The Atheist Experience 29.26 with The Cross Examiner and Jim Barrows

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
In nineteen eighty, Kentucky passed a law requiring the posting
of copies of the Ten Commandments purchased with private contributions,
on the wall of each public classroom in the state.
In a historic decision called Stone v. Graham, the Supreme
Court applied its Lemon tests and held this law to
be unconstitutional. Well as my favorite newsdesk, the Onion said

(00:22):
in a famous headline history size and repeats itself. Here
we are forty five years later, and we're seeing another
rise of Christian nationalism another state. This time, Louisiana has
passed a law requiring the posting of copies of the
Ten Commandments, purchased with private contributions, on the wall of
each public classroom in the state. Sound familiar, just like

(00:43):
Kentucky did in Stone, And just like back then, the
lower courts, citing Stone, have held that the Louisiana law
is plainly unconstitutional. Just this week, Louisiana had argued that
because the Supreme Court had recently done away with its
Lemon test which decided Stone, they are now allowed to
shove their particular version of their favorite religion down the

(01:05):
throats of all school children in Louisiana. The Fifth Circuit
unanimously and slightly surprisingly disagreed and held that Stone is
still good law. But don't celebrate just yet. Louisiana will
likely appear to this appeal to the Supreme Court, and
given the Court's recent holdings, we may see a very
different outcome seeing the very real possibility that the Supreme

(01:29):
Court will continue to overturn its First Amendment decisions. Other
states are schooling like sharks, expecting blood in the water. Texas,
South Dakota, Arkansas all have bills at various stages of
the legislative process that would require the Ten Commandments to
be displayed in every classroom. Arkansas signed their bill into

(01:50):
law just this April. This is what he meant when
Christopher Hitchin said that religion poisons everything. These people are
so lost in their era national beliefs that they want
to tear down our constitution. They will never give up.
They will keep trying to do away with the First Amendment.
This is why we are here. We need to keep

(02:11):
having conversations that focus on facts and logic over irrational
Skydaddy wishes, so we can convince people that the First
Amendment is important. If you think we have it wrong
and that our government should promote religion. Give us a
call because the show starts now. Welcome everybody. Today is

(02:36):
June twenty ninth, twenty twenty five. I am your host,
the Cross Examiner, and joining me today is Jim Barrows.
How's it going, Jim, Oh, not too bad.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
How you doing?

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Oh well? Like Mike cold Hope and said, I'm a
little optimistic. The Fifth Circuit overturned Luisi in a law,
and the Fifth Circuit is where all of these sorts
of things go because they are the most conservative circuit.
So it was a little surprising that it was a
unanimous decision. But that's very encouraging. But as I said,
we've got a lot of other cases and laws going

(03:08):
on in the United States where people are trying to
shove their religion down our throats by getting the court
to take advantage of this moment in time and do
away with precedent. So that part still makes me very
nervous about you.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Well, I'm down here in deep South Alabama, you know,
just just north of the Florida Panhandle, and I've had
several conversations that absolutely terrify me around the fact that
like when the no Kings protests were happening. I have
had several conversations where people Alabama's have said, maybe we
do need a king.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, a Christian king at that of course.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, well right, and just absolutely terrifying that that that
they say these things. It's like, do you not understand
what's going on? And I think that the brain rot
has gone. You know, if you look at the bike
and I know we all have, there's no support for democracy,
there's no support for republic. It talks about kings, and

(04:10):
it talks about God appointing kings. And I think the
brain rot has gotten to it and I hate to use
word brainmot when it comes to religion, but has gotten
so bad on these evangelicals that they think that they
should have a king because that's God or Dane. And
I think that's that's a very strong thing, that that
maybe we're all missing, because I don't know how many

(04:30):
of us really get to have these types of conversations
in Deep South. I mean, if you're living in Austin,
maybe even Birmingham. I tend to think that those tend
to be a little bit bluer than the rest of
the states. And I am literally out here, you know,
in the sticks, so well, very curious about.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
There is hope from the religious side. I will point
out that the plaintiffs in this case in Louisiana were
a The main plaintiffs were a religiously diverse family of reverends.
They were the ones suing to prevent this, along with
other plaintiffs that were also reverends and people who were

(05:11):
not religious. And recently we just had the Oklahoma law
held to be unconstitutional by that very narrow majority that
would have created the first religious public school. That plaintiff
was the Attorney General of Oklahoma, who himself is a
lifelong evangelical Christian. So we do have allies in this

(05:32):
effort in the religious circles. So it is something that
I think is an important conversation to have because I
agree that you're right that when people look to the
Bible for guidance on how to run their government, that
throughout history has proven to be bad news, bad bad news.

(05:52):
And that's you know, the core mission. I'll say it now, Okay,
this is our disclaimer, right. The Atheist Experience is a
product of the Athi Community of Austin, a five oh
one c three nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of atheism,
critical thinking, secular humanism, and what the separation of religion
and government, and that is a core core thing that

(06:14):
we worry about because you can sit here and ponder
the existence of God or not. But as soon as
you think that you know how God wants your government
to work and that everybody needs to follow those rules,
you get into real trouble.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Because, let's face it, the Bible says that you can
pull slaves from your your neighbors. It also says that
once they once they come in, come into your borders,
you should treat them well. So if they're outside of
your borders, you get enslaved them with there. If they're
inside your borders, you had to treat them well. What
that helps all that about? I mean, it's confusing, right.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, it is. It is.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
It's I was watching I haven't looked into this, and
I really want to, but I watched a couple of
YouTube videos where they were saying that one of the
things that's some Nebraska farmers, because you know, Nebraska is
just whining about being going broken a few months because
trying to cancel a bunch of soybean contracts they've lost

(07:07):
all their workers, field hands. But some of those Nebraska
farmers were apparently thinking that black folk would come back
and work their farms because black folk don't work interesting
And I'm like, wow, if that's true, if that kind
of you know, it goes back to you know, conversations
you have in deep you know, in the sticks. If

(07:29):
Nebraska farmers more than one of them is thinking this,
that is some pretty scary racist bullshit to be thinking about.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, and one Wonders be saying, you know, you know,
focusing on the topic of our show, Wonder Wonders, how
biblical that is because you know, when you actually read
the Bible and the context it was written in, and
you understand who the audience was, and especially for the
Old Testament, it was filled with xenophobia and racism.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
Right.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
It's not something that I appreciate that there are liberal
Christians who will say the Bible says love everybody, but
when you actually read it, it is as you said, oh,
you're you're taking slaves, like debt slaves from from your
fellow Israelites. Okay, let them go in seven years, special
rules for them and all that anybody else from not
your city foreigners, slaves for life, sex, slaves for the

(08:20):
women inherited to your children, all of that sort of stuff.
So it's it's it's not I it's it's it's a
lesson in how to institutionalize rules that support xenophobia and racism.
If it is anything the Old Testament that is, that
is what the law is all about. You know, women
are property and anybody who's not of your tribe is

(08:44):
property or less than property.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, Tribalism is a huge problem with religion, the US
first them mentality, no matter how you look at it,
you know, and we see that in some of the
calls we've had over the years where children have been
kicked out of their homes by their parents for not
being for not believing in God.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Right, you know.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, it's the saddest calls that we get, in my opinion,
are those where they are a young people whose parents
have chosen hatred and unjustifiable beliefs. Not that they they
not that they're absolutely wrong in everything, but their core
beliefs are not justifiable in that they don't have any

(09:27):
evidence that it's true, and they've chosen that over their
own child, whether that's because that child is irreligious or
a different religion or not of approved sexual orientation or
whatever it may be. And we've had calls where people
have been kicked out of their house and are struggling
to even find a place to survive without becoming homeless.

(09:52):
And it's if you need to again, I cite it
all the time. You know, religion poisons everything. Hitchens hadn't
hit the nail on the head. It works your way
into your brain and you are convinced that whatever your
preacher or your particular interpretation of your scripture says is reality,
and then anybody else who goes against it is somehow
your enemy, even your own child.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
And that you said, yeah, it's a very horrible way
to look at the world. And you know, and again
you can see this in what's happening with evangelicals right
now in the world around us, with you know, everything
that's going on. You can see that this is just
nothing but the pettiest, nastiest, grittiest tribalism going on. And

(10:37):
that's you know, the attack on DEI. When you have
twenty two year olds being appointed to positions in government
that require deep expertise, much less people with brain worms,
you know, it just makes no sense as to what
is going on unless you have this God ordained it.

(10:57):
Therefore it must be good view. And so you've got
a God or Dane leader, no matter how craptastic that
leader may be, and no matter how often he glitches
in public.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
So I'm going to go through a few announcements. We
do have lines open. I'll encourage people to call in,
especially if you are a theists. We tend to favor
those calls. First, we'd love to talk to you, Obviously,
we don't bite. We've had lots of different calls from
lots of different faith systems, and we've made a lot
of actual friends of people who aren't atheists. So we'd

(11:36):
love to have a conversation with you about what you
believe and why. But first we have some exciting announcements
to make. First, it's that time of year again, Jim.
I don't know if you've ever been. I have not.
I'm hoping this year will be my first. We are
excited to announce back. Cruise tickets are up for sale Forrest,
j Mike, Doctor, Ben, Objectively, Dan and others you love

(11:58):
will be there us August sixteenth, twenty twenty five and
get your tickets in info at tiny dot cc slash
back cruise tickets sell out fast, so get your tickets now.
Have you ever been, Jim, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
I have been once and it is absolutely amazing. When
I went, we had two boats and so you you know,
to go out. The actual event itself, going out and
watching the bats come out is actually kind of amazing.
But up until that happens, the camaraderie, the conversations, the

(12:36):
people just in full atheist mode is just absolutely wonderful.
There's you know, you don't have to keep any masks
on on that cruise. The friends you make will be amazing.
And then you get you know, if you ever wanted to,
if you ever wanted to know if Forrest is really
that way in life, you'll find out he really really

(12:59):
is way in life. He you know, you push that
magic button and get him talking about anything, and he
is just that animated. Same with almost all the hosts.
So if you ever wanted to talk to us in person,
that is a great time to do it. Just keep
in mind that we you know, we're trying to talk
to everybody, so.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
That a little monopolization going on.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Huh sometimes, I mean, nobody's intentionally doing it right. But
the conversations you're having are are just so good that
sometimes you really don't want to leave them. We're not
talking about conversations about religion necessarily. It's conversations about anything
and everything. The river running through Austin is really pretty,
lots of trees, stuff like that. It's hard to tell

(13:45):
your except for the skyscrapers. It's hard to tell a
share in Amaker City. But even some of the skyscrapers
are kind of kind of pretty as well, so they're
just not squares. A lot of them aren't squares. So yeah,
I've been.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
My mother's from Texas, down in the town south of
Houston called Annawhak, Texas. It's like one of those places
you'd see in a Cohen Brothers movie. So love love
Texas for its culture, for its heritage, and for a
lot of There's a lot of great people, not just

(14:18):
in Austin, but all over down in Texas. So I
feel like we should let our viewers know we did
have calls queued up. They have gotten dropped. I don't
know if there is a technical issue going on, but
we're going to keep going through announcements while we see
call so if you were listening and you had your
call dropped, please do call right back in. Sorry that

(14:39):
you got dropped. I'm starting to see them come in now,
so more announcements before we get to the calls. First
of all, the way that we help in the world
is by getting the word out that these conversations take place.
I can't tell you the number of times I've had
conversations with people who didn't even understand what we were
talking about. They thought that we were evil people that

(15:01):
had twenty eight eyes and were eating their babies. And
then we have a conversation and they go, oh, well,
I think I agree with you. Just last time I
was on, somebody called in because I was talking about
Christian nationalism and how it's a threat to our government
and all this stuff. And this person was very upset
and said, I can't believe that you think people are
wrong and evil and call them Christian nationalists just because

(15:24):
they believe in Christianity. And we had a healthy conversation
saying oh, no, no, no, no, it's much more than that.
They believe. They want to use the mechanisms of government
to force their belief system into the public square as
the favored religion, and he a Christian, was like, oh,
I didn't know that this is a summary, and he
was like, I think I agree with you. That shouldn't happen.

(15:44):
And that's what we've seen with these court cases. I
was talking about, we need to keep these conversations up
because that person will now likely convince others that hey,
that's bad to have the First Amendment being torn apart
by these people who want to tear it down. So
to that end, please like this video and subscribe to
the channel, enable notifications and comment below on your favorite point.

