Atheist Experience 20.36 with Matt Dillahunty and Don Baker

and so you think that [Music] suffering is [Music] [Music] I wanna all right so we're live Welcome to The Atheist Experience I'm Matt Delaney joining me this week Don Baker hey good to be here all kinds of Applause this is a live television program sponsored by The Atheist community of Austin in Texas and we're live every Sunday from 4 30 Central until about six or so we may run a little over because we're no longer under the constraints of Public Access about what we can say or what we can do and we talk about what people believe and why uh don is has got a topic that we're going to talk about but a couple of announcements to get out of the way um pride festival went really well I think I was over there for several hours in the afternoon um I know that they did a recap of that last week yeah I wasn't here last week so uh and this week they also built ramps I saw oh awesome Anthony magnabosco and uh Phil talking about that makes a big difference it's it's a lot of little stuff and it's um it it matters not just in the sense um you could just say I'm sure there are cynical people out there who would say oh well the only reason you're doing this is so that people will think that you're better than you are well okay um that might be the case for some people I have no problem with people being uh having their altruism ultimately stemmed from something selfish on the other hand we have people actually did good things for people there were there were actual benefits to it uh that should be celebrated yeah I'm happy if people do the right thing for really bad reasons uh which I'm not convinced that that's a really bad reason but if people do the right thing for really bad Reasons I'm okay with that because the right thing got done right yeah right if somebody wants to come over and you know fix my car because it's not broken but if they did because it would you know ingratiate me to them fine I still got to fix a lot of people do charity because it makes them feel good and okay well is that selfish I think that's the kind of selfish that's just fine I do lots of things that make me feel good including helping other people um I don't know what all is coming up but I do know that we've changed where we go to dinner after the show and they will get the address up at the bottom of the screen it's uh Star of India right there 2900 West Anderson Lane and good stuff good Buffet there I know there was something else that I really needed or wanted to say um but I I can't remember it and uh it was who knows it could have been a rant it could have been about how I'm not standing up for the pledge or the national anthem or any of that crap anymore uh yeah so it's 9 11 which in the United States is a fairly significant date because of what happened 15 years ago um I I still remember at the time I believe I was still a Christian or at least I was in the prime this was in around the time frame of me finding my way out so I might have not been one at the time that 9 11 occurred but it definitely wasn't much long after 9 11 that I I no longer believed and I remember uh my one of my roommates came in and woke me up and said you need to turn on the TV and watch what's going on and it was right after the first plane had hit and they were starting the coverage uh and I have this memory which is probably a false memory of actually seeing the second plane hit and as I go back and I I review things well it's certainly been on TV about a billion times yeah I I I think it may be the case that he didn't wake me up until after the second one but but because I I sat there for like three days I was unemployed at the time and did nothing but watch TV yeah and there were a lot of people it was just in awe of the whole thing but it's uh you know it's significant and we're 15 years on and we could spend months talking about the positive and negative Fallout from this incident you know the encroachment on individual freedoms the a constant attacks on Muslims as if all of Islam is one thing that we can lump into a bucket and you know don't be wrong I absolutely despise uh Islam and probably despise it even more than some other religions I despise but that doesn't mean that I view all Muslims as necessarily problematic or in the same way well the thing that that really freaked me out about the whole thing was afterwards the the rush to embrace Christianity and you know God God Bless America and all this God God this and God that and it was just kind of creepy uh I guess the the church attendance went way way up uh right after that and and uh and has since dropped off and has since dropped off as as if as if religion has an answer here religion was the problem not the answer maybe people figure that out I don't know but uh there's a there's a great quote science flies you to the moon but religion flies you into buildings from Vic Stinger who had been a guest on our show years ago before he died yeah actually we did a show in my old apartment in that tiny little one room where we did the ghetto we did the the non-profits episode with him there and it was uh it was great Vic is so I sorely missed one offices uh interview show with him at one point too so it's in our archives um anyway today if we're ready I don't have a failure topic although it is it is I think uh at its core of failure um I there were two articles in the uh Austin American statesman and probably a lot of other newspapers around around the United States uh about uh Mother Teresa and her canonization and um one of the Privileges that Christianity gets is Media promotion by an uncritical press uh and I talked about this last time I was on uh with regard to the pope visiting Auschwitz and and many of the themes of the two are similar and that the the the Press is being used as a as a way of publicity for the pope and the and the Vatican and it's goings-on uh UPI and AP and other news feeds have embedded promoters of Christianity it's that much as clear local newspapers published the stories without much thought or editing and so you get these kind of propaganda pieces or Puff pieces that that uh show up and and these two definitely qualify um they were both from AP and they can they were concerned in early in September September 4th and 5th and uh over the two articles it's about 18 column inches and I think three column inches would have been plenty uh in one article most of the Vatican generated news is self-serving it's interesting wait are you saying that all Mother Teresa native was three inches [Laughter] there's no way to pass up that joke so I I could I could amplify that anyway uh um okay so most Vatican generated news is self-serving and one of the fun things I like to do is say oh well how does that how does that promote the Vatican if if there's a if there's an article and these two definitely do so so let's uh talk about facts about the article first uh this uh the first articles from the Statesman page A4 September 4th uh titled the pope calls for mercy on the eve of sainthood for Mother Teresa he denounces the sin of indifference to hunger exploitation and other suffering while commending the example of Mother Teresa he calls for more mercy and caring in the world citing citing her and uh called the her order the missionaries of Charity Artisans of Mercy so this is a promo piece for the Mother Teresa and her gang uh the second article on the next day was page A2 Mother Teresa canonized by Pope Francis at Vatican was was the title he shames world leaders for the crimes of poverty they themselves created and Praises Teresa for caring the most for the most unloved and unwanted the poorest of the poor which is kind of her brand name um so and in the analysis the articles of propaganda I I claim and we'll see why in a minute um they are selectively emitting important facts and promoting the mythology of the caring nun in her order uh and you know even on our popular culture or Mother Teresa is synonymous with else unselfish caring and and and for the poor and such and you you you you actually hear that phrase used in in earlier shows I I talked about the Miracles attributed to her and they were um I insist that they were ginned up to solidify her brand uh the the Catholic church is promoting the Mother Teresa is as part of a brand of Christianity and and you know if a saint is a brand and that that doesn't the pope knows that the Catholics reading these articles have drank the Kool-Aid on Teresa and they're not going to be very critical on it the Catholic church has embedded propagandists and these new local Outlets are too lazy to check the articles but I'll tell you what the secret story is and this is all free brand promotion much like how Donald Trump has used the media for his advertising over the over the campaign so much of my material today comes from a book called uh by Christopher Hitchens called the missionary position uh it kind of talks about some of the some of the the real Mother Teresa and anybody who got upset over my joke really should be upset over the title of that I mean I think it's it's it's a it's a cute pun and he's he's got a good turn of phrase um so the missionaries of Charity uh how do they help the poor exactly well they operated clinics which allegedly cared for people who were dying the people there were not given Medical Care even those that had curable diseases the you know one of the things that they could have done to help people is they could have given them a bus fare or taxi fare to a to a hospital where they would have gotten care that would have been that would have been caring for the poor and caring for these folks um the the people there were not given analgesics they were meant to suffer um and they did not allow people to leave to seek medical care they were often made to go out into the slums to beg for food they were not given food stale they were given the stale bread and these things that as is and the whole idea of misery and decrepitude were attributes that Mother Teresa promoted and it was I think partly for show for people that were coming to visit that these really were the poorest of the poor and the and the Really downtrodden and and look at look at what little little effort where we we uh you know are able to provide to these folks and and greatly enrich their life and this is really exploitation and uh quoting Mother Teresa she says I think it's very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot to share it with The Passion of the Christ I think the world is very much helped by the suffering of poor people okay take that in she she thinks she thinks that their suffering is awesome and and a good thing and something to be promoted and it's sadistic um here's another quote pain and suffering have come into your life but remember pain sorrow and suffering are but the kiss of Jesus a sign that you have close come so close to him that he can kiss you so it's pretty sick I think um a sign over there Morgan in there in Calcutta reads uh I'm going to heaven today so it's kind of kind of sick uh exploitation I think so uh Teresa was uh in my estimation a sadist who tried to religiously Spin The Suffering of her victims rather than truly helping them and you'll see why in a minute um the missionaries of Charity uh to exploit the poor made a spectacle of the poverty seeking to amplify the austere nature of their clinics they removed furniture and carpet they forced patients