Truth Wanted 08.45 11-07-2025 with ObjectivelyDan and Justin Frechette

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Objectively Dan here. Lots of people believe different
things and that's why we're here every single Friday. So
if you believe in alternative facts, or conspiracies, or what
other people would call pseudoscience, or even just your religious beliefs,
we want to know why, So call into the show
because the show is starting right now. Hey, folks, Objectively

(00:25):
Dan here and welcome back to another episode of Truth Wanted.
This is the live calling show that happens every single
week Fridays at seven pm Central Time. But we talk
to people about what they believe and why. So if
you'd like to call us, you can do that right now.
The lines are open. It is five one two nine
nine one ninety two four to two to call in,
or you can call it through your computer at timy

(00:47):
dot cc slash call tw And as always, Truth Wanted
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, secular humanism, and the separation
of religion and government. And every single week I always
have a special guest with me. This week is no different.
It's justin Freshet fra chet freshet I pronounced.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
It was really nice. The very first time you did it.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
That was perfect. I tried. I try my best here, Justin.
Welcome to the program.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Thank you, Dan, you are objectively the best day. And
I know, wow, there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yes, I did it. That's the goal. That was always
the goal. Oh, Justin, thanks so much for being with
me here today. Justin. You have a YouTube channel, and
I would love for you to talk about that.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
So my YouTube channel is called this Justin and uh,
you know, it's a fun little play on words. And
of course you know I'm over there fighting the same
fight that you know. You guys are fighting right separation
of government and religion, and you know, battling religion. I
guess you could say you're supporting atheist ideals. And my

(01:56):
most recent video that I put out was a program
or a series is I'm calling reading from Right to Left.
So I fill a panel up with a bunch of
my left wing friends. For example, on the last video,
I had John the Godless Engineer on there, Trevor from
Believe It or Not, I had Hail Heidi and Mark
read from Marcurd Atheism on there, and I read a

(02:16):
right wing up aganda children's book to that panel, and
they react to, well, the really shocking information that comes
out of what's supposed to be a kid's book. So yeah,
go over to this justin and check out that video.
It was really entertaining. And then I've got more coming.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of right wing
books can be considered children's books, but it's good that
you have to find the specific ones for that, right. Yeah.
I mean, you know, we're on the same page there
in terms of you know, folks, if you're tuning in
for the first time and I'm wondering, what do you mean,
why are we going on the offensive here? Look, we
like to talk to you about their beliefs because I

(02:54):
think we both agree there's there's definitely some harm to
that that can come with believing the wrong things. There's
certainly a lot of misinformation out there in the world
right now, and we're not necessarily going to be the
ones to correct the record on that, but we're going
to be the ones that are going to say, hey,
let's stop and think about this. And I try not
to privilege any particular belief including ones that I think

(03:16):
are correct too. I'm happy to have folks call in
to talk to us and challenge us on what we
think is true. I've certainly had my convictions changed on things,
as some of you know. You know, I'm now a vegan.
I've been vegan for a few years, and that was
very much in part due to people challenging me on
this show and my release on that. So happy to
talk to people about it. I'm glad you feel the
same way, justin that these kinds of issues are pretty important.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, I'll fight to the end for everyone's right to
believe anything they want to. But you know, there's a
place and a space for those things, and then there's
you know, some spaces where those kind of things don't belong.
And yeah, you know part of it too, Like you know,
if we talk about, for instance, this you know, like

(03:59):
the ten in minstent schools, Right, we can go there, Right,
we can do that.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
We can tell with that respect, definitely, Like it's.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Not even the argument. There isn't even the idea of
putting these ten commitments on the wall, even though half
of them are completely useless and the other half are
like well duh, right, The problem with it really is, well,
what about those who don't necessarily believe in that particular
doctrine or that part of the Bible. What if they're
Muslim or some other they're now being separated or segregated

(04:28):
right their ideas and beliefs are no longer being shared.
So it's either, in my opinion, it's what's goose good
for the goose is good for the gander, or let's
just keep things secular and it doesn't need to go
in there at all.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, I agree with you on that. We can explore
that more. But we actually had a great topic that
we were talking about before the show, and it was
this idea about Jesus that I want to talk about,
like because you told me you had this thought recently
about Jesus feeding the poor. Because right now in the
Year of Our Lord November seventh, twenty twenty five, snap it.
If it's in the US, are cut off from people,

(05:00):
there's people, there's plans about talking to reinstate some of
it and stuff, but you know, that's what's happening right now.
And I guess in light of that, you were kind
of thinking, well, if Jesus was around and doing stuff,
or at least if he is a thing, it's curious
how that's not kind of happening now the whole you know,
multiplying food and feeding it to people. Think it's kind
of weird that he did it once not. I mean

(05:21):
he did a couple of times while he was live.
But it's like, how come that stopped?

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Right?

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Like, why didn't that keep going? That seemed like a
good thing.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
It really seemed like a trivial thing for Jesus, right,
Like for Jesus it was as simple as for us
to prepare a sandwich. Jesus would just multiply food, but
he only did it in specific circumstances at certain times.
It's like, why didn't he just enter every town he
visited and just was like throwing loads of breads from
his pockets, Like you.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Know why justin he didn't want to disrupt the market,
you know, because that would have would have busted you know,
the farmers, right, you know that they wouldn't have been
able to have their place in the marketplace. So you know,
he was really focused in the economy.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
He was a capitalist.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, that's my favorite take of Jesus. I remember back
when I was still on this hell site of Twitter
that's now x the most like One of the most
asinine things I think I've ever read was a whole
twit long thread on why Jesus was a capitalist and
not like in a like ironic sense, like a guy
who works at a church somewhere really made doubt this argument.

(06:27):
It's like, if you at the boab Land think that
Jesus was really into this, then maybe we are kind
of screwed. Maybe this whole idea of we can come
to a consensus on reality like just can't work, because
that's just I don't know, the pure propaganda on some level, right, And.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
You know, if we really wanted to, like I don't
reduce this complexity a little bit more. Yeah, you know,
if we go all the way to a point of
creation and we need food to survive, but yet food
is so hard to get, why are why are we
just why don't we just you know, why weren't we
created with photosynthesis?

Speaker 4 (07:01):
For example, you.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Could just get all the new treans we need from
the sun. As long as we go and touch grass
once a day, we're good.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Well, we were meant to toil, you know, because we
got kicked out from the garden at least our great
great grandparents did or whatever. I think that's the read.
I don't know, it kind of doesn't make sense, I mean, but.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, that there lies the reason for shows like this
and why you and I get together and any of
us get together to have these conversations is because and
that book can just cover its own ass all over
the place, can't it.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Like, yeah, it's true. We were talking about this on
Talkithan the other day. But like, on this character of Jesus,
at least you know, a lot of people say, well,
the Bible may say this or that or whatever, but
at least you know Jesus was a good guy or whatever.
And like that always irks me because Jesus is so
inconsistent in his character based on which gospels you read.
There's always this kind of it, and you know, secular

(07:54):
liberal people will always still say, well, at least the
book has some good things, or at least Jesus had
some good things. It's like, I don't even go that far.
I don't even think you have to make that concession
honestly to have any sense of decency.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, it's it's an interesting and there was another thing
that I looked at too, is the structure of the
book and the stories themselves. They're not even like structurally
good stories.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, you know, like at least English hearing audience.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, Like the character is just too perfect, so it
makes it extra hard to believe. But you know, if
I was a divine being or even semi divine and
I could go around and do the things that you
know Jesus apparently did, I would just go around and
be doing them all the time. I wouldn't just like, Oh,
you guys need some wine. You got any barrels of
water around here?

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Is there a wedding happening here? We'll make some wine.
I guess you know, they didn't even know the guy.
It wasn't like, oh, this is my best friend. It
was just like some guy in the story.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Man, why I even bother with the wine and food?
Why not just go you're all not hungry anymore or
you're all drunk.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
Now that's true. See, that'd be real creative. But I
don't think they were thinking that far with that. I
don't know. Well, we'll put a pin in this real quick,
because right now I think we need to talk about
our question of the week. Justin every single week we're
asking folks at home a question, uh at prompt whatever
that we want people to respond to, and we're gonna

(09:20):
bring Kelly on stage here to hello, Kelly, what's up? Hi?

Speaker 5 (09:24):
How you guys doing really good? To see you again, justin.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
We're doing good until you got here, Kelly.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
That was a total opposite line I was going to say.
I was gonna say, we're better now that you're here, Kelly.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
So I hear a neutral time now between the two.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Represent like the angels and right now.

Speaker 5 (09:47):
Okay, So last week we asked if you were invisible
in church, what would you do? And here's our three
favorite answers. From number three from Dwayne Johnson. I don't
think d Dwayne Johnson, but from Dwayne Johnson, it's been visible.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
What's that? He spelled differently? So I think the one
we know has a W.

Speaker 5 (10:09):
Yeah, yeah, you know what. I didn't even think about that,
but you're absolutely correct. If invisible, he says, I would
cover myself in flower next to the priest or pastor
and point to him and say, in a scary voice,
you speak for Satan liar.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
That would be that would make the news, right, somebody
would something make the news. Yeah, somebody would try to
record that for sure, and number two from our from
our good buddy Chuck Katos, if I was invisible in church,
when the pastor is about to read a Bible verse,
I turned the page to something spicier. Okay, all right, okay,

(10:45):
so what are your options there? I guess song of songs,
some of songs. Yeah, and that's that.

Speaker 5 (10:51):
You can keep going backus twenty one.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, or here's here's a better idea. Why don't you
just slip in a little page from fifty Shades of Gray.

Speaker 5 (11:00):
I was just thinking, you can go to the part
where lots of daughters get them drunk and rape them too.
That would be a good spicy one.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Well, you know, Kelly, you say that, and spice is
not the word I would use for that, But that's
an editorial choice on your part.

