Ask an Atheist: Atheist Culture?

[Music] hello and welcome to ffrf's asking atheist I'm Liz Cavell associate Council here at ffrf today we are going to talk to the YouTube star known as the genetically modified skeptic his name is Drew McCoy and specifically we're going to talk about a topic Drew covered on his show that turned out to be surprisingly controversial is there really such a thing as atheist culture and if so what is atheist culture as always we want to hear what you're thinking about the subject so you can leave your questions in the Facebook comments below or you can email them to ask an atheist ffrf.org I'm joined today by ffrf's IT director Scott nickeline Scott hello hi you actually brought the genetically modified skeptic to our attention Scott so tell us a little bit about how you found him well I've been watching Jew's uh uh broadcast his YouTube channels for years and uh I've always been very impressed by his kind of commitment to honesty and also intellect intellectual rigor when um you know discussing things like religion and spirituality and some of these other topics so a few uh weeks ago he did an episode of uh his podcast where or his his uh YouTube uh Channel where he talked about uh atheist culture and uh it covered everything from new atheist authors like uh Christopher Hitchens to atheist organizations like us to Common atheist experiences and even common atheist memes here's a clip from his segment on atheist comedians atheist comedians George Carlin Carlin died in 2008 but his legacy is still influential enough today to earn a spot on this list easily he's a legendary comedian author and actor who very often mocked those in power in his work politicians and clergy were regular targets of his wit among atheists he might be best known for a particular comedy routine of his which is floating around on YouTube right now titled religion is I can't even count the number of times I've heard other atheists in real life imitate Carlin's punchline but he loves you and the Invisible Man Has a special list of 10 things he does not want you to do and if you do any of these 10 things he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever till the end of time but he loves you drew leaves Drew lives in Texas with his wife Taylor who makes a quick appearance in in this video and is a YouTuber in her own right Drew welcome to ask an atheist hey guys I am very honored to be here I have been a longtime supporter of ffrf and uh that's one of the many reasons I included it in the atheist culture video but yeah thanks for having me on thanks so much Drew and let's start with the obvious question and Jump Right In what is atheist culture atheist culture is like any other culture a product of a group of people who have some shared ideas and identities really that's that's what culture is uh and as I'm sure we'll get into it is somewhat contentious that atheists can create culture because it's somewhat contentious that atheists share a common identity not Just One Singular position but the inevitable product of humans getting together is basically what culture is right and obviously we'll talk about why this was so controversial but of course like it's a characteristic of culture in a matter what groups culture you're talking about that um you know there's no monolithic thing about any group of people with one shared common characteristic but of course that doesn't mean that um people that share that characteristic don't also share cultural components but what are some of the examples of atheist culture for those that didn't see your video um that you covered uh one that I like to point out is scientific skepticism you know there obviously this is something that touches other bits of culture um even even tabletop gaming culture gets into some scientific skepticism stuff sometimes but yeah scientific skepticism this idea that I I think was especially canonized by people like Carl San and Neil degrass Tyson that it's important to measure our beliefs and ideas by what the scientific process can tell us that doesn't mean that we follow this dogmatically it just means that we use some of these tool in order to refine our own ideas and remain skeptical of bad dubious claims uh I think that that I bring that up because I think just about anybody watching the show would be would be like well yeah that's just a given I don't even think of that as a part of culture it's just of course I do that it's so it's so so much just a given uh but also we have public figures common figures like you know George Carlin or Dan Barker or even the two of you we have shows that we like to watch in common like mine like yours and uh when when getting comments you know where people are saying well I don't really think I engag atheist culture I've watched plenty of your videos and I never got the impression that you held me to that yeah it's uh it's not something that everybody wants to necessarily acknowledge but I think that that may even be um an indicator that atheist culture seems to be such a given for many people that they they wouldn't think of it it's it almost reinforces the conclusion I I I try to draw in the video I actually I posted some this morning on the this episode on the uh atheism uh uh section of uh Reddit and one of the responses I got was you're soaking in it which uh you know uh an old PA mive TV ad reference but nevertheless I think it's uh you know I think it's an example of of how we are actually so imbued with some of these things some of these media things that uh that we're not even noticing that that's that's a part of our experience but even and even raising the subject of atheist culture you received a surprising amount of pushback um even vitriol from other atheists saying things like take a shower or it isn't 2010 anymore grow up uh why do you think the very Quest question prompted such a strong reaction first of all I'll say unfortunately it wasn't very surprising that I got responses like that