The Atheist Experience 29.39 with Dr. Ben and Scott Dickie

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's human nature to wonder what the chances are of
any event occurring in our universe. The absence of a
straightforward answer leaves room for curiosity and speculation. However, the
claim that this result is highly improbable therefore it cannot
occur naturally, such as in the fine tuning argument, isn't proof.
It's a post hot probability fallacy. Dealing any specific combination

(00:22):
of cards is highly improbable, yet most of the combinations
that you get aren't thought of.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
As remarkable in that moment.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Claiming significance after the fact demonstrates a misunderstanding of statistics
and even the basics of probability, especially when those using
this argument have yet to show any of their work.
If you want to do the math improve me wrong,
give us a call because the show is starting now.

(00:53):
Welcome everyone. Today is September twenty eighth, twenty twenty five.
I'm your host, Doctor Ben and joining me is Scott
Dicky and I know what you all are thinking. Talk
Heathen was earlier on in the day. Well, we're taking
over this, okay, all right now, this is the atheist experience.

(01:15):
We are taking over. Uh and I have a little
video to show you all just explaining exactly what happened.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Fake news. That's fake news.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Okay, we did not actually tie up J Mike and
steal the show.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
But we're here now, We're here for.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
A great time at The Atheist Experience is a product
of the Atheist Community of Austin, a five oh one
c three nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of atheism,
critical thinking, soular humanism, and the separation of religion and government.
And this is a call in show. We have our

(02:08):
lines filling up as we speak, so get your calls
in if you would like five one two nine two
four to two, or you can use that tiny nott
CC link to use your browser if you would like.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, call us, let's talk some heathen.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
All right, we're ready to take our first caller.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
I'm ready, I'm ready. Let's roll.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
All right, let's take Zeno from the International Space Station.
How are you doing, Zeno?

Speaker 4 (02:47):
It's a troop out here. I was looking out there.
I think I saw a ghost out the quote window.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, it sounds like you want to talk about intelligent design.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
What exactly do you.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Like?

Speaker 4 (03:06):
I would try to figure out, like from an agnostic more,
I'm like neutral more. But you know, I like certain concepts.
I think pantheism has the hold on it, all the
evidences evidence in that case being it is the universe.
But that's another philosophical inquiry.

Speaker 5 (03:29):
You know.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
The atheists cracked me up because.

Speaker 5 (03:33):
Y'all have faith, and y'all don't even realize what you
have faith in.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
That's the wholes So, you know, instead of instead of
telling us what you think we believe, how about you
tell us what you believe and if you know, if
you're right, maybe we'll change our minds on that.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
What do you believe?

Speaker 6 (03:52):
You know?

Speaker 7 (03:53):
I don't.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
I don't need to think already know what the atheist
faith is. There's no evidence of God or no convincing evidence.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
So yeah, zeno, I want to know. I want to
know what you think. So tell us what you believe.
If you're just gonna tell us what you think we
believed in, I don't think this is a very useful conversation.
So tell us what you believe, have a discussion with us,
or or move on to somebody else.

Speaker 4 (04:23):
Well, you know, my belief is it's unknown and unknowable
right as an agnostic, So you can't claim God doesn't
exist with the atheist. That's your claim, but you won't
admit it, right because you don't have the bath.

Speaker 8 (04:43):
So not at all.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Wait, but you don't believe what you just said, and
you just won't admit it. You believe you believe that
we Actually, it's ridiculous, Zeno. If you're gonna, if you're
gonna call us and tell us what we believe, you've
I can you know we don't need you to do that.
You know we already know what we believe. And actually
I would argue that we know better what we believe

(05:09):
than you. I'm not sure. I've never been to the
International Space Station, I've never met you. How do you
know what I believe?

Speaker 9 (05:19):
Well?

Speaker 5 (05:19):
What do you believe or disbelieve?

Speaker 3 (05:21):
I'm asking you the question. You've already stated that I
believe certain things. I want to know, how do you
know that? How do you know that's what I believe?
Or are you just talking out your ass right now?

Speaker 4 (05:35):
No, I've interviewed several as to have many as friends
and been debate and.

Speaker 9 (05:40):
It sit since twenty fourteen.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Okay, we're not people know me?

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Were any of those people that know me?

Speaker 4 (05:51):
Okay, so explain your position. Then if that.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
Doesn't answer my question. So you're a knowledge that you
actually don't know what you're talking about when you're saying
what we believe in, what we don't believe is that
are Can we put that to bed before we move on?

Speaker 4 (06:10):
Do you not understand the term agnostic?

Speaker 3 (06:14):
I'll take that as a yes, so we can continue,
all right, thank you.

Speaker 4 (06:18):
I'll take god Ever, no.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Zeno, I take the position. I take the position of
agnostic atheism. And I feel like you've had this conversation before,
and I don't know if this is worth our time
right now, So I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Say goodbye to you right now. Zeno.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
If you want to call back and have a discussion
with us instead of about us with us in the room,
you can give you another chance. But we have other
people on the line who want to chat.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
So I think I was trying to present us with
a paradoxical approach to a discussion, and I think he
was trying to live up to his namesake there, but
unfortunately it didn't really didn't really land Zeno's sorry. So yeah,
so sorry, doctor Ben. Let's move on.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, no problem. I'm going to jump right to another call.
Let's talk to Donald he him from Louisiana. Donald, you
are live on AXP. It sounds like you want to
talk about a possible interpretation of God that's different than
a lot of people have come up with. What's your idea, Donald.

Speaker 5 (07:25):
Yes, I'm trying to lend basically ideas for many philosophers,
mainly Berkeley, Plato, Aristotle and you in Schopenhauer to basically Okay,

(07:47):
some of the people I've said were atheists or how
you would categorize them for their time. But I think,
for example, show Ben Howard's ideas of like will and representation,
Uh can't. All you have to do is say that

(08:10):
the will in his will and representation is bound to
some kind of cosmic consciousness that can that dictates like
the perfect forms of things, and you can use ideas
like the unactualized actualizer to try to explain its its origin.

(08:37):
But I mean, of course, with this conception there's a
limit to like how much you can know about about it.
But would do you have any questions like right now
or because I have a lot of like axioms.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah, so it sounds like there's kind of this You're
taking the perspect of a few different philosophers to try
to synthesize a different interpretation of like God.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
I'm just questioning is this for you?

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Is this more of a like philosophical exercise, or does
do you believe that this impacts your worldview in any way?
Like do you think that this you're taking these ideas
and applying them to some kind ofies or is this
more of a.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Like mental exercise.

Speaker 5 (09:32):
I'd say i'd lead more to a mental exercise, But
but I mean, I think it's a possible interpretation. I
doubt it because a lot of the ideas based off
of it is like I'm heavily relying on Berkeley and
his idea of that, oh, because all of our senses

(09:53):
aren't are aren't perfect and stuff that the thing that's
linking reality together is like the mind of God. And
I'm using the idea of the an actualized actualizer like
from Aristotle, which a lot of his things derived from
that like goes against our ideas of physics like inertia

(10:16):
and stuff. So and I don't think like I think
consciousness is emergent from material things, and I don't think
what people describe as consciousness and the idea of his soul,
it doesn't make sense to me so but so yeah,
I lean more way more atheist, but I'm not. We

(10:36):
just know so little about the universe, and when you
get into a sometimes when I look at things like
quantam entanglement or how well math works, and it it
leaves room for doubt, and I just I just this

(10:58):
is it doesn't my worldview somewhat. I see this as
a possibility. I don't see it as a likely one,
but it's it's high enough to to consider.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Gotcha, really and real quick.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
I do want to let Scott get in here too,
But I know there are a lot of people in
the audience who don't necessarily recognize some of these philosophers
or their specific viewpoints. Could you try to articulate your
position as if you're talking to like a classroom of students,
like who may not have heard this before.

Speaker 5 (11:38):
Okay, yeah, First I would say, there's there is this
idea from Aristotle of everything has a has a cause
and effect, but to not have an infinite regress of
causes he he thinks there is there should be some

(12:05):
unactualized actualizer. And then other people have uh like Aquinas
and stuff have used that to like try to explain
the Christian uh, the Christian God. And then there's he
and that there's like Plato's ideas of forms and like

(12:25):
that reality is like if he does an analogy, if
you're in a cave and there's like shadows from the outside,
and you can't you can only see the shadows. You
don't know the forms outside. And he he like points
to things like geometry, like he thinks there's a real
perfect triangle out in some realm of forms and stuff.

(12:48):
And then uh uh. Later philosophers like uh took his
idea and said from this forms there should be the one.
And then later it got reinterpreted by like Saint Augustine
to that one to be the Christian God. And he

(13:08):
makes an argument that since math and numbers all work
so well and stuff, is that the thing linking all
the numbers needs to be conscious. So consciousness is a
higher a higher plane than physical reality. And then you
have idealists like Berkeley, like there's this there's a it's

(13:32):
kind of long. There's like a whole tradition between the
rationalists and the empiricists, but and talking about how well
you can rely on your senses versus how well you
can rely like how well you can rely on induction
and senses versus how well you can rely on deduction
that is built off of axioms and Berkeley. Berkeley basically

(13:57):
his conclusion was, our senses aren't true, really real, and
for everything to not to be working so well well
that we are uh, that there is a great awareness
that is the mind of God. More complicated of this,
I have to do a shortened version, but yeah, and

(14:20):
then there's there's young in the collective unconscious which link
can be linked to play those forms and ideas of
archetypes and stuff. And if you want to know about that,
I think many people have heard of Jordan Peterson he
quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, I think.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah, I think I've got a good idea for where
your position is now. I think this is a great
one for for Scott to get in on, especially if
you want to talk about geometry and math.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
Sure, sure, yeah, Donald, Just quick question here before before
we dive into that. So are you when you talk
about a possible interpretation of God, are you referring to
just like looking and seeing something else in the world
that doesn't match up with what other people normally refer
to when they call when they say God or are

(15:14):
you Are you saying God is really different? Or are
you making an argument for a god like a being?
Are you talking still talking about a theistic God, a
being with a consciousness and intentions and and that kind
of thing. Is that what you're talking about? Are are
you really?

