The Atheist Experience 29.33 with Forrest Valkai and Friends

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, As I was on the bat cruise with the
ACA yesterday, I got to thinking about bats in the Bible.
Did you know that the Bible classifies bats as birds
or foul depending on your translation. Leviticus and Deuteronomy put
them right next to eagles and sparrows. That's ridiculous, right, Well,
for the time, it's not that ridiculous. They didn't know

(00:23):
the difference between sparrows, eagles, and bats. But we know
that bats are mammals. They have fur, they nurse their young,
They have more in common with us than any sparrow.
But I think this is more than just some sort
of trivial taxonomic trip up. I think it's a sign
of a deeper problem with the Bible.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
If the Bible.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Can't be trusted to properly classify a simple bat, then
why should it be trusted to answer the broader, deeper
questions of morals, laws, and the meaning of everything. If
you think you know call us as the show starts.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Now, Welcome one and all. Today is August seventeenth, in
the year of our dark Lord, twenty twenty five. I'm
your host, Forrest Falci, and I am joined right now
by secular Rarity and the cross Examiner and Exammeter Examiner.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
That's my name, and.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Later on today I will be joined by j Mike
and Objectively Dan. We've got five whole hosts ready for
you to talk about whatever gods you do or don't
believe in. This is the Atheist Experience, a product of
the Atheist Community of Boston, and today the only time
this year we do this, we are live at the

(01:45):
Free Thought Library in front of a live studio audience.
Well they're great now you see that one over there
is my favorite? Which one the one right there in
the Cities? No?

Speaker 1 (01:57):
No, the other one?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
No, no, no, they know, they know. Before we get started,
a couple of things I want to say. The first
thing that I have to say is that the Atheist
Community of Atheists Experience is a product of the Atheist
Community of Boston, which is a five oh one c
three nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of atheism, critical thinking,
secular humanism, and the separation of religion and government. The
second thing that I want to say is that if

(02:19):
you are watching this and you're a theist or a creationist,
if you believe in gods or demons or angels, if
you don't believe in evolution or the age or shape
of the earth. If you have a problem with people
like us that don't believe in these fundamental things, that
aren't a fan of Jesus or the Bible, this is
your chance to have serious conversations with people who disagree

(02:43):
with you. We live in a toxic internet culture where
everybody loves screaming at everybody, and I'm not saying that
isn't going to happen, but I am saying that that's
not the point. Point is to give you an opportunity
to talk to people like us, and for us to
get to talk to people like you, and for our
lives to be enriched together. So if you are one
of those people, if you have a god or a

(03:03):
gods that you believe in and you want to talk
about it with some people who don't believe, this is
your chance. Call that number on the bottom of the screen,
or use the weblink there on the bottom of screen
as well, calling over them internets if you don't want
to use up all your minutes or you're calling from
another country or anything like that. Before we get started,
how are you okay? Good? I'm good?

Speaker 1 (03:21):
How are you I'm pretty good. I'm excited to be here.
This is my first time at the studio and on
the bat cruise and meeting everybody, and it's just so
much more than I thought it would be. I'm really
happy I came.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
How about you, guys, I'm excited I was here.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
Last year we did this, it was it was a
super super great time. Then an even better time this time.
The boat work, the bats worked.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
They also came out.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
You know, that's one of the things about dealing with
live animals in your experience, like you just kind of
got to deal with whatever the animals want to do.
It's like that bats don't want to come out tonight.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
It's like, all right, cool, But any actor worth their
assault will say, never worked with.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
But this time it worked out really well. It was
like a dream. It was magically Yeah, we cruised up
and down the river whatever it's got a name. We
saw a great many bats, and more importantly, we got
to meet a great many people. We had so many
folks come out from all over the country and a
couple from outside of the country as well, just to
come over and hang out with us, get to meet us,

(04:21):
get to know us, take pictures and just chat. And
that's the best part about events like this and communities
like this. I've said before and I'll say again, the
thing that the atheist community as a whole is lacking
the most is the community aspect. And that's why organizations
like the Atheist Community of Austin are so incredibly important,
because people need a place to go to know that

(04:42):
they're not crazy and they're not alone. When you leave religion,
you have all the weight of all that trauma and
all that baggage upon your shoulders by yourself. You've lost
your family, you've lost your community, you've lost your church,
you've lost your friends, You've lost all of these things potentially,
and that could be really scary and really problematic and
really harmful and really hurtful and really freaking difficult to

(05:03):
deal with. And that's why this community is here for
you out there who are going through these things, who
have questions, who are deconstructing, who are doubting, who just
want to know whether or not atheists, or just angry
people who want to sleep in on a Sunday, or
if we actually have something interesting to say. For all
of you, you are welcome here. This is an open

(05:24):
and inclusive environment. As long as you're not a dick,
you're welcome to come hang out with us, and if
you are, you're well fome to call in the show
and make some content for you.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yes, we can't both be true. Can't we be angry
people who just want to sleep in but also nice
to other people?

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Say we were? I'm saying we're not just that. Okay,
we've gotten a.

Speaker 5 (05:41):
Little hot over the weekend. You know, honestly I agree
with you.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
For us, you know, we we love to have that
opportunity where people you know, hash out nuanced, difficult, you know, conversations.
We get to we get to really dig in and
learn from each other.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
But look, I'm just going to let you know.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
You know, if you want to make me look like
an idiot, I mean, now's a good time. Gotcha's you know?
I mean, what am I gonna do? I'm just some dipshit?

Speaker 5 (06:09):
You know?

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Come on, show me, show me how smart and cool
you are and why your fundamental, ontological, presuppositional bullshit is whatever.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Come on, we can I prove it. You've got it.
Really is like the biggest opportunity, and that's the amount
of people that come into my comment sections on all
platforms to tell me how easily they could destroy me
in a debate versus the amount of people that actually
call into any of the shows, that it's a ridiculous idea.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Do you ever respond with like, hey, I'll be live
at the staate and time.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Literally, it is the most common thing that I put
in my office sections. It's just hey, I host channel
shows on this platform and this platform. These are my
next three shows. When can I expect your call cricket?
And it never comes every time. And the thing is that,
like I hope that the people out there watching understand
is that we don't prepare for this. We prepared by
showing up. You call in, we get a thing on

(06:59):
the screen and says, this guy is calling in. This
is what they want to talk about week click talk
and that's the whole thing. So you can do all
the prep work you want, and we got to take
it on as it is. You know, this is the
best chance you could ever have to prove God to
three people who don't believe in it and the thousands
of people that watch this show. Think of all the
souls you could say, if only you could show how silly,

(07:20):
and you don't have to make us try to make
us look silly ridiculous. We are silly, ridiculous, but you
could also make us look like we're bad atheists. And
that's the key think.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
I mean, guys, you don't think they're scared, is it?
Do you think they're afraid? I think they're just I'm
just scared.

Speaker 5 (07:35):
Shaking in their boots and their basements.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
I would want them to think about it like we're
at the church fair and we're sitting in the dunking booth.
But you get to throw balls for free, and bring
any size ball you want. Just step up, take your shot,
and we'll see if you can score a bulls eye.

Speaker 5 (07:53):
So you have a quick disclaimer, please do not throw.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
I mean there's a wall titioning us here. That's right,
we are for saying. So bring your balls to the
atheist experience. All that number on the bottom of the screen.
Put your balls on the lock your balls on the loft.
It's time to put your balls where your mouth glass
does have this conversation with your giant balls. Yes, and
let's start by hearing about the balls of our first caller,

(08:20):
who is Ulric pronouns he and him calling in all
the way from Mexican Mexico, who says that atheism is
based on fallacious reasoning. I already have questions about those words.
But let's see where it goes. Uh Rick, you are
on a the atheist experience with not just forest and
not just secularity, but also, most importantly with the cross examiner. Right,

(08:44):
bad day, man? Hey, you heres me neither?

Speaker 1 (08:50):
Hell yeah, yeah, why don't you tell us what our
fallacious reasoning is?

Speaker 2 (08:56):
What you got for us?

Speaker 6 (08:57):
Yeah, it's all based on chusy observation of now and
totally ignoring old experiences of humanity for the last thousands
of years.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Okay, that's just so you know real quick. That's not.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
All right, Alric, I just I just want to stop,
because I think what you're getting at there's a deeper
discussion that we can have that's worthwhile. But the way
you're already starting off is silly. That's not fallacious what
you just talked about. Okay, it's not a fallacy in
the formal, logical, syllogistic sense. So let's just let's just
have normal conversation. You say, hey, guys, your atheism doesn't

(09:33):
account for all the experiences that people have had over
the years. Okay, fine, let's talk about that, l Rick.
My response and then I'll let you go back to it.
My response is yeah, man, but personal experiences is not
a good way to come to a conclusion.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Okay, So now let's have the com and I have
a have one extra point is most people actually don't
discount those experiences. We do account for them, and we've
assessed them and we have found them to be wanting.
So saying we don't account for them or don't realize them,
I think is a bit of a straw man.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Are you literally turning pages in a scrip? I just
want to ask real quick, I swear I just thought
I heard pages turn. It's fine if you are ulric,
but like if you got found out that fucking quick, bro,
I'm not sure.

Speaker 5 (10:22):
Sorry, please go ahead read the next book.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
What do you think?

Speaker 6 (10:25):
Respond?

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yes, of course, it just sounded like paper. And that's
very funny.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
It's just feeding his parrot.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Okay, come on, be just the reason to have paper?

Speaker 6 (10:38):
Yeah yeah, yeah, right, that's all reason of paper. So
and I brought my ball so you'll call me silly
and by talking about again, like in every call, about genitals.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Why is that? Thank god? Thank god? All right, start with.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
All Rick, let's life starts with Yes, let's let's just
let's not go.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Down this route. Let's not worry about that. We're going
to toss it back to you.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah, what do you think about what myself and cross
examiner just said about this whole atheism is fallacious thing?

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Let's do that. Yeah, well, I think that.