and and Kinder bits of push back too take a shower yeah I I can admit I got comments like that uh I I think that so the the the thing that I discuss at the end of the video is that atheists are often accused of being dogmatic like religious people we're compared to religious people and of course to us it's very important that we are not religious people you know we don't we don't believe in those things we're not religious we don't have dogmas in the same way we don't have holy texts we are separate from that and that's important to us especially us who actively fight for our rights to be protected you know ffrf is is one of the groups where I think that's embodied the most and saying that atheism or atheists have a shared culture is to some people in some people's minds like saying we are in fact like religious people we do have these things in common we do have texts and figures and ideas and symbols that we share in common when we're so constantly accused of being dogmatic and just compared to religious fundamentalists I think that we try to overcorrect some sometimes and say you know no we don't have a culture we we are not like that in any way and we we are almost Beyond being like any other human we're we don't fall into those just simple human traps like having shared ideas but the reality is that we are like anyone else ultimately we are just as fallible we're just as creative we're just as connected to our communities as any body else and that means that we're going to share culture and I try to hammer home the idea that this is not a bad thing this is not a negative of atheism or atheist culture that you know it exists I I actually think it's a very positive thing that atheists are able to have a culture without always having the same level of Dogma that other cultures may have do you think that some of this the accusation or even the uh suspicion of an accusation that atheism is like just another religion comes from an sort of an inability to distinguish between what actually constitutes a religion and what constitutes a tribe or a group uh you know I mean obviously at least many atheists would see themelves as part of the atheist community and just by doing that uh you know you you buy into a certain amount of culture but uh but there's there's a difference between communities or tribes or however you want to put it and religion isn't there yeah absolutely now religion is a form of a tribe you know a a tribe A Community a group is this category up here and then you have a lot of different subcategories and people like to you know say cult is one kind of category religion is one kind of category a you know a community or Club is a different kind of category that kind of thing but some something that I try to do on my channel is help my viewers distinguish between um these types of categories by increasing religious literacy a lot of people who like to watch videos like mine are people who are more freshly out of religion and in religious circles you're actually a lot of the time less likely to be well educated in in religion you're going to less religiously literate a lot of the time you're just going to know group in group claims not General reliable information about religion and so a lot of my viewers actually are coming from that perspective as well they know what their former Evangelical or fundamentalist tribe claimed about religion but not much else and so when they see a video like mine I I think they they go whoa whoa whoa you're you're saying that we're part of a tribe that means that we're part of a religion or a cult and and get and get scared but it's it's very complicated when you read actual scholarship in the field of religious studies you see that what a tribe is versus what a religion is versus what a cult is these things they're actually really complicated philosophical and sociological questions that can't be just handwaved Away by saying you calling it that makes me uncomfortable so I I try to engage with empathy on my channel because realize a lot of people are not coming from the most informed perspective when they're watching videos about religion even if they're watching atheist videos about religion right I think you're hitting on um something else that I've been thinking about as we're having this conversation which is just even the the word culture is such a um complex kind of idea that doesn't just neatly um conjure up the same ideas for individual people right so it's just one of those words that I think um is an obstacle to people feeling like they can um let down their guard so in other words uh atheists I think in general just as a middle-aged atheist who's been around for a while like I know a lot of other non-theists and you know other identifying non-believers and I think one shared characteristic um not by every single individual atheist but by many is that there are a group of people who are sort of like very aggressively non joining non-g grouping um type of people and that's not to say that they don't or we don't value Community but that one of the things that we really agitate against is the idea that you know going to join some ingroup um and talking about shared culture I think is something that kind of triggers that idea of you're joining something um you're being put into a group um and that's I think ironically or funnily something that um is also a shared characteristic which is um just sort of like the the agitating against the idea that we would be um in group joining but I mean just like any other group um and what makes this a group is just this one shared characteristic right there's many other things that we don't share as individuals and and not every single person who shares you know the identity of atheist is going to share all of these things in your video but they're just common um elements that you can sort of uh think about and talk about and identify as kind of common things that we all tend towards right we all tend to be Skeptics we all tend to