Speaker 5 (15:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (15:34):
I did?

Speaker 5 (15:35):
Oh, I didn't need to cut you off.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
Well, that's fine, Please continue with your thought.

Speaker 5 (15:42):
Okay, I don't have a fixed definition. I was just
I first was thinking about this and thinking about these
different interpretations of God and these different philosophers. But in
this I'm basicly arguing for a omni present, very extremely

(16:04):
powerful consciousness that is, that is beyond the limitations of
time and space and created time and space by being
an unactualized actualizer, and and things like archetypes of other

(16:25):
gods and other religions and forms are like are they're
like union archetypes derived from.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
This grand grand so rept here Donald, I'm not sure.
I don't feel like you're addressing my question. It sounded
to me like at first you were saying you were
kind of supporting a more traditional view of God, and
then you kind of went back to well, you know,
maybe it has to do with you know, Platonism or
something along those lines. Is that what you're are you

(16:56):
are you talking about a god or are you just
saying that? Well, you know, maybe we could mean some
other things if we use if we said the word god,
is that what you're trying to get at?

Speaker 5 (17:06):
Okay, I'm okay, I'm not strictly going with exactly the
Christian God, but I am saying one conscious being beyond
space and time, that that has that makes everything possible

(17:29):
by its will and its observation of things.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
But okay, I think that's enough that we that we
can start here. I wanted to address one thing that
you brought it. You said something about that math works
or something like that. Could you expand on that? And
I'm math literate, so please feel free to get as
much into the details there as you like.

Speaker 5 (17:52):
Okay, Well, if you if you just look at some
laws like Fagorian theorem and uh geometric proofs and how
they they like, you could come to those from pretty

(18:17):
from from almost from just a few axioms and deductions.
But they work out into they work in the world,
and you can see you can see forms of them
all all the time, and the fact that everything's aim
h formula and equations. It's it's the amount of order

(18:44):
in it.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
Just is are you are you describing the system of
math as like some kind of of determining the way
things are and forcing things to be a particular way,
being prescriptive? Is that what you're saying, is that math
kind of forces things to work out a certain way?
And how could that possibly be if unless there's some

(19:10):
kind of creator god, Is that what you're implying? Because
I don't know if I would agree that math is
necessarily prescriptive. I mean, if we think about how we
develop math, I mean, there's a couple different ways of
looking at what math is. Okay, as humanity, we've invented
this mathematical language to describe descriptions of the universe. We

(19:33):
started out our earliest math was counting things, and we
counted on our fingers, and we counted with stones and
so forth, and we developed from there. And so my
question to you then would be, how can you jump
to the conclusion that math is prescriptive rather than merely descriptive,
Because from all evidence from the history of mathematics and

(19:56):
science for that matter, is that we learn things about
the universe by observing, and then we draw conclusions for
what we see. So what it's it's really not the
case that or at least we can't make the case,
or rather, I've never seen the case successfully made that
there's anything outside of the universe that's kind of forcing

(20:18):
the universe to be this way, not forcing gravity to
work a particular way, not forcing the Pythagorean theorem to
work a particular way. We see things the way we
see the way the universe is, we see that there's patterns,
we describe those patterns. Then we shouldn't be surprised that
our descriptions happen to match the universe, right since since

(20:40):
if we view mathematics and science as a description of
the universe, of course it should match. It's derived from
the universe. And so when if you say something like
how is it that math works, Well, because we saw
what was there, we described it and then and so
that's what we're doing, is we're reference saying that description.

(21:00):
Does that make any sense? Donald, Yes, And.

Speaker 5 (21:05):
I understand what you're getting at. But some of the math,
I you can come to it without without going out
and like using empiricism, you can come to it from
a few axioms and pure deduction and then that is matching.

(21:25):
So well, it's one thing if you go, yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
Donald Ron and like exactly what what Scott is saying though,
like math, math and science are branches from philosophy, Like
all of this stemmed like from the same place, and yeah,
you're gonna see those patterns in reality. Like you keep
going back to the Pythagora and theorem, Like what is
the context and the usage for the Pythagora and theorem?

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Do you remember from school?

Speaker 5 (21:53):
I'm pretty sure it was for building pyramids, and.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
It's a for right triangles, right, like you use the
patagoray in therem for right triangles. There's a set context
in which that equation works. You can't apply that to
some other type of shape because that model was meant
to describe right triangles. So yeah, if you go out
in the world and you find another right triangle, you're

(22:20):
gonna see application of the Pythagorean theorem. And there's a
lot of different mathematical equations that sure are pretty accurate
most of the time because we're using them within the
context that they were designed for. And I'm saying design
because humans made mathematics to describe the world around them.
But you take the math outside of that context and

(22:42):
it doesn't work anymore or it changes. For example, in physics,
you have these coefficients that you're going to use to
describe gravity. Nine point eighty one is what we use
for the gravitational pull like here on Earth, or the
acceleration due to gravity on Earth. That number is not
going to be the same in a place with a
different acceleration due to gravity. But that's it's not because

(23:06):
there's some supernatural reason for that equation to work that way.
It's because the parameters, the variables are all applicable to
that specific context and setting.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
So yeah, I think you need to flip it.

Speaker 5 (23:22):
Go ahead, okay nine point one Yeah, I agree. The
gravitational constant constant of Earth, I mean, I mean it's
not technically constant, since you can like have shifts in
like different places of water.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
The coefficient.

Speaker 6 (23:43):
Earth yeah yeah, yeah yeah, but coefficients, Yeah, that you
can only basically get by directly by going out and
using your senses and doing empiricism and experiment.

Speaker 9 (23:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (23:58):
That that I'm not saying is uh from uh some
supernatural source. But going back to the Pythagorian theorem. Yes, Uh,
I didn't. I didn't get what you were saying. I
know it's right trum angles. But if you take the
ideas of it, of of the adjacent, the hypothenuse, and

(24:26):
the opposite, and you you take those ideas from it,
and then you and then you change it for other
than right triangles, you get things like you get it.

Speaker 6 (24:37):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (24:37):
The the trigonometry rules of signed cosine, tangent, and and.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
Those are all it's all just solving, Donald, Those are
all just solving for different variables. It's just using critical
thinking to derive a model to find out a missing
variable in the equation. Like if all of these other
numbers are a if we assign certain numbers to each
different side length and angle, we're gonna be able to

(25:06):
find out the other angle that we're missing because they
all have to equal a certain amount. So that's that's
just that's just finding like variables that you're missing like that.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
That's all that this is.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
There's nothing like supernatural or super meaningful beyond that about that.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
Let me add something, sorry, Donald, let me add something
to what doctor Ben said there before you go on.
So yeah, so yeah, the like you mentioned the Pythagora
in theorem turns out to be a subset of a
larger law called the law of co signs. And also
it was they did use the Pythagora theorem, or at

(25:46):
least a variation of it, when building the pyramids, or
at least it's it's it's proposed, it's hypothesized that they did.
I don't know if they ever actually have any evidence
of that, but it seems like they would have. They
would be able to. They had the technology and the
knowledge to be able to use that. They can set
up a right triangle. They can measure the links of
the sides, and that helps them to determine that the

(26:08):
angle between those sides is in fact a right angle.
But let me give you an example here and tell
me what you think of this. Let's say that I
went out and I looked at a bunch of apples,
and I saw that they were all red. Okay. I
have dozens and dozens and dozens of apples in front
of me, and I look at them and they're all red. Okay,
And so I say, hey, apples are read. Let's make

(26:30):
that a law. That's a law, that's something I have
observed in nature. Apples are read. So then what I
do is I go down the street and somebody tells
me they have an apple, and I say, you know what,
I bet you that apple's read. And they say they
pull out, and they say, you know, you're right. That's
amazing that law of the universe made this apple red.
There must be something weird happening here. There must be

(26:52):
some sort of supernatural creator that did this. But no,
what really happened was we saw a pattern. We named
that pattern. In this case, I just said, you know,
the apples are all read, and then we went And
then should we be surprised that we go out into
the world and noticed that that kind of thing happens.
It's not. I haven't justified belief that there's anything prescriptive

(27:17):
about this quote unquote law of red apples that I made,
that I've noticed and that I named. There's no reason
for me to think that that's prescriptive, that there's anything
making the apples read. What happened was I noticed a pattern,
and I gave that pattern a name. That's what we're
talking about here. And so when you talk about how
mathematics works, yeah, no kidding, it works. We went out,

(27:40):
we looked at the world, we described patterns that we saw,
and then we shouldn't be surprised at all when the
patterns that we find happened to match that description, because
the description was based on what we observed. And that's
how science works. That's the number one step in the
scientific method, or while I suppose, depending on how you
you set it up. But making observations comes before drawing

(28:03):
your conclusions, and so scientific conclusions are not prescriptive conclusions.
They're descriptive conclusions by definition. And so at the most
what we can say out of after going through this
entire process is that we've summarized a description of what
we see. Now, if we do that, I don't think

(28:26):
we should be surprised then when we go out and
find out that the universe actually matches that description. Does
that make sense? Donald? What do you think about that?