Speaker 6 (11:13):
You'll start with balls and stuff that shows you a
little that's always so base, so low.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
If you don't address the question, we're gonna have a
lot of balls in the air here and we won't know,
we won't know what to focus on.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Or I assure you, I would love to talk about
genitals for the rest of this call, but that's not
the point, and that's not what we're here for. You
said that atheism is fallacious or based on fallacious reasoning
because we don't account for all the lived experiences of
all these religious people. Elliott and Graham just very succinctly,
he told you, why, that's a bit silly. We would

(11:44):
like to know now your response. Were you using the
word fallacious colloquially and you don't actually mean that literally?
Do you understand that we do take into account all
these lived experiences, we just don't take them very seriously
because they're not good enough. Or do you think that
we're missing something still what.

Speaker 6 (12:01):
You call pre superords, Like you take the position before
pre suppositions, we have experienced God before. How should we
not how should we not say take that and go
further with that in our investigation of how the world works?

Speaker 2 (12:16):
So I would get I would ask you, I would
ask you Uric, the exact same question. What about all
of the experiences of other deities that you don't believe in,
or monsters that you don't believe in, like dragons and
Bigfoot and aliens and stuff, or all the other possible
ghosts and brownies and leprechauns and all these things that

(12:38):
all sorts of people believe in that you don't. Do
you think you're missing something by not taking all of
their anecdotal evidence seriously? Or do you think that, at
the end of the day, what you actually need to
believe in a thing is real serious evidence unless it's God.

Speaker 6 (12:53):
I'm taking them more seriously than you'll become.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Okay, that's a shit response. Let's hear let's hear him out,
how are you taking this more seriously than me? I
want to hear that.

Speaker 6 (13:03):
Because I think that if somebody tells me like a
ghost appeared before me, I really believe that a spirit
appeared before them.

Speaker 5 (13:11):
You though, you're just right, So you're just you're regullible.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
You're right, You're just accepting it based on the first
thing that somebody tells you. That is not that is
not adequately taking their experience into account. In fact, you
are being not only disingenuous, but you are being rude
to them.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
And their experience.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
If Forest comes up and tells me that he just
got abducted by aliens, and I just go, yeah, Man,
live your fucking life thinking that aliens are probing your
butthole every other Sunday, that is being a shitty person
to Forest.

Speaker 5 (13:43):
Because that is not the actual reality.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
What I'm not doing, though, What I'm not doing is saying, hey, man, Forest,
you're just crazy. You didn't actually have no I am
legitimately saying, Okay, what is this experience that he had?
Let me try and assess that based on the categories
of experiences that have occurred in life, we know that

(14:07):
things happen just in our minds. We know hallucinations happen.
How do I know Forrest wasn't having a weird hallucination?
You know, like if you if you have a if
you have a vitamin B deficiency for too long, you
can just start seeing all kinds of crazy shit. Man, Like,
just accepting people at their word for these types of

(14:27):
experiences is not is not taking their their experiences seriously.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
In fact, it's the exact opposite.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
You're just letting them live their lives in this state
without ever one saying to them. A man, you might
want to be careful that stove is hot, Like, that's
not cool?

Speaker 1 (14:42):
Dude, what do you think about that?

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Oldrick?

Speaker 6 (14:44):
Why am I? Why am I rude? And why do
have to talk about buttholes again? Why can't you have
a level of time?

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Because, Olrick, we are adults who are humans, and we
enjoy a little bit of humor like everybody else. So
what do you think about seculararity response? Rather than clutching
your pearls for the eightieth time on this call, can
you just respond to his point that buying in instantly
in a gullible way, just accepting blindly anybody anything that

(15:11):
anybody tells you about ghosts and goblins, as you said,
is a disservice to that person. How do you can
you please respond to his point?

Speaker 6 (15:20):
I never said I stept blindly what they tell me,
I say, I depressed it differently.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Well, really, were we all in the same goal?

Speaker 5 (15:27):
He literally said he believed I.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Believe them here the first Yeah, that's literally what you said.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Proudly what you said?

Speaker 1 (15:33):
We said audience, Yeah, yeah, yeah, they agree.

Speaker 5 (15:36):
Okay, I mean, if you don't, look, we all heard it.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
If you don't stand by that anymore, that's fine.

Speaker 6 (15:41):
Off again, So you need the audience to agree you
feel better about yourself.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
No, I pulled them. I gathered more data. I gathered
more data. The three of us heard something, but we're
here in a studio with bright lights, and maybe we
didn't remember correctly. So I looked at to them, as
do I remember that correctly? And they said, yes, that's
what you gotta one. You can go rewind to the tape.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
But I gotta wonder if you engage with other people
in your life I think, shut up, I got you
on the fucking mute. I gotta wonder if you engage
with other people like this in your life. Man, it's
a really really odd way to have conversation and incredibly
difficult to actually communicate and make progress.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Okay, so let's just try it. We'll just try it.

Speaker 5 (16:24):
We'll just like start all the fucking over shit again. Say, hey, oh, Rick,
you're on the atheist experience.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
You think atheists are wrong about things, and the reason
is because we're not adequately addressing the experiences that people
say they have had with supernatural stuff. Well, gosh forrest, Yes, Graham,
I really feel like a good answer to that is
that there's a lot of weird, brainy stuff that happens.

Speaker 5 (16:46):
And you know, because we're all humans.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
We we oftentimes see similar patterns in the world around us.
You guys, do you feel like that fucking accounts.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
For that shit?

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Absolutely?

Speaker 2 (16:56):
And I feel like a great way to check would
be to like and not just assume that a lot
of people believing a thing means that that thing is
probably true.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
Do we have a way of checking? Is there a
method of some sort that we could use?

Speaker 3 (17:08):
I believe they do a census, sia siah something like that. So, hey,
l Rick, after all of that, what do you think
I'm gonna let you back on?

Speaker 2 (17:19):
What do you think here, buddy, look.

Speaker 6 (17:21):
I think you're feeling silly on purpose. Yet the scientific
scientific met only explains to you the natural world.

Speaker 5 (17:28):
What else is the supernatural?

Speaker 6 (17:30):
By definition?

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Can you can you please the SuperNature? Can you please
define what is the meaning of supernatural? And two? Could
you please tell me how you have detected it?

Speaker 6 (17:41):
Okay, number one? Supernatural everything that is not observable in nature?
That's the definition.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Can you define observable so that we're on the same page.
Hold on, hold on, Let's take it one at a time.
Can you please define observable? No, I won't let you
finish because you pulled in a word that's going to
be key to your argument, and I want to make
sure we're on the same page. Can you please define observable?
What does it mean to be able to observe something.

Speaker 6 (18:08):
Scientifically observable? But our methods that we haven't with our senses, seeing, listening,
et cetera.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
What about devices that detect things that we can't? What
about devices that detect things that we cannot detect using
our senses? Do those count?

Speaker 7 (18:24):
Yes?

Speaker 6 (18:24):
Do we like rade your waves and stuff like that?

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Correct?

Speaker 1 (18:27):
It's an honest question. I'm not setting a trap. I
just want to help you define terms so that we
get to the next part of your argument. We know
the scope of what you mean by observable, that's all
I'm asking. So observable means anything that's detectable that we
can measure somehow, right, observe with our senses, build a
machine to detect gravitational waves, whatever it may be that
counts as observable.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Is that correct?

Speaker 6 (18:48):
But I think yes?

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Okay, what is the next part?

Speaker 6 (18:52):
Yes, yes to the threat. Here we go.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
What's the next part?

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Now there's no trap.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
What's the next part?

Speaker 1 (18:57):
No, No, that was that was a question. I'm just asking
you to continue so we now know what you mean
by supernatural. My second question was how have you detected
the supernatural and shown that it exists.

Speaker 6 (19:07):
I've experienced God, for example, I responded to my prayer,
and I think that's not natural because if you just
like talk into the air, you will not get a
respond if there is no person listening to you.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
How do you know he responded to your prayer?

Speaker 6 (19:21):
Because I was lost in a foreign country and I
needed to get out before I would get arrested. And
then he told me follow the blue and then there.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Was a blue line? How did he tell you?

Speaker 6 (19:33):
Follow? How?

Speaker 2 (19:35):
How are you told? Are you told by a letter?

Speaker 1 (19:37):
Was audibly hear a sound?

Speaker 6 (19:40):
They? No? In my mind, appear the blue line in
the moment I was eating, and I might appear the
blue line. And then I go outside and I see
the blue line on the ground and I follow it.
It leaves me right.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Out, just out of curiosity? Did you see this blue line?
Did you see this blue line before this moment as well?

Speaker 6 (20:00):
Unconsciously?

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Maybe? Okay, okay, so is it possible?

Speaker 6 (20:05):
So?

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah, is it possible? H Rick? I'm not saying this
is what happened, But is it possible that what you're
describing is having an idea that you just had this,
that you knew this line existed, and you were in
a moment where you were focusing on like how the
hell do I get out of it? And then you
just a thought popped in your head, Hey, this blue
line's there, and you thought maybe I should go follow it,

(20:26):
and you did and it worked. Do you think maybe
that might might be what happened? You're excluding a supernaturess
looking for next I'm not excluding the supernatural. I asked
you if it is possible that there is another explanation.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
I think there's something we need to clarify because I
took it a different way when he said something so leric.
We just need a clarification here. When you say you
prayed and then you saw a blue line at that point,
do you think the rest of us would have seen
the blue line? Do you think you do? You mean
you noticed a blue line that was already there, like
on the ground, painted or somehow, or on a map
there was a line, or do you mean more in
the mystical sense of the line magically appeared to you,

(21:05):
but other people that were there would not have seen it,
which which meaning do you mean?