Speaker 5 (11:15):
I suppose, well there are bitter spices.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
O god, Okay, we are definitely moving on from that.
I don't know I feel comfortable with that assessment.

Speaker 6 (11:24):
But and number one, our number one answered you know
from Anastasia, if I was invisible in church, I would
take control of the collection played after it's full, floated over.

Speaker 5 (11:39):
To the preacher and dump it down his pants. I
want to make sure that the part it says partisipers,
but I'm assuming it's parishioners know where their donations are growing. Okay,
write down the priest pants.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
That would that. That's kind of scary as well, because
there is sort of a haunting sort of element to
that one too, almost like you're basically like cast for
the ghost at that point, just kind of mess with people.
So okay, all right, Well those are some decent answers.
Thank you to everybody that gave your answers last week.
And now, Kelly, I believe we have a question for
this week.

Speaker 5 (12:10):
We do have a question for this For.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Your answer, Kelly, I still don't like that. I'm not
happy you said that about the spice. I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 (12:18):
If you could rewrite the Bible, what would it say?

Speaker 1 (12:21):
If you could rewrite the Bible? What would it say?
And that's like any part of the Bible, right, so,
like you know, just like a particular story or whatever,
what would you do, Kelly?

Speaker 5 (12:32):
You know what I would I'm assuming that they want
an answer that's like in general, what would you do?
What would you change? And I think I'd probably be
it be a lot nicer and make people. I would
probably say something like you shouldn't know other people, and
you really really should. No matter what you do, keep searching,
keep wanting the truth.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
I would make uh, maybe the Good Samaritan about a
gay guy instead, so that way people would treat gay
people better. Maybe because like, yeah, nobody's like, oh man,
those Samaritans. We don't trust them, Like that's not a
thing anymore, right, Like we do not really care about that,
you know.

Speaker 5 (13:07):
I always say if Jesus was alive today, that would
that story would be the Good Mexican.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, that could for American audiences, that would play well,
I think, yeah, yeah, I don't know. That's my answer.
What do you think? Justin?

Speaker 2 (13:21):
I wouldn't change the thing, but I would add a
page to the very front of the book that said
the contents within or for entertainment purposes only.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
Oh nice, Okay, yeah, I think that's a good one.
I like that one. I like that answer the best actually, So, folks,
if you think you can top that, leave a comment below.
I'll be surprised, because that's pretty good. I know you
can do at least better than me and Kelly. But
leave your answer. We will read our top three answers
for next week. Otherwise, I want to say thanks Kelly

(13:50):
for being on stage for this.

Speaker 5 (13:51):
Well, thanks for having me up here.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Dan. Yeah, absolutely, and all things going good. We'll see
at the end of the show, but for now, I
am going back with Justin. Justin and I were talking
about video games for like thirty minutes before the show,
and I enjoyed that because you know, it's game kind
of baby, It's been a good year for video games.

(14:13):
Not really related to this show or its content, but well,
you know.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
I couldn't. We could totally spend a video game topic.
Excuse me, let me have a drink of water here
real quick.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
You were telling me about the Jesus Christ video game.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
There was a demo that came out for a game
called I Am Jesus Christ. Yeah, I played it over
on my channel. I played the whole demo and it
was it was so strange and very to play a game.
First of all, that's so incredibly well put together. It's
developed by a company that isn't necessarily like they're not
like a religious gaming company. They're just a real game company,
so they're literally just trying to cash in on Christianity. Interesting,

(14:51):
so it's really well put together. It's in first person
of view. Jesus has all these magical abilities, and one
of the first missions actually is to show up to
the wedding, but to make the wine right, so they
turn the barrels of water into wine right. What was
interesting is is they did a little bit of like
they have to take a little creative control in this
narrative of the story of the game right to make
it interesting and more fun. And when you arrive into town,

(15:13):
it was so strange because your mom is there, right,
so Mary Jesus mom is there all right, and she's like, Oh,
I'm so glad you're here. I was just telling everybody
about how awesome you are and how you could save
this wedding because they yeah, Like it was such a
real mom's son moment to be like I'm glad you came.
They've ran out of wine or the wine didn't get

(15:35):
delivered or so I forget the exact like, but it
was really, really, really funny. And then there's this whole
mini game where you create the wine.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
It was really good in this game because I remember
there was a trailer for this game like a year
or two ago, and I just thought it was like fake.
I didn't think it would actually turn to like a
real game. How how long is this game?

Speaker 2 (15:54):
The demo took about an hour to finish.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Really, but is the game out now? It's still okay.
I'm only because I'm thinking, like, what's that?

Speaker 7 (16:03):
Like?

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Is it eight hours to do the whole freaking Gospels?
Like what do you do with that? I don't know,
There's only so much.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
I mean, if we want to speak about it a
little bit critically, there was a moment where I then
had to go wander the desert for forty days and
forty nights.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
Where I was actually a bit is that in the game? Yeah,
in the.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Game, you're about to leave on your journey to go
wander the desert, and I was excited. I was like, Oh,
this is gonna be like some resident Evil Silent Hill
stuff going on.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
This is going to be one demons and stuff. That'd
be cool.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Yeah, But no, they just cut to forty days later
and you walk out of the desert. I'm like, Oh,
what an opportunity.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Should have had? A survival Well, I guess so, like
you know, in a traditional survival game is like oh,
you need to find resources and drink water and stuff.
But like the whole point of that story is like
he didn't eat anything for like forty days, so I
guess it's like.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
It could have still done like some kind of temptation mechanic,
where like, you know, maybe Satan is tempting you as
Jesus with different things and whether or not you choose
to take them or not, and maybe you have to
like allow yourself to be taken in by certain temptations
in order to survive the forty days. But then you
know you can pray to get some of that temptation back.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
I don't, okay, see see your your game design philosophy
is way more interesting than the source material is based
off of. I'm pretty sure most versions would be like, no,
he can't be tempted at all. So it's like, okay,
there's no game play right there.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
Right.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
What the story is originally was he went into the
desert and he didn't eat anything for forty days.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
But it's after the forty days when Heyton shows up
and it's like, hey, don't you want you can turn
that rock into bread, and Jesus like no, And then
there's like one other thing and then he made He's like, hey,
you can jump off this building if you want and
he's like, nah, so I guess you just I guess.
It's just a dialogue box and it's just yes or

(17:53):
no every time.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
By the way, the game is fully voice acted, like
the level of oh yeah, it's it's fantastic to be
completely honest, like the level he's going this. They gave
Jesus like a spell wheel, the same way the Witcher does,
and witchards like he's got a spell wheel and he
can do all kinds of.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Different miracles and stuff.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
Miracles and stuff. Yeah, and you've got to unlock the
miracles as you travel through the story. So the demo
ends with you being on the pier where you're like
meeting Peter and Paul or whatever for the first time,
and you're gathering your apostles and you're doing so by
performing miracles and like making it easier for them to
catch fish in the water. So you've got to like
stare at the water and like duplicate the fish in
the water. And then now the apostles like, look at

(18:36):
all the fish we can catch, and then they start
following you around and the demo ends. Oh my god,
it's so really really well put together.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Oh man, if you die in the game, do you
go to Hell before you get.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
To I haven't identified a lost condition. I'm not sure
you can.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Okay, all right, okay, Wow, I have so many questions
about the game. I kind of want to play it
now because you seem very enthrilled demos.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
The demo is one hundred percent free on Steam, so
like you can totally just go and grab it and
play it.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Wow, we're doing free ads for this game right now.
That's crazy. I mean, need to check that out, because
it's like, I when I think of the Gospels, I
don't know how you gamify that without being sacrilegious, you know,
me to be more interesting, but who knows.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
It could be the dawn of a whole new interpretation
of the Gospels.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, there was a game that came out a few
years ago about Muhammad, and I remember that one specifically. Yeah,
because so there's all kinds of well, there's a lot
of controversis about how you can depict Muhammad, right, so
they don't actually show him in the games because it's
all first person and every time like it's implied that
he's speaking, there's like a wind chime noise or whatever.

(19:39):
Because they didn't want to have a voice for him
and stuff. So I remember that being a thing, but
I guess you could do a little bit more with Jesus.
I don't know that's Is this an American studio that
made this or is this like a different country.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
You forget the name of the actual studio, but they've
made a I can't remember now. They did make a
game that like I would win. You're like that half
of us have all played. I just can't remember the
game that they've made. But well, it was the first
thing that I checked on was the studio because usually
these kind of games are made by religious organizations and stuff,
but this is.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Not, Yeah, a religious first. That's what I want to know,
either if a Christian organization made it or some place
in Taiwan that doesn't know anything about Christianity. Like I'm
managing a Neon Genesis Evangelian situation where it's like, oh,
we just put the Christian stuff in here because we
thought it was cool, you know. But anyway, I could
talk about that all day, But I know, folks, you're

(20:32):
you guys are here because we're a calling show and
you probably want to talk to hear us talk to callers.
So I think we should do that. Now, what do
you think?

Speaker 2 (20:39):
Justin Let's pick up the phone and see who's there.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
All right, let's see who wants to talk to us.
Before we get to calls, let's thank our patrons. Thank
you so much everybody that donates to the patreon. I
wanted to give a shout out to the patron of
the week. This week's patron of the week is going
to be Lauren Z. Thank you so much, Lauren Z.
And thank you to everybody that donates on the patreon.

(21:02):
You guys are amazing. If you'd like to donate, link
to that is in the YouTube description, or if you're
listening on podcasts, it's you know, in the description of
where you're at you're not cc slash patreon t w
Thank you everybody, And with that out of the way,
let's take our first caller. Here we have Michelle, who
wants to talk to us from New York. Michelle, you're live,

(21:22):
untruth wanted what's going on?

Speaker 8 (21:24):
Yeah, I was wondering you would you too like to answer?