(16:07):
Your favorite callers ask questions, they will be answered by
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(16:27):
may not be entirely accurate, and that there are some
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(16:49):
we're going to do a big thank you to you
know who, your favorite, our favorite, the crew who put
this show together every week. Video operators, audio operators, note takes,
call screeners, chat moderators. There they are. I don't know
which one of them dropped all the calls, but we'll
have them whipped with a wet noodle after the show.

(17:10):
Thank you so much everybody for doing that.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Was volunteering for that. I think you need actually okay
with you?

Speaker 3 (17:19):
All right?

Speaker 1 (17:21):
All right, why don't we jump into our calls if
they've started coming back in Now We've got Alex from
Iowa that we're going to talk to you next. And
my note here for Alex says, what are your views
on the relationship between the atheist position and the views
that are not atheists? So I'm going to ask Alex,
could you explain yourself by defining a couple of things

(17:42):
for us. Could you first tell us what you think
the atheist position is, and could you give us some
examples of some views that you would like to juxtapose
that against.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
Okay, sure, So I guess what I was calling was
to clarify a little bit on what the atheist position
would be in relationship to other types of knowledge in
the world. So, for instance, I don't know the atheists.
I don't know how an atheist would take a view

(18:11):
on the development of consciousness in the universe. I know
that atheism doesn't strictly argue for this or for like,
any specific view of how it came to be. But
let's say one calls themselves an atheist and then reads
about the development of consciousness in the universe and develops
a type of philosophy that would extend consciousness beyond the

(18:33):
human brain and even the human body, which would then
require sort of beyond beyond strictly physical science with immutable
laws to explain, like, how will atheist person relate to
that development in their ideas?

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Okay, so what we have here is a question, i e.
What is the atheist position? And then we have some
hypothetical you came up with of finding some sort of
evidence of intelligence without a physical medium. Let's start with
the first, which is what is the atheist position? I'll
defer to Jim after I give mine to see what
if we agree there are flavors of atheism that word

(19:09):
is loosely used by various people. The way I use
it is somebody who is not yet convinced that there
is a god. It's that simple. So a glib way
of putting it is asking you, do you collect stamps?
You say no, okay, then you are a non stamp collector,
famous YouTube channel, and then you ask, okay, what is
a non stamp collector's position on consciousness in the universe?

(19:30):
And you see that it's not really related. But I
do want to answer the second part. But that's kind
of my point. So Jim, how would you answer the
what is atheism?

Speaker 2 (19:41):
That's exactly it. Atheism is not a worldview. It is
a plank in a worldview, but it is not someone
else's worldview. I have met atheists who believe in fairies.
I have met atheists who believe the moon landing was
a hoax. I have met atheists who believe that they
and cast spouse. So yeah, atheism is only regarding gods,

(20:05):
so you know, Buddhists or atheists, so they have that's
a worldview. I would argue that the Shinto religion is
also atheists because they deal mostly in spirits. Is my understanding.
Some Native American tribes, I would also define as atheists
because they don't believe in in a God. Their great
Spirit is kind of godlike, but doesn't really I don't

(20:27):
think really fits that definition. Sure, so they would be
atheists as well. So yeah, I think that your follow
on question is nonsensical to ask what the atheist position
is when atheism is not a worldview like Christianity is.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
I'll sort of jump in and steal man the question
for Alex to say that the question is okay for
somebody who doesn't believe that there is a God, what
methodology do you use to determine the truth value of claim?
I'm guessing?

Speaker 3 (21:00):
Is that?

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Is that better? Is that a more abstract version? Alex?

Speaker 4 (21:04):
Uh No, sorry, I was refer What I was asking was,
I guess more of an historical question. So, if you're
an individual who is in society today, let's say all
their lives has been an atheist, and I think I
think the answer given was almost satisfying that, Like, if
you are an atheist and you just happen to also
then start reading about other topics as a person who

(21:25):
loves to read books, and then you start you start
realizing that in the history of Western philosophy that God
has a logical category that has to do with the
transference of information between entities in the universe. So descartes,
I think, therefore I am as a God category, and there.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Are Let's let's stop here, because you're starting to start,
all right, So let's let's make it a little simpler.
Let's back up and separate this from an atheism discussion,
because you're making some assertions here or I can't I'm
audibly not able to tell whether it's an assertion or
hypothetical or what. So You're you're creating something called a
God category. That's what you're proposing. Can you define that

(22:07):
category for us? Well, I'm saying, can you define what
is with the characteristics of the God category?

Speaker 4 (22:16):
Part would define God as the at least having the
characteristic of receiving the information, the felt information of all
the entities in the universe.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
And is that your definition? Is that your definition I'm
asking for you? Is that your definition?

Speaker 4 (22:31):
I'm being very clear, Well, my position is very clear
that I'm talking about if I'm talking about an historical situation.
If someone is reading is an atheist and also has
these questions like, for instance.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
What question? Give me, give me an example. Hold on, Alex, Alex, Okay,
slow down, Slow the heck down. We've got a lot
of time. I'm going to ask you questions and they'll
let you explain. But you're rushing ahead without setting the
stage for us. All right, So I've heard you mentioned
godd category and lots of different other things. Let's talk

(23:04):
about some examples you say when atheists posit these are
pondered these questions. Can you give me the best example
of the questions you're concerned about?

Speaker 4 (23:12):
Okay? So the question that an atheist might ask, like
myself would ask, is where does the logical category of
God go? In the history of Western philosophy, as atheism
emerges as an intellectual.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Tradition, I don't understand what you mean by where does
it go? Do you use go in the sense of
it went somewhere like it moved, or do you mean
how where does it sit? In some literary categorization seem.

Speaker 4 (23:38):
Will apply logical when atheists have applied logical categories, or
in the history of Western philosophy, when logical categories are
worked out to develop a metaphysical system, or whatever it
might be, whatever we call God for the entire Western
tradition has had a place, and even atheists. I feel
like for North Whitehead, a very respected philosopher who uses

(24:00):
a quote unquote god category in a way that I
actually think is compatible with what your co host was
talking about earlier, which I think I would be satisfied with.
He uses the word God. I think he uses the
word God in a way that is compatible with Western
philosophy and in a way that exercises much of its
cultish tenants. And I just think it complicates the relationship

(24:22):
between being an atheist and spirituality. At least that was
my thoughts.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
But again, what do you what do you mean by
what do you mean now? By by spirituality?

Speaker 3 (24:32):
What is that?

Speaker 2 (24:32):
What do you mean by that?

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Thank you? That's my question. Something tell me what spiritual
or spirituality means?

Speaker 4 (24:39):
Okay, yeah, I guess a felt. I guess it would
be a category that is completely non physical, or at
least it interacts with physicality but is not limited to it.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
And is that what does that mean? What do you mean?
What do that now? I got asked to the question,
I'm sorry because that that that answer was completely did
not do anything for me. What do you mean it's
not physical.

Speaker 4 (24:59):
Hostibility, potentials and possibilities things that are not that have
to happen but.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
Have some So possibilities doesn't help help either. Right, anything
is possible, right it is or maybe to come out of.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
What possibility must be demonstrated. We can't say that ever.
We were just having this conversation.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, probability needs to be demonstrated. Possibility. It's possible for
pigs to come flying out of my lily white backside.
But I'm not wearing pigstye underwear anytime soon, So I
don't care what's possible. I do care what's probable, because
anything is possible. It's just the probability may be very
very very very low. I'm close to zero. It really
doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
I do want to before we go further, I do
want to point out that I actually disagree with that
everything is possible, because that opens the door to some
craziness that one equals zero and you know, true equals
false and all that. I don't think that everything is possible.
We were just talking before the show about from Tracy
Harris would constantly say possibility must be demonstrated. It's a
small point, but I'm getting the sense from Alex that

(26:00):
he would jump on something like that to say anything
is possible to and run with it. So I want
to be very careful with that, but please continue.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, that's why I was saying, I don't care about possibility,
I care about probability.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Right right, right, So so Alex, let's let's define further
define spirituality, because it sounds like you're trying to use
that as a differentiate to differentiate some things, whether they
are thoughts or propositions or whatever they may be, from
anything else that you categorized as physical, because you use

(26:33):
you juxtaposed spiritual to physical. So can you further tell me? Well,
I think what is spirituality? What is spiritual? Can you
define that further? And how do we detect it?

Speaker 4 (26:43):
So like I said, well, first you gave me an example,
and then I wasn't able to expand on what I
meant by possibility and potentials and even probabilities. I think
it's more probable, it's certainly more potentially. It's more probable
that your co hosts can reach out and touch you
right now than I can because I'm not physically near you.
I don't think that can only be reduced.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
You don't know that. Hey, this is not responding to
my question. Stop stop, Alex, this is not responding to
my question. First of all, stop please stop talking before
I have to mute you. Okay, our show. We're asking
you questions so we can come to an understanding, because
I have found that when we let you run, you
start going off and into the weeds a little bit.

(27:23):
And we need to walk this through slowly. Anybody who's
got a defensible, well thought out position can explain it
very simply using simple definitions. And I asked you what
do you mean by spiritual? And you started talking about
you think it's possible that it is easier for Jim
to reach out and touch me than for you to
do that. What does that have to do with spirituality?
Could you please define I think what makes something spiritual?

Speaker 4 (27:47):
Are I think you are jumping ahead? Is what I
am saying when you ask me, are you going.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
To define the words spiritual or not?

Speaker 4 (27:55):
About five six minutes and thirty seconds ago, you asked
me to give you an example. Thankual, Alex, I gave
you an example, and all.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Right, I'm muting him. I don't know. We're not dealing
with a court record and reading back the record and
all of this sort of stuff. If anybody ignored anything
for six minutes, it's been Alex. Here, I'm going to
unmute you. Alex. I've asked you a very simple question,
and it's very telling that you don't have a ready answer.
Anybody that's an honest interlocutor would stop and say, oh, spiritual,

(28:24):
let me define that for you. Here's my well thought
out definition of spirituality and how it is juxtaposed against
anything else. That's what I'm asking for because you brought
this up, so we need to have you define what
you mean by it. Jim wisely asked that, so can
you please define what you mean by spiritual?

Speaker 4 (28:43):
Spiritual is a set of propositions which dynamically relate to
the physical world. In my view, the set of propositions
relative to any physical coordinate in the universe is always
and ever updated through the transmission of God, God's conceptual value,
which is admitted to every physical entity in the universe.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Now, okay, so let's back. Let's let's let's hold on.
I want to make sure I understand your definition. Hold on, Jim,
can we want to understand it? That's what I'm asking
could you please say that first part again. It is
a category. Spirituality is a category of what category right
of what?

Speaker 4 (29:22):
Yes, within a logical system, it is that what which
is able to transfer the set of propositions relative to
any physical entity in the universe.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Okay, let's stop there, let's stop there, let's stop there,
let's stop there, Alex stop. So I want to repeat
this back and have Jim analyze this. It is a
category of you didn't say you said of that, So
I assume we'll just say things that are relate to
or facilitate the transfer. Say it again. This is dense.

(29:54):
This is dense. So say it again. What's the definition?
Not access is into thing?

Speaker 4 (30:00):
Transfer the information between processes processes in the universe, which
are physical things. Things are processes. Because there are processes,
they're able to be transferred.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
What is being transferred information about the processes.

Speaker 4 (30:13):
Yes, they're subjective.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
Okay, so there's information about pro process Could you give
me an example of one example of information about a
process that is that would fit into the spiritual category.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
Yes, I think, well, I think this is the basis
of causality. This is leading its hume. This is whitehead
that when a leaf gets blown by the wind. The
only reason that I am able to interpret that leaf
being blown logically, I think, is that it's taken in
through the universe. God conceptually feels it, and then I
physically feel God's conceptual feeling of that leaf blowing, and

(30:46):
I feel like, all.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
Right, I'm going to I'm going to ask Jim. Sorry
I had to mute there because I wanted Jim, what
do you think? Jim?

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Well, so let's assume that whatever he just said, and
I'm not sure he knows what he just said, but
maybe maybe he does. Let's just say that is correct.
How would you go about disproving it? Not prove it, Alex,
I want you to disprove it. How would you go
about doing that?

Speaker 3 (31:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (31:06):
I get that as an atheist, and as an atheist
doesn't seek to prove a specific I don't.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
I don't care about atheism. We're not talking about atheistm
We're talking about your claim. Wellnigure that you just made.