Speaker 5 (28:37):
I think there's a false equivalency here with all the
red you know, when you were saying that, I thought
you were about to do like, oh, the apple's green
and like the black swawn fallacy. But but but the
apples okay again, and that knowledge, okay, that's synthetic, a

(29:04):
posteriori knowledge that you got by observing and doing induction
and your your senses to find a pattern. But some
but a lot of math, it can either be true
it's like true by definition like uh, and but some

(29:27):
of it so that's not surprising the true by definition,
but some of it, like some of the laws of
triangles and stuff. You can be synthetic, but you can
come to it a priori without your senses. That's the
class of math and knowledge that I'm saying, is this
distinct here because you don't need your sense is to

(29:52):
come in and find it. Your thing works for the
knowledge where oh it's like a constant, or it's or
apples are red. It's a synthetic a prosteriori knowledge. But
knowledge that is synthetic that you can come to without
using your senses, without empiricism, and it's still come to

(30:16):
be true. This is the part is.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Possible, but it's a lot harder to demonstrate that it
is true.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Right, And there's a few.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
I would go further and say that you are not,
in fact doing completely a posteriory observation there. I think
that when when can you let me ask you this,
then can you name one mathematical fact that is not
based on observation of the universe, and that is not
based on other observation. Like we notice patterns, right, One

(30:51):
of the patterns that we notice is that if I
have this set of facts, I can manipulate those set
of facts to come up with to generate other sets
of facts. That's one of the patterns that we've discovered
mathematically in nature is that if we know certain facts exist,
we can use those facts to generate new facts. That's

(31:11):
one of the patterns that we've observed. That's not something
that we created up out of nothing. We noticed that
that happens if I know if I have two stones
here and two stones here, if I put them together
into one big pile, they will make four stones. We
generalize that to beyond stones, and we have our foundations
for mathematics there. So can you name me one mathematical

(31:33):
fact that's either not based on observation or is not
based on conclusions we've drawn from other observations.

Speaker 5 (31:43):
Okay, that's okay. I would say axioms, But most axioms
came from them observing the world and then coming up
with them. But you could come to the axioms without

(32:04):
doing that, Like things like Euclid's five postulates, and then
and things in set theory. But then, but then you
get into well, some axioms can be false, and like
the fifth postulate or the and then you get into
questions of the axiom of choice and the axiom of determinacy.

(32:27):
But my and but my point is, Okay, yes, most
of the axioms and stuff they did, they were just
formalizing their intuition, which was built out after a lifetime
of observing things in the world. But you can come
to them without that.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
But how do you how do you do that?

Speaker 5 (32:48):
Separate these things?

Speaker 3 (32:50):
How do you come to them without that?

Speaker 5 (32:54):
Okay, first you would have okay, okay, we're gonna you're
imagining some brain in a vat that doesn't have any senses.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Let me pause you for a second here, let me
pause you, let me I want to put a finer
point on my question. How can you come to those
conclusions without relying on either previously observed facts or previously
observed patterns that can be used to generate new facts.
In other words, we're not going to use any foundational
axioms or any other assumptions, any other things that we've

(33:34):
observed in nature, and we're not going to apply any
patterns of reasoning, patterns of thinking that we've also observed
in nature. So how can you come to those conclusions
without using previously observed math knowledge and previously observed math
processes or methodology.

Speaker 5 (34:00):
Well, the methodology and stuff is derived from from logic
and law and logic like I think if we were
to take a human mind just inherits uh, inherits patterns
and its structures, and it's in its brain to.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
To from where logically, where does it inherit those patterns from?

Speaker 5 (34:27):
Okay, well, okay, well, are we saying what I actually
believe or what or from the argument that I'm making here?

Speaker 3 (34:37):
I am Well, if those are two different things, I'm
curious as to why you would be making that argument.
But if you're just making I mean, we can examine
arguments on their own, merit. What let's let's focus on
the argument and how does how does what you're saying
support your conclusion?

Speaker 5 (34:53):
Okay? What I would uh, what I would say is
there is some kind of consciousness that is created that
would be creating the forms, And.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
Are you conjecturing that or are you do you have
reason to believe that.

Speaker 5 (35:12):
Okay, but well, uh my my reasoning UH stem from
UH stem from the idea of Plato's forms, and also
things in UH in quantum mechanics, where there where like

(35:36):
bells inequality and information seems to be able to be
non local.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
But okay, so that would be a conclusion. So I
want to know how do we get to that conclusion.
You said you can come to that conclusion without relying
any previous observation, and I'm gonna I'm going to shut
up here a little bit. I want to hear a
little bit from you, and then we'll see what if
doctor Ben wants to chime in on this.

Speaker 5 (36:01):
Okay, well there is Well, how are we going to
define an observation? Because I was going to do a
brain and a vat, but it's observing its own consciousness
and it would have to who then determine? Okay, the
idea of existence exists, and I can take the leap
that thoughts exist, and I think therefore, I am but

(36:23):
are you does that? Because are you going to count
that as an observation even when it is just observing
itself and it has no senses?

Speaker 3 (36:32):
I'm asking you, how can we come to the conclusion
that a mathematical truth is true without Now you're saying
that we can derive that absence of observation a priori right,
And so what I'm asking you is, can you, first
of all, can you name one of those mathematical truths?
And then can you show me how we can come

(36:53):
to that conclusion without relying on previous observation, which includes
the observation of certain patterns of truth, which includes logic.

Speaker 5 (37:05):
By the way, well, okay, you I don't think you're
able to do it without making any observations. But I'm
making a distinction between observations from your senses versus versus
completely internal observation of thought and logic the two because

(37:28):
I was saying that the that the consciousness is beyond
UH is beyond physical realm, and so a consciousness that
isn't bound by space, time or adder and energy that
would be able to observe itself without these things.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
So you're conjectural, I'm conjecturing. Yeah, okay, all right, Ben,
do you I've been talking here. I'm so excited. We
got a math question while I'm on so I'm going
all over this. So I just want to make sure
we I give Ben a chance to talk about this too, Ben,
who also is math literate as well, I should point out, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
I'm having fun watching you two go at this.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
I feel like we we do have some other callers
in the queue though, so if we want to, like
we can talk for a little bit longer, but then
if we can start kind of getting to the end,
and then we can continue this another time as well.
And I'm donald, I'm going to say this, definitely call
another time to talk Heathen and we can continue this

(38:34):
conversation because Scott is over there quite a bit and
I'm sure we'd love to have continue conversation on this
with you.

Speaker 5 (38:42):
So okay, so when to call? Just next next weekend or.

Speaker 3 (38:50):
If you look on the if you look on the YouTube,
they usually post ahead of time, like the next seven
shows or next six shows or whatever, when when who's
who's going to be on? When? And so? But but
I want while you're while you're doing that, I want
you to I want to I want you to bring
your a game when you come. So I want to
give you a little bit of homework here. It's my nature.
I'm a teacher, so I'll give you a little bit
of homework here. And I want you to think about that.

(39:11):
I want you to think about the distinction between nature
and as a subset of that, mathematics and logic. How
can we show that they are prescriptive? How can we
show that they are prescriptive the reasoning that we use.
In fact, I would go out on a limb and say,
you actually went through this process of learning this, you know,

(39:33):
learning how to do mathematical reasoning to some to some
extent or another. And you start out by you know,
when you're a little kid and you're in kindergarten and
you're counting blocks, or you're counting apples or whatever, and
so you start with the basics based on observation. When
you first learn how to add, they have little piles
of apples and you can push them together and do

(39:53):
things like that, and so you start with observation. But
the reasoning itself is also part of an observation. We
notice that reasoning in our universe produces certain times types
of results. When we do this type of action called adding,
we get this particular type of result. The same thing
applies for reasoning. If a certain if we can, if

(40:14):
we can show that certain premises are true, they combine
in a certain way according to our observed patterns that
we've seen observed patterns of logic, and then produce truths
about the other, about the about other facts. And so
that's what I would want, That's what I would ask
you too, And that's what I would love to dive into.
But as Ben said, we're we're you know, we have

(40:37):
limited time here today. But if you want to talk
about how can we show that mathematics or science or
even nature or in general is prescriptive, that's when you can.
If you can't show that, then you're not at a
point where you can say, well there must be something
making it. Does that makes sense?

Speaker 5 (40:55):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (40:55):
Yes, okay, yeah, So I'll look forward to uh talking
to you again at some point on that.

Speaker 5 (41:03):
Wait, just before you go, you've read you've read Kant
right in his his Categories of Knowledge and Critique of
Pure Reason?

Speaker 9 (41:11):
Right?

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Not if I've read it. It hasn't been recently, and
so I'm not. But if you want to give me
a little bit of homework, i'd be happy to.

Speaker 5 (41:21):
Yeah, could, yeah, could you read a CON's Critique of
Pure Reason? Because he basically gives what you're what you're
asking for but I'll do my own homework and I'll
come with a solid argument.

Speaker 3 (41:39):
All right, that's fair, that's here, it's a deal. All right.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
Thank you so much, Donald. I wish we had more time,
but thank you so much. And I hope you have
a great rest of your Sunday.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
All right, I'm so excited. We had a math question.
That's so awesome. Awesome.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, And for anyone else, if you want to talk especial,
if you want to talk about probability, we still might
have enough firm to take you, so get that call in.
We want to talk about some probability today, but just
a couple announcements. We want to make sure everyone knows
all the ways that you can support this channel, and
you can also go into the other shows within the

(42:20):
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(42:40):
helps us continue doing what we're doing. Another way to
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I'm going to pull these up. We have one from
Lisa wickershamnineteen ninety nine says, why were Christians so convinced

(43:03):
that their children were not going to be raptured with them?

Speaker 10 (43:07):
Wow?

Speaker 2 (43:09):
That's intense.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
That's a good question. That's a good question that goes
to you know, you hear people talk about this all
the time. You know, how can a parent be happy
in heaven when their children are suffering down in hell?
It seems it seems difficult. It seems like a difficult
thing to resolve there, So so excellent question, Thank you, Lisa.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
And then we have another one from one of our hosts,
Godless Engineer, who has also been a member for six months,
gives ten dollars, saying the Bible constructs the barrier of sensations,
the wisdom of Jordan Peterson. Yeah, yeah, those some silly
things that.

Speaker 11 (43:47):
Come out.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know what to say about that.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
Yeah, but if you want, if you want us, Oh
we got another super chat and read that one. Raise
your glasses for Oklahoma, Ryan Walters quit. Perhaps we can
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(44:12):
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(44:33):
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(44:55):
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Speaker 3 (45:11):
Much faces, they're so adorable.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
They're doing a great job.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
All right, crew, let's see some love for the crew
in the chat. Everyone gives some love for the crew, all.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Right, yes, yes, please show your support for the crew
in the side chat. And we've got a few more
calls in the queue. Do any of them stand out
to you?