Speaker 9 (21:28):
Maybe it can not have maybe two questions or connect.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
Answer two questions. Probably we could probably do two questions.
I think I think that's fine.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, I've got a I've got a basket full of answers.
I just hope to go with the question.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
There you go, Yeah, let's hear it.

Speaker 8 (21:43):
Okay, okay, uh do you guys think like what is
the what? Why would it said that religion is the
opium of the mask?

Speaker 9 (21:53):
I wish you couldn't say that, like mouths of Toll
or someone that's.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
That's Karl Marx that said that.

Speaker 9 (21:58):
Original Mark Smarts, Marks, I always forget, always found the politics.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
That's why interesting why Karl Marx said that.

Speaker 8 (22:07):
Well, what I'm asking is is, yeah, why did he
say it?

Speaker 9 (22:11):
Did it mean something?

Speaker 8 (22:12):
I mean, obviously it meant something, And I know he
had a reason for saying, Well, like has that reason
changed over time?

Speaker 9 (22:20):
Are there new and modern reasons that why it could
be said that religion is the opium for the mask?

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (22:27):
I mean I am I'm not a you know, scholar
on Marx. Okay, so you know, I I'd have to
tell you to go look at people who have more
intensely studied the guy. I know he was really into Hegel,
and I know that there's a lot of different contexts
that happened there. You know, Marks's whole thing is about

(22:48):
class analysis, right, So he's introducing these ideas of saying, hey,
here's his proletariat, and here's this sort of business class,
and this is what separates people and I, and from
my understanding, his common terry about religion being is that
religion is another way to sort of quell working class
people from uprising it away. In that sense, he's not

(23:08):
too different from Nietzsche's interpretation of Christianity, which is which
is that Christianity is sort of a slave religion, this
idea that Jesus is sort of asking us to be sheep,
literally to sort of follow rather than lead. So that's
my understanding, but there's probably a greater context that could
be said by people who are more knowledgeable about I

(23:28):
don't know, justin do you have any insight?

Speaker 2 (23:31):
I'm not super up on the question or the topic.
This is the first time I've ever heard that, even said.
The first thing that jumps out to me though, is
the idea of if it's an opiate, then it's highly addictive.
And so if I try to interpret this question just
on its surface, being the first time hearing it, it
kind of makes sense from that point. I mean, some

(23:51):
I notice, especially with and Dan, you'll probably agree with this.
Some of the more hardcore religious people, the more deep
into it they are, the harder it is to get
them to like understand reason and skepticism and like, you know,
put it aside for a second and try to think
about things logically, because you know, they're so addicted to
it they just can't abandon it or move up, move

(24:11):
beyond it.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yeah, and I'm looking at things right now. I'm like
googling stuff as we're talking about this. But like, one thing,
one interpretation I'm seeing that's interesting is that some people
say that they misinterpret this idea because it's it's supposed
to be sort of a way to talk about addiction
in some sort of way, because opia was known for
its addictive qualities. So it's it's it's a way for

(24:35):
you know, religion is sort of this way to sort
of quell some of these a sort of quell from
taking action, right, to quell people from going away from
what's comfortable for them. So, you know, I guess there's
a couple of different ways to look at that, Michelle,
So I don't know, what do you think.

Speaker 7 (24:51):
I think the both of you make good points, are
right I agree. And now the second part of the question, Okay,
what would do you say about believe believing something? A
lot like can we believe things rational with rationality and
things that are logical even though they may be unfalsifiable?

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Can we believe things rationally even if they may be unfalsifiable? Yeah,
can you give you an example.

Speaker 8 (25:24):
Believing in God, believing in deities, angels, believing in uh.

Speaker 9 (25:30):
Yeah, that kind of thing, and that kind of age.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
Okay, Yeah, So it's interesting. Uh, it's an interesting question
philosophically because there's there's kind of so like rationalism is
like an entire school of thought within philosophy, okay, And
and and rationalism has this idea of, well, we can
understand true things based on reason alone. And and that's

(25:53):
a very particular idea because that doesn't mean necessarily like
using science or using empiricism. Right, that's actually different because
it's taking outside observations and coming to conclusions via you know, synthesis. Right.
Can't we know things just by reason alone? Is kind
of an open question as far as I am concerned

(26:14):
in in terms of philosophy, because there's a lot of
people that don't have a consensus on that, for example,
one plus one equals two, right, like a very basic
obvious truth. Do we know that because we see one
apple and we see another apple and we see that
they make two? Or do we know that because we
can compute that outside of our observations and our own reality.

(26:39):
Is that is that a material fact that something has
a oneness or a tuneness about it? Or is this
just sort of a system that we've concocted that sort
of makes sense to us internally. So based on your
answer to that, you would be able to know about
what you could say about God in some way or another,
which is you know inconclusive? I guess I would say, sorry,
this is kind of a long answer, but it opens

(27:00):
up a lot of can of worms. What were you
going to say, Michelle, dh, I.

Speaker 9 (27:03):
Got something great for you. You want to hear it.
I'll give you some mathematical sauce. Are you ready for this?

Speaker 4 (27:07):
Well?

Speaker 1 (27:08):
Maybe wait? I want to hear Justin's response first, because,
like I was talking for there, go ahead, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
I was going to say that if the idea here
is that if a rational person can believe in something
that's unfussiled, unfalsifiable, then I would also expect that person
to have enough self awareness to realize that the thing
that they're choosing to believe in is unfascible unfalsifiable. So,
for example, if I want to believe in aliens, cool,

(27:34):
I can't falsify that right now, but I'm just going
to live my life as though there's aliens out there.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
Now.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
If I get to the point where I start wearing
tinfoil hats, I'm no longer very rational or logical, So
then the question kind of falls apart there, right, So, yeah,
you can you can believe in things that are unfossil
unfalsifiable if you are going to be logical and reasonable,
though you're going to put limitations on how much of

(28:03):
that belief is going to control your life.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah. Yeah, I would say rationality is sort of culturally
conditioned in some ways, though I think I would make
that argument, but that I don't know if that's something
you'd want to explore with me, Michelle, because that's kind
of a whole separate idea. But you had some sauce
you were gonna give, Yeah.

Speaker 8 (28:19):
But I was gonna say mathematical sauce.

Speaker 9 (28:21):
I'm the laces of mathematical sauce down on you, right, okay,
and justin Okay. So when it comes to one on
one making two, well, one whole two halves of one
whole apple can feed two hungry bellies, so go figure.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
I might have missed part I think you're talent a
joke there, and I might have missed the bunchline because
I'm not a smart man. Michelle Show.

Speaker 9 (28:43):
I know you are a smart man. Dan, don't ever
put yourself down or apologize to yourself. Always be proud you.
You put me in quite the the You've hit me
in the in the in the thinker quite a many
times on your show, so appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
In the thinker.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
I love that. I love that he's hit you in
the thinker.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
So, yeah, that's a good one. I'll have to remember
that one.

Speaker 8 (29:09):
Yeah, my joke was one whole two halves of one
whole apple can feed two hungry children.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
One half of one whole apple can feed has two.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Halves halves of one whole apple and.

Speaker 9 (29:27):
Children.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Okay, Yeah, maybe it could be a snack.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
The whole apple could feed four hungry children.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yeah, I guess so, I'm not sure what the joke was.
I might have missed that, Michelle, But you know it
doesn't mean too much. Let me let me give you
something else for your thinker here. Okay, Well we're talking
about rationality. It's easy to put other people in in
this place of well, they're not smart enough, they're not
thinking about stuff rashly, they're not doing what's best for them.

(29:57):
But like, again, I think rationality can be a bit
a subjective thing and can matter culturally. If you're a
medieval peasant who isn't educated, right, Like, maybe you can't read,
maybe you've never left your hometown, and all you know
from what people have told you is there is a
God and all these things happen, and there's all these decrees,

(30:20):
and you want to live your life in a way
so that you can avoid the hall and torment that
would come if you don't live otherwise. I mean, that
would make sense to you in some sort of way, right, Like,
there is a way that people are able to rationalize
religion in a way to avoid consequences, right And I
think when it comes down to brass tacks, for a

(30:41):
lot of people, you know, fear is a motivating factor.
So in some ways that is a very rational way
to view a belief as sort of utilitarian in a sense.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's what
you should do. But you know, rationality is a tricky
thing because it depends on people's aims, on what people
really mean by being rational in this sense. So it's
it's not a word I like to use too much
because I think you can make different kinds of justifications
for people's sense of rationality. Does that make sense, Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 8 (31:14):
Well, gentlemen, I think we've sussed out this conversation as
far as we could sus it out.

Speaker 9 (31:19):
I think volumes could be written on it. But I
won't trouble or take any more of your time, and
I will.

Speaker 8 (31:24):
Say thank you very much for the phone call, and
thank you for being convivial with me.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
All right, Michelle, appreciate thanks for your time. I hope
you have a great rest of your weekend. Man, that
was like.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
The most casual, just like it almost felt like we
weren't doing a show. We were just on the on
a phone. But yeah, I got a question real quick.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah I got two for and also, yeah, that was interesting.
We went We talked about Carl Marx, talked about rationality,
and we talked about apples son and hitting people in
the thinker and hitting people in the thinker. Yeah, that's it.
You're right. I'm glad you called that out. That's a
good line. This is a good one. I'm keeping that,
keeping that in the back of.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
My T shirt.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
That's a T shirt somewhere.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
I agree. Let's move on to another caller here. We
have uh make Kel, who is calling from the Netherlands.
Uh make Kel. You are live, untruth wanted. What's going on?

Speaker 3 (32:16):
Hello?

Speaker 4 (32:17):
You can just call me Michael, like Michael.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Okay, it sounds great. I love doing things the American way.
Thank you, Thank you for that, Michael. Go ahead, You're welcome.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:27):
I saw the poll, and I might have another mite
something else to discuss about. But I saw that. The
poll said, is Jesus good or yeah? My answer to
that is yes.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Okay, yeah, tell me about that. Why is your answer yes?