Speaker 4 (31:18):
But my logic is the same win, my logic function
is the same way. I don't think we differ. I
think my logic function is the same way.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
Logic And answer Jim's question, how would you disprove your
claim that the only reason you perceive a leaf being
blown by the wind is because God perceives it first
for using shorthand, how would you disprove that claim?

Speaker 4 (31:40):
It's it's I don't think it's a belief. It's something
that follows from a logical system, and I can choose
to believe it or not. I think that's I think
that's the that's the question.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
Whether it's yes. I want to know how would you
go about disproving it, whether it's logical or whether it's
logical or physical. I don't care how you do it.
I want you to do it. Time to disprove it.

Speaker 4 (31:58):
That does not how any logician would tell you propositions work.
Not anyone.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, but it's people who deal with empirical reality would
ask you to work. Because you can define things into
existence all you want. But in the end, where the
rubber hits the rose, that road, after all of this
navel gazing, the vast majority of people in this world,
when they hear the word God, they think of an
entity that affects the universe, and that that entity's desires

(32:26):
are knowable, and that people kill each other based over that. Okay,
so I'm kind of done with this whole logical defining
stuff into existence, and I still think that Jim's question stands.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Go ahead, Jim, because my question is is simply based
on physics. Perception of belief only happens, according to you,
because God pursues it and then we perceive it. That's physics,
not logic, and I'm asking you to disprove it.

Speaker 4 (32:52):
I agree, it's well, it's physics and logic. I don't
see how they're possibly inable. I don't see how that that.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
Because you're making physical clients. Thing you can do in
science is not prove your claim, but attempt to disprove
your claim and fail. So I'm asking you to do
the best possible thing you can do and disprove your
claim that perception only happens through this intermediary you call God.

Speaker 4 (33:14):
Well, science has a set of methodological approaches to empirical facts.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
I st how about answering the question, Well.

Speaker 4 (33:21):
Mine's the same thing. Mine is the same exact thing.
It creates a logical I just I don't think we
did here in what I You are.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Not answering the question. I'm going to mute them again.
I'm going to mute them again, Alex, for the third
or fourth time. Now we have asked you a question,
and you've spent three or four back and forth not
answering it. You've given excuses, defending it, all of that
sort of stuff. Jim asked a very valid question. You've
made a claim about the universe that we are Perception,

(33:48):
which is a physical process, is dependent upon some other
process i e. God perceiving things right now, any good
scientists when they set up an experiment, one of the
questions they ask is how what I disprove my hypothesis.
That is what Jim is asking. You have made a hypothesis,
You've made a proposition. I know you want to say
it's purely thought. But unless you're willing to say it

(34:10):
is impossible for you to be wrong. You need to
tell us how you could be wrong. So Jim is asking,
how could you be wrong? Tell us the ways that
we could find out that you're wrong.

Speaker 4 (34:19):
Go ahead, Okay, I understand your question. I'm telling you
no philosopher in the history of Western philosophy operates this way.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
All right, So I don't know, Jim, is there any
other parts of this conversation you wanted are you curious
about anything, because he's obviously not answering the question.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yeah, philosophers, I mean science is a branch of philosophy,
so is religion is a branch of philosophy. But okay,
yes they do because science is a branch of philosophy. Also,
trying to disprove what you're doing is an important thing
when you're doing philosophy. One of the things you have

(34:53):
to do when you're writing a philosophical article is anticipate
how people are going to attack your event so that
you can bolster it and hopefully head off anything that
they're talking about that they're going to attack you on.
This is just you know, basics of doing philosophy is
how could I be wrong? Is to examine yourself. The

(35:14):
self examined life isn't worth living, The self examined proposition
isn't worth spewing out of your mouth. It's just not
You've got to start with, okay, how could I be wrong?
And then fail to prove yourself wrong? And we see
that over and over again.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
You know.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
Sherlock Holmes famously did it in the Sign of the
Four Locked Room Murder Mystery. Right. The first thing he
does in that murder mystery is prove that there is
no The only way that that person could have been
killed was if somebody had left the room, and of
course the room can only be locked from the inside. Well,
that's starting with how do I prove myself wrong? We

(35:53):
see this over and over again, so that when you say,
if a philosophy doesn't do that, I think you're fundamentally wrong.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah, I want to I want to agree with Jim
and ask you a question, Alex, because I think what
you are saying, if i'm I've want to steal man
your position is you're you are making a purely logical argument.
That's that's where I think you could You could arguably say, well,
that's not how philosophers do it. They don't they don't
do any methodological experiments, et cetera. You know, I'm I'm

(36:24):
going to start with the basic laws of logic, and
from there I'm going to make certain conclusions, and I
can prove mathematically that this is all true from just
accepting the three basic laws of logic. Right there, If
logic holds, you're right, you don't, there's no experiment to do.
But that's not what we're dealing with here. You. You
pulled in things like perception and leafs blowing. That's all

(36:49):
physical reality.

Speaker 4 (36:51):
Stuff, that phenomenology. But okay, okay, yes, I think that's fair.
That's fair. I just want to say to anyone watching
on me, where I'm getting my ideas from this alf
North Whitehead's process in reality.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
I'm not here to let him promote. I don't know
he wants to preach, he doesn't want to engage. Do
you have any other questions for Alex? I have one,
but I'm worried that if I do, it's just going
to be more of the same.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
So no, I think that that he has completely failed
to make a point and failed to stay on topic.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
Okay, Alex, wish you the best callback if you're ready,
ready to talk like a normal human being. I'm not
sure what your goal was here. Your original call was
how does an atheist view things differently than a non
other non atheist viewpoints or something like that. I'm going

(37:41):
to go out on a limb and say, I believe
that your your premise of your call that you gave
our note taker was not really genuine. I don't think
you were being very genuine. I thought I think that
you were trying to get on the air to just
sort of assert these things. So it's disappoint when that happens.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yeah, even if it was anyone, and I'm not going
to make any comment on that, I don't know enough
one way or the other. But you're confusing atheism as
a worldview or a philosophy, and confusing it as anything
more than a single answer to a single question. I
wouldn't consider Western philosophy to be atheistic in any way,

(38:20):
shape or form, just because it's philosophy and atheism is
one qu an answer to one question. It's a single
position on a single question, on a single proposition. That's
all it is. And you're trying to make it out
to be something more. And so I think everything you
try after that is just fundamentally flawed from that point

(38:40):
of view.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
I totally agree. Yeah, I think I think if we
rephrase the question of what method do you use? What
methods do atheists tend to use to discern truth? Maybe
that's what he's getting at, because he's trying to he's
trying to insert God between us and truth, that we
get truth because God gets through the method and I
use personally is something that is something like the scientific method.

(39:05):
I strive to sort of follow that. It seems to
have produced results. I don't know about you, Jim, it's
pretty good.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
I use pologious definition because I really do like it.
It's the truth is that which comports with the reality
as adjudicated by predictive power.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
That's a good one.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
And I really like that last bit because it gives
us a way to test whether something is true. Right.
If something is true, that means we can make some
predictions off of that. If I say that one plus
one equals too, I can predict that if I go
and grab two rocks and put them in the same circle,
that I'll have two rocks in the circle. Oh look,

(39:41):
I do right. I mean it's not always that simple.
I am oversimplifying for the sick of the conversation, right right, boy?
That is exactly what you need to do, is to
see what is the predictive power. So, if we take
the call we just had, if God is the arbitrare
of what we perceive, does that mean people who hallucinate

(40:04):
God is hallucinating? Or does it mean there's an imperfect
connection to God? How would you go about looking at
these types of things.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
Especially when we and that imperfect connection would be a
physical thing.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
More than likely.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah, something along those lines. We know that the you know,
the brain is neurochemical anyway, so it's just the whole
thing start with. If you're going to have a proposition,
try and disprove it first, or at least try to
attack it so that you can strengthen it before you
put it out there in the universe.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Well, we have another call. We have lots of calls.
I'm going to try to get through them, but we
have another call that where I want to juxtapose how
Alex was answering our questions with how we're going to
answer this question that our caller has. Luke from Canada
is asking how can you atheists be wrong? Turning the
question on us. Okay, so I'm going to make sure

(40:57):
that I understand that that's the right question.

Speaker 3 (40:59):
Luke.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
Could you please confirm that that is the question? How
can we be wrong?

Speaker 3 (41:03):
That's correct?

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Excellent, So I'll kick it over to Jim. Jim, would
what would make you no longer be an atheist?

Speaker 2 (41:14):
Well, I think the question is how do we prove
that our atheism at least appears to be true? And
that is to examine all of the arguments that are
for God. So you're we're looking at the teleological, the onological,
the cosmological arguments, the argument for morals. I'm missing several.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
I think there's a whole bunch, right, and there's just
plain old experience and evidence and all of those sorts
of things. And I will say the question is a
little flawed when it says you're atheists. How can atheists
be wrong? I think what you mean is is what
would convince you that there was a god? Because it
is true that Jim and I are not yet convinced
that there is any that there are any gods. That

(41:55):
can't be a right or wrong thing, like unless I'm lying,
which I'm not right, So I think what you mean
is what would convince us that there was at least
one God? And I agree that all of these things, Jim,
you have to examine, please go on, right.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
So, and I've looked at all those arguments and I
have found them to fail. I have also looked at
the most common definition of God in the Christian world
and maybe the Islamic world as well, and that is
a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnia benevalent, and
I find that that God is logically impossible, and so

(42:29):
I am left with technically I am an agnostic. I
don't necessarily make the negative claim, although I do for
the omni Triomni God that I just mentioned, you know, omnibenevalent,
omnipotent and omniscient, that god cannot logically exist. So I
am an atheist for that god for every other god

(42:49):
that I It's like, these arguments fail, but just because
they fail doesn't mean that there isn't a God who
is not a non Omni god. So that's where I land,
and on that question, I do examine these things, and
I'm here on this show right now as is the
cross Examiner to find somebody who can actually give us

(43:11):
an argument that isn't one of these well known arguments,
and to actually prove it to us. So we are
constantly examining in our cases. And not every atheist does this,
nor do I think every atheist needs to to be
an atheist, So that's how we do it. Does that
make sense?

Speaker 3 (43:27):
Not quite? The question is what would convince you? What
I hear and I understand you say is something convincing.
So what I mean by that is that all the
arguments that you heard weren't convincing. Therefore you weren't convinced.
And what we convince you convincing? You don't know what,

(43:48):
but you haven't heard it yet, I.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
Would go, I would go a little further. I agree
with that to some degree, like I agree that the question,
the proper question, is what would change my mind? I
don't go to where Jim says that an agnostic is
somebody who is not yet convinced, while an atheist is
somebody who is who says there is no God. But
that's a linguistic difference. We're on the same page. I'm

(44:11):
not yet convinced whatever in the category that means. So
what would convince me? My glib answer is what you
just said, Luke, which I don't know. But then I
also add, but all the gods that matter to people
that have been proposed to me would know, and they
would also have the power to convince me. They would
have the power to produce some sort of evidence, create

(44:34):
some sort of experience, or just simply change my mind
or write it on my heart, or however you phrase it.
So I don't know. It would sort of be like
me asking you. What would convince you that there's a
part of the universe where true can equal false. I
don't know what convinced me of that, but if there
is something that can make that happen, hopefully it can

(44:56):
demonstrate that to me. What are your thoughts about that?
I don't know, but all the models of God that
have been presented me would know, and they had sailed
to do so so far. Does that satisfy you? Do
you understand my position?

Speaker 3 (45:08):
I understand your position, but no, I'm not satis size.
I'm sorry. If one where to say, I don know
to the question God exists? When you ask what we
come into that he doesn't exist? You know, like present
in color, you would say, no, that's not enough. I
need more. I need something like like you you presented

(45:29):
with science? What science does? It tries the best to
examine to prove that they are wrong in their position. Right,
That's how scientists too. And this is not something that you,
either of you are doing right now. What you are doing,
that's that's that's the point. Hold on, hold on, Luke, Luke, Luke,
you made a claim there.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
We have to stop. Why do you think we're on this.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
Show to make fun of a feast.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
No, I am here asking for people to give me
evidence of a God. I am open to the possibility
that a God may exist, that somebody can call up
and say, there's this new observation that was made, there's
this new logical argument, there's all of this sort of stuff. Right.
That is why I do this. I don't get paid

(46:15):
for this. I want to come on and say, hey,
to date, there is no Nobel prize for the invention
or discovery of God. Otherwise, if people have figured that
out in a manner to be definitive enough to justify
all the shit we see going on in the world
in the name of God, if people had proven it
to that level, every university on earth would have a

(46:38):
department of God studies. We don't live in that world.
There's no way that you can say that we have
proven that people have definitively proven. The amount of disagreement
we have, the amount of strife we have, and the
amount of just plain old illogic that we suffer from
people who try to who do believe in God for
the wrong reasons demonstrates that nobody has been able to

(47:02):
establish that there is a God. And that is why
I don't believe. But I am here taking calls every
week from people and have a lot of good conversations
where people raise interesting points and I am open to
being convinced. Does that satisfy you?