into stretchers and gurneys and dense configurations and and they didn't even have chairs to sit in um they use primitive equipment by untrained people in One Clinic they turned off the heat in order to I don't know and make it seem like it was a a downtrodden place I don't know while Teresa herself when she got sick she didn't go to these clinics she she went to Europe she flew flew in her little little one dollar sorry and and went to went to uh get some good care in in Europe so that that says says a lot meanwhile the Charities taking on massive donations um we're talking we're talking at least hundreds of millions of dollars possibly billions of dollars if you if you count all of the all of the bank accounts that they've got weren't any squirreled away but but this money was never used or rarely used for the poor it was sequestered away in bank accounts and the idea is that if they used money this materialism is is sort of contrary to the promotion of Teresa's cultish beliefs and the flood of donations within this charity were seen as a sign of approval for God for the precisely those beliefs so so the money was Applause from God but but never was used to help the poor and and I think that this is exploitation pure and simple where you're holding the poor up is hey we're going to help these folks give us money and then the money doesn't go there what other way what other what other definition of exploitation are we looking for as to uh the Pope's uh claim of crimes of poverty um consider that uh while the pope denounces crimes of property of world leaders consider that Teresa was fast friends with Hades ruthless dictator baby baby Doc devolier and his wife each stroking each other's ego for the national media in Haiti she actually endorsed endorsed them even though they were leaders who exploited the poor and and who who built their country out of out of millions hundreds of millions of dollars and fled fled to uh to seek Exile outside when when their when their gig was up Teresa was early on the scene in the Union Union Carbide Bhopal disaster killing thousands of poor there to our twenty two thousand three thousand folks she preached forgive forgive forgive long before any blame had been Lane um and and and in in effect to try to interfere with the the justice that that should have come to those people but the main thing that Mother Teresa did with her money was to manufacture poverty in my opinion much of the money she spent went to sabotage Family Planning contraceptives as an abortion within India and Theresa said herself God always provides he provides for the flowers and the birds for everything in the world that he has created and those little children are his life there can never be enough and this whole idea of God will provide is is just just pisses me off because you never never never see any of the religious people making this claim use their own money to provide to actually do the providing and allow God to reimburse them no no no they don't believe that crap right this is just a cynical way of saying oh you know God wants you to be poor and God wants you to suffer and and I'm going to orchestrate that um Mother Teresa also said uh in a speech in Ireland let us promise our lady who loves Ireland so much that we will never allow this country to a single abortion and no contraceptives and she just fundamentally didn't get the connection between poverty and overpopulation and um it's very clear if you to to even the most casual Observer that if a country or if a people can control their reproductive rate they can control their poverty to a large extent and and she just she was just working overtime it also seems to work against itself this idea of hey we're not going to allow abortion and we're not going to allow contraception so we're not going to give you a perfectly acceptable means of preventing unwanted presidencies nor are we going to allow you anyway to uh terminate an unwanted pregnancy it's it goes into this you know be fruitful and multiply it's all in God's control you guys just go out and and have lots of sex and maybe you know use a rhythm method or right some something the everything but program um anything anything other than actual contraception and then uh you know hey whatever happens happens is what God wants maybe he wants you to stop interfering in the lives and rights of other people uh yeah I haven't heard him chime in on this yet right I'm not convinced he actually agrees with you no matter how many times you say it right we got a little bit more um if we want to think of Mother Teresa's saintly uh we we should maybe look at what she's done for quid pro quo um Teresa had dealings with a lot of shady people throughout her career and many of them were ruthless dictators and con artists one of them was Charles Keating who defrauded the U.S investors in the 1980s of over 200 000 200 million dollars he donated 1.25 million to the order and it wasn't his money it was the the investors that he built that was their money they've got that got donated um she she later wrote a letter to the judge lancito it turned out a famous O.J Simpson judge to let him off to basically you know find it in his heart to let heating go because he was such a good man um uh the assistant D.A asked her Teresa for the money I asked her to give the money back because uh it had been it had been stolen effectively and uh and that the the sensible thing to do would be to return it to the people who who had been defrauded but she never returned any of it and um so that I think tells you a lot about Teresa and and her her the quality of her doings and it seems clear too that she sent much of her money to the Catholic church and in return they adopted her brand making her a state I think I think that was quid pro quo too that a lot of that money is going to the Catholic church so in conclusion Teresa was a sadistic creep creepy creepy ugly nasty woman who manipulated the rich exploited the poor and ran a racket to make more poverty in the name of her cult and her cultish beliefs and she's not not deserving any any sort of veneration at all um and the Catholic church is exploiting the ignorance of its followers to in order to create a fraudulent brand through lies and propaganda and the and the local media and they too the Catholic Church exploits women as baby making machines it's because their God can't do it golly and babies who uh if the conditions are right grow up to be tithers to that church and I think that's a very cynical way of exploiting people as well exploiting the poor and the U.S media is either in on the action you know maybe they're part of the game or maybe they're playing the part of unwitting Dukes when they when they publish these sorts of articles I I think it's kind of sad um and given that we know that the Catholic church is lying about Teresa something that we can easily verify what makes you think they're telling the truth about any of the things that you can't verify which is all their Supernatural claims so that that's it um you know I talked about this I was in uh just outside of Knoxville Tennessee last weekend when she was made a saint I talked about it uh before I started giving my prepared talk there's a lot of stuff there obviously you know hitch's book is a good read on this but what troubled me so a lot of what's happened is a bunch of people wanted to do something good but were either you know unable to do it themselves or perhaps too lazy or looked for the most efficient way and so they gave a bunch of money to someone who they thought was going to be doing good and now if they were to admit that she didn't actually do good then they are doubly made mistakes because they gave money to somebody who didn't do what you know they should have been doing uh helping people and so now that money is wasted and the time is wasted and their support is wasted so it's in their best interest that the Catholic Church made her a saint because that validates it's doubling down on their back yeah that validates it I don't want to throw good money after bad so let me just pretend that the bad money was actually good right uh and and so there's this whole thing but also what's sad I've talked before about the limits of uh verifying Supernatural claims that currently until somebody comes up with some method or mechanism by which we can do so there's no way to verify that the supernatural exists or that it interacts with the natural world in any detectable way I mean we're just stuck there until somebody comes up with a way to verify this and yet in order to become a saint you're supposed to have two confirmed Miracles and I think for her they might have only done one no they did too did they do too I think one of them was she prayed and somebody got better well somebody who was the the the the the woman um had in her mind that she had cancer but she actually had tuberculosis and the the doctors treated her for tuberculosis and it was cured but she prayed and had her cancer cured if you follow okay so that was the first miracle the second Miracle the Vatican was a little bit smarter and and and did their best to hide the facts um and so it's very hard to verify yeah the big thing here though is in 2016 the Catholic church is claiming that they have confirmed two supernaturally caused miraculous events what a Marvel where is your Nobel Prize for discovering the mechanism by which we can confirm this I mean I I was kind of hoping that we would never see any more new Saints because the obvious problem here of saying well if we need two confirmed miracles to get a saint and we can't confirm Miracles then there won't be any more Saints I figured somebody at the Catholic Church would be smart enough to pick up on this but instead they don't seem to care and when you're talking about the media quality crap they don't seem to care as well everybody wants to just feel good here's this woman who dedicated her life to torture I mean not torturing to helping people and that's what they want to believe right and so it's it's in everybody's best interest who is deluded about the facts to make her a saint and they will just continue to ignore this and you know oh you guys you guys just don't like Mother Teresa yes we don't like Mother Teresa because of what she was and what she did yeah uh somebody else made the comment that you know it's interesting that atheists now have a saint and what they're referencing is in her diary she talked about her own doubts I would recommend to all my atheist friends to never ever ever say that again because no every religious person at some point has had doubts or at least privately have probably had doubts and the fact that she jotted down down her doubts and concerns in her notebook does it make her an atheist and when you start completely delusional yeah when you start claiming that you are just as bad as the people who are trying to claim that hitch had a deathbed conversion or any of these other things just stick with the facts and point out the problems don't try to do the extra joke of the Catholic church just made an atheist a saint because if we were to be truthful about how many people don't believe but live their life pretending as if they do believe there's probably tons of uh individuals who have been canonized Etc uh who didn't ultimately believe or had their own doubts but you don't get to claim those anyway we've got a bunch of callers online yeah to get to so