Speaker 4 (32:40):
Because there's a lot of scriptures that basically point out
the fact.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
That he is without sin, like, okay, plainly.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yeah, And I'm assuming you're a theist as well. In fact,
I think you marked to our caller the theist. Okay,
that would make sense, you know, if I was a
theist as well, I would also say that Jesus is good, right,
I think I think most theis would. I think it'd
be hard to be a theist and say Jesus is bad, right,
because I don't know what you're doing there with that, right,
So yeah, I think that stuff makes sense there. Yeah,

(33:08):
so basically because of scripture and what Jesus has done
in scripture that would make him good. That's kind of
your your case then, yeah, okay, okay, yeah, I'll pass
it to you justin what do you think?

Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yeah, So, like you said, it'd be hard pressed to
be a theist who didn't think Jesus was good. And actually,
you know what, I think that's what makes the question
kind of interesting is was Jesus a good person? Is
even though we may not believe in a lot of
the scriptures or we find a lot of contradictions or problems.
For the most part, I think even a non theist,
if we wanted to just treat Jesus like a character

(33:43):
in a story, could still make an argument that his
intentions were well meaning, right, Like you know, we were
talking at the top of the show about him creating
food for the masses, I can't find a single problem
with that at all, Like that's inherently that was a slick,
good move. Where the question gets more interesting is why

(34:04):
didn't he just do that all the time? Why didn't
he just fill everyone's baskets up with bread and wine
everywhere he went all the time. And you know, like
you pointed out like maybe he was watching out for
the markets or something.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
I guess, but yeah, he didn't want to crash the
bread markets.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, yea market is I think that's why the question
in the poll. First of all, as soon inspire people
to call in, so thanks for calling in. But it
also is an interesting question because I think we could
probably even find, you know, atheists in our community. I
would be like, no, on the surface, Jesus.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
Was good, Yeah, if you subscribe to the idea. So
here's what you're just saying, as an atheist, why I
have to assume that Jesus is kind of bad, right,
Because if you subscribe to the idea, which most atheists do,
that Jesus was a real person, right, and that the
gospel accounts are based on this real person that did exist,
you also kind of have to assume if you're an

(34:58):
atheist that these accounts are either exact rations or fabrications
of events, right, And that could either be because his
followers made up these events, or that Jesus himself didn't
you know, didn't wasn't truthful about who he was and
what he claimed to be, either, which would make him

(35:20):
a liar, right, which would make him a verson that
is of ill repute. You could say bad, right, but
you know, not necessarily good right in that respect, In
the same way that there are religious leaders today that say, hey,
I'm the son of God or people should worship me,
et cetera, et cetera. You know, that's basically what Jesus
was doing back in those times as well. And so

(35:43):
I wouldn't hold Jesus to be any better than I
would any televangelist or any modern day prophet or modern
day apostle. Right, It's it's kind of doing the same thing.
So he doesn't get any moral credit for me. Does
that make sense?

Speaker 4 (35:56):
Yeah, it does. If you've removed God out of the
equation and it's just all that's realistic, I wouldn't believe,
and then Jesus would just be just like any other man.
It would have flaws. But I don't stand on that ground,
so it's it makes it a little different, you know.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
Yeah, there's also another position you could take too, is
that if if Jesus, if if you're one of the
theists who believe that Jesus was also God and they're
the benchmark for all of morality, Jesus also didn't come
in and start going, yo, we got it all wrong
in the Old Testament, and like you know, slavery is

(36:32):
actually bad, so like let's not do that anymore. There
is no from what I understand or from what I
know read letter text of Jesus saying that's not a
thing we're going to do anymore. Like he doesn't disavow that.
So if they are the benchmark for morality, they didn't
walk back any of the things that we would say
are a moral today, which could also kind of underline

(36:54):
him not necessarily being a good person.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah, and that can also go into like ideas of
like objective versus objective like morality, because like you could
say that Jesus was maybe a good person for the
time in which he lived in right, and I think
like maybe you could go that far in some respect,
but also like at the same time, like you said,
he didn't really denounce the institution of slavery. He never said, hey,

(37:17):
all men, any women should be treated equally at all times.
Also everybody should be able to vote. Like, he wasn't
super into democracy or anything. Maybe he would have been
for it, but I can't imagine he would be, you know. So, like,
there's definitely weaknesses to the idea that Jesus is sort
of a universal good right, but I don't know that's
kind of us talking here.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
What do you think, Michael, Well, that Jesus is not
the is not the universal standards.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Then what is Okay? Well, what are you what are
you gonna what are.

Speaker 3 (37:44):
You gonna replace it with?

Speaker 4 (37:45):
Because I don't think atheism does it for me because
I used to be one.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
So yeah, so different atheists might have different answers to this.
I'm curious what Justin's answer to this, But my position
would be I don't think there is a universal standard.
I don't think there is a one, and I don't
think any human being has perfect knowledge of morality or
what that even looks like. I think it's in part
informed by our social norms, but also in part informed

(38:10):
by some things we can objectively measure but are ultimately
held by subjective values. For example, I don't want people
to suffer needlessly, right, and suffering is a value that
I attribute negatively to. What's the objective basis of that?
There is no objective basis of that. It's just because
I'm a human being and I inherently don't like that, right,

(38:33):
So it is based on sort of human feelings at
the end of the day. But you can build systems
around that. You just have to have people agree on
those sense of values, which of course people don't, and
that's why we have all the trouble that we have
and ethics in philosophy. Right, But as far as Jesus
being a great standard for that, I don't think so.

(38:54):
I think every progressive reform we've had since the age
of Enlightenment has been almost in spite of what Jesus
is necessarily advocated for or have wanted. You know, we
mentioned the institution of slavery, you talked about democracy, things
like that, but justin yet, what's your take?

Speaker 2 (39:11):
I mean, I'll start from the beginning with the most
obvious and the most common answer that we give to
this is that atheism doesn't say anything about morality to
start with. Yeah, it's just saying one thing, and we're
not convinced of any gods in the world, right, And
I could also just take it one step further and say,
Michael that you're just as atheist as we are, except
we also just don't believe in your god. Yeah, but

(39:32):
for the sake of argument, let's just.

Speaker 4 (39:34):
Play with them.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
No, that's not entirely true.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
Right, So there we go. So I'm going to go
ahead and we're just going to live. I just wanted
to finish the sentence, Michael and just add that for
the sake of the argument and the discussion, we're going
to go ahead and insert a whole bunch of like
underlying beliefs to our atheism. Then okay, And I would
argue and say that my morality is mine. It is

(39:59):
it's circums stancial, it's it's what's going to get me
to the next to the next stage of my life
the best. And if I think murdering is bad, then
I'm going to align myself with other people who would
also agree that unliving people is not a good idea.
And then we're going to create a community where we

(40:19):
don't allow that kind of behavior. And if you decide
to come into our community and unlive people, then we're
going to punish you for that behavior. And things just
go down and down and down to where we then
have government and lease and people who keep those laws
and morals in place for us.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
Right, yeah, go ahead, Michael.

Speaker 4 (40:41):
Well, first of all, I had to refute that little
statement that you said that you know that you went
God one god further in your own belief. I don't
think the gods like from all the pagan religions and stuff.
I think those are real deities. I mean, if you
if I look at from a biblical standpoint, the one
third of the angels that's all from heaven, you know,

(41:03):
masquerading as God's sure, you know, but would I would
I follow that?

Speaker 3 (41:08):
No, you know, but a sort of moral thing.

Speaker 4 (41:11):
Well, you know, then when it really comes down to it,
then that you basically believe Jesus is a liar when
he said he is the truth of the way in
the life, right, I mean, if you really just deny
him flat out and say, oh, we know it better,
we can do it better.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna throw one extra one
in here for you. I don't believe Jesus existed, so
I'm not sure he was around to say those things
at all.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Yeah. Yeah, so there is the myth isis position on
this as well. Right, But yeah, I mean, if if
you take the position that majority of atheists do believe
that Jesus existed, right, and I would say, yeah, I
do think Jesus lied on that. I don't think he
was the way the truth in the light. He definitely
wasn't the first person in history to speak on ethics,

(41:53):
and certainly wasn't the last. And I don't think his
way is necessarily superior than to other people who have proposed,
you know, ethical ways of living.

Speaker 4 (42:01):
All right, Well, I'm not sure about the history and stuff,
and I've never really been digging into the history when
it comes to the existence of Jesus. But based on
his teachings that you know, and the things that I
learned in my life, and when you when you apply
the words and you better food so it, then I
can only infer the man existed.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
You know. They couldn't just make all this stuff up.
That's yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
No, I'll be honest. You know, that's a whole other
can of worms, and we canna go there if we want.
But I'd like to keep going on the track of
what you called in about, right, which is was Jesus good?
Because I think that's an interesting question too. So I
think Justin's willing to say, for the sake of argument,
let's say Jesus was real? Right, was he good? You know?
Like I again, there are some things you can point

(42:47):
to about Jesus not being great, Like he cursed the
fig tree for not producing fruit one time. You know,
that's kind of weird. He didn't have great things to
say about other groups of people Pharisees, right, and maybe
he was making some cultural commentary, but you know, you
could argue that's not nice. He whipped a bunch of
people out of temple that wasn't super great, and you know,

(43:07):
you can make it a larger case, which I think
just was kind of alluding to that, like, oh, he
did feed certain people at certain periods of time, but
he didn't like keep doing that. And one might argue, well,
if you failed to commit an action that you otherwise
could do, you know that that's argued his negligence, right,
And so is it negligence to ignore other hungry people

(43:30):
when you could feed them and have the power to do,
so one could make that case. So you know, there
there's there's there's different grounds by which we could look
at this and say, hey, maybe he's not as good
as he could be, or maybe not the way the
truth in the life, right, But I don't know, what
do you think, Michael?