Speaker 3 (47:16):
So you claim that nobody has the answer to your question?
Is now you claim that nobody has been able to
demonstrate that God exists. But you have people who said
that I've been convinced because it is because of the
demonstiction that was pretended to me. The evidence and we
authented that do not convince you too? Are some some

(47:37):
people will claim that they were convinced because of those
demonstrations that are not convincing to you.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
So that's why some people, some people have a very
low bar, low apostomic bar, and that's fine.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
We do not.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
We want to believe as many sure things as possible
and as you false thanes as possible, and that means
that we have a higher apostomic bar. Like to point
out that in over two thousand years of scientific discovery,
not once have we found God to be the cause
of anything, nor have we found any reason to assume
that God has done anything. We have found naturalistic processes

(48:14):
for things that two thousand years ago were claimed to
be supernatural in origin, and we and sciences prove that
it is not the case. There is simply nothing to
point to a god now Christ.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
And to Luke's point, the people who claim to have
become convinced in my experience and I'm sure your experience, Jim,
disagree with each other in droves in the details that matter.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Yes, absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, I forgot where I was going.
But yeah, basically, and nobody and none of the major
Christian religions agree with each other, none of the major
Islamic religions agree with each other on fundamental points. And
so it doesn't seem like there is a single source

(49:01):
for this god client that that can run consistent.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Yeah, the methodologically, uh, the methodology that people are using
to come up with an affirmation of these claims comes
up with contradictory answers based on which culture the person
comes from, which religion they were taught, all sorts of
things seem to be more determinative of your religious beliefs

(49:27):
rather than a system of determining belief. So how would
you explain that, Luke? How what should convince us that
there is a God? And specifically which god should we
be convinced of.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
So cross take something here. The trouble I'm having here
is that the reason why I say people has been
convinced by the DEMONSTICI is the demonstition of a god,
God any god. But at the right you are correct demonstrated.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
Yeah, but do you agree that. Let's just make it
real simple. Let's say half the world believes in God
A and half the world believes in God Be, and
God A says X is true and God Be says
X is false. Those people and that that is core
to the belief system. If X is true, then God
A is is true. And if X is false, then

(50:17):
God Be is true. Half of those people are wrong
at least right logically speaking. And this is just a hypothetical.
I'm not trying to trap you, but can we agree on.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
That is X a state of AfOR like I'm.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Just as part of a hypothetical, I'm just saying that
the God A and God Be have dynamically opposed claims
about reality that if they are proven to be wrong,
that God does not exist. So if we have two
groups of people agreeing on two different versions of a
God that may contradictively claims about their own existence or
about the universe. Those half of those people are wrong.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
Correct someone For example, bacon. Beacon is one of the
examples I often use as a group says bacon good,
the other says bacon's bad. So you have two gods,
two claims about bacon, and one of those two is incorrect.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Okay, I thank you for that. That's a good example.
It's not at the core of the belief. You could
just be wrong about that one particular aspect. But we
at least understand the concept that people have used a
method to come to a belief about a claim and
they're wrong. And we see that a lot. And given
the number of religions that make contradictory claims, if one
of them is actually correct, they're probably in the minority.

(51:29):
More people are wrong about their religion then the right
religion is about itself. So what's wrong with this picture?
If there were a god that you could discover through evidence, logic,
reasoning and all of that, shouldn't we have come to
some consensus about it? And by now, no, okay, why not?
Real trivial sou does it matter? What is? I assume

(51:51):
you believe in some sort of god?

Speaker 3 (51:52):
Correct? I'm sorry, you're Catholic.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
What, Okay, that's quite all right. So I put then you,
I'm gonna confirm this. You believe in an afterlife?

Speaker 3 (52:04):
Correct?

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Okay, so it's pretty high stakes for you.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
What is pretty high stakes?

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Your belief that that if this God, your God, is
true and your faith in him will be rewarded if
with an afterlife. If you're wrong, that's not a trivial belief.
It's not a trivial error. Correct.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
Yes, what's the alternative?

Speaker 1 (52:23):
The alternatives are some other God is right, You're only
partially right, and there is no afterlife. You're partially right,
but you should be doing evil and if you don't
do evil you will be punished, or there is no God.
There's lots of alternatives, but they're all not trivial alatives.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Maybe it's better for me to believe there is the
If the alternative is nothing like aists proposed, then right, No,
the steak is.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Not high for.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
Me.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
For you, What about the rest of the world.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
I don't to send you a question.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
We have people killing each other in the Middle East.
We have parents in Idaho who are killing their children
because of faith healing. We have people trying to control
our government and force certain beliefs into our kids' heads,
all in the name of a religion that, by your admitting,
could be wrong, but you claim is trivial. I don't
see these things as trivial. I think it's incredibly important.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
It is important for them to have their correct religion.
Being Cafelice, Yes, but.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
You can't prove that the Catholicism is the correct religion.
So why should we become convinced?

Speaker 3 (53:28):
Well to be able to prove that Compelicism is the
correct one, we need to have it to a common
knowledge that we can build from, a common ground that
we can built from to discern which religion is the
correct one? How to discern between the true relition and
the false ess It's another conversation, then the how can
I be wrong? Question?

Speaker 1 (53:48):
Let's have it, Jim, Jim, ask him a question.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
Yeah, So, I'm just going to say that the free
will cop out for why there's evil in the world.
It is a cop out. I mean, it's a nonsensical
because it basically you and this, this is what's going
to happen in this conversation.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
I'm sorry, Jim, I'm gonna interrupt you for just a second.
Did he say free will. I thought he said trivial,
no free will. Oh okay, sorry, go ahead, Yeah, so okay.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
Yeah, so this this happen in this conversation, Luke is
I'm going to argue for an omnipotent God and you're
not going to do that. I want to make that
prediction right now because what I'm going to argue is
that if your God was omnipotent, If your God was omnipotent,
free will is not an issue because your God could
figure out a way without violating free will to prevent

(54:38):
evil because he's omnipotent and omniscient, and he's omnibous, benevolent,
and he wants to. So you by saying free will
is the reason why there's evil in the world is
basically you're saying your God is not omnipotent.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
This is fruceeding. So, Jim I was, I was praying
to agree with you before you went on the rest
of the phrase. I said, Yeah, the omnipens that to
present it is not the omnipotence of the real God.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Yeah, people have got people have gone away because well
hold on, because because atheists like us have pointed out
the problems with the tri omni god. Modern religious philosophers
have moved the goalposts and now call it a maximally
powerful and maximally loving and maximally all of this stuff
to get around this, right, But that.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Doesn't really, that doesn't fix the argument at all.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
Well, it does, because then they can they can take
that argument of can God create a burrito so hot
that even he can't eat it and explain away through
shaking of hands that his maximal power doesn't exceed that.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
I'm not No. My argument is that even a maximally
power God would still be able to prevent evil because
he's also maximally omniscient or maximally imniscient. When everyone phrase that,
actually we'll just use the omnis and there's no logical
possibilities because that's basically what maximum does, right. I'm saying that,

(56:03):
without logical possibilities, that your God has a way to
prevent evil without violating free will, not the maximally god.
No definition of that type of god, omni or maxim
I don't care which those two you use gets out
of this, because you could only think of free will,
and there's a billion other different ways that I can

(56:24):
think of if I spend enough time that you could
do without ever violating free will. That you're arguing for
a lesson maximually powerful god or a lesson omnipotent God.
You're arguing for a god you that you I don't
think you believe in.

Speaker 5 (56:37):
When you think about that, Luke, I'm not sure you
claim that the maximally knowledgeable God doesn't wouldn't allow free
will or without allow suffering in the world.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
That's what you're saying, Jim, right.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
The maximally benevolent, maximally knowledgeable, maximally powerful God does not
exist because evil exists in the world, and your free
will excuse is just that as an excuse, and you're
arguing for a God that is not maximally powerful or
maximumally knowledgeable or maximally benevolent.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
And we could also throw when you haven't demonstrated that
free will exists, But that's a whole other conversation. Yeah,
to break to break down Jim's argument, it's basically saying
all versions of the God we've been presented would have
the capability of creating and designing a universe where this
evil would not happen and it wouldn't violate any sort

(57:31):
of rule he might have about free will. What's your
response there? Okay? So what's where's the logical impossibility? What
is God being restrained by?

Speaker 3 (57:39):
Then the claim that he would be able to do
so has none to be demonstrated. Do we agree?

Speaker 1 (57:46):
Okay? Yes, And we also have not demonstrated that this
God is real either where at We don't know on
both of those questions.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Okay. So if your your claim is that maximally knowledgeable
God cannot allow free will, then.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
No, no, no, your your claim that you're claim to
wrap up the shorthand of free will as we understand it,
Let's let's get this on the table. Is it goes
something along the lines as follows. God doesn't want evil
in the world, but God values free will above all else,
and God knows it is impossible to give humans free
will and prevent them from committing evil. Okay, that's the

(58:30):
summary of it, right that that does a way that
ignores a whole bunch of problems with this is their
free will in heaven. What's your question there, Luke, Do
you have free will in heaven?

Speaker 3 (58:39):
I don't know, okay?

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Do you have free will on earth?

Speaker 3 (58:42):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (58:43):
Okay, so I don't know how you differentiate. So if
you don't have free will in heaven, then God values
something more than free will. If you do have the
free will in heaven, and you also think that no
evil exists in heaven, then there is a world God
can create where you have free will and there is

(59:03):
no evil. So no matter how you cut it, and
again this is why I talk about the models of God.
We have been presented with the model of God I've
been presented with when it comes to this free will
argument is logically inconsistent with the concept of things like heaven.
It's logically inconsistent with Another common argument is if I
gave people free will and I exposed myself to them

(59:25):
to prove that I exist, they would not have free
will because they could not help but worship me and believe,
and they'd be like robots. Well, the story of Satan
and all of his followers that defected from heaven scenes
to disagree with that, et cetera, et cetera, eacheter, there's
mountains of problems with this whole free will thing. Do
you see the problems with the whole free will argument?
Do you see the inconsistency.

Speaker 3 (59:45):
So you to know each what would happen after we
die to no, I do I do not.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
No, I do not.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
I'm taking this from the Catholic belief system that you
said you believe in that there is some sort of afterlife,
which you confirmed that. I assume you believe that there
is some sort of heaven. I think you affirmed that.
And the description I've always been given by all believers
is that there is no evil in heaven. And some
waffle like you as to whether or not you have
free will in heaven. Do you disagree with any of that?

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
The last one I disagree with you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
You waffled. You said you don't know whether there's free will?

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
Oh? Sorry, what does waffle?

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
To waffle? I'm sorry. To waffle means to be like undecided,
go back and forth. I'm not sure. Maybe yes, maybe no.
That's waffling, sorry to be unsure of and maybe change
your mind frequently on so to Basically, they don't know
whether or not there's free will in heaven. Some say yes,
some say no.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Yeah. So the reason why I don't know if there
is free will in heaven is because the absence of time,
and for me, the for minds and in the free will,
time is necessary.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
So nothing. You don't think there's time in heaven. That's
so nothing ever changes, It's just in a single state.

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
It's a belief of a contilious time is not There
is no time as we know it in heaven. Maybe
there is a sequence of events, but no time.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
Jim.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
That sounds like something like an excuse that a priest
would give somebody to get away from this question, doesn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Oh, as a recovering Catholic, I have a problem with
what he's saying as a belief of Catholicism. And I'm
double checking myself as we go, and I've read the
Catechism of the Catholic Church and that's not in there.
But that's not a surprise. So no, I'm not saying

(01:01:41):
I don't know where you get this idea from. I mean,
God is outside of time, certainly, and we may experience
time differently. But yeah, if there is no time, we
don't know how. We don't even know what that means
in terms of science. Certainly timeless and spaceless would mean

(01:02:02):
doesn't exist within this universe. So yeah, I don't know
where you get that. As a Catholic, I hadn't heard it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
But that's that's, you know, putting it back onto Luke. Okay,
so but you agree you don't know whether there's free
will in heaven?