we'll start with uh man I'm getting a really bad Echo it's it's the door cool so we've got uh Zane in Atlanta thanks for waiting hello can you hear me yes um I have four questions are I'll say one word I'll let you pick which ones uh you want to talk about okay it's like a game show [Laughter] Effectiveness responsibility or identity oh well let's start with skepticism okay um I was in another city uh when I had called you earlier and um I was talking about um how God can be proven and um you speaking how you wouldn't know how God can be proven but that would be something trivial for God right okay um so then I was thinking um with the extreme um hypotheticals we went to um if that's not proof for God is it what was the extreme hypothetical the amount of skepticism that you're practicing okay so you're being too skeptical is it that the theists are being too gullible okay so first of all I'll say that the answer to am I being too skeptical or are theist too gullible is theists are too gullible um I'm not convinced that there's any such thing as too skeptical uh skepticism properly applied um is not the same as cynicism and it's not the same as it has nothing to do with just denying everything and turning it up it's about asking questions and establishing good standards of evidence um now there's you mentioned that there was a a hypothetical uh over-the-top scenario that we came up with last time yes okay do you remember what it was um we had talked about um really I didn't say or um really I had meant to say if you know what describe what God had looked like um so I was gonna say from Middle Eastern Morgan Freeman appeared in front of you and he could do every single Miracle um you can name you know would that be proof that God exists have you ever been to Las Vegas yeah have you ever watched one of the magic shows in Las Vegas I mean they do some awesome stuff and you know does that mean that does that mean there's our God or what so no I mean you could go up to any one of them and say okay grow this limb back and none of them are going to be able to do it so to stick with your example um I love Morgan Freeman so I'm happy that he's the one who's appearing in in God form or the guys of God um yeah and and if if I start naming Miracles and he just you know seemingly does them um you know I would that be uh sufficient evidence to believe that Morgan Freeman is God well I don't know but it would certainly be sufficient evidence to justify that Morgan Freeman can seemingly do almost anything I ask him to do now whether or not that makes him God is kind of a secondary question um but if he stood here and did all these things and said I'm God I'd say okay I you know I certainly believe that you can do those things you've clearly demonstrated this and if God's the label you want to go by I could perhaps see where it would fit but I don't know uh what exactly that gets me but here's the big thing let's assume that we were both in agreement that that would be really really good like almost incontrovertible evidence that Morgan Freeman is God or that God Appears to look like Morgan Freeman in order to make me more comfortable with him uh that never ever ever ever happens and nothing remotely like it ever happens nothing even close to anything remotely like it ever happens and it's funny because when we have these conversations and we ask for evidence we ask for examples and we talk about what sort of thing would convince you and and we give these these outlandish examples even if I'm willing to concede that yes that would be sufficient it doesn't change the reality of what we have right now which is Morgan Freeman has not demonstrated any powers and neither is anybody else and and that makes me just Wonder for the people who do believe what convinced them that's the reason why we ask what do you believe and why do you believe it and when we assess the why behind that that's the important part that's where we get to determine okay am I um uh being cynical no I won't say too too skeptical but am I being just cynical or or uh contrarian or are the Believers too gullible do they have lower standards of evidence and without fail every believer I've ever spoken to including myself when I was a Believer and other members of my family when you finally get them to the point where they explain why they believe it is always insufficient it is always rooted in a fallacy dependent upon Faith or they are brought up that way yeah go ahead why do you believe oh uh the point of the question wasn't really to uh really say there has been proof um it's just trying to think of what would be good proof because we have plenty of examples of what you um were called not good enough yeah so let's just get to what is good enough and then can we scale it back can it be something less extreme and that will still be proof and then what's the lowest we could go to this is God proof limbo yeah this is let's lower the bar this was an incredibly useless dance this is this is pointless so what good does it do is to sit around and say you know what I think if I saw this happen I believe in God can I lower the bar a little bit more can I maybe do this because first of all even in that scenario as Arthur C Clarke pointed out any sufficiently advanced technology has any distinguishables from Magic so I would have to at least remain open to the idea that some uh incredibly technologically advanced civilization was able to produce something that looked like Morgan Freeman and could apparently do these things I don't know how you rule that out I don't know how you can ever rule out rule those things out without having the sort of knowledge that would make you God and but when you're if you start with that stuff and start lowering the bar down um let's let's just say that this was a good method that we were starting with Morgan Freeman does whatever the hell I tell him to which would be awesome and we start lowering it down until we find out what the minimum is what if that is my minimum um no that would be it like can God be proven to you um because there's a lot of Christians that say oh um atheists they have the proof but they just don't see it um yeah but here's the thing the question you just the question you just asked about proof well then you're kind of like being a solid system which you have hung up on before in the show people saying they can't be sure of anything no no that's not what solipsism is but we'll set that aside for now um here's the thing when you say can God be proven to you that's not my problem if there is a God that God should be capable of demonstrating its own existence it should be easy and yet it doesn't happen yeah and if if Christians supposedly have this evidence or if atheists are denying it you know use the call to tell us what we're missing yes what is it [Laughter] what is it that you think should convince us that there's a God and yet we remain on give us your best evidence I think with the first call I had on the shows that uh my best evidence wouldn't be evidence that's useful to another person my own personal experience would be useless to you absolutely I I mean we're in complete agreement there so so let's set aside your personal experience for a moment is there anything else um not really and um that's kind of why I think I'm different from most Fields is that um um absent of your own personal um experience to let you know God is real uh you shouldn't expect for another person to think God is real and also where I had looked up um in the Bible where it says the fool said in his heart there is no God and you know with the language that if you say um a person says within the heart they believe it to be true so it's not denying they really don't think there's a God you know do you know the rest of that verse uh Psalm 14 1. yeah the fool is said in his heart there is no God you know what the rest of that verse says no they are corrupt they can do no good thing do you believe that I can do no good thing you could do good things cool so you disagree with half of that verse how can you disagree with half of a verse in a Bible yes it's the truth as if it's true oh oh I was trying to um people say no you do believe you're just lying to me okay I was actually trying to use that to help out saying No it's unbiblical to say that atheists don't exist that they're just all liars because the Bible will say atheists do exist yeah it also It also says that we are corrupt evil beings who can't do anything good is that I mean you don't believe that so this is the problem is is that you're you're referencing something in part by picking and choosing the thing uh and I appreciate the fact that you know you're using that verse to to counter theists who say this but what we had said was um you believe based on your personal experience and you don't think that there's anything other than personal experience that would convince or should convince somebody I just haven't found something other than personal experience to another person and tell them God is real so I'm not I'm not trying to be mean here but I want to make a point that you know it's like you you've come to some conclusion and you you lack the ability to sort of convince other people of it but but you want other people to lower their standards so that you can feel justified in your beliefs I just want to find out what your standards are well so we don't believe because we don't haven't seen sufficient evidence that's that's where so I'm gonna I'm gonna agree with you on on the on the fact that your personal experiences of no use to me but I haven't I have a kind of a follow-up question there why is it that you think your personal experience is good enough to convince you that a God exists what personal I mean because I can't imagine a personal experience that I could have that would convince me that a God exists especially if I'm unable to independently verify it with other people I mean right off the bat when you talk about hey I've experienced something but I can't I can't get anybody else to verify it I can't replicate it all those things um right off the bat there's delusion all sorts of things that come in there's all sorts of ways say I don't know if you could say about your voice but uh tell me I don't know if you can tell about my voice but okay I grew up in the all-black neighborhood been told plenty of time that you know all white people are racist I grow up I drive out to a city with mostly white people I find white people that are very nice to me I ca you know that's my own personal experience I can't prove it to the people back in my own Community but hey I have the experience I found out the truth sure but the type of personal experience you're talking about is what you're doing is you're saying I have had interactions with real people and this is my experience of that there's nothing remotely extraordinary about that that's a completely different thing from saying I have had experiences with a supernatural being those are two different things I believe that you've met people I believe that you I believe that you've met his white folks it's not an extraordinary claim it's the shorthand of that on the racist thing I'm convinced that everybody's racist or prejudiced or biased in some sense but it doesn't surprise me at all that you've met uh white folks who weren't overtly hostile uh to you just because of the color of your skin because I know plenty of people like that