be science-minded um we all tend to be interested in the separation of church and state and um you know we tend to find George Carlin funny and all of these other things right it doesn't mean every single one of us uh has to Love George Carlin but it's just talking about and identifying these things that we share um when we all share this one other thing which is our atheism and that's all it is and that's okay yeah absolutely fantastic points I'm really glad that you brought up the idea that the fact that we don't want to be a part of a group the fact that we want to be perceived as being fiercely independent maybe we are fiercely independent more so than than other groups statistically or something but the fact that we almost have this slight antisocial uh characteristic that we tend to view as a very positive thing I I think it can be a very positive thing uh that's important to our identity and like I've discussed in other videos about atheist identity when you are immersed in submerged in a culture that is so passionate and even forceful about being a specific thing not being that specific thing is just as a defining of a characteristic as being that thing you know it you actually stand out as a part of a group even more if you say I'm not part of the religious group I'm not part of the Christian group in the US and and so I I think that especially in this pressure cooker that we're in we are more likely to join together and seek out community and and that kind of thing because we are not joiners and again that's not a negative thing it does not negate the fact that we try to think independently and that we think that not allowing social influence to influence us unduly you know it's not a bad it's not a bad thing to try to be validated by your social group it's not a bad thing to join communities it is just a human thing to be a part of that it's a healthy thing and that can coexist with trying your best to think independently and critically right on well one of the elements of atheist culture that you discuss in your video is the deconversion story um and I just wanted to ask you why to you this is such a central element in atheism and can you share a little bit about your own deconversion story yeah I mean a huge part of culture is just having common experiences especially if they are particularly influential on your core values and ideas and especially when they are emotionally intense you know when you you when you join a religious community especially in kind of more charismatic religious communities you get up there and there's music playing and you testify you say how the Lord brought you into this and and you know it really bonds you together with with other people and in atheist culture I do think that we have a version of that which is sharing hey I was raised this way or maybe I wasn't raised this way and eventually I came to be the person that I am now and again in the pressure cooker of the religious us uh it can be a very emotionally and psychologically intense experience so of course like any other person we would want to share these formative experiences with each other and they would inevitably Bond us together now the deconversion story that I have is one that I've shared a ton on my YouTube channel and I could argue that it might be the number one thing that gets people to watch me is because they relate to my deconversion story they relate to me which I think I think proves my point but uh I'll go on yeah I was I was raised um independent fundamental Baptist I was a young Earth creationist I liked people like Ken Ham and Kent hovind that kind of thing I wasn't even on the William Lane Craig level uh which which is not that high to begin with uh and eventually after going to Christian College and becoming scientifically literate through getting my psychology degree undergrad and then doing some Master's work I I realized that supernaturalistic experiences which I was taught to trust actually had pretty valid psychological explanations uh I I couldn't accept anecdotal evidence I began reading the Bible even more than I did when I was a kid which was a lot actually more so than just about anybody else I know and I I realized that you know there are pretty good psychological explanations for witnessing things that people would say are Miracles and and in ancient cultures where you didn't have access to this kind of explanatory uh Power in in Psychology then you might think something is is magical or demonic or Supernatural and so it it became pretty apparent to me that I think it's more likely that these things have naturalistic explanations than all of the magic I was taught was real actually is and coming out of a religious fundamentalist family as the not only the first atheist ever in my family's history that that I know of um but also the first and four generations of men in my family not to be an Evangelical missionary a fundamentalist Evangelical missionary on the mission field that that was an experience for me and I needed Community how how am I expected to go through this alone I already lost some friends and family because of it I had people from the former Mission basically hunting me electronically and uh so of course I had to find community and I was able to do that through my YouTube channel and then finally in person and now my all of my best friends are people that I met through atheist spaces and not all of them are still involved in that it's not about that they are atheist that I that I love them it's just that we we' have had similar enough experiences to where it was very easy for us to bond so one word that doesn't come up in your video is deconstruction uh which is a term that I've heard quite a bit on uh Cal certainly on social media and uh primarily from ex evangelicals and or X Mormons so what's the difference for my own benefit what's the difference between deconstruction and deconversion and who do you think is most likely to describe themselves as having deconstructed