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
So yeah, there reason? Okay, Just and why I say,
do you? Yeah? I get it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
I'm going to sort of skip over that. I think
the concept of being outside of time is a nonsense
that we can't comprehend and as meaningless bs quite frankly
that people give to try to sort of wave away
problems with their logic. But let's just at least ask this.
There either is or is not free will in heaven.
Those are the only two possibilities. Free will exists or
it does not exist. Is that is that true?

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
Hmm? Words up to you to convey the idea of
convectat free will doesn't exist in even't that would be
the answer?

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
So what God doesn't value free will?

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Free will? Right now? The idea of free will that
I tried to convey is using time. Since there is
no time in heaven, then there is no frequent in
heaven the way we perceive it today.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
And Heaven is going to be a forever concept, much
much bigger, longer, more than our time on earth.

Speaker 3 (01:03:13):
Right, however, implied the use of time again, it's a placeholder.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Right, permanent, or whatever you want to say. But my
point is the Bible tends to teach that the earth
is sort of like a doormat that we wipe our
feet on before we go to heaven. And heaven's the
important part that this is a test, or that this
is whatever. So if God doesn't value free will enough
to have it exist in heaven, why does he value

(01:03:40):
it so much here to the point that he thinks
that he should put it in even though it prevents
hims Logically somehow from preventing evil.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
The choice of God has to be free. That's why.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Just restating the question, I'm asking why, why why does
God value it so much in here but not in heaven?
Like your continued choice in heaven should be free, right,
your continued participation. If you grow tired of heaven and
you want it to end, should you be able to
end it tiring?

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
Imply the use of time again? Okay, the trouble is
having here? We are having here? Is the way you
ask a question. Imply time in heaven? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Yes? And as I said, I think a timelessness is
a nonsense comment. It's a nonsense concept. It doesn't make
any sense. If there is no time, then states of
things don't change. I don't perceive anything. God wouldn't perceive
anything if we are talking about time, right, change in
states over time from one frame to the next, something

(01:04:43):
has changed. If nothing ever changes, then there's actually no observation,
there's no emotions, there's no belief. Because you can't think
and be self referentials. It's meaningless to say God is
outside of time. You might as well say God is
true and false at the same time. It just doesn't
make any sense. Can't comprehend it. Does it make any
sense to you, Jim.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
No, I mean we've wondered kind of far off from
the problem of evil that kind of disproves that God exists.
But yeah, to say that it's without time, I mean,
you're getting into it realm that we just have no
idea what the heck is going on with that concept.
We know that space and time came into existence at
the same time I was reading, or at the same moment.

(01:05:24):
We don't even know if words like before time make
any sense, because that before indicates that that time exists
of some kind. It just maybe that it is a
different way to experience time or a different way to
experience events. You're basically just spouting nonsense about heaven and
you're spouting nonsense about heaven that you can't prove. And

(01:05:46):
I don't care at that point, because you can't prove
that heaven exists. You haven't proven your God exists. You
haven't even given it. You know, nothing you said has
come with any kind of proof. And we've been talking
to you for almost minutes now, and.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
Let's give it. Let's give them a chance. Shally, what
convinced you that not only a God exists? But it's
the Catholic version?

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
Oh wow? The existence of God came with the prime
over arguments, but the Catholic Church interpretation of God came
with stories like bacon and the ability to have more
than one wife. And depending on each religion, they have
their own claim about what is good or bad and

(01:06:30):
their mistake they are if it's there's the mistaken about
their kam okay.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
So to summarize that into shorthand, you judged the different
laws and rules and claims, and you found that you
agree with the Catholic claims more than other religions. Is
that a fair summary?

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
It's not a judge.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
It's an observation, an observation that led you at the
conclusion that something's right or wrong, which is judging something right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
Yeah, you have criterias of good and bad things depending
on this religion. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
We tell you you said you said bacon right, that
that people who are arguing over bacon. That's something that
convinced you the Catholic Church was right in some way.

Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
For example. Yeah, bacon is one of those things where
they claim that if you eat bacon you will get sick.
Sickness is the consequence of bad.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
So, but you started with the prime mover and you're
at the Catholic God. How do you get from Well,
assume for the moment that the prime mover argument doesn't
have serious flaws in it. How do you get from
the prime mover to a Catholic to the Catholic version
of the Christian God?

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):
Yeah, so if you have a God, So that's a
continution from the prime mover.

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
Oh no, you don't have a God. You have a
prime mover. You have a prime over. You're claiming it's God.
I want to know how you get there.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
It could be Bart Simpson in his lab creating a
universe out of a computer program. We don't know, but
it's a prime mover.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
Bart Simpsons has a beginning, you know what.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
I'm saying, prime mover right, prime utiver for our local
presentation of the universe.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
Right for me, the end from my inderstnding from the
prime mover. He doesn't have a beginning like it's the
unmoved mover.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
Right without a problem, not a problem with that. How
do you get from prime mover to a god, to
the Catholic God in particular, or.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
To me an agent at all, to a thinking being?
That's that's what we're a point is is any question
about what is the cause of everything? The prime mover is,
We don't know. It's just an assertion that there was
an original cause. That's it. Not that it's an agent,
not that it's a god. It's just some cause. That's
the prime mover. You go from there all the way
to virgin birth right and heaven and all of these

(01:08:41):
other claims. How do you get there?

Speaker 3 (01:08:43):
All? Right? So you have many many steps that Greevy you.
But one of those steps we talked about plus Bacon.
One of the another sets that you can use is
the arguments that uh this God has to interrect me
the word. To to have this kind of knowledge, you
need revolution.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
But these are all claims that you're making, but you're
not supporting any of your claims with either logical argument
or evidence, right, And that's what we're looking for, is
a logical argument. We're assuming that the prime mover arguement
is true, so we're giving you that as a starting point.
And then you said bacon somehow is a step on
the way.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
I don't see how bacon is on there. And then
that the God has to interact with the universe. Okay,
that would be the prime mover thing. So you just
restated the prime mover argument. You haven't said anything yet,
So how do you get from the prime mover to
the Catholic God?

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
I understand. So what's what's happening right now is I
don't know what you consider evidence. That's the reason why
I called you the first time around when I asked
you what we donlean to you or how can you
be proven wrong? I was asking asking you what you
consider good evidence or evidence for God. Since I love
that there is nothing that I can.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
Bring, I understand that our question is first what convinced you,
which I think you're trying to tell us. And then
two is, after we have a conversation and point out
potential flaws, do you still think that that's a good
reason to become convinced? Would you use the same logic
when picking which Wall Street investment firm to put your

(01:10:24):
life savings in? Would you do the same thing when
determining whether it's safe to go down We'll go down
a dark alley with somebody at a night like, are
you using the same methodology? And many times, if not
all times, when we have that conversation, I find that
people who are as thoughtful as you are tend to
use fuzzier logic and looser rules when they want to

(01:10:45):
believe in a god. I'm not saying you want to,
You've concluded that you are, But they don't apply the
same skepticism. They don't have the same demands for evidence
and logic and reasoning that Jim's talking about that they
do in every other aspect in life where shit really matters.
Where do I put my money? Am I going to
be safe? How should I raise my children? Should I
get this vaccine or not? Right, there's lots of ways

(01:11:06):
that people make mistakes. How could you be mistaken in
your belief of God? And why should we believe you
when there's a whole bunch of people out here telling
us essentially the opposite is true, that we shouldn't believe
in the Catholic God. That's go ahead, Jim.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
Sorry, yeah, I say to answer your question, how you
know what is evidence? I just used the dictionary definition
for a whole lot of stuff, and the Dictionary definition
of evidence is the available the available body of facts
or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true
or valid. So what are the facts or information that
you use to go from a prime mover to the

(01:11:43):
Catholic God? What are the facts?

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
All? Right? Jim? So when I said consider evidence, but
could you consider exverence? I am not asking in general evidence.
I'm just asking for the specific case of the Catholic God,
which is a little.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
But I was what I'm asking for, what are the
facts that the prime mover is the Catholic God?

Speaker 3 (01:12:05):
Like I said, there are many things that are between
those two steps.

Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
One of them, what's the biggest what's the biggest one.
We don't have a lot of time. I'm sorry, Luke,
but what's the biggest thing, the biggest reason you believe
in the Catholic God Number one. If you had to
say this is the prime one, Well.

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
It's the amount of truth pain about the statement of
the world. That's the biggest reason why.

Speaker 1 (01:12:26):
Okay, so you know when the Catholic Church apologized for
prosecuting Galileo, it was the year the Hubble telescope was launched.
So I don't want to really go on into it,
but I don't think you can be a member of
the Catholic Church and say that it the church itself
makes makes truth claims. Let's ignore the hiding and raping

(01:12:49):
of children and all that. And I know you're going
to say, those are people and all that stuff, but
those people are theoretically receiving truth better than anybody else
on the planet, and they're not. So Jim, we got
to move on to other callers. Do you have any
anything you wanted to wrap up with?

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
No, I would really look at those those truth claims because,
like I said, I'm recovering Catholic and they fall apart
very very quickly when you go and you look at
history and you go look at things that actually happened.
The basic claim going back to the Bible is problematic.
The New Testament is problematic when you go and actually

(01:13:24):
study it. And I don't mean read it to study it.
I mean go and look at what was happening in
the at the time. Go look at all the things
that were influenced by it or that influenced it, and
just start with the basics. Can you prove it was Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John that wrote those gospels? Because you can't
can't know? Yeah, I would. I would start with something

(01:13:47):
as fundamental as that, and then go and try and
improve those things, and go really examine this because once
you do, you won't be a Catholic for much longer.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
I want to thank you Luke for your time. I
really did appreciate the caller. I think you're an excellent
conversation to participate with, and I'd love for you to
call back again, but we do have to move on.
So thank you very much for your time, and we
will hopefully hear from Luke again. As we ponder that,

(01:14:14):
I'm going to jump right into We've got more calls.
I want to jump in because we were sort of
slowed to start off at this. We have Robert in Minnesota.
Why do we need a reason to believe in God?
Why isn't belief in and of itself sufficient? Robert, I'm
going to cut to the chase on this one. You say,
why isn't belief in and of itself sufficient? I assume
you mean why isn't belief in and of God? A God?

(01:14:37):
Sufficient sufficient for what?

Speaker 6 (01:14:39):
So sufficient for their own purposes.

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
So sufficient for whose purposes? What purposes?

Speaker 6 (01:14:44):
For the believer's purposes. So, most individuals do not come
to face through rationality or reasoning, whether seistic or atheistic.
Most individuals are either raised a certain way, they have
an experience, and being raised or having an.

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
Experience, is that been.

Speaker 4 (01:14:59):
A rash endeavor necessarily?

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
So you agree with that, you're gym nodding as well,
you're an.

Speaker 6 (01:15:05):
Accept Yeah, so it sounds like you guys are in
agreement with that. But maybe you guys are an exception
to that. But what I don't understand is the necessity
of insisting other people have a rational backbone to their beliefs.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
It's really really easy. So, yeah, that's an easy thing
to question. First of all, religion brings up tribalism. Second,
look at what's happened in the United States right now,
and realize that this everything that's happening is an extension
of a belief in God and a belief in the
Bible and starts from there and gets worse, right, And

(01:15:41):
that's a problem for everything. And the tribalism involved is
a problem. So I just I don't trying to We
should believe it as many true things as possible and
as few false things as possible, because otherwise we just
can't make good decisions. Does that make sense?

Speaker 6 (01:15:58):
So I mean that that last part certainly makes sense,
but that's more of an individual choice.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
What what what are we talking about if not individual choices?

Speaker 6 (01:16:08):
Well exactly, Well, I mean individual choices regards to an
individuals believe. So I can't tell somebody to stop believing something.
It's just first of all, it's never going to work.
And second of all, individuals have their own agency and
they ought to have the right to.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
Their where Nobody, nobody, to be clear, nobody on this
show is proposing anything other than what you just said.

Speaker 2 (01:16:26):
Okay, well, that's wonderful to hear.

Speaker 6 (01:16:29):
And individuals who are really just do call into the
show to defend their positions for what they believe is rational.
So I'm not saying you're reaching out to individuals to
harass them. I'm not trying to apply that at all.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
But I do want to go back.

Speaker 6 (01:16:42):
I'm sorry, I'm not similar.

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
Would you Why would you even say that? That makes
I think?