myself I mean so there's nothing you know like Dom is saying there's nothing extraordinary about the claim when you then say that you have personal experience that convinces you there's a God now we're in a completely different ballpark um I think um and therefore belief I think I'm still in the right place with my belief if you believe something is true but didn't know you can't prove it to other people you should limit to what you do with that belief depending on how much you can prove it so I think I have it in the right place well I I agree with you that it you know you you know Hume said that you abortion your confidence level to the evidence um and if you are convinced that you know you have a justification but it's not good enough for anybody else and that changes the way you interact and I I can appreciate that um the big question though is still is what personal experience have you have that you think is sufficient [Music] uh I think that'll be a question that will be uh getting us off topic because I think it'll be pointless for me to um divorce their story to you and then you're free to be that may not be convincing to us but we're kind of wondering why it's convincing to you so it's a different so we're just sort of changing changing the question a bit here because because for example whatever story you tell me it's certainly not going to convince me because I didn't have the experience but I am able to put myself in your your shoes and say if I have this same experience would I then believe and that gets us to the to the point which is is one of us too skeptical or one of us too gullible okay I see your point now um basically uh I don't know since since I formed good memory I've been noticing I've been having dreams in which later on while I'm awake those dreams are reenacted and I knew since 10 years old that I just can't say oh hey I know what's about to happen that people will be skeptical so it took me being an adult and I went ahead and um I relayed what was going to happen in the dream to one of my co-workers and I went ahead and relayed the scene five hours in advance and that scene played out so I'm kind of left in the position where either that co-worker is a figment of my imagination or or this dream really did play out to be specific it was something that was um what'd you say not privy to interpretation it was exact I said um that we was going to have a problem at work today and that problem would be solved right at this specific hour did you specify the problem no I specify the time that the problem would be fixed okay so basically all right let me run down this and see if this is fair you have dreams about the future yes and they seem to be coming true yes okay and one of those dreams which you relate to a co-worker is we're going to have a problem at work today and we're going to solve it at 3 45. okay something like that yes and then on that day you had a problem and it was solved about 3 45. no it was right on the dot like right when we was able to go ahead and um open up Okay so let me just for a minute let me just start with the easy part here and that is let's assume that everything that you just said is completely accurate okay so what we have here is a case where you can dream about things that are going to happen in the future and you're you're accurate and I'll just say for the sake of argument you're 100 accurate how does that prove how does that prove or even imply a God in any way um it actually doesn't Okay uh if I made me go ahead and think that um the world is not as mundane as I hear a lot of people say it is um since these extraordinary things happen the world can't be so mundane like I'm having these dreams and finally uh after so many years I got another person to verify it that's not something privy to interpretation I got it right down to the minute right but I understand but we had first of all we had asked about why you believe that there's a God and then you gave us a story and then you acknowledge that that story doesn't in any way indicate a God or the likelihood of a God or anything along those lines so so that story is not really relevant to this the second thing is if you can actually do what you think you can do yeah you would call up James Ramsey well you you can't actually call up James Randy anymore because he's retired and the jref is not uh actually doing the million dollar challenge um but I would think that if you could keep a dream diary so every night when when you have one of these dreams write down write it down in as much specific detail as you can and immediately seal it put it a stamp on it and send it to somebody who you know send it to me and then when the event comes true you can you can we could but you know what's going to happen so you should be able to like record it or get a bunch of other people involved and once we have a record of you've been sending New York predictions and they've been they've come true I can then take that to people who would be more than happy to test this to see if in fact you can do what you do because I can tell you this I could right now write down a prediction that is very specific seal it in an envelope mail it to you and it would absolutely come true and there's nothing Supernatural about it now I realize that what I'm talking about isn't the same as oh I had a dream and it came true but we have to you know we you have to look at this and you have to investigate it in the right way so if you think you're having dreams that allow you to predict the future then why haven't you submitted that for testing why wouldn't that be something wonderful and useful to the world because I think ultimately it's like how you're looking at uh X-Men and you look at the mutant Powers I think that'll be kind of like a lame power a lame power for certainly so hang on no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no first of all you're claiming to have a power clarify to predict the future and your reason for not having it tested is that you think it might be a lame power given the current state of the universe in which we live it would be the most impressive power that has ever been confirmed that would be like uh you know like one of the weaker uh superheroes like oh I don't know Aquaman saying yeah I can breathe underwater but I don't want it to get tested I can talk to the animals but I don't want to get tested because it would be a weak ass superpower we can agree with him that it's weak in comparison to everybody else that he runs with but if there's somebody out there right now on Earth who can breathe water and talk to animals and they're not getting tested holy crap they're awesome Aquaman is only awesome in the real world not in the fictional world Matt if you're telling me that you could do the same exact thing in front any Supernatural but then you're also trying to laugh about me when I say it would be lame is saying is that I'm a magician I can make it appear that I can do what you claim that you're doing for real Okay so so because on trickery and you're claiming that you're getting dreams that predict the future that's why we need more testing and that's why you test it to figure out which one of us is the Khan artist the magician and which one of us is actually Aquaman but in any case we went through all this and your your superpower you acknowledge doesn't in any way confirm a God so I don't know how it was remotely an answer to the question okay I mean I I you know I I would never actually you know kill anybody but I you know and as a figure speech I'm killed to have that crappy power that you think you have so that'd be awesome so do you think we're being too skeptical here about the God clean I don't think we are I um there doesn't seem to be there there I kind of the I tell you what we got a lot of callers waiting and I didn't even give Don much time to talk so that's fine we can move on though the address for the atheist community of Austin is at the bottom of the web page it's 1507 West Canyon Lane Austin Texas and the zip codes down there as well you can just mail me your dreams and uh but I'll say I think it's amazing how uh at the same time if I say it's lame and that you could do it as well that's laughable no what I'm saying is that I could mimic the type of thing that you're claiming that you're doing I I can't do it I can't have a dream that actually predicts the future I I so or at least it's never happened but I could stand on stage with a prediction of something that's going to happen later in the show and tell people that it was a dream and if they didn't know you know I'm talking about stagecraft yeah the outside Observer looking at the two of us we both walk up and say we had a dream and make a prediction and they both come true and to the outside Observer they look exactly the same we need we need to have a way to tell the difference between what I can do and what you can do and that's why it's imperative to you know get yourself tested what's the joke upon me forced me into making me a joke because you hold one way how it is amazing and it's not no no no no no same time no I'm I'm not claiming I'm not I'm not making you a joke I don't believe that what you're stating is accurate but I'm willing to believe if you actually provide evidence for it people ask me hey what would convince you that a God exists I don't I don't know but it's insane I I don't know what would convince me a God exists but I know exactly what would convince me that you have this power you claim and that is for you to consistently produce here's what's going to happen that is out of your control you know this this event's going to happen somewhere and then it happens for you to consistently do that you would convince me it's it's it's easy yeah there's a process there that's that's pretty straightforward if I kept getting a phone call every morning from somebody saying hey I had a dream about you last night and in two hours you know you're going to get the wrong change at the drive-through window and they're going to give you 15 cents too much and two hours later I'm at the drive-through window it is 15 cents too much that's kind of impressive or how about how about predicting earthquakes or something useful you know well predicting earthquakes by the way came up last weekend when I was right yeah in Tennessee because I'm going to let you guys and because we're gonna get to other callers but I'm gonna get my earthquake story out appreciate it thank you goodbye so there was an earthquake in Oklahoma but it was felt in Kansas City and other places and some of my friends in Kansas City were like oh my gosh there's an earthquake uh and because that's unusual even though one of the biggest earthquakes in the United States history happened in Missouri um but the thing is this shows how bad we are at assessing things because if you go to the US government's uh website that tracks earthquakes you will see they happen all the time by the time somebody had reported you know feeling something in Kansas City not only had there been an earthquake uh out at 5.3 or so just outside Oklahoma City but there was another one in Oklahoma there was one more over in Nevada and this was like nine o'clock in the morning I mean this this has already been going on there were 30 40 earthquakes they're happening all the time it's just most of them are minor and most of them affect places where it's not a big deal and when you get the the the