Speaker 4 (43:48):
Yeah, you bring up a lot of points, and it's
hard for me to remember them all. For example, like
cursing the victory for example, did you also know why
he did it?

Speaker 1 (43:56):
For he did it because the tree bared no fruits.
And there's argument and of course that's it's a metaphor
not really a literal fig tree that occurs, So if
you go there, that's one thing.

Speaker 4 (44:06):
I believe it was a literal victory, but it's it's
also a topology of no fruits in Israel, you know, Yeah,
because how many people rejected him.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
Yeah, but the tree didn't do anything wrong. The tree
is just me in a tree. Why it's got to
be a curse, you know?

Speaker 4 (44:20):
Yeah, I mean, can you really I heard the I think, yeah,
I can't remember it very well, but I think that
there was it was explained with if like how do
you call it? It's just the victory as Sorry, no,
I think I should not be arguing about that.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
But it's okay, it's just one minor point.

Speaker 4 (44:42):
That it didn't bear any that this tree was really boring,
you know that that was the whole point.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
That I agree.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Yeah, tree for not producing fruit is not exciting.

Speaker 4 (44:54):
Based on seasonal stuff. Yeah, I should not argue on that.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
I don't.

Speaker 4 (44:59):
I don't know the answer to that. So but what
what what was the other argument?

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Well, so again I'm picking, I'm I'm I'm cherry picking
some particular examples, right, But.

Speaker 4 (45:10):
Like one, and then you said.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Well, there was the temple. You know, he whipped a
bunch of people at the temple because they were they were,
you know, selling stuff. Now, if you if you believe
in a rule of law, right, and these people were
breaking the law, then the lawful thing would be for
them to face penalties outlined in a law. Right. We
don't if somebody is uh, you know, stealing from a bank, right,

(45:35):
we don't expect the state to just whip somebody because
they stole from a bank, right. We'd want them to
have trial, and we'd want them to you know, prove
that these charges happened and then give them the punishment
that's on the books. That could be a fine, or
that could be jail time, right, Instead, he chose violence
as retribution there, which, as some people say, is not uh,
you know, a good thing to do in summer cards.

(45:58):
So you know, that's just another example.

Speaker 4 (46:00):
Well, I'm pretty close connected to the old generation, you know,
with my family. So if you were doing something silly,
you were in a place where I'm not supposed to
be and uh, and they got angry or whatever, you know,
or even if you go into somebody ouse's goden for example,
when they come out, you know, because Jesus said, what
are you doing in my father's house, you know, making

(46:21):
making it a market. Let's say you go in place
and you're not in somebody's place, and you end up
doing something you're supposed to do, they have the right
to kick you out. You know, I don't see that's that.
I don't have any problems with it.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Kicking somebody out, I mean whipping somebody or different though.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
You know, it kind of brings up another little mild,
little interesting question really too, because we're talking about Jesus
and his inherent goodness, right, is Jesus a good or
a bad person. Are we going to measure him from
the point of view of like he is God? Or
are we comparing him to other humans? Because I think
a human or a person who would to have a

(46:56):
moment of weakness and lose their temper and do something
terrible like rob kick somebody out of their house, there
may be a path for like forgiveness, for them to
be like I lost my head, I wasn't in the
right space, I had a bad day, lost my wallet
earlier in the day, Like someone might be able to
go like, Okay, dude, fine, I forgive you, don't do
it again. But you know, is Jesus on the same

(47:17):
measuring stick as an average person? And is he capable
of losing his temper?

Speaker 3 (47:22):
You know?

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (47:23):
And is he forgiven for losing his temper or should
he be measured as a better person?

Speaker 1 (47:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (47:28):
Well, if he did lose his temper and you know,
and he fell into sin, then all the other script
is some mute. Then he is not without sin. So
how is that going to work?

Speaker 3 (47:37):
You know? I don't think.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Well, he didn't lose his temper and he willingly, knowingly
and clear minded whipped some people.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how the situations
were back then. You know, people were a lot rougher
than we people today. I mean, man kind has gotten
really soft if you ask me. So, uh yeah, it
might be harsh saying that, but I grew up in
a in a different way, so I still know the
things of the old ways a little bit. No, and no,

(48:07):
actually I didn't grow up religiously, so let's let that
be let that be known.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:13):
No, So I think I think that that is more like, yeah,
I can't say that there is an absolute uh measure
stick of saying, ah, Jesus was sto hard, hearsh or no,
maybe to today's society where people are a little bit
you know, people are more more soft. But when you
look at other cultures, it happens there too, you know,

(48:33):
like they get yeah, they get kicked away from places
and you know, get lost, get.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
Out, you know.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
Like, well, I think that this kind of points to
this idea that morality is culturally relative in some ways, right,
Like if we are to bring any critiques about Jesus
and his behavior, it is looking at it through a
modern lens. I can't deny that because I'm a modern
human being. But that does kind of bring the question
whether some of the actions that Jesus did would be

(49:00):
considered acceptable at any point in time. For I'll give
you one more example of this, Michael, because I was
thinking about it. There is the part where Jesus is
there's a guy that says, I want to follow you,
but I have to bury my father right because his
father has just died, And he says I have to
do this, and Jesus is saying, hey, you know, follow me, right,
forget about your dad and just do it. I you know,

(49:23):
follow me and do that. Like you know, if if
if say, like you know, a modern religious cult leader
said that, I think we would be very easy to
rebuke that person and say, wow, that's a very cultish
behavior to cut people off from your family and just
tell them to follow me and do what I want. Instead. Well,
we look at it from Jesus and we say, well,

(49:45):
he is the greatest moral teacher on earth, so this
is acceptable, right. But you see how that might cause
dissonance for some people because it doesn't seem to follow,
you know, acceptable standards for morality.

Speaker 4 (49:58):
Well, yeah, I don't know. I wouldn't I wouldn't know.
I mean, if I if I look at things. For example,
you know, when I when I wasn't I believe, I
looked at that very differently than I am today. And
it's kind of like when it's over, it's just over,
right in that sense of Okay, he passed away, he
moved on, or wherever you're you're gonna go, depending on

(50:18):
what you believed them, you know, based on what the
scripture says. But I remember to Jesus like, but I
remember Jesus saying, like, you know, let the bury and
let the dead bury the dead, and but now go
go and preach the Kingdom of God. So yeah, I
mean what eventually, what is what is more important?

Speaker 3 (50:36):
In that sense?

Speaker 4 (50:37):
You see that That's that's the whole jig of it.
It's like, you know, if you're from your standpoint, you
would say, yeah, I'm gonna mourn my father and you know,
but when you're you know, you know, kingdom minded, let's
call it like that, then you're gonna say, okay, yes, Jesus,
I'm gonna follow you.

Speaker 3 (50:51):
We're gonna preach the Kingdom of God. Again.

Speaker 4 (50:54):
I have no objections against against that, you know, it
is yeah, I mean and then and then yeah, you
can ask the question, and what are the other people
are going to think about you? You know, Okay, well
let them think that what they want to think, you know,
I mean, if you really are I want to be
a disciple or you want to follow Jesus and you're
going to have to give it all up? You know,
that's that's how how serious does this in? So yeah, yeah,

(51:17):
it's kind of I.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
Actually think that's a fair response. I don't really have
much to say to that. I think, like, if you
believe that Jesus really is that guy, and I guess
if he's that good enough you want to be able
to follow him, I guess to me, it kind of
just goes back to, well, is he that guy? Right?
Is he actually you know, the real one? Because unfortunately
he's not the first person to say he's that guy,

(51:41):
and he won't be the last. He isn't the last.
Surely there's been other people since then. So do you
have any examples for that of other people claiming to
be the son of God? Well, well, there's like a
whole Wikipedia article for that. You know, you don't need
me telling you, you.

Speaker 4 (51:56):
Know, no, I just I just don't know if you
if you if you have any names or whatever, because
I know the stories that Jesus was supposedly a regurgitation
of the sun gods, and I'll plagiarise and all that stuff,
but scripturally that doesn't really match up, because you know
it does you know, the Bible speaks about the whole
Babylonian system and the worship of the sun, moon and

(52:17):
stars and on that we should not be doing that.
So that's where all that stuff came from. So I
think it's just a commifeate religion, you.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Know, yeah, look at it.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
So you don't even have to look at pagan religions
for that. There are other people that claim to be
a fulfillment of the Messiah, specifically in ancient Judea. You know,
a lot of it we don't have full records on
because they didn't catch on as much, right, But in part,
the way that the gospel narratives are laid out is

(52:48):
to sort of counteract other criticisms that people have in
Jesus not fulfilling that role. Because of course, remember when
not everybody immediately became a Christian, Judaism was still a thing,
and it's still a thing for a very long time,
and folks are not necessarily convinced about Jesus being the
fulfillment of that role, and other other people have fulfilled
that role or claim to fulfill the role of the

(53:10):
son of Man or the Son of God in various capacities.

Speaker 4 (53:14):
I wouldn't know which things you're talking about, to be honest,
it's kinda new to me, to be honest.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
David Koresh, who comes to mind, definitely said he was
the son of God. You know, obviously that's a modern example.
But again, like if you go to wikimedia, there's tons
of other people, particularly Jewish people that have claimed to be,
you know, the son of God after.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
The personally look into that.