Speaker 1 (01:16:46):
I think. I think he's defending his previous He's just
clarifying his previous statement, agency and all of that sort
of stuff. But I do before you move on, I
do have a question to drive this home. Right, you
characterize this as an individual decision. Are you aware that
Idaha has a law that says if you kill your

(01:17:07):
kid because of your faith, it is not manslaughter or murder.
You are completely innocent.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
I have heard that.

Speaker 6 (01:17:13):
I'm not being able to verify it, but I have
heard it yet.

Speaker 1 (01:17:16):
Okay, go look at the documentary No Greater Law. Go
look up, just google it. Idaho faith Healing Deaths. There
is a graveyard in Canyon County, Ohio. Excuse me, Idaho
with well over six hundred graves in the mass, majority
of which are children. This is because of a long
history I won't get into here that started with Christian

(01:17:37):
scientists in the Nixon administration working in faith healing exemptions
into Walter Mondil's Child Abuse Protection Act back in the seventies,
that Idaho still hasn't done away with that loophole. Do
you know why they haven't done away with that loophole?
And it's the last state to do away with that loophole.

Speaker 6 (01:17:53):
So I understand that this is a religious background, but
that's not what I'm talking about at all.

Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
This is what I'm talking about. So I'm going to
explain it to our listeners. The reason that the law
in Idaho says if you fail to give even the
smallest bit of medical care to your child and that
results in the child's death, that would otherwise without this law,
be considered at least manslaughter, if not murder. The reason
that law says that you are not guilty is because

(01:18:21):
not because of the followers of christ Church, which are
the cultists who are killing their kids in Ohio, say
the law should be that way. But every other Christian
legislator in Idaho is unwilling to do away with that
law because every time it comes out of committee into
their unicameral body to be voted on, because the committee

(01:18:42):
will say, Okay, yeah, we need to get to the floor.
We need to do away with this loophole. Every year
they vote it down, and when interviewed they say, these
are fellow Christians. I'm not going to tell people what
their beliefs should be. So I really do not want
to exaggerate or think make you think I'm exaggerating. Why
this is not just an individual decision. And when you

(01:19:03):
ask why we need a reason to believe in God,
my answer is because they're killing fucking kids in Ohio, Idaho.
Excuse me, Okay, So does that make sense?

Speaker 6 (01:19:11):
You're okay, what you're saying. That line of logic makes sense,
but it has it's completely misrepresenting what I said or
nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
So I want you to take your question. Your question
was why do we need a reason to believe in God?
Isn't belief in and of itself sufficient? The reason you
need to have a belief in God is exactly what
Jim said. It's the same reason you need to have
a firm methodology for whether or not there's a car
coming when you cross the street, or whether there's a
fucking tiger in the tall grass when you decide to

(01:19:39):
go into the tall grass, Because if you act on
erroneous information, you can hurt yourselves and those you love.
That's why you need a reason to believe in anything,
much less something as important as these claims about God.
That makes sense.

Speaker 6 (01:19:53):
You're extrap What you're doing is you're extrapolating things.

Speaker 1 (01:19:56):
Does it make sense? Do you agree with me?

Speaker 3 (01:19:58):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:19:59):
It really you do not agree with me?

Speaker 3 (01:20:01):
It independent you.

Speaker 7 (01:20:02):
No.

Speaker 6 (01:20:03):
I didn't say that. You've got to let me talk them.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
Okay, I'm asking you questions. I'm cross examining you to
get to a point and then you can talk. Do
you agree well that we should believe as many true
things in this few false things, or lest we risk
doing very great harm to ourselves or those we love. Ideally, yes, okay,
go ahead, Okay, So.

Speaker 6 (01:20:23):
Again I am not talking about individuals who are acting
out their belief onto other people. There are plenty of Christians, Muslims.
And let me finish. I heard you take a breath.

Speaker 3 (01:20:32):
Let me finish.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
I am hey, hey, hey, hey, let me make something
clear here. I'm gonna mute you for a second. We
will talk when we want to talk. I was not
about to talk. I actually took a drink, is what
you heard? So you need to hold on and figure
out whose show is whose. We would love to hear
from you. But when somebody calls in with something to saying,
why do we need? Why do we care? Why do
we need a reason to believe in God? And I

(01:20:54):
see what is happening in this world, I find it
kind of ridiculous. So that is why I wanted to
get to that point. And then I wanted to let
you talk, all right, and I'm going to let you talk,
and then I'm sure Jim will have some questions for you.
But please stop with the tone about you telling me
when you can and cannot talk. Now, please continue and
tell me what your actual question is.

Speaker 6 (01:21:14):
So I just want to clarify. Okay, again, I was
interrupted a lot before. That's why I was a little
on edge about being Stop.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
What's the whining about eating interrupting it? Get to your point,
I'm I'm explaining.

Speaker 6 (01:21:25):
You just talked to the guy for forty five minutes. Okay,
So what I'm saying, well, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
A chance, get to your point. Stop with the preambles.

Speaker 3 (01:21:32):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (01:21:33):
Individuals have their beliefs, correct. Individuals act out on their
beliefs correct. Some individuals force their beliefs on other Some
individuals force their beliefs on other people, and at times,
such as things like democracy or equality or egalitarianism, I
am one hundred percent in favor of acting that out
by force if necessary. Okay, if somebody wants to come

(01:21:54):
into the United States and install a Sharia lague dictatorship,
I am one hundred percent in favor of by force
removing that. Okay, the same why.

Speaker 1 (01:22:04):
Why why are you? Why are you in favor of
opposing that?

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
I'm not sure if he's getting to a point, but yeah,
he is.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
But I want to understand why you're I have a
point here. Why are you opposed to a Sharia law dictatorship.

Speaker 6 (01:22:15):
Because it opposes my interests?

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
How do you know that? So the underlying question is
what if they're right? What if that's God what God wants?

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
Then I don't care.

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
That's a good answer.

Speaker 3 (01:22:26):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:28):
What's the difference between Sharia law and Leviticus?

Speaker 3 (01:22:31):
I'm sorry, what's the.

Speaker 2 (01:22:32):
Difference between Sharia law and Leviticus?

Speaker 6 (01:22:34):
Academically they're quite different. In practice they would probably function
someone similar.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
Yeah, sure, so be a little bit more lenient, believe
it or not.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):
So What's so you agree that people our beliefs inform
our actions, and those the beliefs can bad beliefs can
inform bad actions. So maybe I'm I don't understand where
we disagree. Do you not then conclude that it is
in our societal best interests that as many members believe

(01:23:04):
as many true things and as few false things lest
they blow themselves up or drive them fly their planes
into buildings, or start wars in them at least, or
kill their kids in Idaho? Isn't that not something we
should say is a moral good?

Speaker 6 (01:23:16):
Nothing I ever said disagree with that or contradict to them.

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
Your question is why do we need a belief a
reason to believe in God? The reason you need a
believe a reason is to make sure your logic is
not defective, to make sure you're not hearing voices, to
make sure that you are right. If you have no
reason to believe in a god, and you believe without reason,
then the random god you choose believing in may tell

(01:23:41):
you to go blow yourself up, and that's bad. So
at least have a fucking reason.

Speaker 6 (01:23:45):
Okay, So I agree, if you're going to do something
vast you should probably have a reason for it. But
what I'm talking about is not necessarily acting on a
fundamentalist idea of religions from Leviticus or from somebody's interpretation
of Shuria, which is incredibly diverse, some of which is
more palatable than others. However, what I am talking about is,

(01:24:06):
let's say an individual is a deist.

Speaker 3 (01:24:09):
Okay, they're an individual who believes in a God.

Speaker 6 (01:24:11):
But this God doesn't this God doesn't interact with the world.

Speaker 3 (01:24:13):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (01:24:14):
I might have created the universe, might just have existed
with the universe, might be a function of the unie
is we don't really know.

Speaker 3 (01:24:19):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (01:24:20):
There are plenty of Christians, first of all, that pretty
much live out this idea of God. So they might
go to church occasionally they'll say they believe in God,
they'll say they believe Jesus Christ died for theirs. And
there's plenty of Muslims that will pray five times a
day that we're trained from pork and all of these.

Speaker 2 (01:24:35):
So just just to cut you off all this long
just cuts you off in this long list of stuff
that I don't think really does anything. What you're saying
is that it is sometimes okay to believe in things
without evidence. That's what it sounds like to me. You're saying,
I think.

Speaker 6 (01:24:49):
I don't think anybody disagrees with that. I mean, I
do really wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):
I do believing I do.

Speaker 3 (01:24:55):
I do.

Speaker 2 (01:24:55):
I believe that believing in things without good evidence leads
to bad constant believes to bad actions. Actions have consequences.
Bad actions mostly have bad consequences.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
And I'll add to the word. I'll modify it by
saying sufficient evidence rather than good or bad, because that's
very binary. It's just shorthand that people use. But sufficient
sort of means you need to allocate your skepticism or
your demand for evidence to the claim being made in
the potential consequences. If you tell me you had a
tuna fish sandwich for lunch, I'll probably believe you because

(01:25:27):
I know what tuna is. I know that people make sandwiches.
I know that what lunches, and I know that people
eat tuna fish sandwiches at lunch, and the potential consequences
for meat accepting that is true is very low. If
you tell me that you had a tuna fish sandwich
for lunch while you're on a flying saucer talking to God,
we're gonna have a different conversation. So if your whole
reason to get to summarize Gym's point, if your whole

(01:25:49):
reason to call us is to say, if your beliefs
won't affect anybody in society, then who cares whether or
not you've got good reason to believe them. I probably agree.

Speaker 6 (01:25:57):
With you, Okay, So what I was saying is individ
And again I agree with pretty much everything you just
said there.

Speaker 3 (01:26:03):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:26:03):
Now I believe.

Speaker 6 (01:26:04):
Things without evidence. So I believe, for example, that the
Mona Lisa is beautiful. There's no evidence for that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:11):
Yes, you do have evidence for that. That's kind of boring,
quite frankly.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
Yeah, that really, I mean a philosophy dedicated to uh, beauty,
questions of beauty and esoteric things like that. Right, you
got that.

Speaker 6 (01:26:27):
You you have to There is no such thing as
beauty necessarily correct like outside it.

Speaker 1 (01:26:33):
You were trying to to to limit us into one
definition of beauty. If we're saying beauty is a subjective
opinion about something, then beauty exists. The concept of beauty exists.
It's the same people who say you have no evidence
of love. Yes I do. I've experienced the sensation I
feel love, I am loved, I love other people. Just

(01:26:53):
because it's a concept, it doesn't mean you can't have
evidence for it. And your sensations that you associate with
things that you find pleasing because of the way they
appear or sound or whatever, that's evidence that it is
beautiful within the common definition of beauty. So try something
else other than that, right, Okay?

Speaker 6 (01:27:12):
Is that is no different than somebody saying I have
an spiritual experience because of how it makes me feel.

Speaker 1 (01:27:17):
Okay, I agree, Well, we don't disagree on that. People
will use spiritual to mean that. I think when you
ask them what spiritual means, they get very, very very
different answers from a lot of people around the world.
But people will definitely go into a concert and have
feelings and say I had a spiritual spiritual experience. But

(01:27:37):
you know what, unless that spiritual experience leads them to
believe that they need to kill their kids or blow
up buildings or not take vaccines, I don't really give
a shit. I have great feelings too when I go
to concerts or hear good poetry or watch some of
the best movies I've ever seen. I don't call them spiritual,
but they are. I'm emotional, they're meaningful to me. They
make me want to keep living because it's pleasure in

(01:27:59):
my life. So what's what's your what's your overall point?
What argument are you trying to make?

Speaker 6 (01:28:03):
So if you if you would step back and listen
to what I'm saying, I think you would understand it
a little bit better.

Speaker 1 (01:28:07):
Okay, that's the last warning. That's a pontificating dude. Just
tell us what is the argument you're trying to make.

Speaker 6 (01:28:12):
I'm not pontificating.

Speaker 2 (01:28:14):
You are not. Okay, it sure sounds like we're interrupting.

Speaker 6 (01:28:18):
No, you are not.

Speaker 1 (01:28:20):
All right, I'm going to interrupt him one more time.

Speaker 2 (01:28:21):
Bye, bye, interruption.

Speaker 1 (01:28:27):
We've gotten to a point where we were having a
conversation and he got pissed off again, So go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:28:31):
I don't know what we just spent what last fifteen
minutes talking about. Honestly, he either agrees with this mostly
except for something that he couldn't articulate, and I don't
know what it was.