feeling here in Kansas City Missouri and you've never felt an earthquake uh and all of a sudden there is one hey it's a big deal and it is I'm not diminishing it because it could could be deadly and dangerous but if you actually go look at the statistics on earthquake it's wholly unimpressive but if you could consistently predict like massive earthquakes like everything six or seven and higher and you can say yep tomorrow at 3 15 p.m just outside Oklahoma City there's going to be a 6.7 magnitude earthquake and you could you know this was a replicable thing that we could consistently do we wouldn't know how you had those Powers but we would definitely be convinced that you had this ability uh we don't want to be a genuinely good thing yeah right could help help people out prepare for these things yeah yeah I don't you know completely suck still no God here let's take another call um Alex thanks for waiting you're in Rockville Maryland and you're on with Don hello gentlemen hey all right yes uh this touches a bit on your accuracy quote Clark quote so I hope it isn't redundant uh it's sort of a problem argument for the existence of something like God uh it's a I'm going to use a Socratic method if that's okay I'm sorry I couldn't I'm going to use the Socratic method if that's okay sure he wants to prove God using us a probabilistic argument yeah I don't know how you could prove God using the first question intelligent life outside of our planet somewhere in the universe or Multiverse yes I'm not sure okay well okay well let's just say for the sake of argument that uh it is likely that there is intelligent life hang on if if you're going to make a case for something and you want to use the Socratic method and you're you your your process depends on getting a yes answer and my answer is I don't know how do you just keep going well I gave him a yes all right we'll go with Don we'll go with Don's yes for now I'm too easy go ahead go ahead okay well I'm sort of picking back piggybacking off of something called the Drake equation yeah we're familiar with I'm very familiar with it and uh I I have some objections to it we consider it a weak argument but I I think that the Drake equation demonstrates um a foundation under which you can evaluate the probability that there may be other intelligent life in the universe but that's a separate thing from having good reason to believe that it is the case for example uh if I sit here and I roll a die well I know the probability is you know if it's a six-sided die I know the probability is one and six that I'm going to roll a six and so if you ask me do I believe that it's going to come up to six my answer is going to be no I'm not convinced that it's going to come up a six but if you ask me do you think that there's a one in six Chancellor to come up to six so I'm going to say yes and so it's all about how you ask the question and the existence of God is not some sort of stochastic random event it's not like a dog roll it's either true or false and and you know you really can't get at it from probabilities um it's it's a I think that using probabilities to talk about God is really a misapplication of probability but we'll let you try it here I kind of say something like that but obviously wait a minute something like God well I hope you will because uh because if you're if you're if you're playing games with the the destination here you you you might just claim you're you're there already yeah I don't know I don't know what God like we do all sorts of miraculous things I don't know how you can say you haven't gotten there yet because that would to me seem to be like an assumption or a definition hey we need this definition I'll go through the three of the three from the assumption that you agree with all them just for the sake of argument is that okay well yeah sure that's completely Fair well I think the audience was curious what what you're coming up yeah I want to hear them so we'll just pretend I've said yes okay the second question is do you think it's likely that there are civilizations or beings that are more advanced than we are somewhere in the universe or Multiverse let's pretend I said yes yes and the third question is do you think it's likely that there are beings or a beings that is so far in advance of ourselves that makes us look like viruses but our bacteria by comparison no and if it has powers which are incomprehensible to us in our current state the powers and qualities which are incomprehensible to us no okay well [Applause] um see if I questions then you arrive at something which I mean it's still not God even if I said yes to all of them it's still not God which is where we get to this something like that so the god of classical theism is not in any way Bound by space and time and highly Advanced uh civilizations within our physical Universe would be well unless they had figured out a way not to be bound by space and time okay yeah well sure and and you know what if they were if they were Bound by space and time and they figured out a way to escape that they're still not God because God was Never Bound by space and time in our history in the sense that the god that a lot of people worship now is not the renovated Canaanite Sky God that the Hebrews that did for worship so that's what you're arguing that it's a concept it's an evolving concept yes okay okay so we're on the same page then okay well then then you guys enjoy this entire page because this to me this this entire line of argument to me is the biggest time wasting thing I could imagine when it comes to trying to prove a God because essentially hey there's there's been billions of people who have believed in the god of classical theism or a God that would fit under the bill of classical theism or some other God like that and now because we can't demonstrate the truth of this and we can't confirm the supernatural now we want to say well it's possible and perhaps likely that there might be other life in the universe and it's possible that some of that might be intelligent it's possible that some of that might be advanced intelligence and maybe they've even found a way to become Gods well okay if we're going to talk about the probability of things we can do probabilities about things that we know how many stars there are what's the rate that stars are are being uh they're coming into existence how many planets are they likely to have what what's the likelihood that a planet's going to be able to sustain life for some time what's the what is the the limits on a civilization's advancement you know what's the likelihood that they're going to completely terminate themselves or in through some other natural disaster now we've entered not only the realm of Science Fiction of uh and by the way we're ignoring things that Sean Carroll would call the known unknowns uh but you can dig into that on your own but now we're actually going A Step Beyond the science fiction and saying you know what maybe there's a possibility that they found a way to violate the laws of space and time you have absolutely no foundation and can currently have no foundation for assuming that that is even possible let alone probable and yet you're going down this entire Road in order to get to something God like yeah it seems like it's twisting Every Which Way and bending over backwards to try to to try to accommodate some crazy belief and it's like okay well it's a speculating really yeah I am not interested in speculation I'm interested in what's actually real and what can be demonstrated I couldn't give a rat's ass about Bayesian analysis that prove that that seems to demonstrate that God exists or probabilistic arguments that talk about Advanced Tech Advanced alien Technologies and uh capabilities that might be Godlike it's absolutely it's a complete waste of my time um well maybe it's I don't know I'm I'm a former competitive religion major so I guess it it may seem like uh angels dancing on the head of the thing to you or whatever but it's worse than that it's worse than that because at least there's a theological Foundation under which we might be able to discuss this but there's no theological foundation for something Godlike that is ultimately alien and of the natural world so I mean you're so far divorced from everything that's trying to be sciency why do you care if there's a theological saying I was making a relative comparison between how useless your argument is and how useless the other one is and the big thing is that there are billions of people who believe in angels when you when we get to a state where there are billions of people who believe that there's an advanced alien intelligence that can can circumvent the the laws of space and time then all of a sudden it'll be relevant um basically you're saying I think one of the things you're saying is that we can't demonstrate any of the probabilities so there's no solid foundation to any of this well we can't we can demonstrate some of the probabilities we can't demonstrate all of them and there are some that are clearly not demonstrable which is the objection but we're on the way to being I mean basically if we can demonstrate some of the probabilities of there being say life and the rest of our universe at all that's a step in the in the same direction maybe we can't demonstrate the probabilities of say intelligent life or life as intelligent as us no I'm talking about can't demonstrate the probability of being able to violate the laws of space and time yeah the the god claims are that God is transcendent and and outside of space and time and you know created the universe and all these other claims and and we're not we're not getting anywhere near there um see I kind of think that when you're talking about violating the laws of space and time um we have a certain perception of space and time and we have a certain perception of those laws the space and time and perhaps our perception of those laws are far more limited than such an advanced theme at the time the time to embrace those things is when we when we have evidence for it not not based on speculation um I also think about that one that's a good point all right well thanks for your call Alex I think maybe we'll move on to other callers okay I hope I haven't we appreciate your call thanks bye let's take another call cheer up here in Los Angeles thanks for waiting hey Matt hey Don hey uh just have a question that um uh I'm I'm a non-believer atheist diagnostic whatever you want to call it uh and uh I always have a discussion with uh friends and I have one friend in particular who uh you know he has this argument as if it's just like the knockdown argument of um for in defensive religion this uh particular religion Christianity oh awesome being honest yeah I mean it's not that impressive to me but I think it is but um he says uh wait wait I predict we've heard it before am I psychic yes I predict that it is an argument that he's not religious but has a personal relationship with the rich in Christ I predict it's an argument from ignorance you guys are you guys have a okay all right I'm sorry we're making fun so what's what's the case well he he says uh so you disagree with your government so why don't you leave your country and that's the argument he's using in defense of his religion the reason why you should not abandon religion because he said if you disagree with it you know you shouldn't abandon it the way that she's not