Speaker 9 (45:35):
Scott?

Speaker 3 (45:36):
You know what I feel like? Uh Like, I'm so
satisfied that we had a math question. I feel like
I can handle anything. I'm empowered. I'm empowered. Uh So,
where wherever your fancy takes you on these all?

Speaker 11 (45:50):
Right?

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Uh, let's talk to Ken. He him from Michigan wants
to know how to understand how to understand the universe
existing for infinite time into the past and future. If
I can pull you up here, Ken, you are live
on the Atheist experience, tell us a little bit more
about your discussion topic today.

Speaker 7 (46:14):
Yes, thank you, it's wonderful to steak to both of you. Yeah,
the maths, if I can say that correctly. As how
infinities work, I kind of lets say the singularity or
the beginning of the universe, you know, time before the singularity.

(46:37):
Does that make any sense? I guess not? But you know,
like a infinite time And how did our eternal nowness
come to be? If if eternal time did exist, what
does it mean? But actually, because of your previous colors
seem very mass heavy. I'm thinking like a right triangle
on the surface of a sphere, and I guess that

(46:59):
makes uh not euclidian. It's non euclidian, so it makes
uh what's the Papagos wrong? So uh, but I could
go on in a finite but I guess not not
to go too far. Just do you have Ben? I
guess you're the math guy.

Speaker 5 (47:16):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (47:17):
Oh no, No, I'm not. Scott's the math guy. Scott's
a math teacher. I'm just a doctor.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
Uh so.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
But but yeah, but that Scott's happy to super happy
to talk math today. So definitely bring bring your math question.
We're here for it.

Speaker 9 (47:35):
Try to.

Speaker 7 (47:39):
Well, I mean, I don't know, but my math is
only high school triggered armetrary. I never did anything post
that except for YouTube. So I mean, what am I
even making a question here? What does it even mean
to say that, uh, in some kind of infinite time? Well,

(48:00):
because I assume most religious people say God is outside
of time? What does that even mean? You know what
I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
I can't. I can't answer that one. I have no
idea what it would mean to be out of time. However,
so as far as the infinity is concerned, if you
if you never went past trigonometry, then you missed out
in one of the most awesome classes that you could take,
and that's calculus, and I think everybody should take that.
And you know, I've taught that for many years and

(48:27):
I love teaching it just because it's a weird subject
and I love dealing with that kind of thing, and
I love trying to figure this stuff out. But is
your question really about that You're just having difficulty understanding
that time could be infinite or is there something more
to it than that?

Speaker 6 (48:44):
I will.

Speaker 7 (48:46):
Well, well, I don't think the human mind can understand
the non existence of time except for what before we
were conscious, So I guess I can put my mind
around the non exist in some time. I don't know. Yeah,
I always. I always end up in these infinite regressions,
you know, turtles and a turtle, infinite time or no

(49:08):
time or there one time, there is time, but once
you're dead there won't. Maybe that's too a little bit
of scared of death. So yeah, what what does time
mean when you don't exist? Well? I assume it means nothing.
But so, but the problem is, how do you write
all that down? Because you know, how do you try
to make sense to it, and of course I'm compircis,

(49:30):
so it's my sense.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
Let me ask you a couple couple of other questions here. Then,
do you do you understand that time still happened before
you were born or before you became conscious?

Speaker 7 (49:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (49:42):
Okay, was there a yesterday?

Speaker 7 (49:49):
I have recollection of it. If I was dead right now,
I would not have recollection of it.

Speaker 3 (49:54):
Okay, Well you're not dead, I don't think, and so
you do. So would you would you accept that statement
that there was a yesterday?

Speaker 7 (50:03):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (50:04):
Okay? And do you also accept that there will be
a tomorrow?

Speaker 7 (50:09):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (50:10):
Well okay. So for time to be infinite, then those
two things just have to always be true. I would
wager that in your experience it has always been true
that there was a yesterday and there will be a tomorrow.
So so far all of your experience points to the
fact that there was time before now and there will

(50:32):
be more time after now. So all infinite time means
is that that was just always true.

Speaker 7 (50:41):
Yes. I like the way you put that. Yes, and
if I never existed, I would assume time exist. I'm
trying to figure out if there's any way to mathematically
described a non existent universe that has no time. Does
that make any sense?

Speaker 3 (50:59):
It doesn't make it. Well, it makes sense. Your question
makes sense, But the thing you're asking for an explanation of,
to me, doesn't make any sense because to me, time
is an is an is a necessary part of what
makes the universe. Yes, but I don't mean logically necessary,

(51:20):
I mean definitionally necessary.

Speaker 7 (51:25):
Yeah. No, I don't see how a universe could exist
without time, because if it was, I don't know. Yeah,
doesn't make sense. What I'm trying to do is I'm
trying to think of myself as a disembodied spirit and
some kind of ethereal something, something non existent something, and
I'm floating around and saying hi to people. Does that

(51:46):
make the probably you know the religious thoughts that will
do this and that after we die. I do know
how that could work. I don't think the human mind
could understand any kind of post life for a turn.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
The year is too But you've already done that, You've
already described it, you already, you already said that you
believe and I don't think. I think this is a
very common belief that there will be a tomorrow, but
obviously it hasn't happened yet. And so you've shown, you've
demonstrated right here live on the air, that people can
hypothesize about the future, you know, further on down the

(52:23):
timeline or further into the back of the timeline. Even
though you were born in a particular time, you can
still imagine what it was like before that. We can.
We can imagine before we were what it was like
in years before we were born. And so everything that
you described is an answer to your question. You've just

(52:44):
described what it's like to imagine an infinite timeline. You
just all every day that happens, you believe there was
a yesterday, and you also believe there will be a tomorrow.
That's it. That's all that it takes.

Speaker 7 (52:58):
It's not that complicated. But the touch with their ownnowness
is that.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
It does at least it to the extent of things
like you know, the b theory of time or the
block theory of time, you know that kind of thing.
You know, that's that's that's more of a physics question
than a mathematics question. You know, it's more about what
you know, do we have any evidence to support that
kind of thing? And it makes you know, it also
requires for us to have a good, strong definition of

(53:25):
what time is, which is a little bit of a
slippery concept, but not entirely slippery. But I'll shut up
for a little bit and doctor Ben, do you have
anything you want to add to this?

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Yeah, I mean I don't have a whole lot to add.
It sounds like you're just trying to wrap your head
around this concept that you know, human brains do have
difficulty processing a concept of such a long period of time,
especially one that does not have an endpoint, because the
majority of things that we experienced, I mean, in fact,

(53:59):
like every thing in terms of our own experience is finite,
as you're kind of talking about with Scott, Like I
had a start point, I will have an endpoint, and
so it is very difficult to get outside of that
and think, oh, yeah, there are other things that will
exist beyond my lifetime.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
And that's something.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
In fact, just thinking about the applications of this particular question,
I think it does point out with some issues within
religious thought processes and a lot of people who believe
in eternity and believe in afterlife, a lot of people
seem to forget that, Yeah, once your life is over,

(54:39):
that doesn't mean that the rest of the world is
going to stop functioning. It doesn't mean that your actions
aren't going to have consequences even after you're gone. So
I think a lot of people, especially thinking about like
environmental concerns or like disease control, all those things that
have massive population impacts, like we don't. I think a

(55:02):
lot of people who believe in afterlife are just thinking, oh, well,
it's not going to affect me. And I don't think
they intentionally do that all the time. But when when
you're not thinking in a perspective that what you do
is going to impact people on this planet for a
longer period of time, it's easy to just kind of

(55:25):
assume that everything starts and ends with you. So I
don't know if that, well, that is in your thought
process at all.

Speaker 7 (55:35):
Logically, we're only self centered, I assume, right, all right,
it's always about me, right, I mean, I mean not
me literally, but I mean humans they seem do you
have time for one quick other thing? I was going
to run off, Well how about this if you have time,
if it's okay.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Yeah, really quick?

Speaker 7 (55:56):
Yeah, okay, yeah, okay, well okay, yeah. I'm an atheist.
I've always been an atheist, but I've never been militant
or full of hate. You know, I mean, let live
you know, I understand uh uh, I mean you know,
uh the theocracies and uh yeah, we got to be
careful here in America, you know, with you know, politics.
I don't want to get into that, but you know

(56:16):
what I'm saying. But uh, I had a question. I
am so sorry. This is wonderful. I appreciate you talking
to me. It would be best to divide. If it's okay,
I'd call back in the future and have other Oh
my question was I find comfort in reading the Koran
and the Bible. And I don't know if it's called

(56:36):
outland shots or something. I read all this, uh you
know when they when it's whether it's slavery or something
over women and all that terrible bad stuff. I just
skip over that because it's bullshit and it's wrong. It's bad.
But but does it make any sense to get some
kind of I like reading about Uh maybe it's just

(56:59):
some kind of mystical It's just I get it if
I read certain kind of religious stuff, I get a
sense of while being while I'm reading it, of course,
until it comes to the part where it says, you know,
guys are better than girls.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
Or yeah, I don't. I don't think that's a problem.
I don't. I don't.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
I don't think it's necessarily a problem to get good
feelings from reading a piece of literature. Like I read
fiction all the time, and I get nice, fuzzy feelings
when I read certain books as well. So I think
the issue is when people take those religious books and
then try to change their entire lives over it, have

(57:40):
unfounded beliefs because of it, and then even worse when
they tell other people how they have to live their
lives because of the book that they read. But but
if you enjoy reading religious texts, even I like reading
certain religious texts. I think a lot of us here
on these shows read religious texts, and it can be fun.
It can be fun, especially as a learning experience for

(58:03):
what people believed at certain points in time or what
certain cultures believed it. And sometimes there are messages in
there that are wholesome messages. I don't think the entire
book is completely evil. There are some things in there
that I do agree with, So I don't think that's
wrong of you to enjoy reading some of those books.

