe, and I
wouldn't believe in sustaining causes unless I already believed in God.
So like for me, I see the same kind of trend,
and it's like an esoteric view called like if you
called Tomism fall Saint Thomas aquinas right. And so there's

(01:49:03):
these arguments that are given and this is like an
example I'm using where someone will kind of give this
argument and it's easy to kind of just go through
the premises. But when you really understand what's going on
in a lot of these philosophical arguments. There's like highly contentious,
like metaphysical assumptions about the world right, about like the
way things are, and certain views that you have to
take in order to get off the ground. And so

(01:49:24):
for them, it's like you have to believe that they
are like sustaining causes, like in the universe. And I
don't see any argument to get me to sustaining causes
unless I already believed in God, right. It seems just
like parasitic on like the conclusion, like I already would
need to believe in God right, So those are knocked
out for me, though I leave them open because I

(01:49:45):
love having those conversations and I love like, you know,
maybe I'm wrong about the assumptions and someone can get
me off the ground and we go from there. But
for me, it was really like it was flat Earth.
That was the first time I felt really challenged in
I believe it was in like a college class before
I had dropped out. The first time I went back,
someone asked me about the shape of the Earth and

(01:50:06):
I didn't know, right. This is ultimately what brought me
back to school and to get you know, a little
degree was that I was not motivated when I went
to school then at all. I didn't really care to
like better myself. I didn't care about knowledge. And this
person was like challenging me on because they're you know,
flat earther. Is just like, oh, I've got to show
everybody that I'm a flatter ether and we're getting in
this conversation and I cannot defend my I just couldn't

(01:50:29):
defend my view. Like I was like, oh my god,
maybe I walk away. I'm like, maybe the Earth is
fucking flat.

Speaker 2 (01:50:34):
I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (01:50:35):
Now I go online, I'm looking and I'm just like
obsessing over this. And then now I start to like
learn about like different things, just something as simple as
like the Southern Cross and observers from different parts of
the Earth and how it would be like geometrically impossible
for someone you know, in these areas to see if
the Earth was flat, right, And that is the reason
why I'm sitting in this chair today was because of

(01:50:57):
that conversation, Because someone put me in a vulnerable spot
where I didn't know what I believed, and I was
already going through this process of like deconstructing these spiritual
beliefs and becoming like more rational. You know, I had
flirted with atheism and stuff when I was younger and
all that, but I went to this weird hippie stuff, right,
and it's almost sucked me back in. And that flat

(01:51:17):
Earth man. That would have been the last thing for me.
That's all I would have needed to just never be
here and maybe grifting some you know astrology book somewhere.
So uh, long winded, but yeah, that's that's kind of
that was the first time. Going forward, I've been challenging
on other things, like you know, nominalism versus platonism and
these kind of things. There's an atheist that gives me

(01:51:37):
a very thought provoking argument against natural selection.

Speaker 2 (01:51:40):
He accepts evolution but.

Speaker 1 (01:51:41):
Disagrees with the theory. That's an interesting argument. Gave me
a lot of trouble. So there's thought that have given
me trouble. But there's stuff that like when I talk
to more well educated people or I read more material,
I start to see what I see, what the tricks
the tricks are that are going on, you know what
I mean?

Speaker 6 (01:51:57):
What excites her education?

Speaker 3 (01:52:00):
Gene?

Speaker 11 (01:52:00):
You know what, what what keeps you going?

Speaker 6 (01:52:03):
That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:52:04):
Yeah, it changed me entirely as a person for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:52:07):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:52:08):
So yeah, thank you appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:52:10):
Sorry, I get excited about talking about that because I'm like, yeah,
I was almost flat earther. It's just the crazy pollar
opposite of what I what I would have become. So yeah,
but yeah, thank you for for inquiring about that.

Speaker 2 (01:52:23):
All right, brother, thank you, yep, thank you than you guy. Yeah,
we're getting at the end.

Speaker 1 (01:52:29):
I'm uh, I'm going to go get some food in
me as well and close out the show. But I
do want to remind people that there are plenty of
ways to support us. We got the direct fundraiser that's
going on. All the proceeds go directly to the a
c A. So please click that donate button if you
want to help support us, remember that you can come.
I don't think you'll you'll be in the area. John

(01:52:52):
August sixteenth, I know you're in a different part of
the country.

Speaker 9 (01:52:56):
Yeah, well, so we were going to try to make it,
but we're at Baja Coon just before that, and so
like we just we can't make the time to actually
make it down to Austin.

Speaker 2 (01:53:07):
And then that's right, right, I bugged you and your
wife about this on TikTok. That's right. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
I do remember now.

Speaker 9 (01:53:14):
But we definitely get it on our schedule for next year,
so we're definitely gonna go come come by next year.

Speaker 2 (01:53:20):
That's right. Yeah, that's that's right. We didn't talk about this.
It's all flooding back.

Speaker 1 (01:53:23):
I'm gonna hold you to that, and then you can
then you'll have me in a room and you can
really like, why does Jesus exist?

Speaker 2 (01:53:31):
Motherfucker? You better tell me.

Speaker 1 (01:53:35):
But if you if you want to come out and
meet you know, Forrest, myself and some other people that
are going to be there, the crew, you get to meet,
You get to meet Vern Verne's awesome, meet Greg, everybody.
Hopefully Katie and everybody will be there. But yeah, you
can go to tiny dot cc slash back Cruise August sixteenth,
twenty twenty five and come hang out. I'd be happy

(01:53:57):
to hang out before and after the event, so we
can go and go get some food or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:54:02):
It would be a blast.

Speaker 1 (01:54:03):
So you can also support us on tiny dot CC
slash Patreon a XP and you can become a patron
to help ensure that we produce the content that we do.
And last, I want to just throw the crew up
for the third time. Let's make it the holy Trinity
of the crew. Cannot do it without these fine people
that are probably just their ears are probably deaf from

(01:54:23):
my clicking and all sorts of stuff. So yeah, and
I'm doing it more and not like realizing it as
I'm doing it. I'm so selfish and pat with this.
But apologies to everybody, apologies to the crew.

Speaker 2 (01:54:34):
We're out peace, glad.

Speaker 5 (01:54:40):
To start already, stop.

Speaker 3 (01:54:45):
Bullshit around you. Watch Talk Ee Than Live Sundays at

(01:55:22):
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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