abandoned your country when you disagree with it can can religions be rehabilitated I'm not so sure yeah yeah and that's even the even bigger Point here is that uh you know he he don't I'm trying to understand that I'm trying to get him to understand that so first of all first of all there are plenty of scenarios where when people sufficiently disagree with the government that is running their country they do leave and sometimes they leave to save their own life it's the reason why we're trying to get atheist bloggers out in places like Bangladesh where they're being murdered for not believing what the state dictates they must believe um why I don't leave the United States merely because I disagree with the government is because the government isn't one thing the government is a collection of people human beings who are elected it's a participatory process I can be and actually was at one point part of the government so you don't get to just write it off as a monolithic thing but the fact that people are violating the rights of others doesn't mean that we just give up and move on it means we point this out we correct the errors we expose what's going on and we keep pointing back to the Constitution and when the Constitution's wrong we get to amend that too um so but but what he's arguing is oh well I disagree with some aspects of My Religion but that doesn't mean I I should throw it out and I agree because there's over a thousand denominations that all identify as Christian for example they disagree on all sorts of things the reason to continue identifying as a Christian is because you agree with some significant collection of those positions so telling me that he or him telling me are you telling me on his behalf that there are things about his religion that he doesn't agree with is relevant I want to know what he does agree with and why that's the important thing I I would like to know what he doesn't agree with as well and I think once he starts making a list of what he does and doesn't agree with you're going to find even more contradictions than if he had just you know said oh I'm a Christian yes well the thing is he uh he don't even like to be called religion uh religious period like and we'll have a discussion and I'll say okay you're religious person she's no she says no I nailed it it's on the call you cheated I didn't have it I didn't have a dream about this call it's on the call screener notes you're too honest but that's exactly how I would fake having a dream about this so he doesn't like being called religious okay now now we're having a discussion about what somebody's what label somebody's going to adopt for their own um yes and that's a separate issue I mean what I love it if if everybody who fit my particular uh definition of atheists to actually use a label sure uh would I love it if everybody agreed on how to use that label or use the agnostic label or whatever sure I'd love that but at the end of the day um apart from sowing Confusion by saying you know like if I walked into the show today and said I'm a Christian again but I don't believe in anything Supernatural and I don't believe there's a God and I don't believe there's nobody is going to look at me and say okay you have I have no grounds for claiming that I'm a Christian and so I am misusing the label but if there were a number of people who identified as atheist Christians uh who threw all that out kind of used the Thomas Jefferson let me pick out the bits of of what Jesus supposedly said that I like um then I'd be a new denomination to Christian unfortunately I don't agree with that much that Jesus actually said so I can't even do that so so what's he he getting I mean whether or not he likes to be called religious um is irrelevant it's like I might not like being called bald but if if the hat if the hat fits and actually I don't mind if somebody calls me baldy even before I started you know shaving my I don't mind that you baldy but what good does it do yeah go up that bald head yeah what good does it do for me to come in here and say if somebody says Hey Matt's bald no I don't like being called bald I am just that's right delusional and paranoid yeah at that point I mean you're basically you know you're divorcing yourself from reality for no good I actually had a pastor come to my door and claim that he was not promoting religion and it's like okay well Gully you're not having a religion and is does your church get a tax exemption for religion and are you willing to give that money back I came to the conclusion that he was you know happy to say anything that that came to his mind that uh Mike convinced me to come to his church but but uh yeah if you're just going to argue about labels don't I mean you just say okay you don't like to be called religious yeah I'm more interested in what you actually believe and why you believe it than what you want to call it I think what people call it is important only in the sense that it's like words don't have intrinsic meaning they have usages and they're only tools and so the only way for us to communicate is if if the words I use or the words you use line up at least mostly I mean it's not you're not going to get 100 agreement and there's going to be jargon and shortcuts but if if by uh Coke Zero I mean this and you mean unicorn poop uh we got a problem when we're talking about this you can't have a productive conversation and at some point it sounds like it becomes dishonest at some point um anyway but yeah yeah we talked all over that I don't know if you had anything else other than that but no no no yeah that was that was basically it because I I felt that it was very important to apply a label to it because we're we'll talk in circles unless we establish uh labels you know and I'm trying to clarify things yeah they're shortcuts yeah it's easier to do that opposed to just calling him what he wants to be called you know yeah you know that's the whole purpose of language and the whole purpose of labeling things but labels also get in the way on occasion and when people want to deny a label then as cumbersome as it is you have to have invent a new label and say let's define kerfuffle blue as your package of beliefs about the supernatural or whatever you're trying to avoid putting the religious label on it and then we'll we'll put all this together and then when we're talking about it we'll use that label so that we don't have to always say okay when you say that you believe in blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah what exactly is your reason for believing that we can just say kerfuffle blue well and you know I think that maybe what is motivating this person is all I think nearly everybody has their own version of their own religion that they really believe and while they may go to a Methodist Church or Baptist Church or whatever it's like they're not they're not completely in line with those beliefs they they have their own little things that they believe and maybe he's just sort of admitting to that that hey there are these other beliefs out there and at the end of the day I think everybody has their own beliefs there's there's many christianities there are people calling themselves Christian and and that makes it a bit difficult for us to argue against because the the there's there's no set belief there's no set thing that you're that you're you're fighting against here it's like you know trying to trying to box ghosts or something because it's it's all different for each person so that's that's why we have over the years and and Matt's really been a big advocate of what do you believe and why and focusing on that rather than assuming anything uh about that and and he just may just be trying to dodge the whole uh uh the baggage that comes along with religion and such so that may be what's going on there I mean it's also why I don't talk about what is what's a true Christian what's a true Muslim what's a true Scientologist what's a true zoroastrian you know I I don't make those claims because I think that the adherents are the ones that get to Define and argue amongst themselves which is great I mean we'll we'll eat some popcorn while we're watching when they sort it out then the winner can call in and tell us what a true Muslim is yeah well you figure that out I want to train try and get you some more calls but the best advice I can give you is um okay if he's gonna if he's gonna just kind of dance around with labels throw the labels out the window and get to the meat of it take care all right for sure thank you so we're trying to get some more calls uh before the show's over we got about uh 17 minutes or so left before we're gonna bolt and go to Star of India which they're going to put up on the bottom of the screen there with the address and everything else it's open to any atheist or atheist friendly person in the Austin area who wants to come down and and some of the folks involved behind the scenes that are that actually make the show happen because yeah the real heroes of the show yeah especially especially in that room especially on the tech front as things get better yes uh and and I know that uh some of them have also been working with non-profits and and making improvements to audio quality so hopefully uh we're getting there I love the fact that since we put the phone system in and got the audio stuff set up um my enjoyment of the show has dramatically increased because as a listener as Yeah well yeah and just sitting here doing it there's few things more frustrating apart from me interrupting you and you want to talk that's fine then having a bad call where nobody can hear each other and this oh yeah yeah and fussing about technical stuff is is it doesn't make good TV so glad that seems to be let's take another mostly over we got uh Brittany in Farmville Virginia thanks for waiting um a master's student and I'm studying mental health counseling um yeah so we've had to do a paper about advocacy for certain client groups and I've decided to do atheists because I have recently kind of transitioned over to atheism and all the stuff that goes with oh good because the alternative is that you thought we were mentally ill exactly um so I've been kind of trying to look at different groups and and people who are kind of outspoken atheists and ask them do you have any experience personally with uh counseling and like have you had any negative experiences or any kind of positive experiences where it really was kind of catered to that you have the specific worldview you know Tracy is probably the best person to ask this question of she's done a lot of um shows and a lot of research into you know religion during counseling I don't know if that's quite what you're getting at um you know I think I think in my experience I I have been through some therapy and I think that the the best therapy that I've gotten has been by people who didn't really care didn't have an agenda as far as what they wanted me to believe they they were there to help me with whatever issue I was working on and I think that you know is if if if if I were working on religion that might be a good topic for conversation if I'm not working on a religion then it's not a good topic of conversation in the therapy right it's it's that sort of thing right it's the boundaries and and not not having the therapist insert themselves this is a good time to to reference the secular therapist project um and it's the website