Speaker 1 (01:28:41):
Right, So yeah, I'm kind of a rubber his throad
kind of guy. Like if you want to sit around
in navel gaze about things that don't matter, more power
to you. But most beliefs I've can catalog in my
head inform some actions that could result in good or
bad decisions. Right, I have a belief that I like
doctor Pepper. I also drink too much of it. That's

(01:29:04):
what I've got a belly that's bad for me. Now,
I believe all of those things, but I also believe
that I'm gonna somehow start exercising later. And if that
believes false, I've got a real problem. So I need
to start exercising more. It could be very, very small
stuff like that, but it affects us, and I don't
know how you can look at the world and listen

(01:29:25):
to the stuff that you and I were rattling off
and say, oh, but let's talk about meaningless personal beliefs
as if we disagree with you. I still don't know
what his point was.

Speaker 2 (01:29:35):
No, I have no idea. Okay, so let's let's go
to a caller that we might actually be able to
figure out what the point.

Speaker 1 (01:29:40):
Yeah, let's do that. We've got Watcher two one five
in Pennsylvania. The record of Jesus convinces me and God,
So uh, let's talk. Let's say, Watcher two one five.
I'm just gonna call you a watcher or watch for short?
What record are you talking about?

Speaker 3 (01:29:57):
The Bible Gospels? With gospels?

Speaker 1 (01:29:59):
And okay, so what about the Gospels Testament?

Speaker 8 (01:30:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:30:04):
What about the New Testament? Gospels? Mark, Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John convinces you? You say, in God, I assume
you mean that the Christian the claims about the Christian
God are true. That's what you mean?

Speaker 3 (01:30:14):
Yes, okay?

Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
So what about the gospels? Convince you that God is
that that God is true or is real?

Speaker 8 (01:30:20):
Very simply, it's just the testimony of Christ, what he
did and has wrecked the record of Him in the
world that we observe.

Speaker 1 (01:30:26):
So do you believe everything you read? Or do you
like to know who wrote it and where it came from.

Speaker 3 (01:30:31):
Now?

Speaker 8 (01:30:31):
I don't believe everything I read I read, but there
are a lot of things that I do believe that
I read, Yes, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:30:37):
And when I read something that I'm going to accept
as true or not, I like to know who the
authors are, what they were writing, who their audience was
when it was written, what evidence they had, what evidence
they can point to. Who wrote the Gospels? Let's start
with that. Who wrote the.

Speaker 8 (01:30:54):
Gospels traditionally we have the titles on the titles of
the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Speaker 1 (01:31:02):
But that's not my question. My question is who wrote them?

Speaker 8 (01:31:05):
Does actually I know who? I know that there was
a dictator in the book of Romans, Paul dictated Romans
to a guy called Theopolis. So there's one guy that
we can name who wrote Romans?

Speaker 1 (01:31:16):
Is that the Gospels?

Speaker 8 (01:31:17):
Wait a minute, was it? I might be I might
be actually calling his name wrong. I think it was.
What was that guy's name?

Speaker 1 (01:31:25):
Because you're not talking about the Gospels. My question was
who wrote the Gospels, not who wrote Romans? Who wrote
the Gospels? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Who wrote those.

Speaker 8 (01:31:33):
People who saw Christ in the flesh?

Speaker 1 (01:31:35):
Okay, that's not true, at least none of the books
claimed that to be true. Do we have any original
copies of any part of the Gospels?

Speaker 8 (01:31:44):
Saying, are you saying the Gospels do not claim that
we saw and I witnessed the Christ in the earth.

Speaker 1 (01:31:51):
We are saying that the gospels the Gospels do not
claim that their authors were witnesses to any of the
events described in the Gospel. None of them say I
saw X.

Speaker 2 (01:32:03):
Well more importantly, Luke one one through four specifically, let
me quote it, because I got to right up here
in front of me, because I know you're going here.
Luke one says, many have undertaken to draw up on
an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us,
just as they were hounded down to us from those
who were from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of

(01:32:24):
the word. With this in mind, since I myself have
carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too, decided to
write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so
that you may know the certainly of the things you
have been taught. Luke, the author of Luke, is not
an eyewitness to anything. He's an investigator of everything. That's it. So,

(01:32:49):
of the four that you claim to be eyewitnesses, Luke
specifically said, he's not. So you have three that you
need to prove somehow are actually eyewitnesses and not some
of these accounts that Luke is talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:33:02):
So is that news to you, Watcher? Is that news
to you that the authors of the Gospels never claim
to be eyewitnesses, only talk about other people's claims. And
at least Luke says explicitly he's not an eyewitness. Is
that news to you?

Speaker 8 (01:33:20):
No, that's not news to me. No, not at all.

Speaker 1 (01:33:22):
So you knew that, Okay, I understood. I understood, So
you don't. So the short answer to my first question
of who wrote the Gospels is we don't know. We
don't know who that was, right.

Speaker 8 (01:33:33):
We know certain names that that are that are on
the record. We do know certain names, Yes, we.

Speaker 1 (01:33:40):
The question was do you know who put pen to
paper and wrote the Gospels? And the answer is no,
you don't, And no academic on the planet would even
say that we do. If you go open up a
study Bible. In the introduction to the Gospels, it will
tell you church tradition, says Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
But we know that that's not true. We don't know
who wrote these gospels. Okay, can we agree on that?

Speaker 8 (01:34:02):
I mean, it's not true because we don't.

Speaker 1 (01:34:04):
Have Well, can we agree that we don't know who
wrote the Gospels?

Speaker 8 (01:34:09):
I said who wrote it? Was the eyewitnesses of Christ
in the earth.

Speaker 1 (01:34:13):
Okay, that's we've They've already shown you that that is
not stated or claimed in the Gospels anywhere, and at
least one of the Gospels explicitly, as Jim said with
Luke says, I'm not an eyewitness, so I'm not sure
why you keep coming back to that. All I'm trying
to do is lay some groundwork here. This isn't even
the conversation. I just want a starting point. Do we

(01:34:34):
agree along with all the academics, Christian academics, Islamic academics,
Atheist academics all agree we don't know who wrote the Gospels?
Can we agree with that point one?

Speaker 3 (01:34:44):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:34:44):
Or no?

Speaker 8 (01:34:45):
I don't believe their testimony? No, I don't believe that testimony.

Speaker 1 (01:34:48):
No, you don't believe who's testimony, the author, the people
who print the Bible. Did you go do you have
a teaching Bible at your house? Teaching Bible a Bible
is stud would use when they're studying, like seminary or
other things like that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:03):
Have several Yeah, yes, So.

Speaker 1 (01:35:06):
If we can't even agree that human humanity today does
not know who wrote the Gospels, and I'm not sure
why we should even proceed, because you're not even schooled
enough in your own gospels to have a valid reason
to then conclude that God is real? What is your
what are your thoughts?

Speaker 2 (01:35:23):
Jim, Yeah, I mean we start with Luke, of course,
then we can go to Matthew and Mark. And when
we look at Matthew and Mark and then the originals
that we have, there's somewhere, depending on which biblical expert
you're looking at, somewhere between eighty and ninety percent copy
word for word copy between Mark and Matthew. Matthew appears
to correct Mark in several places. So I think, really,

(01:35:46):
what you have there is one copy that may or
may not be an eyewitness testimony. And even if it was,
I witness testimony that's eyewitness testimony is the least accurate
form of testimony or the least accurate pieces of evidence
you can use. So Okay, maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
I don't think it is because it doesn't read like
first person testimony. Luke is definitely not. And John John

(01:36:10):
just kind of in his own little universe where he
definitely pulls for Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but he also
adds on quite a bit. In fact, most of the
supernatural elements that come into the story of Christ come
from John. The idea that he's a sacrificial lamb comes
from John. We don't see that in Matthew, Mark or
Luke nearly as much as we do John. So yeah,

(01:36:34):
I just have problems with ship.

Speaker 1 (01:36:35):
Like as authorship, we don't know. Okay. So the next
point then is we don't have any originals. Do you
agree with that, Watcher, We don't have any original copies
of any portion of the Gospels. Do you agree with that?

Speaker 8 (01:36:46):
Yeah, I agreed to copies. Copies can be as well.

Speaker 1 (01:36:50):
So and the gospels, the stories of the Gospels started. Yeah, absolutely,
but let me just verify. I want to make sure
we agree on one more thing and then we can
we can start the conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:36:59):
Uh so.

Speaker 1 (01:37:00):
So the Gospel stories, like many of the stories in
the Bible, were started as oral tradition. They were told
from person to person over time, and the earliest we
can date any gospel claims writings is a generation after
Jesus's death, like seventy sixty BCE. So the first time

(01:37:23):
we think that anything was written down, even though we
don't have the originals, is approximately a generation thirty years
after Jesus died. So we don't know who wrote them.
They are anonymous. We don't have any originals, and the
earliest facts we can look at and say, oh, they
were aware of this history, so that they we know
that this had already happened to times. So it was
written around sixty to seventy BCE for the earliest Gospel.

(01:37:47):
All of that, to me creates a mishmash of stuff
that I wouldn't rely on. Why do you rely on
all that stuff? That's the conversation I want to have.

Speaker 8 (01:37:56):
Because God is faithful, Because He's very faithful, and he
demonstrates it every single day.

Speaker 1 (01:38:00):
Wait wait, wait, wait wait, you said you said you
used the Gospels to convince you that there was a God.
But now you're saying, because of God you believe in
the gospels. Which one is it?

Speaker 3 (01:38:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (01:38:10):
I came to know I came as both. I came
to know God through the word of God that was
in the Bible, the testimony of Christ, and then the
demonstration of my daily The fruit of that in my
daily life has been the empirical evidence that I used
to continue to believe.

Speaker 2 (01:38:26):
So what was it gospel? What was it about the
Gospel specifically that convinced you that these stories were true?

Speaker 8 (01:38:33):
Christ's command to love God and to love my neighbor as.

Speaker 1 (01:38:37):
Myself, that that command is something that convinced you, like,
you thought it was a good command, so you thought
it was a it was a true accounting of what happened. Absolutely, Okay,
So you believe anything that you agree with? Is that
what you're saying?

Speaker 8 (01:38:50):
No, No, I'm not saying that that would be very
a problem because I could. There's a lot of things
that I that I might like that are not good.
I've experienced that in my life as well.

Speaker 1 (01:39:02):
So no, I'm saying, okay, you said that you believed
if you believed in the Gospels because Jesus, the character
of Jesus in the Gospels, did something that you agreed
with that you liked.

Speaker 8 (01:39:12):
I wasn't finished. Can I finish my statement?

Speaker 1 (01:39:15):
I just want you to or try to get to
the point. We've been through this about a thousand times,
and our viewers have been through it about a thousand times.
So if you could just like I asked a series
of questions and then I let you explain yourself. And
then I ask a series of questions and then I
let you explain yourself. So you said, because Jesus commanded
us to love, that's why you believe in the Gospels
that the Gospels are true. My point is, so Jesus

(01:39:37):
did something that you agree with, and that is why
you agree with the gospel, that you believe the Gospels
are true. Do I understand you correctly?

Speaker 8 (01:39:45):
Yeah, that'd be fine. I'll go with that. Yeah, I
do agree with it, and I believe it's true.

Speaker 1 (01:39:51):
Yes, And you believe it's true because you agree with it.

Speaker 8 (01:39:54):
Well, not only not just because I agree with it,
but because it's demonstrated in my early life, like between
you and I, Jim and my and cross examiner and
myself is command for me to love Jim and to
love you. I agree with that, and I think that
that's very very helpful and demoicab evidence of the truth

(01:40:14):
of the matter.

Speaker 2 (01:40:15):
Sorry, how does that prove God exists? How does that
prove that the Bible is true?

Speaker 3 (01:40:21):
Well?

Speaker 8 (01:40:21):
Christ, Christ is the proof. Christ is the proof in
the flesh of Christ. If not for the gospels, all
of the eyewitnesses that saw him.

Speaker 1 (01:40:31):
Which eyewitnesses, which name them?

Speaker 3 (01:40:34):
Who?

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
Where? How do we know that they're real?

Speaker 8 (01:40:36):
We don't got all. We don't got all the names.
We don't got all. Paul was one of them, but
we don't have.

Speaker 1 (01:40:41):
A Paul never met Us.

Speaker 2 (01:40:45):
Sorry, you go ahead, we said exactly Jim.