Speaker 6 (21:09):
Okay, while I was praying, it apited in my mind
and I went outside and it was really painted.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Ah, okay, so it is it is a physical line
that you just thought of. So that's the same thing. Also,
I want to point out that what you are describing
in a way is an observation. Yeah, which means that
it's it's you know you It wouldn't be supernatural in
that case. I have other questions, but I really want
to get to the bottom of this first, So just

(21:35):
I want to just ask again you have to understand
if real real thing. This is a serious talk. In
my house, I have a hallway that leads away from
my bedroom, and when I walk down that hallway, it's
kind of narrow, and the door often slams behind me
in that bedroom. And it's because of just the air
pressure change as I walk down this hallway and pushes
air away in front of me, kind of makes a
vacuum behind me, sucks that door in. It is possible

(21:57):
that it's a goddamn ghost or a fan, or a demon,
or a leprechaun or some other supernatural thing that is
actually slamming that door behind me. I'm not discounting a
supernatural explanation. I'm not excluding a supernatural explanation. I just
have a natural explanation that is much more likely. So
I'm kind of going with that until I have something

(22:19):
that can disprove that. Do you understand that difference, because
when I said is it possible that there was a
naturalistic way that you could think about this blue line,
you accuse me of deliberately excluding the supernatural, and I didn't.
So do you understand the difference between coming up with
an alternative hypothesis versus outright ruling out anything that I
don't like. Do you get how those are different concepts?

Speaker 6 (22:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Okay, great, good. So then back to the original question.
Then is it possible not saying it is what happened,
but the original question, is it possible that the situation
you were describing, the experience you had was simply having
an idea? You knew that blue line was there, you
saw it before. You may not have thought about it before,
but you had seen it, and now you're in this

(23:04):
situation that's very stressful, and you're thinking, how the hell
do I get out of where I'm at? And then
the idea comes to you, maybe I can follow this
blue line, and you interpret that as an answered prayer,
But what it really was was just your brain being
a brain and coming up with an idea. Is that
a possible explanation for what you experienced?

Speaker 6 (23:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Okay? So now final question, how how did you go
about making the determination that it was not just you
having an idea, which happens to everybody all the time,
every day, several times a day, but instead was divine intervention,
an intercessory moment where a supernatural being interfered with your

(23:44):
mind and caused you to think this thing. How did
you determine that it was that that happened and not
the totally mundane reality of just having a thought pop
into your head as happens all the time.

Speaker 6 (23:56):
For it, number one, because I was praying right up
at time. And number two, that's not random reality. It
happens all the time. You don't get solutions popping into
your mirth.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
Talking about coincidence all Rick, You're you're you're talking about
literal coincidences and just the basics of thinking. Like this
is how it works. If I if I turned to
Cross and I say man like like what did you
have for breakfast? Or like tell me tell me a
story about you know, when you were a child in
school or something like, it just pops into his fucking mind,

(24:29):
almost like magic. That's that's why we're so confused about consciousness.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Well, that's that's really what bothers me, is that you're
saying that, like this, this couldn't have been a coincidence.
I was praying and then this thought came to me.
What you just described, Rick, is thinking Answers just pop
into your mind when you think about them. When you
think about a problem, your mind creates an answer. It
happens every time I've ever thought about a problem, math, science,

(24:57):
you name it. If I'm thinking about the problem, answers
pop into my mind and they're not all good, but
they are all doing the same thing that you just described.
You were focusing on this problem through prayer, through meditation,
through deep contemplation. However, you had your mind fixed on
this problem and then an idea came to you. How
did you determine that it wasn't just the same thing

(25:19):
as when you stare at a math problem and think, hmm,
what could it possible be? Maybe it's this number and
it pops into your mind versus an intercessory being that
came down and fiddled with your brain, Like, how can
you make that distinction?

Speaker 1 (25:32):
I have a question for you leric that maybe, but
frame this conversation because you your first go to answer
was I prayed and then this thing happened. Now, because
it's prayer, I'm agreeing that. Yeah, you're thinking and you've
got an answer that's mundane, no big deal. But let's
imagine you prayed for the fire hydrant to blow up
and then it blew up, right, So what you're to

(25:54):
use that as a proof or an argument for the
existence of God is to confuse correlation with causation. It's
called post hawk ergo propter hawk. After a thing, therefore
because of that thing. Just because you prayed doesn't and
then got an answer, doesn't mean that the prayer caused
the answer. Prayers happen all the time. People pray and
don't go what they want all the time. Ten thousand

(26:18):
kids on this planet die every single day of starvation.
Are you telling me their parents aren't praying for salvation.
So your argument comes down to after a thing, therefore
because of a thing, which which is a point of study.
I agree, it's sort of the beginning of the scientific process. Hey,
is this repeatable? Let's do this again and again. Let's
go look at all the parents praying for their starving kids.

(26:39):
Let's look at the people praying for cancer to go away. Magically,
the prayers to make cancer go away work all the time.
The prayers to grow limbs back never happen. That's kind
of interesting, don't you think So? If we take your
first argument of after prayer, therefore because of prayer, and
we apply it to the broader world, we see that
these things that happen because of prayer are mundane and

(27:00):
the things that would be against everything we know never happen.
So how do you how do you respond to all
of this?

Speaker 6 (27:07):
So, first of all, how do you know it never happens?
To the link scro Beck, I've heard stories that that
actually happened.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Jesus Christ, Eesus Christ.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
Wow, I'm so sorry I did hang on. Wow, I
fucking mute you again, ulric ulric Ulrick. I truly truly
believe you are not a fucking idiot.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
I don't think you are the actual dipshit that you've
been presenting. Okay, I really do believe you are a functional, rational.

Speaker 5 (27:39):
Decently intelligent human being, bro.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
And for some reason you came on here and twice
have been like, yeah.

Speaker 5 (27:47):
Man, I just take people at their word for.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
Whatever bullshit they spout at me, and then go and
be like, nah, man, I don't just believe everything I hear,
Man Gullible's written on the ceiling in the studio.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
You want to come check.

Speaker 5 (27:57):
I mean, come on, man, you are better than this.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
I know you are, and I know you don't accept
things like this in your daily life.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (28:05):
Yes, obviously there are stories of bigfoot of limbs growing back,
of pastors being resurrected after being buried for three days.
But you want to know what, there's a billion other
stories on the other side of that.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Scale that totally outweighs that.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Man with medical records and photographic app.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Oh my god, those stories don't happen exactly.

Speaker 5 (28:30):
It's so weird.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
But like the kid that fell through the ice that
was dead for like twenty minutes or whatever, for some reason,
it happened like back in nineteen seventy eight in some
farm that nobody's really sure what town it was actually in,
and like was it Billy or Timmy or Johnny?

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Does it matter?

Speaker 2 (28:45):
I don't know, fifteen minutes, fenty Fuck it all.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
Come on, Ulric, you don't accept this in your daily life, bro,
And you are desperately trying to hold on to some
of these things because they provide you comfort.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
And I understand that.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
I don't have a problem with people, with people accepting
some things because it makes them feel better.

Speaker 5 (29:05):
Shit, I do the same thing.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
I don't actually know that male puppies will pretend to
be bad at tasks so that female puppies will play
with them longer.

Speaker 5 (29:13):
I don't know that that's true, but I live in
that world.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
I accept that because it makes me happy when I
go to sleep at night.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
Okay, I just think that's.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
Adorable, But look, that doesn't actually have any bearing on
the reality around me. The stuff that you're talking about
harms you. It has the potential to harm other people.
And there's a reason you don't accept this other crap
in your daily life. Man, I know you're better than this,
ol Rick. I know you are, dude, and I'm sorry
I ranted. I just I don't know. I guess maybe

(29:43):
it was the bats, I got rabies or something on you.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Guys, I'll bring you back on.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
I'm sorry for yelling at you, but man, I know
you're fucking better than this, old Rick.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
What are your thoughts, oll Rick?

Speaker 6 (29:53):
How does that harm me?

Speaker 2 (29:55):
You just say, because.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Because it makes you gullible? Okay, it makes you. It
puts you further into the realm of gullibility, and gullibility
is a harmful We are all gullible about certain things.
If I come up to you and say, you know,
I've got this new company I've heard about that is
doing AI predictive text stuff, then it's going to blow
up and if you give me one hundred thousand dollars,

(30:17):
I will invest it for you, and you're going to
get at least a twenty percent annual return. You would
be skeptical of me. You would want things like, hey,
show me financial statements, show me the actual documents that
this company's actually exist, take me to their headquarters. One
hundred grands a lot of money. I would have to
run a huge scam to trick you, because you would
be skeptical of that. You should be that skeptical. I

(30:39):
e question the evidence and come to a reasonable conclusion
about it, about everything. If you believe stories that limbs
grow back, but you explain away why that hasn't resulted
in a Nobel prize, let, what would that look like?
Have you heard of the James River Church? Okay, they
year or two ago said hey, we've had a miracle.

(30:59):
We had a person she lost her toes. We prayed
for her, and the toes have grown back. They didn't
realize the attention they were going to get from the press.
Everybody came in. Somebody set up a website. I pulled
it up now called show me thetoes dot com. All right,
and what happened? Did they show her Did they show
her toes? Right? Because they had a video of her
saying I grew my toes back. But as soon as

(31:20):
the world wide press attention came on them, what did
they say? Oh, well, we want to protect her privacy.
We don't want to show this what would have happened
if it was real? Here are her toes. Here are
the medical records. Here are the doctors that examined her.
Here are the records showing they were amputated before. Here's
an examination that shows that they're here. Now, we are
now going to win a Nobel prize, and we are

(31:40):
going to open the church study of religion and God
at least as far as amputation repairs in every single
university around the world. There will be a whole new
scientific field of study here, right, How is this happening?
That's not what happened. They just said, oh, well, she
doesn't really want to share. So what's more likely here? Right?
What's more likely God grew back the toes or people

(32:02):
occasionally lie from profit or fun. You don't want to
be the gullible person, whether it's a little thing about
I grew my toes back, or I should invest one
hundred grand or there's not a tiger in that grass,
so I'm just going to walk over there. You shouldn't
be gullible. That's harmful. Do you understand that?

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yes?