Speaker 4 (53:37):
To be honest, yeah, that's fine, never heard it before.
So well again, pre Jesus that.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
I understand that. Yeah, Like you know, pre Jesus, you
don't find a lot because they don't they don't have
scriptures for those kinds of heresies. They kind of came
and died. But there there's a lot more you find
posts Jesus than you do preach Jesus.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
So all right, yeah, And there was another objection you had,
what was about how Jesus treated the Pharisees. Now, I
know how you people think about religion, right, and the
hypocrisy that is going on there. Yeah, I tell you
I don't like it any much as any much as
you do. And they deserve that he has treatment like
like people preaching that you should give. Well, in the

(54:21):
meanwhile they're getting their money or you know, they they well,
how the Bible said that they elevate their own ideas
and and and traditions about the scriptures. You know, they rules,
and they put them on people, and yet they don't
keep them themselves, you know.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
That, Michael. Yeah, it's interesting because Jesus kind of did
the same thing in a way. So for example, you know,
when Jesus didn't rest on the sabbath and he did
a miracle, he was like, oh, I don't have to
follow that rule actually, because I am the son of
God and the laws were made for man and I'm
not him, right, you know, And he kind of does

(54:58):
his own kind of interpretationtions of scriptures. So in a way,
he's kind of very similar in that regard.

Speaker 4 (55:04):
No, he's the Lord of the Sabbath, see he is. Alright, Well,
Jesus said, my father is always working, so you expected
the son to do the same thing.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
He said. He said, like it wasn't.

Speaker 4 (55:14):
A paraphrasing, but he said something like God made man.
I don't know exactly how the phrase went, and it's
like God made men for the Sabbath or or I
don't know exactly, but I need to look that up
very quickly. I guess that's.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Okay, it's it's it's it's fine. I mean, you know,
I don't expect you to rattle off the verse from memory,
but yeah, I mean, you know, I I agree with
you in a sense. It's hard to it's hard to
criticize Jesus against his standards, the ones that he made,
because like he's the guy that made his standards, right, So,

(55:49):
like I I would be more critical from a secular perspective,
and I the only way that I feel like I
could convince you is if Jesus somehow broke his own
stand right. But like, I'm not necessarily arguing that Jesus'
standards were good, right, That's the thing. I'm arguing for
a sort of different kind of standard by which to judge.

(56:10):
So it's kind of a catch twenty two, right. I
justin I want you to pipe in on this too.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
I might my mind, my mind keeps coming back to
the whole leading by example, right, it's just if you
want me to follow you, believe in you and support
you and encourage you and and tell people about you
and stuff. And you've got to be someone who I
would strive to want to be like. And I don't
want to be like Jesus. Yeah, i'd like to be.

(56:40):
I think that I can be and am and most
people are better.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
So interesting, Yeah, Michael, you said you had something you
want to say.

Speaker 4 (56:47):
Oh uh no, I was, I was listening. That's that's
quite the statement to think you're better than Jesus.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
Man, He's just he was better than everybody else. I
don't know, you know, I mean, And then and.

Speaker 4 (56:59):
Then it's question like, okay, by what standard your own standards?
But what does that make you God?

Speaker 2 (57:05):
You know how know that what doesn't make me God?
And yes, by my own standards?

Speaker 4 (57:09):
Okay, well think you self, right?

Speaker 1 (57:10):
But what Jesus was too though?

Speaker 8 (57:12):
Right?

Speaker 1 (57:13):
I mean he literally judged people by his own standards.
But he's God supposedly, you know. I mean, you know
that's the thing. If if we don't think Jesus God,
he's just another person, right with another person in history
who has ideas about what's right and wrong. So maybe
that's what it is. Before we can even consider whether
his standards are worth looking at or worth following, we

(57:35):
have to prove that Jesus is God right. And some
people say maybe that we don't have to do that far,
but you know that maybe that's where we'd have to start. Sorry,
say that again, Michael.

Speaker 4 (57:45):
That's then you're gonna have to get to work to
figure out out, you know.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
I mean, Michael, I'll be honest, I've been getting to work.
I've been running this show for like half a decade,
a little more than half a decade now, I've been
putting in the work.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Literally of this is we're seeking it out. We're looking
for people like you to come in here with something
to convince us.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (58:07):
Yeah, well well that's that's what I usually try to do.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
You know.

Speaker 4 (58:10):
It's like people also like prove me God exists. Well,
if you want to have the proof. Life never worked
that way where people just spoon feed you everything. If
you want to have something, you have to go get it.
If you want to want to know something, you have
to learn, you have to read. You gotta you know,
you gotta put the work in because if there is
a God, and he knows your heart, and he surely knows.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
So it was it was in looking and reading and
being raised Catholic that got me here.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
Same same with me, Michael, because I was also a
Christian before this, a studious one. In fact, I did
college ministry and you know, definitely dedicated at least part
my life in Jesus. Maybe my problem was it wasn't
entirely in Jesus. But you know, the more I looked
into stuff, the more I started to have questions and
couldn't figure stuff out. And I definitely read books, Michael.

(58:54):
I definitely talk to people. I talk to people every week,
you know. So I'm still having these conversations.

Speaker 4 (59:00):
Yeah, I see, I mean it's possible. I mean, like
you know, I mean like looks. For example, your buddy
said he was a Catholic. Now I have a very
big objection against the followsom you know.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
I'm sure you do he too.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Yeah, I wonder who has the more objections you are justin.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
I mean, I still remember sitting in religious religion class
in my Catholic high school and being assigned certain chapters
to read, and the teachers being like, Okay, we're going
to go read these chapters and read these chapters, and
I'm like, wait a minute, why did we just skip
an entire book or an entire bunch of chapters. Where
did those Why didn't we start from the beginning all
the way through? Well, cause if you go back and

(59:39):
read those chapters, you're gonna find stories about, you know,
daughters getting their dads drunk and having a night of
sin with them, or like bears mauling forty children, or like,
you're going to find some stories in that book that
I found very interesting that the teachers were like cherry
picking the ones they wanted us to read it, skipping
over them more objectionable stuff. So, yeah, anybody who stops

(01:00:03):
reading what's a sign to them? It actually decides to
go dig a little deeper. It's something that's been said
lots of times, and I think it's fairly true. The
best path to atheism is reading that Bible.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Yeah, not for me.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
It's actually the other way around.

Speaker 4 (01:00:20):
I mean it's I guess it's also depends where you
come from. And if you already have bad experience with Catholicism,
for example, I can't blame you. You know, I you know,
you know when it comes to all kind of corruption
that's going on there Inland.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
But Michael, I mean, and I don't mean to interrupt you,
but I need to point this out because you've immediately
framed Justin's point of view as well. He's not a
Catholic anymore because he's had bad experiences, And that's not
Justin's perspective, right, Justin's. It's it's more that he came
to a more academic understanding of his faith and didn't

(01:00:57):
didn't agree with it right. Oftentimes, there's a perception within Christianity,
in Christian culture that the reason why atheists are the
way they are is because oh they had a bad
church experience or oh they just didn't do the work right.
And if you talk to folks like us, we often
give very different perspectives on that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:16):
Sure, okay, I'll take those words back. It does happen,
Though it does happen.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
I don't. Yeah, of course, of course it happens. But
is it the majority of my school.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
My teachers were some of the greatest people ever. My
school experience, in a nutshell, was fantastic. It was just
those religion classes and the moments of having to read
through the Bible and the question marks coming up of
like why are we reading Genesis one but not Exodus
twenty one?

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

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Like why are we skipping through some of these other chapters?
And you know, yeah, what Dan said is my experience
was not a bad one. Now, it's a little funny
that my school had to change its name a couple
of years after I graduated because the guy who was
named after ended up being one of those more bad
Catholic people, So you know, that was the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
But anyways, what a surprise?

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
What a surprise?

Speaker 4 (01:02:10):
No, I mean, like I mean, sure, I mean there
are some sensitive subjects in the Bible, and most of
the time I hardly even read the Old Testim because
it's hardly even relevant anymore, apart from, you know, seeing
certain cross references between the old and the new. So
you know, I'm still learning myself and all in all
that stuff. But yeah, I have came across it with
the with the bears tearing the boys about, and yeah,

(01:02:32):
I mean, can I give it an answer to you
right now?

Speaker 3 (01:02:35):
No? No, I don't so, But.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
Isn't that interesting that even though you can't give an
answer to it, you're still choosing to believe in it
or otherwise justify it overall.

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
Well, I don't If I don't have an answer, I
can't say I'm going to justify this. So that there's
a lot of stuff in the Bible I couldn't figure
out until I don't know how many years later. You know,
it's it's not like it's not like you're going to
a snack board. You know, it's not fast.

Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
Yeah, But isn't that interesting though? Like I imagine if
I was a huge believer in like dos Capital. You know,
we were talking about Karl Marx earlier and I was like, well,
I can't tell you about this chapter here on economics,
or I can't tell you about this chapter on class
conscious But you know, I believe the whole book, right,
Like you would kind of find that a bit absurd, right, Like,
wouldn't you? Why would I defend a book so wholeheartedly

(01:03:22):
that I don't understand or can't fully critique.

Speaker 4 (01:03:26):
Well, I mean, like you can critique it, like I,
it's not why critique.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
Who was it? You know?

Speaker 4 (01:03:32):
Some of the wickedness of King Solomon? And you know,
but I don't know how many wives and stuff, you know,
because that's sin, you know all that stuff. So I
but I don't know. I would have to look into
it for myself, like for example, you know, now that
you bring it up, you know it's not the second time.

Speaker 3 (01:03:47):
I've heard it with the Bears, for example.

Speaker 4 (01:03:49):
Then I then I have to make sure I have
an answer ready the next time, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
That's how I do it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
But Michael, isn't that interesting? And I know Justin wants
to chime into But let's listen to that chain of
logic again real quick. I don't know the answer to this,
so I need to seek out what the defense is
for this? Why not just well where where? What is
the truth of this?

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Because Justin and I might say that the truth of
this is this is a culmination of stories that people
have come up with at a given culture and a
given point in time that may not reflect reality, right,
But like, as a Christian, you kind of can't say that, right,
You kind of have to have some sort of defense
for lack of a better word.

Speaker 4 (01:04:30):
Right, Well, I mean it depends it's gonna you know.
I mean, I'm just being honest. I don't have an
answer for that at the moment. I appreciate that thoughts
of the Bible, I just I don't know very well.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
And that's one of them.