their faith yeah great questions I really I feel like I really should make a a whole explainer video on this because it's something I I like to think about I think that while people will say that the primary difference between deconstruction and deconversion is uh the the end point you know deconversion implies that you left the religion completely and deconstruction means that you are untangling certain IDE ideas from your identity you're unlearning certain things that you were indoctrinated with etc etc but it doesn't mean that you necessarily leave sometimes it does mean that you leave the faith sometimes it doesn't that's a valid distinction absolutely but I actually think that the cultural identity between the the the distinction between deconstruction and deconversion is probably the most important factor so deconversion is a word that might have been entirely invented by atheists in atheist spaces we are the ones that say this you know and and even um it's even a a Christian kind of a a white ex-christian atheist thing that that we say now you're not going to see ex-muslims say they deconverted as often as you're going to see ex-christians say that they deconverted I think it is a kind of cultural idea where as deconstruction is something that involves a lot of people who still call themselves Christian they're also a lot more ethnically and uh sexually diverse deconversion is something that yes you will see women talking about online but you will primarily hear about deconversion from atheist men and most popular atheist men creators are also white so white atheist men creators is basically what you're going to hear deconversion from and whereas deconstruction you're going to hear this a lot from uh queer community communities of color uh you're going to see this a lot a lot more from women if you go on Tik Tok and you go to deconstruction Tik Tok it's going to be mostly women and queer people who are talking about this you will not see the same thing if you're looking for deconversion especially on YouTube I think that's the biggest distinction but I'm sure there's plenty more that people can sound off in in the comments about but to me I I think that that's really the biggest difference so there's not only atheist culture there's atheist subculture yeah of course yeah there there absolutely is there absolutely is and that is one of the the main comments that I actually got as kind of a constructive bit of criticism on my video that hey this is not really atheist culture this is atheist subculture specifically in the US it it especially is talking about white men who have a college education and I think that's I think that's a valid um piece of insight that a lot of this culture really does come from a kind of narrow uh demographic and it doesn't mean that other people aren't included in it it's just that atheist spaces for a long time have been dominated by this guy right and not not so much other other people so as much as you cover in your video and it's very encyclopedic there are invar of course invariably things that you had to leave out uh so for instance you you reference Russell's teapot but nothing things specifically on Bertram Russell uh you you do the Darwin fish but not Charles Darwin uh a fact that in fact a lot of your references don't seem to go back much further than say the 1980s is this because older atheist ideas and figures aren't very well represented on things like YouTube and social media in general or do you think it's just not as relevant or recognizable to your audience I think it's more the latter uh people like bertran Russell are extremely influential today they're they're definitely still influential through the people that I talked about through the symbols and ideas that I talked about they're a lot of them have their very foundations in people that were were speaking in the earlier 20th century and before people like David Hume if we didn't have David Hume we probably wouldn't have scientific skepticism but yes I don't think those things are as recognizable to most people you know people will talk about scientific skepticism but not necessarily know that hume's ideas about miracles very much influence people like Carl Sean and that Carl Sean actually even talked about that uh so that was one of the reasons why I decided to leave those things out is because I wanted to hit on things that are very recognizable to a very specific generation of atheists whose identities are also ground Ed in calling themselves atheists in a way so someone like Carl Sean is very important to someone like me and I'm I'm assuming you to who would call yourselves atheists but man how how do I how do I explain this Carl Sean himself was was just as enthusiastic about all the ideas that we like that Sean said but he didn't call himself an atheist and I don't think it was important for him to call himself an atheist he he did not see that as being being important and so really what I was trying to do was describe the recognizable and core ideas and elements for people who identify actively as atheists not just people who have been influenced by things that also influence atheist culture in a big way that makes sense um speaking about Darwin obviously there's an overlap between atheists and things you know an atheist culture atheist concerns um and the acceptance of evolution you pointed out that um some of the scientists on your list and you just mentioned this with Carl San but you mentioned Bill Nye and Neil degrass Tyson don't explicitly identify as atheists but obviously they publicly campaign for the teaching of evolution it's a Battleground issue in atheism but especially in state Church separation and public education we have a lifesized statue of Charles Darwin uh it's actually a wax model in our atheist Library here right across the H right across the hall um in free thought Hall so I just wanted you to talk a little bit about um how you see that connection between atheist culture and