Speaker 6 (32:22):
But I personal people who have who got healed from cancer.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
I was healed from cancer. I've I was stage four
coorectal cancer. I was diagnosed three days before my fortieth birthday.
You know what cured me. It wasn't my mother in
law who prayed for me, or my friends who prayed
for me and all of that. It was going and
finding the best medical help I could get, and quite frankly,

(32:47):
the fact that I lived three years. I got diagnosed
three years later than my being thirty six. Because if
I was diagnosed about three or five years earlier than
I was, I would not be here today. Because science
fixed the problem, and because I want a genetic lottery.
I responded really well to the chemo. So how do
you detect the difference between me and your friend who
says God cured me? Because there's a ton of people

(33:09):
like me who just go to the doctor, they get fixed,
a healed of cancer, all sorts of things, and a
few people who'll say, hey, they cured my glaucoma or
my cancer or whatever. How do we tell the difference
between the two?

Speaker 3 (33:21):
Yeah, funny enough, We've had prayer and disease for a
really long time in human history, and only when medical
science came on to the scene, the disease is starting.

Speaker 7 (33:29):
Right.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
Steve Jobs got cancer, chose not to get treatment, go
with the spiritual approach, and he died. How do you
explain that, right, Bob Marley too?

Speaker 4 (33:37):
Oh yeah, So I mean this in the.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
Best, best way, the honest way. Put away the childish things. Right,
you are grasping for excuses to be gullible. Don't be gullible.
You can still live your spiritual life, but then acknowledge
the reality of the world. We have not detected a
supernatural almost by definition. As soon as somebody does, they
will win a Nobel prize. And everything you've ever heard

(34:02):
is just stories and miracles, and there is a big
declining curve of miracles happening with the invention of the camera.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
And real quick, I know we shouted a lot at you, Alrick,
and I promise I'll shut up after this. I promise
I will, But just real quick on that point, they
pay me not to man.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Very little.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Uh So, when you actually accept that approach that you
were just talking about as a believer, when you truly
stop trying to shield your belief from all of the
very very available evidence around us, you actually get a
stronger faith.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Now.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
I know that's crazy a host on the AXP is
telling you how to get a stronger faith, But dude, like,
actually delve into this stuff. I know so many pastors,
now you would be surprised, and so many of them
have absolutely no problem just being like, yeah, you know what, Honestly,
I don't really have a super good reason to believe,
like Jesus comes back in the form of crackers or anything,

(35:00):
but I just kind of do it.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
You know.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
You know what's cool about them? Those are the people
that are regularly going out in their community and doing good.
Those are the people that are actively fighting for a
better world. And they don't have to pretend that their
God made some boat two thousand years ago and flooded
the whole fucking earth to do that. You can still
have all of the best things that you get out

(35:22):
of this l rick and just put away all the bullshit, man,
like join the secular side.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
The water is great, man, and what sorr is saying
is true. You better arm yourself to detect what fraudulent
preachers pastors right, because we know they're out there. If
you come to a point where you are accepting the
limitations of your own knowledge but also realizing that people
will lie for fun and profit, you can seek out
a community that is as spiritual as you but is

(35:49):
not vulnerable to these hucksters or two false claims that
are based on religion. And more importantly, you also stop
giving cover to those in that same community who would
do harm in the name of religion. So distancing yourself
from excuses and dealing with reality does not necessarily mean
you are going to lose something as a person. I
agree with you. I think he will gain a tremendous amount.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Absolutely, man, Absolutely, what do you think, Loric? We've said
a lot of things to you here. I still have
questions for you, but I want to hear what you
say to all this just the concept of skepticism as
a general good atheist or otherwise, what do you think?

Speaker 6 (36:23):
But two things like like the example I gave an example,
you just gave that you were huge from concepts, so
people pray for you. And then the medicine helping you.
How can that not call together?

Speaker 1 (36:36):
It is the same thing, because I'll tell you why, Jared,
A very simple There's a very simple example, and this
is what we were talking about. Post hawk ergo propter
tap after the prayer. Therefore, because of the prayer, one
hundred percent of people that have been cured after receiving
medication were cured after they receive medication. Of those people,
less than one hundred percent were cured after they received prayer.

Speaker 5 (36:59):
Prayer seems to be the excuse we.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Give when people are cured. But medication is the consistent thing.
Very few people are cured of cancer without medification, but
we're aware of natural remission. But when I take those
groups and break them up into people who were prayed
for and people who weren't, we don't see a difference.
There was something called the National Prayer Study. The Great
Prayer Study was done by the Templeton Foundation, a very

(37:22):
religious organization who honestly seeks out evidence of God. I've
respect them a lot. They don't sit around and gaze
at their belly buttons and say I guess I believe
in ghosts because I need to believe in God. They
go out and say what proof can we find? Because
they want to be scientific about it. They studied the
largest study of people who had serious heart conditions and

(37:43):
were divided into two halves. Some were prayed for and
some were not. There was no difference between the groups
in results. This is called innecessory prayer. God did not
intercede in a greater rate between those two groups. In fact,
there were subgroups where some of the people were told
they were being prayed for and some were those that
weren't that were prayed for were not told that they

(38:04):
were being prayed for. The people who were told they
were being prayed for actually had statistically significant worse medical outcomes.
So every time we look at this, we don't see
what you're claiming because of after prayer, therefore because of prayer.
That's my response to you.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
And the big thing that like what's so frustrating about
this will work is that we literally just covered and
we're talking about like, you know, well, these people were
prayed for and then they got healed, Okay. Is that
the only thing that happened or not? Was there a
bunch of other shit? Maybe the janitor walked by with
with ever green scented stuff just instead of lemon scented

(38:42):
cleaner today, was that? What did it? What about all
the other times that something else happened and the similar result.
You could analyze all of these different options and come
up with actual answers, but you don't. You find something
that feels good and you believe it because you want
to believe it, because you want to believe it because
you want to believe. That's not how thinking works.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
To yaunting the hits and ignoring the mists.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Yes, and what Graham, Graham, you took the words right
out of my mouth. Is like the thing is, in
these situations, there was a lot of things happening that
helped these people get sick get better, namely, doctors. People
actually perform medical miracles, real miracles, actual medicine. Elliott pointed
this out earlier. Funny how disease has been around for

(39:24):
all of human history, and prayer has been around for
all of human history. It's only when medical science advanced
that we started seeing the disease go away, and the
prayer is now what is given the credit. It's ridiculous.
If you were honest about this, you would accept the
fact that it's I'm not saying it is what happened.
But it's possible that the medicine is what fixed these people.

(39:47):
The medicine is what cured these people. The doctors are
what did the work to cure these people. And if
you now have two options, either it was God or
it was the doctors, you can now run some tests.
And the Templeton found Foundation did and what they found
out the actual science, science done by people who want
to believe like you do, who are biased in your direction.

(40:10):
If anything, they found that this doesn't work. In fact,
it almost usually makes things worse. It's better for people
to go to a doctoring medicine than it is for
them to pray. I have different questions for you, and
I don't know if we're gonna have time for any
of them.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
Probably I'll just end by saying there is a county
in Idaho called Canyon County. It has a graveyard populated
with six hundred gravestones of children. Because that county is
the last remain that state is the last remaining state
in this country that gives an legal exemption to parents
who let their kids die because they refuse to give
them proper medical care and instead anoint them with oil

(40:48):
as instructed by the Bible and pray over them. And
we have cases of children dying of very ear and
ear infection that could have been treated with a drop,
and they die because it goes to their brain. With
the most faithful people in the world praying over their
sick children day in and day out, to the point
that documentaries have been made about this, and why has
that law not been changed because people who are Christian

(41:10):
keep saying, I don't want to vote down a law
that favors other people's religion. I don't want to infear
with that. That's the harm of what you're talking about.
If you just say prayer works because I saw it
work one time, I think you lead to this conclusion.
It's despicable, quite frankly, stop allowing this sort of thought
process when you know what it's going to do. Yes,

(41:33):
you are, quite frankly, absolutely, if you've been explained, if
this has been explained to you time and time out,
every of course it's a fallacy. But I'm speaking in
a broader metaphorical sense. The bigger the Christian community is
the reason that law is still on the books. It
has made it out of committee. They have tried to
get rid of this law multiple times. It always makes

(41:54):
it out of committee. The people who actually examine it
are like, we need to get rid of this. It
goes to the it's a unicameral house and i Idaho,
it gets voted down and every single person that votes
against it is willing to speak on the record. The
politicians say, I'm not going to vote against fellow Christians.
So having these irrational views contributes to harm abstractly, but

(42:17):
it does, so, Yes, I do blame you one iota.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
I also want to point out the fact that very
funny for you to say that we are committing a
fallacy here with your entire goddamn argument is lots of
people believe this, so it's probably true, which is follow
me here called the bandwagon fallacy, which is an actual
logical fallacy, not the shit that you were claiming as

(42:42):
a fallacy at the beginning, and Elliott had to correct you.
Most importantly, you talk about the harm from this shit.
Oric We've talked a million times. You wouldn't believe the dumb,
homophobic and transphobic shit that you do. If you didn't
believe the dumb supernatural shit that you do. Oh yes,
this causes harm. You are an example of that. Yes,
I do blame you for a lot of things. Grow
the fuck up.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
And I know, I know we I know we all
heard it. Yes, I know we all heard it. And
there were just too many other things we had that
we had to touch on. But yeah, remember.

Speaker 5 (43:12):
When he gave his definition for supernatural.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
Yes, and one of the definitions was that it was undetectable. Yeah,
how he detected the ship?

Speaker 2 (43:23):
Oh my god, I wanted to that was one of
the questions. I know, we don't have time for. One
of the questions I wanted to ask was how do
you tell the difference between something that is completely unobservable
and undetectable and ship that isn't real? And apparently it's
toes growing or something. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
I feel dot com ladies and gentlemen, don't.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
I feel like we should have encouraged people to go
to something that has that.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
We had a toe conversation, We've had butthole conversation.