Speaker 4 (01:04:43):
You know. It's probably if I if I'm going to
sit down for a day and just going to read
and compare everything together, and it's like, oh okay, it
can be that easy, you know, And sometimes you know,
it takes time, prayer, reading, researching, maybe looking into other
commentaries or you know, I don't like to lean on
too many is a rather come.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
To the.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
But I think the point Dan's trying to make here is, though,
is Michael, is that you've read the headline and you went,
all right, I understand the whole article, right, Like that's
kind of the point we're trying to to demonstrate here is.
I love the attitude. You're perfect. You're just like, you
know what I need to clearly go look at this,
and I hope you do. But you've decided to believe

(01:05:24):
it all without researching it first, right, You're just like,
you know what, this headline sounds good to me. This
this this is great. You've got my attention, you've got
my support, you've got my belief, but you haven't taken
those next steps. Hopefully Dan and I have maybe encouraged
you to go. You know what, maybe I need to
look a little deeper because, as you said, you need
to have the answers to the questions that we're putting forward,

(01:05:45):
the scenarios that we're dropping down here, right, we're hitting
your thinker.

Speaker 4 (01:05:48):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
I hope that's right, hitting the thinker.

Speaker 4 (01:05:50):
Yeah, of course, I mean yeah, yeah, I mean, I
myself like.

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
Love a good challenge.

Speaker 4 (01:05:55):
You know, it's seriously the other way around, you know.
I even said in a commented before, you know, with
a lot of stuff, I'm probably gonna you know, how
did I say it and what it wasn't in another
live stream and the chat I said, normally you walk
circles around people. So it's yeah, I like a good challenge.
So okay, so far, Yeah, well I would have to
I have to. I would have to look into the

(01:06:16):
whole bear thing, you know, because these kids call them
bullhead or go up? Why don't you go up to?
You know, I don't know what the implication of that
is and what it means what they said with that,
you see that you get these little things matter, So
but can I give you an answer on that note?
So I would have.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
Okay, let me ask you. I want to ask you
a question then, Michael, and we've been talking for a while,
so you know, if you want to go and everything,
that's fine. First of all, you're obviously deeply respectful and
deeply thoughtful, and I appreciate your time in talking to
us today. I want to know you like challenges. So
here's my challenge. What would it take for something in
the Bible to not be true?

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
What conditions would have to be met for something in
the Bible to not be true? If you don't have
an answer that for me today, that's fine, but that's
like my that's my parting question for you there.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
I would extend on that just a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
Hold on, I want to.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
I want to. I want to put a sub challenge
to that one. So what would it take for one
thing in the Bible to not be true? I would
then add to that, how many things in the Bible
to not be true before we can discount the entire Bible?

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
It does it only take one thing? Does it take
ten things?

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
That's a good question.

Speaker 4 (01:07:27):
You would first it would first, you know, you will
first have to reject the existence of God to to
actually make the claim put the claim away by saying, Okay,
this is not the word of God, and then you
might you know, then you might get into possible no standpoint,
I'm just gonna given my standpoint, I would just say nothing.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
Nothing would convince me.

Speaker 4 (01:07:49):
Okay, I am very biased, you know, I'm very biased.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
You know, if if nothing could convince you, and if
the Bible wasn't true, how could you know that?

Speaker 4 (01:08:00):
Because I lived on the other side, I have been
an atheist, I have seen the fruits of the world.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
Well, hold on, hold on before you do that. Does
personal experience validate the claims of the Bible? Right? Because
the Bible has a lot of claims, some of them moral, yes,
but some of them about historical events, right, about what
people have said or haven't said. Right? Do those things
correlate with your personal experience?

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
I don't.

Speaker 4 (01:08:27):
I don't really get the question, because I think I
wasn't pointing at that more like the opposite side, because
you say, like, okay, how do you like? What was
the question?

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
Well, so yeah, let me simplify this, right, So, like
I could read a book about George Washington, right, and
you can ask me, why do I think this book
about George Washington is true, And if I said, well
it's because of my personal experience, that doesn't really follow, right,
because the claims about George Washington that really doesn't have
anything to do with me or the things I've experien

(01:09:00):
and sort of live, right, because because there's things that
are way outside of my context of living.

Speaker 4 (01:09:05):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
So I would argue that the Bible is kind of
in a similar place, right, because it has claims, yes,
some about God for sure, some about morality for sure,
but it also has claims about other things, like you said,
historical events or other things that people have said, or
things that have happened, right, So you know, those things
they don't necessarily correlate, right, your personal experience and what
the Bible has to say.

Speaker 4 (01:09:27):
Well, it's it's kind of funny in a way because
the way I came into the faith was not because
of the Bible. It's the things that I researched and
I came to, you know, and then all of a
sudden it's like, hey, it's written in the Bible. Also,
hey that's interesting, you know, and then not the research
other stuff, and every time every little data point you
came came to the to the Bible, and it's like, okay,
so I have probably have to take this book a

(01:09:49):
lot more seriously because this is true.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
That is true history. This is historically true.

Speaker 4 (01:09:53):
Like when you when you research like ancient civilizations and
how the you know, how the Pagans systems were pretty
much you know, they had all kinds of similarities all
over the world, and then you read the story of
the Tower of Babbel where the languages were scattered, and
then you see like, hey, wait a minute, you know,
like could.

Speaker 3 (01:10:10):
This be true?

Speaker 4 (01:10:11):
You know, you know I was open minded, let's say
it like that, you know, eventually, and yeah, even I
love the.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
Tower of Babbel story. It's a fascinating one.

Speaker 4 (01:10:20):
You come across, you come across, you come across certain
things like teachings of Jesus, and you're like, yeah, yeah,
this is what I've been looking for my entire life.

Speaker 3 (01:10:29):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:10:29):
It's not like, oh, this the Bible says so and
it's true. No, there's gotta be a little bit of
life experience to go with it, because otherwise you just
believe it for the sake of believing it. And I
don't do that. I don't like that at all. You know,
I want to have some substance, to have to be
able to say, yes, this is true because this and
this and this is and this. You know, you have

(01:10:51):
to be able to you have to be grounded in it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:54):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
So many other rabbit holes i'd love to go down,
but yeah, I mean, Michael, you've been a great collar honestly,
and you've been fairly honest, which is very very rare
I find on this kind of program. So I want
to thank you for that, and I hope you'll call
again sometime.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
I would love to talk to you again, Michael. I
don't know what time it is in the Netherlands, but
I appreciate you calling regardless.

Speaker 4 (01:11:14):
Oh man, it's because yeah, that I have a day
off tomorrow, because it's three twenty in the morning, so
it's like three three twenty am.

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
It's absurd. It's absurd spending your time talking to us. Well,
that's that's that is something. Thank you for that. Listen.

Speaker 4 (01:11:30):
Again, I got challenge in the chats by other people.
I don't know if it's still around.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
But you followed through with that shout out to you.
That's why we give you our full respects, Michael. Listen,
we can keep talking forever, but we want to let
you go because we've been talking for a little bit here,
But I do sincerely it would love to chat with
you again if you have another day off or something,
if you can make it. If not, I totally understand.
I hope this conversation was fruitful for you. We'll go

(01:11:55):
ahead and let you go for now. But thank you
again for calling, and.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
Keep researching, looking into it, and don't stop.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
Yeah absolutely, you know, I never will.

Speaker 3 (01:12:04):
I never will.

Speaker 4 (01:12:04):
I'm axooth tsaka, So why should I stop?

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
Well, yeah too, hence the title of the show.

Speaker 1 (01:12:10):
Yeah absolutely, Michael, thanks so much. I'm gonna let you
go now. Thank you again, have a great rest of
your day. Night. I don't know, three twenty in the morning.
It's kind of hard to say, but wow, what a call.
Justin what call? We we talked abo call for a
long time.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
That's that's that's that's that's awesome. I mean, it's easy
to get lost in a phone call like that and
go for a long time when the ideas are flowing
back and forth, and I feel like he was genuinely
picking up what we were putting down, you know. I mean,
some people they just want to argue and preach and
read their their scriptures and stuff. You know, I think
Michael might be putting a little bit of card before

(01:12:46):
the horse in some aspects. But it sounds like it
sounds like your chat went, dude, if you've got ideas,
you need to call in, and he went, okay, you
called in. I hope the experience was a positive one.
I hope he'll call again. Yes, And and I enjoyed
the call very much.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
And I don't try to keep I try to don't
let calls go on for that long. But that was
such a good conversation. I didn't want it to end.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
I always wanted to jump on that, like the Tower
of Babel and stuff. And I was like, you know what,
there might be other people on the line who want
to get through that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
Yeah, we do have it, and I want to get
to like at least one other caller here, because like,
we spent so much time with Michael. But you know
what I mean, he was calling from the Netherlands and stuff.
Who knows when he'll call again. I think it's worth it, genuinely.
I haven't had a Christian argue for his position. I
can't remember the last time a Christian argued for his
position as well as he did. Now. Obviously for some parts,

(01:13:35):
I think for the Jesus morality part, I was actually
pretty impressed. I think he gave pretty good responses by
Christian standards. And that sounds like a put down. I'm
not trying to make it as a put down, but
I'm saying it was more thoughtful and more qualitative than
what I've used to So that was great. I appreciate that.
Obviously disagree, but.

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):
It was a fist caller who actually used the words
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
Yeah, and that too. That's so important, so important.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
Because a lot of times when I'm watching you know,
Truth Wanted or other programs on the ACA, you don't
get that. You get callers at call in and like
they think they know everything. They are ready to make
all the excuses under the planet or under the Unbrella,
and at no point are they going to be like,
you know, what you've just said a thing that has
the only answer I can give you is I don't know,
and I have to go look at it. And that's

(01:14:23):
how you can judge an honest conversation from someone who
just wants to hear their sound of their own voice.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
I agree, I agree, that was great. That was great.
Let's start to fit a we would one more call?
I think everybody one more here? Justin, you got, I got?