evolution and evolution acceptance yeah I mean so the absolute Legend Seth Andrews the the podcaster YouTuber author speaker just just one of my absolute Heroes he he has talked about this subject um and I I really appreciated his cultural insights and and one of those is that atheism is a culture yes but it is also well described as a reaction to another culture this is something that we have touched on here um I think that the reason why talking about evolution is so important in atheist culture is because pushing creationism even at the expense of proper education uh even at the expense of people's actual equal rights um a right to a to a good education uh an equal representation of of other religious people that's something that's really important to a very powerful minority actually in in the US and so atheist culture I think reacts to the fact that we have so many people in power like the you know the not so much the former president but the former vice president and and the speaker of the house today that would say yes you know creationism should be taught in schools evolution is just a theory Mr Senator you know that that kind of thing and uh it becomes important to us to take that on not just because we care so much about Evolution being true it has to do with and you guys know better than anybody else that it has to do with sticking up for people's ability to get a good education and to have religious institutions represented in an equitable way in the public sphere in the public Sphere not in public schools in places that are outside of you know government funded taxpayer funded institutions and so yes while a lot of people like myself learned about Evolution and that influenced our uh eventual coming out of religion I I don't think a lot of us are really trying to educate people about Evolution because we're just like oh it's so cool it is cool but it's not really that we are trying to keep people from being miseducated and people being misrepresented that's what it's really about I think yeah I think that's right um one more thing I wanted to uh mention from your video was the segment on atheist magicians um James Randy pendulette you cover let's look at a clip atheist magicians the late James Randy was a magician who made a career challenging psychics to prove their powers in controlled environments right up on stage where they always embarrassed themselves this was called the $1 million paranormal Challenge and yeah of course no psychic ever actually won because James Randy was able to debunk every single attempt he was very well known for exposing the tricks of Faith healers as well particularly Peter popof I suspected that pop off's Revelations were other than divine radio scanner we brought to the hall picked up a decidedly worldly Source pop off was being prompted by his wife through a wireless earpiece so um I just like this I think it's interesting um but what do you think it is about stage magic that has turned so many of its practitioners into crusading Skeptics uh I think when you see how the sausage is made it changes you you know yeah there there there are plenty of people you know I've talked about this and I've even heard people at ffrf conferences talk about this where when when you really get behind a production like that when you when you understand and are even skilled at influencing public perception skilled at pulling off Illusions you realize how much is an illusion out there how much is marketing how much is smok and mirrors how much is just straight up trickery or dishonesty and and there are people who while they really enjoy creating illusion and steering perception and just entertaining they also have strong moral character and strong scientific skepticism you know critical thinking skills and they want to spread that they want to show people hey this is great and fun and entertaining but when you take it past entertainment and fun and fantasy it can actually be extremely damaging on your wallet it can be extremely damaging on culture it can even do things like start wars it can be that bad and so you have people like James Randy and uh you know pen Gillette pen and Teller they uh perform performing at scyon like constantly just about every year in Vegas um that they they really want to show you what's in front of and behind the curtain simultaneously and and not to everyone but I think a huge number of their fans I mean these guys were very successful entertainers in their own right they really value the the honesty and the Showmanship simultaneously I I think that it actually teaches a pretty valuable moral lesson to our culture that you know that these guys can get up there and go hey this is entertaining but also look at everything that's behind this it's important to recognize it I think uh one of the Primal examples of of that of the of the skeptical magician was Harry Houdini who uh spent so much of his I don't know that he uh to my knowledge he never uh he never identified as an atheist but he certainly took on spiritualism uh very aggressively and uh was doing the same things that I believe James Randy has actually cited Houdini as a uh as sort of a a her or as an inspiration for for what he did yeah I think it's it's one of those agile things that we can all relate to even though so few of us are magicians where it's like this thing that you love so much that is a craft that you've worked so hard to be good at um and if that thing is is creating illusion for entertainment or for Showmanship um it's really painful to see someone turn that to exploitation um you know the pop off video it's like seeing someone take the thing that you love and that's your Craft um and turn it to this you know nefarious use or you know turn it to um take people's money or to you know exploit and manipulate people is just like infuriating and so um you're the one that knows best of all how to kind of you know unearth that and it's also just really fun to see right seeing the best at the craft