Speaker 7 (58:25):
Yes, I do. I don't want to say poetry. I
don't want to say history. I don't want to say
like it's but it's stories and hopefully, Yeah, I understand
between right and wrong, and the Bible didn't tell me that.
I think. I think Sam Harris can tell us how
we all know between right and wrong unless we're a

(58:46):
psychopaths or something. But we don't need some goofy book
to tell us that. But it's just it's ancient literature.
What would they think in two thousand years ago. Yeah,
they got a lot of stuff wrong. But that's kind
of cool. So it's how about the entertainment, And sometimes
it's so, hey, listen, you guys talk to me. I
really appreciate that. I'll listen to the rest of the
show and I have been for years. So uh and uh,

(59:10):
if it's okay, I'll call it next week.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Thank you so much for your call.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
Thanks. Then there's nothing wrong with enjoying reading. I think
that's a wonderful thing. And so if this is the
particular kind of stuff you like to read, go for it.
Go for it.

Speaker 7 (59:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, it's all yeah, yeah, don't get
brainwashed and assume everybody has all the truth. Yeah, I know.
Like I said, I've listened to you wonderful people for years.
So hey says, for taking my call. I hope I
haven't been difficult or google.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
So thanks a lot, Ken, I appreciate your calling.

Speaker 7 (59:48):
Okay, not geometry, that's.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
All right, take care Ken, all right, you all right, great,
you get there, get lots of math today.

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
That's great, I am, I am, that's awesome. That's awesome.
All right, day without maths a day without sunshine.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
No, but I agree with you though on your statement
about calculus. I hated math until I took physics, and
then I understood why math is so cool. So I
think like learning how to apply math, learning how to
just solve the puzzle, Like that's really all math is,
just solving puzzles, and it's.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Super fun, exactly wonderful. All right.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
The next one, let's talk to Jim. He him from
Missouri wants to talk about the atheist burden of proof.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
Jim, you are alive. What would you like to talk about?

Speaker 12 (01:00:48):
Well, yes, when people say that atheists have a burden
of proof, I always say that the burden of proof
for atheists is the same burden of proof that a
defense attorney has in an American criminal court, and it's
simply just to show that there is reasonable doubt.

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):
I would agree with that, or I would I would
phrase it slightly differently. I would I would say that
if it's it's it's not a it's not really dependent
on anything of the defense attorney. What it's depending on
is whether or not the prosecutor makes their case. Now,
their case can fail in a variety of different ways.

(01:01:29):
Maybe the judge throws out some of their claims, maybe
they maybe they just have a bad argument, or or
one of the options is that the defense is able
to poke holes in the claim. But when we're talking
about a burden of proof, I think the word burden
there is is important right when when if you if
you want to make a claim, you are shouldering that burden,

(01:01:51):
You are adopting that burden. So I prefer when when
talking about the burden of proof, I don't like to
just to separate between atheist and theist, because an eighth
theists can certainly say things that require proof, and a
theist can say things that don't require a burden of proof,
and so it's just that most of their theists claims
do but it's people that are making a positive assertion

(01:02:15):
about something that is they're saying something is true. They're
saying something is the case to me. When somebody says that,
then they are adopting the burden of proof, and so
so then the rest of us can just say, how
do you know that? How can you show that that's
the case. And whether or not they're saying that there's
a God, whether or not they're saying that there is

(01:02:38):
no God, which is not something that I assert. I'm
not that type of an atheist. I don't say that
I know that there's no God, or I don't even
say that I believe that there's no God. I'm saying
that I haven't seen an argument from a theist that
makes their case, and so that's not a well I suppose,
you know, if you want to be pedantic here, than

(01:03:00):
that would in fact be a claim. And so then
they say, you haven't seen an argument that makes the case,
then prove that to me. And so then I can
describe the types of arguments that I've heard, and I
can point out the problems with those arguments as I
see them. But if I'm not claiming that, if I'm
not making a statement about reality, then I'm not shouldering
that burden of proof. And that's really the bottom line.

Speaker 12 (01:03:24):
Yeah, I mean to me, you know, I always say this,
you know, when it comes to theis and they want
to say that yes there's a God, I say, okay,
you have to show it beyond a reasonable doubt, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Yeah, So I want to I want to push back
a little bit too, because I want to push back
because the court room example is great. However, I would
say that like poking holes in the other argument, isn't
you don't have the burden to do that, Like as
if we're thinking about the claim guilty or not guilty,
it's not the claim of guilty versus innocent. Like the

(01:03:59):
defense does not how to prove that the defendant is innocent.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
They just have to.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
Their job is to kind of like you were saying,
show if there's any any reasonable doubt and show if
the prosecution has met their burden or not. So I
would say there isn't a burden on the defense. The
burden is on the prosecution and at the end of
the day, they have to like convince the jury that

(01:04:27):
the person is guilty. And if they cannot do that,
then they have not met their burden. But there's no
there's no burden on the defense to make a case
that the person is innocent. Does that make sense?

Speaker 12 (01:04:41):
Well, yeah, and that's that's my point, you know, you know,
I uh, well, last night I was watching some of
the mini series of American Crime Story on OJ Simpson.
They didn't really prove that OJ didn't do it. They
just showed that. I mean, basically, Johnny Cochrane's whole case
was Mark Furman's a race, and that put into the

(01:05:02):
mind of the jury maybe some doubts did he actually
do it or was he framed?

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
So also all it did was was say could this
person be convicted under this these specific charges that were
brought against them? And something else too, like if somebody
is is charged with certain crimes, like they could be
found not guilty because they even if they did it,

(01:05:33):
but if they didn't do the crime that was that
they're being charged with, they're not necessarily going to be convicted.
And it's still not a situation where the defense has
the burden there. So I agree with Scott that we
need to be careful about the use of burden because
in this case there isn't an obligation to have to put.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Up that case.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
So but otherwise, like I I do agree with most
of what you're saying. I know this this particular point
is a little bit pantic, but.

Speaker 12 (01:06:06):
Yeah, well, I mean it's just my feelings, you know. Again,
I feel that, you know, everybody said, you know, when Chris,
when any theist comes and says, well, you can't prove
God doesn't exist, and that's their whole argument is like,
you know, yeah, I can't prove God doesn't exist anymore
that I can prove that, you know, the Lockness Monster, Bigfoot,
the Abominable Snowman, Tchoopacabra, the last cities of Atlantis, Eldorado

(01:06:30):
or shankro Lotte don't exist? Does that mean they do?

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
Yeah, we're getting into like a Russell's teapot argument here,
and I think we're just framing that slightly differently, but yeah,
we're on the same page, I think with that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:48):
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 12 (01:06:49):
I mean it's just you know, you know, again, how
many how many defense attorneys when cases just by showing
reasonable doubt, you know, by saying right, you know, hey, that's.

Speaker 3 (01:07:01):
The point there. So so that what they're by I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, Jim, you finished, and then.

Speaker 12 (01:07:07):
Also oh oh yeah again. They don't completely say the
guy didn't do it. They just said there is enough
doubt they maybe he's innocent.

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
Right, So so they do that. They do that to
show that the prosecution has failed to make their case.
What they're so what they're doing when they when they're
showing reasonable doubt, as you said, what they're doing is
they're saying, the prosecution has the obligation to make their
case beyond a reasonable doubt. Here I see reasonable doubt. Therefore,

(01:07:42):
the prosecution has failed to make their case beyond a
reasonable doubt. And so the defense is not obligated to
make it to demonstrate reasonable doubt. But they can. That's
one of the ways that they can that they can
show that the prosecution hasn't made their case. And it's
different just because you're not obligated to to prove your statement,

(01:08:03):
you still have that option. It's just you haven't adopted
that burden. You're not making a statement that requires that
kind of of support. You're not making a statement that
the universe is a particular way. What you're saying is
you have failed to make your case and that's what
we do. That's what we do here.

Speaker 12 (01:08:28):
Well, sometimes when I'm debating the iss kind of what
I say, you know, you have not proven that your
particular god, whichever god it is, exists beyond a reasonable doubt.
M So it's very possible that there is no god.

Speaker 6 (01:08:48):
All right?

Speaker 3 (01:08:48):
Yeah, and if if they failed to make their case,
then that's where you got to land.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
Anything else. I feel like we're in agreement here. Anything
else you wanted to bring up for your.

Speaker 3 (01:08:58):
Life, we stand in violence agreement.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
We stand in agreement.

Speaker 12 (01:09:04):
Oh darn, we were in violent agreement.

Speaker 5 (01:09:06):
How about that?

Speaker 12 (01:09:07):
You know, hey, you know nothing really no, but I
got to bring it out, you know, to where I'm
sure there are bright people in the queue are probably saying,
you know, getting mad at me, but hey, it's the truth.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
Yeah. Well, thank you for your callge a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
Yeah, thanks Jim, thank you, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
Have a great rest of today.

Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
I believe we had some other super chats come in
before we get onto the next caller. We had one
from Daisy with multiple wives who gave ten dollars saying
I would advocate anti theism if it weren't so easily
conflated with bigotry. I prefer if people believe things with
good reasons, and I doubt that religion can lead to that. Yeah,

(01:10:05):
all right, Well we have some more callers coming in.
Let's talk to Miller. He him from Michigan, wants to
talk about the dark path that religion can often get to. Uh, Miller,
would you like to kind of tell us a bit
more about this?

Speaker 10 (01:10:27):
Sure? By the way, thank you for having me on,
Thank you here for you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
Yeah, what's up?

Speaker 10 (01:10:38):
Just thinking out loud. I was listening to your show
on YouTube and your number was there, so I decided
to call in.

Speaker 9 (01:10:47):
I used to.

Speaker 10 (01:10:49):
I used to be part of a church and now
I'm not. But I was thinking that it's weird how
our minds work as humans, that we're trying to find
answers here and there, and we kind of go everywhere
and in the end, where do you know where? The

(01:11:11):
best answer is.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
That.

Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
It's a good question. It sounds like you have some
do you have some other thoughts about that? Like have
you thought about this deeply on your own?

Speaker 5 (01:11:28):
I have.