Speaker 5 (43:49):
I mean, honestly, this has been a I've.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Had a ball.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
The last time I talked to Orick, he ended on
screaming about how he didn't want to talk about my penis,
And you know, what until he's ready to I don't
want to take another call from him, call in.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
And talk about him specifically.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
Yeah, we've we've talked a few times. It's never been pleasant.
But I tell you what, I have terrible news, sad
news for everybody out there, and that is that we
have to change hosts, which means you.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
Have to.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
Have to take a bus both of us.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
Yeah, I'm sorry, I have terrible news.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Foot I'll stay here and starve life as hell, and
I am trapped in this studio.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
I just wake up here times and it's it's a nightmare.
But while I also I do have this terrible news
that we have to get rid of these wonderful hosts,
I also have fantastic and that fantastic news is that
we have objectively Dan and J Mike who are now
going to be joining me for the show and who
are creeping in beside me at this very moment for

(44:54):
your soon to be viewing pleasure. Again, that call, it
got confrontation, but it got confrontational because the person on
the on the phone was notorious for being confrontational. If
you want to talk to atheists who disbelieve in the
things you believe in, we're nice. We're usually nice. Unless
you're mean, We're nice. And the numbers on the bomb
of screen and there's also a weblink that you can
call into as well. But for right now, I'm delighted

(45:16):
to introduce you to Jmiken objectively Dan. Everybody look at
them all right, so handsome.

Speaker 4 (45:24):
That would be the first time I've heard that.

Speaker 8 (45:26):
And on, come on, remember that girl that was saying
you look like Rasputin when we were running.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Down down the other night.

Speaker 4 (45:33):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
That was good. That was a compliment.

Speaker 7 (45:36):
And then like and then someone like drives by in
one of those passenger bikes and it's just like.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yeah, yeah, they're playing rasp Pootin.

Speaker 8 (45:42):
And then this trunker was like, oh my god, like
grass Poodin is here, and she was like, it's my
boyfriend's birthday.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Say he's his birthday, and you were just like, I'm Rasputin.
It was really funny. It was great. Hey, by the way,
really quickly, we are running a direct fundraiser for the
ACA below the chat right now. One hundred percent of
donations go to the Atheist Community of Austin. YouTube does
not take a cut, so if you want to support
this show and all the other things that we do
here at the ACA. Please consider leaving a donation right there,

(46:08):
also happy to announce it. On August twenty ninth, the
Atheist Community of Austin will be hosting a presentation by
my son Seth Andrews, with an introduction by a genetically
modified skeptic and the antibot. Join us at the Round
Rock Public Library for an evening of pizza, conversation, and
critical thinking.

Speaker 8 (46:26):
Speaking of genetically modified, I wonder how that whole situation works,
because you know that's pretty with the pizza, well sunshine right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
This is great. I kind of have to have faith.

Speaker 8 (46:39):
I like coming to the studio with the tablet and
the first thing I see on the screen to show
me the toes.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, that's great. It it leaves a lot of questions. Nobody. Yeah, anyway,
learn more about the thinking atheist who is coming to
the public library here at tiny dot c slash evening
with set and Last but not least, before we jump
into our call, can we thank the crew for a second. Yes,
let's thank them cruise check those guys out. What then?

(47:06):
Tina is taking a call right now. She is currently
helping us make more content incredible. Thank you all so
much for everything that you do to make this show possible.
We appreciate and thank you at home for watching these
shows and doing any of these shows and being a
part of this community. You also make these shows possible.
We wouldn't have a show to produce if we didn't
have cool cats like you to watch them. And with that,

(47:26):
I'm ready to jump right in to my number six here.
Let's talk to Caleb pronounce he him calling in all
the way from Wallab the Armpits, who says that God
is existence itself. Caleb, you were on the Atheenys Experience
and J Mike objectively Dan.

Speaker 4 (47:43):
Mereta Caleb, it is a question, So I'm not sure
if that's what it is.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
A question. Caleb. You may believe what I just said.
You definitely believe. Hi. How are you welcome to the
How you guys doing good? Great man? Great good?

Speaker 9 (47:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (47:56):
So I use I put that question in. I didn't
have like that was.

Speaker 9 (47:59):
Just like a the best of that I could word it,
but basically let me let me explain it like this.
So I just I just came from mass I'm like Catholic,
but you know, not not like very sure. I'm like
mostly sure, I'm Catholic, but I'm.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Not one hundred percent.

Speaker 9 (48:12):
And I had this conversation with a friends right after Mass.
I asked him, you know, I'm kind of struggling, like
I'm not sure God is real, Like I'm not confident
that he is. I can't walk up to somebody and say, hey,
I know God's real.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Here's how I know.

Speaker 9 (48:25):
I can't be completely sure of that, And so I
just tried asking him from the view of a skeptic,
because you know, my parents maid me be skeptical about
other people, and I still try to be like that mostly.
And I asked him, like, you know, you know, my friends, how.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
Do you know God's real?

Speaker 9 (48:38):
And he's like, okay, well, you know, I have a
problem with the question.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
I was like, what do you mean? And so he.

Speaker 9 (48:44):
Said, well, well God, well you can't say that you
prove God exists because God his existence itself. It's like
saying does existence exist? He says, like that basically doesn't
make sense. And so I was like, okay, well, can
you you know, do you think do you think that
that statement makes sense?

Speaker 2 (49:02):
I what I know?

Speaker 9 (49:04):
I know that existence is real, like we can all
understand that the universe, everything around us is real, it exists.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
How do we like.

Speaker 9 (49:13):
That demands an explanation, and how do we go about
determining you know, what is the explanation for that?

Speaker 4 (49:17):
Well, that might be a separate thing.

Speaker 7 (49:18):
The question on like the table of whether or not
God is existence itself sounds like a type of category
air or something. It's like you're confusing like a property
or a predicate that you'd use to describe a subject
with the subject itself, right. So you're like, you're like,
because you know, like if that person went up to
somebody who thinks that like existence is a property of
some object, or it's a predicate that we use to

(49:40):
to like ascribe.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
To some object, like the ball exists, they're not going
to be.

Speaker 7 (49:44):
Very compelled by when someone says, well, God is existence itself,
because what they're going to say is like you're conflating
something that's like a property if that's their view, or
some predicate usage in the language with the subject itself, right.
It seems really confused. It's like a painting a dream
blue or something. It just seems kind of like a
weird statement.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
That's why we keep j Mike around making cool ast
words like credica predo's subject.

Speaker 7 (50:06):
We're supposed to learn these terms school guys, right right,
let me you know what I'm.

Speaker 9 (50:13):
Saying, kind of getting it, I need it. I definitely
did anything about that.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
Let let let me give.

Speaker 9 (50:17):
You an Let me give you an example of something
that I think can maybe help expand upon them. I'm
sure you guys have probably heard about what is it?

Speaker 6 (50:24):
No?

Speaker 4 (50:24):
Go ahead, yeah, go ahead, Okay.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
I'll go on.

Speaker 9 (50:26):
Uh So, I'm sure you guys have heard about Saint
Thomas Aquinas. He's like one of the most famous philosophers
and theologians in the Catholic Church. And one thing that
he really he really liked studying Aristotle, and he liked
learning about how he perceived like what is existence, essence?
All these nebulous concepts. And he basically made an observation.
And I think this observation makes sense. But I'm just

(50:47):
I want I want to hear what you guys think.

Speaker 7 (50:49):
So basically, so I'm definitely down to talk about it.

Speaker 9 (50:54):
Yeah awesome, Yeah, well, so basically it's kind of like this,
so we can see seeing move, like we observe things moving,
maybe not even just physical things but just the nature
of things change over time, Like we observe that change
is always a force and that things move well.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
So basically we know.

Speaker 9 (51:12):
From our experience that when something moved, something has pushed it.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
Because that's just that's all the evidence that we have.

Speaker 9 (51:18):
We don't have any evidence, any firstthand examples of something
moving that didn't push it, or something that changed that
didn't make it change, or anything.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Like that, and that.

Speaker 7 (51:27):
Yeah, you want real quick, just just for breave, just
for brevity, you just real quick, like you you're thinking
of this idea, like you have the hand and a stick,
and you push the stick, which your hand moves the stick,
which moves the ball right, and then that moves the
ball rolling or it hits another rock like you're you're
What you want to do is talk about some types
of considerations from motion and try to work your way
back right to this kind of to this terminous right

(51:49):
yea or the terminus right?

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Is that the idea?

Speaker 9 (51:51):
Yeah, what's the unmoved mover Basically, yeah, because it doesn't
make sense for it to be infinitely regressible.

Speaker 7 (51:56):
So okay, we'll have to return to that because I
don't know what you mean by it doesn't make sense now,
like if that's some type of personal incredulity maybe like
you can't imagine it, Like I understand that's.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
Something, you know, I just don't get it on there. Yeah,
and that's something I wouldn't I didn't understand it. Yeah,
and I don't.

Speaker 7 (52:09):
Yeah. I don't want to like bash you and be
like oh, it's so easy to understand it, you know,
like it's something that will give people a hang up,
like how do I get to the present moment with
an infinite series of causal events or something like, I
completely understand the kind of hang up that some people have,
you know, I don't think there's a contradiction that well,
let's put a pin on that. Let's like save that
for a second. There's a little bit something there's something
more robust that might be going on in these like

(52:30):
tomistic metaphysics when you talk about like it's not merely
just kind of like these moved mover kind of things.
It's that there's a like a theology and there's an
argument in mind that God is also the sustainer of
these objects, like he sustains them in existence. Right, is
that something you you you've heard as well, yeah, I.

Speaker 9 (52:46):
Brought this up to my friend and he says that, like,
oh yeah, there's constant like gravity is a constant, like
that's always the same or something like you know, temperature
is always the same. There's a lot of these constants
that are constantly that that that are that you know,
they don't ever change. That's always how they are, and
that that has to you know, something to keep that going.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
That's kind of what he was saying.