um really just pulling the veil on um you know Supernatural practitioners is the best absolutely and I actually feel this in my own way as a content creator you know when you have editing and effects and all these things at your disposal you really are creating illusion as someone on social media and we have a a pretty severe crisis at this point of people creating Illusions now with things like AI tools and and just inventing conspiracy theories because they sell really well and of course you know as someone who's made a a career at this point for like actually the better part of a decade now on on social media of course I know how to make that stuff too I know how to make that sausage I just know that the sausage is poison and uh it's important to me to to give people content that is not only informative but also very transparent and um vulnerable in a way able to be held accountable so this is why I try to cite my my sources as much as possible and admit my own weaknesses and and things like that even at the expense of my own bottom line you know I could get a lot more views if I just rage baited people but I I think people like James Randy have inspired me too much to to go okay I got to do the best to to put on my Showmanship without actually compromising my own values right all right let's turn now to some audience questions we've got um questions from Facebook and some questions that were submitted before we even started the show so is culture do you think Drew is culture something that's predefined or is it something that is simply observed and described oo that's that's a really good question and a really really difficult one I think you could make the argument either way however I lean more toward the idea that culture is something that is better to be described it is descriptive not prescriptive uh you can be a part of atheist Culture by calling yourself an atheist and just liking my videos which is every single person who disagreed with the idea in my comment section that you know that atheist culture exists of course and I also think that it's important not to to gate keep uh these communities I I think that it's really rather arbitrary to say well I have 15 of these shared values with everybody else and you only have five so I'm really more of a true atheist than you we we don't accept that when it comes to defining something like Christianity for example Progressive Christians and fundamentalist Christians are both Christians and they have a lot more than 15 differences so I I tend to go toward let's describe culture as a product of human beings and of human Minds than to say that culture is is something that we should prescribe identity to human Minds based upon yeah I agree with that and I think that's important for sort of trying to untangle what's sort of good and what's bad about culture right because um as a woman in like atheism and secularism it's there there can be elements of that you could describe as atheist culture that are toxic and bad and that we um that we don't want you know these aren't the these aren't all the cool best things that we've curated and that we're presenting to the world these are just sort of um things we're observing that have come out of this group identity and of course that changes and evolves over time those are things that we can reject and work to push out of our culture um and there are things that um we can strive to bring into or make a part of our culture that haven't sort of Simply materialized um on their own so it's sort of this mix of both but I do think it's important to understand like our agency in the process of uh our own culture absolutely and I mean I I included some things in there that I that I said in the very video that I don't actually like I don't really like using the word Sky Daddy I I'm I'm actually as a biologist I love Richard Dawkins but as someone as a social commentator which is primarily what he does now I'm very much against what he's saying I I think that he spreads actually a lot of pseudo science about transgender issues which is very harmful in both his country and mine and uh there there are there are transgender people who have supported and worked with ffrf and I'm have been so excited to see that the kind of acceptance and rationality in in ffrf of working with and supporting trans people and and just to see someone that is so important to atheist culture you know doing something like that it it sucks to see but it doesn't mean that Richard Dawkins is not a part of atheist culture because he just undeniably is he's been too influential regardless of whether or not I like that or not yeah of course and and just being able to to talk about culture though in a way that sort of understands and makes room for sort of all of these um ideas about what culture is and how it and how it comes to be right like you can't deny that Richard Dawkins has influenced whatever you might think of as atheist culture but you also can as a member of a group of people that identify as atheists say well but also um I'd like to change atheist culture to really reject ideas like what Richard Dawkins you know puts out on social media all the time now and and like I have agency in the process of what our culture becomes and how it grows and develops absolutely um so here's a question um just for you specifically you've probably talked about this on your channel but tell us here for those of us who do not know what is the origin of the genetically modified skeptic name yeah it has a couple of Origins one I kind of hit on actually earlier in in our conversation and that is I'm the first in four generations of men in my family not to be a missionary um being being a missionary an Evangelical missionary is absolutely in my very genetic code but I did not become that and you can argue sure that I'm a different kind of missionary I'm I have a different kind of mission and that's fine I don't I don't find that to be an insulting comparison uh but it it does