if anybody's looking is seculartherapy.org and the purpose of it is there were a number of non-believers who you know ended up needing to speak to somebody for any number of reasons whether it was you know marriage counselor depression and um various mental illnesses who knows what are what the issues were and what they would end up with is a religious counselor or therapist who would advise them you know in some cases oh well what's missing in your life is you know a relationship with God sort of thing and yeah uh Daryl and some others got together started the secular therapist project and it should be I don't know I am hoping that it becomes like the de facto standard because it will connect you to a therapist not somebody who's necessarily an atheist um does you know what their what their personal views are about religion are irrelevant but they are therapists who proceed from a secular perspective so that when you're actually receiving treatment you're not being fed religious uh yeah you are actually getting science-based secular therapy um that can hopefully help with the issues yeah and I've um I have actually been in [Music] but there is quite a big push right now for more religion to be involved in therapy and for you know counselors to kind of be more Advocates of their beliefs which is kind of scary to me right now yeah and and Jesus loves a captive audience doesn't he why does he keep going after people in need um but so the thing with with um working more religion into therapy um if what they were talking about was meeting the person where they are um talking about what their religious perspectives are what they feel that they need Etc without injecting the therapist's own views um I'm not I don't even know that I would really object too much to that because I think that you know even me as an atheist if I was if I was counseling someone um if they walked in and they were having problems and it seemed that the problems were stemming from their religion then I would want to talk about their religious views what they are getting out of it what they're not getting out of it I wouldn't necessarily be guiding them towards Atheism in a counseling session because that's not my job um yeah but if if I were convinced that the religion was actually causing problems I think that I would be you know obligated to point that out that perhaps uh their their particular view of their own religion which seems to be causing them you know Stress and Anxiety and whatever else that might they might need to rethink those things and on that front yeah I could see it but if if the push is to get the therapist to and I'm I'm guessing that the push is amongst Christian therapists um to to inject their own views no that's that's bad science that's bad therapy that's bad caregiving yeah yes even though they're convinced it's good yeah and Tracy and and her her friend over in England uh I think it's Bob Poole is that right would claim that it's unethical and unprofessional from the part of the therapist yeah I certainly have no problem with um you know counselors kind of who do believe but I think that we we certainly have a problem of people going in for counseling to a you know a counselor who is not claiming any sort of religious belief and then they're kind of getting blindsided by prophesizing yeah and especially um with like an issue like today there's you know grief counseling would be a big thing after something like this and I think it's all too easy to get a counselor who is going to kind of Blindside you and try and make you believe and we're in a better place and Jesus is looking after them and I really hope this I really hope to see the the entire um therapy movement push to change the way we as a society talk about and deal with death because I am personally convinced although I have no expertise in this area at all that the the reason we have the the grief related issues that we have is because we live in a society that does not view death in in a rational way where we've it's it's the reason religions will say oh well you know you'll meet them again on the other side or somebody's still looking out for you and all the other things I think if we if we started from childhood uh saying hey it's okay to be sad about losing someone from your life um death is the final part of life it's it's the last thing it's going to happen to everybody so far as we know and encouraging people to make sure that their relationships for the course of their life were done without the the carrot dangling there of well if if my mom dies tonight uh the fight we've had today that are you know six months ago that has kept us from Talking we'll get to fix it on the other side and that would encourage people to fix the problems now to treat people better in the now if this is if this is the only one and only life we get and any afterlife is a bonus that we don't know anything about I I think that would not only change the way we treat each other but also change the way we view grief and view death but I don't know what I'm talking about so yeah no that's I think that's definitely a good point I mean I saw a counselor who was working with a young boy and his mom had died and she was like oh he's just mad at God I'm like maybe you bet maybe he's upset that his mom died like that might be the real issue here yeah yeah it's bizarre it's sad there's some issues to to deal with there and I'm I'm on the same page as you and hoping that you know there can be some strides made in the field yep yep well thank you Brittany thank you so much I just wanted to you know see if you guys had any experiences and um thanks so much for doing the show I've loved watching it and it's definitely helps with the my transition great great great thank you and keep helping people uh because it's it's neat I will do that plan to be a plan to be part of the secular therapy project when I'm licensed that's awesome right yeah we need to do a lot more work in eliminating the stigma around mental illness where you know both in the language and how we talk about it and how we end up treating people um you know is somebody who had kidney failure you're not going to go up and oh man do this sort of thing to them and look at that dude there he's got kidney failure you know it's it's bizarre the way we we treat people when uh I think that there's almost a public perception that if you have some mental illness that you are uh the stereotypical uh wandering aimless town you know yeah there's a lot of different mental illnesses and different impairments and you know some people who can who are mentally ill can be very functional um there can be a lot of hidden stuff latent stuff uh anyway yeah the stigma the stigma isn't at all helpful so Haroon thanks for waiting oh hi I'm Clinton from um well I'm calling from Australia oh great so uh whereabouts so you're uh in Adelaide Adelaide Australia ah the one town that I didn't get to go to that everybody wanted to go to all right we did yeah Sydney Brisbane Melvin and Perth and the people in Adelaide were like why didn't you come here we have more churches than anywhere yeah that's right um so I I'm so I was into your videos I I think you guys believe that obviously believe it Evolution as being um factor for factful so I just wanted to know like because you know how you believe that uh the Earth was created billions of years ago well I don't believe it was created but go ahead well well it came into form billions of years ago yeah the Earth is what four and a half billion years old roughly yeah so like how how can someone observe that well there wasn't someone who observed it it is it is the evidence from that that we assess so in much the same way that um if I didn't observe my grandmother being born but I believe she was born and I believe she was born roughly in the year that she tells me she might be a little bit off but your question seems to be how does how does science come to this conclusion well there's all sorts of different lines of evidence right we have we uh you know can date rocks based on uh radiometric dating and there's all sorts of independent ways of confirming that um there is uh for evolution there's there's things like uh you know DNA there's things like the fossil evidence there's things like uh the geographic uh how Evolution appears in islands and these sorts of things and and gives us little Laboratories for how things work and all of these things independently point to the same answer and so the evidence adds up and it's very strong for for these sorts of things but um you believe that Evolution happened millions or billions of years ago like say evolution is ongoing as soon as there was life there was evolution but but isn't this like on the normal belief that like one creature evolves from another creature millions of years ago you know and yesterday yes and yesterday do your kids do you have kids yes okay do they look exactly like you are they clones of you well they're not coins but they have similar features similar features so they have they have some features that are the same and some features that are different right so they're different so over time um there can be lots of changes that occur over time right okay level up what I don't understand is if you like because that's what we've been taught in school that one creature over time evolves into another creature it's not like it's it's it's Evolution describes it the change in species not like one individual it's not like hey there was one giraffe and it gave birth to a dolphin Evolution doesn't say that okay that's the case at all sorry keep going instead what evolution talks about is the observed fact um that over time there's changes in allele frequency and and changes in the DNA that result in different features and so the change is a fact the theory of evolution by natural selection is the model that says that the driving force behind which ones survive and which ones don't survive is the the natural order at the time and place that that creature exists and so what we end up with is not a ladder of this turned into this turned into this but a tree where we are related to cousins on other brands like we are Apes right human beings are apes they're coming to Santa and yeah the branching thing is a big part of it because you can have species that Branch off and some of the descendants resemble the original species for you know millions of years but some of the other descendants go off and look look differently or or have different evolutionary pressures basic because of you know being in a different environment these sorts of things yeah like you've got a Chihuahua and a Great Dane and they both are related to wolves because wolves or a wolf ancestor is the ancestor to both wolves and Great Danes and chihuahuas yes okay and there are still still wolves this will take forever to you know talk talk uh about but can I just ask you what is your opinion on the Platypus on the Platypus I I'm not familiar with with models that describe platypus Evolution um and what does this have to do with atheism you know our our belief our our lack of belief in God has nothing to do with evolution well I thought because you have such a strong belief in evolution I thought because you don't believe in a God I thought this time no evolution is a big threat to theism because if evolution is true there was no Adam and Eve there was no fall and there's no reason for Jesus to