Speaker 7 (53:05):
Yeah, And but when you look at this, like if
I was to be as like humble as I could
and just want to compare the kind of views, right,
like we treat them like their hypotheses, and we're trying
to explain this data of motion or these things existing
or going sustaining causes, right, they sustain in existence. If
I have a view where instead of thinking that God's
doing all this work like sustaining Me and Elliot were

(53:27):
talking about this in the hotel room because he was
kind of like it's almost like give like these infinite
kind of gods that are sustaining these things or something like,
and you can get a lot more like your hypothesis
isn't going to be overinflated with this, like weird stuff.
If you just have this assumption in mind that objects
have this call it existential inertia. They have this power
to persist in existence.

Speaker 6 (53:47):
Right.

Speaker 7 (53:47):
It's a power that objects have and until something like
knocks it out of existence, you don't need like agency
sustaining it. It's a property that they have in themselves.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
Right.

Speaker 7 (53:56):
And I've gotten rid of all this god baggage and
this foreign on ptology that is hard to describe. It's
like outside of space and all this kind of stuff.
So I don't see the like the advantage of this argument.
And I'll try to finish this up. Tomism has highly
contentious metaphysical assumptions. If you came to me and tried
to get me to accept this, I'm going to be like, well,

(54:16):
this assumes the falsity of my thesis, which is existential inertia.
I don't need deposit things sustaining them. I kind of
side with the empirical sciences, and I'm just like, well,
this seems to be like philosophically, seems like they have
this kind of this persistence of existence on their own.

Speaker 5 (54:28):
I don't need anything else, right, But I don't know
what you think about that.

Speaker 7 (54:31):
I'm just kind of pointing out that in order to
kind of get off the table before we even get
to like certain premises of this argument, I'm going to
have to accept highly contentious and dubious metaphysical assumptions that
a lot of philosophers just think are dog shit right,
So I need like more independent argument for that. And
this is kind of the problem I see with philosophy

(54:53):
is it's this like inception of arguments that it's really
hard to get to, like a no pun intended a terminus.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
Right, this is why we keep Mike around. That's right,
so I shut up, we get terms like totalistic metaphysics.
That's right.

Speaker 7 (55:04):
Well, Caleb, hopefully this is resonating with you, because I'm
sure you're around people.

Speaker 4 (55:07):
That talk about this kind of stuff a lot, right.

Speaker 9 (55:09):
I mean, I mean, yeah, definitely. I Mean one of
the reasons why I ended up going a cap that
is because they didn't say, like, oh, you just have
to believe because it's just God made the world, you know,
you just have to read the Bible. It's like, no,
we're going to respect your intelligence.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
A little bit more.

Speaker 9 (55:20):
And Joy, well, you're you're trying to explain it, you know,
ask asking deeper question as to why are you asking
these questions?

Speaker 2 (55:26):
Or it's it goes.

Speaker 9 (55:27):
Further than that, or you know, you that that you
can be rational and also you know, believe and that
they compliment one another, like even if it's not necessarily true,
Like I just it's so Yeah, it definitely does resonate
with me. But it's honestly, if I'm going to be honest,
a lot of this does kind of go over my head.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
I'm still kind of well, I mean it goes over
my head too. I'm not a philosopher by any stretch
of the image. Are you saying?

Speaker 5 (55:47):
It's very contentious?

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Kind of here's the second problem with it. Yeah, here's
a secondary critique. You can take this right, Like you're talking.

Speaker 8 (55:57):
About Thomas Aquine is obviously he was influenced by Aristotle, right,
And the reason why he's doing that is the Greeks
were doing better philosophy than what they anyone else was
doing back in the day. They had to make these
ideas make sense because the Bible doesn't make sense, and
the God of the Bible doesn't make sense.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
Right.

Speaker 8 (56:11):
That's why you see that secondary sort of shift in
Christianity between the New Testament versus like the Old Testament.
That's why, like the God of News looks so different.
Like there there is a shift in this idea of
what God is. And of course Acquaintance was inspired by
that and all these other Catholic you know, philosophers and stuff. Right,
So like if you if you really look at the
character of God and how he's described in the Bible,

(56:31):
that isn't really consistent with a lot of these sorts
of universalist claims that they make about God anyway, like
he seems to have a particular character and exists in
space and time and various capacity. Is Yeah, so there's
all kinds of other takes you can do with that
that don't have to deal with the you know, crazy
metaphysical terms and stuff either.

Speaker 2 (56:51):
And if I could just really quickly Caleb as a
I'm a scientist. I care about evidence and shy way failing.
You know, you talk about Saint Thomas Aquinas here, and
I for a few reasons, I'm not a fan. But
like I think if I were you and I wanted
to keep it in this framework of Catholicism and everything

(57:11):
like that, I think you're focusing on the wrong Saint Thomas.
I think instead of Saint Thomas, Aquinas, I think you
should be looking at Saint Thomas also named Didimus in
the Bible, who when Jesus was raised from the dead,
Jesus came back, he met with Depending on which gospel
you're looking at, you know, either Mary Magdalen alone or
like Mary and the other Mary, or like a bunch
of people whatever. Eventually he gets his way to meeting

(57:34):
all of his disciples except for Thomas. He meets all
these disciples except for Thomas, and all the disciples, all
of Thomas's dear friends in faith and fellowship, all come
to him and say, our Lord is returned Jesus's back.
And Thomas, who has every reason to believe this, every
desire to believe this, says, I do not believe. I

(57:57):
don't want to. I don't believe a word of this
until he comes here in front of me. I want
to put my fingers in the holes in his hands.
I want to put my fingers in the holes in
his feet. I want to put my fingers in the
holes in his side, the hole in the side. I
want to know for sure that this is Jesus. I
want to show me those tones, those holes and Jesus

(58:17):
comes to Thomas and says, here I am, and he says,
put your fingers in the holes in my hands and
feet inside. And only after Thomas does that does he
then accept who Jesus is and who he says he is.
And then in the next line, I believe this is
in John. In the next line, it says that Jesus

(58:37):
performed many more tests, he showed himself in many more ways.
He proved himself in all of these different ways that
we didn't write down here. It literally says the next line,
in all these different ways that we will not write
down here, Jesus proved himself. And then the next thing
you learn is blessed are those who have not seen
and yet still believe. So two thousand years ago, Jesus

(59:01):
Christ himself was totally fine with the idea that you
don't have to believe in me unless you can finger
my holes yourself. And now here we are in twenty
five and you are forced to believe on the words
of Thomas Aquinas some other asshole Thomas who's like, you
know what, though here are some some vague week philosophy exists, right,

(59:23):
I think, what if things didn't exist that doesn't make
any sense. Probably God right, and you're having to jump
through these mental loopholes to try to make something make
sense that doesn't fucking make sense. And I agree with you.
Everything that Jamike talked about sounded really cool. Not my
department at all. And I'm here to just tell you
I don't fucking know. I don't know where this universe

(59:45):
came from. I know I have some friends who are
physicists that tell me really cool shit. I'm not a physicist,
so I don't know.

Speaker 8 (59:51):
I don't believe in God because Thomas Aquinas told you, Yes,
that's a laz and.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Just don't That's what I'm trying to get it is, like, dude,
any explanation isn't a good explo Any explanation isn't the
satisfactory explanation. The correct explanation is the one that actually
satisfies your mind and actually meets the criteria of some
serious fucking reason. That's what you should be looking for.
Jesus was willing to provide that two thousand years ago.
If you don't get it today, you shouldn't believe. Don't

(01:00:16):
believe because you have to. Don't believe because I don't
know isn't satisfying believe it when you have a good
reason to believe it, and if you don't, don't. That's
my argument to you. That's what I would say.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
What do you think in Caleb, I yeah, absolutely, I
mean I can't.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
I can't believe. I mean, ultimately, I'm just.

Speaker 9 (01:00:30):
Looking for truth.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
That's all I care about.

Speaker 9 (01:00:32):
I'm trying to find it. And if I thought, you know,
maybe I can find it in religion, But now I'm thinking,
I mean, some of it makes sense, that a lot
of it doesn't really track, and you know, I just like, yeah,
I'm just yeah. I mean Saint Thomas, Yeah, Saint Thomas.
And I don't know if if he's a saint in
the Bible or not, but yeah, from what if I
were to ask somebody in the truth to say, oh,

(01:00:52):
that's an example of somebody that you know, you shouldn't
be You should just believe because he God's already proven himself,
Like Saint Paul writes that in Romans that oh, God
made himself obvious to everyone in the bull world.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
You wouldn't it be cool if you were among everyone
in the world? Clearly?

Speaker 6 (01:01:08):
Not?

Speaker 7 (01:01:09):
Yeah, I mean, because look, there's like counter considerations of this, Like,
you know, I think Schellenberg has these considerations about like
non resistant non believers. So people that don't believe and
they're not resistant to this idea of God, like they're
very open.

Speaker 4 (01:01:22):
There's like, look, I just want to know they're not
God exists.

Speaker 7 (01:01:24):
And I think a lot of people in the audience
might classify themselves as non resistant non believers they don't believe.
You know, hey, I want to know if this is true,
how it would impact my life. I just want to
know the truth of this. And it does seem like,
you know, I would look into like the I don't
know that i'd be able to like reproduce the argument necessarily,
but sure this general idea is it seems like highly

(01:01:44):
unexpected on this hypothesis of a being that desires to share,
you know, its message, the goal, this thing that's like
the most important thing we could ever we could ever
ask ourselves. But people that aren't resistant like don't get
this gift that a bunch of people that you know,
were just maybe born into it happened to get the
right religion.

Speaker 4 (01:02:03):
And God's like that's fine, you know, we'll.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Allow that to go.

Speaker 5 (01:02:06):
But this person is like genuinely, you know, begging.

Speaker 7 (01:02:08):
It's like it's kind of it's kind of hard to
to think that like this project of tomistic metaphysics would
be needed because to like that's like half more than
half the population. Just not they're gonna be like doing
checking out. This is a lifelong project, and there's so
much shit in this right, Like I don't even know
where to start.