seem that there's something that must have changed within me as the this fourth generation or fifth generation not to you know not to be a missionary uh the other is when I started my Channel it was really meant more to talk about alternative medicine and debunk alternative medicine pseudo scientific claims uh my my family has been very much involved in pedaling that as as well as pedaling Christianity and those things tend to go hand in hand now and uh a a a swear word a bad word a four-letter word within alternative medicine spaces in just pseudoscience spaces is genetically modified organisms so by calling myself like the genetically modified skeptic that means I'm just absolutely the worst of the worst I'm a hor I'm such a horrible guy it's almost like calling yourself a Satanist in a way uh to to them and I I just thought it was funny and it had two meanings and I I tend to like names that have multiple layers to them so that was a that was a fun name for me to pick so it doesn't have anything to do with um a meme I recently saw of you in which you had enormous eyes yeah uh I I've had some people make edits of me that make me look like I've been genetically modified and uh you know that's that's fair enough but but that is a product of the name not the reason the name exists um all right I'll ask you this question and see where it goes um so you've gotten a lot of backlash on your video about atheist culture do you think that is sort of evid of the fact that the atheist Community as a whole is divided um and if so do you think there are ways to ease that Division and work closer or do you think it's something else I I think that you actually hit on a really good point earlier and that is that we like to we like to think of ourselves as fiercly independent and as Splitters rather than joiners and I think that that's true that doesn't mean that the atheist Community is necessarily best described as incredibly fractured or divided uh I think that we within the context of the US especially people who are willing to say no I don't I don't go by that I will not stand by this I am going to split I'm going to make my own Community or I'm going to speak up and criticize that we we those types of people which is probably all three of us uh are are the types of people who are selected for an atheist community and so we just have this predisposition I think to fracture more easily to be more atomized um to be more ready to debate even be hot-tempered at certain times depending on how important the issue is and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing I don't think it necessarily means that atheist groups will always be inferior or something like that to groups that are full of just joiners because we we have strengths like I actually think ffr might be the best example of this uh ffrf basically professionally dissents by saying extremely unpopular things that are actually really really good for everyone involved regardless of how unpopular they might be and I don't think that we would see a group of joiners rather than Splitters doing the advocacy that ffrf does I just don't think that that would be possible and and so I think that us splitters have some advantages in in groups of our own the disadvantages may be that it's it can be much more difficult to mobilize really large groups of people I mean you know Christian nationalist musician who's honestly not even very talented at any part of what he's doing Sean Foy can get Triple quadruple 10 times the audience the ffrf can get at one of their conferences and he can get that at a state capital building in Iowa or even somewhere that's not as religious like I don't know Nevada and uh so that's that's a disadvantage that we have but it doesn't come without it its own advantages that might be a good place to stop Drew I want to thank you so much for joining us this has been such a great conversation hopefully the first of many um and that concludes ask an atheist for this week don't forget we also have a weekly broadcast TV show free thought matters this week Annie Lori G has a talk with the liberal redneck himself TR Crowder he is so funny here's a short clip from his Netflix comedy special called Damn booy where he reveals how he met his wife cuz we met working at a bar together in Cookville Tennessee just up the road here yeah a absolutely noted stronghold of Enlightenment Cookville Tennessee and one day early on I overheard her talking to another server about that girl roommate who wrecked her car and the girl was totally fine but it your car up she got a DUI situation and the other server was saying yes just it's terrible you know and I'm going to I'm going to pray for her and my future wife without missing a beat goes that's crazy I too I'm going to do nothing at all to actually help oh my God have my devil babies you Godless no play you can see free thought matters on TV stations all across the US also on ffrf's Facebook and YouTube channels and don't miss free thought radio this week the show uh Annie Lori and Dan will be talking with Stephen emert executive director of the secular Coalition for America you can find free thought radio at ffrf.org radio and don't miss the latest episode of our we descend podcast me and ff's legal director Rebecca marker join American atheists Allison Gil to discuss the 2024 State Legislative cycle listen And subscribe wherever you listen to podcast or check us out online at we- descent. org if you want more information about the freedom from religion Foundation check out our website at ffrf.org if you remember already thank you if not get over being a splitter and please join us thank you so much Drew and we will see you next week on ff's ask an atheist freedom freedom from religion [Applause] freedom from [Music] [Applause] [Music] relig

Channel: FFRF

Views: 3,102

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Id: R4nwrGnQmow

Length: 49min 56sec (2996 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2024