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
I got so much room for so many calls Dan.

Speaker 1 (01:14:38):
I think crews okay with that. I think we'll try
to get one more and then, because like you know,
we'll just try to shift things around.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
This show is not done by just Dan, right, Like,
there's there's an army behind Dan running all these things.
So yeah, we got to watch that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
I'm glad you brought that up because we should take
a moment to thank the wonderful, amazing crew that helped
make the show happened. Maybe we can get the crew
cam up here and show all the folks that help
make things happen. Look at this awesome, awesome crew. Thanks
so much, crew for putting up with me and you know,
making the show happen. So let's let's start it again.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
What more easily the best call In show I've been
on today?

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
Hell yeah, that's great, that's great.

Speaker 2 (01:15:19):
Maybe only one I've been on today?

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
But how about your week?

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
Can we do week the best Collin show I've been
on all week?

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
There we go. I like that. All right, We're gonna
take John from Canada real quick, John from Canada. We're
at the tail end of the show. Okay, so I
can't give you all the time in the world, but
I wanted to do at least one more person. So
I'm picking you today. John, What do you got for us?

Speaker 4 (01:15:37):
Okay, I'll to the case. Can we agree and.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
We agree that Jesus was a socialist. Socialism was not
a thing when Jesus was around.

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
So I think a better question would be, would Jesus
be a socialist?

Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
Yeah, okay, and I think he would. I think he
would agree with a lot of progressive ideas. But I
don't think Jesus was in interested in like class consciousness
in the same way that other John is. That year
you have like a beeping going on on your line, Johnny, there.

Speaker 2 (01:16:08):
He mute us. Something happened?

Speaker 4 (01:16:10):
Mute?

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
I don't know. I'm going to return him to the
queue so that our call screeners can maybe helps us
out what's going on there. Okay, right off the bat,
Jesus a socialist. I know, we argue that like and say, oh, yeah,
he's a socialist. But if I'm asked point blank, I'm
kind of not realizing. Yeah, actually, I don't think I
can say that because socialism has developed at a very

(01:16:32):
particular time and place. Again, it looks at history to
develop its position. But I don't know if Jesus would
care about those kinds of things. I think he's more
interested in the kingdom.

Speaker 3 (01:16:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
Yeah, I think there's a lot of nuance. Yeah, they're like,
if we take the hard, black and white rule of
what a socialist would be, would Jesus be that. No,
I don't think he would be a pure hardline socialist.
But you know, if we take his into some of
his individual actions such as again, we come right back
to what we've been talking about since the top of
the programity to you know, feed the masses or turn

(01:17:02):
water into wine.

Speaker 4 (01:17:03):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
If a socialist had those abilities, that's that's that's what
they would do every weekend. Their weekend is filled up
with sorry, guys, I can't hang with you. I gotta
go over here and produce bread out of nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:17:15):
Yeah. If anything, Jesus is I mean a Christian nationalist right, Like,
he's all about living glory to God aka and him.
So I don't think he really cares about.

Speaker 2 (01:17:26):
He wouldn't have given bread to someone who didn't believe
in him.

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
Yeah, I don't think he does in the like in
the gospels.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
Right, he would use that power as as as a
way to persuade, right.

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
Yeah, he he does make a big point about you
have to believe in me in order to like receive
what's going on here, Like all the miracles seem to
be Oh, well I did this because this person asked me,
right and and did it of me. So there is
something So that's that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
I wouldn't be a socialist at all.

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
Yeah, that's sort of a theocratic sort of fascist almost
sort of like I'm the I mean he's the leader. Right,
there's democracy in that he doesn't care what other people think.

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
So a socialists would would want to raise up like
would look behind them and try to lift up the
people who are worse off than themselves, to try to
get everybody up to the highest point they could possibility.
Would always be like I'm always going to be above you,
but if you believe in me, I'll turn your water
to wine.

Speaker 1 (01:18:23):
Now, he does raise the material conditions of all those
involved in the afterlife, right, because you know, streets are
gold and get the crowns and stuff, so there is
a case to be made there. I don't know, this
is a very funny analysis.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
He would still be living in the bigger house with
the bigger.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
Street of gold, right right, But there is sort of
a class system still because there's everybody in hell as well.
Maybe for burning I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
They probably they're probably the ones that produced the gold
bricks for the roads.

Speaker 1 (01:18:51):
Right, the one the roads that were paved with good intentions,
I think. Yeah. Anyway, so I haven't seen I haven't
seen John callback So we're I think we're gonna have
to sort of get things going from there because we're
kind of at the end of the show. So I
want to thank you again justin for being on today's
episode of Truth I wanted. I love today's episode. Thanks

(01:19:12):
so much for joining me.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
I mean, as soon as we're done here, I'm going
to go talk to all my friends and totally fangirl
about how I did a show with objectively Dan. You know,
like I've been watching you for years. This is a
milestone in my YouTube journey and my call in show journey,
and you know, this is just one more step and.

Speaker 1 (01:19:30):
I go forward with it. Listen to this guy glad
handing over here. Well, I appreciate Justin. Thanks so much
for being on. We'd love to have you on again sometime.
If people want to watch more of your stuff, where
should they go?

Speaker 2 (01:19:42):
They should go to this just in. I'm sure if
you just search it on the YouTube's you'll find a
lot of different this justin channels. It's not a very
unique name by any means, but you know you can
find this logo that I got here behind me that
you guys have seen a couple of times there and
you'll recognize me. So go to this Justin check it out.
I've got another video. There's the logo there, there we go.

(01:20:03):
I've got another video coming out later this month where
I do another episode of Reading from Right to Left
with a whole new panel of people reading another children's
book with some just weird ideas inside that book.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
Awesome, awesome, Yes, thanks for those plugs. And I also
want to give a thank you to Kelly who's been
our backup host today. So hey there he is, Kelly, Hey.

Speaker 5 (01:20:27):
Great show man. That was an awesome call with Mikail.
That was great. I really enjoyed and listening to that
and Justin, you said something, and you said it so calmly.
It was awesome when you said, I just want to
finish this sentence? Was that just the right way when
you said that, that was.

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):
That's probably the calmest anyone has ever said that. Yeah,
crazy thank you on this show.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
Might have been the Canadian in me.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
Yeah, definitely, it.

Speaker 5 (01:20:57):
Was something I'm going to try to emulate in the future,
that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:21:02):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:21:02):
I appreciate it both of you so much. And now
I've done a show with both of you, and I'll
have to do some more.

Speaker 5 (01:21:08):
Absolutely, I gotta say, justin I I know how you
feel about doing your first show with Dan. I felt
the same way too.

Speaker 1 (01:21:15):
You guys need to shut up.

Speaker 5 (01:21:18):
It was like four years ago, and I was like, because,
because you know Dan, I've been watching you ever since
you were on Anthony Back to Bosco show, right, and
and when I got to be on this show the
first time as a guest, I was like, in heaven, man,
it was awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
So I'm gonna mute both of you. Okay, if you
guys keep this up, I'm not letting either of you back. Okay,
none of this, none of this. I'm not I'm I'm
not gonna respond. That's very nice, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
We're just trying to say that you're you're great. And
then you got to take it from our point of view.
Right a couple of years ago, you were just you
were just a voice in my ear while I was
outside doing yard work and I'm just listening and to
the points that you say and I'm not and I'm like,
you know what, this guy knows what he's talking about.
And the reason I'm even on this stage here now

(01:22:06):
with you guys is because I take the points and
arguments that I've learned from you and all of the
other members of the ACA, and I'm now here besides
you going through the journey too.

Speaker 1 (01:22:15):
Well, okay, for real andcerely, thank you. That's very very kind.
On a less serious note, I'm going to go.

Speaker 10 (01:22:22):
And you finish the questions by the way, Okay, Well,
I need Kelly to read the prompt this week so
that we can move on from me receiving compliments from
both of you, because this is just too much at
this point.

Speaker 5 (01:22:36):
Her question of the week for next week is if
you could rewrite the Bible, what would it say? And
I think we're looking for like the general message of
the Bible. Maybe not you can.

Speaker 1 (01:22:48):
I'm open for me too, So yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
An open ended topic like that for someone to interpret
and give an answer works.

Speaker 5 (01:22:55):
Sounds good to me.

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
It sounds good to me too.

Speaker 5 (01:22:58):
And just one thing real quick about that fig tree.
Jesus did have the whole day to come up with
that story with the allegory of the fig tree being
the state of Israel, right, he had the whole day
to figure that story out. Just want to point that out.

Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
That's that is true that I guess he did have
some time with that, and really all of eternity as well,
if you think about it, Like from the very beginning,
we got some super chats at the end here, thank
you Crispin Slit for the one found and I think
justin did you just donate what the hell.

Speaker 2 (01:23:28):
Is with Like a couple hours where the show was starting,
there was a bunch of people in the chat and
one guy was like, I got the number one spot, crown,
another I got the number two spot, and I'm just like, well,
I know how to steal the number one spot. There
was some money in there, so yes, I threw a
three dollar sticker in there to get the number one
spot and of course to support the channel.

Speaker 1 (01:23:49):
Well, thank you. It's often I get to say thank
you to super chats to the person who I'm talking
to on the air. Happened to me, Yeah, that's true,
that's happened with Kelly. But listen. Sincerely, thank you guys,
but justin thanks for being on and of course Kelly,
thank you to me. I always enjoyed talking with you. Man.
Let's let's wrap this baby up. Huh. Let's let's let's

(01:24:11):
get this done for tonight, folks.

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

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
This has been another fantastic episode of Truth Wanted. I've
been your host today objectively. Dan, remember to always keep
wanting the truth and you We'll see you next time.

Speaker 4 (01:24:22):
A good night, but.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
H Watch the nonprofits and join the hosts in the
live chat. Visit tiny dot cc slash y t n
b

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