Speaker 8 (01:02:26):
No, it's like the conception of God as this universal
being who wants a relationship with people and is also
love and is also all these other things somehow like
doesn't care about Aborigines and had to have like people
come and tell them about Jesus, Like why didn't you
have that relationship with them in the first place. If
you look at the history of Christianity as a religion,
it makes more sense to have naturalistic explanations as to

(01:02:48):
why people have these experiences with God and why people
have these relationships than just oh, God just happened to
favor these particular people in the Middle East a couple
thousand years ago. And also that's the God of the universe.
Also is the God of the Old Testament. Also he's
he's love, and he's justice, and he's everything.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
Else that lacks clear well.

Speaker 7 (01:03:06):
Under that view, God's love like under this view, which
makes this like incoherent where we talking about like theological
more theological critique than then yeah, yeah, but it's like it's.

Speaker 4 (01:03:17):
Like here's a very big word.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
You're ready. It's like a.

Speaker 7 (01:03:20):
Type of theological non cognitivism, this idea that it's just
made that up. It's this idea that it's not propositional.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
I've heard that before, but I'm not. Yeah, no you haven't.

Speaker 7 (01:03:31):
Well, so cognitivism is like this idea that it's propositional.

Speaker 4 (01:03:35):
So like it is a statement, like it is raining.

Speaker 7 (01:03:38):
It can be true or false, right, So there's like
there's like some type of propositional value. But if I
if I was just like boom murder or like yay charity.

Speaker 4 (01:03:47):
Right or something like that.

Speaker 7 (01:03:48):
Uh, there's some people that would would say, like, look,
I don't think people are expressing propositions when they're saying
moral stuff. They're just they're just like expressing their preferences
like boo and yay, and that's not like a proposition.
So similarly with this, when what's kind of committed on
this view is that God's identical to like every property
he has because he's he's divinely simple and he doesn't
have parts or properties and things like that. If you're

(01:04:08):
getting into this divine simplicity doctrine, and that's going to
it's going to say something like God's necessary nature is
identical to his omniscience, which his omniscience is identical to
his omnipotence, which is identical to his omnib benevolence. That
doesn't even sound like that's something a person could believe
to be true, right, So I worry on this view
that it's like not even in the category of something

(01:04:30):
that could be be believed by somebody because it just
turns out to be gibberish, right, Yep, it's just like saying.

Speaker 8 (01:04:35):
That's that's why I prefer using the term atheist, because
it's essentially the same.

Speaker 5 (01:04:41):
Yeah, yeah, I would be like an atheist that I
like to use.

Speaker 8 (01:04:45):
The word atheists instead of atheists sometimes to describe myself
because if God is not a clear, concise idea in
and of itself, how can I even say I believe
in him or not. There's so many different conceptions of God.
We just talked about the tomistic conception of God. That's
very different from what early Christians believe, very different from
what Jewish Jewish people believed and still do.

Speaker 7 (01:05:02):
Right, so you know it directly contradicts thinking, Yeah, God
is made of parts, right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
Yeah, so anyway, we don't even know what God is.
That's what we're coming at.

Speaker 8 (01:05:10):
Like, you know, so somebody saying, oh, God is the universe,
God is existence, I'm just gonna be skeptical of that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
I have no idea what that means until I see
other one.

Speaker 4 (01:05:18):
Well, there's actually probably another object.

Speaker 7 (01:05:19):
If someone says something like God is everything or something
like that, then you get this weird thing because I
can do this like count. I can like there's a
water bottle, there's this, there's that, and then I count
for like everything. And then now when you say God
is everything, God is really just this abstract object, Like
it's this abstraction from the things that I have. And
so I don't think abstract objects exist, so therefore God

(01:05:40):
doesn't exist. So you've like you would be like presenting
me on a platter an argument that I'd be like, Okay, well, look,
I have independent reasons to think that abstract objects don't exist.
And if it turns out that you're saying God is everything,
and that's just like, well, so it's not just the
laptop and this the God part matters. Okay, Well, the
only thing I feel like I can do with that
is it's some abstraction. I don't think those things exist
independent of my mind, and so then God.

Speaker 4 (01:06:03):
Just wouldn't exist on my view.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
Yes, that's what's being said.

Speaker 9 (01:06:05):
Oh, hold on, hold on, hold on, let me let
me just let me just clarify at least what I've
been led to believe.

Speaker 6 (01:06:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:06:10):
Sorry, I think that's called pantheism, which is the belief
that the universe is God like, as far as I know,
that's definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Not what the Catholic church.

Speaker 4 (01:06:17):
Yeah, definitely not certain.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
What I've learned is.

Speaker 9 (01:06:19):
That creation and that God can't you know, create himself,
because then he wouldn't be God, you know, because who
would have created.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
God right self? Causation would be even more nebulous than that.

Speaker 7 (01:06:30):
Yeah, Like it's like being a box within a it's
like has self contained box or like just creating itself
like it's supposed to exists.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
The whole thing. Also, you know, if this God is
real and it's chosen representation, is the currentler church. Maybe
maybe not a God worth worshiping in the first place,
you know, But Caleb, I think we've we've eaten this,
you know, in all different angles. I hope you call
us back and tell us how your journey is going,
if you come up with any other answers to what
we've talked about, if you come up with any reason

(01:07:00):
to continue believing, we want to hear them. And I
can't wait for the day that you call us back
and like, yo, guess what, I'm an atheist now what
I'm doing this, I'm opening up. That's a shop somewhere
in New England and it's what surfing last weekend.

Speaker 7 (01:07:13):
I want to come to like these church, these Catholic
churches that hang out with the quinas void.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Do you really?

Speaker 7 (01:07:19):
I do, because I want to do that sounds like
a good time. Yes, I want to stand and hear
with what they have to say.

Speaker 8 (01:07:23):
And like here, you and I have different ideas, and
I be like, well, strange man.

Speaker 4 (01:07:27):
I don't know if you know, but there's a lot
of objections what you said.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Yeah, yeah, anyway, Caleb, I really appreciate your call. I
hope you have an awesome rest of your day. We're
gonna we're gonna move on to our last thing in
the show. Thank you for calling us awesome. Yeah, you
guys have a good one.

Speaker 7 (01:07:40):
I will say, like that Catholic Tomistic project, it is
like a lifelong there's a lot of stuff to read.
But because that's the case, you put so much out
on the table and it makes it really easy to
find these like contradictions like Ryan Mullens's a he's a
non classical theist, and then Joe Schmid he's an agnostic
or atheist. He they wrote a paper together on like

(01:08:01):
you know, showing this kind of like contradiction entailed by
simplicity and uh yeah, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
I was just reading that last night. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 7 (01:08:09):
It's interesting because you have these like in house disputes
between theists on this stuff, and it's like, you know,
it's like, well, I'm sitting here on the side of
figure it out.

Speaker 5 (01:08:15):
I'll be waiting when you guys get.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
This right exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I guess I
love black because like science is all about disagreement and
argument as well. Like there's an old joke, you know,
a group of crows is called a murder a group
of ferrets is called a business. A group of scientists
is called a disagreement. But like we can agree on
the thing that exists and then disagree on how it
works and all these things, and with a lot of

(01:08:37):
these theistic arguments, they don't even agree on what God exists,
how it exists, where it exists, Just like I like
the idea of a guy that made the things happen
and going from there, what can we now decide? And
it just it doesn't resonateparently, don't.

Speaker 4 (01:08:51):
Agree on what it means for something to exist. Now
now it's the thing itself.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
We've got one more question that we're going to take today.
Rather taking a call, we're actually going to take a
question from our lovely audience here in the studio. Greg,
who are we talking to today? Me?

Speaker 5 (01:09:07):
Oh, Greg, everybody, Vio.

Speaker 10 (01:09:11):
First of all, I want to thank everybody in the
audience for coming out. I want to thank all of
our wonderful hosts we'd had on the show today and
everybody out there watching.

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
We love you all more than you know.

Speaker 10 (01:09:25):
But anyway, I kind of wanted to wrap this up
with maybe some things that have been asked of you before,
but maybe not asked on us. So, so I have
a question for each of you, and then I have
a common question at the end. So, Forrest, what is
your favorite biological oddity?

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
Okay, Mike, what is.

Speaker 10 (01:09:42):
Your favorite philosophical argument to utterly destroy?

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Oh god? What am i? Okay?

Speaker 10 (01:09:48):
And Dan, what is your favorite weird, out there supernatural
claim that you love talking about most on the show.
And then my question for all of you and you
may or may not agree, but who is your favorite
other ACA host to work with?

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
And why? Wow?

Speaker 7 (01:10:10):
Oh man, that's that One's gonna hurt some feelings.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
I feel like, yeah, right, yeah, he's creating a hierarchy.
Here is the video involved. I don't like that. It's awful.

Speaker 4 (01:10:20):
Well can I?

Speaker 7 (01:10:21):
I worked with Seth Andrews pretty recently in a sense
that kind of am I allowed to just I can
pull you all?

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
Would be so fat I'm a set Elliott. It would
be so funny. I know.

Speaker 7 (01:10:34):
It's I don't I'll let you answer the let's go
in order that's going on?

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
Okay, biology, Asking me my favorite biological odity is like
asking a chef their favorite food. It's really difficult for
me to pin one down. But off the top of
my head at this moment. Uh. Just mammary glands are
modified sweat glands, what we would call pseudoriferous glands. And
you already have water and a little bit of salt
in there. You just keep adding nutrients and and then

(01:11:00):
you have milk. And that's why early, like the lowest
taxonomy of the lowest, the most basal kind of mammals,
monotreams still have milk patches rather than nipples. Nipples are
just straws. They're just you take that same duct and
just elongate it and focus it in one way. It

(01:11:21):
is nutrient rich sweat coming out of a skin straw,
and that is what defines our entire Goddamn clay bro,
We're about to eat dinner, like right after are you
getting it out of a skin straw? Like what are
you doing? Because like there were some babies in here,
early person, why they suck? They're terrible things, terrible things crazy?

(01:11:45):
All right, Well that's an answer.

Speaker 4 (01:11:47):
Yeah, ah man, favorite to destroy. I mean I don't.