Speaker 10 (01:11:31):
Things that are told to you that in general they're
good advice that come from religious backgrounds or churches and
things like that. But really, in the end, it doesn't
have to come from there, but it's talked about it
in the church, and you try to follow certain rules,
you try to do certain things, be the right person,

(01:11:55):
and then when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter.
You are who you are.

Speaker 11 (01:12:03):
Yeah, I guess to yourself, well, how I act to me,
it does, but.

Speaker 10 (01:12:16):
Like how I act matters to me as well, but
it doesn't matter to the people around you as much.

Speaker 9 (01:12:24):
And religions.

Speaker 10 (01:12:26):
Basically, what I'm getting at is, for example, uh, you
should be married in the church.

Speaker 11 (01:12:38):
Is that true or false?

Speaker 10 (01:12:41):
Who knows?

Speaker 12 (01:12:44):
But is it better?

Speaker 10 (01:12:46):
Yes it is, but is an absolute. It's not an absolute,
and you learn that there's no absolutes, and it's tricky
and messes with your mind through life.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
Yes, I mean they're definitely.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
I can see where it gets confusing with rules of
religion and what rules are set because they make you
a better person, and what rules are set just because
this is tradition and this is what we do in
our community and this is something. Marriage is a great
example of where this is problematic because people will take
marriage and think that it is a like a moral thing,

(01:13:23):
like this is the covenant between a husband, a wife
and God, and only straight people can get married in
the church, and they end up using that as some
kind of like they take ownership over the institution of marriage.

(01:13:43):
And so it's definitely something where even in my past
I thought that getting married was virtuous and coming out
of religion. Like, you know, marriage is a great thing
for a lot of people, But does it need to
be so connected to religion?

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
Does it say anything about you as a person? No,
not really. It's a it's a great thing for those
people who want it. But yeah, that line.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
Between what is tradition and what is moral value is
definitely blurred in a lot of religious cases.

Speaker 3 (01:14:17):
Yeah, I want to ask you, Miller about your So
the notes in the in the from the call screener
say religion seems to give answers, but overall leads down
a dark path. Are you saying that religion inevitably leads
to some dark place or are you saying that because

(01:14:38):
if you are saying that, if you're making the stronger
form of this statement, I would I would disagree with you.
As a matter of fact, I don't think principally, I
don't think in its nature religion is going to lead
you down to the wrong place. The reason that I
have trouble with religion, and maybe you agree with me

(01:14:58):
on this, is is that if you base your decision
making on irrational beliefs, of which every every circumstance of
religion that I've seen, at least I would say that
that's irrational. I'd be happy to address that deeper at
a particular case if anybody else would like to discuss that,

(01:15:22):
I would say that it happened. It gives you the
risk of leading down to a dark place, but it
doesn't necessarily guarantee that. For example, I could design a
religion that is super awesome and that is really good
for the world, and that makes people happy and productive
and helps us to love each other and get along
with each other and so forth. Now that wouldn't necessarily

(01:15:45):
mean that it's a good thing to believe that, even
though they had good outcomes, because I would be also,
in addition to preaching my religion, I would have to
accompany that with the assumption that it's okay to believe
the irrational things, which to me, that's the crook that
gets me, that's the hook that pulls me back in.

(01:16:06):
Is that if you're implying that it's good to have
irrational beliefs, then I disagree with you. Is that what
you're saying or were you're saying? More that religion by
its very nature will lead us to someplace dark?

Speaker 10 (01:16:26):
Let's see, you said, will it lead you to can
it lead you to have irrational beliefs?

Speaker 3 (01:16:33):
Well, what I'm asking is I said, so there's I
just made a distinction between the statement that religion leads
you to someplace dark versus I don't know, maybe softening
in a little bit and saying that if you do
have religious beliefs, or I would rather phrase that as
if you have your unrational beliefs, irrational beliefs, then you

(01:16:55):
would run the risk of ending up at a dark place,
and you're more likely to end up at a dark place.
Do you see the distinction there?

Speaker 9 (01:17:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:17:05):
And so what's your take on that? What what's your position?
What are you trying to say here?

Speaker 10 (01:17:11):
The irrational beliefs that can lead you to a dark place?
That's well stated, for example, you should be married before
having children. That rational or irrational?

Speaker 12 (01:17:25):
It can.

Speaker 10 (01:17:27):
In today's world, It's like it's not that irrational, but
one hundred years ago that was rational. How do things
switch between rational and irrational so it gets molded into
society to where.

Speaker 1 (01:17:42):
That's just mentioned, we're just talking about cultural norms at
that point. We're talking about cultural norms, which I don't
know if we need to really get too far right
into rational versus irrational. As far as cultural norms, we
can have talks about like does this need to be
in force, like is this principle for moral good or

(01:18:03):
is this just something that is specific to that culture
in that place and time.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
Like, there are plenty of religious things that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:16):
You know, could be irrational but really don't have much
significance other than like if somebody goes to the temple
to go have some quiet time alone in that scene
as a positive thing in that religion. But if somebody
is not, you know, having the beliefs related to that,
but still think, you know, it's a great thing for
me to go meditate to this temple. I don't know

(01:18:38):
if I care so much about whether or not that
particular aspect is rational or irrational.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
They're they're not.

Speaker 1 (01:18:46):
Making any claims that you're better than other people if
you do that, So I think it's it's depending on
how you use that how you enforce those social norms, because,
like I mean, a great example of this is how
gender is presented in society, because if you think about sociologically,
gender is a performance, and even though you have your

(01:19:09):
own internal sense of gender identity, if you go outside
of your own culture to another one, you'll still oftentimes
pick the expressions and the norms that relate to your identity,
even though they are completely different. Things like there are
cultures that will have men who wear skirts and men
who wear dresses, men who wear makeup, and that's if

(01:19:30):
you're a man in a society that doesn't use those things,
going to that culture, you might adopt that stuff because
it's seen as masculine, and that is how you're performing
your gender. Do I think that gender as a concept
is irrational? No, doesn't have a whole lot of moral significance.
Like is there morality to being a man versus being

(01:19:51):
a woman? No, absolutely not. It's something that I think
can be a bit more abstract and that's okay, and
not necessarily have a certain set of more value. It's
just if it's how you're enforcing these things within that society,
that is where we need to care about more.

Speaker 2 (01:20:08):
Does any of that make sense?

Speaker 10 (01:20:11):
It does make sense to us. I'll be more specific
in my question. There's somebody I'm interested in. I don't
believe in having children before marriage. In other words, basically,
don't have kids before you get married.

Speaker 11 (01:20:30):
I used to be part of a church.

Speaker 10 (01:20:31):
I'm not anymore, but I still hold on to that belief,
even though it was ingrained in me through the church
that you know, you do things in a very conservative way,
and that's with me. But I'm no longer part of
the church, and.

Speaker 13 (01:20:46):
I get in the yes and several times, and it's
irritating to me that I don't think you should have
kids before marriage, and I find being put down for that.

Speaker 11 (01:20:57):
It's like, what the hell do you think?

Speaker 1 (01:21:00):
That it's okay to have that viewpoint for yourself, but
maybe not.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
I think that other.

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
People need to have that same idea, Like are you
going into public spaces and or are you engaging with
people and telling them that they have to agree with
you on this.

Speaker 10 (01:21:15):
I don't tell people they have to agree with me.
It's what I'm looking for in a partner. And I
get put down for it because I'm not interested in
somebody because.

Speaker 3 (01:21:23):
Of that do you get put down by your potential partners?
Is that who we're talking about or is it like
your friends or.

Speaker 10 (01:21:28):
Something potential partners?

Speaker 3 (01:21:33):
Right, Well, then I'll signal that they wouldn't make a
very good partner for you. Yeah, if they disagree with you,
if they not only disagree with you, but mock you
because you disagree to me, that doesn't make it doesn't
make a great great partner.

Speaker 1 (01:21:48):
I mean, And it's it's okay to have preferences in
how you Like, no one is required to have like
intimate relations before marriage.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
You're not even required to do that in your marriage.

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
Like your boundaries with your own body are for you,
and so it's okay to have those conversations early on,
like when you're pursuing a potential partner and you say, hey,
this is like my preference for when I want to
do something with my body or when I don't, and
it's totally allowed, like have conversations about those boundaries. And

(01:22:24):
if that other partner, like if that other person is
not on the same page or if they have different
needs than you, then you part ways and you say, hey,
I don't think this is going to work out. I
don't think we're compatible. But it's totally okay to have
different viewpoints on that. But I would say instead of
saying that this is like a moral issue of whether
or not it's moral or not to have kids before marriage,

(01:22:47):
I think keep that as a boundary for yourself, but
then still respect other people that are going to think
about it differently.

Speaker 3 (01:22:56):
Yeah, And I would just throw in two that if
if you find a partner, if you don't want to
have kids until after you're born or until after you're married.
Obviously after you're born, but if you don't want to
have kids until after you're married, and you find a
partner that is agreeable to that, whether they're religious or not,
please take the initiative to participate in the birth control

(01:23:18):
efforts of your of your partnership there. I mean, if,
especially in the cases where if you're the one who
doesn't want to have children, then please make sure that
you are, you know, putting an effort in in the
birth control arena and not just leaving it up to
your partner. Yep.

Speaker 10 (01:23:39):
Yeah, especially if you believe in that.

Speaker 3 (01:23:41):
Huh, Yeah, you better. Yeah, put your money where your
mouth is, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):
All right, Yeah, does does all that help? Work.

Speaker 1 (01:23:51):
We've got We've got other calls to get to. But
does that does that answer your question?

Speaker 9 (01:23:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (01:23:57):
It does. You guys are great cool.

Speaker 2 (01:24:00):
All right, thanks Miller, thank you so much for your call.
I have a great day. All right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
We have a theist waiting in the queue. I am
excited for this. Let's talk to Sheldon. He him from
New York. Sheldon, you are live on the Atheis experience.
It sounds like you want to talk about Jesus Christ,
that he is God. What you got for us?