Speaker 1 (01:40:48):
Paul never met Jesus. Go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:40:50):
Paul never met the living Jesus. Paul had a vision.
That was all he had, and then he took that
vision and he went to supposedly to Peter and the Apostles.
They said, yeah, we don't disagree with anything you say.
It's what Paul climbs. Right, Paul never saw Jesus. He's
not a witness to Jesus. He is a witness to best,
He's a witness to a hallucination.

Speaker 3 (01:41:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:41:11):
So no, so you don't have witnesses you have at best.
If I still man your argument, you have three witnesses, Mark,
Matthew and John. Mark, Matthew and John give us three
completely different stories that, in many cases cannot be reconciled.
So how does agreeing with something prove that your God exists?

(01:41:34):
And you can't use eyewitnesses because you can't point to
any that are worth anything.

Speaker 8 (01:41:39):
Paul is an eyewitness.

Speaker 1 (01:41:45):
Paul is an eye hold on, hold on, hold on,
hold on watcher. Paul is an eyewitness to what what
did he see? Sense? Smell?

Speaker 8 (01:41:53):
Here, It's in the record, it's in acts. He told
you exactly what he saw, did.

Speaker 1 (01:41:58):
He But you're bringing it up as if you're making
a point. What did he witness? What's the relevance of
this claim? What did he witness?

Speaker 8 (01:42:05):
And everything that's in the record is what he witnessed.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
You can go read it, Okay, So you don't know,
thank you any other comments you want to make, Jim.

Speaker 2 (01:42:14):
Yeah, So then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against
the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priests
and asked for letters. He had a vision, he did
not experience. He was not an eyewitness to the life
of Christ. Everything he did was after Christ's death, so
he cannot be an eyewitness to that. He could only
be an eyewitness. I mean, how do you not know this?

(01:42:36):
You claim to know the Bible, you should know this.
And I don't think you knew that Luke actually said
that he's not an eyewitness, or you wouldn't be saying,
as so many Christians do, that their four eyewitnesses Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John. And I think that's what you meant until
I read Luke wan, because I don't think most Christians
have read Luke want right, So again, you just haven't
given us anyway to get from I read something I

(01:42:58):
agree with to a God, much less believing that the
entire Bible is true or the entire Gospel Gospel is true.

Speaker 8 (01:43:06):
Is a vision? Jim?

Speaker 1 (01:43:09):
Could you could.

Speaker 3 (01:43:11):
You do that?

Speaker 1 (01:43:12):
Hold on, I didn't hear him. Could you repeat that? Watcher?

Speaker 8 (01:43:14):
I ask you, Jim, what is a vision something you see?

Speaker 1 (01:43:19):
Yeah? So people have interpreted Paul differently, but no no
Christian on the planet that has studied the Bible would
say that Paul met the living Jesus. Most people will
say he had a vision of Jesus from heaven or
other people will say he had a hallucination, something happened

(01:43:41):
in his mind where he came to some sort of understanding.
But it is not an eyewitness, right. He didn't see
Jesus perform miracles. He didn't choose, see Jesus be resurrected,
all the things that every other Christian cites as things
that prove that Jesus was divine. He didn't any of that.
Do you understand that you saw.

Speaker 3 (01:44:04):
It?

Speaker 1 (01:44:06):
It's as if he woke up one day and said,
I just had a dream about Jesus. That's the level
of witnessing we're talking about. Do you understand that that's
like everybody agrees on this. That's what Paul says.

Speaker 8 (01:44:18):
If you go read it, that's the testimony. The testimony
is very explicit about what happened to Paul.

Speaker 2 (01:44:23):
Yes, it is. Actually as he as he journeyed, he
came near Dabascus, and suddenly a light shone around him
from heaven, and he fell to the ground and heard
a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you
persecuting me? And he said, who are you? Lord? The
Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It
is hard for you to kick against the goads. So
he trembling and aston and says, Lord, what do you

(01:44:44):
want me to do? So that is exactly what he had.
He had a vision of somebody claiming to be Jesus
who he is persecuting, and that's it. He doesn't get instruction, right, You.

Speaker 8 (01:44:58):
Don't, right, simple as that right? What I believe his testimony,
and you do not. You think it's you think it's
I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:45:05):
Know, it's well, I don't because I don't. It's just
at best, the Bible's historical thing. You know what you
don't get to Paul as an eyewitness to Jesus Christ
and his life and the things that he did. From uh,
where are we in here? At nine one?

Speaker 1 (01:45:23):
Through going back to the question were going back to
the watchers question. I can believe Paul's testimony without accepting
that there is in fact a God.

Speaker 8 (01:45:34):
Absolutely, Paul didn't testify that he had uh, what do
you call it? A what do you call hallucination? He
didn't testify and he had hallucination? Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:45:43):
So you don't believe that.

Speaker 2 (01:45:44):
I believe that.

Speaker 1 (01:45:46):
Okay, So do you believe everybody that claims that they
spoke to God?

Speaker 8 (01:45:50):
Again?

Speaker 1 (01:45:51):
Do you believe everyone who claims they spoke to God?

Speaker 8 (01:45:54):
Pretty much? Yeah? If they say they spoke to God,
that's that would be prepper and that happens every day
all over.

Speaker 3 (01:46:00):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:46:01):
So you believe with Muslims that they spoke to God, yeah,
and that that that God told them to do something
harmful to you? And you believe Christians who spoke to
God and blow up abortion clinics. And you believe that
evangelists who go on TV and tell you to give
them their your money, that they spoke to God.

Speaker 8 (01:46:22):
No, you know, a tree by its fruits. That's what
the well, you.

Speaker 1 (01:46:26):
Don't believe everybody that.

Speaker 8 (01:46:28):
I would not they say that they spoke to God,
I would definitely believe that whether or not. Now, if
there's God, if they're telling me that God told them
to harm you or I, or that they did some
heinous thing against God's law, No, I don't believe that
they that they heard from God. I believe they following
their own lives or the devil.

Speaker 2 (01:46:46):
And would you say that somebody who commanded another person
to harm one of their children and then at the
last second go psych I didn't want you to do that,
would you consider that harmful or good?

Speaker 3 (01:46:57):
It was good?

Speaker 8 (01:46:58):
Absolutely good, because okay, somebody.

Speaker 1 (01:47:02):
Who will all right, here's let's yeah, let's I think
we figured out where we disagree. And I think I think,
thank you very much Watcher for your time. We're at
our time. I think where Jim, I don't know about you,
but I think where we disagree is I think that
Watcher was probably raised or discovered Christianity and he is

(01:47:24):
desperately looking for reasons to continue to believe it, because
there's no way you go from I studied the Gospels
to UH to concluding that there's definitely a God if
you really know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:47:37):
Yeah, I think if you study the gospels, not just
read them, I mean, we could have gone into the
Last Supper and when that is according to which gospels
Because you can't really reconcile this without making some really
really outrageous claims about timekeeping and other things like that.

(01:47:57):
There's just so much wrong with that. But just the
fact that I really believe that he did not know
that Luke specifically says that Luke is not an eyewitness,
that he investigated the clans.

Speaker 1 (01:48:09):
Yeah, and that's what leads me to that conclusion. When
when somebody calls up and says so confidently in this
like I believe God and the Gospels are true, and
God says love everybody, and then you start asking these
questions which listeners. That's why we do it. We ask
a series of questions before we let you talk, because
we want to figure out what you do and do

(01:48:29):
and agree with and what you do and don't know.
When you reveal that you don't know that the Gospels
never claim to be eyewitnesses, and one of them says
that they aren't. When you don't know that Paul never
met the living Jesus. You need to go read your Bible.
I will encourage you to go read it and study
it because the people who have been teaching you your
Christianity are probably as ignorant as you are. And I

(01:48:51):
don't mean that in a negative sense. I am ignorant
about a lot of things. Jim's ignorant about a lot
of things. Our producer Greg is ignorant almost everything. I think. Right. Yeah,
So when you go and you actually read the Bible
and study its history, study where it comes from, you

(01:49:12):
will realize, like a lot of people do who go
to seminary school, that there's not a lot of there there.
That you are being taught things as being true, and
it all becomes self referential. If I told you that
Dumbledore said to love everyone and free the house elves,
you wouldn't say that Dumbledore is true and exists. Yet
you do that with Jesus because people around you are

(01:49:34):
saying that it's true. So I would encourage you to
can do and read reading.

Speaker 2 (01:49:38):
Yeah, take the four Gospels and put on a timeline
all the events that happen and then next to each other,
and take a look at how they represent all of
these events because they don't all line up. And what
you're going to realize is that Mark ends with the
women ran away, the Great Commission, Great Commissions, Mark, right, Yeah,

(01:49:59):
is an afterthought, right, it was added, But how do
you reconcile the Great Commission with and they ran away
and didn't say anything to anybody? So how do you
get any of these stories if they said nothing to nobody?
Clearly they talk to somebody, right, And look at where
Matthew appears to talk to Mark, and then figure it

(01:50:20):
out that way. It's really really easy, and it's absolutely
astonishing when you begin to realize that what you think
is Christ's story is not supported by any single story,
and that the four stories you have don't actually line
up to give you the story you think you know.
And it at least change your beliefs on what Jesus
said and did and when he said it and did it,

(01:50:42):
because he didn't just say love everybody either, because he
also said I came to bring what strife.

Speaker 1 (01:50:49):
Yeah, not a jot or tittle of the law that
tells us to enslave people into stone women to death.
Not a jot or tittle of that shall change under
Jesus until all has come to pass.

Speaker 2 (01:51:00):
And if you think God isn't the author of confusion,
use the Bible to figure out what you can eat.

Speaker 1 (01:51:06):
Going back to who is it Alex with the bacon
or no, that was Luke, Luke and the bacon. When
you first started talking about bacon, I thought he was
talking about Francis Bacon. I'm like, I haven't read Francis. Well, Jim,
I wanted to thank you. I know we had one
other call. I'm sorry we didn't have time to get you.
This went ran long. We had some long calls in there.

(01:51:26):
I did want to thank our back up for helping
out tonight. Do we have Ben on the line here? Hello?

Speaker 2 (01:51:34):
Ben?

Speaker 3 (01:51:35):
Hey, how's it going?

Speaker 2 (01:51:36):
Guys?

Speaker 1 (01:51:36):
Hey Ben, Hey, the least ignorant of us all. How
are you doing.

Speaker 7 (01:51:41):
I've just been enjoying the whacking and crazy fun times
on some of these calls.

Speaker 1 (01:51:46):
Oh my goodness, what's your thoughts on there? Do you
have any any notes?

Speaker 3 (01:51:51):
Oh?

Speaker 7 (01:51:51):
Sure, Just like the last one. It always perplexes me,
the shifting of what proof is. Oh, the proof is
in the Gospels, but the Guy gospels are approved by
God and the actually it's the proof is is.

Speaker 3 (01:52:05):
What the teachings of God.

Speaker 7 (01:52:07):
But the teachings can only be true because they're they're
reinforced by the Gospels being true, and then ultimately came
down to like, well, I feel like those are correct,
so that must mean that they're an actual source of truth.
But I'm only believing that because of what I heard
from the Bible in the first place. It just circof
is in the putting, right, Oh sure, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:52:28):
That's the that's the part of the original copy we
don't have is the recipe for the pudding.

Speaker 7 (01:52:32):
Dammit, that didn't Well, you can't have any putting if
you don't eat your meat, so that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:52:38):
Very good point. Well, I really want to thank you, Ben.
For those who don't know, we have a backup host
in case something goes wrong technically, So thank you very
much for being here, and thanks as always to Jim,
who is knowledge of these sorts of things far as
outstrips my own.

Speaker 3 (01:52:54):
You.

Speaker 1 (01:52:54):
You made a lot of great points tonight that I
think I wouldness. I really appreciate you being here.

Speaker 2 (01:52:58):
Yeah, it was fun, and you made some points to
that I hadn't thought of, so oh great.

Speaker 3 (01:53:02):
That good.

Speaker 1 (01:53:03):
That rarely happens. All right, well it happens war you think, Well,
I guess we the show. Will see you next week. Everybody,
We're here at Sundays at four thirty pm Central Time.
Join us now in the after show. I know I'll
be here, maybe some other people will be here on
our discord. And thanks again for everybody showing up. And UH,

(01:53:25):
be careful out there. Believe, believe in the things you
have evidence for. Bye bye, glad to start already

Speaker 3 (01:53:37):
Stop