Speaker 7 (01:11:52):
I probably I probably fine tuning, especially because I know
a lot of people they're like that. That one gives
me the most trouble was the fine tuning and I
think that's an empirical claim. So in order to get
off the ground, what you have to kind of do
is say, like, assume our best science says this, Now
you proceed, Right, you have to kind of make these
assumptions because it's not clear what's put in by hand,
and it's kind of people way more kind of physics

(01:12:14):
or would shit on me.

Speaker 4 (01:12:15):
So I'm gonna not do this, right, I'm not gonna
go in that.

Speaker 7 (01:12:18):
But there's like, there's obviously a debate, right, there's an
empirical investigation in query to have so but if we
do our best to say, let's assume our best science
says that there's constants, they could vary in all these
different ways, and a very small range of ways that
the universe could be maybe just one way would permit life.
And so the idea is that that's going to be
better explained on theism than like naturalism or some type

(01:12:41):
of atheistic view, because there's a desire that God wants
those for a purpose, Right, he wants the constants this
way because he wants life. But one really easy way
to think about this is think about the space we've
drawn out where we have all of these ways the
constants could be with the universe is collapsing on themselves
this way, or we get the life we get, or
they're just maybe it's just a bunch of forces just

(01:13:03):
talking biological facts all the time, right, all these different
ways they could be. Now, think of all the way
God's desires could be. For each one of the ways
that you could change the constants, you could correspond a
potential desire that God has. And so when you make
this move where you want to say, look, you need
this desire in order to explain this finely to a constant,
you can't stop there. You have to go parody of reasoning.

(01:13:25):
You need to keep going. That is the same improbability
to land on that desire for that constant rather than
the infinite other desires God could have for the infinite
amount of constants. So by parody of reasoning, we're going
to get an infinite regression of fine tuners, because now
we need a fine tuner to design the desires of
God in order to finally pick out those constants. And

(01:13:47):
that's going to go over and over and over again.
And it's I love seeing people's like eyes kind of
glaze over this when they're like they finally get it
and they're like, I'm.

Speaker 5 (01:13:54):
Like, do you deny that God? He's omnipotent being. He
could create any one of these worlds?

Speaker 4 (01:13:59):
Could he not?

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
Yes? He could?

Speaker 7 (01:14:00):
Why does he have this desire over any of the
other desires? And why does that not cause the same
problem on a higher level that you now need a
fine tuned designer for those desire?

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
Add infinitely thanks for that. Butterflies can taste with their feet, y'all.
That's cool. I like another one. You already had your audity.
I'm just saying I just want to throw another one in. Okay,
So I was thinking about this.

Speaker 8 (01:14:22):
I think I could break it down into favorite cryptid
and favorite conspiracy theory.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
So you do both. Hell yay. Best conspiracy theory?

Speaker 8 (01:14:30):
My favorite one talking about on truthline and we don't
talk about very often, but I really liked the idea
that the US invasion of Iranq was not because of terrorism,
it's not because of oil, but because the US government
found Nephelin bones and that they have to covered that
ship up and take it up. And this is supported
by like early two thousands photoshop jobs of people would

(01:14:50):
just next to giant I've seen.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
It's awesome. It's so cool. I love it. That's the
best anything that the.

Speaker 4 (01:14:57):
Chariots, the wheels.

Speaker 8 (01:14:58):
Yeah, I love the idea that wars are started because
the angel bones and that's just cool.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
I just like that.

Speaker 8 (01:15:04):
Also, So talking about cryptis Micola Mabimbe is first of all,
a fun thing to say. It is is a cryptid
that it's supposed to lives in the Congo and it's
basically just the giant sauropod, right, And the idea is like,
you know, this dinosaur is just living among us, right,
and it's just hanging out in the jungle. We just
haven't found it yet. And there have been younger creationists
that have attempted to go out to the Congo just

(01:15:25):
to find this dinosaur because if they can prove that
dinosaurs lived at the same time as people, then it
kind of throws evolution and all that stuff, you know,
out of whack, right, And of course they've never found it.
But I just love the idea of a grown adult
planning trim to Africa to go to the jungle to
find some dinosaurs.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Yeah, it's just awesome, what a cool thing. It's funny
because I actually I know the one you're talking about,
because they did a video. One of my episode episodes
React here a little while ago included this guy who
runs a creation museum here in Texas, and he was like,
here's this great scientist, this great zoneologist, who is going
out and exploring the very jungles around us to find evidence.

(01:16:05):
And it was this dude who calls himself a zoologist
who goes out and and explores the jungle looking for cryptids,
and he was looking for that one. He was going
to the congo to find this soropod, and that that's
the guy. That's the scientist that they were able to reference. Say,
this random guy who says he's a scientist believes in this,
therefore it's true. And what blows my mind is if

(01:16:28):
the argument really just has to be dinosaurs live with people,
you can do that with evolution, because bitch them's birds.
Birds are dinosaurs. No man, I want to be able
to ride on that ship like the Flintstones. Have you
seen Ostrich writing it's a thing.

Speaker 8 (01:16:44):
Okay, but that's not a soro pod man. I want
to be like Godzillah. Yeah, okay whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:16:50):
Speaking of So sr did exactly what he's doing here.

Speaker 5 (01:16:55):
Guys, you didn't you didn't answer the question.

Speaker 4 (01:16:58):
Who you're favorite there yet you haven't gotten there?

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
What do you mean? Okay, okay, I'll just wait. I'll
just wait patiently and cute.

Speaker 7 (01:17:06):
Well, actually it's interesting because when when you came in
the door at the hotel, I was watching ancient Aliens right, yes, yes,
because I could. I flipped it and I couldn't fucking
look away, like it was.

Speaker 2 (01:17:19):
Just a train wreck.

Speaker 7 (01:17:20):
And I'm watching their standing next to this wall and
they're like, they're like, we don't know why the arc
on it's so tall. You know, it has to be
extraterrestrials or giants or something like that. And I'm sending
messages to SR like, dude, now they're standing next to
a stone wall and it's got the hair guy and
like it has to be aliens.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
And I'm laughing.

Speaker 7 (01:17:35):
Send these messages and Elliott comes in the room or whatever,
and he gets to this part where they're talking about
like Chinese festivals and prays and how they lift the
dragon up into the you know, the like inflatable kind
of dragons and.

Speaker 4 (01:17:47):
They release them, and they're.

Speaker 7 (01:17:48):
Like, could it be the case that people back in
the day, weren't really seeing dragons, but extraterrestrial crafts shaped
like dragons.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
Yes, and I.

Speaker 7 (01:17:57):
Look at it and he just goes because that's naturally.

Speaker 2 (01:17:59):
What would make that ship because obviously that's got to
be our places think about it is that drag.

Speaker 7 (01:18:08):
The reason why we have dragons and war is because
really to be a dragon shaped ships that you.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):
Know that's created, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:18:14):
That's that's the reason why.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
All right, since you're here, I'll go first on this
quest you to.

Speaker 7 (01:18:19):
Be on your one.

Speaker 8 (01:18:19):
I'm not going to say absolute favorite because Greg's psychopath
and we're not doing that. I will say one of
my favorites is secularity right here, this.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
Is on this that's right, Yes, myself is currently. I
love l and I love the way earlier.

Speaker 8 (01:18:36):
You were talking to that guy and you're like, I
don't think you're stupid, because you're like a police interrogator
they just found the murderer. And it's like, I don't
think you're stupid.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
I don't think and it's like I just think the
script that I heard, I just.

Speaker 8 (01:18:48):
Think you're so nice that I could almost believe that
to be true, that you don't think that the person
you're talking to is stupid or whatever, but no, you
are a nice guy.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
You haven't answered es.

Speaker 7 (01:18:59):
Yeah, well, so I have it the worst because I
have to go back to the room with this person.
And so, so who's your favorite host?

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
This is very chaotic right now, very cares in this room.

Speaker 7 (01:19:10):
I have a sip of water like I'm on the standard,
take a pressure or anything.

Speaker 4 (01:19:15):
Just my favorite host is Scott?

Speaker 2 (01:19:18):
Nice? Good answer, good answer.

Speaker 7 (01:19:23):
But you know what I feel like. I feel like
me and Graham have have actually bonded the most.

Speaker 8 (01:19:28):
Actually I'm really Graham's a good guy.

Speaker 6 (01:19:31):
Greg.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):
Why did you make us do this objectively? Why did
you do this? Squid games?

Speaker 7 (01:19:35):
No, let me let me not, let me not talkward.
I I do fucking love this, Scott.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
I've spent ye get up in here your non sponsored beverage.
This just happened.

Speaker 4 (01:19:47):
But you have to understand something.

Speaker 7 (01:19:49):
I interviewed Dan when I was a fan of the show,
so it's I was telling him. I was like, it's
it's cool for you really big fan of.

Speaker 2 (01:19:57):
My buddy. Yeah cool, Well this has just turned to
a big hot Before before I wrap up with my answer,
I want to give a quick shout out to our
incredible audience out there. You are still who sat through
all of the foolishness. Oh my goodness. I also want
to take a second. I also want to take a

(01:20:18):
say we do have someone from the Netherlands. That's great.
It's great people from all over the place and we
also I just want to thank all of our hosts
here who have been with us. Whichever one is my
favorite is irrelevant, because they're all incredible. I want to
thank our call screener and the rest of our crew.
I want to thank all of our callers, even the
ones that suck. I want to thank all of our chatters,
even the ones that suck. I want to thank our

(01:20:40):
mods on everybody else. And with that, my favorite host
is see you next time. Everybody on this experience Sundays
at four thirty under standard time, which is the best
standard time. We'll see you then. Bye. That was a
great idea. I around you got it, y'all. Wal Ellen.

Speaker 5 (01:21:39):
Watch talk Ee Than live Sundays at one pm Central.

Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
Visit tiny dot c c, slash y t t H
and call

Speaker 5 (01:21:45):
Into the show at five one two nine nine one
nine two four two, or connect to the show online
at tiny dot c c slash call th H

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