exist it's all just gory performance art so so Evolution evolution is a big threat to Christianity but it has it's either here or there for atheists if we found out Evolution was wrong like if we found out today that everything in the model that we have for evolution turned out to be wrong that still doesn't tell us anything about whether or not a God exists but but don't you think because a platypus is a mammal bird and a reptile no it's not at least proves that yes it is it's a platypus is a bird no no it's not a bird it is a stuck billed mammal so you not only do you not understand the basics of evolution but you don't even understand the species that you called in as the gotcha uh it's a duck-billed mammal and duck build is a description that doesn't make it a bird it's and it's it's also a reptile it's not reptilian um sorry yes because the male has fangs so you think that the definition of reptile you think that the definition of reptile includes the male has fangs so the saber-toothed timers or reptiles what you need to do what you need to do is go to some of the many great websites that actually describe and teach Evolution like there's there's one from Princeton as well there's also one uh just a theory you can actually get biology books that go through and describe this I bet if you Google platypus Evolution you will find a number of articles on people giving you actual detailed information but the other first thing you probably need to look up is this something called speciation about one species turning into another because if you don't understand what that is and how it works then all the rest is just window dress well well I have researched the Platypus Evolution like I did look it up on the internet but I couldn't find any like a valid reason to believe that it's evoked you you don't find any reason to believe that it's evolved well I don't know where it's all from to what creature because sure so so the thing here is you you just said you don't know cool how would you find out I'm saying I I did my research and I couldn't prove that so if you can tell are you a biologist are you a biologist do you have any expertise do you have any expertise in biology at all no no nothing I'm just uh so because you because you were unable to come up with an answer on an area where you have no expertise your conclusion is it isn't evolved and therefore God no no no no that's not what I'm saying I'm saying is I can't I did better research and I couldn't find any evidence so I'm just asking you do you have any everything why are you calling an atheist show to ask about evidence for platypus Evolution instead of talking to biologists no that's okay um don't get angry I'm just no I'm not angry I I'm just pointing out how how silly this is and how I do not believe that you're actually being honest at this point because somebody who cared about the facts of evolution the Cornerstone of biology somebody who cared about what is what do we and don't we know about the biological history and The evolutionary history of a platypus would not call into an atheist show in another country with two non-biologists to get the answer anybody who thinks like that is either dishonest in what they're actually seeking and trying to find or horribly confused because I'm not going to call your grandmother or my dentist to ask them about platypus Evolution I'm going to call Richard Dawkins and pz Myers okay okay well I I mean I haven't seen in person well I understand I just wanted well you know what I until I could been to Australia I'd never seen Australia personally did that mean it didn't exist or that I was uninformed and and lacks sufficient evidence what you are personally what you are personally unable to discover tells us nothing about what the truth is oh no no I'm not trying to I was just I just wanted your opinion I thought you would have more information but that's okay don't no because my I'm not a biologist and my atheism is not based it's not based on evolution okay um can I just uh say something about Jesus sure okay we have gone over time but I will let you say something about Jesus before we close out the show all I wanted to just tell you is that you know how you guys well people say that there's no uh grave of Jesus Christ or the he wasn't buried I I don't know what people say well you you said it when you're like you know how people say or you ask people where's Jesus grave I I don't know that I've ever asked anybody where Jesus's grave is the evidence for historical Jesus is kind of weak but but we don't care it what what matters is the supernatural claims and and the evidence for that is crap I I I I don't think I've ever asked anybody where Jesus's tomb is because I was a fundamentalist because I was a fundamentalist Christian for more than 25 years and was studying to be a pastor and I know that we don't know that so why would I ask okay I just I just wanted to tell you that well no no you have asked like you are some Cola and he didn't have an answer I thought you wanted to know you called some uh only one of your shows uh some Cola you know I was talking about Jesus Christ and you you said in other questions that always is where is he buried and then he went quiet so I thought okay I don't remember that the way his grave was I don't remember that but you know perhaps it happened what is it you wanted to tell us about Jesus well all I wanted to know is because we are Muslims so we believe that Jesus did not die on the cross okay and we believe he's he we believe he's buried somewhere okay why do you believe that we because we we believe that he's buried in in India in in Kashmir when I ask why you believe something and you just tell me what you believe in more detail that's not a why do you believe that Jesus is buried somewhere because I'm not even convinced that Jesus ever existed although he may have but you're convinced that he's buried in Kashmir why the reason we believe is because in the Bible he was um when he was taken down from the cross and then he was uh given you know the ointment on his body to to heal himself and then he went to his disciples and after that he he migrated to other places okay you know um I've asked you why you believe this and you keep telling me what you believe do you not understand what a why question is that's why I believe it I believe because no because because the Bible says so yeah no so the Bible doesn't say Jesus went to Kashmir it doesn't say immigrated anyway what the Bible has to say about Jesus is that he died and was resurrected and visited people and then he ascended into the sky unless cashmere's in the sky you were getting nowhere near the why of what you believe you're just talking trash yeah I mean this is this is the thought process that undergirds almost every religious discussion I've ever had and that includes with Muslims with Christians with Hindus anytime you try to get to the meat of why they believe what they believe they just tell you more about what they believe oh here's here's why because they don't think about why they believe things right because that's that's they just believe and they're taught to believe and they believe since their children and all these things and and that's a terrible reason to believe yes it is funny you know because we're we're over there over time it's funny because nobody is satisfied when their parents say because I said so and yet seemingly every religious person I've ever met is immensely satisfied with because I said so if the i in question is their particular holy book or some supposed expert that they were brought up listening to because I said so because I said so go do your damn homework do your homework on Evolution do your homework on religion go do your homework on your particular religion and the other religions I support I wish comparative religious courses were mandatory I don't want them to be electives I wish they were mandatory in public schools because when I sat through my comparative religions course I can remember as a Christian sitting there going man these people believe bizarre [Laughter] and everybody else who was sitting in that class was thinking the exact same thing they possibly possibly who could seriously believe this and the thing is there were representatives of most of those beliefs in that classroom all thinking that about everybody else now this Show's been on for 19 years or so how long have you been hosting for 11 12 whatever the hell it is now I don't plan to stop anytime soon we're probably going to keep going I don't think religion is going to go away anytime soon but you want to know what might make religion go away if we took all the religious people in the world and put them in one place let's go with South Carolina because that's what the Christians wanted anyway and then you guys sit there and talk about why not what you believe but why you believe it and have this discussion amongst all of you as people walk out of South Carolina I predict without a dream they're going to be non-believers they're going to finally realize that hey that little thing about you know I'm an atheist that you know means I just believe in one less God than you do or in case of Hindu several less Gods than you do but as soon as you realize and there's another old quote when you realize why you don't accept the religions you reject you'll under accept you'll understand why I reject yours as well that's the key so go to South Carolina hash it out and then when you're done if somebody comes up with the one true religion and a justification for us call us and tell us about it because we'd love to hear it but if all you're going to do is call in to tell me what you believe and how you haven't managed to disprove something or prove something or how you have this idea that you might be able to demonstrate the probability of something vaguely god-like that could be a part of the natural world and yet transcend the natural world even though there's no demonstration of any probability that you're wasting our time because it's just likely but it is good fun so thanks for having the discussions and thanks for giving us the opportunity to expose the flaws that lead to religion thanks to the studio audience for hanging out and to all the guys in the booth over there who make the show happen we'll see you again next week bye-bye [Applause] hi this is Russell Glasser host of The Atheist Experience you know The Atheist Experience is made possible by volunteers and the generous support of viewers like you if the promotion of positive atheist culture and separation of church and state are values that you hold please consider contributing by becoming an ACA member or visiting our product page at evolvefish.com under the partner tab thank you

Channel: The Atheist Experience

Views: 70,644

Keywords: atheist experience, the atheist experience, theatheistexperience, atheist, atheism, atheist vs christian, atheist debate, religion debate, atheism debate, Matt Dillahunty (Broadcast Artist), belief, faith, reason, rational, proof, evidence, logic, fallacy, religion, religious, science, secular, Skepticism, skeptic, questioning god, doubt, is god real, agnostic, agnosticism, evidence for god, Christianity, Islam, morality, evidence for jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ, debate, Bible, Bible contradictions

Id: cGtTX4qT6YE

Length: 102min 36sec (6156 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 11 2016