Speaker 9 (01:24:26):
All right? I would ask to call by versatal chat
that everyone and they're actually continue They actually listened to
your program and they asked me to have a discussion
and then they asked me to call and they told

(01:24:47):
me this. I want to try the program work, to
be honest, and I would ask what do I believe
and why I'm not asking anybody to believe anything I believe.
I'm not how I believe. I believe that you make
judgments but for yourself. So I agree with a lot
of stuff that you were talking about just now with

(01:25:07):
the gentleman. I do believe Christ was, he was born,
he died, and he rose again. I believe that he
has spoken to me. He answers to Jesus and he
says he's God. So I don't last fifty plus years

(01:25:28):
that he's spoken to me. He's, as far as I
can tell, not lie to me. And with that track record,
I believe him. I believe he's He and that's what
he answers to and that's why I believe what I believe.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
Okay, what else? What else? What? Sheldon? What specifically convinced.

Speaker 9 (01:25:49):
You that he is what he says he is? Like
I said, over the past fifty plus years, I mean
he's in guiding me, not that I've been listening. I said,
how has he been today?

Speaker 1 (01:26:06):
How has he been guiding you? Does do you hear
an audible voice? Do you feel something? What is this experience?

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
Like story of a voice?

Speaker 9 (01:26:15):
I have heard an audible voice. I have been shown uh,
future events if I make certain decisions literally shown almost
like a video. And but I still make the decisions
that I want to make because I wasn't told not
to make it. I was told I shouldn't make it.
And here's why. The things that I was shown they

(01:26:39):
come the past, not asking anyone to believe and anything.

Speaker 1 (01:26:42):
I say, But like what what kind of things the
judgment what kind of things have have you predicted?

Speaker 5 (01:26:50):
Not me?

Speaker 9 (01:26:51):
I didn't predict anything. I was shown I wanted to
help some people financially, and nobody would normally do what
I did. Actually, I purchased the house to help.

Speaker 1 (01:27:04):
Them, but I was told beforehand it doesn't do not
But wait, so you bought a house for people who
needed one. That doesn't sound like anything supernatural. That sounds
like you did a good thing for other people. That's
almost something you did.

Speaker 9 (01:27:19):
I wanted. I wanted to help these people, and I
was told if I did right, and I was shown,
I would lose my shirt and and ws and it
basically became a financial nightmare for me to the point
where I was, I mean completely financially devastated because of

(01:27:41):
stuff they did. But my name basically was on a property.
I was getting fines. I spoke to them and they wouldn't.
They parked a truck on the premises, and I'm living
in New York City. That's the type of truck is
a bigger truck is illegal to block on that type

(01:28:04):
of premises, but I don't know about it. I was
getting fined. I twenty five hundred dollars the day they
parked another one, so ied to go to court the judge,
I'll be out of it.

Speaker 3 (01:28:16):
I think we're straying a little bit here, Sheldon. I
don't think that those particular details are necessarily relevant, but
maybe we can get to that if it turns out
to be relevant. But you've said a couple of times
now that you don't want to try to get convinced
anybody else to believe what you believe. But do you
think it's important that you have good reasons to believe
what you believe? Or so that's one option you think

(01:28:40):
that it's it's important to have good reasons to believe
what you believe, or if you didn't have good reasons
to believe your religious beliefs, do you want to believe
them anyway? What's more important to you? Knowing the truth
or believing in God? Which may be the same thing.
They may not be. But if you had to choose one, and.

Speaker 9 (01:29:02):
Truth is like I said, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:29:06):
Okay, So then when you say something like I'm not
here to convince anybody else of anything, that's fine. Of
course you're not obligated to do that. But what I
want to know is how did you convince yourself that
this was true? There's some weird things happen that you
can't explain. How do you get to a god from that?

Speaker 9 (01:29:33):
I guess the audible voice that has said certain things
to me mm hmm within the fift people here that
I've been around.

Speaker 3 (01:29:42):
Okay, so you're hearing voices, that's one. Okay, what's next,
voice a voice? Okay, that's fine, you hear your You
heard a voice, Sheldon?

Speaker 1 (01:29:54):
Do you think that every time? Let's even just let's
let's take this first thing. You so you heard a voice.
Do you think that everyone who says that they have
heard a voice all actually did? Or do you think
that some people think that they heard something but they didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
No?

Speaker 9 (01:30:13):
Right, No, I know I know what you're saying. No,
not everybody it says they hear.

Speaker 1 (01:30:18):
So how do how do you know that the voice
you heard was a real voice? And then how do
you know that that voice was God's voice?

Speaker 9 (01:30:29):
Well, that that voice eventually told me I am God.
So if I believe the voice and the voice says
I am God, then I have to believe I am
God is the.

Speaker 3 (01:30:41):
Voice we're asking, why did you believe the voice?

Speaker 1 (01:30:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (01:30:47):
Everything the voice had told me does far either has
come to pass or has been proven true.

Speaker 3 (01:30:56):
Right, But people that are not God can tell the truth.

Speaker 1 (01:31:00):
Yeah, and and at least the story that you were
starting to tell us sounds very mundane, like the things
like getting fines on the street, going into financial distress
because you're trying to do something for somebody else, and
then buying a house to help somebody, like all of that,

(01:31:20):
whether or not you thought you saw that coming, Like,
that's all very benign stuff and could happen coincidentally, I
know so many people who would describe similar experiences. So
how do I understand?

Speaker 2 (01:31:36):
How do I know.

Speaker 1 (01:31:37):
That you are having actual God experiences and not just
having your own thoughts in your head that that tell
you to do certain things?

Speaker 9 (01:31:47):
How do you or do I?

Speaker 3 (01:31:51):
How would one know that?

Speaker 9 (01:31:54):
Okay, I don't know. If you could know, you could believe.

Speaker 3 (01:32:00):
It, or you don't, I guess Okay. So that so
that's it seems like you're failing your own priority here.
You said you preferred truth over this God belief if
if you had to choose. Obviously, we're recognizing, at least
for the for the sake of this argument, that they
could both be true at the same time, but you're
saying that you'd rather be true if it turns out
that there's no God. You want to you want to

(01:32:20):
believe that, and so you don't seem to be really
given good reason to have that belief. You're you seem
What it seems to me is that you're admitting that
you don't have a good reason, but that you're just
believing anyway, which contradicts what you said earlier about what
your priority is.

Speaker 9 (01:32:42):
Well, I can't physically prove something along this line that's
true if I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:32:49):
Know how, okay, so so then so you can't prove
it's true, so you shouldn't believe.

Speaker 9 (01:32:56):
It, right, so that the stuff that was said to
me is true so far?

Speaker 2 (01:33:03):
But did did? But even in that voice, it did?

Speaker 1 (01:33:06):
If the voice told you that it's God, like, I
have so many questions because we've already discussed that just
because you heard a voice doesn't mean that it's true.
But it also is confusing of how you get to
specifically this particular God because you also mentioned the resurrection.

Speaker 2 (01:33:29):
Of Jesus Christ and all that.

Speaker 1 (01:33:33):
It seems totally separate from like because what if what
if it was a different God that was speaking to you.
What if it was Satan that was speaking to you? Like,
I have so many questions, and I want to know
how you got to this conclusion other than just having
a gut feeling that it that it was.

Speaker 9 (01:33:54):
I told you only seven minutes. So I I've read
the Bible. I've studied Bible. Actually a lot of my
answers actually came from the Bible as well, a lot
of my explanations came from the Bible as well.

Speaker 1 (01:34:12):
Which specific ones, which specific answers.

Speaker 9 (01:34:20):
Other beings that I've seen, the Bible describes them as
ghosts or spirits, and I believe them to be spirits.

Speaker 1 (01:34:29):
There are plenty of other religions that describe spirits.

Speaker 7 (01:34:33):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:34:34):
And that's again something that you'd have to demonstrate. But
but even let's let's pretend that spirits were were real.

Speaker 2 (01:34:41):
Uh, how did you?

Speaker 1 (01:34:43):
How does that get you to the Bible and not
another religion that believes in spirits?

Speaker 9 (01:34:51):
I the name that I was raised in. I had
friends of many religions that I've been exposed to, at
least four or five different other religions including his who
was Induism? Is Voodoo? Well not Voodoo particularly, but there's
a voodoo culture and different forms of Christianity as well.

(01:35:17):
So I have I haven't read the Koran yet, as
I tried to get one for about thirty years and
I actually recently got one, but I have had uh
many interactions and many questions that I would have and

(01:35:38):
basically right of those other religions.

Speaker 1 (01:35:41):
But do you know as to answer, Yeah, that doesn't
answer your question. How did you tease out which one
was correct, if any of them?

Speaker 3 (01:35:51):
Well, like I said, you're not following through on your
own commitment to truth. By the way, you're not following
through on your own commitments. So if you really do
believe that, then you need to step up to the plate.

Speaker 9 (01:36:00):
Here. When I started reading the Bible and I call
on Jesus, this is the voice that answered. It's the
same voice I was talking to me before.

Speaker 3 (01:36:15):
And what is there more than that? Or is that
just it? You said, hey Jesus, and a voice in
your said said, yo, what's up? Right? Is that what
you're saying happened? And from that you believe that there's
a guy that Jesus is real?

Speaker 9 (01:36:30):
The question? And I was told the question, I was
told the answer okay, and I didn't have at least
there are stories.

Speaker 1 (01:36:41):
There are stories of other people. There's stories of other
people who converted to Islam for the same reason. There
are people that have called out to Allah and believe
that he's the one that answered them. So if I
have you and that other person in front of me,
and both of you are telling me your stories, I
can't believe both of you right, both of your stories

(01:37:01):
can't be true at the same time.

Speaker 9 (01:37:06):
I'm as far as we're talking, I don't know that
could be possible.

Speaker 1 (01:37:13):
So how would I make the decision? So if I
had to listen to either one of you, how like,
what would you tell me to convince me that your
God is the one that spoke and not that other
person's god.

Speaker 9 (01:37:29):
There we go. I wouldn't tell you anything to convince you.
That's not my job.

Speaker 3 (01:37:33):
As far as I understand, what would you tell to
convince you?

Speaker 9 (01:37:39):
I'm already convinced.

Speaker 3 (01:37:42):
So you're just saying you just believe it. That's it.
So again, you're you're violating your commitment to the truth.
There you said you shouldn't believe things without good reason.

Speaker 9 (01:37:53):
The voice of fifty plus years, and I'm not lied
to me to my knowledge as answer to the name
Jesus and knowed me. You still know I am God.
Whether that I have knowledgeab love it or not, I
have no idea.

Speaker 3 (01:38:13):
But this is what I choose to follow at the
one you choose to follow.

Speaker 11 (01:38:16):
Okay, yeah, because I believe it could be true.

Speaker 3 (01:38:21):
Right, But you don't have a good reason to believe
it's true. You just said a couple times now that
you just got to believe it reason.

Speaker 9 (01:38:28):
I believe I have a good reason. You don't believe.
I don't have a good reason.

Speaker 3 (01:38:32):
What's your good reason?

Speaker 1 (01:38:36):
This voice is credible, and yet you have no evidence
that the voice is telling the truth. There's no evidence.
As far as I'm concerned that you even heard a voice.

Speaker 2 (01:38:49):
I could. I could call.

Speaker 1 (01:38:50):
Into this show and say that I heard a voice,
and I've never even had that experience. I don't want
to discount your experience. I don't want to invalidate your experience.
I want believe that you honestly believe this. But at
the same time, like I know that auditory hallucinations exist,
people have had them. I know that people have heard

(01:39:11):
voices from other gods, or at least they claim to
and so I'm just trying to get the right information
and honestly, if the Christian God is the real one, Like,
do you think that your God wants people to know
about him? Do you think he wants me to believe
in him?

Speaker 9 (01:39:33):
I want to know what he don't. I don't know that.

Speaker 3 (01:39:40):
Do you think it's Does it concern you at all?
The questions that doctor Ben is.

Speaker 9 (01:39:44):
Asking you, Yes, I believe he dies.

Speaker 3 (01:39:48):
For you to No, that's not what I'm asking. Doesn't
concern you at all? The questions that Ben is asking.
Ben is saying that people have auditory hallucinations. People. Ben
is saying that people hear things that they believe is
from God that can't be according to your belief right,
they have contradictory beliefs to yours that they heard in
the same way that you're explaining yours. Does not? Does

(01:40:11):
that concern you at all? That these kind of things
are known to happen and it doesn't appear to be
affecting your decision making? Doesn't that concern you?

Speaker 9 (01:40:24):
It is, like I said, but looking at the track records,
it doesn't bother me.

Speaker 1 (01:40:30):
Sheldon, does does your God want me to know about him?
Is there something that will happen to me if I
don't believe in God?

Speaker 2 (01:40:38):
Do you believe in in Hell? Do you believe? What
do you believe in? About that?

Speaker 9 (01:40:44):
I do believe. I do believe that Hell exists.

Speaker 1 (01:40:48):
So do you believe that God wants to keep people
out of hell? Do you think that God wants people.

Speaker 2 (01:40:54):
To be out of hell?

Speaker 9 (01:40:57):
I do believe that.

Speaker 1 (01:40:59):
Okay, So if God wants us to believe in him,
why is his best evidence that some person I don't
even know heard a voice one day or heard a
voice over fifty years?

Speaker 2 (01:41:11):
How is like?

Speaker 1 (01:41:12):
If if God really wanted me to believe in him,
why is he giving such like you're such.

Speaker 9 (01:41:22):
I don't know that. I didn't profess to know that.

Speaker 1 (01:41:24):
Well, it sounds like it sounds like if that's the
best if if that's the best evidence God can come
up with, it sounds like he doesn't want me to know,
and so maybe I shouldn't believe if he doesn't want.

Speaker 9 (01:41:34):
You to know. Now I don't know. There are times
that He's waited to allow certain things that choice I
made that he's warned me about, and then allow me
to make those choices and then allow me to understand
why you allow me to make those choices, because other
than that me Sheldon would not be truly understand what

(01:41:59):
he was trying to show me.

Speaker 1 (01:42:01):
Yeah, so I think we're just jumping around to a
bunch of different points.

Speaker 2 (01:42:04):
I think we're going to end here.

Speaker 1 (01:42:06):
But if you want to call back, like please come
up with even just your one or your three best
reasons to believe and tell us why we should believe you, like,
think about it really hard and think about would this
convince somebody else? Because if if this is true, I

(01:42:27):
want to believe it, but you have to give me
enough information to work with.

Speaker 2 (01:42:31):
You have to you have to convince me and.

Speaker 3 (01:42:34):
More than that. When when doctor Ben asks you to
do that, it's not because we want you to convince us,
although that is the case, but the reason it's important
because if something is not convincing to us and is
convincing to you, then we need to examine why that's different.
Why is it so much easier to convince you of
something than it is to convince us of something? If

(01:42:57):
it's because we're being too close minded. We want an
or at least I do. I'm assume I don't want
to talk for doctor Ben but I assume doctor Ben
wants to know the truth as well, and likewise, on
the other side of that coin, if you're wrong, you
should want to know, as you've claimed that you do
want to know. Okay, So that's that's why we ask

(01:43:18):
you for these arguments. We don't want we don't. We
already know that you're convinced. You said you're a theist.
We believe you, We believe that you've accepted these truths. Okay.
When we ask you, can you demonstrate that or can
you prove it? Or can you give us good evidence?
It's not because we want you to go out and
talk to somebody else. It's because we want to examine
why you believe it. And so if there's if there's

(01:43:41):
something that's not that we disagree on whether or not
it's convincing, we can talk about that. That gives us
something to some meaningful to address, because I'll you know,
we at least claim to want to know the truth.
If you're in that same boat, then we're on the
same team. We're trying to do the same thing. We're
trying to agree on what is the evidence, is the

(01:44:02):
evidence compelling? And should we come to that same conclusion.
That's something that we can do together because we want
to talk about reality, which is independent from all three
of us. And so when we say when we ask
for evidence, we're not we're not saying you have to
be an apologist and go out and make fissures of men,
although somebody else told you to do that. But we

(01:44:25):
do want to make sure that all of us are
thinking reasonably, thinking rationally, including us and including you, because
I think the world is better when most people do that.
Does that make sense?

Speaker 9 (01:44:39):
That makes sense?

Speaker 3 (01:44:40):
Okay? All right?

Speaker 9 (01:44:41):
Good?

Speaker 3 (01:44:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (01:44:42):
Good?

Speaker 3 (01:44:42):
Maybe we can end on a common note there.

Speaker 2 (01:44:45):
Yeah, definitely call back in.

Speaker 1 (01:44:47):
I'd love to continue this conversation call earlier on in
the show too, so that you can get some more time.
But thank you so much, and I hope you have
a great rest here to day.

Speaker 9 (01:45:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:45:00):
Thanks, all right, Yeah, and that that's our show for tonight.
Let's bring up Kelly, our backup host for today. Hey, Kelly,
thoughts and any thoughts on on today's show?

Speaker 2 (01:45:14):
Yeah, I have a couple.

Speaker 8 (01:45:15):
I don't want to be too long because I know
we've gone over, So I just a note for Donald,
if you're still watching. Philosophy does help us figure out
what questions to ask, but it doesn't give us the
answers to those questions. And I think you should keep
that in mind. So another thing I wanted to say was,
and this is just for everybody. When you when you're
interacting with people this week, talk nicely because as George

(01:45:39):
Orwell said, just as thought creates words, your words create thoughts.
So I just want to put that out there. It's
just be nice this week. And uh, that's it. Oh
and about the uh, this really cool Talk Heathen takeover
of the show. You know, I am one of the
official backup posts up Talk Heathen, so all three of

(01:45:59):
us are. I'm here, but I am also I am
also one of the regular hosts. Oh truth wanted.

Speaker 2 (01:46:06):
No, no, no, we can't. We can't show their other
shows on here. No no, this is.

Speaker 1 (01:46:10):
Truth Talk Heathen, only Talk Heathen only today. Don't even
mention the nonprofits. We can't even we can't go on that.

Speaker 3 (01:46:21):
It is the flagship show, so we have there might
be there might be some special attention there. But before
we wrap up, I just want I want to especially
thank doctor Ben. I think you've gone to great lengths
to arrange this. You you abducted J Mike so that I
could be on the show, and you you arranged for
all these math calls at the beginning just to make
me feel welcome. So doctor Ben, I really appreciate the effort.

(01:46:43):
You really want the extra mile for me today, So
I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (01:46:47):
Oh yeah, this is definitely I definitely prophesied and I
definitely before this and we and we got math callers.
But yeah, and I do want to mention, like real quickly,
I I appreciate how we had a few disagreements with
the callers on this show, but it was very cordial.

(01:47:07):
Nobody was attacking each other as a person, Nobody was
shouting insults, nobody was threatening human rights necessarily in these calls.
So I just I just appreciate the fact that we
can have conversations with this and have it be cordial.

Speaker 2 (01:47:27):
And I really liked that we did that.

Speaker 1 (01:47:29):
So callers, if you're listening, thank you so much for
bringing some some good discussion. I greatly appreciate it and
definitely want you to call back in so any other
any other words from you too?

Speaker 3 (01:47:46):
Oh great show, great show, said my thing.

Speaker 2 (01:47:49):
So awesome. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:47:51):
Everybody, remember be back here next week at four thirty
pm Central Time.

Speaker 2 (01:47:57):
Thank you so much. Have a great night.

Speaker 3 (01:48:00):
Lightle say.

Speaker 2 (01:48:04):
To dot ALB.

Speaker 1 (01:48:07):
Stop passing the bulls embry around you.

Speaker 4 (01:48:13):
Five say.

Speaker 2 (01:48:18):
Watch Talking Than Live Sundays at one pm Central. Visit
tiny dot c c slash y t t H and
call into the show at five one two nine nine
one nine two four two, or connect to the show
online at tiny dot c c slash call th H

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